I’ve never understood the need for an individual or a country to dominate others physically–domination is violence, violation. It probably stems from a need to “show others who is the boss.” It is interesting also to observe the connotation we attach to certain things, events, deeds, etc which we deem “heroic.” If we take as much as a casual reading of history, ballads, poetry, and narratives, we always see in them, an eulogy of war, praise for conquest, and violence. It is not infrequent to come across the power and prestige of a king/emperor being measured by the number of people he killed in battle. And this kind of piques me–it used to bother me earlier, but because I’m older, I’m growing more cynical–this glorification of wars, battles, blood and gore.

And there he rode, with a majesty that shames a Lion,

Struck terror into the deepest recesses of the Enemy’s heart

His grip strong and steady on the steel, which

With a swoop, dismembered the opponent’s neck and lo!

The battle was won!

An imaginary, but predictable poem/account of a war, written from the victor’s perspective.

Without going into the psychological nuances of the need to dominate either people or nations, I’d say the entire history of mankind is but a history of wars mostly for world domination, right from Alexander the Great’s times. Notice that we use “Alexander the Great” in the sense of him being a world conqueror, his own stated ambition. Yet what did it result in? Death of thousands of innocent people who did him or wished him no harm. The same is the case with any so-called world conquerors: Napoleon and Hitler.

What howerver, follows a war is even more devastating in the long term. It breeds more hatred against the conqueror. Iraqis hate the US, Vietnamese despise the US, and the Poles still view Russians with suspicion–in fact, they have a whole horde of ugly jokes about Russians.

What I’ve written here is not new, but then there is no dearth of wars from then till now.

By the way, the inspiration for this loose post came from this source.