I watched a documentary about organized warfare’s origins the other day. There was not much news, but it got me thinking about it again. We have a cat, and when she meets another cat, she would often sit down and observe, or the other cat would act aggressively and she run away, or when she felt she had a chance, she would act aggressively back. It is a wordless, instinctive reaction from an animal to a situation, something we often also do. The documentary distinguished between organized warfare or a fight between two groups of people who don’t know each other but meet on contested land and organized warfare. For this last one, you need a more sophisticated language to organize a clearer hierarchy and streamline these aggressive feelings towards the other (who you don’t know and just met) in a better way. The first, much older group lived thousands of years before a recognizable language existed. These early humans communicated more sophisticatedly than other animals, but no one had yet written a thesis on the art of war. It was only around 5 thousand years ago that we see the first thoughts about life and war written down; since then, some people have spent their lives thinking about it. But we are all still animals, and it is hard to deny that most people don’t read a book about philosophy or are otherwise critical of what we are capable of as humans and never wonder why and how we can think. I suspect that most people are like our cat; we are not aggressive per se but also are not in control of our reactions when meeting another cat or, in our case, another human. We are also conditioned by nature, like the cat. The only difference is that we can think about it after the fact…of our reaction.