/lit/ - Literature

>>19477353
Maybe check out War is a Racket.

Because there are things worth fighting for.

War is good because it gives man something to truly dedicate his life to.
I'd rather die at 20 storming the beaches of Normandy than live a long life sitting in a cubicle as an insurance claims adjuster.

Starship Troopers is essentially apologia for a military state from what I remember.

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The captain of the gate:
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods

>>19477393
>>19477403
>>19477410
>>19477414
>>19477420

Ty anons

>>19477414
go back

>>19477480
What did I do

>>19477403
>>19477410
>>19477420
These are the kinds of narrow, idealistic answers I would expect from children.
More sensible answers should include:
-Competition for limited resources being inescapable
-Risk-reward calculations, long-term vs. short-term expectations
-War as tool to manipulate domestic population/opinion and/or to circumvent domestic laws (expanded war powers); esp. since any such expansion(s) can easily be made permanent. Related would be war as means of evading monetary controls/secret funding of projects or companies
-War as means of cultural dissemination or eradication; closely related is war for religion/ideology/glory
-War as means of establishing surveillance and/or outposts/footholds/staging points for future military operations
-War as arms-race, thus requiring readiness and escalation to avoid domination
It's a game, like any other such system of inputs and outputs. There are good moves and bad moves, gains and losses. As long as it is possible to gain something by it, it will be rationally engaged in. Welcome to the machine.

Ultimately it all rests on the fact that it is easier to take things from another than make them yourself. And the opportunity cost of investing money in making them is that you didn't spend it in force of arms, which means those who did have the ability to take all that investment for themselves. Violence has always been the ultima ratio.
People have also very rarely considered themselves part of a greater 'humanity' for whom general progress is a concern. At first, it is the personal riches of the individual ruler and his kin. Then, the riches of the nation; then, the riches of the interested classes within the nation. That is who i care about. You may lose but i will gain. It is a transfer of wealth—indeed a net loss considering the resources expended in fighting—but if i have no care for the cosmic balance of human gain, and only my own, then it is a net positive to me as long as i take more than i lose.
It is easy to see this with older warfare, but modern war-as-waste is a more complicated issue considering the costs involved. Even then i'm not sure if that is true. One recalls the opening sentence of Kissinger's Diplomacy
>Almost according as if to some natural law, in every century there seems to emerge a country with the power, the will, and the intellectual will and impetus to shape the entire international system in accordance with it's own values
Certainly, it is evident that the victors of WW2—America and the USSR—used their position of predominance to shape international systems that served to transfer wealth from their sphere to the motherland. Even if they didn't directly annex land, they effectively stacked the deck in their favour through international institutions like the UN, WB, WTO, IMF, etc. The value this has added to their economy is a tricky counter-factual, but i would hazard that it is far above what they spent on the war and post-war reconstruction. The person who can choose the rules of the game always wins.
I honestly think it really is as simple as 'to the victor goes the spoils'.
I guess for recommendations i'd say Politics Among Nations by Morgenthau and 'Dictatorship, democracy, and development' by Olson have the gist.

>>19477353

>>19477486
Shut up nerd, no one cares about your political technicalities.
War is good because it is honorable and man is at his best when he's fighting for his life, not because you can decrease oil prices by 3%.

Violence is a meme. Like dishonesty, cruelty, or dogma, once it gains a foothold in an environment it justifies it's own existence. Although it makes the lives of any individual actor more difficult no one will unilaterally de-escalate for fear of the out group. In most developed countries were largely insulated from this effect by laws but at the national level things are murkier, closer to the state of nature.

>>19477486
> answers are only sensible if they reflect my opinion

>tfw will never be tried for war crimes

>>19477553
>mfw i drop a bomb worth 10 heart surgeries in a stealth bomber that costs an entire hospital on a group of yemeni children because man is at his best when he's fighting for his life

>>19477585
Damn the expense I want that orphanage flattened.

