importance now attached to the destruction of sources of supply (as opposed to
purely "military" bases and personnel)---strongly suggest that a truly qualitative
improvement is in the making. Assuming the war system is to continue, it is
more than probably that the regressively selective quality of war will have been
reversed, as its victims become more genetically representative of their
societies.
There is no question but that a universal requirement that procreation be limited
to the products of artificial insemination would provide a fully adequate
substitute control for population levels. Such a reproductive system would, of
course, have the added advantage of being susceptible of direct eugenic
management. Its predictable further development---conception and embryonic
growth taking place wholly under laboratory conditions--would extend these
controls to their logical conclusion. The ecological function of war under these
circumstances would not only be superseded but surpassed in effectiveness.
The indicated intermediate step--total control of conception with a variant of the
ubiquitous "pill," via water supplies or certain essential foodstuffs, offset by a
controlled "antidote"---is already under development. There would appear to be
no foreseeable need to revert to any of the outmoded practices referred to in the
previous section (infanticide, etc.) as there might have been if the possibility of
transition to peace had arisen two generations ago.
The real question here, therefore, does not concern the viability of this war
substitute, but the political problems involved in bringing it about. It cannot be
established while the war system is still in effect. The reason for this is simple:
excess population is tar material. As long as any society must contemplate even
a remote possibility of war, it must maintain a maximum supportable
population, even when so doing critically aggravates an economic liability. This
is paradoxical, in view of war's role in reducing excess population, but it is
readily understood. War controls the general population level, but the ecological
interest of any single society lies in maintaining its hegemony vis-a-vis other
societies. The obvious analogy can be seen in any free-enterprise economy.
Practices damaging to the society as a whole--both competitive and
monopolistic--are abetted by the conflicting economic motives of individual
capital interests. The obvious precedent can be found in the seemingly irrational
political difficulties which have blacked universal adoption of simple birth-
control methods. Nations desperately in need of increasing unfavorable
production-consumption ratios are nevertheless unwilling to gamble their
possible military requirements of twenty years hence for this purpose. Unilateral
population control, as practiced in ancient Japan and in other isolated societies,
is out of the question in today's world.
purely "military" bases and personnel)---strongly suggest that a truly qualitative
improvement is in the making. Assuming the war system is to continue, it is
more than probably that the regressively selective quality of war will have been
reversed, as its victims become more genetically representative of their
societies.
There is no question but that a universal requirement that procreation be limited
to the products of artificial insemination would provide a fully adequate
substitute control for population levels. Such a reproductive system would, of
course, have the added advantage of being susceptible of direct eugenic
management. Its predictable further development---conception and embryonic
growth taking place wholly under laboratory conditions--would extend these
controls to their logical conclusion. The ecological function of war under these
circumstances would not only be superseded but surpassed in effectiveness.
The indicated intermediate step--total control of conception with a variant of the
ubiquitous "pill," via water supplies or certain essential foodstuffs, offset by a
controlled "antidote"---is already under development. There would appear to be
no foreseeable need to revert to any of the outmoded practices referred to in the
previous section (infanticide, etc.) as there might have been if the possibility of
transition to peace had arisen two generations ago.
The real question here, therefore, does not concern the viability of this war
substitute, but the political problems involved in bringing it about. It cannot be
established while the war system is still in effect. The reason for this is simple:
excess population is tar material. As long as any society must contemplate even
a remote possibility of war, it must maintain a maximum supportable
population, even when so doing critically aggravates an economic liability. This
is paradoxical, in view of war's role in reducing excess population, but it is
readily understood. War controls the general population level, but the ecological
interest of any single society lies in maintaining its hegemony vis-a-vis other
societies. The obvious analogy can be seen in any free-enterprise economy.
Practices damaging to the society as a whole--both competitive and
monopolistic--are abetted by the conflicting economic motives of individual
capital interests. The obvious precedent can be found in the seemingly irrational
political difficulties which have blacked universal adoption of simple birth-
control methods. Nations desperately in need of increasing unfavorable
production-consumption ratios are nevertheless unwilling to gamble their
possible military requirements of twenty years hence for this purpose. Unilateral
population control, as practiced in ancient Japan and in other isolated societies,
is out of the question in today's world.
