“War is a male activity. Organized fighting and killing by groups of women against other groups of women has simply not existed at any point in human history.”
That’s a powerful observation from evolutionary social psychologist Frank T. McAndrew Ph.D., whose writings on the psychology of going to war propose that men evolved to be more aggressive in order to compete for female mates.
The story of Helen’s face launching a thousand ships comes to mind.
But for modern combat, nations have bureaucratic conditions that must be met in order to officially declare war on one another (the United States hasn’t officially declared war since 1942). Whether it’s the biologically aggressive nature of males, ideological fundamentalism, or something else that causes diplomatic negotiations to break down can only be theorized. The bottom line is that humans have been fighting and killing each other throughout our entire history.
I’d like to think that there are noble reasons to go to war — for example, defending your homeland or stopping the Nazis from murdering millions of innocent civilians.
And then there are…less noble reasons…
Also read: How the United States can avoid the next ‘dumb war’
In the video below, The Infographics Show breaks down five of the dumbest reasons people went to war. I don’t want to spoil anything, but one war on the list started over a soccer game. DUDES DECIDED TO KILL OTHER DUDES BECAUSE OF A GAME.
Check out the other dumb reasons people went to war right here:
