WWI, According to Christopher Clark. Magadh, in Thursday's Souciant.
All of the studies of how WWI came about seem to share one thing in common: they insist that people were in control of events, and that the causes of the war are to be found in human motivations, frailties, and miscalculations. Man is at the helm, steering the great ship of history from one reef to another -- or marching from folly to folly in an endless human-led parade. But all of this strikes me as a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion that Man is somehow in control of events, for good or ill as the case may be. We do not want to accept that our "systems" can in fact take over, leaving us powerless to do anything more potent than offering up an existentialist's "no." We do not want to resign ourselves to being merely an effect, impotent (especially as individuals) to play the role of a cause.