Originally Posted by powerclown

I think this is what the "intrinsically war-like" crowd is saying. Just like ants and lions and sharks, we too have war-like tendencies. All of us. There are varying degrees of aggression in different people obviously, but there is an underlying and possibly even unprecedented degree of violence potential in people. I agree with Freud that much of our propensity for violence comes from our intelligence and our sexuality, and that people sublimate their base instincts for the sake of civilization, ie., the safety of the herd. Without the sublimation, the human race would cease to exist, he says. The sex drive is one of those things that fucks up the possibility of a perfect world, or world peace or shangri-la. Wasn't sex outlawed in the movie "1984" so as to avoid subversive thought amongst the populace? Thats a specifically Freudian concept for example. Then there are issues surrounding the aggressive wellspring inherent in orgasms (the ultimate source of ego gratification), and castration as one of the most effective ways to remove much of the latent aggression in people and other animals. I would recommend Freud's Civilization & It's Discontents to anyone interested in the dynamic, or in just a plain cool book to read.

But one does oneself a disservice by denying reality. Inherent human aggression, ambition, motivation needs to be included in the equation of any sort of "quest for worldwide peace". There needs to be mechanisms built into the system to account/accomodate for this.

Originally Posted by Cynthetiq

Not really because all the kumbayayas that get discussed don't apply to some of the people so thus someone gets marginalized.

Originally Posted by Cynthetiq

You are talking about "solving" maybe one or two, there was something that I sent to roachboy a bit ago about conterfactuals, whererin a known counterfactual historian changed his mind based on simulations.