In this groundbreaking book, Barbod Salimi offers a reexamination of how we understand the psychology of violence and war, challenging long-standing dualistic, reductionistic, and deterministic explanations. Salimi critiques traditional nature–nurture models and methodically argues that these frameworks oversimplify human behavior and fail to capture the deeper dynamics that shape our movements toward or away from violence. In place of these approaches, Salimi proposes a wholistic psychology rooted in embodiment, non-duality, and phenomenological identity development. Rather than viewing violence either as a product of innate traits or as an output of social conditioning, he suggests that our dispositions are best understood through the formation of habits we continually enact and reenact. Using broader American culture as a case study, he goes on to illustrate how national narratives and embodied patterns help explain uniquely American attitudes toward war. In the final chapter, Salimi offers a hopeful vision grounded in embodied ethics and spiritual–mystical–existential (re)orientation, positing that such practices can fortify our psychological resilience to destructive formation and support a more peaceable way of being.
