Strictly scientifically speaking, there are only two purposes in life: to survive and reproduce (and truly life only wants to survive so it can reproduce, so they can even be grouped as one concept). Philosophers may theorize and others may speculate about higher purposes, but a lot of the basics of biology revolve around those two concepts. Pretty much anything else is either biologically pointless or can be reduced to the basic function of survival. Even many higher functions that we attribute to more advanced or intelligent species (such as humans and chimps and other primates) usually have their roots in survival. War and violence are no exceptions to these rules, as they have remained from a few million years ago to now. We fight and kill for the same reasons anything fights and kills: to survive. And nothing is going to change that.

An extremely old debate between philosophers (with plenty of other people’s opinions thrown in) is whether humans are naturally peaceful or naturally warlike. There are a lot of varying opinions on the matter, with a surprising amount of variety. But whoever is right doesn’t really matter. It’s a moot point as we don’t need to know the truth of it; all we know is history and the present day, and that’s all we need to worry about. It doesn’t matter whether humans are violent or peaceful because we know what has happened in the past. Humans have fought and killed before, but in a different form than today’s wars (excluding the technological differences of course). As John Green says, “For the vast majority of human history, war consisted of raiding. It was about taking stuff from other people's kin group so that your kin group could have that stuff. For 99% of human history, that's how we fought.” This is an effective survival strategy that many animals use. Chimps do it, even some ants, and more modern territorial wars are an extension of this.

Now, when John Green says “for the vast majority of human history”, he means for the vast majority of human history, which is somewhere around a few million years. And up until the last 10,000 or so, humans fought by raiding. But then things changed, and whether wars were the cause or effect of that change is another highly debated topic (there are many of those). As John Green also says, “Cities began as settlements, which, because they were stationary, were targets for raids. And so to deter raiders, cities built walls. But those efforts required coordination, or else coercion, and resources which states are good at.” But after cities and states and countries and all the innovations and progress that came with them, war had to change. John Green continues, “Concentrated urban populations were the basis of civil militias, made up of soldiers who were also citizens. That meant that they were both effective fighting forces and political catalysts. They built civic pride and diminished the power of wealthy warrior elites, who couldn't defeat these new, larger armies.” And so then we come to the modern era, where newer, bigger, more powerful and destructive weapons threaten to destroy the things you want to take from other people. So what do people do?

They create international accords and conventions to constrict warfare so as not to destroy the world or kill too many people, some prime examples being the Hague and Geneva Conventions. The International Committee of the Red Cross defines international humanitarian law as, “International humanitarian law is part of the body of international law that governs relations between States. IHL aims to limit the effects of armed conflicts for humanitarian reasons. It aims to protect persons who are not or are no longer taking part in hostilities, the sick and wounded, prisoners and civilians, and to define the rights and obligations of the parties to a conflict in the conduct of hostilities.” But these international laws are good for peacetime and not much else. Once the actually fighting starts they get thrown out the window. The first time they used poison gas in WWI, they tried to find ways to have it not violate those laws, but soon neither side cared enough. Survival and self preservation instincts are too strong, we won’t let ourselves be beaten because we are abiding unenforceable laws, because they are unenforceable.  The International Committee of the Red Cross says: “The International Committee of the Red Cross is regarded as the “guardian” of the Geneva Conventions and the various other treaties that constitute international humanitarian law. It cannot, however, act as either policeman or judge. These functions belong to governments, the parties to international treaties, who are required to prevent and put an end to violation of IHL. They have also an obligation to punish those responsible of what are known as “grave breaches” of IHL or war crimes.” And those other countries aren’t going enforce the international laws because once the other side violates them they start violating them too.

Humans have tried to maintain a lasting peace time and time again. After each World War there was a “never again” period where people vowed that this sort of thing could never be allowed to occur ever again. But humans aren’t going to stop. World War I was the war to end all wars, and so was World War II. But it probably will never work because fighting for survival is an ingrained instinct in humans, and “survival” is a very loose definition. Anything can be classified as survival, whether it seems like it to someone else or not. The types of wars fought change, from raiding to sieges to poison gas and nuclear bombs, but the reasons stays the same: survival.

No matter how far we come, it appears we always have to go a few steps further in order to get what we want. Simply itching to be looked at the same; something seemingly simple yet unable to be accomplished even after centuries of coexisting. Women have been attached to thousands of words making us out to be inferior, stamped to our foreheads and pasted to our curves. It feels as though we are trapped in a never ending cycle of being treated as lesser by men, and greater yet by the media, leaving the need for a drastic change.

One of the biggest issues in existence is the fact that no one tells the man “no”. Throughout countless encounters a woman is taught to be quiet, keep her mouth zipped shut with the utter defeat of pain searing inside of her lungs, begging to be released into the world singing of all the torture she has endured. The key is thrown away, with the words always being locked away deep down. This is due to the utter sense of fear women live in everyday. Walking down the street alone is no simple task. You become fragile and exposed to the world around you dominated by the male ego. Shouts pour out of their mouths. Their eyes lock onto you, scanning you from head to toe, like you are the prey. Your head tilts, and suddening the only thing you fixate on is the specs in the sidewalk pavement. Your pace picks up, the frightened scurry of your shoes scuffing the ground cannot be heard against the thumping of your heartbeat. Whistles, kissing noises, yells, all follow you down the street. It feels like you are being hunted.

