Why I make war?

I have a question in my mind: Why do I make war on games?  Is it some violent and repressed feeling trying to set free the rage inside of me or is it simply a mental exercise that I engage in to test my mind against that of my opponnent?  But further more why I do like playing war? Am I a bad person for that?

First I'll start by looking at myself and sorroundings; I live in Costa Rica which is a small country in Central America and we have no army, that's right for the last 50 years we've managed to survive without any army even though during the 80s the rest of Central America was inmersed in their own guerrilla warfare, you might recognize our current president Oscar Arias as a Novel Peace winner for having brought an end to those wars in the 80s.

Even more the last time my country was at war was in 1948, when we had our civil war and before that the last time we were at war with our neighbors was on over a land dispute with Panamá about a century ago.  However, things have changed so much that our country is one of the most stable ones in Latin America and we enjoy good relations with our neighbors, having signed a Free Trade Treaty with the rest of Central America and being in the process of signing one with Panamá.

So I was borned in a land in which neither my generation nor that of my parents have known what war is, I only get the stories from my grandparents and what it was like for them in their twenties living through the turnoil that an event like that represents for a country.

I come from a very conservative catholic family and consider myself a practicant catholic who goes to church every sunday and confesses several times per year.  I have chosen to live a straightedge life so I don't drink alcohol, do drugs or smoke.  I have a clean record with the police as I've never had been arrested or have had any run ins with them, even more I've only been ticketed once by the transit police due to an expired permit.

The only time I've been in a fight was at school when I was 11 years old, it was some stupid argument about a girl, the next thing I know I'm fighting a guy that's bigger than me, taller by a head and ended up breaking his nose despite of being smaller than him.

So as you can see I am someone who tries to live by his values and who avoids unnecessary confrontation or troubles, however the games that I enjoy the most are about making war, the movies I like the most are gory ones, the music I love the most is heavy hardcore music and the books I like reading the most are about military history and horror stories.

It would seem like a dichotomy to live so calmly but to have such violent tastes to put it in a way, however I am quite aware that the things I like do not dictate how I behave; not because I like the SAW movies I am a sociopath nor because I like my miniatures games do I own a gun or have gone to school and killed anyone.

I don't know why I like those things, what makes me prefer playing Hybrid over Alhambra, Warhammer 40,000 over Railroad Tycoon but I do and I know I'll get bored playing Wealth of Nations but I'll get my hands in as many wargames, miniature games and adventure games as I can.

Maybe some crazy shrink has already figured out what's in our nature that makes me and others like violent stuff, but after studying a bit of political theory I think I have two very helpful concepts.

 The first is called the "natural state" which proposes that man got together for their benefit because we are all violent by nature and the weak needed defending from the strong and the strong needed defending from the union of the weak, so it was mutually beneficial for all parties involved.

This doesn't explain why I like violent things, it just shows that it's within our instincts, it's part of who we are.

The other concept was exposed by the great english man Bertrand Russell, (from whom I'm taking the liberty to paraphrase as I don't have his writings with me right now) : he explained that man is basically violent but that as long as he gets to unleash this in constructive ways such as games, sports and other activities, then the need to be violent would be fullfilled and thus people would be able to engage in a more harmonious existance.

And knowing this comforts me; I know I am not an evil spawn or a freaky psycopath bursting in the inside, but rather a perfectly normal man who'd rather satiate his violent needs through peaceful ways such as games than ignoring them and just one day simply burst and then leave everyone else perplexed because I was never violent.

So when I think about these games I don't think about killing or maiming anyone, it's just about the challenge to beat my opponent, to have a better strategy and achieve victory through a superior application of tactics all the while making believe that I blow things up for the fun of it.