If you want human progress toward world peace, then you must stop thinking like the establishment wants you to think. First, and this should be obvious, the establishment wants war and conflict to the degree humanity tolerates it because they are the ones who profit from it. Do not tolerate it at all and it will not exist at all. But, ignore it, and it will never go away. Apathy is the friend of the establishment. Second, it is the current thinking that is war and conflict-centric. Patriotism, nationalism, statism, and the means of manipulation through enforced subjection and peer pressure to genuflect before symbols like a flag and icons like some national anthem is how a mindless majority tyrannizes a minority of thinkers. Forcing respect for symbols of ideologies is only one step from forcing respect for the ideology and the ideologue, so no one should submit to it. Forcing respect for symbols of authority like flags of countries and governments, iconolatry, or patriotism is worse. Never forget that we are seldom the people the Exploiter Class is talking about when they are discussing benefits but we are almost always the people who must give to preserve the "rights we hold so dear," which is, of course, a sham.
What is loyalty but subservience? What is obedience but servility? What is conformity but compliance, and what is complacency but surrender?
A country is a tool of oppression and respect for the flag is the symbol of your compliance when neither should be idolized. Government is something we should be moving away from as our intellect and individuality develop. But any government of the people by the people needs to emphasize the power of the people who should be strong in the face of iconolatry and manipulation by power hoarders until we eliminate ideological loyalty and oligarchical power.
If you want to progress toward a better society, you will have to give up old world views that have kept us fighting and supporting oppressive regimes for security's sake. As soon as you give up security concepts, you will find that authoritarians are rarely anything but self-serving, what you think you own actually owns you, that community and sometimes family exist to force conformity that will repress innovation, retard all progress, and insist on the status quo until retrogressive acts are used to reestablish obsolete old world orders that serve the self-serving. Then one day you awake to realize that security concepts like strong leadership, consumer-centric ideas, and community are a trap and that death looks like your only escape until it hits you that even religious constructs are nothing more than a collection of security concepts.
