Why we are always at war

Our rulers want us cheerleading yet another war, because it enriches them and keeps us divided

However much you feel committed to one side at the moment – whether Israel's or the Palestinians' – you can and should stand back, just a little, to look at the bigger picture.

There are reasons the West is continuously waging wars, or fuelling them. Think of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza – all of them in just the last two decades.

One reason is because there is lots of money to be made from war – or there is if you belong to the ruling class. There's money in the weapons and technology that make the fighting possible; money in the resources, largely hidden from view, that are being fought over behind the scenes; and money in persuading you and me that we must tighten our belts to support the war effort.

All that’s needed to launch another war is a good cover story – and a compliant media owned by the same corporations that benefit from war.

But there's another reason.

If we weren't at war, if a new war wasn't always dominating the headlines and our thoughts and passions, making us either outraged or fearful for the future, we would have the mental space and energy to think about other things.

Such as how badly our societies are run, how the wealth gap just keeps growing larger, how incompetent our leaders seem, and how little is being done to solve the biggest problems facing us, like ecological collapse.

If we weren't so convinced that we are the good guys, if we weren't so eager to cheerlead yet another war, we might start to understand that we are all the same underneath, that we share one planet, that our future rests on cooperation, not conflagration.

Which is precisely why we will always be at war.

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