War = Stupidity
- Lark_Truth
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War = Stupidity
There are tons of reasons as to why nations go to war with one another. Territory, money, power, hate, religion, and various other reasons. People join up with their nation's military and go off to war because they're feeling patriotic, maybe religious, they need the money, drafted, or they don't have much else to do. Many of those people don't come back from the front lines.
Besides the death tolls on the battle field, there is also environmental damage at where armies clash. Shell craters, bombs and grenades that didn't go off, poisonous gas, radiation, fields of grain and vegetables ravaged and the earth salted so that nothing will grow, water supplies poisoned, etc. Any one who lives in those places will have a difficult time coping because some army made the place inhabitable for the next few years.
Death tolls among soldiers, environmental damage of battlefields, that is what happens when mankind goes to war over a large patch of dirt and its resources. It seems just a waste to go to war over something like that. Dictators and power-hungry monarchs wage war on their neighbors to receive more power, and they get many people killed on both sides, innocent or not, just for that power.
Is war stupid?
- Lucylu
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Re: War = Stupidity
Nietzsche's Will to Power at work.Lark_Truth wrote:Dictators and power-hungry monarchs wage war on their neighbors to receive more power, and they get many people killed on both sides, innocent or not, just for that power.
I cant help thinking lately that war is basically at large (and I realise I am gender stereotyping when I say this), because men enjoy it. They like getting dressed up and running around with their guns to shoot the bad guy. It makes them feel vital, powerful, righteous, manly. And likewise, much of the suffering that goes on in the health and social care system, keeping people alive when they are better off dead, is caused by women fundamentally enjoying taking care of others and the sense of power, superiority, martyrdom and self righteousness that brings. It is the masculine and feminine forces at their worst. The really daft part is that these people are revered which just reinforces the problem. It brings up some sort of unconscious archetypes; the soldier and the healer.
What really interests me is whether it is worth questioning these archetypes if they are so powerful and bring so much energy to people's lives. Inertia and entropy are the enemy, after all, so if these things make us live and be lost in the flow of life as a human, making us feel and love and forget ourselves then is it wrong to question them? Is it better to surrender to the archetype even if its selfish and superficial and immoral?
- Sy Borg
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Re: War = Stupidity
Insightful observations, Lucy. Gender based display behaviours have been the source of much human misery and pleasure. Immature sexual impulses drive humans and other animals to all manner of absurdities, indignities and atrocities. It's only with age one can stand back and marvel at what the hell that was all about :lol: . I am as convinced as a generally skeptical person can be that this applies both individually and at a societal level. War isn't stupidity, it's madness, more or less literally.Lucylu wrote:Nietzsche's Will to Power at work.Lark_Truth wrote:Dictators and power-hungry monarchs wage war on their neighbors to receive more power, and they get many people killed on both sides, innocent or not, just for that power.
I cant help thinking lately that war is basically at large (and I realise I am gender stereotyping when I say this), because men enjoy it. They like getting dressed up and running around with their guns to shoot the bad guy. It makes them feel vital, powerful, righteous, manly. And likewise, much of the suffering that goes on in the health and social care system, keeping people alive when they are better off dead, is caused by women fundamentally enjoying taking care of others and the sense of power, superiority, martyrdom and self righteousness that brings. It is the masculine and feminine forces at their worst. The really daft part is that these people are revered which just reinforces the problem. It brings up some sort of unconscious archetypes; the soldier and the healer.
What really interests me is whether it is worth questioning these archetypes if they are so powerful and bring so much energy to people's lives. Inertia and entropy are the enemy, after all, so if these things make us live and be lost in the flow of life as a human, making us feel and love and forget ourselves then is it wrong to question them? Is it better to surrender to the archetype even if its selfish and superficial and immoral?
If our societies survive their youthful misadventures (always a concern for parents) then perhaps they too will consider with the benefit of hindsight, experience, and the clarity that battle fatigue brings at the irrational behaviours of today's "adolescent" societies with their childishly simplistic and manipulative public conversations.
- Lucylu
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Re: War = Stupidity
Its a sort of mania from our hormones I suppose. A drug induced haze. Battle fatigue is something I've been thinking about too. It may sound harsh but it seems that the problems in Syria are a case of 'better out than in'. If people really want to fight and the tension builds and builds is there any point in trying to stop them, only to postpone the fight. Maybe getting it all out will make the battle fatigue ever closer. Eventually, people will burn their energy, get bored and want to move on. Even if it takes hundreds of years.Greta wrote:
If our societies survive their youthful misadventures (always a concern for parents) then perhaps they too will consider with the benefit of hindsight, experience, and the clarity that battle fatigue brings at the irrational behaviours of today's "adolescent" societies with their childishly simplistic and manipulative public conversations.
