There's an excellent Radiolab episode about violence and human nature. It includes a guy that was asking people if they thought humans would ever stop fighting wars. It turns out we mostly think not, though back in the 1980's we weren't so pessimistic. I was wondering what the Nexus thought.

It goes on to a crazy story about baboons that went from extremely violent to totally empathetic. Makes me think of the power of culture so my response to the poll would be a yes.

Thoughts?

nope.
it's always been a part of the human condition; the struggle for resources, power, and socio-economic status. nothing is stronger than greed for those, not even love.
nice to think otherwise, but whatever.

oh yea...and then there's wars over superstitious belief systems..

It's hard to say. If you look at it from an Darwinian perspective, we're carnivores
who have upgraded to an advanced primate of some sort, whose brain enlarged
to defend ourselves with complex strategy, time processing and advanced weaponry.
This is what the Darwinian theory says in an over-simplification. Do take note
though, that there are missing pieces to this and cannot be proven completely.

Now, getting to your question using the above vantage point, I would say unless
evolution means bringing the human race to a state of higher resonance (I say
this term loosely to evade conflict), then we might have another chance to
straighten things out with a new start. To be honest, there really is no way
to tell and current events really brings pessimism to this topic. Only time will
tell, but I'd still argue that we need some sort of revelation that is experienced
by the entire human population before this could happen (as it looks presently).

Then again, we were talking about Alan Watts earlier. If you asked him that question,
his response would be, "You must have war to have peace, you must have nothing to have
something. Without one, you couldn't define the other."

Just a few thoughts, long day. lol.

Someday humans might have one world govrnment. Then there would be no more war. There would still be riots and street fights and stuff though. Humans will always be mammals.

hehehe...I think the rather "charming and amusing" fact is that we WON'T stop...but that eventually the wars will be between ROBOTS, and the contest will be judged by whose robots are left standing.

Eventually, when it comes to that, people will realize they're only THROWING AWAY MONEY by having the wars, and probably THEN mostly stop.

....and the irony will be: it was never much of a problem when LIVES were being thrown away, and people could only see the waste of it all when it was MONEY that was being thrown away.

interesting responses..
if history is any indication, then "going for broke" in the most literal sense
shows that warring parties waged all their chips in hopes for a bigger piece of the pie.
I don't think waste of money was ever a concern; taxation has always been a function of war in some way or another.

I suppose it depends on your definition of "war", but as long as people wanna kill some ******-****ers, it's going to happen.

and one global gov't sounds like a possibility, but I don't think it will be a reality. there will likely always be nations who disagree, and dispute over resources and related factors.

saying there will be an end to wars is sort of like saying there will be an end to politics.

When we humans become extinct as a species, then the wars will be over.And not before.

Interesting responses indeed.



Ha! Great reference. I don't think Alan is wrong, but I think we can have physical peace and keep war only as an idea. I think we need the concept of war to understand the concept of peace. I don't think you have to experience a car crash to know it hurts though. Maybe we'll grow complacent though and things will go in cycles as they tend to do. Makes me think of how people were itching to get into WWI because it had been so long since a major conflict. Then as soon as we're done we talk about how we never want it again. We sound like recovering addicts. I guess it's just my faith that we'll one day stay clean.



Ha, I love this idea. I think if we stay the capitalism in overdrive course this could very well end up coming true. How crazy would that be.

Build robots today to...

^Yeah, I rock this T-shirt.

The best place to start would be to find a way to rid conflict from one's personal life. If this could first be achieved, I might see a different possible path for the whole.

I dont fight in war. I dunno about all the other humans out there..though I am not all of the other humans out there, but that is my point. "humans" is a term that encompasses alot of us animals on this planet. Some of us have already stopped fighting wars.

..to bad we only have one planet..otherwise we could just round up the ones who seem to thrive on conflict and send them away.

I would LOVE to watch all the world leaders, and heads of large corrupt corperations gathered up and shipped off to live on a tiny moon base, or maybe out in the middle of the ocean on a ship for 2 or 3 years..to fight over the rations we give them and be fed mushrooms until they learn to get along and develope some appreciation for the planet they live on and the people they share it with. IMO alot of these people dont deserve to be here right now. These are the people that need serious rehabilitation.

