War

What we've got here is failure to communicate.

Here's a new description of history. A description of how successful groups culturally evolved and passed on traits that ensured their survival, yet threatens ours.

Way back in the day, there were small tribes of people, cooperating in order to further enhance their chances of survival and procreation. Some inter tribal relations were based on cooperation, while others were primarily competitive. People are almost never content to take only what they need, because they fear the impending lack of tomorrow. Small amounts of resources increased the competitive nature of the tribes requiring those resources. Competition breeds innovation and inspiration, allowing cultural and technological leaps which compound over time. Competition also fosters an us versus them viewpoint.

Now, every tribe in the world has had members ask and wonder about the big questions. Where did we come from? Are there spirits? What happens after we die? Where have my ancestors gone? All tribes have answered these questions in one form or another. These answers in some ways have quieted the fears and gave comfort to those who needed it. These traditions have grown with the growing cultures and gave rise to the worlds great religions. As a tribes influence increased, in order to maintain their dominance, their traditions were imposed in some fashion on those who were subjugated. Unification and population increase increases the dominant cultures ability to claim its inherent right to it's privileged position. Human cultural evolution is not logical, as people see popularity as a sign of righteousness, no matter how logically fallacious that may be.

Isolation between cultures, through geography, language, ideology, or whatever may separate, was a dominant force in human cultural evolution until quite recently. It still exists without a doubt, but now, due to advances in technology, isolation itself is under threat. Communication mediums without boundary allow everyone with access to regard each other as members of a global community rather than by previous associations. It is not so much that people accept everyone, but that they communicate at all with anyone. People begin to have difficulty seeing the faceless monstrous enemy beyond the gates when they can see that same enemies family pictures.

Every culture believes that their traditions have gotten it all right. If they did not believe that their beliefs were correct, why would they then continue to believe them? Some traditions believe that they are correct, but that the world is large and complex enough to allow others to be correct in different ways, while some postulate that their beliefs are the only truths that exist. This not only means that there is no room in the world for other truths to exist, but anyone claiming to experience truth elsewhere is actively threatening the beliefs of the chosen. In order for the only truth to be proven, and to survive, is to eradicate other claims of truth, by all means necessary.

People only do what they perceive to benefit them. This is the only true thing about human beings. The benefits that have been achieved by certain cultural groups in their achievement of an amount of dominance have been enough to ensure the loyalty of their participants.

In this age of communication, the isolation has given way to connection. What we see now are perspectives that are higher than those engaged in these cultural wars. We see the desire for cultural supremacy causing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the consumption of resources by those who feel self satisfactorily deserving, all these things we now begin to see as simply a threat to the species as a whole. It begins to look like street gangs warring for turf in a burning derelict city. In order to ensure our own survival we begin to see how some of our beliefs and practices that brought us out of the muck and established the means of connection we now enjoy, must be abandoned. This creates fear in the true believer, still bloody from the mornings battle.

There is an arc which is observable in every struggle, the pinnacle of power and influence wanes as chaos sets in to upset the inflexible order. The harder the resistance of the established order against the reality of chaos, the more pronounced the recoil from the inescapable victory of chaos.

Any approximation of order must include provisions for chaos, or chaos will destroy the illusion of its eradication.