Surprised that war is still being waged? But if it's "the father of all things"

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The great era of change we are living through is manifested in war, in conflict, in fire. Could it be otherwise? Evidently not. Yet it seems surprising to us. We constantly repeat, like a sort of Eastern religious mantra, that it is impossible for there to still be war. With whom should we wage war in such an interconnected and globalized world? Yet it happens that if the enemy does not exist, we need to invent one. The paradox is that the enemy, and the war that ensues, appears a sort of vital necessity. Without the mirror other that opposes us, or that we feel the need to oppose, we do not exist, we cannot explain our existence, we cannot explain it . We exist because we are in conflict (and not only at the level of psychoanalytic transference!). And this happens even in the most theoretical, most sublimated era, most observed through perfect two-dimensional screens; Even in this age when everything is "smart," when everything is intelligent, when our fingers appear like the divine ones Michelangelo drew on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, always ready to create simply by touching a surface; even in this age when what is often most "valuable" (data, information, etc.) is dematerialized; even in this age, the carnality of fire, of pure conflict, still seems to manifest itself as the only means that can determine and certify effective change.

We still seem to be entirely within the perspective of the greatest of philosophers, Heraclitus, who said: "The father of all things is war and the king of all: some he made gods, others men; some he made slaves, others free." He explained that the structure of the world, which he called "logos," is a burning fire, which lights up and goes out. And this fire, which is also logos, that is, reason that informs things and through things reveals its own reason, lights up and goes out according to an order that remains apparently inscrutable but is so by necessity, and not according to what we imagine or hope it will be. An order that always forms on the threshold between equilibrium and disequilibrium, which, to be vital, manifests itself as a transient, ordered state that then plunges into disorder, which is a conflict that first breaks order and then generates new ordered states.

It's remarkable how all this returns to us now, to a West emerging from more than a decade of constant attempts to defuse tensions, moving toward a sort of gigantic safe space that should have become the existential horizon of fully civilized humanity. Humanity calmed within the horizon of conflict, entirely sublimated into the ordinary, marvelous, and comfortable structures of our highly evolved society. All things considered, one can almost find a silver lining, theoretically, to the great chaos we find ourselves in: liberation from the terrible illusion of protection, of a safe space, which should have penetrated (and has penetrated) even into words. Better the fear that unleashes new forces than the deadly protection that paralyzes everything in the peaceful stagnation of one's own security. The reaction to a safe space comes not so much from within as from without, that is, from the very necessity of the intrinsic force of life in the world that continues to "turn," to give itself according to its own regularity, which, however, is not made up of certainties and stability but of imbalances that must continually be realigned. Regularity is transformation. And all this generates conflict that now translates into wars being waged just around the corner. Ultimately, however, we are still simulating conflict: everything is too far away, in our world where everything is close, too elsewhere. Because elsewhere appears to us as war itself, elsewhere appears to us as conflict.

In Heraclitus's perspective, everything is in constant transformation, and the only regularity is that very logos that symbolizes change. Regularity is change, change is the only stable factor. In a short essay by the young Spengler, a sort of university thesis dedicated to the great ancient philosopher, the author of The Decline of the West writes: "All works of culture—the state, society, customs, opinions—are products of nature; they are subject, like all others, to the same conditions of existence, to the rigorous law according to which nothing remains unchanged and everything is transformed. One of Heraclitus's greatest discoveries was to have noted the intimate affinity between culture and nature. The contrast and balance of opposing tensions has the same significance for energetic occurrences that war has for human existence." One could summarize it: conflict or nothingness.

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