- Sid Tafler
- Victoria British Columbia
- Canada
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Is war inevitable? Is it a natural state of human affairs or an aberration, absent from our distant past and perhaps, our future as well?
Human history is splattered with blood. 160 million people died in dozens of wars in the 20th century alone.
Although armed conflict still dominates the headlines, fewer people are fighting and dying in wars. Apparently, there were fewer war deaths in the last decade than any other in the last 100 years.
Go way back to prehistory, and you see little if any evidence of war. The living sites of Stone Age people are remarkably free of mass graves, fortified sites and depictions of war on cave art. Also missing are images of shields, which always rise as defensive weapons when people are attacked with spears. We can't say for sure there was no warfare 20,000 or 50,000 years ago, just that there is little or no sign that there was.
So can we abolish war, just as we seek to abolish slavery or smallpox? Or will we still keep fighting each other to settle our differences, with ever-more sophisticated weapons and techniques?
sven johansson
Everywhere human have lived – in a micro-world – Vikings on Greenland, people on Easter Island etc – the base for life is always over-used all to destruction mainly for stupid status symbols – like Moai, castles, cathedrals and Pyramids. 300 years ago – the same destruction was imminent in Europe because land for food production was all used to capacity at the state of agriculture society as of then.
Then exploration begun – opening up Americas, Australia and New Zeeland where the European overpopulation could move to avoid starvation. Europe turned industrial making tools needed for the immigrants. Now that period is past and all bankrupt. Americas and the whole world are now over-using and adding pollution to nature toward destruction in the name of “economics” simply meaning more money – disregarding that “being economic” actually mean “to use wisely – to preserve”. The fact is that any politician standing for “preserving nature” would be thrown out of office next day! Land – water and air pollution are destructive worldwide with CO2 as extra bonus. We know that melting out glaciers - now on way - will drown whole island countries - by raising ocean level. One month of 50 C in populated US and Canada - would take out every electric grid that can be constructed – then add the utter stupidity of the re-occurring “bubble financing” - not for high quality life - but status junk - and there is no hope. I will discontinue my time on TED – there is no hope for wisdom – only want.
sven johansson
War killings peaked in 2 world wars because of enormous number of soldiers and enormous size of battlefields. Today war combat is in limited areas, mechanized and with low number of soldiers. As result - war is now very ineffective and last double or triple times without closure one way or another. And - sadly - we cannot even stop bullying within families – bullying in schools - at work – within nations and between nations. We must realize that the human specie is programmed highly ego-centric; anybody and anything – incl. nature - “be damned” - to the bitter end. The only solution would be effective international law - valid inside every nation – and international police force and justice - powerful enough to enforce and deter against violations - worldwide. Killing 9,000 in Syria – or throwing acid in the face of a woman - is international crime against humanity – and so is the hysterical greed for materialistic status-junk now destroying the suitability for life on our planet Earth.
CO2 on Earth was made low enough - for high forms of life - by being absorbed in primitive forms of life that now is out of circulation in oil and coal. Burning fossil fuel release CO2 as greenhouse gas that will increase Earth’s temperature toward that of - Venus 450C. "Drill Baby Drill" and we end up as on Venus - all life scorched to death. Is that what our greed are going to give our children and future generations? Homo Sapient? Sapience? Even a grand of wisdom in humans - we would learn from 3 disasters of overuse of limited resourses: Vikings on Greenland, Polynesians on Easter Island and Mutineers on Pitcarn Island. In those examples the means for live were used up in short time. We have now reached total limits of our planet - food, water and air - with increasing CO2 - the bitter end.
Hubert de Bourgogne
According to Wikipedia Venus has an atmosphere, consisting for almost 100% of CO2 and having a pressure of almost 100 bar at a 10% lower gravity than Earth. It means that on Venus a bit more than one million kilogram CO2 is resting on each square meter of its surface. Here on Earth we have only 4 kg/m2 CO2. Some century ago it was only some 2 kg/m2. This increase of 2 kg/m2 is blamed to have caused an increase of temperature of 0.5 °C.
If CO2 has the greenhouse effect it is blamed for, then, taking in account that a) Venus is nearer to the Sun where the heat inflow from the Sun is twice the value here on Earth, b) the radiation outwards goes up with the fourth power of the absolute temperature, then the temperature on Venus should be far above 5,000 °C instead of some 500°C. And that means to me that CO2 is not the cause of global warming.
I believe that the bottleneck is not food, water or air, but the price of fuel, that will disrupt the economy.
sven johansson
Hubert de Bourgogne
In order to prevent misunderstanding, lets split the problem in separate parts.
