War and Peace

[Wertish]

heh......I honestly don't know what I was trying to say.....I think it was something along the lines of, one is needed for the other to exist.....No idea where I was going with the fanatics......  

[bluecherry]

xd That happens to me sometimes. I'll say something when I'm tired and it comes out strangely and then later I don't really know what I was saying any more.

 

[dragonkin991]

I feel peace is not possible. Human greed is too much. When some one country has more of something then the other, then Greed takes over. With people being born everyday, there will be war to get more land and necessities. People question things about their government, but only some do things about it. There could be no peace even without war. for there are still problems in our own country. There are people who have fellow citizens that will leave them with and empty house, or leave them with a dead family member, or maybe even take their own lives. In our own country there is war happening everywhere. It is a tragic thing to realize, but it's true, things are happening in our country that are worse than wars, for in war there is a reason somewhere and you are fighting for something, but in your own country you are wasting away your freedom. Peace is impossible with war in our country.  

[Wertish]

.....Huh?
You like made two points or so then you like revised them and got me all confused........or you just repeated yourself alot.....


I dunno......  

[bluecherry]

So making a bit of an attempt at breaking down what that post is saying, it's something to the effect of: " I don't think we'll ever really get to 'peace' because even if we got wars, conflicts between governments and the whole countries' peoples it represents, to all end, we'd still have smaller scale personal conflicts going on. Thus, we have peace only in name, not actual fact. We'd, all people, still not really be all getting along in happy harmony or anything." This case you make being based upon the belief that there will always be people out to go and cheat their way through life, robbing others of their rights instead of earning things themselves.

Is this correct as to what you were saying? If so, true, it will be darn hard to get everybody to live their lives playing fair, but I wouldn't write it off as entirely "impossible" though. With over six billion people and the world as it is now, yeah, nearly impossible, but with LOTS of time and gradual, nearly imperceptible changes or in a shorter period with some HUGE dramatic changes and, especially, if for some reason there was a large lessening in the population making it easier to deal with everybody, it's not out the window all together. However, I do think it will/would be a REAL challenge to accomplish and require lots of determination and persistence.

 

[Baulder]

Still, even if all those problems were solved, theres still one thing that humanity can't fix that will eventually lead to another conflict. Boredom. Humanity, no matter what it finds, gets bored of things far too easily! When we found fire, we were awwed, now it's nothing more than a microwave. When he discovered gunpowder, we were ooohed, now it's our entertainment in fireworks.
Humanity will get bored of peace as well, and then twist it to their entertainment. Besides, war is the only thing that kept the human population in check. Errr... was.  

[bluecherry]

Seriously, there are FAR more and better and easier and cheaper and less risky ways to get your kicks then going to war. With all these other options to occupy individuals - and other separate issues and problems that would keep arising always to occupy foreign policy even - nobody is just going to go to war out of boredom from too much peace. And still, even if we went HUNDREDS or wars with peace, at this point no individual people would live through very much of that time to get "bored" with it. There have been plenty of people in the past who lived full life times without knowing war personally in the past any way. And besides, there is a difference between getting USED to something and getting BORED with something. I am quite used to fire, but still find it quite entertaining. But don't rat me out to Smokey the Bear or anything for that. ninja

 

[Emet_Paladin of Truth]

a short, but valid point:

war is necessary. this is evidenced by the fact that it is the oldest surviving human construction. for as long as there has been man, there has been war in some form or another. if it was unnecessary, this would not be true.

you can theorize on the necessity of war all day, but history has already spoken.  

[bluecherry]

And prostitution is the world's oldest profession, therefore society could not survive without hookers ever at all under any circumstances? Not saying this to mean "war is unnecessary," just questioning the soundness of your method of coming to your conclusion.

 

[Emet_Paladin of Truth]

bluecherry

And prostitution is the world's oldest profession, therefore society could not survive without hookers ever at all under any circumstances? Not saying this to mean "war is unnecessary," just questioning the soundness of your method of coming to your conclusion.

i would debate the accuracy of "prostitution is the world's oldest profession," but your point is taken.
My point was more: we tried this once, remember? didn't work too well.  

[bluecherry]

My view is more that war is not inherently necessary to humanity surviving in the way food and shelter are. We so far can't get along without it though because thus far and probably at least for a long while to come we won't reach the state (though an entirely possible one) where people all realize that it benefits no one ultimately to try to run other competent adult people's lives against their will. That s pretty much always what wars are fought to fend off, be it from another country attacking your country/its citizens or your own government abusing its own (former) citizens.

 

[Emet_Paladin of Truth]

bluecherry

My view is more that war is not inherently necessary to humanity surviving in the way food and shelter are. We so far can't get along without it though because thus far and probably at least for a long while to come we won't reach the state (though an entirely possible one) where people all realize that it benefits no one ultimately to try to run other competent adult people's lives against their will. That s pretty much always what wars are fought to fend off, be it from another country attacking your country/its citizens or your own government abusing its own (former) citizens.

that already is realized
it's called 'capitalisim'
the reason why it doesn't matter is the
"competent adult people"
part of that realization.
who defines these terms?
did hitler consider jews 'people?'
did the British government consider the American colonists 'competent?'