Women are degraded to feeling like animals. The act of walking down the street can be as violent as having confrontations in war. An author of a poem describing experiences in Vietnam wrote: “muzzle down, sniffing like a hundred-dollar dog. Keep it on automatic. Anything moves in the bushes you open fire”. This relates to exactly what a woman can feel, how all humanity is extracted from the man who is entitled enough to threaten your security as a person. It is like an instinct, almost dog-like. Any female they can find will be subjected to the harsh realities that we are still not equal.

For centuries, humans have played the game of trying to decide who the alpha is and who is the omega. Once the idea that women were lesser came to be, society latched onto it with a full force. Everywhere you turn, you are blinded by the movies, pictures, music, and blatant ignorance the media carries.

Violence towards women is made almost appealing. Harming women can even lead to a means of pleasure. 50 Shades of Grey took the world by storm, everyone enraptured by the intense lifestyle led by the main character. He forced the woman into a relationship without love; only submission. Americans everywhere gobbled up the plot, fixating on the glamorized Hollywood faces portraying the characters and the sensuality coated with a thick layer of sexism. The Huffington Post released an analysis of this movie saying: “For some women, the themes of control and rape are not a fantasy. These women see their own abusive relationships echoed in the supposed love story of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, but efforts to have their voices heard have been roundly squashed by those who seem to believe that if women enjoy something, its feminism is above reproach.” Denial is a key contributor to these inequalities our society is facing. People absorb the subliminal messages so far sunken into the fabric of everything we do and it becomes increasingly difficult to pull apart.

The masses of America who were enraptured by the cruel nature of the movie are part of the larger issue, but not aware of their perpetuation. This blind ignorance, this adapted behavior, has normalized so many pressing topics that they are hardly even seen as problems. Women have learned to put their heads down as a mechanism to defend against cat calling, and men have only learned to do it more. The media has learned that abusing women sells, and Americans have only learned to adore it. This form of violence is hard to weed out from the overgrowth of mistreatment, and we must push through this and break the cycle. These problems need to become problems again. They need to stop being accepted and begin to be questioned. People must be aware of how they are being treated and how they treat others, and only then can we advance to an environment where anyone can walk down the street and feel safe just being themselves.

Introduction:

The goals of this paper were to investigate how war impacts and leaves an imprint on people in communities. I also go into how these impacts can be beneficial to the people or how the system can advance or deteriorate because of these changes. My process was overall productive and I was able to use my time wisely and efficiently. When reviewing my final product, I was overall satisfied with the paper and how my goals were accomplished.

Essay:

While war and violence may seem like an easy thing to define and understand, it actually is a lot more complex than what first meets the eye. War and violence is not only a physical being in the moment, but it also has a mental effect during and after the circumstances. One of these mental effects is how war has affected the home country (or countries) during and after the bloody battles. War always imprints on the societies that were involved for better or for worse.

One effect that Karl Marlantes points out is that our mentality as a people changes towards the government after a war. To provide more context, Marlantes wrote about the specific aftereffects of the Vietnam War. He writes “We have switched from naïveté to cynicism. One could argue that they are opposites, but I think not. With naïveté you risk disillusionment, which is what happened to me and many of my generation. Cynicism, however, stops you before you start. It alienates us from ‘the government,’ a phrase that today connotes bureaucratic quagmire. It threatens democracy, because it destroys the power of the people to even want to make change.” This quote not only shows how the people have evolved their views on the government and war, but how it has improved. This can also show how people learn from immediate history and how this imprint from war causes changes throughout history.

Another way war has affected the mass afterwards was the opinion of the public of war efforts. Karl Marlantes also writes “For many people, it eroded the notion, once nearly universal, that part of being an American was serving your country.” It can be seen here that people further experience that cynicism Marlantes refers to earlier. War doesn’t actually solve a lot of issues. The people learn this concept because of their desire to change the ideals of war and violent conflict. The idea of what it means to be an American in relation to war has led to numerous debates and differing opinions.

Furthering this notion of being American and not wanting to serve, there are in fact a lot of different instances where some do not have a choice to be called back into the military. This also causes a lot of issues of dividing the people and the nation. Rita Nakashima Brock writes “Forcing people to stay in service means the military abrogated their contracts and made the question of whether or not they volunteered moot.” This means that there is no choice involved when the military always has the option to reenlist a person back into active service. Even if a person has grown and took things out of war and are against it (no matter if they volunteered the first time or not), they can be forced back into it, disregarding their morals and beliefs in the present. So sometimes even when a people have evolved opinions based on past events, the system doesn’t have to follow those opinions in the same time or even ever.

In conclusion, war leaves an after effect on the communities involved that can impact how that community grows in the future. Sometimes people can become more aware of the violence happening around them. And sometimes the system refuses to change because it it more “beneficial” to them.

Works Cited:

Marlantes, Karl. "Vietnam: The War That Killed Trust." The New York Times. The New

York Times, 07 Jan. 2017. Web. 13 Mar. 2017. <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/opinion/sunday/vietnam-the-war-that-killed-trust.html >.  

Rita Nakashima Brock. "Just War Theory: Are We Protecting the Moral Conscience of

Soldiers?" The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 14 Mar. 2017.<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rita-nakashima-brock-ph-d/in-gates-afghanistan-what_b_758090.html>.