By Kollengode S Venkataraman, (September 2026)
People cherish friends whom they have known for a long time, or those who they have interacted with in domains outside their profession and with whom they “click.” Here, people don’t have to wear masks of propriety or social and political correctness.
And when these friends get together over regional or international cuisine — “ethnic food” is a pejorative term these days — tasting unfamiliar food for the first time, they engage in “carefree, reckless” conversations. “Gay abandon,” again, is socially incorrect, particularly in NYC or SFO. People freely converse jumping from work life, family life, personal life, travel, politics, arts, and literature… without the need for neat segues. Any one phrase used by one person can be the jumping-off point to go to another topic.
That is what happened when we went to dinner, taking a friend known for over 40 years, who was new to Chinese Hot Pot. We went to a noisy small food joint in midtown Manhattan, not a fancy spot. We started off with a spicy broth with a variety of mushrooms, Chinese-cut vegetables, and noodles.
War between Russia and Ukraine, and the American aerial invasion of Iran have been dominating US newsrooms for quite some time. So, it was inevitable that among the topics we meandered over dinner was the nature of wars. My friend raised the question for all of us to jump in: why nation-states continue to indulge in war in this day and age. This is a serious question many other noble souls have pondered over. We were in good company, after all.
During WW II, seeing the material devastation and the brutal deaths of people in the tens of millions in Europe alone, the Pacifist Movement was reinvigorated with a new lease of life. Great minds like Aldous Huxley and Bertrand Russell, familiar to the English-knowing world, were active in this discussion. There were others in Germany and France too.
In my formative years, by happenstance, I read their works. One was a thin book, Science, Liberty and Peace by Huxley. I was in my late teens with limited grasp of the nuances of the English language — I started learning English only in the sixth grade — and I was greatly impressed by his ideas.
What follows is my simple — maybe also simplistic — understanding of mass killing that goes on in modern wars aided by science and technology.
Individuals are motivated by a mixture of ambition, profit, greed, and insecurities (real or imagined), and the need for power/control. This is what propels society forward, for better and for worse. Such motivated people become leaders in all facets of society, culminating as leaders in the geopolitical entities called nation-states. When these instincts among leaders are not restrained, either by individuals themselves, or by the social norms of their times, we end up with undesirable, unexpected, and unintended consequences.
The urge to expand one’s influence has been the driving force ever since mankind started organizing itself into societies. Even animals seem to have this instinct. When attempts to expand one nation-state’s influence are resisted by other nation-states, sooner or later, we end up in armed conflicts. While preparing for wars, and during wars, political leaders of nation-states unleash a potent potion of the above ingredients on their citizens, amalgamating them around the idea of patriotism, nationhood, and/or ethnic survival (real or imagined) — often imagined. They also add a good dose of xenophobia, prompting their citizens to obey their diktat, with disastrous consequences, often to themselves. And throughout history, all manufacturing resources of nation-states have been drafted into these war efforts in direct and indirect ways.
Man — the gender is important here — has been aggressive by nature (physiology, with testosterone and adrenalin) and insecure, anxious, and fearful of threats (psychology).You may wonder why this detour, and how is it relevant here. It is, indeed, simply because the behavior of people in small groups only magnifies when organized into large groups as in modern nation-states. Remember Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles, American Exceptionalism, We are the Chosen People, and We are the Sole Superpower!
Society also rewards man’s aggressiveness in various ways. In prehistoric times, a man returning from jungles carrying a lion’s head in hand earned the respect of elders, envy (and eventual admiration) from his peers, and adoration of the women in the tribe for his courage. He became the de facto leader of the tribe — like an aggressive lion controlling the territory and leading the pride.
In politics today, people (mostly men) coming to power through one of the routes in practice today is the same as the pre-historic man returning from jungles with a lion’s head in his hand. They use highly manipulated electoral democracies, party-controlled elections, revolutions, coups, tribal wars within nation-states, and others to come to power. These leaders are respected (or feared), envied, and admired by different segments of society.
The small book Science, Liberty and Peace by Huxley, written in the 1940s was a good starting point for me to plough through abstract ideas on modern wars in terms of mankind’s physiology and psychology aided by science and technology. This book discussed, among other things, aggression and the impulse in men to dominate and control, which manifests as wars among nation-states.
Going through this genre of books written in mid-20th century requires time and a temperament to read and re-read sentences to internalize their messages. In today’s digital world, however, when people are in a great hurry chasing their individual Holy Grails, both time and temperament are in short supply. And it has become difficult for them to comprehend the multifactorial nature of complex issues. They prefer to leave the analysis of such complexity to apps downloaded, or AI-assisted programs. They have surrendered — they would call it subcontracted — their discriminating faculties to AI-assisted programs.
And here, as we changed the broth with different spices and ordered new course of soybean items to the boiling hot pot, our conversation meandered to another topic: today’s “pairing scene” among single men and women where they size each other as potential mates. Outside politics, society assesses men using more nuanced metrics.
Here, the lion’s head in a prehistoric man’s hand is replaced by degrees from prestigious schools, PhDs or MBAs from leading universities, fellowships from hospitals, partnerships in law and accounting firms, tenured professorships, or running successful businesses. And the potential for a few million dollars in bank accounts in his 40s. Family pedigree could be the icing on the cake, so to speak.
Among Desis in our young days (between 1970s and 1980s), a US or Canadian Green Card was even better when compared with family pedigree in India.😀 In the early 2000s, an H1-B visa was good enough as a big plum on the cake in the marriage bazaar in India. Today, in the Desi courting scene and marriage bazaar, H1-B visa is a big liability.
Women, while dating and during prolonged courtship, size-up men for “success” markers, with the factors changing with the mores of the time. This continues to be the case even after Women’s Liberation. The social and economic liberation of women in the middle of the 20th century did not liberate them, it appears to me, in one fundamental way:
“Liberated” women today, even with their economic independence, continue to desire and seek men equally powerful or more, in their time-consuming and stressful pairing game, as in prehistoric times. They seem to be not yet liberated from the compulsions of psychological dimorphism seen in the animal kingdom 😒. And successful women prefer to pair with other successful men.
This has led to the unintended, but quite predictable sharp economic polarization in one generation within every homogeneous/demographic/ethnic group, like Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Caucasian… Professionals today marrying across their racial and ethnic identities has added yet another dimension to this sharp rise in the economic disparities among married couples in the same age groups.
You may intellectually challenge this assertion. Then, go beyond your narrow professional/ethnic/demographic group, and look around. And count how many professional women have married nonprofessional men, and satisfy yourself. Or go online and see the statistics and satisfy yourself.
To put this in everyman’s language, throughout history, successful men — however one defines success — have been more desirable, and therefore have had better picks in the cruel world of pairing among Homo sapiens. Those successful in this stressful social game of pairing — parents in “arranged” marriages, and the young men and women in “self-arranged” marriages — are gleefully smug … at least temporarily 😆. Others who lose out are glum. 🤔
This is how our totally unplanned dinner conversation ended. We left the restaurant and walked around the block for a cup of coffee. As we took leave, we said to each other, “Have a great day. We had a good time at the Chinese hot pot joint — with both food for our palate and food for thought as well.” END