I love peace, but WE love war.

Melissa analyzes whether war is human nature. This is not a new question for me, regardless if there is new scientific evidence for it. I argued here that its possible that we wouldn't be here at all without a theoretical penchant for annihilating Neandertals.

An important distinction must be made here, that although archeological evidence and modern behavioral analysis suggests that we (and especially us males) have within our DNA the ability to wage cruel war, in no way does that imply that human nature also includes the delight of one human to torture and cause pain to another.

Though we may justify our wars on various grounds, like nowadays freedom from oppression or religious grievances, or in the past water rights, food rights, and breeding rights, we cannot therefore justify waterboarding for freedom, or crucifixion for religious reasons.

On September 11th, I was this close to enlisting. But I didn't, because I wouldn't have been joining for the right reasons. The wars my grandfathers generation fought in, my father's generation fought in, and my generation is fighting are all for very different reasons. But at no point did America join a war with the express purpose of causing suffering to another group of humans.

The desire to cause another person pain is unique to the human race, and is a mental sickness of the advanced mind we evolved ourselves. It is not normal, it is not inherited, and it can be cured.

Maybe we'll always have war, I can't really say. Maybe our species evolved and dominated the planet becuase of our violent nature. Maybe some day, far down the road, we'll wipe ourselves off the planet in a violent, aggressive nuclear war. But we should never use our warlike nature as a justification for torture.

And if it is true, that we evolved the ability and cunning skills needed for highly organized warfare, it is just as feasible for us to evolve back into peaceful, egalitarian creatures some day in the future.