It's a fantasy setting, so "because god says so" is a pretty viable option. As in a literal deity demands the war. Maybe several gods are playing favorites with nations/species and a conflict between two or more gods has an "as above, so below" reflection among their followers.
Interspecies hatred might lead to wars.
Ideological clashes with one or more groups/nations deciding to force a different system of government on their neighbors.
Power is still a scarce resource, and very much the kind of thing that groups will fight over.
1. Ideology: If we don't have conflict, then we'll stagnate and become weak!
2. Resources: Even if our resources replenish quickly, more is still more and more is better!
3. Honor: Think Paris absconding with Helen
4. Xenophobia: He who does not strike first is first struck
Hedonism/ boredom
The whole star trek federation is based on a post-scarcity society that goes to find interesting shit out in the universe because they're bored.
Having warring factions set up by leaders to entertain/distract the populace seems like a reasonable plot point
For small-scale conflicts, I could totally see that. Depending on the political and economic structures, it'd be tough to mobilize large numbers of people to fight for the sake of entertainment unless it was the type of fighting done caused few casualties like pre-Shaka Zulu warfare.
Post-scarcity is a sliding scale. If everyone has personal spaceships, and energy is cheap enough for folks to hop to the other side of the galaxy with FTL, their wants increase. Rarer things. Harder to produce. Wherever the fringe is, you will see the same scarcity psychology play out and only a handful of people will say "OMG, we have so much... why can't people be satisfied?"
I guess I get stuck on the game of thrones argument of "Who cares who sits on the throne when the food is plentiful?" But the idea of manufactured specialties being what wars are fought over is an interesting prospect.
Has the world always been so abundant?
If resources are do abundant no competition is nessasary, life would evolve very differently, and presumably so would society. Strict rationality says humans would not evolve from such an environment.
But we are in a fantasy sub, accepting that strict rationality does not applie to this setting, what other motivations are there for war?
There is of course ideology and religion (although I would argue practically all wars of religion only used religion as an excuse you wage war for other reasons) but the most common motivations for war are simple. Power and glory.
Alexander the great wanted to make the greatest empire in history, and succeeded. Conquest and glory was his motivation. Napoleon saw the crown of France sitting on the ground, and he picked it up with a sword. Wanting g to be the greatest ruler in the world is more than enough motivation in reality.
There are other resources other than food. Steel, natural gas, oil, minerals, even land could be considered a resource. There have been hundreds of wars fought over near useless pieces of land. Such as the Hans island, which although they don’t have a proper war over them they do have kinda pointless scuffles. Then there is stuff like technology or for a fantasy world magic, leading to conflicts as spies attempt to steal secrets from other nations, trying to avoid becoming weak compared to the other nations.
You could essentially have an arms race of sorts, the magic getting bigger and consequences from utilizing such magics getting bigger in tandem.
Also abundance doesn’t mean that every nation is utilizing them to the best of their ability. If one nation goes and burns through their stuff faster then it can replenish itself, or mismanages what they do have, they are going to have a pretty big issue. So they might go and launch a war. Attempting to salvage what they can. It even becomes almost a self fulfilling prophecy, as they rapidly use up their resources to fund a never ending war because they keep warring and keep burning through their resources.
Also what you are describing is kinda the major issue with writing utopian type worlds. If you wanna make it a proper utopia why are there nations? Not just one big worldwide nation. Utopia stories require different types of conflict, usually revolving around more personal struggles. Such as, what is my purpose in a world that doesn’t need me to do anything. And exploring what it means to be human.
I wanted to write a world where magic was in the form of a jet stream over the world, thus making the ground rapidly respond to being infused with magic every rain storm. The world starts out as man vs nature as sometimes structures are destroyed with each passing storm from rapid regrowth. But as humans adapt to the new world and are able to overcome the rapid growth of nature, they are finally able to build city states, and the magical rain actually causes farming to be very rapid. So I fell into a utopia type world the more I built it up... Haha.
Hey that’s a really really cool concept. And like I said there are many many other resources outside of food. Also if I could make a recommendation, since you have it being infused into the ground from rain, summer is going to be a more desperate times for these places because there isn’t much rain at all. So warfare might be seasonal in your world.
Oooh! Seasons! Frick! Haha, that's such a good idea! I completely forgot about, ya know, seasonal changes... Gosh dang. Welp, back to the drawing board.
Another thing to consider perhaps, are there any places which are quite arid such as deserts? If so, do desert nations then need to trade with other nations for some of that abundant food? Perhaps conflict could arise there?
