War, as James explained, is a paradoxical phenomenon. It brings horror, devastation, and death, yet at the same time the spoils of war, which can fuel one’s economy, also brings the glorification of conquest. War is one ideology that stands for: power over inferiority. At the same time, war heightens unity and nationalistic ideals.

The form of peace however, in the face of patriotism and nationalism, is considerably weak. It carries utopian ideas that fail when it does not realize certain values of society. To William James, peace time creates a spiraling force of degeneration that Jon Roland calls the “real ‘enemy’…our darker human nature.” This human nature as James explains come from the idea that life is hard, but some are more difficult than others, and the comparative ease of one’s life give rise to the problem of degeneration.

As James puts it, people need to realize and revisit the idea of honor and moral pride in the participation of the collective community. To do so, James suggests the use of war discipline and “instead of military conscription, the conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other goods to the commonwealth would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man’s relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour and hard foundations of his higher life.”

I find The Equivalent of War as applicable now, in the 21st century, as it did in 1906 when James presented this essay as a form of pre-World War I sentiment. Certainly, many Americans oppose the idea of war, but in reference to National Service and community service and the idea of war against the degenerating nature of community participation, it becomes completely different. It is necessary to organize and institute a form of national unity that bears “moral fruits”: “toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is temporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of one’s life.”

Read William James' "The Moral Equivalent of War" here:
http://www.constitution.org/wj/meow.htm

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