5 ms·

Just to state the obvious, which might not be so obvious to everybody: looking at the big picture, over billions of lives and thousands of years? War is not suc

Just to state the obvious, which might not be so obvious to everybody: looking at the big picture, over billions of lives and thousands of years? War is not such a bad thing. I'm not trying to just be randomly contrarian. I'm serious. When I look at all the Europeans went through, starting with Greece and ending with the takeover of the New World, it was conflict after conflict. Terrible time to live. But through all of that experience the Europeans learned to have something resembling "competitive improvement", where folks could have huge egos, dogmatic religions, a quest for progress, and seek to make a difference in the world -- without war. Took a lot of war to figure that out, and we're still working on parts of it, but the lesson is clear: a certain level of creative destructive chaos is something to be demanded and never surrendered. Peaceful harmony is the way of plants, not mankind. We're here to challenge each other to move forward (without war, of course, but it we have to keeping failing to figure out where the boundaries are)

netcan 12y ago
War is a part of human history that rolls into pre-human times. It's impossible to remove it from history and try to speculate about the results. It would be like trying to remove pairing or family ties from the equation. In any case, war is what causes things like the dark ages. When the way to gain wealth is to steal it, it doesn't pay to create and people stop. When exchanges between groups are generally violent, all other contact such as trade and cultural exchanges stop. The way violence has been kept at bay enough to let civilisation advance has been violence. Empires which are a big centralized ball of violence were usually how civilisation happened because they provided a big enough sphere within which war was minimal. Islands of relative peace.
FlyingSnake 12y ago
> Peaceful harmony is the way of plants, not mankind. Indus valley civilization survived and prospered for around 1500-2000 years, without wars. IMO this is a proof that peaceful harmony works.
- AnimalMuppet 12y ago
  That assertion is what the parent questions. Repeating the assertion as if it were fact does not actually prove anything.
junto 12y ago
Thomas Malthus also saw other side effects of war in terms of population control: The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world. — Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population. Chapter VII, p61 This was 1798 mind you when he wrote that, and much has been written that shows that food production increases in line with population growth [1] It is certainly true that the Great War WWI and WWII have had a devastating effect on the European psyche and therefore tolerance to outright conflict, especially over the last 70 years. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe
- Semiapies 12y ago
  I don't think you can really make that claim about the Europeans being less tolerant of conflict. After the first world war, it only took a couple of decades to start an even bigger war. Then, the whole continent got effectively carved up into alliances with two outsid!e superpowers. All the periods of European peace, historically, correspond to some power/empire dominating at least much of the place, and the post-WW2 situation is not really different. Nowadays, the effort is to make that one dominant power enforcing peace Europe itself.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  Malthus seemed to imagine every method of population control other than the one that actually happened: Mass education leading to a revision of the social structure such that overpopulation was no longer inherent in the expectations underlying the family unit. That neatly side-steps the Malthusian catastrophe, something which I'm sure drives the current crop of Malthusians to tears.
jerf 12y ago
"Peaceful harmony is the way of plants, not mankind." Bwuh? Plants do not live in peaceful harmony. They just fight in ways that are not immediately obvious to the naked human eye, mostly involving things that we humans would consider serious violations of the Geneva convention. But they are as vicious as any animal, just differently.
- frobozz 12y ago
  Indeed, anyone who would make that claim must be utterly ignorant of horticulture. I frequently have to rip out bindweed (which has killed many of my plants) and tormentil (which has taken over much of my lawn). That's just the stuff that _is_ immediately obvious.
  - jkaunisv1 12y ago
    Then there are the plants that will 'poison' the ground around them so other plants can't grow there.
    - hrjet 12y ago
      And then, there are carnivorous plants too.
      - jkaunisv1 12y ago
        True, though I was thinking of plants making war on each other rather than eating animals.
- gus_massa 12y ago
  Actually, they are as vicious as any animal, just slower: This is a time lapse video of a vine climbing onto a tree http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9MV5CgPgIQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9MV5CgPgIQ I remember another time lapse video of a plant crushing a smaller plant against the floor, but I can't find it now. Edit: Another video about fig trees killing other trees: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCUtpmwacoE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCUtpmwacoE
jkaunisv1 12y ago
Even plants make war against each other :)
- TrainedMonkey 12y ago
  Survival of the fittest and all that.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Those are certainly some interesting endpoints to have chosen.

