Why war is so important?

 Everyone is constantly working for perpetual peace, in this quest we forgot the importance of war.

Soldiers attacking their enemy

“Without war, human begins to stagnate in comfort and affluence and lose the capacity for great thoughts and feeling, they become cynical and subside into barbarism.”

This is a quotation from Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky who was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. Dostoevsky’s literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes.

Why his quotation makes sense?

In the modern world, we live in a society that is way more organized than it could have ever been. Believe it or not, we are living in one of the most peaceful periods of human history. It is now well-settled and harmoniously organized as a developed civilization. Our environment now promotes democratic values of being fair to one and all. We are told to fit into a group. We are being molded from early on in life to be pleasing to everyone and those who are out worldly combative and aggressive pay a social price — in the form of unpopularity and isolation. These values of harmony and cooperation are perpetuated in subtle and non-subtle ways. Through books — on how to be successful in life; and through pleasant, peaceful
exteriors. We are trained and prepared for peace and we are not at all prepared for what confronts us in the real world. This unpreparedness for confrontation must be thoroughly discussed and need to be rooted out.

But, why we should always be prepared for confrontation?

On the surface, our society and the world seem very organized but just below it, it has become increasingly competitive and nasty. Wherever you look at, in politics, business, or even the arts, we face opponents who will do anything to gain an edge. It also similarly applies to geopolitics as well. Nations are conspiring against each other making exclusive cliques to get an upper hand on their competitors.

These fairy tales of perpetual peace are constantly promoted by our religion and culture. Our culture generally denies these realities and only promotes a gentler picture but in reality, the world and our existence suffer from it. So, we should be prepared for combat.

Much research has been done in the field of Psychology and Sociology and it has found that it is through conflict that problems are often solved and real differences reconciled.

Here, I present a thought of G. Michael Hopf, he says —

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”

G. Michael Hopf quoted it in a postapocalyptic novel, he sums up a stunningly pervasive cyclical vision of history.

Through perpetual peace, the human becomes addicted to a zone of comfort. This zone of comfort creates a hedonistic lifestyle for humans. As time passes, they become so addicted to this zone that if the time calls them to get up for the action of confrontation, they still choose to lie down and not to confront. This tendency of humans creates a really hard time. As a result, they fade away with time.

If we look at mother nature, even she does not show mercy on those, who can not fight for their life. As Ralph Waldo Emerson noted that — Nature has made up her mind that what can not defend itself shall not be defended.

We live in a world that constantly plays a brutal game of confrontation. If you do not combat them you can not secure your place anywhere. Confront your weakness, confront your dark side, confront your silly emotion, so that you can find your purpose in life and your dignified place in history.

If we examine the history of humanity, we find that there were slaves and masters. Slaves were regarded as slaves not because they were born with that identity but because they chose the state of slavery because they chose not to fight for freedom. They chose an environment of comfort — the comfortable zone of slavery. They just had to do is to obey the orders of their master religiously without any objection. In this zone of comfort, they had no stress about anything.

Final Thought

War is necessary because it teaches us to always be prepared for confrontation or combat, as the fear of something keeps men alert. To be prepared for war does not mean always choosing the path of war blindly. Preparedness gives men an additional option of when to choose war and when to not.

I hope that I was able to put my views on this topic. If you enjoy my writing go ahead and follow me. My posts usually contain Geopolitical events and their implications. Sometimes, I also write about Life, Spirituality, and Ayurveda. As I’m a proud Indian, I constantly try to bring India’s inherited ancient knowledge and wisdom to you. I am constantly trying to improve myself. Your appreciation is needed to grow up.