The origin of live and let live (and a very interesting system to analyse)

http://www.heretical.com/games/trenches.html

by etherael • 17 years ago

60 18 17 years ago

numair• 17 years ago

This reads as though it is straight out of a Monty Python sketch:

I was having tea with A Company when we heard a lot of shouting and went out to investigate. We found our men and the Germans standing on their respective parapets. Suddenly a salvo arrived but did no damage. Naturally both sides got down and our men started swearing at the Germans, when all at once a brave German got on to his parapet and shouted out "We are very sorry about that; we hope no one was hurt. It is not our fault, it is that damned Prussian artillery."

stcredzero• 17 years ago

I went to a military academy as a high school student, and we had lots of military instructors who were in Vietnam. One of them was a Staff Sergeant in US Army logistics. Though they were logistics, they occasionally had to defend themselves. According to this one instructor's account, US logistics personnel would deliberately miss the enemy, and would instead try to almost hit them in order to scare them. The logic was this: as logistics, you don't want to fight them -- that's not your job! You just want to get out of there in one piece with your supplies. So you try to get the machine-gun bullets to go right past them or right around them. That should scare them into taking cover. The last thing you wanted to do was to kill someone's best friend and have them go super suicide commando on you.

I told this to an acquaintance who was an ex-marine from a family full of ex-marines, and he just commented that this was what was wrong with the Army. Apparently, a lot of people in the Marines are definitely there to kill the enemy.

nazgulnarsil3• 17 years ago

the escalation of war throughout modern history, culminating in the world wars, is a fascinating subject. the methodology of total war is so alien to the human psyche that it requires quite a bit of brain washing and careful planning, and even then you constantly have to maintain it via a strict hierarchy, lest you get the sort of unspoken agreements between sides as discussed extensively in the article. the escalation to total war was caused by at least three things:

1. the growth of government as a percentage of GDP (more efficient taxation and indoctrination) allowed ever greater a nation's economic output to be turned to aggression. see Bertrand de Jouvenal's excellent On Power for a lengthy dissertation on this subject.

2. the slow change from a multi-polar to bi-polar power arrangement. in the animal kingdom you will see "posture fighting" between contesting males where little actual damage is done. This is because a real fight is disastrous, even for the male who wins since he may be weakened so much that he can not now defend himself against a third male who will swoop in on this opportunity. Likewise with a multi-polar power arrangement. No one nation will devote tons of resources to a total war with another because doing so will weaken both with regards to other nations. what we see in pack animals (including primates) is that aggression generally only occurs when one side has overwhelming advantage (5 vs 1) and thus can act without reprisal. larger fights, while rarer, usually end when one side gets a kill. why doesn't the winning side press the advantage? again, the risk is large for an uncertain payoff.

3. of course, technology. this one is harped on by so many history channel shows that I feel no need to go into it.

lionhearted3• 17 years ago

This reminds me a little of how Shaka Zulu broke from rituals to conquer most of sub-Saharan Africa. Shaka was one of the most effective African generals and conquerers in recorded history, because he changed the nature of African warfare very quickly.

Basically, pre-Shaka, warfare was a ritualized thing in the area. The tribes would take throwing spears and stand on two hilltops facing each other, and threw spears and shout at each other until one side gave up and fled. The conflicts would create injuries, but not so many fatalities.

Shaka moved to a more shock troop charge style of attack. He outfitted his guys with large, wooden shields, and short, heavy spears that could slash or stab. So when the other side lined up to fight ritually, Shaka charged and would have his side massacre the other.

Normally you'd see the other sides adapt, but he brutalized and then assimilated his enemies very quickly so they couldn't adjust to his tactics. He swept through Africa conquering very quickly.

This has been seen many times throughout history - basically, the side of the war that fights with less rules, wins. But normally, if the other side realizes you're not fighting a gentlemanly ritual any more, they adapt. Yet a few military men in history moved so fast that their opponents couldn't adapt. Shaka, Alexander, and Genghis Khan are the first three examples that come to mind - they fought relatively dirty, breaking rituals and customs of warfare with new equipment, a more brutal focus, and immediately assimilating or executing prisoners of the defeated. Because they moved so fast, and all the survivors became either new recruits or were killed, there was no time for an organized, adapted resistance. That's how those guys were able to take such large amounts of land in short amounts of time.

