The Greatest War is the one with oneself. It is a War that never ends till death — a War where you win some battles and you lose some. The goal is to win as many battles as you can and lose as few as possible.
There is a quote from Plato that says: "The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile." I thought the statement is not entirely true because how can the War with oneself be the first and greatest victory when the War never ends, and how would a man claim victory while he is still at War?.
but Philosophy uses absolute language to point at a process. So, maybe the victory was never meant to be final, i.e It is not a victory because the war ends, but because in that moment, the right side of you is in control.
So I asked an LLM for its take on this. below quote is a piece of the output from the LLM, that I really like:
"If we take your argument and Plato's and merge them, we get a more complete truth:Note: The War becomes known to you once you activate Self Awareness
Self awareness is the simplest part, once you activate that shit, it feels like you are at War with yourself - but the truth is the war did not start there, you just became aware of it.
Now the goal is to establish control - where your awareness and your
actions are so aligned that you don't have to fight yourself to do the
right thing anymore.
You stop being a "Soldier" and start being the "Architect" of your
life.
Understand: The war is not meant to remain violent. As you grow, something shifts. The battles don’t disappear, but they become fewer, quieter, and less chaotic. What once felt like constant resistance begins to feel like understanding.
And this is exactly what Carl Jung meant when he said: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."