War, i.e., the legalization of what in peacetime is first-degree murder, has been the imperishable scourge of the species since Genesis. Joshua conquered Canaan by force and violence. The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is honored in the breach rather than in the observance. Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War observed that the strong doing what they can and the weak suffering what they must is the key to unlocking the human narrative. Geniuses like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud were clueless about arresting industrial-scale violence. The electrifying Sermon on the Mount has not stopped a single war. Edward Gibbon lamented, “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”
At present, wars or violent conflict remain endemic: Sudan, South Sudan, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Kashmir, Myanmar, the Philippines, Mozambique, Libya, Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. In the physical sciences, mankind’s advances have been awesome. AI and space marvels are illustrative. But no progress has been made in preventing war.
Species narcissism explains the discrepancy. We instinctively believe we are the superior species. All species cultivate that trait. It promotes survival for the sake of survival unhandicapped by morals or ethics, the endgame of Darwinian evolution.
All theory may be in favor of human superiority. But all experience is against it. Humans kill each other on a scale unimaginable for other animals. The annals of lions and tigers, for example, exhibit nothing comparable to Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, the 872-day siege of Leningrad, the Holocaust, the Battle of the Somme, ad infinitum. No other species pointlessly kills for the sake of killing and power or to experience a juvenile adrenalin high. Remember the words of the reptilian former national security advisor and secretary of state, Henry Kissinger: “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
By any moral or ethical metric, humans are the worst species by orders of magnitude. Human inferiority is compounded by the fact that we are capable of better by subordinating our hormonal gratifications to our cerebral endowments.
Despite infinite evidence to the contrary, humans doltishly imagine that wars can be ended by prayers or oblations to a supreme being or beneficent rulers. As Lord Acton noted, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The Buddhist Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi ignored the genocide of the Muslim Rohingya. The oppressed become the oppressors at the first opportunity. Juxtapose the Holocaust with Gaza today.
James Madison, father of the Constitution, recognized the folly of believing men were angels naturally inclined towards peace and magnanimity. Madison wrote in Federalist 51,
What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
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Madison’s solution was the Constitution’s separation of powers—a structural bill of rights to forestall tyranny. The war power was entrusted exclusively to Congress with no incentive for adventurism. In times of war, Congress becomes an acorn and the President a mighty oak wielding infinite power. As Madison noted, war is the nurse of executive aggrandizement, for example, warrantless dragnet surveillance of the “not-yet-guilty” and killing anyone deemed a national security threat without evidence. Kissinger derided as “an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassinations.”
We have forgotten Madison’s constitutional wisdom in de facto transferring the war power from Congress to the president for at least 75 years. A plague of pointless presidential wars ensued and continue. We fantasize that we are made of angelic DNA with no need to arrest the human propensity towards killing for power. Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright epitomized the delusion. She sermonized, “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.” This is the same lady who told 60 Minutes that the deaths of 500,000 Iraq children was a price worth paying for America’s handcuffing of Saddam Hussein!
Any person afflicted with species narcissism should not be entrusted with power.
