Why We Fight
There are those with a long, and clear, view of history who say that the story of civilization is mostly the story of Mesopotamia, and that is mostly true, at least from a chronological standpoint, but to appreciate the fullness of our great story, we need to take it a step or two further.
Civilization was birthed in the first city, Sumer, where for the first time in history humans did things very differently then we did before. We not only lived together in numbers and concentrations like never before, we also cooperated together in ways like never before.
Our new ways of cooperating gave birth to agriculture, to science, to medicine, to writing, to literature, to astronomy, to the rule of law, to a preference for diplomacy over violence, even to such common-seeming things as how we count time, and how live next to each other in rectangular dwellings off of roads. But maybe the most important idea was that the governance of this new thing, this civilization, should be responsible stewards of the welfare of the people, and the land. This idea is not inseparable from actual cities and nations, or organization at scale, as many cruel lessons of history over the millennia have proven sadly, and repeatedly to those who will learn the lessons of history, but the idea of responsible stewardship of the people and the land is truly inseparable from civilization itself.
And over the youthful centuries that followed, the grasp of the embrace of civilization both ebbed and flowed, with the vagrancies of nature and time, and against the parallel growing power of uncivilized, organization at scale.
And on some rugged and rocky craigs, a tiny band of our forefathers sprung forward farther than the whole world had in the previous thousand or two years, nor would for a thousand or two years to come, bringing science, the arts, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, the rule of law, and thought itself to heretofore undreamed of, and staggering, heights. But perhaps the most precious gift they gave us was the joining of governance and law along with the idea that not only should governance be responsible stewards of the people and the landPost too long. Click here to view the full text.