A New Tale of Two Cities
by
Matt Giwer (c) 1995 <1/15>

      There once were two cities. The inhabitants did not compete among themselves or with the other city. The cities continued to survive and grow and prosper.
      There once were two cities. The inhabitants of the first city did not compete among themselves or with the second city. The inhabitants of the second city competed among themselves and with the first city. Ultimately the first city fell to the second city and adopted its competitive ways.
      There once were two cities. The inhabitants of both cities competing among themselves and with the other city. The first city learned better means of competition and eventually the second city adopted its new means of competition.
      Three different scenarios. Note none of them make the slighest difference to the survival of the population of both cities. There is nothing essentially good or bad about any of the three scenarios. They are simply different ways of life
      Consider the situation starts with two noncompetitive cities and one of them learns competition for whatever reason. In that scenario the idea of competition will ultimately become the dominant approach to life as the noncompetitive city will be losing resources to the competitive one.
      And from the third scenario it is clear that the most competitive methods will eventually become dominant.
      Now we know competition within a species and between species is the natural order of things in this world. Certainly there was no difference in our prehuman ancestors. They were certainly competing with each other within their groups and between groups. That such competition is the way things are in all of this world and in humans is not something that should surprise us.
      Nor should it surprise us when better means of competition are discovered by the human mind they spread and are adopted by others. This is simple observation. There is nothing intrinsically good or evil about competition existing or better means of competition developing. This is simply the way things are.
      What is surprising is the response one gets from changing cities to nations and competition to war. That the better means of war are adopted and spread and those that fail to adopt them disappear from history should neither surprise anyone nor be a source of condemnation by anyone. It should be equally apparent that better means of conducting a war are not limited to battle field tactics.
      At some point in human history it must have become obvious that better weapons resulted in more victories. Simply converting from stone to metal had obvious social implications such as the need for metalworkers, ways of making hotter fires, more simply a wider range of technologies and the learning needed to support them.
      And if a nation wished to survive against those new weapons and did not have the deposits of metal needed it had to develop some other skill and the skills of trade to obtain metal. And the more competitive the trading skills the better.
      And one step further, if there were different forms of social organization that could result in a greater chance of winning a war then those would be adopted or the nation would disappear from history. We have a hierarchal organizational structure at all levels of our society and it mimics that of a military system.
      Consider war as we know it as opposed to the way we find it expressed in primitive societies. They have rather ritualized combat that is not designed to take over the other group but rather to take something and leave the loser to produce what they want again. Rather like a system of game management. But in those cases there is a a direct benefit to those who get together for the "war party."
      Consider today we manage to get people to fight for the benefit of their country, their way of life, whatever it is called, with hardly the slightest promise of any benefit to themselves. Yet nations are able to raise armies to fight other armies. This in itself is an achievement.
      Yet war is condemned while all of the benefits it has brought to our society are cherished. The very concepts of competition that result in both progress and war were around before there were even mammals on the earth much less humans.
      There are those who imagine it is possible to act against everything that has lead to making us human in renouncing all forms of competition. That is a reasonable as renouncing sight or opposable thumbs and as impossible to achieve.
      What appears to lead to this belief is the confusion between the simplest of religious beliefs and reality, that they have the slightest connection. Rather than realizing there is no connection there is the belief that those ideas can be imposed upon reality. And this is a fundamental error in religion.
      Religions are intellectualizations of intragroup behavior. They are the limits upon competition that are necessary for a social group to survive be it animal or human. Even religions do not venture into the area of nation to nation relations. Yet those who would take these simplest of ideas describing interpersonal relations then attempt to pretend they apply among nations.
      Some of the greatest theologians have addressed the idea of a just war and beyond a few general ideas that never appear applicable to a particular war they have come up empty.
      Yet, there is a running presumption that war is in some manner evil. In fact war is the natural outcome of the existence of intelligent life on earth. It is a consequence of all life and of our form of life. It is simply messier than most human activities.