This is a machine-generated transcript. Text is unformatted and may contain errors.

Over I'm going to say is going to cause that work of independent and affiliated stations the University of Chicago roundtable we present Malcolm Sharp of the law school Mr Sharp we propose today on this roundtable to discuss war as a psychological and scientific problem we're not going to talk about such current issues as Henry Wallace asked Germany destructions and war are as old and familiar as love unfriendliness impulses that move us to kill and destroy it may be part of our unchangeable nature like hunger the impulses of reproduction that some think these fighting impulses are the result of change about social systems either way but can we do to control our two students from different join me today in the discussion of MUST men fight Dr Margaret Mead psychologist and anthropologist of the American Museum of Natural History DR HARLAN sharply director of the observatory of Harvard University and president of the American Astronomical Society chapter eight you're a noted scientist and you played an important part in research for new weapons of art what difference does it make if we fight another war but another war against men you mean I go sharp let off well next was what I had in mind there are other kinds of wars exciting ones excited enormously like the Cardinals and Dodgers there's a great fight in the fight against cancer but I know you say that it's your brain to another world war the fight of man against man well there are many differences that it will make one is that we certainly will look foolish to any outsiders like the Martians or to the Galaxy but one important consequence of the atomic war is that it might wipe the species of man off the surface of the planet. Dr made you spent seven years studying seven primitive societies What did you find out about war I found out that it is possible to take men of the same race to the same general level of civilization in the same environment and either develop them into exceedingly peaceful cooperative people aren't exceedingly destructive hostile people depending upon the way in which the social system was arranged and how the kind of world we have today Dr Shepherd is not like the wars of the Pacific peoples I like the wars the eighteenth century what happened to the character of modern. Well modern wars become a science and not a social endeavor a pleasure or diversion I like to put it here sharp that we need not mention the atomic bomb in talking about the dangers of the next war the crisis is. On us without that particular gadget because biological warfare or the development of jet propulsion and of rockets of guided missiles of robots fighting machines all those Even without you two three five was a great danger to urban and perhaps even rural existence where all seriously endangered by the many tools we had before that the atomic part of it just sort of speeded the matter up document to the point of view of the world like primitive societies you're saying these modern weapons to taking all the fun out of war and. They take their taking a fun out of war of course because they've removed the individual so far from the prosecution of war so to the extent that I had hundreds of thought it depends on making people enjoy taking heads actually taking you know with a weapon that has been taken completely out of modern warfare what we need very often is submissiveness ability and blind though a billion as a way of exercising many of these weapons not destructive aggression Yes the character of war has changed in so many ways that of that the only fighting instinct I'd say the pleasure of the combat again machined out of the present wars future wars altogether the smell of the enemy no more the rheumatics nor the bombing charger and all those poor victims the clash of Sabers all that is gone and now there is science and bending over a drafting table about the military virtues what's become of them. I mean the military victories have turned into the much more submissive precise point that's more important to make a mathematical mistake very often in modern water than the pale to get your dander off the people who released the missiles and our soldiers and that sent the next round of the I suppose the safest part of the population DR KAPLAN Well I don't think any part of the population is going to be saved in the next war just for the reason that the brunt here just changed completely We just got to keep in mind that the isolation of many in one city or in the center of that kind is all disappeared no Milwaukee Minneapolis and St Louis are just five miles from the danger line the front here certainly feel great nations playing for position we can all see the part now as a day of the people around us in our society. Universities and schools try to encourage rationality irrational influences of all sorts work among us for our movies by our tendency toward fighting and cruelty newspaperman think that it takes a fight to make a story great poker game a foreign politics is turned into an imitation of a prized life not have the liberty to destroy himself as well as to save himself. In the scuffing must men fight I suggest we send her attention on these questions What has science done to watch the scientists How would you go about determining the answer to whether was an inevitable result of human nature I would you go about devising practical measures to help control fighting what the Victorians of other societies tell us about human but massive and people have too little assertiveness too little to fight that's not the history of civilized people show extraordinary persistence in the practice of or for except one of the other diagnosis on change about this position to kill or destroy a product of human arrangements for every time no basis for choosing between them how do we work to control incurable are starting