The advertisements for IPL league dub the event as a “karmayudh” and show the captains in war paint and battle gear - holding spears, daggers and other assorted missiles. 

Why should sports be promoted as ‘war’ and why should such a promotion appeal to people at all? Does it pander to the innate aggressiveness in all of us?

Why are most video-games for kids, all about killing the enemy by shooting, bombing, blasting, maiming, piercing, blowing to smithereens, etc? Aren’t we inculcating in them a destructive mindset?

What explains the idiocy of parents buying toy guns and water-pistols for their toddlers, knowing well that these can lead to aggressive conduct? Why should Lego, known for their range of constructive building blocks, come out with their toy gun series?

Is there a link between ‘playing’ with toy guns as a child and aggressive behaviour as an adult? Just as the big cats of Africa train their cubs to fight and attack, through the medium of aggressive play, are we using toy guns to consciously prepare the kids for the rough adult life, by training them to become militant and violent?.

In a study  conducted in 1976 by Charles W. Turner and Diana Goldsmith, psychologists at the University of Utah, children were observed playing with neutral toys like blocks and airplanes and then with toy guns. The researchers found that the children exhibited more physical and verbal aggression after playing with guns. Isn't this a no-brainer?

But, toy makers disagree and argue ( source) that today’s toy guns provide a modern extension of the role of toys in enhancing children's play experiences. They point out that children have played fantasy games involving the triumph of good over evil for centuries. Before guns, there were bows and arrows. Such ''rough and tumble,'' is often a healthy way for children, especially boys, to resolve competitiveness and form friendships.

Probably, we are all born not with just an instinct for survival, but with an aggressive drive. As the Devil in Shaw’s “Man and Superman’ states:.

And is Man any the less destroying himself for all this boasted brain of his? Have you walked up and down upon the earth lately? I have; and I have examined Man's wonderful inventions. And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself. In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to theMaxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons.

That sums it up well. Man’s heart is in his weapons. So, it’s war out there. All the time.