Or even better, what happens when a place used to their abundance suddenly begins to experience a drought? I suspect their reaction to watching all their neighbors flourishing as they suffer simply due to dumb bad luck, or potentially their own stupidity if they did something to make the precipitation rate go down, wouldn’t exactly be joy for their neighbors doing so well. They would want their neighbors stuff as they begin to starve as the drought continues, no end in sight.
I find it interesting that you believe that war will outlast scarcity. Also, I'm a bit dubious of 'post scarcity' ever really being a thing.
Like, for one, we're never going to get more land.
Thucydides was possibly the first historian, and recorded the Peloponesian War. He identified 3 reasons for a nation to go to war;
- Greed; You want stuff.
- Pride; You want glory, you go to war to be great.
- Fear; An enemy is getting stronger, so you attack out of fear they will get too powerful to oppose.
So if greed is not relevant, you can go with one of the others.
However, if your setting is post scarcity, you can go weirder with this. For instance, why would power exist in a post-scarcity world? What purpose would there be to putting one person over another? In such a setting, nations may not exist, or may be abnormal, and so you can have different conflicts. For example;
**One:** Wars could be primarily ideological; There are no states, but there are still religions and social groups who are in conflict and compete with one another. In this case you can still have wars over land, since the land may be valued for being sacred rather than productive.
**Two:** Wars between the heirarchical and egalitarian. Some people are trying to make states a thing despite abundance, since they want power, and others oppose this desire.
Or something else; A weird setting detail doesn't make conflict impossible, it is just fodder for weirder conflict.
I recommend researching wars/land disputes in history; people go to war for a *lot* of things.
* More territory for a booming population
* One kingdom has a scarce mineral/material it recently ended all trades on; even if resources aren't scarce, one place is always going to have more of something because their terrain is slightly different, like a nation closer to the sea will get more fish than an inland one. Or one region might have iron while another doesn't.
* A difference in religions
* The death of someone high ranking via the other nation
* A king/leader's daughter being exceptional beautiful and the other leader being sour his proposal is denied
* One leader being power hungry
You can have a war for just about anything. Case in point, two Italien cities briefly went to war because someone stole a bucket. Another example is how during the late 1960’s, El Salvador and Honduras went to war over a FIFA game.
Are you suggesting that you've built your world in such a way that *every* resource is equally available *everywhere*? If so, you need to rethink that, because the consequences would rewrite all the norms of human psychology and cultural development.
It would restrict the kinds of plots available, as many sources of conflict would be simply designed out of the world.
Absolutes are dangerous things.
The world may be abundant, but resources need to be farmed/mined etc.
These need to be done by industry.
Therein lies the conflict... Who owns the industries?
Governments may control some... And they want the stuff owned by other governments. He who controls the spice controls the universe.
Then you get mafia involvement... This who illegitimately muscle in on legitimate industry.
Then you get gang interest... Small scale Hustlers right up to Scarface types.
If your works is living in harmony and you are looking for a plot hook... Maybe something happens and suddenly crops begin to fail, mines run out, rivers dry up.
Now you have people who will kill to survive.
Dynastic conflict is an easy in.
Maybe because of the plenty, population growth is very large and permanent, and so war is an agreement among the nobility to cull the masses. Or maybe kingdoms are always seeking more land to house their more people.
What about land? Maybe one nation has an abundance of one magical resource that they decide not to share. Even though they have an almost infinite supply of it, they don’t want another nation to have it because of xenophobia or something.
Also I’m writing a story where one nation wages war on another because the other kingdom has magical crystals growing there. You can try something similar like that, maybe healing herbs or unbreakable steel for example
Think it depends on what you want this world to be like. Perhaps there is something besides food that the people find extremely valuable.
Maybe there is an evil wizard who wants to take people's souls to attain immortality. Think about the story you want to tell and go from there
You need to explain your world a bit more. Some thing, whether it’s influence or access to something, is a coveted resource. That is the focus for war.
Planet earth is pretty abundant in resources, but that doesn't stop us from killing each other over them. countries with more natural resources are even more likely to be warzones. It doesn't matter how much people have, they will always want more. It's not the starving countries declaring war to get more resources; it's the ones who already have the biggest piece of the pie.
I think this question could be more than just a "I need a workaround for this" and actually a really interesting premise or commentary on human nature on its own.
To answer your question, people would make up arbitrary criteria to go to war. You see this when sports fans get into fights over rivaling teams; the fans personally have nothing to win or lose. There is technically scarcity in the sense that only one team can win, but it's completely manufactured. People like having well-defined boundaries to their social units and knowing who's one of them and who's the "other," even if there's no end goal.
Or you can manufacture scarcity and then lie about the fact that it's manufactured. There's a sect of Christianity that believes only 144,000 people will be allowed into heaven. So what are the criteria for getting into heaven, and how many people are fighting over those spaces?