netcan 12y ago

War is a part of human history that rolls into pre-human times. It's impossible to remove it from history and try to speculate about the results. It would be like trying to remove pairing or family ties from the equation. In any case, war is what causes things like the dark ages. When the way to gain wealth is to steal it, it doesn't pay to create and people stop. When exchanges between groups are generally violent, all other contact such as trade and cultural exchanges stop. The way violence has been kept at bay enough to let civilisation advance has been violence. Empires which are a big centralized ball of violence were usually how civilisation happened because they provided a big enough sphere within which war was minimal. Islands of relative peace.

FlyingSnake 12y ago

> Peaceful harmony is the way of plants, not mankind. Indus valley civilization survived and prospered for around 1500-2000 years, without wars. IMO this is a proof that peaceful harmony works.

AnimalMuppet 12y ago
That assertion is what the parent questions. Repeating the assertion as if it were fact does not actually prove anything.

junto 12y ago

Thomas Malthus also saw other side effects of war in terms of population control: The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world. — Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population. Chapter VII, p61 This was 1798 mind you when he wrote that, and much has been written that shows that food production increases in line with population growth [1] It is certainly true that the Great War WWI and WWII have had a devastating effect on the European psyche and therefore tolerance to outright conflict, especially over the last 70 years. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

Semiapies 12y ago
I don't think you can really make that claim about the Europeans being less tolerant of conflict. After the first world war, it only took a couple of decades to start an even bigger war. Then, the whole continent got effectively carved up into alliances with two outsid!e superpowers. All the periods of European peace, historically, correspond to some power/empire dominating at least much of the place, and the post-WW2 situation is not really different. Nowadays, the effort is to make that one dominant power enforcing peace Europe itself.
cbd1984 12y ago
Malthus seemed to imagine every method of population control other than the one that actually happened: Mass education leading to a revision of the social structure such that overpopulation was no longer inherent in the expectations underlying the family unit. That neatly side-steps the Malthusian catastrophe, something which I'm sure drives the current crop of Malthusians to tears.

jerf 12y ago

"Peaceful harmony is the way of plants, not mankind." Bwuh? Plants do not live in peaceful harmony. They just fight in ways that are not immediately obvious to the naked human eye, mostly involving things that we humans would consider serious violations of the Geneva convention. But they are as vicious as any animal, just differently.

frobozz 12y ago
Indeed, anyone who would make that claim must be utterly ignorant of horticulture. I frequently have to rip out bindweed (which has killed many of my plants) and tormentil (which has taken over much of my lawn). That's just the stuff that _is_ immediately obvious.
- jkaunisv1 12y ago
  Then there are the plants that will 'poison' the ground around them so other plants can't grow there.
  - hrjet 12y ago
    And then, there are carnivorous plants too.
    - jkaunisv1 12y ago
      True, though I was thinking of plants making war on each other rather than eating animals.
gus_massa 12y ago
Actually, they are as vicious as any animal, just slower: This is a time lapse video of a vine climbing onto a tree http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9MV5CgPgIQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9MV5CgPgIQ I remember another time lapse video of a plant crushing a smaller plant against the floor, but I can't find it now. Edit: Another video about fig trees killing other trees: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCUtpmwacoE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCUtpmwacoE

jkaunisv1 12y ago

Even plants make war against each other :)

TrainedMonkey 12y ago
Survival of the fittest and all that.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

Those are certainly some interesting endpoints to have chosen.