Humanity has seen its fair share of war, yet somehow we never manage to learn from our mistakes. Rather we continue to repeatedly fuel the deadly cycle of rapacious violence and destruction. War is no newfangled notion, it has been around for centuries. It is a long withstanding ideology that has been used as a tool to garner political advantages, drive up economic growth, occupation of land and conflation of resources. War is by no means accidental, it is a strategic act for the procurement of power. 

In the words of Karl Von Clausewitz, prominent military strategist and 19th century Prussian General; 

“War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.”

The psychology of war, itself is an amalgamation of the aspects of subjugation of others and survival of one’s own.

Our history and the present day are so marred by organized aggression, it is inevitable for the question to arise; is war innate to human nature and are we as a species hardwired for war? Most theories on human biology do not attribute the affinity to violence, rather discuss self defense mechanisms subsequent to the evolutionary trait “survival of the fittest” i.e. protecting the gene pool, and ensuring human survival. 

The earliest onset of war postdated the establishment of agrarian society; the mass production of food and hierarchical systems once people weren't foraging for their survival. Society as we know it was slowly paved through waves of scientific inventions, the industrial revolution, all occurring alongside rifts between communities. With the world's innovation, the quality and effectiveness of weapons for self defense or nefarious means also improved. 

As life became more complicated, so did people. Biases that were hidden away came upfront. Once the basic necessities of people are being fulfilled, the desire for more arises. On the other hand, conflict within people in conditions less than favourable, will be exacerbated as compared to those whose needs are being met. It is the systems set in place that greatly incite sentiment and riot within communities.

To say humans are born selfish and ruthless enough for bloodshed, would be inaccurate, because there is a range of phenomena that affect and constitute a person's neurobiology, including the environment they are existing in.

There are many psychological factors upon which war is borne; revenge for a previous injustice, so they resort to fighting fire with fire. Another factor is fear; fear of war itself begets war. Politicians, driven by lust for power and recognition, boost their assets even if the means are through propaganda, tactical manipulation, and vilification of others. Such leaders rally the masses through veiled threats for their enemies. 

When there is no respect for the existence of other individuals, it is very easy to provoke people for warfare. Once selfishness and self-preservation are rewarded in society, the downhill spiral of civilization does not stop. Greed is the primary motivator of those who exploit the world at their disposal unabated and strip it of its riches to burgeon their own wealth and social standing, at the expense of a much larger fraction of people. 

The reason why war perseveres till today is simply because most people let it happen and do not bat an eye. Disruptors of peace are presenting themselves as peacemakers. By presenting leaders who have murdered scores as heroes to the general public, we define the morals and ethics of future generations. 

Voltaire, French historian, philosopher and prolific writer said,“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”[2]

After the war is done and the dust has finally settled, the commercialization of people’s grief through the media and film industry begins due to the cinematic appeal. People love watching destruction, especially if it's from the point of view of the oppressors. This is desensitisation at its best. 

Today’s war is not just soldiers with visors in a wide plain charging towards each other, today’s war is hidden in plain sight yet is rampant; psychological warfare, indoctrination of people, the erasure of ethnicities, and the limitation of freedom of thought, speech, ability by operating a system which leverages on their labour and in turn, churns out not enough for people to make ends meet, while a few handful relish in luxuries and gorge on resources that were not theirs to begin with.

With the rise of AI, the prevalence of misinformation and propaganda has skyrocketed even more. AI generated images and deepfakes can be sold as truth to the general public that is unaware of these technologies. In July, Spotify, popular music streaming platform’s CEO, Daniel Ek invested in a European company that is manufacturing AI drones for self-defense systems. Autonomous weapon systems are trained on datasets, and can be misused to target people of a certain ethnicity, age, gender or ability. Social media warfare is being conducted through attention depleting platforms that breed insecurities, distress and eventually numb the minds of people while real atrocities are blurred into the background. 

Imperialism is also warfare. It fuels the world’s injustices and reinforces the capitalistic society we are a part of. Political scientist and activist Michael Parenti in his 1986 lecture “US Interventionism, the Third World, and the USSR” discussed the state of underdeveloped countries, how the third world has been exploited for 400 years and that it is not poor. He explained that most of these countries are rich, only the people are poor. 

