Why We Fight by Mike Martin
Why are we willing to die for our countries? Does religion precipitate violence? Do pride, anger and vengeance lead to war? Can ideology persuade someone to blow themselves up? This ground-breaking book explores how tens of thousands of years of evolution have shaped our brains to fight, and not to fight. Drawing on insights gleaned as a soldier and a scholar, and a biologist, Mike Martin explains how the lives and deaths of our ancestors have shaped our behavior to propel us towards conflict, even as that option makes less and less sense. Why We Fight highlights the continuums between animal and human individual violence and explains how mankind has massively reduced the preponderance of warfare by creating larger and larger social groups. Together, these arguments form a compelling demonstration of humans' evolutionary predisposition to warfare, rooted in a prehistoric past when going to war actually increased your chances of survival. Our contemporary world is marked by the disintegration of social groups, which inevitably increases the likelihood of conflict -- yet, Martin concludes, humans may still ultimately outlive warfare altogether, consigning it to history.‘A much-needed, well-written, and well-substantiated work[Mike Martin] manages to challenge some of the most common assumptions in the field of conflict studies. [Why We Fight] is a first, essential step into a more scientifically grounded social science and a challenge to several well-established academic theories.’
-- Strife Journal
Mike Martin is a visiting research fellow at the Department of War Studies, King's College London, having previously studied biology at Oxford. Between these experiences, he served as a British Army officer in Afghanistan. His previous books include An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict and Crossing the Congo: Over Land and Water in a Hard Place, the latter of which was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Adventure Travel Writing Award in 2016.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781787384897 |
| ISBN 10 | 1787384896 |
| Title | Why We Fight |
| Author | Mike Martin |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd |
| Year published | 2021-03-25 |
| Number of pages | 328 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |