The "rational choice" model of behavior assumes that human beings behave in order to achieve "gain."

200 million people died in the 20th Century as a result of warfare, genocide and acts of terror. What was gained by virtue of the monumental episodes of murder and self-destruction that occurred? 

Some theorists in the academic world perpetuate the idea of rational choice.

Wars produce prodigious loss of life and economic destruction. Jay Winters and other great historians of the First World war recognize that it was an exercise in absolute futility, producing maimed and dead soldiers and economic chaos.

I begin with an alternative hypothesis or theory: 

My colleague Ivan Strenski has stated the essence of the sacrificial dynamic is expressed in the idea that "loss is gain." Scott Atran has demonstrated in a series of studies that acts of terror constitute demonstration of devotion to a sacred object. Even when offered large sums of money, devoted actors will not abandon their belief that acts of terror are justifiable and praiseworthy.

There is nothing "rational" about the terrorist's wish to die oneself and to kill other human beings--unless one profoundly believes in Allah.

It seems that a concept that used to be fundamental in anthropology--taught in Freshman courses--has left the scene: the simple idea of cultural relativity. 

People get so hysterical when discussing political issues that they abandon this fundamental idea of social science. Dying for Allah makes sense for those who profoundly believe in Allah. But of course it seems like non-sense to those who have no attachment to or belief in Allah.

The fundamental method of anthropology revolves around the effort to entering into the mentality of the other. Scott Atran has accomplished this  courageously and brilliantly in relationship to those who perform acts of terror.

I have used method as the basis of my studies of Hitler and Nazism. I've attempted to ascertain the frame of mind, the thought processes, the psychology--that led to the destructive forms of behavior that constituted the core of Nazism.

How do entire societies become possessed by certain narratives that seem fantastic and that obviously are profoundly destruction and self-destruction? 

Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes, author of The Twilight of the Bombs (2011), has responded to my theory of the dynamics of political or cultural violence by posing the following question:

My response: Gods or gods arise out of sacrifice. If no one was willing to sacrifice for a god, how would we know this god existed? If no one was willing to die for a nation, how would we know that nations exist? Carolyn Marvin sums things up nicely: "Blood sacrifice creates the nation."

One might view political history--what appears in "history books" from ancient times to the present--as a series of blood sacrifices made by societies in the name of some object deemed to be sacred or absolute by each society.

This accounts for the virulence and massive destruction of episodes of warfare and genocide. What is at stake is the survival or one's own sacred object in the face of another society that deems another object to be sacred. 

Massive acts of violence and destruction, killing and dying, are undertaken in the name of preserving or demonstrating one's belief and devotion. The proof of the pudding is in the dying and killing. Nothing to do with "rationality." Nothing to do with biology (natural selection).

When a suicide bomber blows himself up in the name of Allah, it takes little effort to imagine that he is dying for his god; that he makes himself a sacrificial victim because he "believes in" his god. Throughout the history of Christianity, there were "martyrs." We can understand this as well.

Everything depends on the perspective of the believer. The acts of a Japanese kamikaze pilot seem extraordinary or bizarre to many people.

However, Americans don't feel the same way about the attack on Omaha Beach in 1944 during the Second World War (depicted so brilliantly in the movie Saving Private Ryan). 

The fate of the soldiers--massacred en masse--was not unlike the fate of a Japanese kamikaze pilot (or a suicide bomber). Americans died for freedom and democracy just as Japanese soldiers died for their Emperor and suicide bombers die for Allah.

This seems self-evident--that Americans (this was stated explicitly by General Eisenhower who called the Second World War "the great crusade") were fighting and dying for a cause: that they understood the cause for which they were fighting.

Yet some otherwise sensible people put forth the view that Americans didn't really care what they were fighting for--they simply were fighting to survive, or to support and defend their buddies.

This idea that Americans didn't actually understand that they were fighting and dying for a cause--the sacred values of freedom and democracy--might be explained by the fact that this cause was so deep, so profoundly internalized, that it did not need to be made explicit. 

The term "martyr" derives from the Greek word meaning "to bear witness." When suicide bombers die for Allah, they bears witness to the intensity of their belief. Death constitutes “proof”—for the bomber and fellow believers. “Look, he’s giving his life for Allah. Allah must be real.” It’s difficult to imagine that someone would give one’s life if Allah were not real—that one would die for no-thing.

Those who do not believe in Allah are not convinced. Just because a suicide bomber blows himself up, we are not thereby persuaded or the reality of Allah.

Dying for the Emperor in the Second World War, Japanese gave witness to their belief that the Emperor was god. Still, citizens of other nations were not thereby persuaded of the Emperor’s divinity.

On the other hand, we do not find it difficult to imagine why an individual "gave his life" for his country, e. g., for France, Great Britain, Germany or America. We believe in the reality of these entities, so death in thee name of these entities seems to make sense.

In all of the cases discussed above, we are dealing with a common mechanism, which I call the law of sacrifice. People give their lives as a testimony to the reality of the sacred object with which they identify.

To return to the question: Why is the loss of life and material resources perceived or conceived as victory?

Because for those who make the sacrifice—whether they are dying for Allah or Japan or Great Britain or the United States—victory represents the triumph of belief. When people die in the name of a sacred ideal, we are persuaded that this ideal must be real.

People sustain loss in war in order to demonstrate the validity of the ideal in whose name loss is generated. It takes a radical act of consciousness or imagination to conceived that when we human beings give our lives for some-thing—we are dying in the name of no-thing.