>>19477585
>mfw when I, a nobody who would've remained so had I not been thrust by circumstance into the cockpit of this machine of war, make a larger impact on this world with ten seconds and the push of a button than most men do by dedicating their entire life to slaving in a cubicle

>>19477353
>waste of money
Good, fuck that shit. It's never going to be put toward anything but war expenditures. Might as well watch shit go BRRRRRRR until frivolous war costs actually severely fucks us over in a more tangible, observable way.
>waste of time
Seems fitting, since focusing on anything else is a waste of time to some 99% of people. Nobody gives a fuck enough to even have civil, sensible discussions about the most basic things without overcomplicating shit with their own narcissism, biases, and uneducated, mentally unwell nonsense. Almost like they're crisis actors in the way of any minute moment of human progress and sensibility.
>waste of human lives
Human lives will never outweigh human greed. We are all sacrifices to the literal and metaphorical war machine of modern society. Human progress means nothing unless it involves the betterment of ways to wipe out swathes of other people, and anything that doesn't is just going to have such an exorbitant price tag on it that you'll be forced to suffer meme military and/or college life just to afford anything.

>>19477625
This is the rationale of a mass shooter. The sort of person who thinks this way gets summarily executed by his own officer in wartime.

>>19477632
>Human progress means nothing unless it involves the betterment of ways to wipe out swathes of other people

>>19477679
I'm honestly chill with it, I just wish everyone else could be honest about it instead of selling limp-wristed fake hope 24/7.

>>19477353
The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black
What right man would have it any other way? he said.
The good book does indeed count war an evil, said Irving. Yet there’s many a bloody tale of war inside it.
It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.
He turned to Brown, from whom he’d heard some whispered slur or demurrer. Ah Davy, he said. It’s your own trade we honor here. Why not rather take a small bow. Let each acknowledge each.
My trade?
Certainly.
What is my trade?
War. War is your trade. Is it not?
And it aint yours?
Mine too. Very much so.
What about all them notebooks and bones and stuff?
All other trades are contained in that of war.
Is that why war endures?
No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.
That’s your notion.
The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.

Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god

>>19477674
>Nooooo you can't just slaughter innocents during wartime!
>Why? Because... well... you just can't okay?

>>19477704
More has to do with you not being useful

Play Europa Universalis IV if you're into gaming. It will put in the perspective of what it is to be a ruler. Nature wants living beings to expand, so that's what we are going to do. Lack of resources and glory. You can try to be pacific, but your neighbors will not. They'll attack you, and if you don't have means to defend yourself you're gone. The Fate of Empires by Glub is a good 30-something page essay about the cycles empires had. They all start like barbarians seeking a better life and thus plunder stablished empires. The barbarians get civilized and rationalize stuff, become pacific and humanist. But there'll always be barbarians to continue to cycle.

>>19477353
>Waste of money
False. This is the crux of the issue.

>>19477578
No faggot, answers are only sensible if they reflect reality. I presented natural reasons by which and for which wars are prosecuted, and why some amount of warfare is inevitable as a result of intractable conditions and incentives. These are not opinions, they are givens. Go back to whatever fucking containment board you came from.

>>19477353

ITT: edgy suburban teens that have never been in so much as a schoolyard fight

>>19477353
Socialist books most critical of states and capitalism are what you need.
“We” can’t stop because of greed and bullying assholes

>>19477353
Because testosterone gives them bloodlust. They do not care for their brothers who become miserable due to their actions. They have no sense of collective solidarity. They seek to destroy and rape everything beautiful because they cannot destroy the monster within.

>>19477353
>instead of general human progress
holy reddit

>>19478566
Who say we shouldnt be monsters?

>>19478566
And with testosterone, they will give birth to a more perfect being
Beautiful, impenetrable, and violent.

>>19477553
t. spoiled 1st world teenager death fantasy

>>19477410
War is the cause of you having to live the life of a cubicle duster.

>>19478475
Based realist anon

killing lots of people is good for the environment. war is our moral duty as custodians of this planet and apex predators on the top of the food chain with no one to keep our numbers in check but ourselves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpkI_h_SlHM

Yee, c'mon

>>19478520
>stop labour
>all the plebs starve to death while the elites ride out the storm with resources they already have

For the same reason people will always need to defend themselves against criminals. At both the individual and national level some are unable or unwilling to respect the rights of others.

