Ep. 010:  John Horgan

Show Notes

• Shaped by a childhood during the cold war
• Honed his arguments within a military family, his father and his grandfather served in WWII and WWI
• Is it possible to end war?
  • His experience has been that 9 out of 10 people believe that it is not possible to end war
  • His book is an attempt to argue otherwise.
• Is war part of human nature?
  • This theory is false: war is a recent innovation, war is sporadic
  • There is not much evidence that war is an inevitable result of competition for resources or inequality or poverty
• Horgan paraphrases Margaret Mead: War begets war, once war breaks out, it transforms a society, makes it more militaristic and more likely to engage in war in the future
• Some peace activists think we need to eliminate conflict and competition
  • Not true, conflict is neither good nor bad, doesn’t necessarily lead to violence
• War is expensive, impractical and leads to lose-lose situations
  • The U.S. spends $1 trillion on military
• There is evidence that we are in a period of relatively low war casualties
  • Although the Syrian war is a big upsurge
  • There are reasons to be optimistic
  • Period of decline in violence
  • Spread of democracy
  • Democracies fight non democracies, but don’t tend to fight other democracies
• As information becomes the valued commodity, this undermines need for violence
  • Although as global technology promotes globalism, it can also be used to spread hatred, e.g. ISIS’ use of social media
  • Capitalism and commerce can be a progressive force in ending war
  • The biggest companies, such as Apple and Google and Walmart, don’t want war; they want goods and capital to flow freely
• Vision of a new anti-war movement, including the traditional left but also including conservatives who worry about spending and religious conservatives who recognize that war is immoral
• Ending war is both a moral and practical imperative
• U.S. defense budget is nearly bigger than all the other countries’ budgets combined.
• Every time we use war we legitimize war and use of force.
• How do we use show of violence in a way that does not perpetuate more violence?
  • War is not a force of nature or a natural disaster, it is a human creation.
• If everyone wants the end of war, even people who are making money off it, why is it not ended?
  • War is not the inevitable product of differences and competition
  • New York is fractious and competitive but the conflict and differences do not result in mass violence.

Biography

• John Horgan is a science writer and a professor
• Classes taught at Steven’s Institute of Technology include a class on war and science
• Author of a book titled: ‘The End of War’

Resources

• John Horgan’s website: http://www.johnhorgan.org/index.htm
• Stevens Institute of Technology: http://www.stevens.edu/sit/
• End of War by John Horgan: http://www.johnhorgan.org/the_end_of_war_112595.htm
• Scientific American’s Cross-Check blog: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/

Contact John

You can contact John via his Scientific American blog: Cross-Check, his email jhorgan@highlands.com or his webpage.