Weapons Culture

Humans do like to kill each other, don't they?

Weapons fascinate us. Over the millennia the human race has devoted millions of hours to weapon development. We have industries devoted to manufacture and museums devoted to study and remembrance.

People who love weapons often express it in sensual terms. Some of them acknowledge the weapon's primary purpose, that of injuring and killing other human beings, while others slide past that aspect with a soft focus. The dead fall out the bottom of the frame, leaving the victor standing in view, sweating, panting slightly, weapon hanging slack.

It's mostly a male trait, but not exclusively.

The violence may be intimate, one on one, or orgiastic, with multiple partners all at once or in quick succession.

Yes, it sounds sexual. Men can fight and kill much more tirelessly than they can copulate. The blade of steel stays stiff until forcibly broken. Maybe if men were better in bed they'd have less time for fighting, and less inclination. But then again, probably not.

Having been a weapon fancier myself I can view it from both sides. Obsession makes a shelter from other reality. The devotee can judge everything by how it measures up to the yardstick of one kind of performance. When the penalty for failure is permanent elimination it is easy to convince yourself that you've found the true measure of a man. Why wait for natural forces to cull us when we can cull each other?

It's easier to take a life than to get one. Why try to understand what you can more easily destroy? Why try to understand much of anything except the technology and biomechanics of combat?

Why indeed? Some people find the simple life of killing and dying suits them perfectly. Then those of us who choose differently have to figure out how to deal with the incorrigibly violent. We have to cultivate skills of violence in order to defend ourselves, or hope that we can retreat, or accept death as preferable to fighting.