We often focus on the violence, but what we really don’t address is the competition aspect. Violence is almost always a result of a competitive mindset (us or them, etc). Competitive consumptionism, competitive fanaticisms, and above all, fanatical competicism (many sports fans compete for who has the biggest asshat cheese wedge or tailgate party rather than really caring anything at all about who won a game). Coercive marketing (religious or otherwise) establishes isolationism as a mode of life (boys vs girls, our god vs. their god, brand loyalties), all at a huge profit for the biggest bullies and patriarchs who sell violence as a distraction from real needs.

We don’t have wars because of violence. We have wars because of competition. The key to the anthropological questions is the cooperation vs competition, not the peacefulness vs violence. Group behaviors that benefit a place or people work best when they provide usefulness to future people in that place. Civilization itself (cities) is a means of isolating people from other people and from nature. That isolationism is the basis for competitive extraction of resources (take stuff and bring it inside the walls).

Humanity is under Earth’s employment, but mostly just shows up to steal the supplies now. Civilization doesn’t face the consequences or responsibilities it has to the planet, and in that vein, it teaches its children to avoid reality at all costs and live according to anthropocentric competitions.