plus ça change

Or, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Image - the destruction of Carthage in 146BC

For many of us watching war at work in the world and seeking to understand why it happens and continues to happen, there is no avoiding the realisation that in terms of human nature, little has changed.

The brain function and emotional reactions of most people today has evolved no further than stone-age homo sapiens fighting over the largest piece of meat or the best piece of flint. If only it were still about food and flint.

But, what makes it all more dangerous is that we now have weapons which can destroy humanity and indeed, all life on this planet. When we see the warmongers at work, handing out weaponry to deranged genocidal lunatics in Israel, and propping up greedy self-serving fools in Ukraine, it amounts to giving a six year old an AK47 and trusting them to use it wisely. Well, of course they are not trusting them to use it wisely because they want war, but they are hoping they don’t go too crazy and take down everyone with them even while they teach the six year old how to pull the trigger.

Is it a bad thing or a good thing that human nature has changed so little? It is a bad thing given the potential for destruction mere mortals now have, but it is probably a good thing in that we have a greater capacity to understand the minds of the madmen, those selling the weapons and those using them, and perhaps, just perhaps, make it possible to limit the danger. Warmongers are hardwired for primitive needs and reactions. Study their actions and you soon understand how their brains work.

This of course assumes there are enough sane, sensible people in the world, particularly in the corridors of power, who can have an impact. That may not be the case and if it is not the case, and there are no angels at work keeping up from the worst of outcomes, the inevitable may well happen.

But, until then, we can only ponder why it is that humans have changed so little over recorded history, a few thousand years. No doubt there are biological and physiological fundamentals at work in that a human brain is a human brain and will continue to function in certain ways because that is its nature, or perhaps it is because we humans are feeling beings who have learned to think, as neuroscientist, Dr Jill Bolte Taylor puts it. Evidently, some have learned to think more so than others and clearly learning to think is an incredibly slow evolutionary process. Dr Bolte Taylor also makes some interesting points about changes in brain function brought about by changes in society, i.e. the younger generations who have grown up in the technological age. When we understand that human life and experiences did not change greatly for thousands of years, and therefore neither did brain function, then the incredibly fast pace of change from the Industrial age in the 18th century until today, must be having an impact. We need to understand what that is.

And, interestingly, in times past when people, particularly males were taught to think more than feel, which of course had its own costs, perhaps they were better thinkers than we find today. Rational thinking requires an understanding of feelings and emotional responses but it is not driven by them.

War has always been a part of the human condition with the powerful using their power to gain greater power regardless of the cost to human life and existence. Might is right was the way of it for most of human existence. We like to think we had evolved beyond it but it seems not. And, the Romans in a fit of vengeful pique, and hegemonic domination, destroying Carthage in 146BC in a blood-drenched slaughter, whether or not they really did salt the fields, is uncomfortably close to the Israelis in the 21st century inflicting the same sorts of bestial savagery on the Palestinians. At core, it is the same motivation, to punish and to instill fear which brings a collapse of resistance. That is the theory. Generally resistance intensifies because that is human nature also. This is why the Romans killed as many as they could and sold the rest into slavery, dispersing them. Genocide writ large. To see the Israelis doing it today is even more horrifying.

It took three wars to finish off the Carthaginians and the Third, (149–146 BC), between the Romans and the Carthaginian (Punic) Empire, saw them finally destroyed with more than half of its people slaughtered. The Romans then had a goodly amount of centuries before they too were destroyed.

Image: Gaza in Palestine, 2024

Any study of history clearly shows these cycles of power and domination and destruction and punishment. In short, while the powerful may get a few good years or even centuries, ultimately it does not work and they too eventually fall. So why do humans keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result?

Probably because actually thinking things through and pondering potential outcomes while recognising the shared humanity for all of us is not common today, just as it was not thousands of years ago. One would think that given the vastly increased potential for destruction there might be more caution about waging war but it seems not.

When I grew up in the Sixties it was with the possibility of nuclear armageddon destroying life and planet. To find myself decades on in the same scenario, is a bookending I never expected. But perhaps that too was foolish. It is not as if we have been free of war since WWII ended. It is just that the wars, waged by the West in essence, have not impacted our lives. Well, Vietnam certainly came home to roost, but the rest of the dozens of wars, where countries far away were destroyed, in the name of American/Allied hegemonic power, were always distant.

Which is why it is interesting that Palestine has had such a huge impact on so many. It may be that in this age of social media and technology we see more and read more and know more than we did about Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, to name just three of too many. Or perhaps there are enough people beginning to understand that what we betray for others, we betray for ourselves.

There is no reason why Jews have to be dominant and no reason why they cannot live peacefully and productively alongside Christians and Muslims in Palestine since that is what happens in dozens of countries around the world. But that is a realisation they are incapable of making and the global community must take a stand to force them to do what is right, just and sensible.

If human nature has not changed and actions speak louder than words and scream shrilly it has not, then we stand at one of the most dangerous points in human history. The West is corrupted and does not have good leaders. The power of the US is declining and they are led by some of the biggest fools on the planet, because their system is corrupt and that is what it delivers. And a declining great power is always more unstable and more dangerous than one which is secure in itself.

If all of the energy devoured by the climate change fear agenda, what a great distraction from warmongering realities, was directed into stopping war and ending injustice, recognising a common and beautiful shared humanity, the world would be a different place.

We owe younger and future generations a better, safer, kinder and more peaceful world and regardless of our age we have an obligation to work for it.