I don’t have to wonder why people go to war, and I don’t actually need much explanation as to the reasons why they start them after agreeing with a general who once observed that the study of war aptly shows they are started for the worst and most nonsensical of reasons. But I have to wonder why an apparently intellectual animals follows leaders into war.
And it must in some way be linked to the same reasons we have for mostly following the norms of our societies for it is obvious to the observer that some societies have laws and norms in variance to others but each one thinks theirs superior and if not they think them more than acceptable. For some reason we are wired young to fit into the general consensus because this general consensus provides us with the greatest chance of survival.
Yet of course when we all go to war, those chances are reduced for individuals but not for society as a whole. And here we have something that is strange in the mind – we fight for individual freedoms and we progress societies thinking freedoms better than diktat even if they produced the same outcome, but we will martial ourselves into armies for nothing more than power and money.
We think our politicians liars yet we kill for them and applaud. Truly the crowd thinks differently from the individual.