With regard to the adolescent societies that's something i also think myself sometimes, but lately I wonder how we can grow out of war (in general), if we will always necessarily have a younger generation who will believe they are absolutely right to fight. It may be that part of growing older is tolerance of difference as you say, but also accepting human nature; that there will always be conflict and there will always be selfishness as it is part of the spectrum of human experience. The trouble is of course that when we are ourselves selfish we are wholly ignorant of that fact. We passionately believe that we are right and cant see any other way of being.
Without being pessimistic...realistic instead..will there always be war all the while we continue to have children? Barring eugenics.
- Ozymandias
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Re: War = Stupidity
To claim that "war is stupid" is to claim that war is a decided upon action, as if only one moral agent said "I'm going to do a war". However, a war always requires at the very least two parties. Typically, one is the aggressor and one is the defender. We usually equate the aggressor as the stupid, or as Greta aptly called it, mad ("War isn't stupidity, it's madness, more or less literally.") party, though you can't always just side with the one who defends themselves from the punch- they may have given the aggressor a reason to attack.
So the question can split into a couple questions: "Is it stupid for me, a head of state, to attack another nation?" and "Is it stupid for me, the head of state of an attacked nation, to retaliate?". To the second question, it may have been stupid for me to do whatever I did to provoke the aggressor, having a knowledge of his capacity to destroy. But it's probably rational for me to defend my nation nonetheless. So in that sense, half of war is usually not stupid.
The first question is the one that matters a bit more. I'm having trouble answering it because there is such a big area of samples to pull from. Lots of wars have been started for just reasons, lots of wars have been started for unjust reasons. Most have had bad effects, but a select few are solely responsible for causing the existence of big states, and without big states to support our massive global population, we might have gone extinct ten or twenty years ago from things like famine or conflict. There have been good effects of various wars, to counter the bad effects you mentioned, so you can't entirely reason that war is stupid simply because it has bad effects. I won't say that a nation should blindly run into war because "it has had good effects in the past", though, I'm just saying that you can't always count on a war to be wholly evil, and thus cannot rule it out or call it stupid for that reason.
But I think it comes down to a question of your wording. Going back to what I said at the beginning of my response, to say "war is stupid" is to make the untrue assumption that war is something one moral agent decides to do. If I was playing a big game, moving all the pieces around on a world map and trying to manage humanity and our politics, like Risk but with fully functioning societies, I certainly would not start any wars. There's no reason. But that's because I'm not at conflict with myself, and I have a displaced, omniscient point of view. Your view, looking at the world at large and thinking about all the wars in the past, is similar to this position. You can clearly see how bad war is at actually solving problems, and so you justly say "Why?". But it gets messier when it's real life and you're there, in the middle of a nation in the midst of a crisis. War isn't really your choice, and so stupid or not, you're a part of it, and you may even support it because your nation's situation is just so messed up that you don't know what else to do.
- Sy Borg
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Re: War = Stupidity
Lucy, while replying there was a problem with the electricity network and the power was lost for a few hours. Now ... where was I?Lucylu wrote:Its a sort of mania from our hormones I suppose. A drug induced haze. Battle fatigue is something I've been thinking about too. It may sound harsh but it seems that the problems in Syria are a case of 'better out than in'. If people really want to fight and the tension builds and builds is there any point in trying to stop them, only to postpone the fight. Maybe getting it all out will make the battle fatigue ever closer. Eventually, people will burn their energy, get bored and want to move on. Even if it takes hundreds of years.Greta wrote:
If our societies survive their youthful misadventures (always a concern for parents) then perhaps they too will consider with the benefit of hindsight, experience, and the clarity that battle fatigue brings at the irrational behaviours of today's "adolescent" societies with their childishly simplistic and manipulative public conversations.
With regard to the adolescent societies that's something i also think myself sometimes, but lately I wonder how we can grow out of war (in general), if we will always necessarily have a younger generation who will believe they are absolutely right to fight. It may be that part of growing older is tolerance of difference as you say, but also accepting human nature; that there will always be conflict and there will always be selfishness as it is part of the spectrum of human experience. The trouble is of course that when we are ourselves selfish we are wholly ignorant of that fact. We passionately believe that we are right and cant see any other way of being.
