by Christyl Rivers

Created on: December 03, 2010   Last Updated: December 05, 2010

People will give many reasons for why we have wars. Among them are religions (“Holy” wars) resources, world dominance, and nationalism. 

All of these things are not the cause of wars, but the symptoms.  Einstein said that nationalism is the measles of man-kind.  What he meant it that nationalism separates us, tries to convince us that human beings on one (arbitrary) human made border are somehow better or worse, than those on the other side. 

The real cause of war is our big brains.  Other animals engage in conflict, but it is rarely more than a few minutes, or hours at the very most, and they do not devastate entire regions, or seek to do genocide upon their own “race.” We think we are smarter, but until we see we have much to learn of Nature's wisdom, we remain rather uninformed.  Natural laws can teach us about balance, even when we wrongly interpret nature's balance as ruthless and savage. In Nature ALL things are made in divine image, not just man.

We have learned, with our bigger brains, to store and recall abstract information that is not always supported by reality.  It tells us to believe one human is less, one is more. We are also programmed to think of our species as “better” than others.  We have learned to put all species at peril, although in the long run, Nature always wins out even if we wreak major havoc.  Other primate species will arise, perhaps to better consciousness, or not.  We are animals that are victimized by our own technological cleverness combined with our ability to plan, store, and recall stupid fairy tales that benefit those who profit from war.  There is more hope, now, however that we are learning more about our minds, our programming, and our leaders who want to instill continual propaganda.

Not all war in unjust.  Surely the Nazis had to be stopped, but could we, in our cleverness, devise a way to do this without killing thousands of Germans?  Maybe, but we had to be convinced they were less than human to devastate their cities.  And, let’s be honest, humans also have a weakness to want revenge.  Revenge is another concept stored in big brains that most animals do not have to contend with as a defense mechanism.  Race is also involved. We bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but not Nazi Germany.  We did not put German Americans into internment camps.  They were much easier for our minds to perceive

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>