4 ms·

with the power of hindsight, that aged like milk. i wonder how much of our current views be seen this way another 50 years from now. however i think some thin

with the power of hindsight, that aged like milk. i wonder how much of our current views be seen this way another 50 years from now. however i think some things will most likely be for certain, like how there are key parties who economically depend on war or planning for it. there have been countless seeds of conflicts sown around the time when this article and the essay it refers to were written. they are still being played out and i won't be surprised if they still influence some things decades from now. another think i find repeating from the past into the future is the nature of aliances switching over time. predicting one major conflict between two currently strong allies in my bingo card. our brains remain wired like the tribes that fought for survival. one might continue to find "us vs them" problems when there exists none.

openrisk 2y ago
> our brains remain wired like the tribes that fought for survival If that was literaly true then there would only ever be a single organizational structure for human society, like bees, ants, chimps or whatever. When you look at recorded history alone, societies have organized in many different ways and the complexity and variety is only exploding over time. Organized war has generally been part of societal behavior, but that has been because perceived benefits always exceeded the attributed cost. From the nuclear age forward the calculus has changed. It only gets worse with each new potentially lethal invention. The reality of a finite planet, where organized, technologically assisted violence can wipe out billions will eventually sink and lazy ideological thinking, vested interest in warmongering etc. will disappear. Logically, given the trajectory of human development, for war-as-we-know-it to persist we'd have to wipe out modern civilization in a final global war and go back to primitive societies that can afford this "game".
- rldjbpin 2y ago
  > there would only ever be a single organizational structure for human society, like bees, ants, chimps or whatever. this implies that we have zero agency over what we do. i did not mean that with my remark. > societies have organized in many different ways and the complexity and variety is only exploding over time. completely agree. but i think a significant driver of the way we organize ourselves is the underlying approaches to how we made groups to sustain. from my narrow worldview, it would be too soon to rule out any violence from our future. but overall the trajectory has been for the better imho.

openrisk 2y ago

> our brains remain wired like the tribes that fought for survival If that was literaly true then there would only ever be a single organizational structure for human society, like bees, ants, chimps or whatever. When you look at recorded history alone, societies have organized in many different ways and the complexity and variety is only exploding over time. Organized war has generally been part of societal behavior, but that has been because perceived benefits always exceeded the attributed cost. From the nuclear age forward the calculus has changed. It only gets worse with each new potentially lethal invention. The reality of a finite planet, where organized, technologically assisted violence can wipe out billions will eventually sink and lazy ideological thinking, vested interest in warmongering etc. will disappear. Logically, given the trajectory of human development, for war-as-we-know-it to persist we'd have to wipe out modern civilization in a final global war and go back to primitive societies that can afford this "game".

rldjbpin 2y ago
> there would only ever be a single organizational structure for human society, like bees, ants, chimps or whatever. this implies that we have zero agency over what we do. i did not mean that with my remark. > societies have organized in many different ways and the complexity and variety is only exploding over time. completely agree. but i think a significant driver of the way we organize ourselves is the underlying approaches to how we made groups to sustain. from my narrow worldview, it would be too soon to rule out any violence from our future. but overall the trajectory has been for the better imho.