The Reason For Wars

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Gordon975
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Re: The Reason For Wars

Post by Gordon975 »

Ranvier Wrote :
Profit had always been the only reason for war. The underlining justification to mobilize the willingness of the population may vary (religion, patriotism, or spreading the democracy and freedom, lol) The only reason we hadn't descended into a Global nuclear war yet... there is no profit in that. That doesn't mean it can't happen if some country decides that they have nothing left to loose or some group of people decides that there is no more profit to be made unless we start a new.
The human species is a creature like all others that is designed to evolve to survive in an environment, and this evolution is designed to fit with the speed at which the conditions within an environment change. Part of the ability to evolve and change is governed by intellect part by instinct and conscience. Instinct and conscience drives the male towards the most appropriate female and vice versa to achieve the best species adaptation for an environment. We as a species are adapted by instinct and conscience to live in groups , families and tribes, this, because the young of our species take a long period to mature and need protection and education. We as a species therefore have been successful by acting in groups and are vulnerable as individuals. The male of any species is designed by instinct and conscience to be attracted to and desire the females of their species although members of the human species may through intellectual thought and arguments like to deny this. The males of our species are by instinct and conscience as individuals and by group, programmed by evolution to seek and acquire females from wherever they are for the process of evolution via reproductive natural selection. On a reasoned intellectual level interpreting the male and female of the human species in this way and the males as the aggressor towards other males just to acquire their females is abhorrent to me as it should be to every other decent person but at the primitive and savage level which all species without our human material comforts live it is a a very common fact governing their existence.
Profit, religion, patriotism are just in fact the excuses that our intellect uses to justify war and the killing of members of our species which accompanies it, the true reason is rooted in our conscience and instincts for survival through reproductive natural selection reasons that our particular “advanced” form of intellect find difficult and perhaps impossible to admit to.
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Re: The Reason For Wars

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Ranvier wrote:Profit had always been the only reason for war. The underlining justification to mobilize the willingness of the population may vary (religion, patriotism, or spreading the democracy and freedom, lol) The only reason we hadn't descended into a Global nuclear war yet... there is no profit in that. That doesn't mean it can't happen if some country decides that they have nothing left to loose or some group of people decides that there is no more profit to be made unless we start a new.
Gordon975 wrote: The human species is a creature like all others that is designed to evolve to survive in an environment, and this evolution is designed to fit with the speed at which the conditions within an environment change. Part of the ability to evolve and change is governed by intellect part by instinct and conscience. Instinct and conscience drives the male towards the most appropriate female and vice versa to achieve the best species adaptation for an environment. We as a species are adapted by instinct and conscience to live in groups , families and tribes, this, because the young of our species take a long period to mature and need protection and education. We as a species therefore have been successful by acting in groups and are vulnerable as individuals. The male of any species is designed by instinct and conscience to be attracted to and desire the females of their species although members of the human species may through intellectual thought and arguments like to deny this. The males of our species are by instinct and conscience as individuals and by group, programmed by evolution to seek and acquire females from wherever they are for the process of evolution via reproductive natural selection. On a reasoned intellectual level interpreting the male and female of the human species in this way and the males as the aggressor towards other males just to acquire their females is abhorrent to me as it should be to every other decent person but at the primitive and savage level which all species without our human material comforts live it is a a very common fact governing their existence.
Profit, religion, patriotism are just in fact the excuses that our intellect uses to justify war and the killing of members of our species which accompanies it, the true reason is rooted in our conscience and instincts for survival through reproductive natural selection reasons that our particular “advanced” form of intellect find difficult and perhaps impossible to admit to.
Gordon, you simply don't understand evolution. It is not a process of or by design; it is a process of random mutations, of which the currently positive ones survive, and the currently negative ones perish.

Oy, this thread is so far out of kilter that I don't have the inclination of righting it. Let's just blurt out that wars had been historically, until present time, been fought almost exclusively to gain control over resources that were not plentiful enough to go around to everyone who needed it or wanted it badly enough.

Modern-type warfare is an institution grown out of the preventative measures of the overproduction crisis. Military takes up resources from the economy, but gives back nothing for it in times of peace times. This has a healthy effect on the economy: money keeps on getting circulated, and no production is performed.

