War is retarded.

This is the best war quote collection so far, keep it up! And we haven't even reached 40 pages of discussions yet... When I opened this thread I really thought there will be 40 pages of debate on whether war is retarded or not .

reply to post by airspoon


I can't agree with you there. yeah combat, fighting for survival, that's natural in all animals. But not war.

War is a human thing, and is based upon nothing more than stupid religious and political beliefs, or earlier wars over land and who was more dominant or something. I've never seen a wolf kill a rabbit over it's political view, or an Eagle swoop up a mouse because it was muslim or something. They do it because they have to.

War is a selfsih human act which is in no way connected to survival combat.

A lion eats a zebra to survive, but people kill eachother in war because they're told to, they don't have to, there isn't a real reason behind it, they just kill eachother because of nothing more then, in my opinion.... opinions.

It's not natural to have wars with eachother, but that's what I think

Star & Flag for the OP

reply to post by vanhippi


If a pack of wolves accidently wonders into the territory of another wolf-pack, they are going to war, simply over a piece of land. Same thing with prides of lions, cackles of hyenas, a shrewdness of apes, etc... Animals do go to war with each other for political reasons.

In fact, because civilization has interfered with evolution (to where the weak/sick no longer die out and instead multiply), war is the only way to put a check on population control, especially now that sanitary conditions are becoming more and more common. Because we are no longer wild, we have pretty much ignored the confined benefits of natural selection and our evolution will eventually suffer, if it hasn't already.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like wars and I would even go so far as to say that I don't agree with most of them, but I do believe it's nature's answer to civilization subverting national selection.


--airspoon

Originally posted by airspoon
reply to post by vanhippi

 

If a pack of wolves accidently wonders into the territory of another wolf-pack, they are going to war, simply over a piece of land. Same thing with prides of lions, cackles of hyenas, a shrewdness of apes, etc... Animals do go to war with each other for political reasons.

In fact, because civilization has interfered with evolution (to where the weak/sick no longer die out and instead multiply), war is the only way to put a check on population control, especially now that sanitary conditions are becoming more and more common. Because we are no longer wild, we have pretty much ignored the confined benefits of natural selection and our evolution will eventually suffer, if it hasn't already.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like wars and I would even go so far as to say that I don't agree with most of them, but I do believe it's nature's answer to civilization subverting national selection.


--airspoon

This may be one of those rare times when I'm truly an idealist, but I don't think war or any other Mathusian situation is necessary to control population.

A good place to look here is the sharp decline of birth rates in the advanced Western societies, where having children is essentially a financial liability and there are technological means to control it. Actually I'm convinced that a free market economy is the best solution for ethical population control.

In a free market (without arbitrary rewards for breeding), the larger the population density, the more it costs to raise a child. This naturally will lead to a curtailing of birth rates as it becomes uneconomical to breed. If at any point you start averaging two kids a couple in a civilization, you will effectively solve the overpopulation problem for that civilization.

People will then live in equilibrium with nature. I use the word "equilibrium" instead of, say, "harmony", as the latter seems to be emotionally loaded with fantasies of popsicles and gumdrops. Equilibrium, in this sense, simply means that nothing is happening that is unsustainable, regardless of how things look to one person's subjective aesthetic sensibilities.

The idealist in me believes that true freedom would ultimately result in a stabilization of this sort. I do admit that I don't have a whole lot of analysis to present to back up this view, which is why I call it idealistic. I would just hate to think that the only way humanity can live in equilibrium with nature is either an authoritarian regimentation of society curtailing freedom to an intolerable degree, or constant mass slaughter of human beings.

reply to post by NewlyAwakened


I agree with you on the free-market, as I believe that a free-market is the best solution for natural law, however certain conditions would have to be met, before it would be efective at population control. One such condition would be an extremely large population in of itself.

In a true free-market system, the more kids you have, the more "help" you have. We saw this play out through the centuries of our history, where it was very common for a family to have 10-15 kids. In a central and favor-given market, like our current market, kids become a financial burden, as our labor is really owned by someone else and the efficiency of that labor is lost to someone else. It is when we are salves, whether wage slaves or captive slaves, that the burden of children actually out-weighs the benefits of the same.

Take for instance a true free-market economy, where I don't have to pay a doctor to treat my child's illness or broken leg. I'm not forced to purchase food from the super-market and instead I can hunt my own. I'm not forced to work a 9-5 and stick my child in day-care, etc, etc, etc...

Instead, I'm relegated to work for someone, where I get peanuts on the dollar and then I'm forced to patronize other's services for that child. I'm forced to provide labor in the form of money to a government that benefits the same people who benefit directly from labor. Sure, someone can open their own business, however they have to get permission to do so, pay taxes and fees and then you aren't even opening that business in a free market and so are playing by rules that are designed to worked against you, thus you are in the same spot as if you simply worked for someone else.

However, on the flip side, evolution would be less diverted but not completely on course, as charity takes the place of social welfare. Not too many people can walk by a child begging for food without breaking them off a loaf of bread. This empathy just may be our fundamental evolutionary flaw. Because of this, I believe that civilization has diverted our evolutionary path and we as a speicies are no longer capable of purifying our DNA and enhancing our species by adapting through natural selection.

We have to have someway of mass die-offs, so you really have to pick your poison. War is a good way for at least a percentage of the population to have a fighting chance, as your skill, fortitude and determination will decide your odds. Now don't get me wrong, poison is still poison and I don't like or advocate for war, though I do think that it is nature's way of making up for our shortfall in the evolutionary cycle.

--airspoon