The first of the Western Civilizations, Sumaria, had a priestly leadership. That was
the last time that happened for a long time. The Semites, led by Sargon The Great
conquered them and Western society was ruled by warriors for thousands of years. It
makes sense. A question I have frequently posed in this book is how does a creative
person deal with an aggressive person. Aggressive is synonymous with active. Military
castes can easily create a philosophy of their superiority and support it militarily.
It works. The only way to deal with aggression in the long term is deterrence. The crop
farmers of Sumaria would have been very timid. They could not have fought back against
the aggressive tribes of nomadic herders.
Societies went on with militarist rulers. The peoples descended from the horse herders of western Russia, the Greeks, Romans and Eutustrians, replaced the Semites as the ruling
class of Western civilization. War was just how things were done.
Things like that are self correcting in the long run. The militarist had an advantage for
a long time. That included a reproductive advantage. They were able to spread their genes.
The other non-military castes became widely hybridized with the military castes. They
became able to fight back. War became less economical when more people could fight back,
especially with the rise of more developed technology of warfare that enables a non-warrior
to fight wars.
In terms of the warrior caste, we currently have a very hybridized society both genetically
and morally. Morally you say? Yes. Looking at how we react in our society shows the values
and rules impressed upon the society by the militarists. We see Christian philosophy when
someone says forget it or it's not worth fighting over. We see the militarist when we see
natural territoriality. A man's got to do what a man's got to do. It is the lesson of John
Wayne. It is a recognition that even if you don't want to fight, there may come a time
when you must or the militarist will destroy what you have built and kill you. An interesting
corollary to this is we often, especially within the society, even follow the rules of the
militarist. Fighting rules are stylized like reproductive battles, which they basically
are when the fight is within the society. It's considered wrong to hit from behind. If
there were no common rules, there would be nothing considered unfair. Even in war, there
are usually some rules.
In modern society, we compete, but competition by violence is largely outlawed or frowned
upon. It is counterproductive for the society. At the same time, we currently dare not lose
the ability to fight.
In the stable ecology, it would be assumed that military warfare likely wouldn't exist or
it is not a stable ecology. If there is warfare, by definition it would not be for the
traditional reason of resources. It's hard to say about ideologies.
Actually, this part of the discussion has been covered in examinations of history (the
Chinese empire) and repeatedly in speculative fiction. It seems that a society can exist
for a long time with very little potential for violence if there is no outside threat.
A powerful empire may crumble easily to a small external threat.
I will note here the view that Robert Heinlein offered in the book This New Horizon. It is
interesting in that many years ago when he wrote it, he talked about artificial selection
(though without hybridization) and postulated in the book that the society should be based
on a fairly high degree of potential for personal violence. I don't see it that way, but it
is a view. This was not part of his view, but if we do achieve a star flight capability such
as is projected in the show Star Trek (or the stories by Larry Niven) and if we meet a lot
of intelligent aliens, the equation could change that a high degree of aggressiveness could
be required. Still, that's extremely speculative and they may well be naturally predisposed
to non-violent philosophy for the same reason that I suggest humans will be. This is all way
beyond anything worth speculating about here.