战争和宗教的起源.doc

Origins of War Here is something that tells a little why there were wars in ancient times. Its a story that the journalist Tom Ricks told to Fareed Zakaria. Ricks picked it up from the book?Bugles and a Tiger,?by John Masters, a 1956 memoir of a British officer with a Gurkha regiment in Waziristan in the 1930s. As Ricks tells it, At the end of a war, Afghans confronted Masters and angrily asked him, Where are our medals? He said, Well, you were the enemy. They said, No, no. You gave medals to the Pashtuns on your side. We want our medals, too. You couldnt have had a good war without us. In other words, they looked upon war as something more than a horror to be avoided if possible. War to them was a pleasurable challenge. It was something to take up when the opportunity presented itself. There was daring-do to be performed and recognition for individuals from members of their own society. Less recognition was given to advocates of understanding an opposing sides position and compromise to avoid war. As late as the beginning of the 20th century in Europe there were people in high places who believed that war was an exhilarating drama. And there were those who believed that it built character and made a society strong. Teddy Roosevelt was among them – no matter the some wars in the 19th century, including the U.S. Civil War. The First World War changed a lot of minds. So did the Second World War and the development of the atomic bomb. The Stone Age In ancient times, hunter-gatherers commonly called themselves the people. This suggests that they considered outsiders not quite people. They had no science to draw from in classifying who was human and who was not, or what was human. Outsiders could be evil spirits, or at least intent on doing evil. The intentions of outsiders were suspect. The outsiders might raid, taking what little food they had stored or a woman or child. The ancient world was not yet well tied together by communications. Different societies did not kno