Is War A Virus? Ctd

Norm Geras is skeptical of John Horgan's analogy:

[I]f some people become warlike, even despite war not being a general human disposition, other people may have to go to war to defend themselves.

But this simple analogy points to a much broader difficulty: namely, that wars may be entered upon for a number of reasons that have primarily to do neither with innate human aggression nor with culturally transmitted attitudes of a bloodthirsty kind; they may arise out of conflicts of economic interest, national or ethnic hatreds, competing territorial claims, religious or other ideological beliefs concerning the superiority of one's own people and the inferiority of others, the yearning to be free from foreign or even domestic oppression, the desire to defend one's country against invaders, and so on.

I do not say that the elimination of war is impossible. I don't know that; like Horgan, I hope it is possible. But the complexity of war's causes isn't well captured by calling it either a cultural innovation or a virus.