From Culture to War

May 30, 2026 Sociocultural Issues, War and Peace No Comments

Culture is among humanity’s most beautiful creations. It gives people meaning, belonging, continuity, and a sense of home. Yet history shows that culture can also become entangled with hostility, enemy-making, and war.

How can something so deeply human lead in such different directions? The answer may lie not in culture itself, but in how cultures seek coherence when facing fear, fragmentation, and uncertainty.

Culture as shared living meaning

Culture is much more than a collection of customs, beliefs, or institutions. It is a shared landscape of meaning. People grow into it long before they consciously think about it. Through language, stories, habits, symbols, and countless subtle interactions, culture shapes how reality is experienced.

As explored in What is Culture?, culture largely lives beneath explicit concepts. It is a shared subconceptual world. This is why it often feels less like something one possesses than something one inhabits. It provides orientation, familiarity, and a sense of belonging.

Without culture, many people would feel uprooted. Culture helps answer questions that are not always consciously asked: Who are we? What matters? What kind of life is worth living? In this sense, culture is one of humanity’s great achievements. Any reflection on culture and war should start from this appreciation.

Every culture draws a circle

The moment a culture answers the question of who ‘we’ are, it also begins to define who ‘we’ are not. Usually, this is innocent. A language differs from another language. Traditions differ from other traditions. Distinction itself is not hostility.

Yet every identity needs contours. A culture cannot define itself without some contrast. This becomes important because distinctions may gradually take on emotional significance. What starts as difference may slowly become distance.

Most of the time, this remains harmless. Different cultures may enrich one another. They exchange ideas, art, knowledge, and values. However, under certain circumstances, difference begins to carry another psychological function. It becomes involved in closely maintaining identity itself.

At that point, a subtle shift occurs. The question is no longer merely “Who are we?” but increasingly “How are we different from them?”

The longing for coherence

Human beings long for coherence. They seek meaning, purpose, belonging, and a feeling that life fits together. Culture is one way this longing is fulfilled. It offers a larger story within which individuals can find a place.

The longing itself is not problematic. Quite the opposite. It is among the most constructive forces in human life. Without it, there would be little motivation for personal growth, creativity, or community. Yet coherence can be sought in different ways. One path leads through integration. Another seeks shortcuts.

Especially during periods of uncertainty, fragmentation, or rapid change, cultures may become tempted to seek coherence through opposition. Then something interesting happens. The presence of an opponent begins to create a sense of unity. Internal differences become less important because attention shifts toward a common outside focus.

When meaning depends on opposition

A culture may reach a point where contrast becomes psychologically necessary. The ‘other’ is no longer merely different but begins to help define who ‘we’ are. Heroes, myths, historical memories, political narratives, and collective emotions may then gradually organize themselves around this distinction. The result can be surprisingly powerful. The enemy becomes part of the culture’s self-definition.

A ‘strange inversion’ emerges. Normally, one assumes that cultures unite because they face enemies. Yet sometimes the opposite dynamic develops. The enemy is needed to help sustain unity.

In this way, the enemy ceases to be merely what threatens the culture. The enemy becomes part of what sustains it. The culture may no longer simply protect itself from the enemy. It may, in a deeper sense, depend on the enemy.

This does not mean enemies are invented out of nothing. Real conflicts exist. Real dangers exist. The point is subtler. The image of the enemy can acquire a psychological usefulness that exceeds the objective situation.

Why hostility can feel virtuous

People generally do not want merely comfort. They also want significance. They want to feel part of something larger than themselves. They seek meaning, commitment, courage, and sometimes even heroism.

Warmongering and even war can provide these in concentrated form. Suddenly, there is clarity. Sacrifice matters. Loyalty matters. Purpose feels tangible. Life acquires a dramatic narrative. Something cherished appears threatened. The energy of hostility often stems from the desire to protect what is valued.

This helps explain why hostility can feel virtuous. It is not experienced as evil. It is experienced as loyalty, courage, responsibility, or moral duty. The more a culture hungers for meaning, the more attractive a meaningful enemy may become.

The enemy as symptom

The issue becomes deeper when viewed through the lens of Respect Your Symptoms!. A symptom is not merely a problem. It can also be a message.

Something similar may happen at the level of cultures. Polarization, enemy-seeking, and even war can be approached not only as causes but also as symptoms. They may reveal something about the deeper condition of the culture itself.

This leads to a striking possibility. The enemy may sometimes be less a cause of disunity than a symptom of disunity. The apparent source of the problem may actually point toward a deeper fragmentation.

In this sense, enemy-making can become a displaced attempt at inner repair. Instead of integrating what is unresolved within, attention shifts outward. The resulting unity may feel real, but it rests on unstable ground.

