Baraka_Guru

Poverty is a big issue that causes a lot of unrest, but it isn't the only thing I was referring to. Think the Middle East and the unrest caused over specific pieces of land. Is it worth going to war over "sacred land"? And, non-religiously, is it worth going to war to secure oil reserves because you don't want to change your excessive way of life? The "American way of life," which might very well be deemed more "sacred" to some than Jerusalem to others.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

The French have a saying, too: we surrender. I'm not willing to give up on something because it seems extremely difficult. I'm not comparing myself to JFK, but going to the moon was once considered by MOST people to be completely impossible. Mankind split the atom. We've cured plagues, and we even got Marisa Tomei an Oscar. It just takes the will to act. Maybe all war being over forver isn't step one. Maybe step 1 is having a whole week without war. Step 2 is having a month. Then we go from there. I'm not willing to give up on something this good because it's too big or too hard.

BTW, that's what my wife said last night.
I still see these things as solvable problems. One way or another, the US will eventually have to stop using oil. It's an inevitability. Oil is finite in the world, and will run out. Same with coal and natural gas. It's not a question of if but when people will have to stop using these things. As for religious entitlement: people can get entitled about anything. It's one facet of selfishness. The idea would be, simply, promoting consideration of others. The golden rule is said to have predated written word.

The_Jazz

I can't believe I'm the first one to say this. It's a political science staple:

War is the prosecution of politics by other means

As long as we have politics, we will have war. People have conflicts. Nations have conflicts. Until you can stop bar fights, gangs and professional basketball, you'll have war.

Will, you have a noble goal, albeit unattainable. It is certainly something to work toward so long as you understand that it will never happen in your or any of your decendant's lifetimes, just like poverty. I see nothing wrong with trying to wipe it out so long as you realize that someone will always have something that someone else wants.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Baraka_Guru

I'm telling you, the Buddhists have it right. If the problem of war is ever solved, I'm confident that what helped bring about that outcome will be parallel to what Buddhists have been trying to teach us all along.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

Do you think we, as a species, can go without war for a year? Maybe not indefinitely, but for a fixed amount of time?

If everyone was a real buddhist, war would probably end. I agree, Baraka.

The_Jazz

With 7,000,000,000 of us? No. Sorry. If we magically stopped all war today, I'm sure a new one would spring up very quickly. There are just too many motivating factors.

The problem is that just like Christians, a lot of Buddhists only pay lip service to the truth of the message.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Baraka_Guru

From the Dhammapada VIII Thousands:
Greater in battle
than the man who would conquer
a thousand-thousand men,
is he who would conquer
just one --
himself.


Will, I don't think a period of absolutely no war is plausible... just like that: "let's try a week of no war." There are too many factors, reasons, conditions, what have you, making it impossible to "orchestrate" that kind of peace. The very suggestion is a hopeful "what if" scenario, but I don't think it is realistic. What I do feel is realistic, however, is that those with the most power would do well to be the first to embark on a lifestyle of peace. For example, if the U.S. were to suddenly take on a role of compassionate benefactor, they would be influential enough to encourage other powerful nations to do the same. This would possibly trigger a chain reaction, especially if you consider the amplitude of compassion if it played a role in international relations and trade. Take away the misery of even the most turbulent nations, and you just might take away the reasons to kill.

What a defeatist thing to say. Just because there are Buddhists who aren't rooted in action as true Buddhists should be, it doesn't mean the Buddhist teachings should be overlooked. I read a story of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was forced to fight against the Americans during the war. He spend his time trying his best to shoot over their heads so as not to harm them, while making it look like he was fighting them. Not everyone could be expected to act in the same way, but certainly this is an inspirational story that would encourage us to improve the world. We don't all need to be Buddhas, but we would do well to integrate his teachings. They are universal. He doesn't own them; he discovered them as our underlying reality.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

Translation: The_Jazz gives up. I keep getting this message from people. War is a reality, deal with it. Sorry, but no thanks. I'm not interested in unbacked statements about the nature of man being unchangeable. What if this is possible, but it's never been done for a lack of trying? I can't back that up, of course, but neither can anyone back up the claim that there will always be war.

Edit: I know how fantastic this all sounds, but just dismissing it isn't going to do anything. What harm is there in trying?
Exactly! This is what I'm talking about.

