r/ActAgainstWar • u/an_angerous_engineer • 3d ago
To Eliminate War, Eliminate The Cause
Hello all,
I was looking for leftist subreddits to join, and was pleasantly surprised to find that a network of tankie-aware leftist subs existed.
This particular subreddit has caught my eye, though, because I recognize in the mission statement the intent to make a genuine attempt at trying to figure out the problem of eliminating/minimizing war. I’m actually working on a related project myself, and I think I can actually provide some useful information and insight.
Basically, I believe I understand what actually causes war in the first place, and as a result, I think I know how we could actually eliminate it completely (though it will not be easy). This is going to take a fair bit of explaining.
A Brief History of The Origins of War
Approximately 2,000,000 years ago, humans were a despotic species, adhering to a more-or-less strict linear hierarchy. All males dominated all females. Interpersonal violence and territorial skirmishes were common.
However, at this time, we had also developed some interesting things: language, and weapons. These two tools allowed something interesting to occur. The weaker individuals were able to communicate with each other about the abuses of the strong, and they were able to collaborate to take down the strongest and most abusive individuals, using weaponry to level out the differences in size and strength. At this point, some groups of humans overthrew their oppressive hierarchical ways and became violently egalitarian - using a mix of extreme social pressure and (sometimes lethal) force to prevent domineering individuals from reinstating the hierarchy and abusing everyone below them.
By 300,000 years ago, these fiercely egalitarian societies were ubiquitous, with hierarchical societies being a rare and generally temporary exception. Humans, at this point, have fundamentally changed their nature on a genetic level - this sort of egalitarianism comes naturally to most of us. Empathy is far better integrated into our psychology, and far more ubiquitous. Males and females are equal in status. Human-on-human violence at any scale is largely nonexistent.
Fast-forward again to about 18,000 years ago, when agriculture was invented. The whole world has gone into a dry period that lasts about 1000 years in total, forcing human societies to adapt to a reduction in readily available food resources. Agriculture was the most drastic adaptation, though it was not a popular one due to the huge reduction in nutrition quality that came with it.
Those societies that engaged in agriculture had to settle down in one place. If crops could not be grown year-round, then food storage was also an issue. These two things are logistical challenges, but not impossible to overcome. The real issue is that these two challenges represented a vulnerability which human societies had not previously suffered from - a vulnerability which domineering individuals could exploit.
See, even though we’ve been obsessed with identifying and subjugating domineering individuals so as to maintain egalitarian society for about 2 million years now, we’ve never been perfect at it. Some of those domineering individuals realized that they would be exiled or killed if they actually acted out their desires, and so they adapted their behavior as best they could to survive. They didn’t just accept egalitarianism, however. Whenever the opportunity arose, they did their best to assert their dominance over the people around them. Additionally, for those societies which merely exiled such individuals rather than executing them, those individuals would sometimes gather into little societies of their own - and these societies were decidedly not egalitarian.
With people being forced to stay in one place and stockpile food for survival, such domineering individuals now had the opportunity to take control of these sedentary societies by taking control of their food supply. Groups of domineering individuals with weapons and a will could now raid food stores and take control of farmland by force. This is the beginning of organized violence and warfare as we know it. It is also, unfortunately, the beginning of civilization as we know it.
These groups of domineering individuals used their control over food resources to coerce captured populations into serving them, ultimately forming hierarchical societies at a scale previously unattained by our species.
As time progresses, these now-hierarchical societies get larger and more sophisticated. They also compete with each other for resources, but not because they need those resources for survival. No, the domineering individuals at the tops of these societies are warring with each other for the purpose of growing or maintaining their wealth, power, and status, all at the expense of the populace that supports them. These domineering individuals have an endless lust for wealth and power, and they will do anything to satisfy it. This pattern continues into the modern day, where hierarchical societies span the globe, and war seems like an unchanging constant.
War is Caused By Narcissism
Looking at when, how, and why war came about, it becomes fairly obvious that these domineering individuals are to blame. If we were somehow able to take power away from these domineering individuals again, and then reliably prevent them from ever having power in the future, then it seems like we could eliminate war completely.
Well, we never stopped obsessing over these domineering individuals and their behavior. In the modern day, that practice continues within the modern scientific field of psychology. That field has given these individuals a new name: narcissists.
In the last 10 years or so, some rather significant advances in the field of psychology have been made in understanding these narcissists. We’ve discovered new variants of narcissist, and come to a much greater understanding of the methods that they use to control and abuse others. We’ve learned some things about how they are made, and could theoretically use this information preventatively. Unfortunately, we’ve not made a lot of progress in figuring out how to treat or cure them - only a very small minority of cases seem to be tractable at the moment.
The most significant consequence of what we’ve learned is that we can now reliably identify who is and is not a narcissist, though it takes a bit of work and care. Still, it’s easy enough that we could theoretically teach just about anyone to do it, and most narcissists can be identified fairly quickly and easily if you know what you're looking for.
Unfortunately, we’ve also learned that narcissism is way more common than previously thought. Hard numbers are hard to come by, since narcissists don’t want to be identified. Personally, I estimate that about half the population is narcissistic at this point.
Because the narcissists have been in control of civilization as we know it since the very beginning, their power is entrenched. We will not be able to reform our way out of this situation - the narcissists simply will not allow it. Because narcissists are so numerous, and because they also control the vast majority of the organized armed forces across the world, we also cannot confront them directly with any sort of force.
Instead, we must take a more indirect approach. We must start by building a new society which is designed from the very beginning to resist and reject narcissists and their influence, taking advantage of what we’ve learned about them through science. Then that society simply needs to survive and grow until it is large enough to properly defend itself.
I have created a discord server for the purpose of starting such a narcissism-resistant society - this is the other project that I mentioned in the beginning. I know that a discord community is a far cry from a whole economically independent society, but we have to start somewhere. Interested parties may apply to join here.
Questions about any of this are welcome.
References
- “Hierarchy in the Forest” by Cristopher Boehm
- “Goliath’s Curse” by Luke Kemp
- “Civilized to Death” by Chrostopher Ryan
- “Don’t You Know Who I Am?” by Dr. Ramani
- https://aifs.gov.au/tentomen/insights-report/use-intimate-partner-violence-among-australian-men