The ironic part is that the kind of personality that'll do that rarely knows restraint, so they overextend themselves and have their empires die after their usually premature death.

swombat• 17 years ago

How did Alexander fight dirty? In all the biographies I read, it seemed his "advance" was to use clever tactics, rather than to fight dirty. Would love an example of this.

lionhearted3• 17 years ago

He had no regard for his troops' lives - something like 80% of his soldiers that went with him died, and he conscripted new guys everywhere he went. So he'd conscript, shock attack losing a lot of guys, then conscript from the newly defeated, and repeat. He did make advances in strategy and technology too - I believe his major military innovation was actually much longer spears than opponents, and he moved fast enough that that technology wasn't diffused and adapted.

He also executed, assassinated, or otherwise brutalized his own supporters fairly often when it would advance a goal of his. Alexander's romanticized in the west, but he didn't have much respect for the lives of his soldiers and people.

nazgulnarsil3• 17 years ago

this is really interesting. this is taking advantage of a loophole in the fact that animals evolve for this sort of "limit your losses through limited engagements" mindset. it doesn't apply if you can re-up your forces from the defeated. only works with humans because with animals you can't simply assimilate newly defeated tribes to fight for you.

Do you have any sources that would be worth looking into that expand on your line of reasoning?

lionhearted3• 17 years ago

Edit: This turned out to be quite a long reply. I gave examples and background from Japan's warring states era of five or six of the top generals, and which ones wound up winning. I contrasted it with two arguably more courageous and smarter generals who weren't able to consolidate power after their victories and who didn't amount to much. It's a long comment with background and links - people who like Japan, strategy, or military history might enjoy this comment, though it turned out to be one of the longer ones I've written.

There's a lot of examples, but it can be hard to find them in recent history. If you're dealing with a country who has the same government or talking about a cultural icon, the tendency is to paint things black/white, good guys/bad guys.

And if one side completely annihilated the other? Well, then forget about trying to get a balanced perspective. Rome completely genocided and eliminated a highly advanced society called Carthage, but it's barely a footnote on history because there's no Carthaginian side to hear. On the flipside, since both the Nationalists and Communists in China survived WWII (Taiwan and Mainland), you can read pretty balanced perspectives on both places.

So that said, I'd recommend the Sengoku period of Japan if you want to learn about politics and military history. Its governmental policies are no longer in place and there were many sides keeping records. You can get a pretty good idea of what actually happened there and how the winners won.

Quick background, then I'll answer your question with a few specific examples of people and battles to read up on and give Wikipedia links as a jumping off point:

For most of its history, Japan had a dual power structure with the Emperor and the Shogun. The Emperor was literally God on Earth and in charge of everything. Nominally, the Shogun was the top servant of the Emperor and military commander, but the power went back and forth between them during different times.

Sengoku is when the Shogunate (the central military and earthly government) completely broke down and became powerless. Japan broke into basically a 30-sided civil war, with local lords commanding small armies and attacking each other.

There's three great unifiers from the Sengoku era - Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. It's interesting that those three all came from the same camp: Hideyoshi rose from being a peasant to being one of Nobunaga's top generals and later successor. Ieyasu was close allies with Nobunaga.

These three men were probably not the most courageous, brilliant, or skillful of the Sengoku era. Notably, Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin were renowned for being amazing warriors and leaders. But Shingen and Kenshin got locked into a standstill battle with each other for years while Nobunaga swept through Japan conquering and assimilating people. There were lots of political marriages, and many times a father would be facing his son-in-law. Since the enemy side was frequently respectful and somewhat reverent to the enemy, often you could sign up their footsoldiers and lower ranked officers after defeating them (the higher ranked officers almost always committed ritual suicide when defeated).

Anyway, this is getting quite long, but here are some links:

The era itself (fascinating):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sengoku

The three great unifiers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oda_Nobunaga

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyotomi_Hideyoshi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_Ieyasu

These two were great generals and leaders, but got so caught up in fighting to a standstill instead of win/expand/recruit that their clans were later crushed (if you read deeply into Sengoku, you start to ask, "Why didn't Uesugi Kenshin accomplish more?" I believe the answer to this question is because he was fighting to a standstill, and not expanding upon his victories):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uesugi_Kenshin#Uesugi_and_Taked...

