Why We Fight, by Mike Martin

Desire (kama), anger (krodha), greed (lobha), attachment (moha) and ego (ahankar) are the five basic causes of human irrationality. In violence, one of the most significant human irrationality, intertwined strands of all these five factors can be seen. In Why We Fight, Mike Martin, a soldier and scholar, goes beyond these five tenets to look at the root cause of violence in societies. He attempts to describe connections between individuals and their social behaviour. The book’s focus is on the small subsection of human traits that lie at the intersection of attachment and ego, which Martin has referred to as status and belongingness. He further examines the correlation between status and belongingness as the root cause of violence in general, and terrorism in particular, from biological and cognitive perspectives. This goes against the prevalent perception about ideology as the backbone of violence, with specific references to conflicts in western Asia from Afghanistan to Syria.