I was thinking about how we (USA) are always in continuous (ghost) wars and never try to negotiate for peace, to my knowledge.
How would a peaceful world look like?
One country and one languague or would a world power have to forcibly join everyone together?
Star Trek suggests we just need 3 successive wars (the 3rd being a nuclear world war) then meet aliens, and we’ll be OK.
To learn how to fight, you need to take part in fights.
There’s a book for you to read: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (Steven Pinker)
I honestly don’t think it’ll ever happen, people are too different for that.
Pretty porthole view of US geopolitics my dude. Peace isn’t zero sum, someone always has to give up something, and people don’t like to be made to feel like they’ve lost. I’d never want a homogeneous society either, too culturally bleak.
I don’t know that a completely peaceful world has ever really existed because human beings tend to be very tribal in nature. Therefore there is inherent competition that rises and falls in cycles.
Humans gotta human, and I’ll fight anyone that says otherwise.
Otherwise
Alright, that’s it. We are taking this outside.
I have no idea what we will do with it when we get there, but I’m pretty sure it involves fireworks and fingerprinting…
It’s too hot outside. Can we go somewhere with air-conditioning, like a movie theatre or something?
And there was peace.
We should start our own movie theater! With blackjack! And hookers!
As long as you’re talking about live hookers, because I’m done dealing with dead hookers.
We’ve all had something go full Tijuana before.
A lot of people will blame conflicts on power hungry individuals, on war profiteering, or on relatively simple characterizations of cultural prejudice (“Americans hate brown people!”). There’s truth in these viewpoints, but they’re limited by being framed in current sociocultural issues.
It’s very important to understand that there are ancient cultural feuds that people who were born and raised in the US are mostly ignorant of. For instance, India and China.
The reason that Afghanistan is such a mess internally today is that it was never a cohesive national culture in its history. The people who live there are comprised of many different cultural groups, many of whom are the descendants of various groups of invaders throughout the region’s history - and as such, many of the groups hate each other due to past territorial conflicts.
Every place you might look at in the entire world, the history is like this - an endless fractal of groups trying to conquer each other, or running away from some other conquerors and getting into conflict with the locals whose land they ran away to. It goes all the way back to the time that the first hominid picked up a rock and hit another one over the head. The conflicts are so old that no one remembers how, why or when they started, but the fear and the hatred remain.
These conflicts aren’t the product of modern international economic competition or ideological differences (capitalism v socialism, etc) or nationalist political division. Rather, the modern competition, differences and division exist today as an expression of the old conflicts.
To get to the world of peace that you have in mind, it would be necessary to wipe the slate of history clean.
Afghanistan is technically isolated throughout its history. The current government of Afghanistan couldn’t survive without overhaul of the economy.
“Progress over profection” That’s a saying in the 12 step program, but it applies to everything related to humans. We will never be perfect, but we can always be better.
I think Arthur C. Clarke wrote a novel about that? CHILDHOOD’S END.
That novel where people instantly abandoned religions after seeing how they started historically?
Yeah, not trusting that novel as a treatise about real humans.
No and I’d say diversity is worth over a homogenized society even if it comes at an increased chance of conflict. And it’s not like people who live in the same country and speak the same language don’t fight each other. People argue over mundane stuff like tv shows after all, and get into online wars and exoduses over social media platforms.
The peace you seek is probably only possible through massive brainwashing or an absolute privacy infringing totalitarian state that monitors everyone and is rapid in exterminating dissidents that are flagged for abnormal behavior.
The world is fighting fewer wars than ever in history. That doesn’t mean there are no wars, they’re just much fewer in number compared to the past.
We’re also competing and dominating resources in other, less violent ways. Economically, technologically, socially etc.
Believe it or not, we’re living in the most peaceful period of human history thus far. I’d recommend the book The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker which talks about how far we’ve come. That said, I see the threat of global warming, lack of fresh water, famine, and energy scarcity becoming threats to the current status quo, though. If we don’t figure some things out as a species, we’re likely in for some turbulent times in the next hundred years.
Lack of fresh water and energy scarcity is already becoming a problem in Africa iirc.
I had the impression that those struggles have been going on for a long time. Like 30+ years.
Is the issue growing worse, or was the previous struggle sensationalized to an extent?
Afaik The issue is growing worse.
You are right. Thank you for the insite!
Its not really about warfare, but abbout divisions, and mostly class divisions, be it political or economical. And goverment always becomes corrupt and at least in the case of the main 3 superpowers, starts getting into shit that doesnt really concern them, be it cold war shit like the contras or the mujahadin or be it espionage and the taking down of sovering states to install their own pupet governments for banana companies among other stuff and whatever the hell the soviets where doing. Thats why i propose that we should create an A.I. overlord so that it replaces human leadership and distributes resources as needed (by persons) and exploits them in a sostainable way. But not A.I. like the language models that we have, no, im talking singularity type shit, but there has been good progres with what we have right now. And i believe the fate itself of humankind rest on the fact that we build such A.I. since we as humans have proven uncapable of governing ourselves without mass murder, starvation, fear and inequality.
Well I agree that the human solution seem to be really far or completely impossible.
Nice try AIEDIT: okay nevermind I refuse to derail such a thoughtful comment.
I wish, the shit we have is just for political bullshit.
I think having freedom opens you up to attacks. Kind of like loving makes you vulnerable to heart ache.