Why do people go to South Africa? Apparently, they had read Aibolit. For the first time, like many others, I set foot on the land of South Africa at the Johannesburg airport. It was summer, evening, it was very warm. The plain stretched around, built up with production facilities and hangars. The horizon was hazy. I

Why are Turkey, Israel and Iran not fighting the Islamic State in full force? GEORGY MIRSKYHistorian, political scientist, chief researcher at IMEMO RANTurkey does not fight, because for it the enemy is not even tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow. Turkey's main rival

Why and how do people age? Surprisingly, from a scientific point of view, the problem of aging is very young. While there were few old people on Earth, this problem did not seem relevant. Yes, in Europe late XIX century, the average life expectancy was 39 years, and Russia

Why do people yawn? If you turn to a medical encyclopedia 30-40 years ago, you can read something similar to the fact that “yawning is an unconditioned reflex act, widespread among mammals, reptiles and fish. It has

The whole history of man is the history of wars. Along the way, of course, the wheel and handwashing were still being invented, but anyone who opens a history book will inevitably drown in an abundance of soapy horse grits, bloody swords and breakthroughs of the Maginot line.

Even the greatest literary works antiquities are mostly inspired stories about how Achilles tears out the tendons from Hector, Shiva kicks the asuras, the beautiful Usivaka destroys the Taira house, and Cuchulainn, breaking the back of his friend Ferdiad, says a few kind, heartfelt words about this. There is nothing to say about the Bible: there is a continuous beating of babies from the first page to the last.

Given that biologically a person is a cannibal and a scavenger, it would probably be naive to expect any other behavior from him. Nevertheless, over the years of evolution, this predator has gained such altruism and such abilities for empathy, compassion and mercy that if you look at humanity from some Alpha Centauri, then, probably, one would expect that by the Paleolithic homo would be like sapiens put aside his ancient stone ax and be filled with love and goodness. No, really, how can you cry over a fading flower, and then go gut your neighbors?

Where does this interesting schizophrenia come from? Why has it taken so long for man to form as a warring animal, and what is happening on this front now? Very interesting answers to these questions are given by the latest studies of anthropologists and sociopsychologists.

At the same time, the actual murder - the taking of a person's life - was almost always considered a crime. With one caveat: the killer acted alone or in a small group. As soon as the group became large, then any murder committed by it, whether it was called war, execution, revolution or suppression of a riot, received full moral indulgence.

And this moment - a person has the right to kill if he is in a group, but not if he is alone - explains a lot about the nature of war and man. True, for a very long time they did not pay attention to him.

There are dozens of theories explaining the phenomenon of war: Freud explained it by aggression and craving for death, Malthus - by the struggle against overpopulation, Hegel - by the laws of the dialectical development of society, Lenin - by class struggle. IN last years a lot of wonderful theories appeared: passionarity, age imbalance (the younger the population in a society, the more willingly it fights), economic and rationalistic theories. And all of them wonderfully show under what conditions people are more willing to fight, but do not answer the main question: why do they do it at all? That is, it is clear that the winners receive some benefits, but in general, a war is almost always ruinous for all parties and extremely disadvantageous for the vast majority of its participants. It's nice, of course, to get a jug, two mats and a youthful slave for free - but was it worth the risk of being left without a head? Pay attention that quite often people are at war with no chance of any reward at all. It is enough to study the history of military conflicts between primitive tribes Papuan New Guinea, where each tribe is in a permanent state of brutal war with all the others, where any stranger is perceived as both a murderer and a victim, and where death from natural causes for men (and for many women) is an exceptional event. People simply live by destroying each other. Concern for food, housing, offspring is secondary there, in the first place are constant vigilance, fear of the enemy and hatred of neighbors.

In general, if people spent as much effort as they spend on wars and on the search for compromises, they would undoubtedly be able to solve all world problems by spilling one single liquid - ink.

Biologists and ethologists, who timidly tried to bring their proposals into the discussions, were usually harshly pushed out the door. Okay, they were told, you can still blather something about sex, the psyche, or there, about genetics, but the war has nothing to do with biology. Animals don't fight. Show us a finch with a grenade launcher - then we'll talk.

And the finch was found. Well, that is not quite a finch ...

brutal manners

But for a group of one species to purposefully go to exterminate representatives of another group belonging to the same species - no, nature did not show examples of such a plan to man. For the time being. More specifically, until the mid-1970s, when the researcher Jane Goodall, who specialized in studying chimpanzees in natural conditions, published a book indicating that chimpanzees were at war. They are fighting, without any discrepancies. Males (sometimes females) of the group gather in combat detachments and try to quietly get to the parking lot of another group, brutally beating and sometimes destroying the “enemies” they meet, including cubs.