Without being pessimistic...realistic instead..will there always be war all the while we continue to have children? Barring eugenics.
Ultimately we can't prevent anything, only delay. Was there ever going to be another result once humans gained dominance? We were never going to limit ourselves to sustainable living, not en masse. No matter how well we operated, at some point we were going to be unsustainable unless we limited breeding on a planetary scale. Still, the fact that we will all die does not prevent us drinking up as much life as possible beforehand. So it is the the current world order. As resources run out there will be conflicts. There will be more conflict over water resources. Some on the subcontinent believe that if India does not allow more downstream water into Pakistan that it will result in war.
Inevitable change, each existing form making way for the next, either faster or slower. Of course it's harder to be philosophical about change if it's your street being bombed.
PS. This isn't my original reply, which seems to have left my head.
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Re: War = Stupidity
Greta:
I guess that's the philosophical equivalent of walking into the kitchen and then forgetting what you came in for. I usually default to looking in the fridge.PS. This isn't my original reply, which seems to have left my head.
- Rr6
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Re: War = Stupidity
Stupid waste. imho
Humans are both stupid and smart at seemingly same time. I known that seems contradictory, yet humans can exhibit both these traits within 2 minutes of each other.
What is the cause of stupidity in seemingly smart people. Is it fear? Is it ego? Is it both?
The U.S. government was designed with checks and balances of three branches of government so as no single one can be allowed to abuse its people in unfair ways. Or do stupid stuff that endangers the principles of the constitution and the subsequent bill of rights.
In 1969 Fuller wrote Utopia or Oblivion and laid out his reasoning why war is obsolete.
Is global warming stupid?
- Lucylu
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Re: War = Stupidity
Quite. Like the destruction of the House of Wisdom in the 13th Century. So sad.Rr6 wrote: Often, when I see the destruction of wonderful and useful constructions of humans--- bridges, autos, ships etc... ---I think what a terrible resultant waste of war.
Absolutely. The pity being we're not always sure which half of us will prove to be wrong in hindsight! Historically the victors proved themselves to be right by virtue of winning and surviving to tell the tale. Nowadays we have more information recorded for posterity.Ozymandias wrote:[H]alf of war is usually not stupid.
If two parties have conflicting values, such as their chosen deity, then war ensues. The force of the Roman Empire spread Christianity, for example. 'Stupid' to enforce a religion which speaks of love and peace but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. They probably even thought they were doing people a favour by invading them, and to a degree they did civilise the uncivilised.
Tolerance of alternate values is one thing. Tolerance of intolerance is the tricky part.
Greta,
Thanks for writing a second reply. Sooo frustrating when one gets lost!
Greta wrote:As resources run out there will be conflicts. There will be more conflict over water resources. Some on the subcontinent believe that if India does not allow more downstream water into Pakistan that it will result in war.
Inevitable change, each existing form making way for the next, either faster or slower. Of course it's harder to be philosophical about change if it's your street being bombed.
The above picture shows the corruption of different regions. I like to think, perhaps naively, that there will come a time, gradually, when all countries can be classed as 'clean'. But then again 'clean' internally, ie internally peaceful, democratic and consistent doesn't mean that this will follow through to being peaceful with other nations, but its a step in the right direction. Gradually all countries will become stable and honest, hopefully relying on renewable resources. Less corruption, more trade, more exchange of ideas.
Remarkably, although there was such a big fuss about the UK leaving the EU there was no hint of violence. Hard to believe after the last century. Imagine if just a hundred years from now, the people of the middle east could have similar political talks without any violence. Its hard to imagine, but its possible. You rightly pointed out on the Brexit thread that its unlikely it would have happened if it weren't for the mass exodus of refugees out of Syria and in to Europe, and many making a bee line for the UK. This movement of people will bring with it a merging of cultures and ideas.
I also like to think that humans will crack renewable energy. Water may be a bigger issue but if we have inexpensive energy desalinisation of sea water would be more accessible. Germany has just signed up to 50-60% renewables by 2035. No mean feet.
