People claim they would like to put an end to war. However, ending warfare is not easy. The issue is not a mysterious "aggressive instinct." The problem is that--for many people--warfare is conceived as a good thing.

People say they would like to achieve peace. But how can peace be attained if people love war?

Warfare is loved because it provides an occasion when people can sacrifice --in the name of preserving or rescuing a sacred ideal. How does one demonstrate that one loves a sacred object? By dying and killing in the name of this object. The proof of the pudding is in the dying and killing.

If sacrificing one’s life for a sacred ideal is good, how can war be bad?

Hitler is considered an anomaly. Yet he said, “We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have performed the greatest deed in the world.” Does this statement not articulate the structure of thought underlying most forms of collective violence?

“We may be inhumane, but if we rescue (X), we have performed the greatest deed in the world.” This syllogism generates most forms of collective violence. War and genocide are undertaken as the performance of inhumane acts in the name of defending or rescuing a sacred ideal.

It is the “X factor”—the sacred ideal—that acts the releaser: transforming violent acts into forms of goodness. The sacred ideal is a moral imperative justifying any and all acts: liberating individuals from other forms of morality.

Each society is founded on a sacred ideal that it wishes to promulgate, protect and defend. Warfare represents a devotional activity, revolving around an X factor. It is always, “Something to kill and die for;” or some thing to kill and die for. What is the nature and meaning of this "thing" in the name of which human beings are willing to die and kill?

Members of societies feel that they are obligated—believe it is their duty—to die and kill in order to rescue a sacred ideal. Unwillingness to wage war thus becomes immoral: one doesn’t love one’s country enough. Those who oppose war become heretics or apostates.

A nation incurs casualties in order to demonstrate its devotion. Death in warfare is the “pledge of allegiance” in its most radical form. As one commentator put it on the Fourth of July, “The basic hero is the dead soldier.”

A journalist during the First World War recalled meeting a wounded Canadian soldier in pain. He tried to console the soldier:

As I looked into his face and saw the look of personal victory over physical pain, I gripped him by the hand and said: “My good man, when you go back home to Canada, back to your home, you need not tell them that you love your country, that you love your home—just show them your scars.”

Show them your scars; show that you have been wounded in the name of your country. Being wounded represents a testimonial: demonstration of love. In war, the good thing (the sacred ideal) and the bad thing (violent acts) go together like a horse and carriage.

The leader's power derives from the sacred object that he represents. He can ask members of the population to die and kill only in support of a sacred ideal. The ideal provides the rationale or reason. It is by virtue of a sacred object—one’s devotion to this object—that a war becomes “just.”

We conceive of acts of violence as necessary when these acts are performed in the name of a sacred ideal; that is, in the name of our sacred ideal. When the other society performs acts of violence, these acts seem brutal, ugly and without justification. Only when dying and killing are enacted for the sake of our sacred ideal--do they seem justifiable--and beautiful.”

I postulate a law of sacrifice. Societies perform acts of violence in order to demonstrate devotion to a sacred ideal. The ideal might be called “preserving the Union,” or “Great Britain,” or “France,” or “Germany,” or “the people,”  or Allah, or “freedom and democracy.” In our heart the dream remains the same.

One may consider a particular ideal “good” or “bad:” everyone has an opinion or preference. However, there is a common principle or dynamic: that for which we die and kill becomes real. Killing and dying are forms of validation.

Why do people love war? Because it provides the occasion to demonstrate one's devotion. People love war because it allows them to die or kill for a sacred ideal. 

Best regards, 
Richard Koenigsberg