The biologist-turned-chronicler describes such sorties in detail: “Six adult males of the Kasakela group, one juvenile male and one adult female, leaving the younger chimpanzees of the flock, headed south, and then heard the cries of chimpanzees coming from the other side, and found by surprise male Kahama - Godi. One of the males of Kasakela knocked the fleeing Godi to the ground, sat on his head and pressed his legs, and the rest beat him and bit him for ten minutes. Finally, one of the attackers threw a large stone at Godi, after which the attackers ran away. Godi was able to get up, but he was seriously injured, bleeding, his body was covered with bites. Godi died of his wounds. The following month, three Kasakela males and one female went south again and attacked a Kahama male named De, who was now weakened due to illness or previous fights. The attackers dragged De from the tree, trampled him, bit him, beat him and pulled out shreds of his skin. The female accompanying De, who was in heat, was forced by the attackers to go with them to the north. Two months later, De was seen alive, but so emaciated that his spine and pelvic bones were sticking out from under his skin; he was missing several claws, part of his toe was torn off. After that, he was not seen. In February 1975, five adult males and one juvenile male of Kasakela tracked down an old male Goliath from Kahama's pack. For eighteen minutes they beat him, beat him and kicked him, stepped on him, lifted him and threw him on his back, dragged him along the ground and twisted his legs ... "

The most interesting thing is that quite recently both of these groups were one. It split after the divergence of leaders. All members of this group were close relatives who experienced before the "divorce" good feelings to each other.

Goodall's book caused a huge scandal, especially in the camp of fans of the theory that real cruelty in nature is characteristic only of a person - a creature that has come off from nature.

Alas, further research by scientists confirmed the observations and even expanded them. It turned out that other apes, such as gibbons and baboons, also perform military sorties (albeit less cruel and less often leading to death). Even herbivorous gorillas and spider monkeys periodically take the warpath in order to properly pile on their neighbors.

Monkey with a grenade

And then the next question arose: is it harmful? The most brutal warriors among primates are chimpanzees, they are also the most intelligent living species (except for humans, of course). So what came first - rationality or cruelty?

A number of researchers believe that the cruelty of warring primates is a consequence of their highly developed ability for reflection and compassion. Precisely because they know how to understand someone else's pain, they inflict it, experiencing aggression and excitement. And this excitement, fear and empathy become a kind of drug that cannot be obtained at all otherwise than by torturing one's own kind. The only cubs who deliberately maim small animals and become excited at the sight of their agony are chimpanzees (again, apart from humans). The kitten may maim the mouse, but he will not think about the feelings of the mouse - he just plays with the twitching ball. A chimpanzee cub understands perfectly well that a bird with a torn off leg is in pain - he alternately demonstrates fear, pity, and gloating, playing with his living toy.

But most evolutionary psychologists still take the opposite view. They believe that just the rationality of primates is due to their extreme aggressiveness towards their own kind.

If you put together various theories on this topic, then everything happened something like this.

The ancestors of primates lived in an area in which fierce competition for resources gradually began. Settlement outside the usual area for some reason for a long time was difficult, and the population suffered from periodic hunger strikes, after which active skirmishes began between its members for the purpose of, for example, cannibalism or simply regulation of numbers (we can observe such pictures in some modern species such as lions, hyenas, and rats). It was then that mutations turned out to be extremely beneficial, which oriented individuals towards altruism towards “their own”, that is, the closest relatives, and towards aggression towards “strangers” - more distant relatives. Being by nature a creature not too well armed to destroy its own kind, unlike lions, hyenas and rats, the ancestor of man and monkeys could not easily kill rivals alone. But by uniting as a group, it was possible to exterminate all unnecessary cousins ​​and second cousins.

A fairly large animal-gatherer, in need of a large amount of protein, not specialized in herbalism and not possessing powerful fangs, claws or teeth, has relied on cooperation and aggression towards strangers. For millions of years it has perfected these wonderful skills. Some of his descendants learned to jump on trees and eat leaves, so that in herbivorous monkeys such sorties are rather atavism. But the meat-eating monkeys were forced to continue to train their patriotism and intransigence towards enemies, since the easiest way was to get protein from the same monkey, if, of course, watch for it with a crowd and tear off its tasty and nutritious legs (a chimpanzee, being not such as a pronounced cannibal, like a person, they also do not disdain eating parts of the bodies of the dead, especially cubs).

