> It is an unfortunate but unavoidable fact of humanity that armies are required to exist. Is it really unavoidable? I'll play the naïve part here and say that

> It is an unfortunate but unavoidable fact of humanity that armies are required to exist. Is it really unavoidable? I'll play the naïve part here and say that the military is an extension of humanity's tribal nature. The entire concept of countries and borders is rooted in our deep desire to belong to a specific tribe, be defensive of other members of our tribe, and offensive towards other tribes that might want to do us harm. The fact we manage to communicate and exchange goods and ideas is a testament of our collaboration skills, but this "us vs. them" mentality is always present in the back of our monkey brains. If we ever manage to overcome this innate distrust—either via natural evolution (unlikely) or merging with a neutral AI (more likely?)—it would boost our capacity of working towards common goals as a species to unprecedented levels. > There is definitely good that comes from them, ranging from humanitarian aid to the research into high end technology There's no reason these efforts couldn't come from a nonmilitary organization. While competition and developing better weapons of war than other countries is a large component of technological advancement, I'd argue that global collaboration without distrust and politics would accelerate that progress even more. It would certainly help with current issues like climate change, space exploration and pandemic mitigation, while avoiding all of the pain, death and misery that wars and conflicts have brought us throughout history.