Robert Nisbet in The Quest for Community describes the effects of war on a modern, impersonal society composed of disconnected people in search of meaning and purpose.
War brings modern, atomized societies into a temporary sense of community. Empty activities are filled with moral meaning. Everyday life, with its anonymous people repeating meaningless tasks in standardized offices, become part of a common moral crusade. Modern wars are consciously cast as moral endeavors by governments, undertaken for moral abstractions like democracy, freedom, and even women’s rights. The enemy is seen as the personification of evil. War brings a temporary sense of spiritual peace to lives otherwise devoid of moral purpose and disconnected from their fellow citizens. Even shopping for the most meaningless material objects, the symbols of the society which man has striven for and which has made his existence that of a cog in a machine for the production of those objects, takes on a moral significance.
War administration and production for the war effort find their ways into science and education. Psychiatrists forswear their oaths in order to bring evil doers to justice. University researchers turn their attention to making weapons, with the aid of healthy government grants, of course.
After the fighting drags on, and the moral fervor dissipates, the psychological weight of returning to anonymous lives without moral purpose seems heavier than it was before the moral crusade started. What is left is a strengthened government and bureaucratic apparatus devoid of morality, existing for its own sake, more entwined with the productive society, and always on the lookout for new moral crusades for moral cover.
As the war does not turn out as promised, citizens lose faith in their political leaders and turn to the military as the source of national strength and efficiency. If only the politicians had turned the military loose, instead of shackling them, everything would have been different.
Military leaders are increasingly seen as the best of the nation, endowed with almost super-human properties. Soldiers are applauded at airports, and sporting events become constant celebrations of war and the politicians’ tool for waging it, the military. Instead of being seen as at best dupes, and at worst careerists and adventurists with no compunction against killing strangers, soldiers are seen as sacrificing, selfless protectors against an encroaching and ugly world. Minding their business and working for good, they were the victims of sneak attacks by cowards who hate us for who we are, because we are good. The people, despite the lies of politicians and the setbacks in the war of good and evil, have found a new totem, the sacrificial, yet always pure, soldier. For the masses, psychologically there is no choice but dissent into total national self-doubt.
Nisbet ends chapter 2 with a quote for Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamozov, from the Grand Inquisitor:
“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men will agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but find something that all will believe in and worship; what is essential is that all may be together in it. This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time.”
Metaphysical yearning is hard to quench. Its pain is ameliorated with communal continuity and symbolism, both religious and social. The continuity assures man of his place in a never-ending cycle, and the symbolism, revered by all in a community, binds that community together. This was the traditional world. It has almost disappeared in the Western world, and has left in its place free-ranging people searching for their place in the modern industrial society, where productive efficiency is valued most highly and which leaves little room for the encumbrances of the old continuities and symbols.
New symbols must be found. Needing something to worship, and needing to know that all others also worship it because the need to live in a community is so strong, the symbols of the managerial State take the place of the old symbols. Those who dare to abstain from worship, or who remain agnostic to these new gods, are despised. Phrases such as “love it or leave it”, or calls for the killing of dissenters become more common. Man must worship something, and when man is cast in a small role in a materialist society where the old ways have been overthrown, and where the democratic lowest common denominator is exalted, the new objects of worship will reflect this.