And yes, in group battles, it was not the strongest who won, but the smartest. Observant, cautious, with high abilities for communication, mutual understanding and mutual assistance. Those who tried to prevent any quarrels in their group (recall that important point that a lone killer is always an outcast with us, since personal aggression, especially towards “friends”, does not bring bonus points to the group, but takes them away).

So it was not the mind that gave rise to aggression, but, probably, on the contrary: we received our large and smart brain as a gift from our great-great-grandfather, who successfully obtained smaller brains with his help.

Like these ones interesting news come to us from the world of birds and animals.

Cursed forever

Let us imagine a father of a family who tenderly kisses his children and his wife, straightens a knitted blanket on a baby, strokes a pussy, pats a dog behind his ear, sprinkles millet on a canary, and then takes a Berdanka and goes to shoot at a bastard who has encroached on peace and tranquility in his beloved family. Are we ready to understand it? Of course ready! At least at this stage of development of society. Protecting our own, especially females and cubs, is such a priority for us over all other forms of compassion that even when we see attacks on peaceful domestic nests in the movies, our fists clench and the hair stands on end on the ridge. A person's capacity for love and compassion is truly limitless, it can only be compared with rage towards those who threaten what we love - whether it is our family, property, or a whale we are saving from slaughter.

It remains only to divide the world into “us” and “them”. For chimpanzees, "friends" are those chimpanzees he's been in contact with in the last couple of months. Or not only chimpanzees, but also, say, the same dogs or favorite plush toys - in general, what the chimpanzee recently sniffed, stroked and revered as his own.

For a person with his vast communications and over-inflated brain, everything is much more complicated. He can sincerely hate his neighbor in a communal apartment and passionately love his president, although he smells his neighbor every day, and he has never seen the president in his eyes (although the TV is trying to correct the situation). He simply grew up in the consciousness that "his people" are his best people in the world, headed by the best leader in the world, and this is not discussed. Even a fully developed and civilized person can be turned into a chimpanzee burning with hatred in a matter of weeks, if you tell him every day from special boxes confidentially how the damned Pechenegs make sausage from Christian babies, and the vicious Phoenicians plan to parachute their marines into his bathroom.

But if from the same box, or from church pulpits, or from the pages of good books, you constantly repeat that all people are brothers, all children need protection, that you can’t offend the weak, no matter what color their gills are, and in general “ don't touch the bird, put down the dog", then the concept of "friends" may well stretch to the volume of the Galaxy and even beyond that. And all these pacifists of the past - Erasmus of Rotterdam, Victor Hugo, Francis of Assisi and Leo Tolstoy - eventually expand this Galaxy. Not for everyone, unevenly, but the process is underway.

Here is a Japanese writer of the 17th century who writes a fairy tale about a robber who robbed and killed people, and then he was caught and sentenced to death in boiling oil. The robber's little son was also thrown into the cauldron, and when the oil began to be poured, the robber, escaping from the heat, stood on the child with his feet, and "the audience laughed at him." Seventeenth century, enlightened writer. But today, even in ISIS, we are unlikely to recruit spectators who would be able to laugh at such a spectacle ...

Because a person, fortunately, is changing - changing rapidly and for the better. The sight of the torn bodies of enemies is less and less pleasing to the public, if you do not take completely atavistic individuals. The more secure we feel, the more good-heartedness we are ready to pour out on the heads of our near and far. The more we are told from every iron that violence is unacceptable, the more we tend to agree with it.

And vice versa: where, having taken away the levers of information, monkeys come to power, very soon almost the entire society will be covered with wild wool. Especially that part of society whose education, due to its smallness and stuntedness, will not be able to act as a reliable shield that protects against fear and hatred of “strangers”. Fortunately, information in the modern world knows no boundaries, and every year it becomes more and more difficult for the totalitarian rulers of this planet to truly charge their people with fear and hatred, if in fact nothing threatens this people.

So with chimpanzees, in general, you can begin to say goodbye - until the worst of times. And then who knows how evolution went on there on Alpha Centauri.

Military historians rarely devote much space to discussing the causes of wars. But this topic, in addition to history, is also studied by others. humanities. The debate about the origins of war and peace over the past few hundred years has revolved around one single question. It looks like this: is war the result of the predatory instinct inherent in human nature, or is it the result of principles learned in the process of education?

