The paradigm of the inevitability of violence

I bring the following topic up because I often find myself in casual conversations with people about it, and I find the results are usually frustratingly similar.

I have a few questions:

1. Do most people agree that "world peace" (that is, an end to violent conflict worldwide) is a worthwhile goal for humanity?
2. If it can generally be said that most people would like world peace, is this a realistic goal (not putting it on a timeline)?
3. If not, why is that?

More often than not, people I encounter seem to agree that world peace is desirable, but resign themselves to the seemingly inevitable "fact" that human nature dictates that war or violence of some sort will always occur, and that the best we can do is to minimize it. President Obama, Nobel Peace Prize winner himself, seems to be of this persuasion.

The problem I have with this sentiment is that I have difficulty understanding why people simply accept that war and/or more localized violence is inevitable. Generally, the rationale people give is that it has "always been this way," or that "human nature" is to be violent and/or greedy. Greed is the motivating factor behind all wars and violent conflict, after all - the attacker wants something that the defender will not willingly provide.

Why do we project our vision of the future based on the past? My degree is in history, and even I must ask this question. Simply because there has (insofar as we can determine) always been war, why do we assume that there will always be war? Is the story of human progress static? Furthermore, are we not seeing an overall decline in violence as compared to earlier eras in history? This video has been posted here before, but it bears viewing for those who have not seen it:

www.youtube.com...

Something to think about.

As for "human nature," why do we presume to understand ourselves and each other so well as to make projections of how humans will interact with each other for indeterminately long periods of time in the future? Most people would agree that human beings are not possessed of the ability to see infinitely far into the future, yet we feel comfortable making statements such as, "There will ALWAYS be war," "People will ALWAYS suffer," "There will ALWAYS be inequality," etc. If we understood our own natures half as well as we posit that we do, I would argue that we would not have nearly as much violent conflict as we do in the first place.

Furthermore, even if we can state that we have human nature pretty well mapped out, why do we assume that it is fixed? If we accept evolution, is it not possible that our "nature" could change as human beings evolve, both biologically and technologically? Is it that hard to imagine a world in which present causes of war and violence, such as scarcity of resources, economic inequality, and religious fervor, have been made irrelevant by the progress of our species?

It seems to me that a large part of the popular resignation to the paradigm of the cycle of violence is a fundamental lack of imagination. Consult John Lennon's song, "Imagine" for more on that. In statistics, there is something called a Markov process, which is a process in which the likelihood of a future state is determined only by the adjacent state, either the present state just before the given state, or the one immediately following, not the past chain of events. I would put it to you that a future state of world peace, utopia, etc. is entirely possible and even probable given enough time. All it requires is a paradigm shift in human consciousness, and probably in technological progress as well. In a world of plenty, would we need to fight each other? Conflict may be inevitable... but is violence?

Food for thought.

reply to post by CrowServo


Psychologist Albert Ellis makes a similar claim, in his school of psychology called Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy or REBT. He says the root of anger, and the desire to harm someone, is almost always related to variations of implicit or explicit philosophical beliefs about other human beings. He further claims that without holding variants of those covert or overt belief and assumptions, the tendency to resort to violence in most cases is less likely.

I discus about this on a thread of mine about evil

Why do people accept it ? By blaming some one or something else ?

You ask:

1. Do most people agree that "world peace" (that is, an end to violent conflict worldwide) is a worthwhile goal for humanity?
2. If it can generally be said that most people would like world peace, is this a realistic goal (not putting it on a timeline)?
3. If not, why is that?

The answer to one is probably "yes."
The answer to two is definitely "yes."
Three is not applicable.

The reason I say that number two has the answer of "yes" is because the unrest and issues we see are related to entropy. If we can draw usable energy from the "Dark" Energy (and there are many signs suggesting that we already have found ways to draw usable energy from it, but that these ways are persistently suppressed), we will add virtually infinite energy - which evidence suggests is negentropic in its very nature - the entropy in our social structures will diminish, the power elite will lose control over people, and, in fact, we all will exchange any power over others for autonomous control of our individual selves.

Money will dissipate - because money is an accounting of "energy credits" (See Jeremy Rifkin's 1980 book, Entropy, for a detailing of how and why this is). "Infinite money" has no meaning in a social structure.

BUT... We have to gain access on a wide scale to extraction methods. As long as it can be hidden, we will continue using entropic energy sources, adding to the power elite's control and the entropy in our social system.

So whether we will achieve this depends on many things, all involving the release of the information on this vital and novel source of energy.

Firstly, you have to realize what catalyze wars/violence, which is a simple answer if you're a perceptive individual. The three most prominent conflict catalyst are Religion, Media, and Greed off the top of my head.

People has been precondition to accept abuse, and believe violence is an inevitable fate of human nature. The latter is proven evident to people simply because the media mainly portray the "wicked and bad" of the world, instead of the Good. The media always endeavor to give people "juicy stories" and what they call "juicy stories" are primarily the shocking and horrible. This is on a daily bases and it will continue indefinitely in the future to keep the people entertained. As of now people has become so use to the media stories of the horrid and the unspeakable, that they accept this portrayal of a bad world as commonplace.