BTW, I'm not talking about ending murder. I'm talking about ending war. War, I think we can all agree, is much different than war. War cannot be carried out by one person. War is about many people killing together. That's a different ball-game.

cyrnel

As soon as greed, ambition, pride, etc can be controlled or removed at all levels of every society, war might go away.

Be sure to inject everyone or the unmedicated will be fighting serious temptation.

Not sure I'd want to have a beer with those people - would they be people? - but it would be peaceful.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

pan6467

Will, I love Lennon and what he preaches, but the world is not ready for an end to war. I agree with Cyrnal, you would have to eliminate fully all greed, pride, envy, hatreds, prejudices, etc.... and in order to do so you would in turn destroy mankind.

It is like everything in nature, there is positive and negative. without one the other cannot survive because they are codependant on each other.

Neighbors kill each other over land disputes in our cities and rural areas everyday. Family members kill family members over money everyday. Some people thrive only on negativity and cannot be happy until everyone else around them is miserable and doing "bad" things. These people, hatreds and anger will always be present.

The same is true about neighbors helping the other after their house burns down, showing love by volunteering in the community they live, families helping other members and being true "teams" (for lack of a better word). There are people who radiate great beauty and love in life and people like to be around them.


The only thing you can truly change is yourself, in doing so you can teach and show others what living as positively as you can, can do for ones self. Perhaps, you will get followers perhaps not, but you will live a better, happier, life.

I always have believed an old saying and Pacino emphasizes it in Scarface (the restaurant scene near the end when he is losing it and Michelle Pfeiffer leaves him): Without the negatives people would not know the positives and in not knowing the positives, when negative comes, negative will win.

It's great to dream, philosophize and think you can change the nature of man, but you are a fool to think you can do so in just 1 lifetime.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Baraka_Guru

With the advent of quantum physics and everything that it affects, I hope that things like this will prove your wrong. We are living in a world of rapid change; a speed of change that hasn't happened since the renaissance, especially if you consider the growth of global trade at that time.

The world is opening up; we are connecting in ways never before imagined. Cessation of all war in one lifetime? Maybe not. But, then gain, maybe...

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

YOU DO?!

jorgelito

Buddhists are also violent. No religion is immune to violence. I realize it is trendy and fashionable to bash Christianity, but to generalize in either direction is foolish.

Try it like this:

I'm telling you, the Christians have it right. If the problem of war is ever solved, I'm confident that what helped bring about that outcome will be parallel to what Christians have been trying to teach us all along.

Telluride

It depends on what you mean by "peace". Do you you mean "peace" in the sense that everybody is respecting one another's individual rights? Or do you mean "peace" simply as the absence of war/conflict?

Europeans could have avoided war in the 1930s/1940s by allowing Hitler to take over their countries, for example. I would prefer war/conflict to that sort of "peace". I think a lot of other people would, too.

__________________
"I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice." - Friedrich Hayek

Willravel

Absence of war. 'cuase the name of the thread is war, and that's what I've been saying for the whole thread.
Hitler could have been stopped easily before WWII had the idiots in the UK and France not been so damned afraid of communism and had formed an alliance with the USSR. They all saw what was happening and acted like children.

War can be avoided. ALL war can be avoided.

Cynthetiq

Really naive. Vikings weren't interested in being peaceful necessarily. They say your stuff and they wanted it, they took it.

One of Aesop's Fables:

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Elphaba

From the perspective of the only XX in this conversation, neither war nor disease are inevitable. I was lucky not to contract polio before the vaccine became available. Today, that disease and many others have been all but eradicated. Matriarchal societies were not war driven, as painted by the mythical Amazons. Cyn, I believe the "human" condition that you describe is the Y factor in the equation. That peace is impossible in your world view, does not make it so.

__________________
"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." Molly Ivins - 1944-2007

Cynthetiq

You are lucky to not contract polio. Many mothers are foresaking vaccinations because they think it does more harm than good. Again, there's that human condition, Pride, they think they know better then all those that suffered before them. The guy who traveled to Greece and back with the virulent drug resistent Tuberculosis, he travelled because he thought he knew better and didn't give a shit about anyone else but himself. Another person afflicted with pride. These are just simple examples in both male and female variants.