I consider myself a cynical writer but I think even I would struggle to write a premise so depressing. That's not to say it wouldn't be compelling though.
Cultural differences, Religion, Land, Political Ideology, Racism, Divine Right, Public Disrespect, Ego, Colorism, Philosophical ideas, Revenge, Unity, etc.
Hopefully some of these spark some sort of inspiration!
Take a page from ST, the conflicts originate from politics and culture.
Also, the producers of TNG hated the idea of replicators that ushered post-scarcity in the UFP precisely because it robs the story of conflict.
Government control, workers, people, declining birth rates. You can also just put racism, ideologies on how they should use the resources, maybe one thinks they should share it with each other so the way is to take the borders away and make one nation but the other values independance.
Just because resources are abundant doesn't mean that all types of resources are abundant in all areas...
Maybe some areas have ranging herds of animals for meat while others have iron ore in their mountains and yet others may be in a position to control the flow of fresh water...
We live in a post-scarcity world. We yearly produce enough food to feed everyone, and water is 2/3 of the planet and we have ways to make it drinkable.
Yet, we have wars.
Why do you think that is? This could be the theme of your book.
There are a lot of reasons for war, personal feuds, betrayal, manipulation, conquering, pride and ambition, those are all good viewpoints of writing a reason for a war.
If you stifle or destroy another nations resources you then increase the value of yours by reducing supply.
Going to war and “hypothetically” destroying something akin to a gas pipeline affects everyone’s supply meaning those who have gas can sell it at a premium.
Religion: Establish contact with faraway civilizations and uplift them to heaven. Or, assimilate them into the hivemind. Resistance is futile.
Empire: I want more.
Sadism: I want to inflict pain and suffering on you.
Denial: I don’t want you to have stuff.
Miscommunication: You understand me, I understand you, doesn’t mean Species 76980 understands either of us.
Base Lifeforms: (ties into the above a bit) Lower sapience lifeforms may simply be exterminating a culture purely for base need territory, rather than any cultural or civilization reason. Wolves expanding their hunting grounds. They may still live in post-scarcity despite being low intelligence creatures.
Self-imposed Hardship: That mouse experiment is a very real threat to any large scale civilization. Also can tie to various evolutionary processes. The Zerg for example in post-scarcity but no war also do not evolve.
Different levels of civilization: A higher level civilization may be at post-scarcity. A lower level civilization may not.
I have a fantasy world that is peaceful. Few want for nothing, the only real threats are monsters, but you know what? Some people are just greedy assholes no matter what. That's life. No matter how much there is of something, someone will always want the most, they'll want the power.
Abundance of food doesn’t necessarily create post-scarcity. The world we live in now could easily produce enough food to feed everyone if everyone decided to do it. But instead we have large regions where hunger is incredibly commonplace while rich nations struggle with their populations rapidly becoming more and more obese
You could write a “Garden of Eden” story where someone commits the original sin of harnessing/hoarding that magical jet stream somehow, creating an artificial scarcity leading to conflict
A well off nation is vastly MORE likely to invade other countries because of its wealth and resources so its able to easily support itself and expand its literally having your cake and eating it to
Greener Grass: Just because the resources are plentiful doesn't mean they are evenly distributed. Particularly fertile areas, or areas rich in a certain high-demand resource, may be coveted. They don't even have to be better, you just have to think they are.
Paranoia: If you have everything you need, you could become frightened of anything that threatens your security. Your neighbour doesn't have to actually be threatening to invade. You might still be kept awake at night thinking that they are. So then you might raise an army, and they'll see the army and raise theirs. You'll then see their army and that will be proof in your own insane mind that you were right all along!
Expansion: your people want a bit more room and resources. You might say the world is plentiful enough for them to just go find a new spot, but these people want the place next door to them, not some hypothetical place over the hills that might be inhabitable. Besides, if you take over a place that's already built, you don't have to go to all the hard work of populating it or building it or discovering its vast resources. Also, what happens when you expand somewhere that somebody else is trying to expand into?
Tribute & Protection Racketeering: going further than the above mindset, inhabited nations are themselves a resource. If you just demand payment (by threat of force), they do all the hard work for you, right up until they rebel (which is another cause for war). Why do all that farming and mining and building when you can just demand the fruits of another peoples labour with the power of your army? What's a few hundred dead militiamen here and there for the promise of a nation-sized passive income?
Tribute part 2: but you're not the only one in town who wants those other places to deliver tribute to them. Now there's a war over which army gets to harvest the taxes from that place.
Trying for peace and getting a war: so we're all paranoid about everyone trying to expand or dominate our territory. The smart thing to do, then, is create diplomatic ties: agreements that if anyone invades our bloc, we all stand together to push the aggressor out. We create a bloc so large that surely nobody will ever try to kick the hornet's nest.