Social Darwinism and its criticism

The basic ideas for both answers go back to the concepts of the philosophers of the New Age - the Englishman T. Hobbes and the Frenchman J. J. Rousseau. In accordance with the concept of Hobbes, war is the result of the natural aggressiveness inherent in man, which is overcome as a result of the conclusion of a social contract. According to Rousseau's ideas, man is by nature good, war and aggression are a late invention and arise only with the advent of modern civilization. These ideas retained their significance even in the second half of the 19th century.

The modern phase of this debate began in 1859 with the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. In it, life on Earth was presented as a competitive process in which the fittest individuals survived. The concept of social Darwinism, which became most widespread at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, considered war as a continuation of the natural competition that we observe in wildlife.

A group of chimpanzees patrolling the area

Critics of this trend noted that war is a collective process in which separate groups and communities act against each other, while in nature this process takes place at the level of individual individuals. Moreover, the most fierce competition unfolded among the closest neighbors, who occupied the same ecological niche, ate the same food and claimed the same females. So the similarity here could be purely external.

On the other hand, if we follow the logic of cultural anthropologists of the second half of the 20th century, who saw the war only as a bad habit and the result of an inappropriate system of education, it is not clear why this habit is so difficult to correct. War is still a characteristic element modern life, and this sad fact stimulates new research into the problem of its origin.

To date, the main results in this area have been brought by the development of the ethological approach. According to him, various patterns human activity, including aggression, are considered as genetically determined programs. Each of these programs arose and developed at a certain stage of evolution, as they contributed to the successful resolution of problems as diverse as the search and distribution of food, sexual behavior, communication, or response to threat.

The peculiarity of the ethological approach in comparison with earlier directions is that here human behavior is considered not as the result of an instinct laid down once and for all, but as a kind of predisposition, which, depending on a particular situation, can be realized or not. This approach partly explains the variability of warlike behavior that we observe in nature and in history.

Ethological approach

From the point of view of ethology, war is a coalition intraspecific aggression that is associated with organized and often deadly conflicts between two groups of the same species. It should not be identified either with aggression as such, which has a purely individual dimension and is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, or with predation directed against representatives of another species. Warfare, although traditionally a male activity, should not be equated with activities such as female rivalry, which by definition is an individual behavior. Genuine coalition aggression is very rare in the animal world. As a special form of behavior, it has developed only in two groups of animals: ants and primates.

According to Darwin's theory, natural selection encourages behavioral strategies that enhance the survival of a certain set of genes that are passed from one generation of descendants of a common ancestor to another. This condition imposes a natural constraint on the size social group, because with each new generation this set will change more and more. However, the insects managed to break this limitation and create related groups of huge sizes.

Up to 20 million insects live in a tropical anthill, while all of them are siblings. The ant colony behaves like a single organism. Ants fight neighboring communities for territory, food, and slaves. Often their wars end with the total extermination of one of the opponents. The analogies with human behavior are obvious here. But among humans, anthill-like forms of society—with large, permanent, densely populated populations strictly organized along territorial lines—appeared comparatively late, with the advent of the first agrarian civilizations about 5,000 years ago.

And even after that, the formation and development of civilized communities took place extremely slowly and was accompanied by centrifugal processes, little resembling the rigid solidarity of ants. Accordingly, the expansion of our knowledge about insects, primarily about ants, is still unable to explain the origin of coalition aggression at the earliest stages of human development.

War among primates

Great apes, such as gorillas and chimpanzees, are the closest relatives of humans. At the same time, for a long time, the results of their observation were practically not used in any way to explain the origin of coalition aggression in humans. There were two reasons for this.

First, they were seen as extremely peaceful animals, living in harmony with nature and with themselves. In such relationships, there was simply no room for conflict that went beyond the traditional male rivalry over females or food. Secondly, great apes were considered strict vegetarians, eating only greens and fruits, while the ancestors of people were specialized big game hunters.

Chimpanzees eat a killed monkey - a red-headed colobus

Only in the 1970s. it has been proven that chimpanzees are much more omnivorous than previously thought. It turned out that in addition to fruits, they sometimes eat birds and small animals they have caught, including other monkeys. It also turned out that they actively conflict with each other and, most strikingly, carry out group raids on the territories occupied by neighboring groups.

In this activity, according to one of the researchers, something eerily human is visible. Only males participate in raids, although female chimpanzees actively take part in hunting and intra-group conflicts. These groups of young males move to the border area and patrol the perimeter of their possessions. Having detected the presence of single alien individuals, as a rule, also males, chimpanzees begin to pursue them, while demonstrating enough high level collective interaction. Having driven the victim into a corner, they pounce on it and tear it apart.