Sometimes newly developed weapons need to be tried out, or burnt up to make new ones in their place, or ammunition used up to make room for the new, and that's when the USA starts a war somewhere far from American soil: Central America, Middle East. Desert war is rather very convenient: the atmospheric conditions provide visibility, the lack of vegetation provides lack of hiding places. Perfect place for target practice.

This is the conventional, atheistic wisdom, its reason not poisoned by the false dogma of religious considerations.
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Gordon975
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Re: The Reason For Wars

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-1- wrote:
Gordon, you simply don't understand evolution. It is not a process of or by design; it is a process of random mutations, of which the currently positive ones survive, and the currently negative ones perish.
Sorry if you have misunderstood me, I agree with you, and the survival of the “positive mutations” reflects their best adaptation for an environment whatever that is, it can be physical or in the human case political.

-1- wrote:
Oy, this thread is so far out of kilter that I don't have the inclination of righting it. Let's just blurt out that wars had been historically, until present time, been fought almost exclusively to gain control over resources that were not plentiful enough to go around to everyone who needed it or wanted it badly enough.

Modern-type warfare is an institution grown out of the preventative measures of the overproduction crisis. Military takes up resources from the economy, but gives back nothing for it in times of peace times. This has a healthy effect on the economy: money keeps on getting circulated, and no production is performed.

Sometimes newly developed weapons need to be tried out, or burnt up to make new ones in their place, or ammunition used up to make room for the new, and that's when the USA starts a war somewhere far from American soil: Central America, Middle East. Desert war is rather very convenient: the atmospheric conditions provide visibility, the lack of vegetation provides lack of hiding places. Perfect place for target practice.

This is the conventional, atheistic wisdom, its reason not poisoned by the false dogma of religious considerations.
Thanks for taking the trouble of “righting this thread” the argument is an interesting one and needs to be had.

I think what you are expressing is the generally held belief as to the reason for wars, but these are probably in reality a form of propaganda imposed by governments and their human population alike, on themselves, to justify war instead of for the reasons I have outlined in this topic. I can’t think of any war that has achieved any long term material advantage for any country over any other but there is a host of examples where “men” have marched from their perceived territory and into that of other “men” the list is almost endless.

My suggestion contained in this topic is perhaps an uncomfortable one and politically incorrect for our age but that does not mean it is wrong.
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Re: The Reason For Wars

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Gordon975

So what you are proposing is that the reason for war, stems from human sexuality in the desire to mate and procreate?
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Re: The Reason For Wars

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Ranvier Wrtoe:
So what you are proposing is that the reason for war, stems from human sexuality in the desire to mate and procreate?
Yes I am suggesting that war stems from the human males desire to mate and procreate and to do this by finding new females as a societal endeavour based along family and tribal lines, expanding into the territory of and replacing the existing males contained within it, the recurrence of the stupidity of war and the waste of resources which it incurs is hard to explain in any other way even though it seems very embarrassing to do so.

Would the right wing political parties in Europe oppose a million female refugees in the same way as they oppose a million male ones?
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Re: The Reason For Wars

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Human nature so plastic that it no longer resembles the nature of any wild animal. Humans certainly are mammals and vertebrates. However human psychology is artificial and may have been so for centuries, to the effect that there is no such thing as human nature. In that case we would be free within the compulsions of our basic anatomy.

If we are free there is no need to opine whether we are basically cooperators or basically competitors; we can adopt some other criterion for warring or not warring.

I suggest that the best criterion for not going to war or for going to war is the utilitarian criterion. In our present state of knowledge the greatest happiness of the greatest number must include people who live at a distance and all people who are sentient whoever they are.

Let's take for example Myanmar and the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim people there. Aung San Suu Kyi is rational and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. She is obviously rational so it follows that war is not needed to protect the Rohingya Muslims. Diplomacy and cooperative action will serve, and Malala Yousafzai has already been in touch with her to plead for protection for the Rohingya Muslims.

North Korea and President Trump are not irrational. For historical reasons North Korea feels threatened by America and its satellite South Korea. Obviously the threat from America should be reduced by diplomacy and positive sanctions. We don't have to like North Korea or its Dear Leader we need only be practical .

-- Updated September 4th, 2017, 6:26 am to add the following --

Edited :"largely" artificial
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Re: The Reason For Wars

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I did think that it might be a good idea to make men and women switch roles, so that they are not doing the things which they love ie they are not getting a perverse pleasure from it. For instance, men would be the nurses and carers, and women would be the politicians and military and police. Then, I think, we would soon have a more balanced view coming in. There would be more sharing and peace at an international level, more compassion for those in poverty and in prison and on the other hand men would hate to take care of the very sick so much that euthanasia would be legalised as it should be.

