Man of War By Por Paul V. Montesino

Man of War

By Por Paul V. Montesino, PhD, MBA, CCP

I’m sure I’m not the first person who has expressed the words in the title of this article to describe the famous jellyfish, and most certainly not to describe human beings. And it has been mentioned also by religious figures and philosophers more famous than I in moments of anguish or introspection.

Most carnivorous animal species feed on each other. They are also the most aggressive. The ones who feed on products of the land like grass, seeds, or leaves, are the least aggressive and more congenial. As soon as the carnivorous get hungry, they look around trying to locate the next meal moving nearby, usually a member of another species. They chase it and end up eating the pursued or if the other one is stronger or more skilled, devoured by it. There is an inter-species evolutionary fight going on all the time where the stronger or the fittest survives. But we are different animals.

We are the only ones that feed on our species, no longer actually cannibalizing ourselves, but premeditatedly attacking each other in useless and wasteful criminal wars that justify our effort to kill, enslave, or otherwise possess the destiny or life of our neighbors. And hunger has nothing to do with it directly unless somebody wants to steal your grocery cart; our reasons are many and complex: racial, political, religious, ethnic, geographical, you name it. Reasons that force us to create organizations, committees, and institutions of learning to control them.

We’ve been traumatized, scandalized, and worried throughout history every time we witness, hear or experience one of those wars. Countless hours and resources have been wasted in making them more efficient and lethal. There are even Colleges of War.

Now we are experiencing another period of uncertainty when one big country, Russia, decides that it’s OK to attack and destroy a smaller one, Ukraine. But hold the horses. Wars are not always between folks who speak different languages or live on different lands or on different sides of a fence. There are also many wars in your neighborhood.

There are wars when neighbors hurt each other because they want what the other has; or when spouses, usually men, beat, hurt or kill their partners, or when children are abused physically, psychologically, or sexually; when children abuse their elderly parents. When a religious person abuses a minor the abuser’s religious institution becomes complicit.

In other words, we don’t have to cross borders to see war, sometimes we don’t even have to look out the window to see a crime committed. We must rethink our definition of war. It may not be an army marching to attack; it could be we are committing moral if not physical suicide.

And that is my point of view today.