The results of these observations seemed so incredible to the researchers that a whole discussion flared up in the academic environment regarding the possibility of chimpanzees killing their own kind. Opponents of this view insisted that these unprecedented forms of behavior were the result of an artificially created situation in the Gombe Stream Reserve. They argued that feeding bananas to chimpanzees led to increased competition and struggle for resources between them.

However, subsequent observations, purposefully carried out in 18 chimpanzee communities and 4 bonobo communities, still confirmed the ability of chimpanzees to kill their relatives in natural environment. It has also been shown that such behaviors are not the result of human presence and have been observed, among other things, where human impact on the chimpanzee's habitat was minimal or non-existent.

The researchers recorded 152 murders (58 directly observed, 41 determined from the remains and 53 suspected). It has been noted that collective aggression in chimpanzees is a conscious act, in 66% of cases directed against alien individuals. Finally, we are talking about a group action, when the forces of attackers and victims are not equal (on average, the ratio of forces was 8:1), so the risk of killers in this case was minimal.

This study also contributed to the destruction of another myth about the great apes, namely the supposedly non-aggressive bonobos. It turned out that bonobos, like their larger relatives, are capable of showing aggression, including in its lethal forms.

Why are they fighting?

Anthropologists in the process of research have identified three factors that unite chimpanzees with the ancestors of humans and which are potentially responsible for the emergence of coalition aggression in both cases. First, chimpanzees, like humans, are one of the few primate species in which males remain in their natal group after maturation, while females are forced to leave it. Accordingly, the core of the group in chimpanzees is formed by males related to each other, and females come from outside. In most other primates, the situation is exactly the opposite.

Secondly, chimpanzees are moderate polygamists. They live in a ranking society in which males usually compete with each other for females, but at the same time there is no life-and-death struggle among them. Sometimes dominants tend to restrict access to females for low-ranking individuals. Sometimes chimpanzees form pairs for a long time.

Third, chimpanzees show little sexual dimorphism. Males are about a quarter larger than females, about the same as in humans. Gorillas and orangutans, unlike chimpanzees, are pronounced polygamists. In these species of anthropoid males, there is a fierce struggle for females, which are almost half their size. The larger size and large fangs of individual male gorillas are a serious advantage in the fight against a rival. The winner monopolizes all the females in the group, driving the losing opponent out of the group. Chimpanzees do not have such intraspecific polymorphism and advantage over rivals. Therefore, it is easier for them, like people, to cooperate with each other within their group in order to compete with males of other groups, protecting them from encroachments on their territory and their females.

It is also important that great apes, and especially chimpanzees, are endowed with a fairly complex brain. It gives them the opportunity to show empathy, to understand the meaning of the actions of other animals, attributing certain intentions to them. These abilities make real collective action possible on their part in a human-like sense.

A group of chimpanzees kill an intruder

The most important prerequisite for the latter is the ability to adequately perceive the intentions of others, soberly assess their capabilities and plan long-term strategies for interaction. There are other types of monkeys in which, like chimpanzees, the males coordinate with each other. However, without the appropriate qualities of the brain, they are not able to maintain such interaction for a long time.

Much of what is known today about chimpanzees is also relevant for our common ancestors, who existed about 6 million years ago. They were probably quite advanced and intelligent primates living in a closed, stable community, with high opportunities for male coalition behavior.

For two recent decades was published whole line large works proving that the sense of altruism underlying the ability of people to create sustainable coalitions was laid in close connection with the development of parochialism. In other words, hatred of a stranger is the reverse side of love for one's own, and militancy is an inevitable companion of friendliness. In the light of the data obtained by primatologists, it can be assumed that some semblance of parochialism is also present in chimpanzees, whose last common ancestor with humans lived only 6 million years ago.

Literature

• Kazankov A. A. Aggression in archaic societies / A. A. Kazankov. - M.: Institute for Africa RAS, 2002. - 208 p.
• Markov A. Human evolution. In 2 books. Book 1. Monkeys, bones and genes. M.: Corpus, 2012. 496 p.
• Shnirelman V.A. At the origins of war and peace. War and peace in the early history of mankind / V. A. Shnirelman. - M.: Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1994. - p. 9–176.
• Dawson D. The First Armies / D. Dawson. - London, 2001. - 124p.
• Wilson M. L., Wrangham, R. W. Intergroup relations in chimpanzees. // Annual Review of Anthropology 2003, vol. 32, pp. 363–392.
• Wilson M. L. et al. Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts // Nature 2014, vol.513, p.413–419.

