War: Why? | Teen Ink

War: Why?

October 26, 2010
By arnoldx BRONZE, Wheat Ridge, Colorado
arnoldx BRONZE, Wheat Ridge, Colorado
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Why do all humans always resort to violence? Lets take a brief look at some major wars in history. There were first the Persian invasions of Greece in c. 500 B.C. Then, Roman wars in the 2nd century C.E. Then there were the Saxon wars only a century later. Skip forward a while, then there is the Persian war in 7th century A.D. Some more, and you have the conquests of Genghis Khan and The Crusades. Lets go to some more modern era wars. We have the Revolutionary war in the 18th century, then in the 20th century we have World War 1, World War 2, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the War on Terror.

So, is it human nature or something else? Many people today, called pacifists, are people who never resort to violence except in self-defense. This seems, oddly enough, against nature. In the animal kingdom there are no compromises. Take, for example, a mother protecting her young. A hungry predator will come across, and the mother will defend herself and her children. If the mother loses to the predator, so, too, does the children. If the predator loses, the mother can live on. There are rarely any circumstances that end up in a different way than the two mentioned.

If we take a look, we act the same way. If somebody threatened you violence for something as petty as money, you would likely put up a fight. If you lose, the victor takes your money and your life. If you win, you get your money and a court date. We fight for power over others, and control. We fight for food. However, we posses intellect, and most of us would rather debate and make compromises. If that fails though, we would forcibly take from what another what we desire. If an Apocalypse happened tomorrow, it would be a free for all, only the strongest and smartest to survive.

So then it is arguable that violence is human nature. What is war? War is a big fight between lots of people over stupid crap. Lets break down the wars that I mentioned previously. The conquests of Genghis Khan were just a big attempt at world domination. The revolutionary war was a fight for independence from a bigger country who wanted us for personal gain. World war 2 was, again, a power struggle. Hitler attempted to rid the world of the Jewish race, and failed.

I’ll Leave it up to you. Is violence something instilled in the human mind? Something that we can never be rid of? Or is it the people preforming the acts themselves?

The author's comments:
Violence and nonviolence are big issues, so I wanted to try to find out why Violence exists.

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