A man killing his son literally doesn't surprise anyone anymore, which can lead to the conclusion they accepted the reality of a bad world, and see it as to inevitable and never attempt to make a change.

Secondly, society is a debt centric collective. This debt centric concept catalyze "fear" and keep people lock conforming to society expected standards. People are too distracted to critical think on how society is breaking them apart piece by piece, and the education is filled with such transient society conforming issues that's it's nearly guaranteed to turn a individual to a society conformist. I actually believe I'm divinely gifted for being rebellious against society at this age (18) and not conforming to mainstream media/religion. It's quite amazing once I really think about it. Nevertheless, society is packed with so much society conforming methods that it's nearly impossible to break free. People that come to conspiracy site, such as this one to question reality is pretty damn gifted and are making the step of breaking free of society.

But in my humble opinion the biggest break humanity has to make is separating from controlling religion and sometimes I just don't know how I broke away from it. Humanity has to learn to save themselves rather than allowing some shadowy figure in the sky to do their saving. For all we know religion could have been a primary tool primitive societies constructed to control a society, since their methods of controlling aren't as advance as ours currently and I made a post similar to this statement a week ago.

Actually man made God and his image. Considering we're anthropocentric beings and we've been this way for thousands, approximately over 6,000 yrs ago, it's a credible claim. Additionally, back then we still had corrupt governments that possessed primitive means of controlling. Since the government didn't have the necessary tools to control us such as our television and all other forms of media we possess today, they decided to control with books and "lo and behold" our bibles came into fruition.

[edit on 18-2-2010 by GrandKitaro777]

The sense of inevitability you mention reflects the distracted awareness, or unconscious sense perception as it relates to formation of meaning in the mind. The words that we use like "war" mean something obvious to everyone. It is a function of an ideology that we share. Ideology carries a negative connotation due to the implication that anyone with an ideology opposed to there's, has a "false" ideology. The enemy is rendered falsely aware, and neither party pauses to examine how it is they have come to believe they are in sole possession of truth, beauty, and civilization, perceivers of the true reality. We feel this without thinking, feel it is inevitable, but there are potential moments of intervention.

The inevitability of conflict exists partly in the blind formation of the thoughts and habits of perceptions in our heads, the stories that we tell about ourselves in history books, about the way people are, about the way we eat and clothe ourselves, to cover up our disillusionment as a people. Each crisis is a moment of honesty, to peek under the covers; we know "it" is not working, "things" are going bad. But because we are wounded, and the blood is obvious, we are fascinated with its aura, its searing authenticity.

Video games, Army posters, Veteran's Day, and the Star Spangled Banner with "bombs bursting in air". There is beauty in war, in precision death, domination and sacrifice. Powerful feelings of loyalty, sacrifice, the greater good. We have "imagined" a world in which its "self alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order" (Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936). It has a certain "fascismo" about it, as Mussolini might say.

When transcendence is complete and the paradigm has shifted, the mechanisms of meaning and ideological production are in place and the zeitgeist crystallized, there still remains the possibility that by an emotional act of imaginative identification the people have been misled, imagined a solution that is more doctoring than cure, more placebo than medicine.

"Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech. And all great movements are popular movements, volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotional sentiments, stirred either by the cruel Goddess of Distress or by the firebrand of the word hurled among the masses; they are not the lemonade-like outpourings of literary aesthetes and drawing-room heroes.

Only a storm of hot passion can turn the destinies of peoples, and he alone can arouse passion who bears it within himself."
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Originally posted by CrowServo
The problem I have with this sentiment is that I have difficulty understanding why people simply accept that war and/or more localized violence is inevitable... Why do we project our vision of the future based on the past?

We have nothing else upon which to base our projections of future human behavior. As a degreed historian, can you point to one example of a peaceful and pacifistic and successful culture on Earth? Ever?

No. You can't.

You can look anywhere in Nature and see, quite obviously, that territoriality rules on planet Earth. We call it "war," and we lament it for some reason, but it's what happens all across Nature, every moment of every day.

There's no such thing as an organism that doesn't encroach on the territorial imperative of another organism. Take it down to the level of plant life, if you wish. Species of lichen, so similar botanically that they scarcely seem distinguishable from one another, carry out territorial battles until the weaker colony is driven to extinction.

This is how Nature works, and we see it on every level of existence.

Now, can we imagine humans breaking from this purely natural cycle? Sure, we can imagine it — we can also imagine human beings sprouting wings and flying about, we can imagine human beings turning into superheroes, we can imagine all sorts of nonsensical things.

But violence and war are essential to what we are. It's driven our intelligence, it's driven our technologies, it's driven our civilizations to the high level that we see today.