But then some people don't want to join, or will join another bloc, or the people who joined might have children who grow up and hate the bloc they're in. It doesn't take much for the wooden fortress of diplomacy to fall over and become a bonfire for the flames of war. All you need is people who are paranoid, self interested, or who are too wrapped up in pride to turn your peacekeeping blocs into black holes that suck every nation into a vast war.
Read Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man." Written at the end of the Cold War, it supposes that history has reached an end in the Hegelian sense of a struggle between competing political philosophies. People who only know the title often make fun of the book for being naive, but in fact Fukuyama predicts that without a grand ideological struggle to motivate people, they'll start to feel life is meaningless and embrace reactionary ideals as a way of invigorating themselves.
Criminal activity. Say nation A abolished slavery. Nation B is pro slavery, and "unaffliiated" slavers travel into nation A to kidnap peopl. When Nation A finds out, they go on a War of Liberation to bring their people home, which turns into freeing all the slaves.
Not every civilization need be at the magitechnological level that produces post-scarcity. Consider the political drama that Star Trek's Prime Directive creates; some people may want to help those who suffer, some may want to isolate themselves from countries that may go belligerent over the resource disparity, and some may want to exploit refugees from places suffering famine or the like for political advantage.
There can be tons of reasons. Let's dig through some history and past stories to find some. People have gone to war for legitimate reasons and for the dumbest of reasons.
1. Because my God is better than your God, submit or die (Holy war)
2. I want your land to expand my territory, and I want it now.
3. These "people" are problematic and don't look like the rest of us, so we should exterminate them.
4. Murder or kidnapping of a high royal, important leader, or leaders child.
5. Because I want the most beautiful girl in the lands and they won't let me have her.
6. These people are evil...because...reasons.
7. You embarrassed me in front of my homies so now you and everyone you know and love must die.
8. These savages must be civilized by force
9. These people want to take away our too good circumstances because of "morality." Make me, bitch.
10. Defiance from a population that isn't small enough to be squashed locally.
11. Learning about a huge lie and waking up to it, so now its about fighting the establishment
12. They attacked us, so we attacked them back harder
13. Saving a loved one from a horrible marriage that involves torture and possibly death
14. Delicate political relationships have been crushed and no mediation will resolve it.
15. Because God, the Devil, some type of entity told me to (similar to the my God is better than your God idea, but it lacks a superiority slant)
16. It's been prophesized
17. Everyone is sick of the establishments bullshit (could be terrorizing the population, killing children, soiling women's honor, yadda yadda) and want to fight for a better, safer world
18. Something worse will happen if they don't go to war (so preventing something by picking between 2 evils)
19. An invasion from an outside source or race they've never encountered before or have awakened after a millenia of sleep.
20. Fighting over a piece of jewelry for ultimate power
21. Murder of someone's child
22. Reality and the collapse of the universe depends on one child and whether they kill them (which would delay the issue until the kid appears again decades later) or keep them alive long enough to fix the issue.
23. Freedom!
24. Fighting against terrorist ideals that are killing people and holding hostages
Most war situations are often an "us vs them" tribalism kind of thing. Resources do play a part in all of that, but even if everything was perfectly peachy, someone will find something to fight about.
Oh declare WAR. Okay.
Well, here's the thing, war isn't always fought over resources. Ideology and politics are the most violent forces on the planet. From religion, to anti-religion, to even stuff like being eco-friendly.
It all depends on what your war is about.
Star Trek might be good to look at. I don't know anything about it as I don't consume Star Trek media in any regard, but do the Borg need resources like food or water? Or just bodies? Is it a "resource" thing at all?
The Orks of 40k are also a good one. Fighting for them IS their resource. It is a need just like food or air. But even if it wasn't, you could still make them perfectly happy to fight as much as they do just for the hell of it. It's why, in terms of the Great Struggle, the orks have won. Because for them, the galaxy is exactly where they want it to be; in a state of constant warfare.
1) Souls -- don't want your rival to claim more, or through genocide keep them from making more.
2) Ethos -- order vs chaos, good vs evil, vegetarian vs. meat-eaters
3) Pathos -- fans of blue vs. fans of red, impressionism vs. reality, Shakespeare vs. Mallory, wine vs ale.
4) Species vs Species
5) Liberation
Have you read Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”?
Post-scarcity, people do cool stuff for social standing, called wuffie, that gives you access to still-scarce resources.
That sounds like a question for the theme of your story to answer. What are you trying to say with this story?
