Will war ever be completely eradicated from society?

[QuantumTheory]

I've always wondered about war. Some people think its unveitable, others think we should live in peace. (these people are called pacifists).

I've always wondered if society will end in war, paticulary, nuclear war? Why can't people just get along?

My neck is KILLING ME! Seriously, I don't know what's wrong with it. It's gotten a lot worse. I spend a lot of time at thec omputer, nots ure why it hurts so bad. Its unbearable. I am 17, maybe I am sleeping wrong?

 

[DM]

I believe you've answered your question by being at war with your own neck. Learn to be at peace with your inner self before adventuring into our society.

I challenge anyone to disagree with the fact that men are driven by war. I underpin my statement by pointing out that surrounding organisms such as insects, animals etc... have very similar behaviour as ours. I further believe that we'll never be at peace so long we continue to have our imprinted DNA characteristics.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I just recently finished reading Charles Stross's Accelerando. In it he gives an evolutionary explanation for the development of consciousness that is as good as any I've seen. It's based on a "Red Queen's Race" between a prey species and a predator one, in which each gets a marginal advantage over the other by improving its theory of mind of the other enabling it to predict the other's behavior better. So the theories of mind keep getting better and better as the species co-evolve. The point being that in this case, the predator and prey are the same species - hominids. So this would imply that war - "man is wolf to man" - was the generating force of our conscious intelligence.

Well it's only a novel I suppose, but for me, the shock of recognition was real.

 

[waht]

Believe it or not, Wars are about money, and big businesses.

Whose contractors are rebuilding Iraq right now?

 

[Pengwuino]

Believe it or not, Wars are about money, and big businesses.
Whose contractors are rebuilding Iraq right now?

That was very insightful and logical. I suppose you expect the red cross to rebuild oil pipelines and communications system?

 

[sameandnot]

the ideas of "making war"... or, "waging war"... are kind of crazy right?

is peace "made", or is peace "disturbed"?

i am disturbed, by others, when they fail to be aware of my being.
in their ignorance (ignoring), they have acted from a non-awareness, and have affected It [The Situation (on the whole)] adversely.
I am, thusly, disturbed.

is war a result of ignorance (ignoring "what is")? Is ignorance founded in ego-centrism?

 

[waht]

That was very insightful and logical. I suppose you expect the red cross to rebuild oil pipelines and communications system?

lol, why would red cross rebuild oil pipelines? Thats not logical.

But this is:

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/rebuilding_iraq/index.asp

 

[kuahji]

I've always wondered about war. Some people think its unveitable, others think we should live in peace. (these people are called pacifists).
I've always wondered if society will end in war, paticulary, nuclear war? Why can't people just get along?
My neck is KILLING ME! Seriously, I don't know what's wrong with it. It's gotten a lot worse. I spend a lot of time at thec omputer, nots ure why it hurts so bad. Its unbearable. I am 17, maybe I am sleeping wrong?

I'm a pacifist by nature. However, if say someone like Hitler, Pol Pot, etc. is in power, I believe war is needed. I believe only through education, evolution, & a one world government can war be eliminated. As long as there are separate nations they will always test each other out to see who is bigger & stronger. However, I don't think our mental evolution is ready for a one world government just yet. Einstein once stated "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." I only hope that mankind will come to it's sense & learn from it's past. Prometheus gave "fire" to man symbolizing a spiritual spark, I believe it's not only our destiny to learn from our past, but it is what "must" be done. Anyway, there are are many reasons for war, inequity, lack of education, separate nations, people drunk with power, etc.

 

[QuantumTheory]

I'm a pacifist by nature. However, if say someone like Hitler, Pol Pot, etc. is in power, I believe war is needed. I believe only through education, evolution, & a one world government can war be eliminated. As long as there are separate nations they will always test each other out to see who is bigger & stronger. However, I don't think our mental evolution is ready for a one world government just yet. Einstein once stated "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." I only hope that mankind will come to it's sense & learn from it's past. Prometheus gave "fire" to man symbolizing a spiritual spark, I believe it's not only our destiny to learn from our past, but it is what "must" be done. Anyway, there are are many reasons for war, inequity, lack of education, separate nations, people drunk with power, etc.

I agree, if someone like Hitler or someone is going to kill thousands of people, go for it. I'm a pacifist as well.

Unfortunately, I think as long as there are conflict int his world , arguments, etc, I don't see war going away.

I find it pretty disturbing the army, marines, national guard etc will recruit minors (To be 17) into war. Is it really right to do this? They are still growing up, I can't imagine wht mental precassions this could do. So they pay for your college, that's great and all, but I don't think it's worth risking your life (if your deployed to iraq).

They even had a secret government tracking thing that monitors people who oppose recruitment, they targeted these peaceful elderly people as 'threats'. (Was on MSNBC)

 

[Dawguard]

Why is there war? Because there will always be people who want more then they can get. Greed is the sole cause of war, and always will be. One of two things will happen: they get what they want, or some country tries to stop them and war is the result.

 

[sameandnot]

Why is there war? Because there will always be people who want more then they can get. Greed is the sole cause of war, and always will be. One of two things will happen: they get what they want, or some country tries to stop them and war is the result.

if you say so.

 

[Paul Martin]

My view of this question is a lot more optimistic than what I have been reading here. If you look at the big picture, we are no different from other animals in that we require certain resources and certain protections in order to survive, both as individuals and as a species.

Food and water are the primary resources needed by all animals, and territory is required in order to obtain food and water. Thus, most animals, including humans are territorial. They will fight to protect their territory. Even at that, food has typically been in short supply for almost all animals almost all of the time. So, given an opportunity, most animals will enlarge the territory they hold.

Since the beginning of agriculture and herding, humans have fought to defend and increase their territory so they could feed themselves, and during that time, famines have still been ever present. The population has always increased enough to keep the people on the brink of starvation. . . . Until about 1948 or so.

Looking at global food production, humans since about 1948 have been producing more food than they can consume, and the amount of excess food has steadily increased. At present, most of the food produced by humans is fed to other animals. Through technology, in the past half-century, humans have finally solved the problem of food supply for themselves.

There is still an enormous problem of the distribution of that food, however, so there still are famines in the world. But there is more than enough food to go around. The fact is that territorial wars are no longer necessary for the same purpose that they have been for millions of years and for all animal species. And, if you notice, the big territorial wars stopped happening in 1945.

It takes a long time for traditions to die out even after they no longer have a purpose, so it will probably take a while for the idea of war to die out completely. But, if you notice, the public's attitude toward war has been changing dramatically since 1945. Some people, the "pacifists", can see that war serves no good purpose and they do what they can to stop them altogether. Others, see that armed force is necessary for other purposes than waging territorial wars, and they claim that we still need "wars". So, we have "Police Actions" such as the "Korean War", the "Viet Nam War", and the "wars" in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I put all the "wars" in scare quotes because none of them was officially declared a war by the US Congress. All of these were to prevent "bad guys" from causing too much destruction. In cases like Cambodia, Rwanda, Angola, Congo, and Sierra Leonne where such a "war" or "Police Action" was not mounted, the carnage was much worse than if some armed force had intervened to stop the bad guys.

We are in a transitional period, I believe, where armed forces will be used in the same sort of way as police forces, i.e. to minimize the damage done by sociopaths, and the old fashioned territorial wars between countries will be old history.

But we had better be careful to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If we ever let our guard down, as civilized nations, and let the truly bad guys of the world victimize innocent people, we won't be much better off than people were when wars were normal.

My bet is that the world will see a complete abandonment of war within 50 years, and we will see international cooperation in the stopping of the sociopaths. Time will tell.

Paul