War is the enemy of civilisation

Rereading your reply, I think you are quite wrong that somehow we cannot have civilisational achievement, art and philosophy and so forth, without warfare. The desire to be the best in a particular sphere is not equivalent to the desire to 'rule the world'. The case is the exact opposite. War is the enemy of civilisation. This is surely obvious in the modern world. Are we seriously to maintain that the First World War furthered the cause of civilisation? And how would a global nuclear war advance civilisation, art and philosophy? No, this is nonsense. I suspect it has always been nonsense. Civilisation requires leisure, it requires education and literacy, it requires material well-being, and most of all it requires security, all of which is threatened by warfare.