Jane Addams and cooperation vs. competition

From reading Jane Addams' "Personal Reactions During War" and discussing it in class, I found a lot of its insights somewhat enlightening. The one thing that I believe was most poignant and crucial to Addams' writing was the idea that war is not a natural state of humanity. In fact, the very nature of conscription implies that individuals, if given the choice would not fight in a war. Therefore, war by its very nature is contrary to democracy because it requires one party to force its will on another party. The very cornerstone of democracy is the freedom of the people to choose the direction of the state. If the state is imposing a war that the people do not wish to fight, the nation is not really a democracy. Therefore, there is a lot of coercion that goes into the very training of an army defying everything that the leaders may be standing for.

Addams makes a comment about the natural inclination for cooperation that exists within humans. While I personally believe that this is essentially true, I believe that it is our cooperative nature that can be manipulated to get us to join into a war. To aid or fellow citizens, to protect the innocent, to support the country. All of the propaganda that goes into war preparation seems to speak to our cooperative nature. I also believe that in a war situation, although there is competition going on between sides, there requires a lot of cooperation within each party to properly coordinate a war.

Addams is very right however. A cooperative nature does allow us to naturally not want to enter into a conflict. It would make us more inclined to work out our problems with an enemy diplomatically or through other nonviolent means. The cooperative nature of humanity is what motivates the conscientious objectors and the pacifists, not just the political leaders. In many ways, war mongers tend to appeal to our competitive sense much more often than our cooperative sense. If you look at army commercials today, it seems little more that promoting competition--"Be all you can be". Ultimately we are sucked into conflict using very individualistic motivation. We are given heroes to look up to, told that we can make a difference. Every bit of advertising that the military does not only includes an appeal to our cooperative sense "join a team" "serve the country", but also uses rhetoric of individualism by talking about "your country", "your career options after the military." Most of what the military uses to get recruits is actually appealing to our competitive, individualistic side.

Therefore, I agree with Addams in that by nurturing our compassionate and cooperative nature, it is easy to see how war sort of falls out of the picture. Unlike The Moral Equivalent to War, we do not need to continue to nurture out rugged, masculine side. It is much more important to realize that to be creatures of peace is not only impossible, but much easier than being warriors.