Violence Makes Permanent

Military historians tend to dislike the idea of the Decisive Battle. Its surprisingly hard to find a time where a single battle decided a war over something more complicated than who should be king. Battles make for great stories but they are only a small part of warfare. But great acts of violence can do one thing which people with soft lives do not like to think of.

Acts of extreme violence are acts which cannot be undone. And sometimes that is the point. If you kill the king’s advisors, he can’t call them back after the controversy blows over. If you make the Elamites grind up the bones of their ancestors, they can’t turn the powder back into skeletons. If you knock down and smash the standing stones or build a temple of your god on the ruins of a temple of their god, they can’t rebuild it.

People often resort to violence because they are afraid that they are about to lose power and want to make sure that the people and things they most hate can never be given power again. This is often a very bad idea for them, because if your side is losing the political battle, it probably does not have enough muscle to win the physical battle. But even if crude physical violence rebounds on those who started it, it can kill people and destroy things, and those acts can not be undone. If you are trying to guess whether terrible people are likely to resort to violence, it is worth remembering that violence makes permanent.

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(drafted 28 January 2023, scheduled 18 June 2023)