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> "If you are not capable of violence, you are not peaceful. You are harmless" this is exactly the value that caused so much war and death all over the world,
by wobfan 2y ago
> "If you are not capable of violence, you are not peaceful. You are harmless"
this is exactly the value that caused so much war and death all over the world, for decades and thousands of years. still, even in 2025, it's being followed. are we doomed, chat?
- pjc50 2y agoUS sending clear signals to countries that they should start thinking about their own nuclear proliferation, even if that means treaty-breaking.
- GlacierFox 2y agoThe emphasis is the word capable here. I think there's a difference between a country using their capability of violence to actually be violent and a one with the tangible capability using it for peace.
- jddj 2y agoThere are peaceful strategies that are temporarily stable in the face of actors who capitalise on peaceful actors to take their resources, but they usually (always?) take the form of quickly moving on when an aggressor arrives. Eg. birds abandoning rather than defending a perch when another approaches. We're typically not happy to do that, though you can see it happening in some parts of the world right now. Some kind of enlightened state where violent competition for resources (incl. status & power) no longer makes sense is imaginable, but seems a long way off.
- Yoric 2y agoJust to clarify, who's the aggressor in what you write? The US?
- jddj 2y agoNo one in particular. Russia would be one current example, Israel (and others in the region at various times) another, the US and Germany historically, the Romans, the Ottomans, China, Japan, Britain, Spain, warlords in the western sahara, the kid at school who wanted the other kids' lunch money. The idea though is that if everyone suddenly disarmed overnight it would be so highly advantageous to a deviant aggressor that one would assuredly emerge.
- numpad0 2y agoYes and we don't know if the US is on the blue side this time. It's scary.
- Xelbair 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium yes. i would also recommend The Prince as light reading to better understand how the world works.
- tim333 2y agoI think peace is more down to the good/peaceful guys being better armed than the bad ones.