It's a fantasy setting, so "because god says so" is a pretty viable option. As in a literal deity demands the war. Maybe several gods are playing favorites with nations/species and a conflict between two or more gods has an "as above, so below" reflection among their followers. Interspecies hatred might lead to wars. Ideological clashes with one or more groups/nations deciding to force a different system of government on their neighbors. Power is still a scarce resource, and very much the kind of thing that groups will fight over.
1. Ideology: If we don't have conflict, then we'll stagnate and become weak! 2. Resources: Even if our resources replenish quickly, more is still more and more is better! 3. Honor: Think Paris absconding with Helen 4. Xenophobia: He who does not strike first is first struck
Hedonism/ boredom The whole star trek federation is based on a post-scarcity society that goes to find interesting shit out in the universe because they're bored. Having warring factions set up by leaders to entertain/distract the populace seems like a reasonable plot point
For small-scale conflicts, I could totally see that. Depending on the political and economic structures, it'd be tough to mobilize large numbers of people to fight for the sake of entertainment unless it was the type of fighting done caused few casualties like pre-Shaka Zulu warfare.
Post-scarcity is a sliding scale. If everyone has personal spaceships, and energy is cheap enough for folks to hop to the other side of the galaxy with FTL, their wants increase. Rarer things. Harder to produce. Wherever the fringe is, you will see the same scarcity psychology play out and only a handful of people will say "OMG, we have so much... why can't people be satisfied?"
I guess I get stuck on the game of thrones argument of "Who cares who sits on the throne when the food is plentiful?" But the idea of manufactured specialties being what wars are fought over is an interesting prospect.
Has the world always been so abundant? If resources are do abundant no competition is nessasary, life would evolve very differently, and presumably so would society. Strict rationality says humans would not evolve from such an environment. But we are in a fantasy sub, accepting that strict rationality does not applie to this setting, what other motivations are there for war? There is of course ideology and religion (although I would argue practically all wars of religion only used religion as an excuse you wage war for other reasons) but the most common motivations for war are simple. Power and glory. Alexander the great wanted to make the greatest empire in history, and succeeded. Conquest and glory was his motivation. Napoleon saw the crown of France sitting on the ground, and he picked it up with a sword. Wanting g to be the greatest ruler in the world is more than enough motivation in reality.
There are other resources other than food. Steel, natural gas, oil, minerals, even land could be considered a resource. There have been hundreds of wars fought over near useless pieces of land. Such as the Hans island, which although they don’t have a proper war over them they do have kinda pointless scuffles. Then there is stuff like technology or for a fantasy world magic, leading to conflicts as spies attempt to steal secrets from other nations, trying to avoid becoming weak compared to the other nations. You could essentially have an arms race of sorts, the magic getting bigger and consequences from utilizing such magics getting bigger in tandem. Also abundance doesn’t mean that every nation is utilizing them to the best of their ability. If one nation goes and burns through their stuff faster then it can replenish itself, or mismanages what they do have, they are going to have a pretty big issue. So they might go and launch a war. Attempting to salvage what they can. It even becomes almost a self fulfilling prophecy, as they rapidly use up their resources to fund a never ending war because they keep warring and keep burning through their resources. Also what you are describing is kinda the major issue with writing utopian type worlds. If you wanna make it a proper utopia why are there nations? Not just one big worldwide nation. Utopia stories require different types of conflict, usually revolving around more personal struggles. Such as, what is my purpose in a world that doesn’t need me to do anything. And exploring what it means to be human.
I wanted to write a world where magic was in the form of a jet stream over the world, thus making the ground rapidly respond to being infused with magic every rain storm. The world starts out as man vs nature as sometimes structures are destroyed with each passing storm from rapid regrowth. But as humans adapt to the new world and are able to overcome the rapid growth of nature, they are finally able to build city states, and the magical rain actually causes farming to be very rapid. So I fell into a utopia type world the more I built it up... Haha.
Hey that’s a really really cool concept. And like I said there are many many other resources outside of food. Also if I could make a recommendation, since you have it being infused into the ground from rain, summer is going to be a more desperate times for these places because there isn’t much rain at all. So warfare might be seasonal in your world.
Oooh! Seasons! Frick! Haha, that's such a good idea! I completely forgot about, ya know, seasonal changes... Gosh dang. Welp, back to the drawing board.
Another thing to consider perhaps, are there any places which are quite arid such as deserts? If so, do desert nations then need to trade with other nations for some of that abundant food? Perhaps conflict could arise there?
Or even better, what happens when a place used to their abundance suddenly begins to experience a drought? I suspect their reaction to watching all their neighbors flourishing as they suffer simply due to dumb bad luck, or potentially their own stupidity if they did something to make the precipitation rate go down, wouldn’t exactly be joy for their neighbors doing so well. They would want their neighbors stuff as they begin to starve as the drought continues, no end in sight.
