everyone is different; everyone is the same.

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I keep returning to the theme of our evolved behaviours. We can choose how to behave to a certain extent but we are strongly influenced by our evolution. I like to watch people in public transport, on the street, at lunch. Watching in particular young male humans eating, often I see them hunched over their food, arms wrapped around it protectively, eating just like other great apes.
I see groups of young women competing with each other for the attention of young men. I see young men showing off to each other, trying to intimidate each other, competing for dominance and access to mating opportunities.
Groups of young men stake out their territory. They do not mark their territory with urine likes dogs do but they do mark it with graffiti tags for example. This territoriality seems to be no different as an evolved behaviour to politicians and generals staking claim to territory.
We argue and fight over national borders, fairness and claims to land and territory, yet in the end all national borders are military. Land borders are based on violence or the threat of violence and the seemingly arbitrary land-lines dividing countries are no different. Geographical borders are a little different. Islands are geographically separate. This means that they are militarily more defensible. Large rivers, lakes and especially mountain ranges also are natural defensive lines.
Territoriality comes natural to us; we evolved with it. The desire to expand territory, greed and aggression again, is also something inherent to our species. I recently came across three reasons for war: money, money and money. Elsewhere I came across three different reasons for war: fear, honour and interest. We can rationalise war into different groups of reasons but in the end we evolved to fight to defend our resources and to fight to expand our resources. In the modern world this manifests as money or other interests. Fighting for honour is perhaps the exception and I struggle to find the evolutionary driver behind honour as a motivation for killing others.
As long as there are humans, there will be war.

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