A Review of Why We Fight: The Roots of War & the Paths to Peace

I first came across Chris Blattman’s writing several months ago in a blog post where he pumped the breaks on the idea that the US might be headed for Civil War. As someone who believes false polarization (or the perception that we as a nation are polarized) is a much bigger threat than our small but extreme political factions, I found the post very refreshing. Blattman called attention to the ways in which we are prone to one-dimensional caricatures of our rivals when really it is these caricatures that turn our thinking towards eschatological alarmism.

“A common pattern in sectarian and ethnic conflict is a spiral of fears, based not on what a reasoning enemy would do, but by the actions of the bogeyman in our mind. It leads to distorted thinking and conclusions.”

After reading the article, I pre-ordered Blattman’s book expecting much of the same content, but I learned a lot more as Blattman wrote a thorough review of conflict and how it does and (perhaps more importantly) does not turn into violence. It distills insights across economics, social/clinical psychology, conflict management, game theory, political science, and history while weaving in personal anecdotes from real-world experiences with gang violence on the streets of Chicago and sectarian conflict in Africa/Columbia. His central insight is that war is extremely costly, so groups will most often avoid it (a theme prominent in the book “War, Peace, & Human Nature”). But nonetheless, when war does break out, Blattman addresses what kept these groups from cooperating.

I left with two threads of takeaways that I found particularly valuable. The first thread has to do with generally how to approach solving large-scale social ills and the second has to do with specific reasons for why we wage war. We'll start with the general approach side.

Wicked Problems – Wicked problems are problems with many interdependent contributors making them seem impossible to solve. Wicked denotes the degree of difficulty in solving the problem rather than its evilness. Because the factors are often incomplete, in flux, and difficult to define, attempts to solve wicked problems can often backfire.

“And when you do try something [to fix wicked problems] it’s hard to know if it’s working. So we should expect wobbly evidence, shrimpy evidence, and innumerable failures.” (Blattman, p 224)

Piecewise reform – Given how intimidating wicked problems can be, we shouldn’t think about solving the problem completely. This is too demoralizing. Instead, we should think about taking small steps to weaken the problem. These kinds of problems need what Blattman calls “piecemeal engineers.”  This approach borrowed from Karl Popper emphasizes small-scale and incremental interventions that should be continuously amended as experience suggests. This kind of piecewise reform is central to the scientific method but is often lacking amongst activists and policymakers.

5 Reasons Why War Occurs

#1 Unchecked Interests – When power is broadly dispersed throughout society, war happens less. This is true for all forms of power, be it political, social, economic, etc. Democracy, wealth equity, checks and balances, and federalism all contribute to a broader dispersal of power and thus serve to mitigate unchecked interests. Blattman calls this dispersal of power “Polycentrism”

#2 Intangible Incentives – Mostly in the realm of the ideas, maybe your culture values honor or glory or vengeance. Nationalist/ethnic/religious ideas are often intertwined.

#3 Uncertainty – “It’s a little bit like poker. And in that circumstance, you can’t really verify amidst this uncertainty. So just like in poker, when you’re not sure what hand your opponent holds, you might fold and you might decide sometimes it’s worth it to call — or escalate, then call.” - Blattman

#4 Commitment Problems – Closing windows of opportunity. If you feel like your rival will be much more powerful than you in the future, you’re much more willing to attack them now, to prevent them from getting in said position. In game theory, a commitment problem arises when two actors would be better off in the present by committing themselves to a cooperative relationship in the future. But, if the actors know that they will prefer to default on their agreement in the future, fighting is more likely.

#5 Misperceptions – Jumping to the worst conclusions about your opponent, basically cognitive distortions that make fighting more likely. It makes it seem like CBT would be a useful solution to this, and it actually does seem to help! Other misperceptions arise from failing to put oneself in the mindset of a rival, not thinking of all the possible reasons why someone might have done what they’ve done (mindreading), etc.

 Fair, Thoughtful, Realistic, & Inspiring

https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Fight-Roots-Paths/dp/1984881574/ref=asc_df_1984881574/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=532786031661&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12746201875372714442&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9009731&hvtargid=pla-1393166428510&psc=1

Book Review: One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America - By George Yancy and Ashlee Quosigk

This book is a thorough investigation into the central divide that’s currently tearing a religion apart. Each chapter reads like an academic paper in which there are qualitative and quantitative research findings, and the authors dedicate a large amount of the book to exploring the implications of each chapter’s (study’s) findings.

The central thesis of the book is that it no longer makes sense to think of Christianity as one religion. Rather, it makes more sense to think of Progressive and Conservative Christians as akin to other religions that have split off from one another. They center distinctive value systems and mean entirely different things when they say they are “following Jesus.”

What Do Conservative and Progressive Christians Mean by: “Following Jesus”

When Conservative Christians say they are following Jesus, they mean adopting a set of theological beliefs. 1. Believing that Jesus died for the sins of humanity and 2. “Particularism” the only way to receive God’s forgiveness is to believe that Christ is the Son of God and died for your sins. and 3. That the Bible is an inerrant divinely inspired book. Central to their faith is a somewhat rigid and unalterable theological framework. This framework is intolerant, in that it claims to have a monopolistic relationship with the truth. Practically, what this means is that other religions or value systems are false.

When Progressive Christians say they’re “following Jesus,” Yancy and Quosigk claim that this indicates that they see Jesus as an advocate and an inspiration for a humanistic ethic of social justice. Central to this humanistic ethic of social justice is the protection of the marginalized and tolerance for those of different faiths and ethnic backgrounds.

Asymmetrical Contempt

Progressive Christians view Conservative Christians with contempt as they consider their theology to be ridgid and immoral. Conservative Christian theology claims to have a monopoly on the truth, but Progressive Christians (more relativistic & postmodern) don’t adopt this exclusivist mindset, and they see Conservative Christians as a haughtily arrogant bunch. (While Christianity tends to promote humility, intellectual humility about one’s religious convictions is harder to come by.) They also dislike Conservative Christians’ desire to convert others.

Ironically, while Progressive Christians are less inclined to try to convert those of other faiths to Christianity, they are likely to want Conservative Christians to adopt their humanistic ethic of social justice. (Interesting aside: White Progressive Christians are especially likely to view Conservative Christians with contempt, compared to Progressive Christians of other non-white ethnicities.) Conservative Christians view Progressive Christians with less contempt, but the authors speculate that this is because Conservative Christians don’t recognize how little Progressive Christians agree with their theological assumptions. As someone who’s inhabited both Conservative and Progressive Christian spaces, I think this is spot on. Given Conservative Christianity’s ridgid theological culture, Progressive Christians have adopted a “closeted” mindset, where they often don’t talk about how much their beliefs differ from orthodox Christian beliefs. I’ve experienced this myself, by hinting at disagreements with Conservative Christians at times, but never flatly saying I disagree because I think this will prompt an attempt at proselytization.

A Parallel Case: Buddhism and Hinduism

The authors claim that this divide is similar to the division between Buddhists and Hindus. Buddhists and Hindus both claim they want to achieve “Nirvana” but have distinct conceptions of what that means. Buddhists believe annihilation is the key to Nirvana, whereas Hindus believe that a merger with ultimate reality (achieving Brahman status) will bring about this state of Nirvana. And similar to the progressive/conservative Christian divide, there are entirely different political and social policy recommendations as a result of sharply incompatible theologies. A Hinduist approach to “Nirvana” implicates a caste system in which society is organized on a vertical dimension, where the top Brahman caste is considered more holy than subservient classes. But in Buddhism, where the ultimate goal is annihilation, there is not a corresponding social system where the annihilated receive additional resources or preferential treatment. The parallels between an exclusivist theology and a humanistic ethic of social justice are not hard to imagine.

Really enjoyed this book. I learned so much and found it enlightening to see the amount of heterogeneity within the concept of Christianity. I definitely think researchers of religion, writ large, should adopt the approach of distinguishing between the two versions of Christianity.

My critique

False polarization. Most Americans aren’t politically polarized or even interested in politics, and while these implications still can affect even the politically disengaged, the authors could’ve spent more time focusing on how even more moderate Christians fit into these conservative/progressive categories despite political apathy or ideological moderation. While the social identity characteristics are aligning more – more Republicans are claiming Conservative Christianity and more Democrats are claiming Progressive Christianity – the distinction has less to do with politics than it does with adherence to rigid theology.

Therefore, a more theologically based dichotomizing label could be useful. The theologically defined and the theological flexible might be more apt, though less intuitive perhaps. This seems better to me because most mainstream (somewhat suburban) Churches in America seem fairly politically neutral. In my experience, in non-extremist Churches, politics is sort of the elephant in the room. The thing that goes undiscussed. I wouldn’t want people to get the sense that our political divides are enormous or so insurmountable, so as to tear our most central institutions apart. Politics plays a role here, but it’s not the only thing going on.

Nonetheless, a great read worth checking out!

https://www.amazon.com/One-Faith-Longer-Transformation-Christianity/dp/1479808687/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=one+faith+no+longer+george+yancey&qid=1651699152&sprefix=one+faith+no%2Caps%2C68&sr=8-1