Hello internet,
I am reading the Spirit Level. This has informed my most recent musing about the world and how it works. In the chapter on violence the authors mention a criminologist who argues that all violent crime is caused by feelings of shame or humiliation and all incidences of violent crime are attempts to recover lost pride. Now think this as plausible as you like, I personally find myself sympathetic going by my own experiences. I can think of a couple of instances particularly in my pre-teen years when I lashed out violently in response to intense feelings of shame. This ties in with the broader thesis advanced in the Spirit Level that many social ills are related to feelings of status insecurity.
Take this into account, and also consider the phenomenon, observed in another pop social science book whose name escapes me, that individuals extend the sphere of what they consider to be a part of themselves. One example of this phenomenon is when somebody is driving a car they refer to the car internally and aloud as themselves: for example "he hit me!" or "I am a bit heavily laden, I'll have to be careful with braking times" (I have never driven a car but growing up my experience of cars was varied and exciting, to be euphemistic).
Imagine if the same phenomenon applies to people who are in positions of power or authority within an institution or organisation. What if the same combination of forces that lead to road-rage, also lead to the personal bitterness of inter-company squabbling? What if they lead to leaders taking their countries to war? The story would go a little something like this. The leaders of a country come to identify themselves with the country and vice versa. What they see as an attack on the status or pride of the country feels like an attack on themselves. This brings about a feeling of acute humiliation for them, almost as though their national football team who they had been boasting about hours before had been devastatingly trounced, which provides them with a strong urge to retaliate in some way to recover some lost pride. Again confusing the country with themselves, they lash out with a part of their anatomy to which they hold only the most spurious claim: their diplomatic, or worse armed, services.
I am absolutely convinced, without hesitation, hyperbole or irony, that every war ever has been or will be caused by these effects or similar. I have solved international relations, you may shower me with your praise.
But seriously, it must have happened somewhere at some point mustn't it? It is far too plausible a story not to be true.
Caleb
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