It's Cain's Fault

You might have already listened to this question before: is war ever justified? But before you argue with me about myself being monotonous, let words be presented to you, candid reader. Since the beginning, I shall say, the noble species that bears our name was condemned to be part of even the deepest circles of hell. I can say that way up in my family tree, one of my ancestors killed his brother. If I am not mistaken, his name was Cain and he killed his brother Abel. Since that moment, the entire species of Homo sapiens has inherited that mark: a sense of aggression against our own brothers. As humans we’ve developed the sense of killing, involving ourselves in an eternal cycle of recycled rivalry. It’s quite simple to regard that “the moral of this simple hypothetical example is that there is no obvious merit in indiscriminately trying to kill rivals” (68). We could argue that we are now condemned to kill our kin due to Cain: we inherit his genes. And in accordance to the point of view of this text, genes are immortal. Hence, this civil war of Homo sapiens is not expecting a peace treaty a couple of years from now.

In a war, we sought to kill the rival in order to win. But what if killing the rival is not the final solution? Tell me this: have you heard the saying that says, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend?’ We can simply apply that to World War II. Throughout history, the United States and Russia haven’t been the friendliest of all nations, still they sought to unite in order to crush the Axis powers. Yes, this was a great notion of union, but years later it would boost the Cold War. Tough choice isn’t it? So the solution is not to kill rivals. But I am getting off track here. Is war ever justified? According to basic logic, a war is between two belligerents, two rivals. It starts because these two belligerents clash over an ideology, territory, power, etc. We as descendants from Cain believe that killing our rival will end the war. But “in a large and complex system of rivalries, removing one rival from the scene does not necessarily do any good: other rivals may be more likely to benefit from his death than oneself” (68). In case of World War II, Russia benefited from the fall of the Axis powers because it would later become the power of the East. With the United States, Russia was friends at war, and enemies a couple of years later. Then, is war ever justified? We strive for a solution for the problem, but we end up finding a problem for our solution. We are damned with Cain’s genes. And genes last forever. That’s the only justification I have about the wars I’m experiencing today. It’s Cain’s fault.