War will never end. War is not just a human trait but a life trait. Lions, birds, dogs, siblings even micro organisms battle it out over food and land. War is in us and can only be put to rest, but it will without a doubt be woken up.

^that is true, we all fight and have fought our own personal wars, however minor they might be. I think it takes alot of disipline, as well as unlearning other disiplines imprited onto us to move past those tiny wars we each fight..only then will ALL humans have the capacity to move beyond the larger ones.

Still..the large, destructive wars that plague this world today are between a very small, elite few in contrast to how many people there are. Most of it is about money and power(or religion which is consumed with power)...I would like to take the perspective of a humanitarian and say that I think that most humans do not play an active role in these wars..without the large corrupt corperations, free trade that enslaves people and pyramid style governments and social systems the world could be a very different place.

The irony of the situation is that for people to actaully take back they're freedoms and equalize power, which would end at least alot of the war we have today, it might require that we stand up and fight one last fight against the structures currently in place..either that or they will destroy themselves..without the hold the current economy has I cant see alot the wars right now continuing becasue there wont be any gain.

just look at history
the elite factions have always waged wars, and they always will.

One global government would suck. Think about the way the US is run... a big chunk of those problems is because of a non-homogeneous population. Texans and Washingtonians both trying to decide ONE set of law we can both be ruled by.

don't blame us, we have many of the same draconian laws as several other states.
stupid people actually allow thier heartstrings to be pulled by the "family values and christian morals" scheme, so voters give the goahead for gov't to play that card and bend them over.

Meanwhile, in the most populous state, the people have been given more of a say in limiting gov't, and now their state is broke.

i've said it time and time again...the problem is people ignorantly give the elite power by excessive consumption, without even caring to know what sort of corruption businesses are involved in..

be frugal, consume less.

^and that is just it IMO..way way way more important than voting by writing someone name down, your true vote is your dollar. In a world run by corperations the best way to go against it is to be very attentive to who and what you are supporting when you purchase anything.

pretty much

people allow themselves to be so easily distracted by commercials and competitive sports; so-called "reality shows" to appeal to that inner sense of "glad we're not that messed up" sentiment.
Super-sized everything, all-you-can eat, Wal-Mart in every town, now there's a pill for everything that used to seem like normal human conditions. exploit hypochondriacs, paranoics, and convince people they need to buy a new vehicle.

meanwhile in the political world, filtered media doesn't help matters. they interview the tools of american public opinion, the children, and the ignorant blue collar folks.
the war on ___ is to protect the children, and soldiers protect our freedom. yea right.
this Casey Anthony case is another example of how people can be so easily distracted and express opinion vehemently about something that doesn't really have any bearing on their lives. Gay marraige, abortion, medical marijuana... all personal choices, that for some reason, self-righteous people feel they have some god-given right to decide for others.

I don't enjoy being a cynic; it's just very difficult to swallow when you see history repeating itself, while others seem not to notice or care.


and you know what the sad thing is? gov't will always find a way to manipulate people to justify the need for war; people love violence, it's instinctual. the news is saturated with reports of violent acts.

We are a very young and dumb species, but I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that we aren't learning on some level. Most measures of human rights and reason would put today ahead of any past civilization. We undoubtedly have a long way to go, but I do feel like we're moving in the right direction.

Mathematical logic also supports this idea. There was a simulation that pitted dozens of algorithms against each other in 100 iterations of the prisoner's dilemma. The winner was a simple piece of code that did nothing but follow the golden rule. Radiolab again delivers the audio. In subsequent tests they found this golden rule following algorithm could start in an environment overwhelmed by "nastier" entities and in a couple of generations they overtake the environment. Combine this with aforementioned ability to shape behavior with culture and I think we'll end up in a pretty good place.

I'm not saying it will happen in our lifetime, but give us another thousand years and see what we've figured out.