The philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that prior to modern civilization, back when all men were living in nature, they lived in what he called a "perpetual state of war". In his view, survival was the highest order of nature and the most efficient way for man to have done that, he felt, was to go around fighting all the time. His solution: create a massive police state that would keep people from fighting all the time.

A little later, another philosopher named Jean-Jacques Rousseau responded to this claim by saying that it made little sense. Man was probably very peaceful most of the time, and used aggression only as a last resort. Rousseau said, "uh-huh" to Hobbes' "nuh-uh", and so sparked an intricate debate about man's real nature in the absence of government rule.

I'm more inclined to agree with Rousseau, since our societies and interpersonal relationships are based on cooperation, not conflict, and that cooperation tends to be more beneficial for each of us. This is certainly true from a biological standpoint. If Hobbes is right, then in nature, I might have killed every woman I met, which would make it awfully difficult for me to pass on my genes.

The counterintuitive conclusion is that war itself seems to be born out of cooperation just as much as conflict. Sure, fighting is predicated on conflict. But wars happen between nations, and the only way you can convince hoards of citizens to fight a war on your behalf is if you can convince them to cooperate with you, and with each other.

If we really lived in a world where all men have a natural tendency to fight one another, the first city of Mesopotamia would have never come together in the first place.