Imaginary War

War is such a thing that it turns ordinary civilians into heartless savages. But it’s not that simple. At least for the point I will make. Who is a civilian and a savage? Are savages barbarians, and vikings? Do civilians only consist of that lonely grandma across the street?

I would rather complicate it. I would say that war creates savages depending on the kind of war. While fortunately many civilians are not living through physical war, it is sad to say that there is a real imaginary war going on, a mental war, in each individual.

There are different kinds of imaginary wars creating different kinds of savages. Without getting too much into politics, you can always, in my humble opinion, link apathy to imaginary wars. Basically if someone is apathetic towards someone else and cannot empathize with them then they are probably going through an imaginary war regarding it. I would say identity is a major player in imaginary wars. In fact most people cannot empathize with others because they themselves are suffering from an identity war.

As you might know there are terms that are not exactly what I am trying to convey but are close. There is the term identity conflict, identity crisis, and the term cognitive dissonance which I will get to later.

An identity conflict is a conflict between two identities of the individual where they are forced to choose one over another. An imaginary war however, is not exactly an identity conflict because I would say that it’s tied more to the imagination of a person. A person has this imaginary war between two groups. One side has certain characteristics while the other has some other characteristics. Perhaps one is good and the other is bad. This is their imagination. It might be true, it might not. It does not matter. What does is the apathy that follows as the mind mimics a real war. They turn into pseudo savages. Civil savages. The same way murder is just in war, cruelty becomes justice. 

As for why this imaginary war occurs, it could be for any number of reasons. I would like to focus on the identity crisis as well as insecurity though.

What is an identity crisis? I would say that it is a matter of confusion. It is not being sure of your role. Perhaps being insecure of your identity. And what if you cannot change your identity? What if you are stuck with it forever? Then you might as well be proud of it and trick yourself into an imaginary war to be proud of that identity against other identities. That is a pretty simple view of it but I think it will do the trick for now.

Mental Dissonance

We are still not exactly at cognitive dissonance yet. Cognitive dissonance is the conflict between real behavior and ideal behavior. I would rather call what I am trying to explain a mental dissonance between what is true and what you want to be true, real and ideal. In an imaginary war, it could be caused from the mental dissonance between an insecure reality and a proud ideal. Who does not want to be proud. Everyone wants to be proud. But are you? Why are you so fixated on this pride? That is the thing about mental dissonance. The more the dissonance, the more the fixation on the ideal to escape the real.

Mental dissonances also have to do with cognitive dissonance. In the example of instant gratification vs self discipline, this can be seen. No matter how much you know that you need to discipline yourself, you somehow choose instant gratification. You know the health facts and are told it repeatedly. Yet you somehow choose instant gratification despite the world standing on the side of self discipline. There is truly no one but yourself to blame. You can try, but it’s meaningless as this is a pretty obvious example of cognitive dissonance. 

The difference between cognitive and mental dissonance is that you can always shift the blame from individual responsibility to societal responsibility and feel better about your eating habits. Now once again there is an imaginary war between the individual and the society. Or more specifically between the powerful and the weak in society. This leads to a class war of sorts between the weak and powerful with both sides becoming savages to the other.

I would like to say that a savage is not exactly a bad thing as in some contexts it’s necessary. But that does not make it good. Especially if better alternatives exist. So it is exactly a bad thing. Savagery is never a good thing even in war. It is simply a reality we need to face rather than staying ideally civil.

Because as a civil I can always talk about how good kindness is while soldiers die on my behalf. That dissonance between reality and the ideal might cause me to be more fixated with kindness as a result causing a mental dissonance and imaginary war rather than face the reality of the matter like in cognitive dissonance.

Of course I can add in more confusion with the concept of justice. But that is beyond the scope of this article.