Have wars become more brutal?

In the poem “The Son of Guidance” by the poet Ahmed Shawqi, he says two verses about war as follows:

War is your right, you have a law... and from the most powerful poisons there is a cure.

If you take a pledge or give it... all your pledges are a pledge and loyalty

War, as Shawqi describes it, is a necessity of life and legitimate when it leads to resolving dilemmas that could not be easily resolved through negotiation. However, once war has laid down its weapons and the warring parties have agreed to a covenant of peace and non-aggression against one another, a person's upright character prevents him from betraying or breaking the covenant he has made.

In 1939, French philosopher Simone Weil published a 24-page treatise on what can be concluded about human nature as described in the Greek poet Homer's epic poem, "The Iliad." Weil demonstrated that the epic seeks to make war more noble because its heroes, such as Achilles, Agamemnon, and Hector, believe in redemption, heroism, and glory. They are more willing to die for these lofty principles than to live because they betrayed or deviated from them.

But her thesis, published in the same year that World War II broke out, 1939, received special attention when Steven Pinker published his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, in which he concludes that people have become less inclined to war or to the brutality of killing, based on his studies and statistics on wars and the number of deaths in them.

However, some researchers and commentators on Pinker's book have argued that his findings would not have been accepted by the French philosopher Weil, who was more inclined to believe that it was difficult to control the fighting and killing tendency in human nature. This is because most who read her literature believed that she tended to conclude that humans are inherently more violent.

Homer's second epic, the Odyssey, describes the journey of the king of Ithaca, Hercules, on his way back from the war with Carthage, described in the Iliad. We know that Hercules suffered torment and woe during his journey before he was able to return to his palace and his wife, Penelope, who refused to marry those who proposed to her, awaiting her husband's return.

Armenian-American author William Saroyan chose to write a story inspired by "The Odyssey" titled "The Human Comedy," published in 1943 during World War II. The story's hero is named "Homer McCauley," and the city in California is "Ithaca." The story's hero, absent at war, is Homer's brother, Marcus, whose family eagerly awaits his return. Tragedy strikes when Homer receives a letter informing him that his brother Marcus has been killed in action.

Thus, Saroyan chose to embody the tragedy of wars and their impact on people who suffer and are tormented because they are “collateral damage,” the same disgusting term we heard in the horrific wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, the wars in Gaza, southern Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere.

We are not here to analyze what the Israeli army is doing in Gaza, nor the atrocities and horrific crimes it is committing. However, there is no doubt that global population statistics tell us that the world's population reached its first billion people at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This figure doubled to two billion in 1927, and rose slightly more in 1939 when World War II broke out, killing approximately 3% of the world's population. However, since 1927, the world's population has quadrupled, now exceeding eight billion people.

This world has become more crowded, with the number of megacities rising to 53, home to more than 650 million people. These cities are human jungles, crammed with layers upon layers of unregistered organizations, many of which control the lives of the people. Most of them suffer from overcrowding, overcrowding, poverty, hunger, underground and illegal worlds, and organized and individual crime.

One of the problems of overcrowding is that it is not limited to poverty, unemployment, hunger, and exploitation. Rather, the most important problem is the loss of privacy, people being exposed to one another, and the easy collapse of value systems. Drug users in the lower neighborhoods of these cities consider life to be either a fight or a get killed, which makes their youth, in particular, readily accept killing.

Moreover, the expansion of consumerism, the development of technology, the unequal distribution of income and wealth, and the dominance of the rich in government, or what is known as "plutocracy," is the system that creeps and nests within political structures and controls their decisions. As a result, the world has become more aggressive and susceptible to killing and aggression.

This is also supported by various evidences, namely the large number of wars within countries and between neighbors. Wars between neighbors are either directly due to divergent interests or greed for the neighbor's resources, or they are instigated by major powers, each of which has one neighbor as an ally, while others have another neighbor as an ally. Wars are waged by proxy to avoid confrontations between the major powers themselves. It is said that there are eighty internal and regional wars, some of which are raging, others dormant, waiting for someone to stir their embers and rekindle their flames. It is astonishing that Hollywood has been producing films about the struggle for resources since 1920, such as the films "Dune" and "Sandhills," "Avatar," and others. Some of these films are set in the distant future and on planets other than Earth.

But there are also many stories of conflict over land. Has Hollywood been preparing our minds and reorganizing our thinking to accept that the struggle over resources, minerals, and real estate has legitimate justifications, even if it leads to human death and maiming? Some, like businessman Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, have never stopped predicting an all-out world war. Perhaps his experience on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, in China and the United States, and his trade and service relationships with them, allow him to see what many others fail to see.

But insistent and definitive talk about the imminent outbreak of a third world war requires planning and wisdom. Here, I recall the scientist Albert Einstein, who said: "We used bombers in World War I and the atomic bomb in World War II, and killed millions of people in both. Perhaps we will use astronomy in World War III. Then we will fight World War IV with axes and shovels."

The question I want to ask here is that the people of the Gaza Strip have lost perhaps more than 70,000 martyrs, including children, doctors, paramedics, nurses, men, women, and the elderly, while others are still missing. There is no doubt that the children have seen calamities that cannot be experienced even in the worst nightmares, and they have seen death approaching and avoiding them every hour of the day. What will these children's outlook on life be like when they grow up? Some will say that some of them will be gentle and patient, loving people so that they do not suffer as they did. Others may see them as strict, strong-willed people who do not bow down to the difficulties they are accustomed to and have endured the most bitter of them for more than 520 days now, or perhaps more. What difficulties will stand in their way in the future?

The occupation, oppression, killing, destruction, uprooting of trees, and the demolition of places of worship, schools, hospitals, roads, and infrastructure are beyond comprehension in Gaza and the West Bank. But does this mean that Israel, whose soldiers apply the principle of "kill Palestinian children so they don't kill you in the future," is what makes Israel safer and more secure for its residents?

Many Jewish analysts, both Israeli and non-Israeli, have become convinced that what Netanyahu and his aides and soldiers have done is a destructive act that will ultimately destroy the nation of Israel. All of this may be true, but it is also subject to question.

The Egyptian poet "Mamoun Al-Shennawi" said:

Don't ask me, how many lovers have asked

Does time believe in what it draws hope?

Does the dream of love last long?

Don't ask me, I'm scared and anxious

The moon does not diminish until it is full.

The idea is taken from Abu al-Baqa al-Rundi, who mourned Andalusia in his famous poem:

Everything has a flaw when it is perfect...so don't let a person be deceived by the good life.

This is the world - as I saw it - states... whoever is pleased with one time will be displeased with other times