Mythical Amazons. Warring tribes exist, even in matriachal societies and tribes that did exist in the real world.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Willravel

If there's a sign up sheet for a matriarchy, I'll be the first with my John Hancock.

Elphaba

It occurs automatically whenever someone marries into my clan.

__________________
"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." Molly Ivins - 1944-2007

jorgelito

Margaret Thatcher, Condoleeza Rice, Golda Meir - Do we really want to make stereotypical judgments that females are not war driven? Ever get between a woman and her child? You will all but assure war.

Willravel

Fair enough. I want to live in a matriarchal society because I like being objectified, but that's neither here nor there.

Elphaba

I never claimed that women will not defend their hearth and home. jorgelito, you have only one war monger in your list of three. But then, she has an oil tanker named after her, which is her offspring of choice and in service to her "king".

Do you really believe that a mother defending her child is "war?" That is silly at any level and not worthy of the political arguments I have experienced of you in the past.

__________________
"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." Molly Ivins - 1944-2007

reconmike

War is human nature, it always has been. Ever since the caveman days when they were fighting with clubs and stones, and with mans progression through time, he has been inventing ways to improve on it. I don't think it is really possible to cease the cycle. Too many factors to attempt to stop all wars. Man will always have flaws, whether they are the so called 7 deadly sins, or just lust for total domination of another people.

Not all wars are bad either, what happens when talking does not accomplish goals, when compromise in not an option or feasible?

Also, how many people fighting constitutes a war? Is a border skirmish between tribes considered war?

Going to use a lyric quote from a Springsteen song, " poor man wants to be rich, rich man wants to be king, king aint satisfied till he rules everything"
That is human nature in a nutshell.

__________________
Where is Darwin when ya need him?

Willravel

Something like war may very well be human nature, but not only is that not an excuse for it happening, but it doesn't make it unstoppable. Had it not been for the actions of brave people, we may very well still be in the Vietnam War.

This type of process, I imagine, will have to work one war at a time. Most people would suggest Iraq or Darfur first, and I'd tend to agree.

jorgelito

Elph, I think you misunderstand me. My point was that war is not the sole purview of the male gender and that women are perfectly capable of "making war". I took exception to the claim that war is a male pastime.

Justine, Catherine the Great, Joan of Arc were all war mongers. I would argue that Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher were certainly war mongers - Yom Kippur, Munich, Falklands were all done at their bidding.

The mother example was an illustration of a woman's capacity for violence, not to be taken as an exact analogy for war. That would indeed be silly to equate the two.

So, bottom line, I am not inclined to believe that this thought experiment regarding the eradication of war in hinged upon gender. I still think the possible solution lies at the more core foundation of our humanity.

Hope that clarifies thing Elph

Elphaba

Rather than continuing with the current focus of how peace is impossible, I would like to further Will's OP on how war might be ended.

My first suggestion was to undercut the current war economy by public financing of elections. I concede that this is a mere baby step, and an extremely difficult objective to accomplish. But not impossible.

It is also necessary that other changes must be made. These are not in any particular order:

Pass a law that removes the attribution of a corporation as a "person." The legislation that accorded "all persons" equality (the post civil war amendments) was intended for "natural persons," not commercial entities. (If you are not aware of the importance of this, I would recommend Thom Hartman's website).

Cheney was lying (gee, golly, what a surprise) when he insisted that conservation was irrelevant to our oil dependency. Had Reagan not negated all of Carter's conservation initiatives, we would not be attempting to steal the oil of other countries today. The current wars of US initiation would not have been necessary.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. speaks to our oil "dependency" better than I can:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Heku9oTLy...elated&search=

-------------

I am not an isolationist, but many of my suggestions that end war on the part of the US depends upon our country becoming self-sufficient once again.
More to follow.

Thank you, jorgelito. That is the form of debate that I have always known you for.

Of course you are correct that war is not due to humanity alone. I was responding to the arguments that "war will always exist and I have my gun to prove it." Perhaps that is an unfair interpretation of the posts here, but some of them seemed to be dripping with testosterone.

I would like to return to Will's OP in thinking about how we can make war unnecessary. I honestly believe that a peace economy is possible in the US.

__________________
"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." Molly Ivins - 1944-2007

reconmike

Will, I do not want to derail this thread towards Vietnam, but in December of 1972 Nixon started linebacker 2 air raids on North Vietnam, within a matter of weeks North Vietnam was at the cease-fire table, if the US would have fought the entire war this way it would have been over much quicker with very different results.