at the beginning shop with. What difference would it make to the universe what you study as an astronomer whether or not we learn to control or mighty little to the universe the cosmos is a large matter and where a small planet and where around a small sun in one of the millions of galaxies doesn't make much difference to us the cosmos what happens on this planet even the complete destruction but then there's a reason to look into it further because one might say we're not so much interested in the cosmos looking at us but what about the species can we keep it on the surface of the earth I once I prepared perpetrated an after dinner talk about ten years ago on the chances of man survival on the surface of this. Planet are some neighboring planets and. It was considered to be sort of a comic type of equipment is absurd just fanciful my SO considered it but in the intervening years as scientific wars has been developed policies of human species of a bit again demonstrated it pretty foolish and the subject of man's survival is now both of immediate concern and the subject is not a comedy it's a tragedy for is I looked at it this way sharp I said What is the chance of a probability theory that can be an astronomical elimination of man from the surface of the planet say in the hundred thousand years. And the chances are practically nil the orbits are satisfactory the comments are coming in no sons are crashing into us no chance astronomical Disaster How about the mineralogical in climatological thing well if the races well know we can adjust ourselves to the changes ice ages and things of that time that's not it how about the chemistry the aircon that don't know won't know change isn't there we can't adjust to me don't foresee anything geology earthquakes sinking of continents all those nodes and all of those wave man seems to be pretty silly if you get down to the animals and I'm getting the parasitology we're ahead on America and the mileage of the bugs won't get us we can always keep ahead of them and then you come to the payoff the time it seemed a little absurd and knowledge tragic namely that man's only deadly enemy that was a race of men this time unspoiled a species as man himself now ten years. Ago one thousand of a serious and now it's a very bad thing if we given time you see slow evolution might go somewhere life has been on this planet for a billion years and that man has been here less than one tenth of that one tenth of one percent of that time how much time of we got ahead now but I'd like to ask you that what is your estimate for convenience I think a fifteen or twenty years and I think you're pretty optimistic that it is fifteen or twenty years before they the comes that spoils the whole thing but it seems to me like this must mean what she thinks about this that in three or four years that die is going to be cast one way or other whether we have a chance for survival as a species and a civilization or whether were washed up so I think that that could be cast for washing us up I think always that there are any other direction just to start a direction off however it goes second or twenty years is not too long our children. Their children will be there to say it's just a might I wonder if the people who are planning children and thinking children are worrying about this situation enough it occurs to me that there are million people probably planning on how families at the present time do they realize they realize what they're putting him in for I mean that there may not be a civilization by the time they grow up is the cruelty the thing about it I don't know I think this people ought to be considering producers enough in their own standpoint they'll know for sales clever they can dodge they can world or they can outtalk somebody but the poor kids what's ahead for the children Shepard presents a rather cumbersome possibility that as a doctor made their death your subject matter may disappear and I subject matter may very well disappear with that they are a bad thing a good thing well the important thing I mean you're making a rather inhuman comment but we're being rather inhuman here and considered necessarily the disappearance of the human right and you know my stars won't disappear when this goes up either Now my primitive people have a special contribution to make in this whole field because they give us experiments provided by history will make it possible for us to work out scientifically what sort of chance we have and how we can take. Do you think that anthropologists have some reason for thinking we ought to take it that we are going to survive Oh I think that's why I've been there anthropologist has evidence on man for pathway to make inventions that will make it possible for more people to live together peacefully now we've seen that goal for little bands of twenty people for the people in New Guinea for input they have to think and eventually make a profit for more than five hundred people to live together when the village gets bigger than that if they are killing each other getting it to others that have to put up then you go up to Bollywood has a million people and look incredibly thankful for that and we've seen now inventions that make it possible for all the people in the United States to live together with a relative degree of peace to get that far will be doing rather well for the anthropologists ten fifteen that proved time and a little bit of time that Dr Sharp to give the man being on the earth we have made great progress in inventions that make it possible for more and more people to live together cooperated with and faithful. At one point you don't believe in eliminating all struggle and conflict No indeed I but I do think it's possible to eliminate destructive struggle and especially the sorts of trouble that mean the physical destruction of other people and their property will be a promise made in the primitive