>>19477553
You are talking about honor in a cantonese basket weaving forum, and you my good sir, have never been in a fight, have never benched 220, and have never gotten an iq over 100

>>19477486
>narrow, idealistic answers I would expect from children.
When will you realize that the children are right

>>19477403
>>19477410
>>19477486
>>19477553
>>19477625
>>19477632
>>19477679
>>19477704
oorah im ready to fight and die for a true cause so based vgh so redpilled vgh hard times creating strong men vgh

>>19477553
But anon, the only reason people go to war is drop oil prices by 3%. you can create whatever schizo interpretation of war that makes you feel good but that doesn't change the fact you're being sent there to defend somebodys investments who has no connection to or care for you at all

>>19477353
Today's wars exist precisely for the reasons you listed. The machine won't stop producing because that's it's purpose. Excess needs to be wasted, and may as well try to gain something from it.

>>19477353
I am fully convinced that 99% of people do not ever want to be in a war. It's the 1% who are the problem.

>>19477585
Whats the difference in a terrorist training base and a children's hospital?
I don't know, man. I just pilot the drone.

>>19478520
>>19479777
i killed a nigger and buried him on 60.533148867976685, -145.74913153135947

Leviathan or Origin of Species

>>19477353
Carl Schmitt

>>19477553
war was never about honor it was usually monetary or historically less so now about nationality or ethnicity

>>19477353
read kant's perpetual peace

>>19479777
retard

>>19479628
don't interact with the retard

>>19478520
From Renzo Novatore, an actual anarchist and egoist:
>”Life — for me — is neither good nor bad, neither a theory nor an idea. Life is a reality, and the reality of life is war. For one who is a born warrior, life is a fountain of joy, for others it is only a fountain of humiliation and sorrow. I no longer demand carefree joy from life. It couldn’t give it to me, and I would no longer know what to do with it now that my adolescence is past...”
>” ...only the one who knows and practices the iconoclastic fury of destruction can possess the joy born of freedom, of that unique freedom fertilized by sorrow. I rise up against the reality of the outer world for the triumph of the reality of my inner world. I reject society for the triumph of the I. I reject the stability of every rule, every custom, every morality, for the affirmation of every willful instinct, all free emotionality, every passion and every fantasy. I mock at every duty and every right so I can sing free will. I scorn the future to suffer and enjoy my good and my bad in the present. I despise humanity because it is not my humanity. I hate tyrants and I detest slaves. I don't want and I don't grant solidarity, because I am convinced that it is a new chain, and because I believe with Ibsen that the one who is most alone is the strongest one. This is my Nihilism.”

>>19477353
Plato's republic

>>19477695
>Before man was, war waited for him
My favorite line from the book

>>19477584
Not with that attitude you won't

read Darwin, Freud, Ellul, Hedges

>>19477353
Read Carl Schmitt. I think "The Concept of the Political" is a good introduction, though not complete. Another great book is "The Nomos of the Earth." My interpretation of him (which is not wholly faithful) is this:
Perpetual peace is a depoliticized society. While war is its own discipline with its own laws apart from politics (in fact, war can be a scarce feature of such politics), the very threat of war is an ever present reality of politics, which is based on the friend/enemy distinction.
War itself entails the disintegration of the human being. Thus, the "modernized" concepts of war as "cyber warfare" or "information warfare" are simply not actual war. In the same sense, economic competition, religious movements, and other such aspects of society are not the political, despite their ability to become political through the friend/enemy distinction. The competitor is not the same as an enemy (which is why economics does not follow the same rules as politics). And the enemy need not be hated in the sense of a personal adversarial nature, despite the enemy having such potential of the greatest hatreds. The Crusader need not hate the Saracen, nor the Russian the German, for them to be the political enemy.
Perpetual peace is based on the premise that mankind has found a niche through the excess of production in the industrialized era. But to take away the political from man is to take away his political will. It's the assumption of a divine power that man simply lacks, which is not in his character. Hence, pacifism, in the universal sense, can be he most totalitarian and oppressive forces of them all, even violent.

>>19477486
stfu marxist tranny

>>19477585
Those insurance adjusters need their heart surgery! we can keep them in the cubicle for a extra 20 years!!!

>>19477486
there breathes the man with soul so dead...

>>19479787
Lol imagine thinking any war was over oil...

Old Testament.

>>19477353
On Aggression