by Matthew Fulton

Created on: August 12, 2010

War has been a major factor in history since the first civilizations. It has built and destroyed empires, helped bring about new technology, and has changed societies in many other ways. Wars have been fought for many reasons, but no matter what the cause, there will always be new wars to be fought. There will always be some grounds for nations to go to war, and two major catalysts for this are fear and suspicion. Fear and suspicion of some entity persists in all levels of society. Often learned at the family level, fear and suspicion become powerful forces. The masses have always found groups to fear and blame problems in society on, and are easily led to fight or persecute them. The ruling classes are subject to fear of other nations and threats to their power. Intellectuals have often based their ideologies on suspicion of certain groups and classes in society. These fears and suspicions have led nations to war for centuries, and will keep hostilities going for centuries to come.

Fear and suspicion often start within the family, especially in poor families. Their lack of education and exposure to other ways of life has led to severe distrust of anyone not in their group. As Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia stated about village children in Russia, “a child will know personally only the rural police officer, and being well aware of his father’s needs [that is, the peasant’s need to be suspicious of any outsider], the child will perceive the land captain, the district supervisor, and the governor as a single identity.”[1] The children inherited this suspicion from their parents at an early age, and even though they eventually learn more about society, their distrust of the officials likely persisted for most of their lives. This transferring of distrust and ideas from parents to their children leads those from lower classes to strongly believe in the fact that their suspicions are warranted. These suspicions are often not just of government officials, but any other outsiders or anyone not like themselves.

This distrust helps to breed conflict between different groups within society, often on the basis of religious or ethnic lines. This has been exemplified in modern day Israel, where Palestinian terrorists, who have been indoctrinated for generations by their parents and religious leaders to be suspicious of Jews and the very existence of the Israeli state, are willing to kill themselves in efforts to kill as many Israelis as they can.

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