societies there are both Peters and get tougher succeed I have one very nice case on a favorite river where you have a group of cannibals living on the river and behind them to groups of shall we say cannibal each other cannibal you do most of the work for the council they make the baskets and make the pots and the camels are careful not to kill them all off in any given generation and in turn the cannibalise appeased accountable for their prey upon them and you have a system based upon exploitation and appease but that's the mouse from those people there's another group they are patients who don't depend on war at all but they're protected by natural circumstances they live on land that nobody wants and don't make anything anybody want to see this isolation when they're not isolationist but they're isolated we have to discover social inventions that will take the place of the ocean barriers and mountain barriers that are dissipates. From your long range time bind if you shop like you wouldn't think too much peace news would be good for the species what you or I think conflicts in Africa thing that have I just referred to on this going on the baseball world that does improve the quality of baseball in the blood pressure of people and their contents everywhere we live with it our daily lives are full of conflicts if you go back in the biological history of the planet I'm told by those who know that conflict has been the basis of most evolution higher evolution and so I don't think we want to raise contest or conflict in that sense for you we don't have to we're going to have people who are assertive and creative in cooperative activity instead of being assertive destructive or the Volumnia for example have a very high level of civilization and a higher level of the art than we have and yet the whole time I was in Bali twenty years I never saw two children fight even except on a stage do you think it's possible it's for a certain some biological anthropological function and previous ages which it can no longer serve I think it's been one of the devices by which we have been able to organize larger and larger aggregates of society organizing those large aggregates made it possible for us to have better inventions all the time and we've now reached a point where war serves no social function and endangered species may have been biological justification of wars on the old philosophers talk about but certainly that is now worn out because the war ahead of us is a lethal war it's a species annihilating larger civilization killer and not just an insight so the conflicts or the contest we have to have now seems to me have to be the constructive side and they are very largely most of our contest and competitions are quite constructive been peaceful. But it's still exceedingly important whether we take the point of view that was outlined earlier that man is naturally destructive innately disruptive and we cannot curb it or whether we were God the sort of evidence we have from primitive decided that shows that man is in made me and potentially either destructive or kind of property and that you can use those potentiality either way depending upon your social invention that the meat is encouraging isn't true shap Yes often mystified certainly the history of civilized society is sure a very persistent pattern of armed conflict for us two years ago we were in the same position there is of a Russia that we are today then it was our structure we were surrounding them afraid of them. Playing for position against them looks today as though we might be starting the sort of tensions statesman started after this radio brushed off. Time point of view which you were speaking of a while back and every time for the kind of evolution that Dr made refers to I'm not referring to evolution and I don't mean to be the optimistic guy agree with you entirely that we've no time at all and they were starting on a very very vicious course I'm merely pointing out that if we're going to try to do something different it's necessary to know whether it's possible and that anthropology produces evidence to suggest that it is possible if we the will to do it if we work fast enough and hard enough but I'm not meaning to be very optimistic what devices would you have in mind in your books you've spoken of education in a very large sense the training of the young and we do with that these next years ahead we haven't any time to train the young I don't think we've got to have make the sort of social inventions that make it possible for a whole community that don't understand our tricity to turn on electric light bulbs because they have been devised and put at their disposal. Religion and moral reform are sometimes referred to as possibilities our own chancellor Mr Hutchinson emphasizes this point what do you say about that chaplain in the time part of your appeal and if you define things correctly perhaps they'll help I mean a broad education which might be guiding the policies or the knowledge of our men in government that might be a part of education but it comes down to this little process of going through the three or four R.'s there just isn't time for that now we're in a crisis to be a time if you would wait until the galaxy rotates once a two hundred million years but we know that two three four years to work this out it is true too isn't it that religion and perhaps education like it which is very religious still. Has a divisive influence tribal it that it was just to conceal from ourselves our own aggressions it takes us into a world of guilt punishment hero and villain Well you're more dangerous than helpful when religion as a preventive war has succeeded very much in the past it seems to me if I read my history correctly Well on the other hand it's given us a great deal of our ethics to want to prevent or I think we can look to religion at least in part and I'll probably