Sengoku ended at the Battle of Sekigahara, the most important battle in Japanese history. It's considered the unification of Japan, and began a 250 year reign of almost complete peace and stability in Japan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekigahara

Interesting note about Sekigahara - the battle was between Tokugawa Ieyasu (who won) and one of the top generals of the then-deceased Hideyoshi Toyotomi. That general's name was Mitsunari. Mitsunari was so generally offputting that that a number of lords, generals, and captains defected to Ieyasu's side because they disliked Mitsunari so much.

Here's the really crazy part - Ieyasu's men caught Mitsunari, and Ieyasu ordered them to let him go so he could lead the enemy troops. He knew that there were 2 or 3 generals that would potentially defect from Mitsunari's command. So in this case, it's almost the opposite war of recruiting - poison the enemy leadership and make yourself a more attractive camp. Ieyasu did really reward and take great care of everyone who came to his side - he didn't take much luxury for himself, instead setting his son up to rule and making everyone on his side wealthy.

One last one that should illustrative the point quite well:

The Battle of Okehazama is one of my personal favorite battles in history. It's how Nobunaga got started. A guy named Yoshimoto was taking 35,000 troops to go crush Nobunaga and take his lands. Nobunaga took 1,500 of his best troops, snuck around behind Yoshimoto's main force, and raided Yoshimoto's camp during a heavy rain, and killed Yoshimoto.

This battle set of the era - it's really amazing to read about, one of the greatest underdog stories in history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okehazama

"ad Nobunaga decided on a frontal assault, the battle would have been deceptively easy to predict; his army was outnumbered ten to one by the Imagawa forces. A frontal assault would be suicidal and an attempt to hold out at Zenshō-ji would only last a few days. Because of the odds against their side, some of Nobunaga's advisers even suggested a surrender. Nobunaga, however, decided to launch a surprise attack on the Imagawa camp."

"With their leader dead, and all but two of the senior officers killed, the remaining Imagawa officers joined Oda's army. Soon the Imagawa faction was no more and Oda Nobunaga was famous as his victory was hailed by many in Japan as miraculous. The most important of the samurai lords who joined Oda after this battle was Tokugawa Ieyasu from Mikawa Province. Tokugawa would remain a loyal ally of Oda from this time till Nobunaga's death."

lsd5you• 17 years ago

Napoleon Bonaparte was also known for breaking the rules of engagement, but i guess in his case his enemies caught up in the end.

ugh4• 17 years ago

Buy the author's book: http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Cooperation-Revised-Robert-A...

And please put a NSFW tag on links to a racist's website (no, this is not about the graphic, this is about the rest of the content: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Sheppard_%28activist%29).

j1o1h1n• 17 years ago

Is there a generally accepted "LOON" tag?, Mr Sheppard gives us:

> What I have termed the "Dynamical Laws":

> 1. The only power that females have is given to them by males;

> 2. The only thing which females do with that power is use it against males.

Complete with graphic of some Third-Eye-Vagina-Dentata.

ugh4• 17 years ago

Could be brilliant satire. Well, I doubt it :)

etherael2• 17 years ago

I didn't actually know that the site in question was run by this fellow, but I fail to see how it matters in the context of the linked article? Especially in a "someone is looking over my shoulder and saw me reading about world war I military history" fashion being comparable to "saw me looking at sexual imagery". I don't believe it's appropriate at all.

ugh4• 17 years ago

I have nothing whatsoever against the content of the linked excerpt (in fact I quite distinctly remember reading it somewhere else and liking it a lot). And I also quite enjoyed the discussion here. I just don't think it is so great if you link to content hosted by nutjobs. The article is SFW, so using NSFW was maybe misleading.

Luc• 17 years ago

People jump to conclusions all the time. That graphic at the top of the page is quite evocative, for example. Besides, I'd like to have a respectable source for this article, so I know it hasn't been edited to fit a nutcase agenda.

The origin of live and let live (and a very interesting system to analyse)

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