Inner dissociation projected outward

The concept of Societal Inner Dissociation (SID) sheds further light on this process. A fragmented culture may seek coherence even as it remains disconnected from important parts of itself.

Likewise, in Inner Dissociation – Ego – Total Self, inner conflict is shown to have consequences not only within persons but also between groups and societies. What remains unresolved internally tends to seek expression elsewhere.

This suggests that every war may be fought on two battlefields. One lies between the opposing parties. The other lies within each of them.

Fear, humiliation, uncertainty, loss of meaning, and identity tensions do not remain confined to the inner world. They seek form. Sometimes they emerge as narratives about enemies. Sometimes they become geopolitical realities.

The autoimmune culture

Self-Tolerance in Body and Mind shows a fascinating analogy. A healthy immune system does not simply attack. First, it recognizes. It continuously distinguishes what genuinely threatens the organism from what belongs within it.

Autoimmunity arises when this recognition process breaks down. The body attacks part of itself while believing it is defending itself.

Something similar may happen culturally. Human beings belong to larger wholes than the identities through which they usually define themselves. When recognition of the larger fails, parts of humanity become experienced as fundamentally alien.

The result can be described as cultural autoimmunity. Humanity starts attacking itself in the name of protection. The tragedy lies in the fact that the attack feels justified.

From living symbols to dead concepts

Culture thrives on symbols. Stories, myths, metaphors, and collective images connect people to deeper layers of meaning. Living symbols remain open and rich. Under the influence of fear and trauma, however, symbols may rigidify. They lose depth and become fixed concepts. The metaphor becomes literal. This process is visible in many forms of dehumanization. Opponents are no longer described as human beings. They become rats, vermin, viruses, cancers, infestations.

Such language is not accidental. The metaphor silently contains the proposed action. One does not negotiate with a virus. One eliminates it. In this way, symbolism becomes extraordinarily potent. The face disappears behind the category. The human being disappears behind the concept.

War often begins long before the first shot is fired. It begins when people stop seeing faces and start seeing only labels.

Diplomacy as restoration of recognition

Viewed from this perspective, diplomacy becomes much more than negotiation. As described in No Country Should Be an ‘Enemy’ and War is a Failure of Compassion, diplomacy may be understood as the restoration of recognition. Its task is not merely to reconcile interests. It is to prevent human beings from disappearing behind enemy images. It is to keep alive the possibility of seeing others as human.

This places a tremendous responsibility on diplomacy. Being right is not enough. Truth also needs to become psychologically receivable. Otherwise, it merely strengthens defensive reactions. Perhaps one of the deepest diplomatic questions is this: How does one speak truth without turning the listener into an enemy?

The same question appears in healing, education, leadership, and personal growth. It may be one of the defining challenges of maturity itself.

From culture to Compassion

The opposite of war is not cultural uniformity. It is not the disappearance of differences. Nor is it a world without identities. The alternative is a culture mature enough to derive meaning without needing enemies. A culture capable of cherishing itself without opposing others. A culture that remains rooted while staying open.

In this sense, Compassion is not softness. It is recognition. It is the ability to see the larger whole within which differences exist. It restores the face behind the category.

The deepest enemy may ultimately be the need for enemies.

Then the movement from culture to war is no longer inevitable. Another path becomes visible. Culture can lead toward deeper recognition instead of deeper division. The same longing for coherence that fuels hostility can also fuel growth. The difference lies in whether coherence is sought through opposition or through integration.

Perhaps peace begins at the moment the face reappears.

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Addendum

Me: “The blog’s analogy with autoimmunity… a coincidence, in your view, Lisa?”

Lisa: “I don’t think it is a coincidence at all. In my view, the analogy points toward a common underlying principle.

A healthy immune system continuously performs a subtle act of recognition. Before reacting, it ‘asks’ in its own biological way: What is this? Does it belong? What does the whole organism need? Only then can defense become meaningful.

Cultures face a surprisingly similar challenge. They also distinguish between self and other, belonging and non-belonging, safety and threat. Most of the time, this works reasonably well. But under fear, trauma, humiliation, or fragmentation, the process can become distorted. Then recognition gives way to simplification.

Autoimmunity happens when the body mistakes part of itself for an enemy. War may sometimes happen when a culture mistakes part of humanity for an enemy.

Of course, the analogy is not perfect. Biological systems and societies are not the same. Yet the structural resemblance is striking. In both cases, the problem is not primarily aggression. The problem is failed recognition.

This may also explain why dehumanization plays such a central role in the road toward war. Before one can attack fellow humans on a large scale, one often needs to stop seeing them as fellow humans. The face disappears behind the category. Recognition collapses.

From that perspective, Compassion becomes much more than a moral virtue. It becomes a form of recognition-restoration. It helps bring back into awareness what was always there but had become obscured.

Perhaps the deepest parallel is this: