'Before man was, war waited for him'

[svalbard]

Evidence of a prehistoric massacre extends the history of warfare

I found this article informative and it got me thinking(which is always dangerous). Is a state of peace an artificial construct of the human mind or is it a natural evolution? I still see plenty of violence around the world so I wonder do we subconciously(sp) wallow in the horror and misery if violent suffering.

 

[Venusian Broon]

An interesting thought @svalbard

If humans 'removed' all the reasons for conflict and aggression then surely a state of peace would be 'natural'. So to give a silly example, if we invented a Star Trek replicator that could manufacture anything from virtually nothing then why fight for resources? (Silly, because, yeah how's that going to work )

But then how would one combat jealously and envy, say? Or the hundred and one other more psychological reasons that allow violence to creep in. Possibly require us not to be human? (I've often thought that the humans in Star Trek are more alien than the 'aliens' they interact with!)

Because aggression can be positive too. It can be channelled into something other than destruction and death. It can be the driving force behind creative arts and healthy competition. I personally think it's part of what we are, and maybe we have to take responsibility of some of the negatives (and try and minimise them) to keep the positives.

Yours puzzingly ?

 

[svalbard]

Good post VB. I will come back to you on this tomorrow. Too much wine imbibed at this hour.

 

[sknox]

There is a long continuum between individual violence and war. These include everything from cattle raids to piracy to rebellions, civil wars, feuds, police brutality, state-sponsored terrorism, and so on. War, in its modern manifestation, is almost a minor player in all that.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

So to give a silly example, if we invented a Star Trek replicator that could manufacture anything from virtually nothing then why fight for resources? (Silly, because, yeah how's that going to work )

Because you need resources to feed into that replicator. And the resources I'm using to build a galaxy-sized supercomputer to allow me to simulate an entire universe in VR for TES95 are resources that you can't use.

If anything, local manufacturing tech (aka real-life equivalents to the replicator) are likely to make conflicts over resources worse, because whoever has the most resources will have the biggest robot army and the biggest collection of giant mining robots to collect more resources.

To eliminate resource conflicts we literally need to be able to create anything we want from nothing at all. Otherwise even a galaxy won't be big enough for us.

 

[sknox]

IMO, resources--land, money, natural resources--is overblown as a reason for war. Jealousy, rage, megalomania, and good old revenge are neglected by our modern, by-the-numbers mentality. Besides, human emotions make for better stories.

 

[Foxbat]

Other creatures have conflicts, which would hint that perhaps it's part of the evolutionary process of survival. Wasps raid honey bee hives. Ants have specialised roles, including soldiers. They attack other ant colonies, often carrying their defeated opponents off for food or as slaves.

War is not unique to Man, just more advanced.

 

[svalbard]

Other creatures have conflicts, which would hint that perhaps it's part of the evolutionary process of survival. Wasps raid honey bee hives. Ants have specialised roles, including soldiers. They attack other ant colonies, often carrying their defeated opponents off for food or as slaves.

War is not unique to Man, just more advanced.

We are experts at killing things and I wonder is that our natural state. To subjugate our fellow man. Be this through Football Chants on the terraces(I believe following sports teams is akin to being a member of a tribe in bygone eras), how CEOs are almost always sociopaths, getting promoted at work over your fellow workers, wanting better toys than your neighbours, how many friends you have on Facebook.

None of the above involve killing but they are about domination. Each in their own small and devastating way. And sometimes(maybe more often) we glorify in this.

As VB mentioned in his post. Agression is a prime ingredient in the the advancement of civilisation, for the creation of good things. Stuff that raises us up so that we do not have to kill.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Ordinary people cant contemplate killing except perhaps in extreme self-defence and so can't get inside the Napoleons and Alexanders to whom killing is justified and even the world is never enough, but they're always there.

As soon as a group becomes complacent and lowers it's defences, there'll be another group to move in and take their stuff.

From gangs of tribal raiders to organised Roman or Persian armies. No less certain in prehistoric times, than in the future -- forever. Unless human nature changes, which isn't at all likely, imo.

 

[sknox]

The Naked Ape, by Desmond Morris.

I shy away from generalizations about humanity (though I do use them in my fiction). We are not inherently good or evil, violent or peaceful. We are what we do, and most people don't do much. Even war entails only a small percentage of the species.

I see us as a species much like any other, to begin with. Unlike every other species, though, we are able to choose to be something beyond what our genes and chemistry dictate. It's that choice that sets us apart. It is the loss of choice--through slavery, illness, madness--that is the greatest human tragedy. I see a time when we are able to architect our genes and command our chemistry and finally be truly creatures of choice.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

Unlike every other species, though, we are able to choose to be something beyond what our genes and chemistry dictate.

Perhaps, but science seems to be showing that we have far less choice in behaviour than we'd been led to believe by philosophers and theologians. A lot of research in the last few years has been linking behaviour to genes or structural changes in the brain (e.g. the studies linking political beliefs to the state of the amgydala).

On the plus side, that does open the doors to changing behaviour by changing our genetics.

On the minus side, that does open the doors to changing behviour by changing our genetics. Because you can be pretty sure the people wanting to do it wouldn't be wanting to do it for our benefit.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

IMO, resources--land, money, natural resources--is overblown as a reason for war.

They're the traditional reasons for war. 'See tribe over hill? They got nice beach and pretty women. Let's kill men, steal women and lie on beach.'