BTW (on your sig.) aleph is aleph (a jew would be LMAO at that)  

[bluecherry]

Really now? You tell me where exactly on earth that is taking place? And also, do remember a mixed economy is not the same thing as capitalism. I've heard of lots of mixed economies with varying ratios in the mixture, but no places that really have capitalism. I hold that "competent adult people" can be rationally, objectively defined. "Competent" just throws out people who are for example, young children, or the greatly mentally handicapped, or those completely suffering a total mental break from reality, or who are very badly brain damaged. "Competent" means people who are at least capable of grasping reality and responding to it, regardless of if they actually do go through with what is necessary to do that. "Adult" I mention because I want to clarify more that I don't think children are somehow mentally messed up by their nature as children even though they don't fit the requirements of competence. And "people" are independent living organisms whose primary means of survival is through the exercise of reason rather than something like blind instincts that they have no ability to question.

So before you assume people would abuse the terms in "competent adult people" by trying to define it to exclude people they just don't like or agree with, know that the terms do not and are not meant to mandate that these individuals do as well as they can in life under any particular person's standards, just that they have a certain capacity. That capacity is what is needed for the warless society to have any chance at ever existing - you'll never be able to get it among animals that live guided by instincts that they are unable to question nor do non-conscious things really do much of anything to ever be able to count as a society. And trying to force those with that capacity to do things is exactly the kind of thing that leads to warring. So now it just is the case that if you try to manipulate the definition, all that happens is war will eventually start up again. Trying to change the definition doesn't change what the facts are that the terms were meant to convey. If I tried to redefine yeast to include pepper and used pepper instead of what is actually yeast in my bread dough, the result will still be my bread not rising no matter what I said about "But pepper is yeast! And yeast makes bread rise!"

 

[Emet_Paladin of Truth]

bluecherry

Really now? You tell me where exactly on earth that is taking place?(1) And also, do remember a mixed economy is not the same thing as capitalism. I've heard of lots of mixed economies with varying ratios in the mixture, but no places that really have capitalism. I hold that "competent adult people" can be rationally, objectively defined. "Competent" just throws out people who are for example, young children, or the greatly mentally handicapped, or those completely suffering a total mental break from reality, or who are very badly brain damaged. "Competent" means people who are at least capable of grasping reality and responding to it, regardless of if they actually do go through with what is necessary to do that. "Adult" I mention because I want to clarify more that I don't think children are somehow mentally messed up by their nature as children even though they don't fit the requirements of competence. And "people" are independent living organisms whose primary means of survival is through the exercise of reason rather than something like blind instincts that they have no ability to question.

So before you assume people would abuse the terms in "competent adult people" by trying to define it to exclude people they just don't like or agree with,(4) know that the terms do not and are not meant to mandate that these individuals do as well as they can in life under any particular person's standards, just that they have a certain capacity.(2) That capacity is what is needed for the warless society to have any chance at ever existing - you'll never be able to get it among animals that live guided by instincts that they are unable to question nor do non-conscious things really do much of anything to ever be able to count as a society. And trying to force those with that capacity to do things is exactly the kind of thing that leads to warring. So now it just is the case that if you try to manipulate the definition, all that happens is war will eventually start up again. Trying to change the definition doesn't change what the facts are that the terms were meant to convey. If I tried to redefine yeast to include pepper and used pepper instead of what is actually yeast in my bread dough, the result will still be my bread not rising no matter what I said about "But pepper is yeast! And yeast makes bread rise!"(3)

1: I misspoke, I meant Democracy, or just the general idea.

2: It is that very capacity that is questioned by the oppressors.

3: this is an unfair compairison, while 'pepper' is concrete, 'competent' and 'person' are both abstract. you can't bring up an example, and therefore a definition, of these terms without it being opinion, however well founded.

4: I don't assume anything. I merely draw a conclusion from history. People have redifined these terms to suit themselves, are redifining these terms to suit themselves, and will continue to redifine these terms to suit themselves.
It can be said that a redefinition of these terms is requisite for war. Nobody says "let's bomb Israel because we're assholes!" they say "let's bomb Israel because the're inhuman monsters! Death to the Infidels!"

I would also like to point out that we are having a classical Calvinist/Hobbesist arguement- redifining 'good' as "the realization that it benefits no one ultimately to try to run other competent adult people's lives against their will."  

[bluecherry]

When I gave my first post about what I thought was needed to result in a world devoid of war, I said largely that I thought it was so improbable, at least for a long time, because just fixing up governments is far from the end of what is needed to make this work. I was talking about "everybody" as in "every person." Thus democracy (and better yet, even a constitutional republic that protects people's rights rather than just going with majority rule all the time) is not enough. Maybe you'll get less civil wars with democracies as opposed to systems where people are governed by people they had no choice in, but as long as the people are still intent on the kinds of things I mentioned back in that other post, the government will either act on these wishes and result in wars between countries or maybe after a while the minority of people being abused will get fed up and a civil war may still happen too. My point with the pepper comparison stands still I think, I used the pepper example because it was a clear, easy way to grasp what I meant. The point was that regardless of how you may try to manipulate definitions, things are what they are and will respond according to what their nature is, not your definitions of what their nature supposedly is or isn't or should be or shouldn't be. The job of a definition is not to (and it can not) control something's nature, it can only (when properly done) describe it. So calling a competent adult person incompetent and trying to run their life according to your defining competence in a way that you prefer competence to be is no more going to lead to these people actually being incompetent and bringing about a war-free world than calling pepper yeast will make pepper make bread rise. Bad definitions - ie, incorrect recognition and description of the nature of a thing - don't change the thing and how it will act. Also, I've not given a definition of good, I've given an argument for what I think is requisite for a world to be rid of wars and why. That stuff is not the be-all, end-all of what is good.