No one wants war. Everyone wants war.
We grow hungry again. Driven by the primal urge to dominate, conquer, make human sacrifices great again. A critical mass is within reach.
You can hear them chanting it at every damn occasion: “No one wants war.” Politicians, news anchors forging “public opinion”, many so-called “respectable” upper-class members. They repeat it like a goddamn mantra. Sing it in unison. A fake lullaby to hold up appearances. Because if we all believe it—if we really fucking believe it—then everything remains calm. Tame. Domestic. Under control. Don’t look behind the curtain. Don’t sense that restless, gurgling hunger for blood festering in the hearts of so many, waving their flags and cradling their rifles like beloved family heirlooms.
Industry thrives on war. Autocrats feast on it. Politicians cling to it like the mother’s milk that will feed their approval ratings. War cements their position at the apex. War is their best friend. War is their secret fetish: they might not admit it publicly, but they salivate at the prospect. Profit, profit, profit, blood, blood, blood.
And it’s not just them: plenty of ordinary folks want it too, or at least don’t care if it’s happening, as long as it’s not on their street. It's like an action movie that plays out in someone else’s backyard. All those bombs and missiles—big, shiny, and oh-so-impressive—lighting up the sky on the evening news: you can hear the commentary, feel the adrenaline, the excitement. Something is happening! Did you hear? And then you switch the channel to some cooking show to see if the sauce is thick enough.
The fake “age of stability”
We live in an age of comfortable ennui. We Europeans pat ourselves on the back for the so-called stability we’ve had since World War II, as if that war was the last big one, as if the echoes of Yugoslavia or the Middle East or anywhere else never counted. We wrap ourselves in the duvet of illusions, thinking we’re “above” it all, that we’ve evolved. We act like we found the magical formula to never let Hitler happen again, that we overcame the evils of fascism and its close brother, imperialism. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was torn to pieces in countless wars, often financed or influenced by European powers. Our “peace” and material comforts were built on their destruction, their resources, their lost generations. Americans don’t even attempt to hide it—they wage constant war, but never too close for comfort.
Bored? Have you tried watching people die?
But behind the veneer of progress, there’s an itch, a primal twitch in the soul of society that yearns for… something. Something raw, something dangerous, something that lets us know we're fucking alive. War would do that, wouldn't it? War reminds us that there’s a heartbeat raging in our veins, a capacity for primal violence simmering under the surface.
Over and over and over again: times of extended peace breed boredom, dissatisfaction. People start tinkering with radical progressive ideas—like real democracy, real equity, real revolutions—until suddenly, the narrative shifts. A scapegoat emerges (usually a foreign enemy, or some demonized minority), and the wheels of conflict start spinning. The talk of peace is replaced by talk of “self-defense,” “national pride,” “our moral obligation.” We see it happening right now.
Our modern lifestyles, of course (I keep repeating myself): we shuffle from bed to desk job, from desk job to entertainment, from entertainment to bed. Maybe occasionally we hit the gym, treat ourselves to a romantic date, or indulge in some regulated, safe nature hiking. But it’s all rather… placid, so distant from our primal ancestry that used to wrestle with animals (but not as often as most people think), with storms, with each other, with death on a daily basis. Today, we’re distanced from death. We hide it in hospitals, nursing homes, warzones far away from the bright screens of our living rooms. We’ve severed ourselves from nature’s ancient rites, from the stench of actual, tangible blood, from the brutality of survival. So it’s no wonder some people crave war, especially men with their tribal instincts and macho illusions—some men actually jacking off to the idea of “defending the homeland.” They’ve only seen the images and know nothing of the horror. They imagine the glory, but not the maggots. I know nothing of it, too, of course. But my parents do, and what they told me is enough to tell you IT’S A BAD FUCKING IDEA.
War = money = control
You know the cycle: the capitalist system hits a crisis—maybe a recession, maybe a spiritual crisis, a loss of purpose, maybe all of those. People are pissed, wages stagnate, inequality spikes, and the lower classes rightfully begin sharpening their pitchforks. So how do you distract them? Wave a flag, spin a heroic narrative, show them an enemy. War is the tried-and-true formula for unifying the populace behind the authorities. Once the drums start pounding, you can brand anyone who dissents as a traitor, a coward, a scoundrel who doesn’t love the motherland. And just like that, you tighten control, you command loyalty, you rake in profits from arms deals, oil, reconstruction—rinse, repeat.
Horny for death & destruction
We saw it before World War I. Europe had an extended period of relative stability. Politicians got restless, their power waning, and so they started building alliances and forging romantic illusions of heroic conquest. They were practically salivating for an excuse to unleash chaos. War was almost… fashionable. Of course, they lied to the public, told them it would be “over by Christmas,” a grand romantic fling. Millions died in muddy trenches, gassed, shell-shocked, devoured by machine guns.
Fast-forward a century, you see the same pattern forming. Tensions simmer, militaries flex their latest hardware, politicians deliver speeches about “protecting national interests,” institutions are dismantled (like right now in the US), checks and balances abolished, and behind closed doors, arms manufacturers grin ear to ear. Look at them jacking up their stock prices with every rumor of conflict. Because when bullets fly, money flows. When bombs drop, bank accounts swell. War is an orgasm of profit for them.
“But no one actually wants war!”
