WOLFISM LII from Wolfie's blog

WAR

From the perspective of Hyperborea, what shall we say of war? It enables colonization, motivates commerce, drives industrialization, calls forth innovation, and forces civilizational selection. What’s not to love?

Hoof and Grass – Wood and Wind – Steel and Fire – every age of migration and colonization relied on the making of war, for more likely than not, when an invasive population first touched its feet to new soil, they were not the first humans to do so. Previous inhabitants had to be displaced, exterminated, or subjugated. Nor did Leviathan suffer from this. Quite the contrary. The more advanced civilization inevitably won, unless it had grown soft in its doddering old age, and either way, the losers were expendable, grist for the mill, to the victor the spoils. All was right with the world.

Meanwhile, the makers of war require the implements thereof. First came swords, knives, shields, and armor, and the metal for forging them - and also horses, those noble beasts who carried warriors into the fray. Tradesmen and merchants supplied the hordes with what they needed, and wartime commerce had its genesis and began its evolution. Next came guns and cannons, for destructive capabilities had to advance. Merchants supplied these as well. The march of progress brought forth ever more terrible engines of destruction, and always there were merchants to provide them. Commerce! If Leviathan could smile, surely it would have, nor would its good cheer have been marred in the least by the mounting piles of corpses, young and old alike feeding the flies, for every person and every community is expendable, grist for the mill, to the victor the spoils. All was right with the world.

Where at first the business of war had relied on tradesmen such as blacksmiths, these eventually gave way to industrialization. The sheer number of weapons, ammunition, and war machines required was staggering. Efficiency was needed, and economies of scale, and division of labor, and centralized control. Humanity was equal to the task. Factories were built and equipped, and products were churned out at dizzying speeds. Industrialization soon became the factor that decided the outcome of military conflicts. Whoever had (or had access to) the most and the best factories, won. The United States did not become mightier than other nations because it had more soldiers or because its soldiers were braver. No, it became mightier because its armies and navies were better equipped, and this in turn was because it could harness the tremendous power of the military industrial complex.

Nor is it sufficient to have merely the most weapons, ammunition, and war machines: it is also necessary to have the best. Innovation! Nothing on earth is more beautiful or more deadly. Physicists, chemists, engineers, mathematicians, all are recruited by the military industrial complex, and all do their part to continuously improve man’s ability to slaughter man. To shoot farther, straighter, faster; to demolish more totally; to carry more people and things from point A to point B and do it more quickly so the killing can begin without delay; to better enable communications and the analysis of information so better command decisions can be made and more of the enemy neutralized: the appetite for innovation is voracious, ravenous, never satisfied, and Leviathan gobbles up its daily meals with gusto, excreting corpses with as little concern as a man has for his turds.  

From the making of total war comes civilizational selection, for total war is a zero sum game: either you win or you lose, and if you lose, you are either displaced, exterminated, or subjugated. In recent decades we haven’t been witnessing total war very often. Instead we see governments toppled – and then the victor, usually the United States, rushes in to try to rebuild the place in its own image, and lo and behold! They repeatedly fail. They win the war and lose the peace, over and over again, because they don’t understand what war is for. It’s a contest of civilizations, and the loser is supposed to be made to vanish, either by genocide, or by exile, or by being absorbed into the victor and rendered irrelevant as a discrete entity, its useful attributes assimilated and its useless ones buried and forgotten. Chase, kill, eat, excrete: these are what the victor is supposed to do to the vanquished. When it does it, civilizational selection takes place, Leviathan is strengthened, and all is right with the world, for the victor has proven itself the best at commerce, industry, and innovation, and these are the principles by which Leviathan rises and expands.

Can the individual exploit all this? Of course. Be the merchant. Be the industrialist. Be the innovator. HAIL MAMMON! ISCHYROS DIAVOLOS!