survive developments you've mentioned to give us an impulse to prevent war but the impulse is not enough without the techniques the techniques we have to work on now as well as the impulse How about science Dr Schaffner this is a scientific culture of ours isn't it science stands for rationality. Yes and it hasn't sold its self very well in the high political realm specially in this country I have in mind the fact that we don't have as many scientists as they have in Russia by a considerable number and they have ten times a governmental backing I mean that's a rough estimate as we get here we have excellent scientists in our village but we do not have the backing and even our work for Bill for a science foundation for national health for Science in America was dead died in the committee last July just held up in a House committee Meanwhile the Russians go right ahead their five year plan has tremendous lot of scientific development and we're doing our best under our present system we're doing well we're really great in the science we want to remember that we haven't yet got our big policy makers and our own government since Dave to the situation that we're in a scientific age with a technological civilization what could the physical sciences do toward eliminating war by themselves apart from the game elements to it your for I don't know how much they can do course they can the physical sciences can be worried and talk about it because they understand the lethal affects of things that we're doing and so the natural sciences in general but I think the hope has to be put in the social sciences if we could get an emphasis on our way to measure passing this on to somebody else how about that how about the physical scientists their big part and controlling these instruments they've invented. Well I HAVE THEY ARE NOT do they get a chance to control any instruments it seems to me that the high command of American Army has a good deal to do is to walk the walk not the so much security surrounds us No I think I sense that bloke and I will not accept responsibility for physical side and that is our job to pull the human race out of this predicament but I think that the social scientists say the psychiatrist for one thing the psychiatrist we know about mob actions in the national psychosis or the cultural anthropologists must meet for instance opposite to her or the psychologist or the social historians that know about the evolution of the history of evolutions and of revolutions they're the people who can help where it's going to be passed to us we've got to have resources to current resources we've got to have some money not a whole lot probably half of the money took to build Oakridge wouldn't take us a long way and we've got to have people first class people that's a scientists have had a corner on them a good deal and we've got to have the help of the natural sciences in simplifying our problems to the point that we can get action rapidly and when we have help this way MS Mead It was a natural scientist the physicist who emphasize very strongly in our Science Foundation built the social sciences should be included and it was in the Senate United States Senate that the social sciences were purged it was too uncertain just because they're difficult doesn't mean we should tackle them and the least down by I think we will help I think we must help we take subjects like good T.V. eight with atomic bomb those are not natural sciences they're combination of the social sciences and the natural sciences we cannot disentangle them and so we've got to go ahead very well together work together and get plenty of finance and plenty of encourage went but you're both agreed that the two great divisions of science and not for science in the social sciences were supported strengths and given prominence their advice taken. We would get forward. As rapidly as we need to for the development of words No not as rapidly as we need to we'd have a chance of getting forward especially if this could be done on a world scale if it's only done on a national scale although we would then make a better contribution that we make now it won't be enough could you give some examples of the kind of contribution the social sciences can make one of the things that can contribute of course is an understanding of the way in which different people French Russian British Chinese tackle problems and why when you get a committee working together from those different countries you get utterly unnecessary misunderstandings hostilities and disruption instead of constructive cooperation merely in terms of cultural psychology and not in terms of base real politic as they're so often interpreted and they help the physical sciences in dealing with the effects of their inventions Yes I believe we can. I'm going to step out of Observatory just a bit on this and talk about this problem we've got just briefly of trying to get some subs to sit take care of this aggressiveness which is the subject of our conversation this aggressiveness you see sees me natural We have great thrills doing a war time of working together why can't we have in peace time the challenge of peace is much greater the challenge of war that we get together so I suggest that one could substitute non human enemies to fight and perhaps that would help some especially as me said These can be done internationally and I talk about nationally first Suppose we took as just an enemy for general popular tact the enemy the literacy and low educational standards there's no doubt of the at each other and also the need of it suppose we took the say of a one of our curious modern enemies change thinking the uniformitarianism that comes in our culture in the fact that we have great networks and great. Chains of comic strips and also we don't think as individuals the building up of what I call local cultures there's a thing that can appeal to a lot and get