Will, after we leave Iraq tomorrow, how do you convince the Iraqis not to erupt into a full fledged civil war?

__________________
Where is Darwin when ya need him?

Willravel

This is hardly as simple as Iraq. This is about ending war, no matter who wages it. If the US wages war, it's wrong. If it's Iraqi civilians and militants divided by sects, the tiny al Qeada presence, or the almost non-existent Iranian influence, it's wrong. This thread is way past taking sides. I was only suggesting that if a movement based on the idea were to take off, the first two projects would probably be either Iraq (not just meaning the US) or Darfur.

Baraka_Guru

Yes there have been and, I'm sure, are violent Buddhists, but they aren't following Buddha's teaching, now, are they?

Although I wouldn't bash Christianity, I would like to point out that there is a difference between looking at the Buddhas teachings and looking at the Bible. First of all, there are far more contradictions in the Bible. Second, the Bible is far more convoluted, metaphoric, and dependent on parables. I wouldn't say that Christians couldn't heal the world, because I believe they could. What I am saying is that Buddha teaches a straightforward, realistic approach to fixing the world's problems. If you disagree, please convince me how the dissemination of this knowledge, whether one knew it was Buddhist or not, wouldn't at least help stop wars:

Four Noble Truths:
1. The Nature of Dukkha: All life is suffering. This is the noble truth of "dukkha": the word "Dukkha" is usually translated as "suffering" in English. Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, sickness is dukkha, death is dukkha; union with what is displeasing is dukkha; separation from what is pleasing is dukkha; not to get what one wants is dukkha; to get what one does not want is dukkha; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are dukkha. This first Noble Truth reflects on the nature of suffering. It comments on types of suffering, identifying each type in turn. A more accurate simplification of this truth is "Life is full of suffering."

2. The Origin of Dukkha (Samudaya): Suffering is caused by desire. This is the noble truth of the origin of dukkha: It is craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for extermination. The second Noble Truth reflects on the sources of suffering (Dukkha.) Put very simply, it states that suffering results from expectations linked to our desires, and our attachment to those desires themselves.

3. The Cessation of Dukkha (Nirodha): To eliminate suffering, eliminate desire. This is the noble truth of the cessation of dukkha: It is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, and non-reliance on it. The third Noble Truth reflects on the belief that suffering can be eliminated. It asserts that it can be done, and that it has been done.

4. The Way Leading to the Cessation of Dukkha (Magga): To eliminate desire follow the Eightfold Path. This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of Dukkha: It is the Noble Eightfold Path.

Eightfold Path:
1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

Source: Wikipedia

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

mirevolver

To quote Albert Einstein, "So long as there are men there will be wars." I agree with the genius. If you want to see an end to war, you will have to end the human race.

I for one would find such a department within our government or within any multinational organization to be most disturbing. I believe George Orwell created a "Ministry of Peace" that in truth did nothing of the sort.

The very name of a department of peace opens itself up to being used to take advantage of the trust of the populace to enforce a peace. Similar things have been done before, after all what could be wrong with a government organization designed to protect. Perhaps even call this organization a "protective team", seems to be no harm there, at least until you translate "protective team" into German. Suddenly you have the term, "Schutzstaffel", which when abbreviated becomes "SS". The SS was created within the National Socialist (Nazi) Party and was responsible for many of the atrocities committed within Nazi Germany. But I guess "protecting" that which is important to your country is a good intention.

How do you give someone power or authority without corrupting that person? Corruption leads to greed, lust, desire for more power, all of which are on the path to war. Take away the power structure and you have anarchy which eliminates the possibility for peace.

War has been started from something big like desire for conquest, something as small as a single murder (World War 1), or something as insignificant as the outcome of a soccer game (1969 between El Salvador and Honduras). In my view, if a war can be started because of the outcome of a sporting event, then it becomes clear to me that people can find any excuse to start a war. If people can find any reason to start a war, then there will always be war, it is inevitable.

__________________
Aside from my great plans to become the future dictator of the moon, I have little interest in political discussions.

dksuddeth

will, was this a tacit admission that the threat of violence is a deterrent to violence? or the threat of war is a deterrent to war?