Steven Pinker says, "I looked at homicide, looked at war, looked at genocide, looked at terrorism. And in all cases, the long-term historical trend, though there are ups and downs and wiggles and spikes, is absolutely downward. The rate of violent crime in United States has fallen by more than half in just a decade. The rate of death in war fell by a factor of 100 over a span of 25 years...If you certainly choose the most violent parts of the world at any given time, they're going to be pretty violent. But if you count the number of parts of the world that are violent versus those that aren't, then you see that the world is becoming more peaceful. The impression that some kinds of violence have gone up over the last five years has some truth to it. Because of the Syrian civil war, the rate of death in warfare has drifted upward a little bit in the last five years. There has been a small increase in homicide in the United States in the last three years. But both of those figures are at a fraction of what they were in the '60s, '70S and '80s."
So, we are getting less violent, more stable (overall) and we know that at least we are more aware of our issues, thanks to the disinhibition effect of social media.
- Lark_Truth
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Re: War = Stupidity
Guys, what I am trying to say when I write "War is stupid" is that all it does is get people killed over some reason that the politicians wanted resolved - violently. Violence and bloodshed isn't always an answer, yet people resort to those things when they want something. For instance: World War 1; one big mess! The European Nations were almost all wanting war, trying to develop better weapons than their enemies, and making large-scale alliances. Then Austria-Hungary's archduke was assassinated [read conveniently killed off] and then the war kicked off, drawing in almost all of the European Nations because of the alliance system, and millions of people were killed, not just soldiers, and the soldiers had it rough too. What was the result of WW1? Austria-Hungary was broken into several nations, Germany lost a lot of territory and went into an economic crisis until Hitler came along and geared up the world for World War 2, and millions more dead.
If you can see my point here, war is stupid. Besides, diplomacy works much better.
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Re: War = Stupidity
But it still doesn't usually get us very far because, generally speaking, the webs of cause and effect are so complex, involving so many people, that something which should theoretically be a matter of fact (such as the causes of World War I) becomes a matter of competing opinions.
- Lucylu
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Re: War = Stupidity
- Lark_Truth
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Re: War = Stupidity
If it had been discovered when wars between humans first began that diplomacy worked better, I think that empires would have lasted a lot longer because they were united by peace and cooperation rather than just being conquered.
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Re: War = Stupidity
I think--and I think this statement will be applicable to philosophical logic of what follows from what in reasoning--if one's goal is for a peaceful world in which all earth's resources and material prosperity are better democratized, then most motives for war are stupid.Lark_Truth wrote:Is war stupid?
There are tons of reasons as to why nations go to war with one another. Territory, money, power, hate, religion, and various other reasons. People join up with their nation's military and go off to war because they're feeling patriotic, maybe religious, they need the money, drafted, or they don't have much else to do. Many of those people don't come back from the front lines.
Besides the death tolls on the battle field, there is also environmental damage at where armies clash. Shell craters, bombs and grenades that didn't go off, poisonous gas, radiation, fields of grain and vegetables ravaged and the earth salted so that nothing will grow, water supplies poisoned, etc. Any one who lives in those places will have a difficult time coping because some army made the place inhabitable for the next few years.
Death tolls among soldiers, environmental damage of battlefields, that is what happens when mankind goes to war over a large patch of dirt and its resources. It seems just a waste to go to war over something like that. Dictators and power-hungry monarchs wage war on their neighbors to receive more power, and they get many people killed on both sides, innocent or not, just for that power.
Is war stupid?
I'm glad you brought up the environmental impacts of war. Most discount those including the sky-is-falling climate change religious who are in a rush to war with Russia. I was a major convert to the dangers of nuclear war after reading a book written by a woman that is a medical doctor and has spent much of her life researching the medical effects of nuclear war, and trying to get nations to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. Nonetheless, I'm not entirely against the use of nuclear weapons, for a number of reasons (pertaining to the socio-political and military landscape of today).
I have done some reading on military history, that genre of literature. Not a lot but some. I've never reading the brilliant Western philosopher of warfare Carl Von Clausewitz but I have read at least one book written as a commentary and explanation of Clausewitz views in his famed classic On War.
So, from my reading of military history I learned that democracies are the most warmongering and have produced the bloodiest wars, not monarchies. Monarchies have been limited to their own treasuries. Most of the wars waged produced little casualties and lots of time just laid camping. And monarchs typically never wanted to bleed their pockets dry. Governments that are democracies on the other hand have a far more extensive pool of money to draw from. They tax the people, or in the case of modern day America we didn't tax the people but rather increased the national debt massively and have delayed payment for the Millennials and the generations after them to pay for all these ward we have been waging.