IMO it seems a little reductive and Freudian to say that war comes down to the male sex drive, though I cant help thinking the current comparison of who has the most nuclear weapons and the biggest missile to be more than a little phallic. There are more than one primal instincts that drive us, not least of which are the desire to survive, the desire to procreate and the desire for power/ influence/ control/ attention (or whatever you wish to call it). Trump and Kim Jong-un certainly have everyone's attention.

I quite like the idea of getting rid of all men, as Ormond proposed earlier in the thread although that seems to be throwing the baby out with the bath water. Maybe just a little genetic tweaking of both the sexes to smooth the rough edges would be a good thing instead. More emotional intelligence, less testosterone.
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts". -Bertrand Russell
Gordon975
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Re: The Reason For Wars

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The human species is evolving and far more quickly now via its intellect than by reproductive natural selection, this means that its primitive instinct and conscience designed to enable existence prior to an ability to communicate and have a knowledge of history through education, although still there is hidden by a veneer imposed by an educated intellect. Although the intellectual veneer that we impose on ourselves tries to mask the difference between the male and female roles and therefore the differences in instinct and conscience between genders within our species, at times the primitive instincts and conscience that exist in both sexes eventually breaks through the artificial restraints that we impose through culture and law.
Perhaps the most important intellectual evolutionary lesson that we have is the one that we should love our enemy it is probably the one which has resulted in the modern civilisation that we experience today, prior to this our instinct would have been to hate and distrust our enemy, when this particular base instinct makes its appearance, the consequences are rarely good.

Lucylu wrote:
For historical reasons North Korea feels threatened by America and its satellite South Korea
An atomic weapon it one for defence by deterrence.
Kim Jong-un “The leader of North Korea“ has not made the nuclear weapons or the missiles of Korea, the people of North Korea have, and it is an achievement that must have needed great sacrifice for the population of such a country. The North Korean people or at least its educated elite must know that they won’t be attacked by America, South Korea or Japan however after the invasion of the Crimea by Russia and the occupation of Tibet by China they may believe they have need of some means by which to defend themselves from countries other than what we are supposed to believe them to perceive as their western enemies. It would be politically inept of North Korea to be suspected of making weapons to defend from invasion by China.
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Re: The Reason For Wars

Post by Ranvier »

Interesting perspectives of human male sexuality as the cause of war. Of course sexuality is one of the reasons to strive to achieve success and profit as means to compete with other males of the species. However, if the link to war was directly due to male sexuality, this would probably result in a much lower percentage of male population to female population, where most males would be sex fiends selecting genes that would allow men to mate continuously with multiple female partners per day. I'm not a sex expert but most man (I imagine) could perhaps engage in a sexual activity with 3 - 8 female partners per day. This most likely would not persist for an extended period of time due to sperm count limit, where women are not subject to such limitation. In other words, nature points to a different cause for war, other than simply the male sexuality. On the contrary, one may argue that female unlimited capacity for sexual activity is a natural adaptation to accommodate for multiple partners to ensure the successful procreation.
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Re: The Reason For Wars

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A family comprising male and female dedicated through love to the raising of their children is the only unit within which has been proved through recorded and archaeological history it to be the means to enable the human species to survive and advance its evolutionary adaptation to an environment. The existence of a family group bound together by the emotion of love has been normal, throughout the known history of our species, and makes it part of the main instincts for both male and female humans.
Men will have disputes with other men about all types of issues and are prepared to resort to violence to assert their will onto others ultimately through war. Women really never engage in the violence en masse, which is war (although I’m sure there has been an exception somewhere).
Both male and female of our species are driven by instinct and conscience, as are other less intellectual animals, to finding a find a way of achieving a family life often this is impossible if the male / female balance is wrong or the environmental conditions (availability of land, food, and shelter) are not available, it is this that I am suggesting as one of the main drivers that result in a war of aggression resulting by whatever excuse of men marching from their perceived territory and into that of other “men”.
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Re: The Reason For Wars

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Gordon 975 wrote:
A family comprising male and female dedicated through love to the raising of their children is the only unit within which has been proved through recorded and archaeological history it to be the means to enable the human species to survive and advance its evolutionary adaptation to an environment.
But what about celibates some of who are prophets or saints , extended families, adopted families, faithful servants, soldiers away from family for years on end possibly for ever, young people who move away from family to find work far away perhaps refugees, self-serving dictators, professionals such as teachers ?

