Koenigsberg's Law of Sacrifice:
The Ideas for which we Die are True
Trench
"Science is organized around a limited number of concepts (or "laws") that account for everything we see in the world around us." (Hazen and Trefil, 2009).

"Newton developed compact laws that apply to an immense assortment of situations. His three Laws of Motion—like all fundamental laws that govern science—seem simple, almost simplistic. The deepest insights of the human mind often have this characteristic." (Hazen and Trefil, 2009).

KILLING AND DYING: PRINCIPLES OF VERIFICATION OR VALIDATION

  1. Cultures invent ideological concepts which they elevate as "absolutes" constituting the bedrock of their societies. How do people persuade themselves that ideological constructs are true or real?
  2. Franco Fornari states that war is the establishment of a human situation whereby "death assumes absolute value." The ideas for which we die have a right to truth—death becomes a "demonstrative process."
  3. Ideologies become real to the extent that people die for them. Sacrificial death "gives witness" to the depth of devotion. Death is a principle of verification—testifying to the truth and power of the sacred ideal.
  4. The nature of the idea or belief or entity for which people sacrifice their lives is fungible. People have died and killed in the name of "preserving the Union," or the British Empire, or the German Reich, or the Emperor (of Japan), for Communism, for Allah, for the Tamil homeland, or for "freedom in the Middle-East."
  5. While the nature of the "sacred object" for which people die differs—the mechanism for validating the idea is the same. The sacred object comes alive to the extent that human beings die and kill in its name.
  6. The concept of "killing" is subordinate to the concept of "dying." The purpose of acts of "aggression" (killing in war, genocide or terrorism) is to get others to die for the idea that is worshipped by one's own group. A society kills members of another group—so that members of the other group will be persuading of "the truth." Collective forms of violence are undertaken in order to establish the truth or validity of a sacred ideal.