We must return to mock combat to avoid not a true extinction, but something close enough that you might wish it was one.
Let’s face it; mankind can already chuck around some very impressive energies. Nuclear weapons alone are a big check to our future survival chances if biological agents and chemical possibilities are not enough, and all three of these are not yet at their maximum potential. Our desire to make better weapons is logical; Bullets and bombs and mortars can kill millions and cripple entire generations already as we have seen in the world wars and even recently in places like Africa and Asia. So to stop the guns and shrapnel, you build a big red button. Building mightier weapons than a man can carry keeps us all safe, right?
I say wrong. Mankind has the destructive energy right now to reduce you and yours to the late medieval age. Forget the nation part of this equation, forget about any current culture. A tech level is a tech level. In a hundred years time we could all have even worse weapons aka a big radiation party and some kind of super-pox is also invited. Nobody wants to live in the rebuilding stage of a civilisation after two hundred million dead, no hospitals, damaged sewers, no imports/exports, roads or airports, no power. Its survivable sure, but why bother? And thats without some maniac really trying to make an ash heap of the world on purpose.
We must return to sticks and stones, else the atom and microbe will one day break our bones. We must be prepared to sacrifice rationality to save ourselves; Earn the fame of a romantic warrior for your country and humanity may yet avoid the great filter! Ride the joust like a pro and save humanity! Step up to the enemy line wearing a mask of feathers and threaten to cut their giblets while having a dance! Wrestle that one enemy champion to death and begone the real terrors of combat in our precious and vulnerable stage of civilisation…
How can we erode the supposed usefulness of all our modern arms in light of all the terrible cultures that knock em dead shoot em silly wars seem to produce? Unshackle ourselves we must, and learn to have a good fight and hold hands after it all.
While there have been plenty of headlines about games supposedly causing violence, in fact during the time that video games have been a thing violent crime has dropped substantially across most of the developed world, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
Of course neither a drop in violent crime, nor indeed the drop in the number of wars being fought, will ever make nuclear weapons (and the knowledge of how to make them) disappear.
C’mon guys, you really didn’t get that he was talking about having those instead of battles? Which happened a lot less than some people think, but did happen occasionally.
Actually, it probably is coincidence, at least mostly. There is strong evidence linking that drop in violence to the end of leaded gasoline, strong enough that it looks like the gasoline accounts for most of the change. But it does at least make it hard to argue that video games increase crime.
I’m sure everyone is well aware of that, and just realizes that it is a naive and simplistic idea that would only work in a world were people are exactly like they aren’t.
Oh, and to the original idea: The problem with war is not that people die. Some things are worth dying for, after all. The problem with war is that the stakes are too high. Suppose, for instance, that China decided to resolve that whole Taiwan thing once and for all, and sent in the military, to which the US inevitably responded, and boom, China and the US are now at war and killing people. Yes, that’s bad… but suppose instead that the leaders of China and the US instead just sat down to a game of chess and decreed that the winner would determine the fate of Taiwan. That’s still bad. Why should the fate of Taiwan be decided by a chess game? One can argue that it’s best for the people of Taiwan to decide their own fate, or one can argue that it’s best for them to be aligned with the stronger nation (where “stronger” can be defined in any of a number of ways), or one can argue that it’s best for them to be aligned geographically with whatever major nation happens to be closest, or whatever. Not all of those arguments are very good, but they’re definitely better than saying that it should be aligned with whichever country is headed by the better chess player.
I was thinking something similar, but Godwining up the whole thing. In the 1940s Hitler wanted to take over the rest of the world. In the 1940’s the rest of the world didn’t want to be taken over by Hitler. So let’s say that the rest of the world and Hitler each assembled a team for a mock battle, and Germany won. Would the rest of the world say “It’s a fair cop, gov’ner, you rule us now. We’ll turn over our Jews and gays and blacks for extermination post-haste” or would the rest of the world say “fuck this shit, we aren’t going to let our futures be determined by the results of some stupid game, hand me that gun.”? People might be willing to let a game determine the directions of their lives–until the consequences get high enough that they are willing to kill or die to avoid them.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that to put it as an “Actually…”
My understanding of the drop in violent crime is that it’s been almost simultaneous across the developed world, from a peak in the early 90s. However the year at which leaded gasoline, paints etc were banned varies by country to country, and in many places was after violent crime was already declining.
