War

Today's world seems to be highly critical of war. It is seen as destructive, inefficent and deeply immoral. Though I very much agree with this view, don't wars -and conflicts in general- build cultures and identities? Don't they push civilization to grow? Don't they set history in motion? The real question I have is: Does culture need conflict?

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It probably does, and a state of affairs in which everyone was blissfully happy would be very unproductive of anything except happiness. It is a bit like what we tend to think of as normal stress. If an individual is overwhelmed by stress, that is obviously a bad thing both for her and her work. If an individual feels no stress at all, then why should she do anything at all? We need some motivation to get going, presumably, and a degree of stress is fine to motivate us to get things done and succeed in our tasks. The thing about war, though, is that it so easily slips from being a period of some aggravation to becoming a highly destructive environment. What we need from a cultural point of view perhaps is more but much smaller wars!

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