Ever since human history is known, billions of people have been born and died, and billions more will be born and die in the future as well.
If the history of humans over the last several centuries were to be clearly analyzed and dispassionately studied, it would become evident that human history has been largely a history of conflicts and quarrels between individuals, strife and animosity between groups of people, and skirmishes and wars between countries. Such conflicts have been taking place from time immemorial due to the prevalence of feelings of hate, jealousy, greed, and prejudice in the minds of humans. While it is true that there are also elements of love and compassion in the human mindset, the fact is that negative elements, such as hate, have mostly gained the upper hand over positive attributes that promote peace and harmony. In other words, humans have largely suppressed positivity and focused on negativity in their outlook and behavior. This scenario can be described as a lack of civilization prevailing over civilization among humans. This is the ground reality in human history to this day.
While material progress has evolved in a highly impressive manner over the years, the mental makeup of humans has not changed in any visible way. Conflicts and wars continue to happen as in the past, albeit with different techniques, strategies, and weapons now.
Several major wars have taken place over thousands of years in different regions, with World War I and World War II being the largest and most violent, claiming millions of innocent lives.
After the end of World War II, it was thought that world peace could be achieved by creating the United Nations Organization (UNO). Unfortunately, over the years, this organization—even though endowed with some strength, such as having a peacekeeping force if needed—by and large has failed to achieve its objective of preventing war. It has now emerged largely as a time-passing debating club. The performance of the UNO has convincingly proved that achieving world peace is a utopian idea, and there is no hope that a world without conflicts and wars will occur anytime in the future.
The present ongoing wars between Russia and Ukraine, and between the USA/Israel and Iran, are case studies of how wars are prompted and launched by certain warlords controlling these countries. These ongoing wars are no different in cause or effect compared to the thousands of wars that have taken place in the past.
The only way to explain the reason for such continuing wars and conflicts is that humans have not become civilized at all. Civilization implies that an individual, or a leader of any country, must understand that wars and conflicts have solved no issues in the past, nor will they solve any in the future, and must convince themselves that the values of peace and harmony need to be realized.
In such circumstances, any individual or leader resorting to conflict and war must be considered uncivilized and not measuring up to the standards of civilization that humans have the potential to achieve, given the presence of good elements in them, alongside the bad elements.
Several saints, deep thinkers, and religious traditions have emphasized the need for peace and harmony as the only way to promote lasting and sustained human happiness, which should be the ideal target for humans. Unfortunately, while millions of words have been spoken and written by these great thinkers, they have largely fallen on deaf ears.
If one were to study the events of several wars in the past, it would become clear that there were no justifiable causes for these wars from a holistic viewpoint; they were caused solely by uncivilized humans behind such wars.
The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the US/Israel-Iran tensions are being witnessed with high concern by people around the world. It is nauseating when one party or the other celebrates their success in killing opponents, destroying infrastructure and industries, and driving innocent people from war zones to seek refugee status elsewhere, uprooting their entire lives.
The warlords deserve severe condemnation for their thought processes and actions, but they seem so uncivilized in their thoughts and actions that they would not even bother about such condemnation.
It appears that the world is cursed to live with wars, killings, and destruction indefinitely, exposing millions of innocent people to such bitter conditions.
What is particularly noteworthy is that each human lives in the world only for a few decades and then vanishes without knowing their final destination. Humans also come into the world from nowhere but believe they have a stake in it and material possessions to protect at any cost.
The material and technological progress and achievements being made cannot be considered a mark of the growth of civilization, but only as endeavors of humans to improve their material affluence, even as they should realize that all such achievements serve no tangible purpose in facilitating the development of human civilization to its maximum potential.
