The Inevitable War

The world is being riven into two opposing camps. While some might see the distinction as between democracies and dictatorship, the reality is more complex. While the mechanisms can be skewed, Putin, Hamas, and even the somewhat meaningless Iranian president, did win elections. After all, even dictatorships wrap themselves in the cloth of democratic legitimacy. No, the dividing line between the warring parties is far simpler. It is a line between the Glory Seekers and the Pleasure Seekers.

The Glory Seekers are those countries and religious movements that are trying to recreate a glorious past (or fulfill the prophecy of a glorious future). China’s ever greater Greater China Dream is a part of recovering their proper place in the world. Russia claims ownership to Ukraine on the basis of shared roots, Ukrainians be damned. Persia lays claim to the Middle East and Turkey is making its historical moves from Libya to Syria – and beyond. For their part, Sunni Islamists pursue a futuristic vision of a truly global domination.

Those Glory Seekers that have governments often have elected dictators because playing to such claims is both popular and requires the suppression of political rights.

On the other side of the forming battlelines are the Pleasure Seekers. These countries might have had glories in the past, but they aren’t seeking to reclaim them. By and large, their citizens are too busy pursuing the ever-increasingly personal. At one point it was the building of families, but more and more it is the establishment of entirely atomic rights and pleasures. These countries, from the UK and France to the Australia and Japan, aren’t interested in conquest. They do act in their interests overseas, but their goals are often in the support of economics and rarely in the support of territorial growth. There are a vast swath of these countries

While the US has historically had its share of Glory Seekers, most interventionalists in the US aren’t seeking glory or power. Their primary goal is the spread of political freedom – almost as an inverse force to the Soviet spread of Communism or the Islamist spread of Islamism. They see a glorious future, not through their countries’ domination of others but through the spread of the ideology they support. This movement inevitably comes up in opposition against Russian, Chinese, Turkish or Persian pursuit of Glory.

Perhaps the greatest battleline between these two sides is the Taiwan Strait. On the one side the Chinese demand the territory as a baseline recovery of their old Glories. On the other, the Taiwanese have given up any claim to the government of mainland China and just want to be left alone.

At the present time, the Pleasure Seekers have the upper hand. Due to their fundamental interest in improving quality of life (and enjoying that improvement), their societies are massive technological and economic engines. However, that advantage is shrinking and the conflict-focused Glory Seekers are both building up substantial militaries and learning how to outmaneuver the Pleasure Seekers on the world stage. The pursuit of glory has won in Afghanistan, eastern Ukraine, Hong Kong and much of the Middle East.

Interestingly (with the exception of the Sunni Islamists) both sides have been undone by the combination of birth control and public pensions. The ability to depend on the mythical ‘somebody else’s children’ for support in your old age has led to the vanishing of children. At the same time, perhaps due to their ideology, those self-same Islamists have had the least success in building up their technological and military capabilities.

What does the future hold?

For my part, I hope for a future in which there is purpose without subjugation or the pursuit of glory. I hope for a future in which we seek pleasures far greater than those of the individual. Humanity has been at its greatest when it has approached just such a reality. Today, though, that is not our reality. Instead, the main body of the Glory Seekers will necessarily come into direct and violent conflict with the main body of the Pleasure Seekers. At some point, in order to survive, the Pleasure Seekers must pull themselves away from their pursuit of the narrowest of self-interests and make the pursuit of glory costly enough that its adherents will think twice before acting on their fantasies.

After October 7^th, the Israeli center and left-wing Pleasure Seekers with no interest in conquest were awakened to its inevitability. The results were made clear by Asmat Mansour (a former associate and cellmate of Yahiya Sinwar). In a speech last week, he said, “[Sinwar] did not expect that the operation would lead to such complicated matters, isolate him, and become so dangerous. He gave Israel all the reasons and excuses to break all the rules… the calculations did not go as planned.”

Those driven by a desire only for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness must occasionally rise to the challenges created by the Glory Seekers. The past has shown, again and again, that Pleasure Seekers driven into a conflict they abhor make for the fiercest of enemies. The past has also shown that the longer the need for conflict is denied, the higher the price of that conflict.

I fear this is a calculus that can never be undone. Pleasure Seekers will not rise to war until forced to do so – and the seekers of Glory will not understand the monsters they awaken until their fates are already sealed.

[this post was partially inspired by my previous post: The Tabernacle and Modern Monuments)