He stated, 

“The Capitalist European and North American powers have carved out and taken the timber, the flax, the hemp, the cocoa, the rum, the tin, the copper, the iron, the rubber, the bauxite, the slaves, and the cheap labour. They have taken out of these countries—these countries are not underdeveloped—they're overexploited!”

The case of abortion rights, patriarchal violence, vile misogyny and also extremism under the guise of religion are complex forms of warfare engaged to keep the public barred from true progress while the elite bask on exalted thrones. 

The two and 77 years of siege and blatant genocide in Gaza has dispelled many delusions about how the people in power are our allies, because in war there are no people, there are only casualties, statistics, and collateral damage. People's lives are erased from the face of Earth, families are incinerated in a matter of seconds and somehow you are made to believe that it is a victory. Whose victory is it if human life has lost its worth? When somehow one group of people seems to hold an advantage on another group of people? But we were taught that everyone was equal.

Does it all matter anymore when keeping up the farce of economic progress is given more weight than individual human lives? In this world, can the epitome of “success” only be achieved through trampling on the downtrodden and building a bridge over the bodies, as if they never existed in the first place?

Are we so lacking in humanity that we resign ourselves from what is happening around us, it is none of our concern unless God forbid, we are at the receiving end of the torture? The reason such large scale massacres occur despite institutions being in place for their prevention and de-escalation, is because the entire structure is built on corporations that have wholly aggrandized their power and unjustly established themselves at the summit of the world's wealth. And the United Nations, despite its vows for world peace, is reduced to a figurehead organization that sets ideal principles but claims no authority to stop terrorism.  

During each war, the common people bear the brunt of it all. They are constantly barred from educational opportunities, enough resources to meet their needs. People that have spent their entire lives fighting a war they didn’t cause are bound to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression regarding employment and housing. The intense cognitive and physical impairment caused by war lead to a severe decline in their quality of life. 

Human rights are no longer being upheld, especially in this era of late stage capitalism, the impending

replacement of the working class with AI counterparts, and how the surveillance footage from real journalists at the cusp of death is not enough for the world to put an end to the relentless killing of people.

The desensitisation of the general public is what allows war, by electing a stark unreachable leader you already pose a rift between people and their state, which eventually makes them numb to what is happening around them, almost in a stupor due to a lack of political awareness. People that are focused on survival are robbed of their essential human rights. Important assets are being used to control and not enhance the lives of masses, but the cogs cannot keep running in a machine forever. 

Due to the Internet, in today's age of information, radicalism is at its peak and the cracks in our systems are apparent. The climate catastrophe that our planet faces today is huge in part due to the unabashed use of weapons and bomb fare. Yet, there is no answerability. There is no accountability for the dire actions of a people that hold authority, be it those who assist in evil atrocities or those who are silently complicit under the guise of neutrality. 

Rules should be in place. It is only now that people are waking up, and recognising their role in bringing to light these issues which have been so entwined into the fabric of our society that no one has questioned them for ages, and those that have, have either been restricted, demoted or restrained from speaking their minds.

You should not be qualified to run state affairs if you cannot amicably handle conflict. The justice system needs to be called for all people alike, corruption needs to be tackled at where the magnitude is the greatest because when these people become above the law, they take everything.

As long as the desire for power claims people's hearts, and clouds their ability to see anyone else as human, and while racism and religious phobia prevail in our society, we cannot progress in a way that is beneficial to humanity as a whole. 

George Orwell and Aldous Huxley had contrasting predictions about the future of our world, Orwell in 1984, reiterated the motif of excessive government surveillance and control through fear and isolation while Huxley’s in Brave New World, predicted that they would be no need for the government to ban anything because the people would be controlled by their own desires and hedonism to notice anything. We can see now that both principles co-exist in our society.

Building a community that respects individuals and does not glorify and condone violence and bloodshed through media and speech, is a community that takes everyone along. Vigilance and immediate action are the things that can slow the momentum of our world's descent towards systemic collapse. There are no borders for empathy, there are no borders for humanity. Tranquility can only be enforced, through proper law making, confronting the power play and ending the long lasting exploitation of the majority.