War breeds generational hatred
September 29, 2026 · 18 min read
Lex Fridman returns from Ukraine warning that war creates hate lasting generations, Musk makes the same point about Gaza, and Bryan Callen and Craig Jones describe how quickly order and humanity break down up close. It adds a long-term cost to every calculation about war.
The rules, numbers and steps worth keeping in front of you.
- Core claim: war's longest-lasting cost is hate that spreads to a whole people and passes down through families.
- Lex Fridman: losing a parent or child turns hate from soldiers and leaders to the entire nation.
- Fridman: most Ukrainians he asked said they could not forgive Russia, and many meant all Russians.
- Fridman: wars are waged by the powerful and rich; the poor suffer.
- Fridman's rule: ignore the powerful and listen to actual citizens, on the other side too.
- Elon Musk's test, offered as his opinion: count enemies created against enemies killed, judged over time.
- Musk: pursue the fighters, but pair it with conspicuous, transparent acts of kindness.
- Musk: Versailles punished the defeated and seeded the next war; the Marshall Plan rebuilt them.
- Musk: watch for atrocities designed to provoke an overreaction.
- Bryan Callen: do not romanticize violent revolution; a society's fabric tears fast.
- Craig Jones: the people fighting are ordinary citizens and conscripts.
- Mines keep killing for decades because demining is extremely difficult.
- Limits: this is testimony and history, not systematic data, and no source denies a right to self-defense.
This is the short form. The full insight has every expert's reasoning, their own words and the sources.