1. CO2 or carbon-dioxide. It may be difficult for you to believe, but the whole present CO2-hype is fake, bogus, lying, nonsense, cheating, or whatever word you want to use for spreading untruth. It is proven by Venus, twice influx of heat from the Sun as on Earth, over one million kg/m2 CO2 and a temperature of only 450 °C. On Earth they say that the increase of CO2 from 2 kg/m2 to 4 kg/m2 during the last century has caused an increase of temperature of 0.5 °C. If that would be true, then Venus should have a temperature well over 5,000 °C. Calculate it your self, look in Wikipedia for Stefan–Boltzmann law and “radiative power”.
2. The global warming might be caused by a small but steady increase of the number of sunspots during the last 120 years. I'm not sure about that, I'm only sure that it is not caused by CO2, whatever All Gore and others may say. Nevertheless politicians continue to waste money on fighting the non-existing CO2 problem.
3. You are completely right about the wasting of energy. I have worked long days at temperatures well over 50 °C and I never needed air conditioning. The same applies for our second house we use during the summers. The temperature there is usually well over 30°C and we have no airco nor need one.
4. There real problem is the impossibility to increase the production of oil so it will keep up with the growth of the consumption. That did doubled the fuel prizes since 2010 and further prize increases will disable our economy. We should stop using nuclear power plants based on uranium-plutonium fuel because it is too expensive and too dangerous. Look for my comment on that at some other recent conversation.
5. North America can produce more electric energy than needed without using any nuclear or fossil fuel, nor wind turbines or solar cells and without producing any pollution. Look for my post at a question from Khayam Arif
pat gilbert 100+
As an example of this my brother was commenting that he quit listening to the news because whenever he would listen to the news he found himself getting angry. Who benefits from his anger? The Tv station as they sell more advertising when the sensationalistic crap goes out on the air waves. I might add I find myself feeling the same way when I listen to NPR.
Guy Dauncey
RH is completely right about war being choice. Pinker specifically contrast our defensive, aggressive nature with our "better angels" nature, and shows how a number of huge civilizational factors have steadily removed the need for us to choose the worse of our natures, and empower us to act form our better natures.
The evidence is so compelling, I'd love it if his 700 pages could be condensed down to make it easy for everyone to understand the evidence.
There's no "perhaps" that we are moving in the right direction - it's a trend that started 5,000 years go, when we started trading tribal life (where a third of all males die from an act of violence) for states and governance.
(from wikipedia...) Peter Singer positively reviewed The Better Angels of Our Nature in The New York Times. Singer concludes: "[It] is a supremely important book. To have command of so much research, spread across so many different fields, is a masterly achievement. Pinker convincingly demonstrates that there has been a dramatic decline in violence, and he is persuasive about the causes of that decline."[6]
Sid Tafler
that we had a few thousand aberrant years, with lots of war and killing,
but many thousands of years before and after with very few wars.
You can walk down the street or
into a store in perhaps 99% of the villages, towns and neighbourhoods
in the world and have nothing to fear.
Some of us may be carnivores, most of us eat plants or animals, but I doubt it is in our
nature to kill other humans. We are like wolves, efficient hunters and killers, but a wolf very rarely
kills another wolf.
R H 20+
Allan Macdougall 50+
It is perhaps a sad reflection of our nature that we seem inclined only to respond positively to the aftermath of disaster, rather than responding positively beforehand via considered and enlightened politics and education.
Ken brown 30+
Troy was taken because of economics rather than Helens looks.I think in the future we will see more acts of seemingly mindless acts of sudden violence.Rage and lynch mobs with no real target like that of those two young white men who killed 5 black people in the states this week? I have seen the young men in our country go up for GBH,they get together on a friday or saturday and drink very fast then they cruise the streets looking for a lone person and attack him.
This is a common practice that has no real reason behind it other than a person that has suffered a great loss and has gone out to drown there sorrows and without realizing it but not stopping it, is looking for rage release.I've seen this in our young and the figures for this type of crime is on the rise.
edward long 100+
Terry Glavin
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Tribalism, nationalism, religion, greed and old grievances still exist.
Perhaps humans are moving in the right direction. But a long way to go.
The tensions may increase as the global population grows and competition for oil, water, land, food, resources grow.
Part of the more peaceful decades reflects the end of the cold war and peace due to US hegemony (except where they wanted a war or don't care). West Europe has grown tired of conflict and is more united.
As China rises, perhaps tensions will increase as the US feels more challenged.
Robert Baird
Mankind has never had a greater capacity to destroy itself, but also has never had less large-scale violence in it's history. I profess no expertise in the subject, but let's all hope that it's war itself, and not mankind the bringer of war, that becomes extinct.