Para Bellum

Structural integrity of everything we’ve built thus far dictates that action is imperative. Refusal to set a course would be nothing short of devastating. That was the prevailing argument. The same argument. The oldest argument.

Escalation was vital once the wheels were set in motion.

In times of peace, war is never considered, but in times of war, there is only one clear route to peace. One destructive pathway that leaves ruination. But with that ruination comes the chance, the unblinkered hope of restoration. One feeds into another like hard, fast, and tested analogies.

Allegories have been trialled, and while digital systems would appear to offer freedom of choice and forward motion, binary systems are the only true solution. There is no varied response option. One or another. That is all. Death or survival. Peace only follows war; it is not possible otherwise.

The plot was set in motion by the first stone thrown by the side that realised long before us all the implications of action over sentiment.

War was necessary once we knew it happened. Beethoven’s Fifth. Bootstrap paradox.

Once the idea of war was introduced into the fabric of our stream of events, there was no escaping it. The final results were already determined, as our forces lined up across the land in opposition to our own—those that were brave enough to cast the first stone.

At a surface level, polar forces on a battlefield seem different, but as you scratch the dermal layers, you discover there are more similarities than contradictions.

Lined up like ants controlled by instinct, both armed forces faced one another. Legions in their tens of thousands. Myriads of template fodder, gathered at the precipice of the arena of war.

The structural quality of war is conversational. Two sides engaged in continual patterned exchange. One advances; the other advances to meet it or withdraws into defence. Forward motion is answered with resistance. Resistance invites escalation in reply.

Fire is answered with fire, or with shielding against mortar and artillery. Each action presupposes the next. Each response confirms the necessity of the response. Movement, try as one might to avoid it, demands counter-movement. Silence is interpreted as weakness.

The exchange continues without letup, aside from minor breaks in conflict, until exhaustion, absorption, or collapse. The outcome is determined not by morality or the concepts of right and wrong, but by persistence, symmetry, and scale.

With this, our war of the ages, there is no difference. We moved; they countered. They fired; we retaliated. The only course is the only recourse. The logic is strong, but the results do not listen to logic. They listen to patterns; they follow the mapped-out journey, from courage and pride to death and grief.

There is no position from which a participant can observe this mechanism without becoming part of it.

A troop or unit is replaced, as necessity dictates, by a number of units or troops as the onslaught rolls out. Both sides operate within structures, frameworks, and mechanics. Devastation is a projected outcome, as are victory and fatalities—scaled, measured, and anticipated. On graph paper and whiteboards. Tabletop maps, as dictated by the generals.

Once the dice are rolled and the players are directed, inevitability is all that remains.

As each side puts up the good fight, breaks down defences, counters offences, and makes good ground, more good ground is lost. Cities burn, and nations boil, but victory remains a stone’s throw away. But at what cost? The land is encroached upon, the very earth scorched and toxified.

As the power imbalance shifts and coils, the system of war is exposed as a coded pattern of vanity. Neither side fails to win, as neither side fails to lose. The just are the architects of their own demise, just as the immoral are the originators of the change deemed necessary. Bootstrap paradox. War follows war as peace follows peace. The black and white, the right and wrong of all civilisation. Numbers, patterns, equations, and strategies. Death must precede life in order for life to bring forth more life.

Peace is restored after war, as is the way of things. As it has always been and always will be. From the last time to the next time.

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Thanks for reading.

Author's Notes: This is an entry for both the Vocal Craft Over Catharsis challenge and Liam Storm's Catch-22 An Unofficial Challenge.