Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century by Jonathan Glover

Author:Jonathan Glover
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2001-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

2 ESCAPING THE HOBBESIAN TRAP: PSYCHOLOGY

Co-operation to escape war is easier between democracies. It is easier if states are subject to some degree of international authority. But the restraining effects of democracy and international authority depend on the psychological climate. Escaping from the Hobbesian traps, like unchaining ourselves from tribalism, calls for the use of politics and psychology together.

To blame 1914 entirely on some combination of Bethmann Hollweg, Moltke, Berchtold, Sazonov, Poincaré, Grey and others is too simple. The ecological niche of statesmen is the population of their country. The mood of the public both influences who reaches the top and shapes the choice of policies. An adequate understanding of the trap of war starts with leaders, but has to go behind them to public opinion. (‘I would have been impeached.’)

This applies to understanding the period during a war as well as before it. The trap in which Erich Maria Remarque and Robert Graves found themselves was partly maintained by public satisfaction with the war: by Remarque’s uncomprehending old headmaster and by the parents Graves could not talk to about the war. The climate of opinion conditions everything.

In 1914 the outlook included tribal nationalism and Social Darwinism. Other aspects of the climate of the time were the beliefs countries held about each other, a concern with national honour, and some deeper, Hobbesian, ‘unspoken assumptions’.

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