What Is After Victory? More War.

Victory.

The word itself drips with the sweet nectar of self-delusion, a fleeting high for the primate brain convinced it has conquered something more than its own insecurity.

We paint murals of triumph, carve the names of our 'heroes' into cold stone, all to commemorate a momentary pause in the ceaseless symphony of violence that is human existence.

Peace, as we call it, is but a fragile ceasefire in the war of all against all. A brief intermission where we reload our weapons, refine our strategies, and nurture the festering resentments that will inevitably ignite the next conflagration. We are, after all, merely apes with anxieties, playing dress-up in the costumes of civilization. Scratch the surface, and the snarling beast beneath yearns to be unleashed.

And unleash it we do, with predictable regularity. For war, in all its grotesque absurdity, is the engine of our supposed progress. It is the midwife of innovation, birthing technological marvels from the womb of destruction.

We shatter the world to rebuild it in our image, each iteration fueled by the delusion that this time, this time, we'll get it right.

This time, victory will be final, peace will be permanent, and the gnawing emptiness within will finally be sated.

Ah, but the ego, that insatiable parasite, demands its due. It craves the validation of conquest, the intoxicating rush of superiority. We adorn ourselves with medals, build monuments to our own hubris, and conveniently forget the blood-soaked cost.

For every triumphant Caesar, there are a thousand nameless corpses fertilizing the soil of his ambition. But who cares for such trivialities when the trumpets are blaring and the crowds are chanting your name?

And so the cycle spins on, a macabre waltz of death and rebirth. Today's victor is tomorrow's tyrant, his triumph the seed of the next war.

We are prisoners of our own primal programming, forever chasing the phantom of lasting peace, forever failing to grasp that the very pursuit of victory ensures its own demise.

Perhaps, one day, we'll evolve beyond this self-destructive loop.

Perhaps we'll learn to find fulfillment in something other than conquest and domination. But if history is any guide, I wouldn't hold your breath.

After all, what's a little genocide between friends?