Without violence and war, we'd still be picking fleas from our armpits in a tree down in Africa somewhere, our brains still the size of a racquetball. Where there is no violence, there is no challenge to survive. Where there is no challenge to survive, there is stagnation.

— Doc Velocity

Originally posted by CrowServo
I bring the following topic up because I often find myself in casual conversations with people about it, and I find the results are usually frustratingly similar.

I have a few questions:

1. Do most people agree that "world peace" (that is, an end to violent conflict worldwide) is a worthwhile goal for humanity?
2. If it can generally be said that most people would like world peace, is this a realistic goal (not putting it on a timeline)?
3. If not, why is that?

We had a bit of turmoil in my locale in recent memory. People seem to compensate with the 'Old West' mentality. Where, a hired gun is just a "stones throw away".

Addressing your post's topic, Violence, when called upon, will propegate. I WILL walk the streets where the talk is, and listen to those whom later have this tendency, but lack the ability. Due either to physical constraints, vanity, certain defeat; what have you...

War is accepted because of the last tale...The Spoils of War. Where the peaceful Neutral nations got away with the booty. IE, Sweden, Swiss, who I believe still have untold treasures, according to some old man I see on the TV, anyways,

Originally posted by Doc Velocity
We have nothing else upon which to base our projections of future human behavior. As a degreed historian, can you point to one example of a peaceful and pacifistic and successful culture on Earth? Ever?

No. You can't.

Of course you can't. So far, all energy used to operate all societies has been entropic - it creates disorders in the social structure.

If we could shift to the infinite, negentropic and ubiquitous energy of the universe, rather than the present disordering energy, something we have never seen before would arise.

[edit on 2/19/2010 by Amaterasu]

Originally posted by Doc Velocity
As a degreed historian, can you point to one example of a peaceful and pacifistic and successful culture on Earth? Ever?

No. You can't.

I did say that my degree is in history, but I do not consider myself a historian. Nevertheless, cultures are composed of individuals, and that is where I consider true change to begin. As an individual may be a successful pacifist, so may a culture of such arise and become the norm.

For historical examples, I'd argue that we are still in our childhood as a race of beings, and that we'll eventually have plenty. Of course, you and I and everyone else here will likely be long dead by the time this happens, so both perspectives are unprovable. But still, there is the example of Ashoka, the ancient Indian warlord who renounced his violent ways, converted to Buddhism, and promoted a successful kingdom where peace, nonviolence, vegetarianism, and leniency to prisoners reigned.

As for the claims of violence being natural, I'd argue that conflict may be natural, and violence may occur within groups of organisms which lack the capacity to choose otherwise, but human beings do have the capacity to choose. Wrought by violence or not, I don't think much of this "civilization" we've carved out, but we're stuck with it for now. I think just as much and better could have been accomplished through our ancestors working together rather than against one another. We can choose to be peaceful and cooperate, and engage in nonviolent conflict. If one can do it, all can, given enough time. Perhaps the rational component we have evolved will continue to develop until such time as our descendants realize that violence is counter-productive.

If I may quote a band, Bad Religion, "No progress ever came from war - only a false sense of increase." Justifying violence amongst humans by referring to examples of other organisms which engage in it makes no more sense than social Darwinism. And yet, to quote BR again, "Our evolution didn't hinge on passivity." We are at a point, though, when we can resolve conflict through peaceful means. We do it every day, and we are getting less violent. If that trend continues, I believe that violence will end for good... but as I said, it's unprovable since we'll all be long gone by then.

I don't think imagining that human beings will get over their violent urges someday is on quite the same level as imagining that we'll grow wings - but hell, I don't even discount that possibility! Everything is one thing until it is something else. Conflict and violence are not the same thing. Our survival needs are gradually being met, and the "challenge" to survive is indeed less than it used to be for most people. That should only continue to be the case, but I disagree that it leads to stagnation. The more of us who survive, the fewer of us who are killed or disabled by means of violence, the more chance we have of progressing as a species. Challenge can take many forms, and nonviolent problem-solving is one of them.

But as I said, the whole thing is academic since we're a long way off from peace. I just want to provide some balance by suggesting an alternative way of imagining our distant (and therefore unpredictable) future.

Originally posted by Amaterasu

Originally posted by Doc Velocity
We have nothing else upon which to base our projections of future human behavior. As a degreed historian, can you point to one example of a peaceful and pacifistic and successful culture on Earth? Ever?

No. You can't.

Of course you can't. So far, all energy used to operate all societies has been entropic - it creates disorders in the social structure.

...

[edit on 2/19/2010 by Amaterasu]

The entropic solutions used for fuel these days have one significant advancement: They prevent mongrels from perpetual advance...whereas fuel supply will halt, not limit, an advance.

Perpetual motion may be possible, but could you imagine a revisionary W., h***bent on World Policing, without limits, while the 3rd World Terrorized Nations feebly raced about in equivelance of Golf carts...

Unimaginable, as entropy will wear down the fines of Engineering feats. This, is applied Scientific Limitology.