I mean by providing all these examples to show that there are many ways in which societies evolve other than nuclear families.
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Re: The Reason For Wars

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I think that we are moving towards discussing society and culture. In discussing the fundamental causes for war, it seems that the "usual" path is in that one group of people wants something from another group of people to profit. Everything else are just "triggers" for actual mobilization and initiation of war: religion, nationalism, fear etc.

-- Updated September 8th, 2017, 2:40 pm to add the following --

If there was a profit to be made from a global nuclear war, life on this planet would already seize to exist in the 60's. War only makes any sense at all, if there is a profit to be made.
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Re: The Reason For Wars

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Belindi Wrote:
But what about celibates some of who are prophets or saints , extended families, adopted families, faithful servants, soldiers away from family for years on end possibly for ever, young people who move away from family to find work far away perhaps refugees, self-serving dictators, professionals such as teachers ? “

I mean by providing all these examples to show that there are many ways in which societies evolve other than nuclear families.
I can see your argument Belindi and in terms of our modern and perhaps civilized societies from antiquity you are perhaps right, but civilized societies are heavily reliant on intellectual organization for their existence, the primitive origins of our species, which our intellect has moved us from to its current level of sophistication, is under pinned and some might suggest hampered by primitive instincts and conscience. We in our modern societies can play with all sorts of family arrangements because we have the luxury of abundant food, good shelter and a feeling of safety and security; this has not always been so. It takes a strong family unit to survive and enable the survival of the next generation, and this can only succeed against adverse conditions with cooperation within a family setting held together by a love that is more than just an infatuation. Love is not just there to make us feel good it is there for a much deeper purpose.

Ranvier wrote:
I think that we are moving towards discussing society and culture. In discussing the fundamental causes for war, it seems that the "usual" path is in that one group of people wants something from another group of people to profit. Everything else are just "triggers" for actual mobilization and initiation of war: religion, nationalism, fear etc.

-- Updated September 8th, 2017, 2:40 pm to add the following --

If there was a profit to be made from a global nuclear war, life on this planet would already seize to exist in the 60's. War only makes any sense at all, if there is a profit to be made.
Which wars have resulted in a financial profit for a country?
Politicians may use weasel words to promote war while in the pay of industrialists and the moneyed elite or for some twisted philosophy of hate but long term everyone loses and everyone knows it. The only "successful" wars (if such things exist) have been the ones of settlement where the indigenous population has been replaced and the invading migrants, people of another country, create family lives for themselves. I refer here to the United States, Canada, Australia etc, although these are not classed as wars there is very little evidence that the indigenous population welcomed the new occupiers of their land when they marched in, arrows and boomerangs are no match for muskets and cannon, any one who objected died or perhaps if lucky were exiled to a resettlement area, some records from the 18th and 19th century are perhaps intentionally a bit vague on this point.
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Re: The Reason For Wars

Post by Ranvier »

Gordon975 wrote: Which wars have resulted in a financial profit for a country?
Profit as the primary motive for war may not be immediately obvious because war brings terror in the gruesome loss of life and the destruction in infrastructure. However, from the point of view of the victorious, war brings profit in control of the land and the natural resources. This is a strategic maneuvering of the "board pieces" that is meant to result in a "stronger" position for the future. Vietnam war is particularly difficult to see such tangible profit but nonetheless it wasn't to fight the communism on the intellectual or moral basis. For specific examples, we can search the history of colonialism (you've mentioned) or even WWII, that turned out pretty well for U.S., Europe, or even Israel. It may be shocking or distasteful to contemplate such facts but no less evident.
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SimpleGuy
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Re: The Reason For Wars

Post by SimpleGuy »

In modern technological societies there will be no reason for wars. In science-fiction Stanislav Lem depicted the invincible (in German: Der unbsiegbare) where nanomachines befeated everything else and could as a cloud defeat all other armies. This is a far but not impossible future. We should think about saving peace more than thinking about reason for wars. Lem's vision of an invincilble cloud of everchanging nanobots , should give us a clue that military conflicts can not be an answer.
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