Scientific American: "War Is Our Most Urgent Problem. Let’s Solve It" By John Horgan

[grahamhgreen]

My answer to the above question: No, there is no more urgent problem than war. Not climate change, pollution, overpopulation, oppression, poverty, inequality, hunger, disease.

If you seek solutions to any of these problems, you should also devote at least some effort to ending war, for several reasons. First, war exacerbates or perpetuates our other problems, either directly or by draining precious resources away from their solution. War subverts democracy and promotes tyranny and fanaticism; kills and sickens and impoverishes people; ravages nature. War is a keystone problem, the eradication of which would make our other social problems much more tractable.

Second, war is more readily solvable than many other human afflictions. War is not like a hurricane, earthquake or Ebola plague, a natural disaster foisted on us by forces beyond our control. War is entirely our creation, the product of human choices. War could end tomorrow if a relatively small group of people around the world chose to end it.

Third, more than any of our other problems, war represents a horrific moral crime. Particularly when carried out by the U.S. and other nations, or by groups that aspire to or claim the legitimacy of states, war makes hypocrites of us and makes a mockery of human progress. We cannot claim to be civilized as long as war or even the threat of war persists.

.......


My answer is that nations and other groups should act in a manner consistent with the ultimate goal of eradicating war once and for all. This is what I call the “end-of-war rule,” which I spell out in more detail in The End of War. My own country, the U.S., is the world’s most egregious violator of the end-of-war rule, and not only because over the past dozen years Americans have waged two major wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. The U.S. also maintains by far the biggest military in the world, in terms of spending, and it is the biggest arms dealer.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2014/08/12/war-is-our-most-urgent-problem-lets-solve-it/

FURTHER READING:

The End of War, paperback, forward by Douglas Fry, McSweeney’s, 2014. http://www.amazon.com/End-War-John-Horgan/dp/1938073126/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407671952&sr=1-1&keywords=the+end+of+war

[tk2kewl]

1. war is over

If you want it

[grahamhgreen]

2. Exactly.