That’s the comforting lie. It soothes the average office worker who does their 9-to-5 in marketing (like me), then heads home to scroll the news. Because who wants to face the truth that many, many people do want it? Think about the doping effect of war hype. All the right-wing (and “centrist”) politicians, all the populists, all the autocrats, they thrive on conflict. It’s the ultimate adrenaline injection for their base. Suddenly, people rally behind them. Suddenly, they’re saviors, heroes, righteous guardians of the homeland. War is a political goldmine.
Many men daydream about the glorious battlefield. They fetishize the uniform, the sense of belonging, the ultimate test of manhood. They fantasize about getting “the respect they deserve.” War is the ultimate belonging: you’re with us or you’re one of them. It’s tribal, it’s primal, it’s a savage dance that humans have performed since the dawn of time. This urge never disappeared. We like to think we’ve banished our darkest instincts to the rotten pages of history, but that’s nonsense. War is the stage upon which many re-enact their fantasies of dominance.
Gladiators and arenas
War also entertains. From a distance, conflict looks like a spectacle, a documentary you watch to get your blood pumping, an action flick for the bored masses. It’s always in some far-off place, some desert or mountainous region or city with an unpronounceable name. It’s exciting, exotic. The footage is crisp and shiny. Journalists stand in flak jackets, narrating your evening’s entertainment, and when you’re done, when you’re satiated, you just turn off the TV.
We don’t want war where we live, of course. That would fuck up our lawns, our kids’ playgrounds. We don’t want bombs dropping on our malls, our schools. We want it conveniently located in someone else’s country. Contained to a specific arena with us watching from the stands. That’s the sweet spot: maximum spectacle, zero personal risk, ultimate moral detachment.
Territorial animals
We dress it up with ideology. We call it “defending freedom,” “protecting democracy,” “liberating the oppressed,” “preserving the homeland,” or “fulfilling God’s will.” The slogans change, but the primal urge remains. Tribal lines get drawn. “Us versus them.” It’s been like this for thousands of years, from cavemen fighting over hunting grounds to modern nations sparring for resources. Apparently, we can’t suppress that evolutionary wiring forever, no matter how many institutions we create. All the fancy tech, all the philosophical treatises about moral progress—none of it kills that ancient beast inside the human male. Not every man, of course, but enough for it to matter.
Sure, some women get off on it too—especially those who crave an old-fashioned sense of security. The whole “cottagecore” or “tradwife” fantasy: imagine a manly soldier returning from the front lines, battered and triumphant, providing safety and order and pride. It’s a fringe kink, I think, but it’s there, lurking in corners of the internet, hammered into the fabric of old fairy tales. War hero. Strong arms. Flag-waving triumph. There's a macabre romanticism to it.
Because war is the great simplifier. It simplifies complex social issues into “friend or foe.” All the complexity of the world suddenly falls away. It transforms deep-rooted discontent into a war cry. It kills the revolutionary spirit. In war, there is only black-and-white, no space for nuance or subversion.
So where does that leave us?
In a fucked up limbo, just waiting for… something. Don’t you sense it coming? Trump and his likes are merely the accelerators, sensing the Zeitgeist and then abusing it for their profit.
It’s all games and posturing in the distance, until the day the illusions shatter. Then we’ll look at each other with that dumbfounded expression again—How did this happen?—like we haven’t been walking toward this cliff for decades. Liberal, centrist parties have walked us there, done nothing to stop it, then freely given way to the autocrats. Symbolic resistance is all there ever was. They just don’t care.
The next couple of years: sure, you can refuse to play along when they crank up the patriotic machinery. You can question the narratives. It won’t matter, because you will be drawn into it. There is no escaping it, and the innocents are always those who suffer the most.
“No one wants war.” Yet global war is around the corner, lurking. They want it. They crave it. They stoke it. And we’ll find ourselves, once again, trudging through the mud of some obscure battlefield, fighting other people for no reason, death all around us, suddenly present and tangible, wondering why the hell no one stopped this.
But maybe we want that.
Antonio
“Enjoy” this essay in video format:
It’s terrifying how close it feels, and how few people around me are aware of it yet. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Regarding men’s primal urge for war, Dmitry Orlov’s writes in The Five Stages of Collapse:
“When it comes to aggressive young males, the sense of disconnection produces in them a heightened sense of insecurity and anxiety, which directly affects the sympathetic nervous system. This may cause an animal to behave more aggressively, or, in the case of the human animal, to gather rocks and to find and sharpen sticks, or, technology and finances allowing, to purchase semiautomatic assault weapons and lots of ammunition. This process may then progress through several stages. The end result is the spontaneous development of a warrior mentality—a cultural universal marked by a desire to prove oneself in battle, contempt for death and a tendency toward what Emile Durkheim called “altruistic suicide.”
The pattern is the same among Homeric heroes, Mongol conquerers, Japanese samurai, European knights of the age of chivalry and Moscow’s bandits and racketeers during the violent 1990s. Meaning is created out of meaninglessness through heroic acts of violence performed in keeping with a code of honor. Inclusion in the elite group is achieved via violent rites of passage and creates group loyalty and a sense of belonging. The gun cult in the United States is a strong precursor to this development, and the sporadic shooting sprees are its individual manifestations. This tendency may develop to the point of becoming a mass phenomenon. If it does, it will annihilate the current ruling class and the process of aristocratic formation will begin anew.”