"-Uncle Yura, are you a spy? - You see, Pavlik ..." WIKIPEDIA: "In early 1212, thousands of peasants (including children and teenagers) from Germany and France gathered in an army to conquer the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem (according to According to some reports, the French children did not go to Jerusalem, but to Paris to the court of Philip Augustus, where a certain preacher promised to present the king with a letter from Jesus Christ and perform miracles; Philip ordered the children to go home).

In May 1212, when the German people's army passed through Cologne, there were about twenty-five thousand children and adolescents in its ranks, heading to Italy in order to reach Palestine by sea from there. In the chronicles of the 13th century, this campaign, which was called the "Children's Crusade", is mentioned more than fifty times.

In France, in May of the same year, the shepherdess Stephen of Cloix had a vision: Jesus “appeared” to him in the form of a white monk, ordering him to lead a new Crusade, in which only children would take part, in order to free them without weapons with the name of God on their lips. Jerusalem. Perhaps the idea crusade children was associated with the "holiness" and "blamelessness" of young souls, as well as the judgment that they could not be physically harmed by weapons. The shepherd began to preach so passionately that the children ran out of the house after him. Vendome was declared the gathering place of the "holy host" and by the middle of the summer it was estimated that more than 30,000 teenagers had gathered. Stephen was revered as a miracle worker. In July, they went to Marseille with the singing of psalms and banners to sail to the Holy Land, but no one thought about the ships in advance. Outlaws often joined the host; playing the role of participants, they lived off the alms of pious Catholics.

The crusade was supported by the Franciscan order.

On July 25, 1212, the German crusaders arrived in Speyer. The local chronicler made the following entry: "And a great pilgrimage happened, men and virgins, young men and old men, and they were all common people."

On August 20, the army reached Piacenza. A local chronicler noted that they asked the way to the sea: back in Germany, they set off on a campaign, assuring that “the sea would part before them,” since the Lord would help them achieve their sacred goal. On the same days in Cremona they saw a crowd of children who had come here from Cologne.

German children endured terrible hardships crossing the Alps on their way from Germany to Italy, and those who survived the journey faced the hostility of the locals in Italy, who still remembered the sack of Italy by the crusaders under Frederick Barbarossa. The road to the sea across the plain was much easier for French children. Having reached Marseilles, the participants of the campaign prayed daily that the sea would part before them. Finally, two local merchants - Hugo Ferreus and Guillaume Porkus - "have mercy" on them and put at their disposal 7 ships, each of which could hold about 700 knights, to sail to the Holy Land. Then their trace was lost, and only 18 years later, in 1230, a monk appeared in Europe, accompanying the children (both German and French children, in all likelihood, were accompanied by churchmen, although this has not been proven in any way), and said that the ships with young crusaders they arrived to the shores of Algiers, where they were already waiting. It turned out that the merchants provided them with ships not out of mercy, but in agreement with Muslim slave traders.

War will be repeated as long as it is not decided by those who die on the battlefields.
Henri Barbusse

All those who died “for their homeland” gave their lives for the stupidities, mistakes or whims of the regime.
Alexander Nevzorov

A truly enlightened person never fights.
Lao Tzu

I believe that rational explanations of the nature of wars are far from the truth for at least two reasons: wars are by nature irrational and waged not so much even for conquest, but for the sake of mythologies imposed on society or deeply hidden desires.

Myths reflecting the desires of peoples are national ideas, which have nothing to do with the truth, but rallying people and leading them to war. Politics is a competition of myths, and with all the conventionality, artificiality and inadequacy of collective myths, they lead some peoples to prosperity and success, while others are thrown to the sidelines historical process. Paradigm changes in social structures, such as wars, revolutions or other singularities, are nothing but myths. Peoples differ significantly in their quality of life not because of biology, genetics or geography, but because of the dominant ideas-representations of reality, embedded in the constitution or the rules of the game.

In the book "Russian Fascism" I wrote that fascism is not so much social phenomenon how much negative property human soul, a pathogenic and destructive property, extracting all the filth from people, the most vile and dark qualities of human nature. Erich Fromm believed that the human brain lives in the twentieth century, while the hearts of most people live in the Neolithic. Therefore, fascism is born from within, from the souls themselves, who need enemies, external and internal, and these souls are ignited with aggression and hatred by non-humans of hell, demons of various calibers, possessed by myths and mental pathologies of their own consciousness.