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

The_Jazz

By my count, there are no less than 7 wars currently going on(Afganistan, Iraq, Columbian civil war, Darfur, Ugandan civil war, Chechnya, Sri Lanka), and those are just the ones that I can remember on a Sunday morning on my way to the airport. It also doesn't count a bunch of cold wars like China/Taiwan or India/Pakistan or North Korea/everybody.

Every single one of these is political. No exceptions. Again, war is simple politics persecuted by other means. Complete world peace is a fantastic goal and we should all work towards it (in other words, I'm not the defeatist you accuse me of being, will), but let's recognize that the ONLY solution to the problem is political. If you're going to pursue this goal, you also need to realize that violence is the failure of personal politics.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

tecoyah

Reality comes no clearer than this

pan6467

Will my point isn't that murder will always exist but that the negative emotions that cause murder, greed, envy, lust etc, reasons for murder will always exist.

If they exist then there will always be war because there will always be leaders to prey upon people's fears and project them onto other countries.

To play God an to try to take half of man's nature away, will be to ultimately destroy mankind.

The negatives that start war are the very things we need to recognize the positives and progress.

If I have a very good day, how will I know if I have never had a bad day?

If I love someone, how will I know that it is loveand appreciate it, nurse it, build it and keep it alive, if I do not know what hate is?

If I never fail, how do I know what success is?

It is impossible.

You will always have leaders that want more, that will bring forth greed, lust, desire, fear and so on. As long as we have national leaders like that we will know war.

The only way to get rid of the negative feelings so that there will be no war, is to have every single person on Earth treated the same, fed the same, paid the same, have identical possessions, look/act/believe/ exactly the same, you would have to destroy ALL art, you would have to make everything the exact same, you would have to get rid of colors, sounds, anything that someone may like that another doesn't..... but therein lies the rub, in order to do so, you destroy and take away man's individuality, and I for one, will not give away my individuality. I will kill to save it, I will band with others and we shall fight to the death .... in other words civil war.

Even if everyone did give up their individuality, who would oversee that everyone was the same? There would have to be leaders of some sort (even in a rotation), thus the leaders would be treated differently, to the point where one or a group would like the difference and take over. Of course he would need to treat others differently so that he would have allies, I am sure he would find some.

In doing so, all the greed/lust/anger/hatred/etc would again bubble to surface and war would be inevitable.

Individuals can be peaceful, mankind can have peace for a generation or two... but war is always inevitable, just as peace is always going to be the end result.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

irateplatypus

the largest obstacle to ending war is that it only takes one to wage. no matter how many billions are peaceful, it only takes one individual/faction/nation/race to start another.

a world without war would have to be one of COMPLETE ideological hegemony. it would, by necessity, be a world of uniform and lobotomized thought.

i know this sounds crazy... but the only scenario that could possibly precipitate a end to intra-human war would be interstellar travel or contact with alien life. only such a momentous discovery could galvanize humanity into a single unit unwilling to cannibilize itself. but, even under those incredible circumstances it's still an unlikely eventuality.

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

Telluride

In that case I won't agree that peace is inherently better than war. I value my rights more than I value peace.

Why shouldn't they have feared the USSR? How many millions were killed during Stalin's purges? I wouldn't trust that sort of nation, either.

__________________
"I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice." - Friedrich Hayek

roachboy

first off, i dont understand what people are talking about when they use the term "human nature."

i dont think you are talking about anything, really: the term here seems to designate an arbitrary collection of actions which are then linked back to an even more arbitrary set of subjective dispositions.

because these actions and their "explanation" seem to be function outside of all context, it would follow that a claim for "human nature" is either (a) tautological or (b) a de facto claim for the existence of the soul.

which is quaint.

here's what that idea does.
if war is an expression of "human nature" then no=one is responsible for it.
the result is a version of the story about the scorpion trying to get across a river. he talks another animal--say a beaver (can't remember)--into giving him a ride---initially the beaver was not going to do it, but the scoprion persuaded him, saying everything is cool dont worry--about halfway across the river, the beaver feels a prick in his back and realizes that the scorpion has stung him.
"what do you do that for?" the beaver asks.
"i cant help it," says the scoprion "it's my nature..."

