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The gods exist to receive gifts
Franco Fornari’s hypothesizes (1974) that war represents a “voluntary destruction of previously accumulated reserves of human capital,” an activity performed with the intention to “sacrifice a certain number of lives.”

Norman O. Brown states (1959) that archaic gift-giving (the potlatch being an example) is “one vast refutation of the notion that the motive of economic life is utilitarian egoism.” Archaic man gives because he wants to lose: “the psychology is self-sacrificial.” The need to produce an economic surplus is connected with the sacred: “Gifts are sacred and the gods exist to receive gifts.”

During the First World War, the “gift” of millions of lives was offered to the reigning god, the nation state.
First World War Casualties
Limbless British Veterans after the First World War (Roehampton Military Hospital)