War is always satanism, a mental deviation from the norm, infecting ohlos, cattle, pecus, an aggressive, dark and ignorant part of the population. By infecting the masses, this kind of Satanism leads to the collapse of states and empires. History teaches that peoples and countries that have embarked on this vicious path are moving into oblivion. War is the infection of the masses with war with the help of chimeras perceived by the cattle as a patriotic duty, a sacred duty or heroism. Albert Einstein wrote about this: "Heroism on command, senseless cruelty and disgusting senselessness called patriotism - how much I hate all this, how low and vile war is."

“There are decision centers and there is a battlefield. Approaching the place of battle, a person begins to be exposed to those feelings and sensations that are far from his interests. The sense organs are tense, sharpened, concentrated to such an extent that there comes a moment of immunity to anything else. My head becomes empty. Both the past and the future disappear; at the moment the projectile explodes, such concepts as "because" and "for the fact that" simply do not exist, while the body and mind strive for complete concentration, without which a person cannot survive in these circumstances. To put it bluntly, a fight can never be based on interest, because the dead have no interest. A person may well give his life for God, king, country, family, or even for all at once. However, to claim that he did this because he had some posthumous “interest”, consisting at least in the survival of those closest and dearest to him, would be a distortion of the meaning of this term and turning it into his own caricature.

The motives that motivate people to go to war and sacrifice their lives are as dark as Grimoire books or spells to summon demons. It is absurd for a normal person to die for the sake of his own interests, but to die for the sake of someone else's mental pathologies is even more absurd.

In its depths, war is not an instrument of politics, and not even mass kill for the sake of a certain strategy or goal, war is the madness of some, infecting a mass of others. And the more blood is shed in the name of an extravagant myth, the more sacred this myth and its symbols in the minds of the brainless.

“The regime can be arbitrarily stupid, vicious and destructive. He can splash in the "blood and pus of the people", rape, humiliate and kill millions of his subjects. But if he knows how to show a single trick, then the killed and raped population will always be grateful to him. All that is required of the regime is to be able to pretend to be a “motherland”. It's not easy, it's very simple."

I draw attention to the fact that for all warmongers, without exception, goals, values, symbols of bloodshed are ways of infecting Yahoo, the same as the concept of “ours are beaten”, “honor”, ​​“glory”, “patriotism”, “victory”, “ enthusiasm", "banner" or "reward".

War is not a grand theatre, but a gigantic slaughterhouse. And the fact that the whole history of man is the history of wars testifies that demonism has always taken and to this day takes up over divinity. In the foreseeable history, there was not a minute on the planet when there would not have been a war somewhere, and until the 20th century, up to about 10 percent of the world's population died as a result of military operations.

“Even the greatest literary works of antiquity are mostly inspired stories about how Achilles rips the sinews out of Hector, Shiva kicks the asuras, the beautiful Usivaka destroys the house of Taira, and Cuchulainn, having broken the back of his friend Ferdiad, says a few kind things about this, felt words. There is nothing to say about the Bible: there is a continuous beating of babies from the first page to the last ... Considering that biologically a person is a cannibal and a scavenger, it would probably be naive to expect any other behavior from him.

I could still understand the desire of a Cro-Magnon to drain the guts of a Neanderthal, but after all, 99% of all computer games released in the world today assume that the player will have fun killing. Do you know games in which you need to heal, grow or build?

Having created grandiose megacities, launching satellites and flying to the moon, humanity has not come up with a single ideological system that would unambiguously say that war is madness, it is a danger of destroying humanity. And the few pacifists have always been presented to society and perceived by the majority as scatterbrained creatures, poorly understanding the importance and value of "historical moments" and "great victories". I’m not even talking about the “most spiritual” institution of mankind: almost all world religions in one way or another support the “sacred right” of some peoples to slaughter other peoples, and not just support, but bless mass destruction, to this day sanctifying rockets and atomic bombs.

I am practically unaware of the theories that have received mass support, orienting people towards cooperation and peace, but there are dozens of theories explaining the inevitability of war: “We find in human nature three main causes of war: first, rivalry; secondly, distrust; thirdly, the thirst for glory ”(Thomas Hobbes). Freud explained war by aggression and a craving for death, Malthus - by the struggle against overpopulation, Hegel - by the laws of the dialectical development of society, Lenin - by class struggle, Hitler - by the advantage of one race over all others, Lorentz - by an innate, instinctively determined property of all higher animals, modern scientists - a natural manifestation of collectivism ...

Theorists remarkably show under what conditions people are more willing to fight, but no one explains why they do it at all? Especially in our days, when the war is especially ruinous for all parties to the conflict and extremely unprofitable for its participants.

