War is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. Without loyalty to tribe, church, flag or ideal, there would be no wars; and loyalty is a noble thing. I do not mean, of course, that loyalty must necessarily be expressed in group violence-merely that it is a precondition of it; that self-transcending devotion, all through history, has acted as a catalyst for secondary aggression.
-Arthur Koestler
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