according to this line of thinking, then, war is a simple expression of one's nature and can therefore be neither good nor bad.
and if you imagine that this is an eternal feature of being-human, then it is a function of the Soul. if you were to run out a biologically based interpretation of the same thing, you'd end up with something like robert ardrey's work, in which the notion of the soul is simply transposed onto a vague set of biological correlates.

second problem: reverting to "human nature" to explain a political phenomenon (and war is a political phenomenon, like it or not) erases the fact of the political. it's like folk above prefer powerlessness, prefer erasing any latitude they might have to work to actually prevent war or violence or anything else. let's say that a collective is smarter than an individual (not a stretch) simply because it is a deliberative body. say that this nonsense about "human nature" is understood for whatever reason to mean something. it is possible that a group of folk could arrive at the understanding that left to themselves, life could be nasty brutish and short, but working together they might be able to check something of this "nature" and its bloody expressions. perhaps then they could try to figure out what that might entail practically.
it;d be worth a shot, wouldnt it?
but these facile references to "human nature" would lead you to think the project a waste of time.

another problem: in ALL the historical examples above, NOT ONE person took even the slightest account of how the societies that they referenced were organized internally. groups like the vikings were ordered around war bands--they operated within pestige economies that were geared materially around plunder---so the social groups were organized around war. but this is ONE TYPE of social organization and has no particular a priori privilege, even in one-dimensional non-accounts of an abstract topic like "war"---so that folk would advance societies like the vikings as examples works in a strictly circular relation with the conceptions of "human nature" that folk import.

capitalism is arguably a type of permanent war--if by war you mean systemic violence--something broader than the legal state of affairs that names conflicts between nation-states (its modern usage)....but this systematic violence is fundamentally Other than that of a plunder-based war-band type social group. the fact that you see war in both contexts does not mean that there is any continuity between them. if you argue that there is, you are making shit up.

there could be a political system that is geared around a collective decision to end war. this is not such a system. think about the functions of the present host of wars in propping up otherwise bankrupt political regimes, enabling the avoidance of structural problems with (say) the nation-state in its older form and position....the system that we live under needs war. it IS war. this claim could be demonstrated at length--but for the moment i'll leave it here. suffice it to say that the fact that capitalism IS war implicitly (systematic violence) on a continuous basis, and that this system also relies on explicit war to iron out irrationalities in its systems of production is the ongoing result of choices that WE HAVE MADE, and that we continue to make by participating in this socio-economic order. it has NOTHING to do with any abstraction concerning "human nature"--WE are responsible for the order within which we operate. "human nature" in this context is nothing more or less than a category used to legitimate an evasion of responsibility....

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

I think you know me better than that. Even as a last resort, I don't threaten or commit violence if I have anything to say about it.
I'm glad to hear you're interesting in working towards 'world peace' (a term that's been used considerably by beauty queens, for some reason). War would be the result of a failure of politics.

Pan, I wouldn't have expected you to be so pessimistic about this. A lot of my inspiration comes from Lennon and Ono. An end to war does not mean an end of the understanding of war. We have history to look upon for lessons, and war could just be a cautionary tale for generations after the last war. Also, you act as if war is the spice of life: it isn't. I've not been directly in a war, but I've done it vicariously through all of my friends who are currently in or have been in the military. I know enough about it to know that it destroys souls as well as lives. Several people I know have PTSD. You don't need PTSD to appreciate what peace means. Maybe I should ask you this: have you ever murdered anyone? Then how do you know what it means not to kill anyone?
I don't commit war, but I have free thought. We just need to lobotomize the want to kill another over an idology, if anything. I'd hardly call that a loss.
Your right to wage war? Because that's the only right I'm talking about. I'm not suggesting taking anything but that.
I'm talking about the insane fear of communism. That was, by my understanding and from reading on the subject, what kept the alliance from forming before Germany started attacking.
This is what I've ben trying to say. Thank you for articulating it.

War is not a part of human nature any more than rape or murder. Anyone can choose not to wage war.

roachboy

yeah but sooner or later you need to specify what exactly you mean by war, will. so far as i can tell, you are using an extremely wide understanding of the term, which is more or less defined as the absence of peace--which is also not obvious, definition-wise. so for example under capitalism, you can have "peace" between states and ongoing routinized brutalization of human beings at the level of production at the same time. this would be a problem if by "war" you really mean "violence"....in which case, there would be war and nothing but war.

so i am confused.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite