History is a litany of wars pursued by leaders of tribes and countries, seeking wealth, power, and resources, and forcing their subjects or citizens to support them. Empires rise and fall. War is glorified, and warriors are made out to be heroes in order to recruit the manpower and command the resources to make war. Leaders often use religious indoctrination to get their people to accept the suffering, death, and destruction they must endure and to wreak even greater suffering, death, and destruction on the proclaimed enemy. Dissidents are punished and often slaughtered. The vanquished enemies become slaves. All is justified as the victor achieves his goals.
We like to think the world is different today and that we are more “civilized.” But are we? Has human nature really changed since people first roamed the earth?
From the early days of their existence to the present day, humans have developed tools and weapons, accelerating from simple stone tools and weapons for hand-to-hand combat to high tech tools and weaponry that efficiently produce massive death and destruction. The victor celebrates, the vanquished suffer, and no one benefits. The victor continues to seek conquest until he is conquered. The vanquished seek recovery and revenge, and may eventually conquer, as the slaughter continues, endlessly.
Each war simply sets a stage for the next one, because the defeated, in time, will seek to reclaim their losses in fortune and territory. In the past century, the “Great War” or World War I (WWI), set the stage for WWII, which set the stage for the Middle East conflicts of today. In between WWII and the Mid-East conflicts, we had the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
Our country has been continually at war since WWII, expending enormous resources to establish and maintain a military establishment capable of destroying all life on the planet. We seek global dominance and reward compliant, oppressive governments with our weaponry and threaten those who do not wish to comply with our rules. Our excessive expenditures on weaponry, surveillance, and intelligence enrich corporations and degrade and impoverish society with reduced support for education, infrastructure, health care, social services for the poor, elderly, disabled, and even for the veterans who suffer because of their military service.
In 2020 the U.S. was the world’s greatest exporter of military equipment, selling as much as Russia, Germany, France, and China combined. Our government pursues global dominance through our military resources and technology development, to the benefit of the corporations and financial systems that support them. Rulers or governments unwilling to accept and support our supremacy are considered a threat. Those that do accept are exploited to buy our weapons and support the industries and technologies needed for our continuous conflicts.
Population growth and technology development increase the burden on the natural environment. Yet we decry a reduced birthrate because more and more people are needed to support the “Ponzi scheme” that is our economy. We pursue continuous economic growth to fund unnecessary expenditures, even as we acknowledge and ignore that excesses may lead to destruction of life on the planet. We have induced drastic climate change which is destroying the environment we rely on for survival. Yet we continue with our excesses, in never-ending wars and questionable technology development, simply because they make a profit. We choose to ignore potential consequences while acknowledging that environmental deterioration may result in our planet becoming uninhabitable. We choose to assume that technological advances will correct whatever problems arise, in spite of evidence that technology has created some of our worst problems.
We view people from long past generations as inferior beings. We assumed they were subhuman and lacked the brain power of later humans. We do not acknowledge that we learned much from their endeavors. We built on their efforts even as we deny their ingenuity and their capabilities in developing means of survival. They made possible the development that allowed this country to achieve its present wealth and status, which we are now devoting to ever more destructive ends.