It's only really in modern times that it's become cheaper to buy resources than steal them, so wars are mostly fought for ideological reasons. Or because it's Thursday.

Also, mass industrial production needed all the men it could get to work in the factories, so there was no longer the incentive to have a war to kill off the surplus population of unemployed men who might otherwise cause trouble at home.

 

[Dave]

In evolutionary terms, we aren't very different to the Homo Sapiens who killed all the Neanderthal males and raped their females. That is who we are - an extremely violent species who kills for pleasure. Look at the way we treat animals, heck, look at the way we treat the disabled, elderly, those with learning difficulties. Don't you watch the News? - gun crime, stabbings, terrorism, torture and cruelty - every single day. You may not like it, but it is exactly why we have become the dominant species on Earth today. Now, we need to learn and change if we are to survive any longer, or else we can exterminate each other instead.

I'm reminded of the Planet of the Apes quote from the Lawgiver:

Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

In evolutionary terms, we aren't very different to the Homo Sapiens who killed all the Neanderthal males and raped their females.

Actually, I would question that. The last few decades are the first time in history when genes that would have killed you off early in life are not being culled, and are spreading through the gene pool. The obvious example goes back to the amygdala studies I mentioned above, where significant numbers of people are unable to deal with threats properly due to defective amygdalas. Five hundred years ago, those people would have gone walking in the woods, seen a bear, said 'ooh, look at cute fluffy bear' and gone to pet it... and removed themselves from the gene pool.

One of the explanations for the Mouse Utopia experiments I found most convincing was that, by giving mice all the food they could eat and removing them from predation, the experimenters allowed genes to spread that would have killed them off in the wild. Which eventually led to complete collapse and the extinction of the entire group of mice as those defective genes reached the point where they stopped breeding at all.

I'm reminded of the Planet of the Apes quote from the Lawgiver:

Which is amusing, because non-human apes commonly murder each other. Domesticated humans are one of the least violent ape species.

 

[sknox]

>They're the traditional reasons for war.

See, when I look through the periods I know well, that just doesn't hold up. Much of the fighting in central Europe from around 1050 to 1250 was done primarily for religious reasons; specifically, the Christians trying to convert the pagan Slavs or the recently-converted Slavs rebelling and apostatizing.

A great many wars during the period 1200 to 1400 in Italy were wars of revenge and retribution, though there certainly were also wars fought for territory as well.

Innumerable wars were fought because someone held a title someone else felt was rightfully theirs. In fact, where we can identify motives and goals (a tricky business at best), wars fought in the name of justice were quite common.

Then there are wars such as with the Hussites or the Cathars. Wars fought for honor. Wars fought simply because the clan in the next valley over was the ancient enemy of our clan, and there were a hundred ancient slights that would justify an attack. Then there were episodes like the War of the Eight Saints, or the Sicilian Vespers, that are nearly impossible to summarize.

I do not mean to imply that land and money, were unimportant. I'm only trying to suggest that these materialistic motives were not the only factors in play and, in many cases, were not even the most important. We moderns are most comfortable with materialistic motives--we mistrust ideals and causes--and so we tend to project that utilitarianism into the past.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

Most of the monarchs of medieval Europe were related to each other, and there wasn't much point fighting over territory that their kids might come to own through marriage anyway.

But that was a small fraction of the history of warfare. Even at that time, there were plenty of other wars going on elsewhere in the world for territory and resources. And plenty fought afterwards, as those European nations expanded around the world and built their empires.

 

[RJM Corbet]

In evolutionary terms, we aren't very different to the Homo Sapiens who killed all the Neanderthal males and raped their females. That is who we are - an extremely violent species who kills for pleasure. Look at the way we treat animals, heck, look at the way we treat the disabled, elderly, those with learning difficulties. Don't you watch the News? - gun crime, stabbings, terrorism, torture and cruelty - every single day. You may not like it, but it is exactly why we have become the dominant species on Earth today. Now, we need to learn and change if we are to survive any longer, or else we can exterminate each other instead.

I'm reminded of the Planet of the Apes quote from the Lawgiver:

The lowest common denominator.

And there's a warning there, about becoming complacent in our 21st century first-world to the danger of war -- or perhaps the certainty -- the only question being when and against whom?

 

[Edward M. Grant]

The early wars of the 21st century will be civil wars, as we transition from industrial to post-industrial societies. We're already seeing the early stages happening across the West, with America in the forefront.

Then, after the civil wars are over, we'll get the giant mining robot resource wars.

 

[awesomesauce]

Actually, I would question that. The last few decades are the first time in history when genes that would have killed you off early in life are not being culled, and are spreading through the gene pool. The obvious example goes back to the amygdala studies I mentioned above, where significant numbers of people are unable to deal with threats properly due to defective amygdalas. Five hundred years ago, those people would have gone walking in the woods, seen a bear, said 'ooh, look at cute fluffy bear' and gone to pet it... and removed themselves from the gene pool.

But given what we know about neuroplasticity, how much of that is immutable biological defect, and how much is socialization, and being raised in an environment where fluffy bears just aren't a threat? Are those amygdalas still defective if it comes to another human with a gun, for instance?

 

[Edward M. Grant]

Yeah, there is some question as to how much is genetic and how much is due to being raised in a low-threat environment while wrapped in cotton wool by their parents. I'm not enough of an expert on that part of the brain to know for sure. I suspect it's a mix of the two.