all a nation of people into it and then of course there's the great fight I mentioned before the fight against the major maladies do we realize that there is a challenge that is constructive and adds to life and happiness of man and I just exactly the opposite of the World War I in the fight on the major maladies we can go far we've already gone far we've got awaken consciousness of that and so we find the big foundations and all we're short of personnel that fight on the major maladies again a social science and natural science then another one that I like to mention and perhaps to me is a scientist the most appealing of all is the fight against will say the ignorance they are known the great battle they are known we could as civilized animals top animal on this planet take as our challenge to unravel the mysteries and feel that we're defeated so long as we have remnants invested years of superstition around us. Therefore a fight on the major unknowns is a thing which would list the appeal of the whole world I've talked of that internationally and it has a definitely appealing thing people see there's a challenge there we can compete and we must compete nationally on that all right let's do it. And fact I've already been challenged in the fight of this kind nobody paid much attention to it but we're concerned with tactics in the Peace Room Abir peace contrary to challenge Well this challenge came from a from Moscow it came out last February in the pre-election speech of Marshall Joseph Stalin which he said Jeremy that you have to I've written it down the I've no doubt he said that if we give our scientists proper assistance they will be able in the near future not only to overtake but surpass their chain of months of science beyond our country's boundaries now that's the kind of a challenge i like there's the kind of a contest there might be something that substances aggressiveness that seems to be natural to us I replied to that too coarse but nobody paid much attention. What you recall Well what I said OK I'm going joke I say OK we trip that challenge if you're going to beat us or you can you've got to be good and if you are we will cheer for you because the whole world would benefit from the winning of a contest of that kind and that's excellent national psychology because that is the sort of appeal to which Americans might respond now in terms of their state of developed aggressiveness which we have to need and have to use if we're going to take the next step in determining a direction towards peace instead of towards for you combine a sort of game against another people with the game to survive if you start at the beginning of the discussion yes the game survives for the civilization to survive that it may race to survive and the race eventually the race divide because the substance and whether are an impulse to fight is innate or not we know that we have enough aggressiveness in our own society that we have to make these interim invention that just as the ones that Dr Shafi outlined just now in order to drain off their precipice it's now being used to produce a rising vicious circle of warfare instead of establishing us in the direction towards think one of the points in which the struggle against ignorance could proceed is the struggle against ignorance of ourselves both among the ordinary folk like us among our governors rulers are masters and sort of. Know what they're doing when they are in gauging international games Well I think the bear is a chance for a challenge and for a competition and already in many scientific ways we are friendly in competition internationally and many scientific fields and it does absorb our ambitions doesn't make us want to fight the Blood Wars I think the bite of man against Lance can easily be made obsolete as a matter of the spirit we have seen so long as we are healthy animals which will continue to value our lives still more of the life of our kind. Science leaves open the question of whether the disposition to fight is part of so-called human nature that there is out of change about human arrangements doctor made a scientist takes the position that the impulses which lead to fighting can be molded by improving our society I am more impressed by the persistence of fighting in other societies and in our own more inclined to think that our official representatives will need to learn how to repress fighting in us and in themselves Dr Mead looks for great new contributions from what we call social sciences Dr Shapley has made a notable contribution in his discussion here and elsewhere a moral substitute for a lot both of them have the faith of scientists faith in the capacity of reason to solve problems the faith in which all of us who love lives must have some share of one dollar you can subscribe for four months to the University of Chicago roundtable pamphlet and receive a copy of today's analysis of MUST Memphis participating in today's discussion where hollow Shapley director of the Harvard observatory Margaret Mead noted anthropologist and associate curator of knowledge of the American Museum of Natural History Malcolm sharp professor of law at the University of Chicago a single copy of this week's pamphlet cost ten cents in kind of a three dollars you may subscribe for one Year address your audience to the University of Chicago roundtable Chicago thirty seven Illinois next week Brigadier General William C. men and medical director of the manager sanitarium Dr Roy German of the department of neuro psychiatrist and Michael Ray's hospital in Chicago and Dr Henry Bros and psychiatrist at the University of Chicago well discuss what time lessons for peacetime psychiatry today's Roundtable originated in radio set in New York the National Broadcasting Company and at the Independent affiliated stations of grub right in the presentation of this discussion this is N.B.C. the National Broadcasting Company.