Dictators don't necessarily often engage in wars of expansion. The Philippines was run by a dictator, Chile, most Latin America countries during the 1970s and '80s. The most warmonger nation of earth since perhaps ancient Rome and the Mongols has probably been that of the capitalist democracy of the USA. Nearly every generation it sets out on a another war promoted on the basis of another holy cause. And really, no country it ever attacks poses a military capable threat to its mainland. Vietnam had no military capability to threaten mainland USA. Iraq did not. Libya did not (actually, Gaddafi was helping protect mainland USA from Arab terrorists, in more recent times at least). Syria does not. Iran does not. And although Russia does have the military capacity to threaten mainland USA it showed no resolve to do so until the US empire using NATO empire forces began steadily, aggressively, marching closer and closer to its boarders. Empires do not use their own armies alone. No, as when Napoleon advanced on Russia he marched *half of Europe* on Russia. The Brits were a people of a tiny island. Their empire was possible by swallowing up other nations and using those people in its wars. Like the Asian Gurkhas.
NATO was created as a military alliance in response to the communist Warsaw Pact. That communist alliance no longer exists, so, NATO has no real purpose, other than it has been morphed into an empire force to expand Western domination across planet earth and to fulfill the goals of Western globalists. Nationalism has awoken in the USA and Western Europe challenging this globalism and its warmongering pursuits across the whole of earth. Really, the USA leads the pact of in Western domination and controls de facto maybe 90% or 95% of planet earth. Drunk in greed that is not enough. Russia and a few other nations stand in their way to absolute 100% of all of planet earth. And the great struggle will be played out in Eurasia because the natural resources in that area will shift a lot of power to it during the 21st century.
I like the natural science. I like the social sciences of economics and anthropology. I respect but do not like doing philosophy. What I don't care for and likely will never take is any course in feminism. What I don't care for possibly would only take a basic course in one day is political science. I would only take a basic course just to get a basic insight into the thinking of this religiously dogmatic minded people of lies, conspiracy, and war. But I say that for this reason: philosophy has a role to play, philosophers, in challenging the lunatic religiosity of the political science, the political scientist, who really conspire to bring wrack and ruin across earth for so called "national interests." Philosophers can also challenge politicized sciences, espousing the sky-is-falling and their own messiah-ism, over the earth once more leaving out of an ice-age and the mini-ice age we are in into a more bioproductive earth. The Amazon jungle being the most bioproductive enviroment of earth, with humans living naked in it, and the frozen desert of the Antarctica being low on productivity and humans dying if they lived naked in it. Polar beers can live in the snow a cold naked. Not humans. Not the kind of animal species we are.
In our current day religious wars of expansions are not coming from the Hindus or Buddhists. Mostly they are coming from one major sect of Islam: the Sunni world. And Saudi Arabia as an absolute monarch run by Sunnis that see Shia as heretics and want the whole of the Islamic world run by Sunni, sponsor much of the wars in the Islamic world. The Jewish in Israel might be said to try and expand their territory here and there.
As for the Ukraine region this political science piece, something of a bible today one could say for political scientists involved in the US Government, and religiously guides US foreign policy over the Ukraine and Russia per national interests is this book written many years ago. It's available to listen to per an ambition man reading the book, on youtube. He cuts up in several parts. But here is Part 1. The Grand Chessboard.
The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brezezinski: Ch 1 (Audiobook)
The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives is one of the major works of Zbigniew Brzezinski.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ36S-Vi2CA&t=10s
To understand American primacy and its relation to war, the philosopher most consider or take stock of the conception of "grand strategy" and its role in foreign policy.
Wikipedia article on "grand strategy" with a section of the essay explaining the conception of US Primacy. One can look that up if they are so inclined.
Now, bearing in mind the Prussian philosopher of war, Clausewitz argued back in the 1800s that war was a tool and means of politics , of political goals. Here is an essay on "grand strategy" on the Foreign Policy Research Institute website.
fpri.org/article/2011/01/defining-and-t ... -strategy/
Defining and Teaching Grand Strategy
Timothy Andrews Sayle
January 15, 2011
Grand strategy is a phrase that evokes instant and easy associations. The term immediately evokes a cast of historical actors and events: Thucydides and The Peloponnesian War, Bismarck’s Realpolitik, or the Grand Alliance of World War II.
Second, for students of political science or policy studies who wish to think about formulating policy, Liddell Hart’s definition offers little guidance about the purpose or objective of a grand strategy. An important element of Liddell Hart’s definition is indeed to achieve a political objective; but in Strategy this political object is defined in some relationship to a defined enemy in an ongoing conflict.
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