(Up to: War Scribblings )

The term "war" is a nebulous and frequently confusing one, applied to a variety of situations, and if you believe that the definition of words define the way in which we think, oft mis-used, an inappropriate coinage. Instead of being bandied around around as a rallying penant, a focus of anger, the axis of excuses leading to irrationality, connivance and political machinations, its harsh reality should be held up for what it is, accepted for its daily banality rather than cast out as an anomaly in human nature. Specifically speaking, it should not refer to a definitive period of action. It should not stand for a show of military force, or a finite conflict with a start, an end, a purpose, or a set of objectives. "War" in a traditional sense, cast upon some momentous occasion, adhering to a blot on our historical landscape, is simply a set of conveniently-grouped maneuvres that stand out from more preferable times purely for blind foresight reason. Collated by when and where, why and who, each instance of "a war" exists with the emphasis upon it such that it has been elevated to a status designed to both make us feel at ease in our own time of relative "peace", and to give us a sense of apparent superiority over our rash ancestry. It is a false recognition of progress and self-improvement. We look back upon our own bloody histories with fear and disdain, gleefully happy in our precious hindsight that we can now comprehend the horrors that previous generations inflicted upon the world, looking back with a pompous sneer that we have learned from the experience. We refer to the First World War, the Boer War, the Hundred Years War. We mark the moments when these turmoils leapt into action like an assassin towards a car, or a tank over a border, and we celebrate the days on which normality returned and our sense of bloodshed could retire to pure nostalgia, hoping such monstrosity would never return.

And yet, when such a conflictual instance rears its ugly propaganda head, we accept it. A small few may raise a big fuss for a while, but on the whole, we do not have a showstopper problem with it. Because it is what has always happened. We have become accustomed to it, or rather perhaps it is in our nature to begin with. We deal with it by concentrating on the end, on the reasons and the conclusion, so that we may settle back into what always was, even if life after is drastically different to what was before. At least we will not be at war. When the end comes, we will rejoice. We insist upon dividing our timelines up, noting the build up to war, when it is inevitable. We gasp at the very instant when the first strike takes place. We grow uneasy during its duration, crossing our fingers and waiting for the moment at which we can breathe in relaxation again, and we don't look back once it is all over.

This is dangerous. This perspective harms us, keeps us in a false sense of perpetual hope for peace rather than a reality in which we can understand who we are and what we can do about it in the future. "War" needs to be considered from an ongoing viewpoint, one that stands outside singular events, one that sees it as a constant turbulence, that has no end and no beginning, just an evolution of peaks and troughs of intensity and public awareness. War is a force, just as is economics, or politics, or nature itself. It is influence over our fellows, and our environment. It is a form of interaction. This is why a world devoid of war is just as improbable or implausible as a world without weather, or human existence without society.

Just as the ferocity and, perhaps more importantly in this day, public awareness of war at any one time rises and falls, so with it the rules and the methods that construct and define it are similarly also completely mutable. War is about power. Power is about setting the rules. Thus, the rules that allegedly govern the act of war, the laws we invent to justify what we otherwise fear we may succumb to, get swept aside in place of new ones. Like laws of physics, they are refined and redefined to suit context, experience, and needs. The only constant through the continual struggle is the reason why - a pointless desire to prove the ability to survive, to exist as an individual without fear of recrimination.

Thus, the wagers are wrong in believing that a surge in conflict can solve anything. Peace through war is, in the short-term, an obvious hypocritical fallacy and, in the much longer term, a pipe-dream. Peace cannot be achieved by assuming that grouping others under the same blanket as oneself, sweeping them up into a global blanket to invest a less confrontational infrastructure in them, will lead to all people thinking a like and getting on. Rather the opposite, turmoil within a single system will lead to splits, segregation in beliefs. Even the face of liberalism and tolerance cannot be agreed upon, mankind being so devoted to an individualistic viewpoint as to be doomed to a perpetuality of difference and misunderstanding. To truly accept difference is to observe the ironic fact that others do not accept it. And so, to force ways of life, beliefs, even cultures, upon those otherwise strangers to them, is to inflict a mask of peace that cannot be sustained. To assume a utopia can be achieved this way is to assume that all people are completely identical.

Thus, the peacefarers are wrong in believing that they can abolish war and live beyond its savagery. The extremist believers are most wrong, going so far as to proclaim that all war is unnecessay, that we are somehow better than our ancestors. Again, the danger of this arrogance is to reach a point of pure disregard for influential conflict. If one accepts that there are, not necessarily benefits, but times when war is essential or critical, then firstly one can be prepared for it, and secondly one can understand its patterns, its requirements, when it is appropriate and when it is not. To abandon all thought of war is unreasonable and delusional.

The most favourable approach to understanding who we are and where we are going is through logical acceptance of war as a fundamental social factor. We must realise its dangers, its objectives, its reasons. We must study it, but at the same time stay clear of embracing it. It should not become a subject of taboo, just as much as it should not become a thing of relish and delight, or a first resort. Its hideousness should hang over our heads as a constant reminder of our savage and ongoing, inescapable origins, but we should not be afraid of it. It is a part of us.

(See also: Fuck Your War )