“In general, if people spent as much effort as they spend on wars and on finding compromises, they would undoubtedly be able to solve all world problems by spilling a single liquid - ink.”

Sometimes the war is called atrocity, they even talk about the “bestial grin of patriotism”, but I don’t know atrocity in the form of permanent and full-scale hostilities of the most merciless predators. Yes, predators can hunt in groups, but when they meet a stronger competitor, they most often run away. They know how to hunt, but not to fight. Therefore, the term “monkey with a grenade” would probably be offensive to monkeys ... Therefore, even if human aggressiveness has deep biological roots, then humans have no quantitative competitors except for viruses ...

Only bestial obedience and fanaticism of human crowds have made and still make the existence of wars possible.

War is a psychosis generated by the inability to see the relationship of things. War is a calamity and a crime, containing all calamities and all crimes. War is barbarism. War is the teacher of violence. War is a crime that cannot be redeemed by victory. War is a political cancer that corrodes the body of the most powerful states. War is a hydra that modern conditions threatens the very existence of humanity. War is not an adventure. War is a disease. Like typhoid. Never lie so much as during the war, after the hunt and before the election.

Only a few, whose vile well-being depends on the people's grief, make wars. Perhaps the only reason wars arise again and again is that one can never fully feel how the other suffers.

He who wages war with others has not made peace with himself. War and culture are incompatible, they exist in different spheres and speak different languages. I am convinced that murder under the pretext of war does not cease to be murder. War is murder. And no matter how many people come together to commit murder, and no matter how they call themselves, murder is still the worst sin in the world. If we don't end the war, the war will end us.

“Since the earth revolves around the sun, as long as there is cold and heat, storm and sunshine, so long will there be struggle. Including among people and nations. If people stayed to live in paradise, they would rot. Mankind has become what it is, thanks to the war. War is a natural and common thing. War is coming always and everywhere. It has no beginning, no end. War is life itself. War is the starting point."
Adolf Hitler "My Struggle"

Children about the war.

Meat grinder - this is the war.
Alexey, 6th grade

War is the most terrible word in all languages ​​of the world. From ancient times to the present day, wars on Earth do not stop. From spears, arrows and shields, humanity has come to the most terrible and destructive weapon - atomic bombs, the use of which can destroy the home of all living things - planet Earth.
But Wars do not go by themselves, they are started by people. The groups in power decide the fate of peoples. These politicians, intoxicated with strength and power, strive for world superiority, not understanding the simplest and most important thing, that every person on Earth of any nationality and any skin color has the right to life...
Dolgova Irina, 6th grade

This year our country is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Victory. During the war, a huge number of people died and many went missing. War, I don't want to meet you. You are so vile, nasty, vile, bringing grief to everyone. Many children were left without parents ...
Filippova Dasha, 6th grade

War has no female face. War has the face of death. War, you bring pain and suffering with you. You took millions of lives. You made unhappy every second person on earth. Wherever you come, everything living and human is destroyed. You bring grief and destruction, sickness and hunger. Your tentacles extend for many thousands of kilometers. Because of you, children are left orphans, wives without husbands, mothers without sons.
You shouldn't be.
Petrova Anastasia, 6th grade

I hate you War! I'm disgusted by all the people who stir up great fire Wars. But it is in this Fire that human dreams, lives and destinies are burned! Well, what disgusts me the most are the people who fanatically follow you, who deify you, War! After all, these people do not live in our world, they live in a world where the main values ​​are not heroism and patriotism, but in a world where anger, hatred, cruelty and deceit are valued.
Fursova Nadia, 6th grade

War! What it is? What is the terrible meaning of this word? I want you not to repeat yourself again. When you started, you claimed a lot of lives. Children have been hurt because of you. Many of them have lost their parents. I don't want more shots. I want you to finally end, and peace reigned on Earth.
Fiokhin Anton, 5th grade

I address you, War, not with respect, but with contempt. Because you unceremoniously invaded our homes, bringing chaos and destruction. All the suffering you caused, we will never forget. Remembering these events, we will curse that day, that year and that hour when you came to our cities.
Larkova Arina, 7th grade

War, you are the death of innocent people, nature. You disfigure the earth, burn the forests. War, you are the catastrophe of the whole Earth. You take from life the best people, brave and desperate, who, without hesitation, give their lives for the lives of others. I hate you and want people to live in peace and never know you. War, you bloodthirsty predator. We are against you. Long live life and peace!
Fisenko Ksenia, 6th grade