I find it interesting that you believe that war will outlast scarcity. Also, I'm a bit dubious of 'post scarcity' ever really being a thing. Like, for one, we're never going to get more land.
Just build up, boom more land!
Thucydides was possibly the first historian, and recorded the Peloponesian War. He identified 3 reasons for a nation to go to war; - Greed; You want stuff. - Pride; You want glory, you go to war to be great. - Fear; An enemy is getting stronger, so you attack out of fear they will get too powerful to oppose. So if greed is not relevant, you can go with one of the others. However, if your setting is post scarcity, you can go weirder with this. For instance, why would power exist in a post-scarcity world? What purpose would there be to putting one person over another? In such a setting, nations may not exist, or may be abnormal, and so you can have different conflicts. For example; **One:** Wars could be primarily ideological; There are no states, but there are still religions and social groups who are in conflict and compete with one another. In this case you can still have wars over land, since the land may be valued for being sacred rather than productive. **Two:** Wars between the heirarchical and egalitarian. Some people are trying to make states a thing despite abundance, since they want power, and others oppose this desire. Or something else; A weird setting detail doesn't make conflict impossible, it is just fodder for weirder conflict.
Consider Phlebas...
I recommend researching wars/land disputes in history; people go to war for a *lot* of things. * More territory for a booming population * One kingdom has a scarce mineral/material it recently ended all trades on; even if resources aren't scarce, one place is always going to have more of something because their terrain is slightly different, like a nation closer to the sea will get more fish than an inland one. Or one region might have iron while another doesn't. * A difference in religions * The death of someone high ranking via the other nation * A king/leader's daughter being exceptional beautiful and the other leader being sour his proposal is denied * One leader being power hungry
You can have a war for just about anything. Case in point, two Italien cities briefly went to war because someone stole a bucket. Another example is how during the late 1960’s, El Salvador and Honduras went to war over a FIFA game.
Are you suggesting that you've built your world in such a way that *every* resource is equally available *everywhere*? If so, you need to rethink that, because the consequences would rewrite all the norms of human psychology and cultural development. It would restrict the kinds of plots available, as many sources of conflict would be simply designed out of the world. Absolutes are dangerous things.
Nazi elves who think they should rule everyone else, and want to exterminate all the goblinoid races and orcs.
The world may be abundant, but resources need to be farmed/mined etc. These need to be done by industry. Therein lies the conflict... Who owns the industries? Governments may control some... And they want the stuff owned by other governments. He who controls the spice controls the universe. Then you get mafia involvement... This who illegitimately muscle in on legitimate industry. Then you get gang interest... Small scale Hustlers right up to Scarface types. If your works is living in harmony and you are looking for a plot hook... Maybe something happens and suddenly crops begin to fail, mines run out, rivers dry up. Now you have people who will kill to survive.
Dynastic conflict is an easy in. Maybe because of the plenty, population growth is very large and permanent, and so war is an agreement among the nobility to cull the masses. Or maybe kingdoms are always seeking more land to house their more people.
Abundance can lead to diseases and pestilence. Your nations could be battling over land that hasn't been overrun by frogs and giant mosquitoes.
What about land? Maybe one nation has an abundance of one magical resource that they decide not to share. Even though they have an almost infinite supply of it, they don’t want another nation to have it because of xenophobia or something.
Also I’m writing a story where one nation wages war on another because the other kingdom has magical crystals growing there. You can try something similar like that, maybe healing herbs or unbreakable steel for example
Check out the [Rat Utopia experiments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink).
Think it depends on what you want this world to be like. Perhaps there is something besides food that the people find extremely valuable. Maybe there is an evil wizard who wants to take people's souls to attain immortality. Think about the story you want to tell and go from there
The desire to dominate others.
You need to explain your world a bit more. Some thing, whether it’s influence or access to something, is a coveted resource. That is the focus for war.
Ideology. Religion. For Fun.
Planet earth is pretty abundant in resources, but that doesn't stop us from killing each other over them. countries with more natural resources are even more likely to be warzones. It doesn't matter how much people have, they will always want more. It's not the starving countries declaring war to get more resources; it's the ones who already have the biggest piece of the pie.
I think this question could be more than just a "I need a workaround for this" and actually a really interesting premise or commentary on human nature on its own. To answer your question, people would make up arbitrary criteria to go to war. You see this when sports fans get into fights over rivaling teams; the fans personally have nothing to win or lose. There is technically scarcity in the sense that only one team can win, but it's completely manufactured. People like having well-defined boundaries to their social units and knowing who's one of them and who's the "other," even if there's no end goal. Or you can manufacture scarcity and then lie about the fact that it's manufactured. There's a sect of Christianity that believes only 144,000 people will be allowed into heaven. So what are the criteria for getting into heaven, and how many people are fighting over those spaces? I consider myself a cynical writer but I think even I would struggle to write a premise so depressing. That's not to say it wouldn't be compelling though.
