War as a Psycho-Biological Force, Wired into (Most) Brains, By Brian Simpson
The article "On the Seduction of War," published on The Focal Points (a Substack under Courageous Discourse, associated with Peter A. McCullough's network but this piece by John Leake), dives deep into the primal, almost addictive psychological pull of war. It's a reflective, philosophical essay blending personal anecdote, evolutionary biology, historical warnings, and neuro-psychological speculation to argue that war isn't just rational geopolitics — it's a seductive force wired into our ancient brains.
Leake posits that the "psychological and moral drama" of war — killing a despised enemy and revelling in your tribe's superior strength — triggers the same neural circuitry as lust. Just as glimpsing an attractive person can induce a trance-like state that overrides rational thought, war propaganda taps into this primal circuitry, making destruction feel exhilarating and inevitable. This explains why war rhetoric follows a predictable, timeless script: demonise the foe, glorify triumph, and watch critical thinking shut down.
Neural Overlap with Lust: The drama of vanquishing a "loathsome enemy" lights up brain pathways tied to desire and conquest. Leake draws an analogy to his own experience at a cocktail party, where seeing a beautiful woman put him in a hypnotic state — critical faculties offline, pure instinct taking over. War, he suggests, does the same on a collective scale.
Schopenhauer's "Will" (die Wille): He invokes Arthur Schopenhauer to frame this as an expression of a blind, primal force driving all life to fulfill nature's imperatives — survival, reproduction, dominance —without regard for reason or morality.
Tribal Primal Instincts: Humans are fundamentally tribal animals with a biological drive to expand our group at others' expense. Leake cites evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein on the "evolutionary mismatch": our archaic instincts (conquer rivals, protect kin) evolved in small-scale tribal conflicts, but now pair with nuclear weapons, drones, and hypersonics. This mismatch risks self-extinction unless we consciously override it.
Historical Echoes: He quotes James Madison warning that continual war seduces minds, expands executive power, and erodes freedom — propaganda exploits the same trance-inducing drama that lust does.
The piece is cautionary and introspective, not hawkish. Leake uses Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (the grim comedy of nuclear doom shifting to opportunistic survival/reproduction in a mineshaft) to illustrate how war's seductive narrative can make catastrophe oddly appealing. He ends on a sobering note: without deliberate effort to counter these primal pulls, our tribal wiring + modern tech could doom us. It's less about glorifying war and more about diagnosing why we're so susceptible to it — real primal stuff rooted in lust-like reward circuits, testosterone-fuelled dominance, dopamine hits from victory, and ancient survival drives.
These fits broader discussions in evolutionary psychology (e.g., tribalism, in-group/out-group aggression) and neurobiology (shared reward pathways for sex, status, and conquest). No hard empirical studies cited — just philosophical synthesis and observation — but it resonates with thinkers like Weinstein on mismatch theory or even older ideas from Freud/Jung on repressed instincts surfacing in collective violence.
