Ehrenreich’s Blood Rites, Essay Example

In the final chapter of Blood Rites, Ehrenreich investigates the apparently essential relationship between the human and war. She recounts how neither ideological shifts nor technological adjustments have eliminated war. The end of the Cold War, which saw democracy emerge as the hegemonic planetary ideology, did not end war; advancements which introduced the firearm, led many to speculate that war would simply prove too “costly” (223) to be practiced by human beings.

In this regard, Ehrenreich’s argument seems entirely sound: war remains constant throughout human existence. Accordingly, she considers an explanation from evolutionary biology, whereby war resembles a meme. The “self-replicating” (226) nature of a meme means that it is something continuously repeated not because it gives any evolutionary advantage to the human being, but rather because it bears an autonomy in spite of its human host. Ehrenreich nevertheless does not entirely accept this argument, to the extent that it seems to limit human autonomy; she therefore supplements this interpretation with possible social causes for war, while also noting that phenomena such as peace movements challenge the notion of war as essential to the human being.

The argument from evolutionary biology is especially compelling, since it seems to explain the constancy of war. At the same time, there is a danger of essentializing the human being with this account: it is a fatalist and teleological position to merely state the human being is X. The radical development of human history itself is a challenge to this statement. Simultaneously, as Ehrenreich also notes, social institutions such as the family seem to remain constants for the human. Perhaps this is how we can therefore understand the permanence of war in relation to the human: a phenomenon that exists at the interstice of evolutionary biology and the social.

Works Cited

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Origins and History of the Passions of War. New York: Holt, 1997.