I can agree it’s probably a positive factor, but that’s all I was trying to say about video games too.
On one hand we have become more civilized and on the other hand our weapons have become apocalyptic. We will never back off on weapon development but we may go back to a scorched earth policy or total domination by the strongest. Stability based on diplomacy is always preferred but never seems to be a permanent solution. Places like North Korea drive this point home. If North Korea can get their way by flashing a few nukes who will be the next one to use this same strategy.
The only way it would happen would be if people are willing to accept the outcomes of ceremonial combats and not “appeal” the decision by fighting real combat when the ceremonial combat didn’t decide things their way.
It’s not impossible. Americans, for example, live in a country where fifty separate governments have all agreed to submit themselves to a common set of laws. The EU is heading in that direction. But overall, we’re not there yet.
In a weird way, the Cold War did this. Sorta. We’d give a bunch of weapons to “our” Vietnamese or Hondurans, and they’d give a bunch of weapons to “their” Vietnamese or Nicaraguans, and they’d fight for a while, instead of us fighting.
Also, we’d assassinate leaders, or depose them in CIA coups, rather than sending in the Marines.
There really are alternatives to “war as we have known it.” (They aren’t particularly admirable…)
And by the way, so far as I’m aware, there has NEVER been an instance at any time in the past, when a large scale problem between two nations was resolved by ceremonial combat, or anything like it. There are plenty of LEGENDS AND MYTHS about it, but that’s it. No doubt the legends sprang from the same desire to avoid the mess of war that the thread starter has.
Small note to Trinopus: the proxy wars of the past, weren’t really at all close to the idea here that the threadstarter is talking about. Those were real wars, which were fought for the sake of either holding a perceived-to-be-real frontier, or to try to thwart the nation or idea that was ACTUALLY seen as an enemy at the time. The difference is, that regardless of the outcome of those wars, zero changes were accepted to have occurred in the superpowers.
Another observation: in a very real way, the heightening of weaponry’s power that has made it possible to fear for our existence, is itself an attempt to fight the kind of battle envisioned, just in a different way. Instead of having two warriors slug it out with clubs, two technology developers battle for advantage. If one ever succeeds in a permanent way, we would have the functional result of a bloodless war. And this too, has been tried throughout time, and has never occurred either.
Finally, in a real way, diplomacy is a form of combat by champions, to decide the fates of nations. We’ve been doing that for ages as well, and there HAVE been actual victories where both peoples’ accepted the decisions.
16 posts on this board and no mention of the Star Trek episode A Taste of Armageddon?
Sort of. Technically,is a chess game or mock combat that much different from a bunch of politicians making decisions by getting in a room and talking themselves to death?
We already have plenty of mechanisms to discuss and resolve political issues. The reason we have war is because sometimes people decides that they don’t give a crap about those mechanisms and decide they just want to take what they want.
You may as well have asked “Technically, is trying to make a decision based on logical arguments and empirical data so different from flipping a coin?”
Politicians are accountable to their populace; even if the talks are in private there are certain red lines of things that would be political suicide for them, and things that they can compromise on but they need the other side to likewise compromise (so again the people they represent are satisfied).
This is the reason why so many disputes are intractable; no-one can find compromises that seem fair. If the whole process was just beurocratic noise, or handing over a suitcase of money, all disputes could be solved in no time.
ETA: If you’re implying that the inevitable end of such negotiations is war, that really doesn’t seem to be the case: there are fewer wars happening in the world right now than at any time in modern history.
Your understanding is different than mine. From what I recall the drop in violent crime was associated with a local stop in leaded gasoline. Frankly, if it was how you remember it then it would be a useless theory.