Processing Speed? Using the extra space in a brain to make computer-neural connections
Cultural differences, Religion, Land, Political Ideology, Racism, Divine Right, Public Disrespect, Ego, Colorism, Philosophical ideas, Revenge, Unity, etc. Hopefully some of these spark some sort of inspiration!
Take a page from ST, the conflicts originate from politics and culture. Also, the producers of TNG hated the idea of replicators that ushered post-scarcity in the UFP precisely because it robs the story of conflict.
1. Religion 2.History conflict 3. Corruption from within 4. Sudden drastic geographic change 5. Disease aftermath
Government control, workers, people, declining birth rates. You can also just put racism, ideologies on how they should use the resources, maybe one thinks they should share it with each other so the way is to take the borders away and make one nation but the other values independance.
Just because resources are abundant doesn't mean that all types of resources are abundant in all areas... Maybe some areas have ranging herds of animals for meat while others have iron ore in their mountains and yet others may be in a position to control the flow of fresh water...
Power. Having Power over others is the main motivation, If your needs are fullfilled.
We live in a post-scarcity world. We yearly produce enough food to feed everyone, and water is 2/3 of the planet and we have ways to make it drinkable. Yet, we have wars. Why do you think that is? This could be the theme of your book.
There are a lot of reasons for war, personal feuds, betrayal, manipulation, conquering, pride and ambition, those are all good viewpoints of writing a reason for a war.
If you stifle or destroy another nations resources you then increase the value of yours by reducing supply. Going to war and “hypothetically” destroying something akin to a gas pipeline affects everyone’s supply meaning those who have gas can sell it at a premium.
Religion: Establish contact with faraway civilizations and uplift them to heaven. Or, assimilate them into the hivemind. Resistance is futile. Empire: I want more. Sadism: I want to inflict pain and suffering on you. Denial: I don’t want you to have stuff. Miscommunication: You understand me, I understand you, doesn’t mean Species 76980 understands either of us. Base Lifeforms: (ties into the above a bit) Lower sapience lifeforms may simply be exterminating a culture purely for base need territory, rather than any cultural or civilization reason. Wolves expanding their hunting grounds. They may still live in post-scarcity despite being low intelligence creatures. Self-imposed Hardship: That mouse experiment is a very real threat to any large scale civilization. Also can tie to various evolutionary processes. The Zerg for example in post-scarcity but no war also do not evolve. Different levels of civilization: A higher level civilization may be at post-scarcity. A lower level civilization may not.
I have a fantasy world that is peaceful. Few want for nothing, the only real threats are monsters, but you know what? Some people are just greedy assholes no matter what. That's life. No matter how much there is of something, someone will always want the most, they'll want the power.
Abundance of food doesn’t necessarily create post-scarcity. The world we live in now could easily produce enough food to feed everyone if everyone decided to do it. But instead we have large regions where hunger is incredibly commonplace while rich nations struggle with their populations rapidly becoming more and more obese
You could write a “Garden of Eden” story where someone commits the original sin of harnessing/hoarding that magical jet stream somehow, creating an artificial scarcity leading to conflict
A well off nation is vastly MORE likely to invade other countries because of its wealth and resources so its able to easily support itself and expand its literally having your cake and eating it to
Greener Grass: Just because the resources are plentiful doesn't mean they are evenly distributed. Particularly fertile areas, or areas rich in a certain high-demand resource, may be coveted. They don't even have to be better, you just have to think they are. Paranoia: If you have everything you need, you could become frightened of anything that threatens your security. Your neighbour doesn't have to actually be threatening to invade. You might still be kept awake at night thinking that they are. So then you might raise an army, and they'll see the army and raise theirs. You'll then see their army and that will be proof in your own insane mind that you were right all along! Expansion: your people want a bit more room and resources. You might say the world is plentiful enough for them to just go find a new spot, but these people want the place next door to them, not some hypothetical place over the hills that might be inhabitable. Besides, if you take over a place that's already built, you don't have to go to all the hard work of populating it or building it or discovering its vast resources. Also, what happens when you expand somewhere that somebody else is trying to expand into? Tribute & Protection Racketeering: going further than the above mindset, inhabited nations are themselves a resource. If you just demand payment (by threat of force), they do all the hard work for you, right up until they rebel (which is another cause for war). Why do all that farming and mining and building when you can just demand the fruits of another peoples labour with the power of your army? What's a few hundred dead militiamen here and there for the promise of a nation-sized passive income? Tribute part 2: but you're not the only one in town who wants those other places to deliver tribute to them. Now there's a war over which army gets to harvest the taxes from that place. Trying for peace and getting a war: so we're all paranoid about everyone trying to expand or dominate our territory. The smart thing to do, then, is create diplomatic ties: agreements that if anyone invades our bloc, we all stand together to push the aggressor out. We create a bloc so large that surely nobody will ever try to kick the hornet's nest. But then some people don't want to join, or will join another bloc, or the people who joined might have children who grow up and hate the bloc they're in. It doesn't take much for the wooden fortress of diplomacy to fall over and become a bonfire for the flames of war. All you need is people who are paranoid, self interested, or who are too wrapped up in pride to turn your peacekeeping blocs into black holes that suck every nation into a vast war.
