Center and periphery

A key insight into European society came to me when observing Argentine ants - a particularly vicious type of ant born of a meeting of three rivers in Argentina. The birthplace of these ants is unique and extremely important to the story. Three rivers meeting means three separate species of ants at worst and three separate colonies at best. These colonies constantly struggled at the meeting point of the rivers to establish their dominance over each other. War was continuous between the colonies and so these ants became better at war than any other ants on the planet. When they eventually found their way out of the Argentine tri-river meeting to the rest of the world, they swarmed and overran other ant colonies until they managed to dominate the widest swaths of land. This was followed by an incredible peace at the center of the ant colony and never-ending war at the periphery. This is European society in micro - a sea of continuous war and mass murder between interest groups. The constant warfare shaped European society in incredible ways - with up to a third of the populations of some nations perishing during the course of some wars. Europines are instinctively always preparing for war - their society even in peacetime is optimized to attempt to find the most efficient way to do everything, whether it be gather water from a pond or coal from a mine. Little thought is given to the comfort and safety of the workers or the environment - all effort goes towards the preservation of the society and this means war. The constant warfare thoroughly militarized European society - often the same generals who came back from war would build private enterprises and run them in the same way. This machine-like construction of society leads to members mindlessly chasing the next objective with little questioning of why the objective is valuable. The true decision-making power remains with the people at the very top. Those people also lack the philosophic sagacity to make judgments on what is right and what is wrong. These people often rise in the ranks because they are the most willing to tow the line of the establishment. The idea that everything must be capitalized upon and used to the maximum efficiency based on realism is a survival-based mode of thought that found a home in Europe due to the incessant warfare - the drive for efficiency was coded into people’s genes. Within Europe, often the most warlike are also stereotyped to be the most efficient.

The center could be considered to be the elites of the society - who often hold multicultural and cosmopolitan views, while the periphery are the underclass on whom the elites rely to perform labor in their enterprises but do not hold these cosmopolitan views