How humans Could End War.

[alfredo]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327151.500-winning-the-ultimate-battle-how-humans-could-end-war.html

Among the revisionists are anthropologists Carolyn and Melvin Ember from Yale University, who argue that biology alone cannot explain documented patterns of warfare. They oversee the Human Relations Area Files, a database of information on some 360 cultures, past and present. More than nine-tenths of these societies have engaged in warfare, but some fight constantly, others rarely, and a few have never been observed fighting. "There is variation in the frequency of warfare when you look around the world at any given time," says Melvin Ember. "That suggests to me that we are not dealing with genes or a biological propensity."

[timeforpeace]

1. No, that's got nothing to do with little humans being the baddest predator the planet has ever had.

We're soft, we're slow, and we taste good, but gosh darn it, we kill like motherfuckers. Not in the genes? Fool.

[jgraz]

2. Here's the only way humans are going to end war.

http://www.vhemt.org

[conspirator]

14. Is that a branch of PETA? nt

[odai123]

3. I may be thinking too narrowly, but...

It seems that as long as there are people out there who want power, realize violence is the easiest way to get it, and can convince others to die for no good reason, war will still exist. Most people aren't like that, but it seems some always will be.

[imdjh]

6. I disagree about "most people aren't like that".

We are indeed like that. That's like saying that Queen Elizabeth I wasn't warlike because she never went to battle.

There is even an argument to be made the the higher your "eco-class" (just made it up) the MORE you contribute to the struggle for resources.

If I buy a pair of $20 sandals made by a Chinese worker who eats rice and garden vegetables and rides bicycle from his primitive dwelling to work and back I might well be contributing less to the struggle than a person who buys $300 American made organic sandals from a worker who lives in an air conditioned house and drives back and forth to work in a Subaru after chowing down on organic tofu and expensive mushrooms which are sold by people who have green houses and green cars and air conditioning and solar panels which were carried by trucks, etc....

[varelse]

4. If the human species has a future

the path to it is to end the addiction to violence.

Archaeologist Steven LeBlanc of Harvard University says that war is not a biological compulsion but a rational response to environmental conditions such as swelling populations and dwindling food supplies. He points out that some North American tribes fought savagely over land and other resources before the arrival of Europeans. But warfare also "stops on a dime", he says, as a result of ecological or cultural changes. In his book Constant Battles: Why we fight, LeBlanc describes how warlike Native American tribes such as the Hopi embraced peace when it was imposed on them by outsiders. "We are definitely malleable and susceptible to cultural influence," he says. Warfare is "not so hard-wired that it can't stop".

[alfredo]

9. Not nature, but nurture?

[imdjh]

5. Human nature and "in our genes" is not the same thing.

Human nature is not a scientific term in the same sense that genes are. Human nature is the observation of the natural state of the human being. Human nature isn't even instinct. Human nature is human nature- the observation of the state of being human and an extention of the condition of being an animal. Even animals make effectiveness or "profit" decisions on violence.

If you have food and I want food I will offer to purchase food. If the price is reasonable/harmless to me then I will pay it. If it is too high then I will negotiate. If you refuse to negotiate and I (and my family) are not particularly hungry then I will walk away empty handed looking for another source. If there is no other source and the need is critical, I will negotiate in a more threatening manner. If you hold firm, then I will either fight you for it or come back later with my cousins and kill you for it. That this occurs over and over throughout the cultures and centuries doesn't make it genetic, it make it human nature, our natural condition. The only reason we don't engage in this in the west and some other places is because we hold the highest class or rank in the world at the moment. We fight over other things, things as important but not as basic.

[YOY]

7. I can tell you how to do that without research.

Make it mutually unprofitable if not totally self-destructive..

[alfredo]

8. Where to start? Money, cut off the money.

Still, that doesn't change hearts.

[FarCenter]

10. War can't be stopped at current levels of population

War is driven by competition for resources.

There will be at least one more major war which will drop population to a fraction of the current level.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_cycles , and note the periodicity of the graph showing the Thirty Years War, Napoleonic Wars, and WW I and II.

The next total war should come after 2030 as population peaks and crude oil production collapses. Biological weapons should be very well developed by then.

[alfredo]

11. I've seen the same thing happen with local deer populations. Their numbers

increase beyond what the environment can carry and their population crashes. Most great civilization died from lack of water and fertile soil, not war.


War isn't always the best vehicle for population control. Disease and starvation works best.

[varelse]

12. Thank you for posting this article - it is worthwhile to read the whole thing

I am very glad I did.

[alfredo]

13. A bit of hope never hurts.

[HOLOS]

15. Remove Testosterone at Birth

[rucky]

16. Scarcity of Resources - both perceived and real.

mostly perceived

That's what I think drives groups to war.

[bvar22]

17. Want to end war?

Require those who decide to have a war to actually fight them.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

18. Nature vs Nurture: Most of the people on the planet today haven't experienced war.

Which certainly challenges the notion that "it's in our genes". Or that we're "preconditioned" to kill.

I put those concepts in the same status as "the devil made me do it".

"If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?" Joan Baez