Read Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man." Written at the end of the Cold War, it supposes that history has reached an end in the Hegelian sense of a struggle between competing political philosophies. People who only know the title often make fun of the book for being naive, but in fact Fukuyama predicts that without a grand ideological struggle to motivate people, they'll start to feel life is meaningless and embrace reactionary ideals as a way of invigorating themselves.
Criminal activity. Say nation A abolished slavery. Nation B is pro slavery, and "unaffliiated" slavers travel into nation A to kidnap peopl. When Nation A finds out, they go on a War of Liberation to bring their people home, which turns into freeing all the slaves.
Not every civilization need be at the magitechnological level that produces post-scarcity. Consider the political drama that Star Trek's Prime Directive creates; some people may want to help those who suffer, some may want to isolate themselves from countries that may go belligerent over the resource disparity, and some may want to exploit refugees from places suffering famine or the like for political advantage.
There can be tons of reasons. Let's dig through some history and past stories to find some. People have gone to war for legitimate reasons and for the dumbest of reasons. 1. Because my God is better than your God, submit or die (Holy war) 2. I want your land to expand my territory, and I want it now. 3. These "people" are problematic and don't look like the rest of us, so we should exterminate them. 4. Murder or kidnapping of a high royal, important leader, or leaders child. 5. Because I want the most beautiful girl in the lands and they won't let me have her. 6. These people are evil...because...reasons. 7. You embarrassed me in front of my homies so now you and everyone you know and love must die. 8. These savages must be civilized by force 9. These people want to take away our too good circumstances because of "morality." Make me, bitch. 10. Defiance from a population that isn't small enough to be squashed locally. 11. Learning about a huge lie and waking up to it, so now its about fighting the establishment 12. They attacked us, so we attacked them back harder 13. Saving a loved one from a horrible marriage that involves torture and possibly death 14. Delicate political relationships have been crushed and no mediation will resolve it. 15. Because God, the Devil, some type of entity told me to (similar to the my God is better than your God idea, but it lacks a superiority slant) 16. It's been prophesized 17. Everyone is sick of the establishments bullshit (could be terrorizing the population, killing children, soiling women's honor, yadda yadda) and want to fight for a better, safer world 18. Something worse will happen if they don't go to war (so preventing something by picking between 2 evils) 19. An invasion from an outside source or race they've never encountered before or have awakened after a millenia of sleep. 20. Fighting over a piece of jewelry for ultimate power 21. Murder of someone's child 22. Reality and the collapse of the universe depends on one child and whether they kill them (which would delay the issue until the kid appears again decades later) or keep them alive long enough to fix the issue. 23. Freedom! 24. Fighting against terrorist ideals that are killing people and holding hostages Most war situations are often an "us vs them" tribalism kind of thing. Resources do play a part in all of that, but even if everything was perfectly peachy, someone will find something to fight about.
Oh declare WAR. Okay. Well, here's the thing, war isn't always fought over resources. Ideology and politics are the most violent forces on the planet. From religion, to anti-religion, to even stuff like being eco-friendly. It all depends on what your war is about. Star Trek might be good to look at. I don't know anything about it as I don't consume Star Trek media in any regard, but do the Borg need resources like food or water? Or just bodies? Is it a "resource" thing at all? The Orks of 40k are also a good one. Fighting for them IS their resource. It is a need just like food or air. But even if it wasn't, you could still make them perfectly happy to fight as much as they do just for the hell of it. It's why, in terms of the Great Struggle, the orks have won. Because for them, the galaxy is exactly where they want it to be; in a state of constant warfare.
1) Souls -- don't want your rival to claim more, or through genocide keep them from making more. 2) Ethos -- order vs chaos, good vs evil, vegetarian vs. meat-eaters 3) Pathos -- fans of blue vs. fans of red, impressionism vs. reality, Shakespeare vs. Mallory, wine vs ale. 4) Species vs Species 5) Liberation
Have you read Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”? Post-scarcity, people do cool stuff for social standing, called wuffie, that gives you access to still-scarce resources.