If war is a part of human nature will peace ever be possible? Throughout history you hear the politicians and leaders give speech after speech about how great it is when a war has ended but in no time at all another one begins. I’m not so ignorant to believe that every elected official has the ability to avoid a conflict through diplomacy, nor do I oppose war in all circumstances. But when you think along these lines, will there ever be genuine peace? Not the unrealistic peace, I’m referring to the kind of peace where millions of people aren’t killed through war within a decade.
With this question in mind and being a Film Editor I decided to create a video titled ‘Our Wars In 2 Minutes’. Covers the major wars since WW1 up until ISIS. It’s violent and brutally honest, be warned.
Watch it, don't watch, either way knowing people's opinion on this subject would be interesting.
Well, I applaud tom’s mastery of Adobe Premiere, but aside from a series of stock footage elements smash-cut together and combined with a dramatic score, I don’t see any particular insight or explanation of note.
Well, the trend is a positive one, as far as I know millions of people weren’t killed in war in the 2000s, or 2010s (so far). As far as preventing war goes, there are a couple of promising strategies: making war unprofitable, and changing human biology. War, and group violence in general, is a strategic choice. Presently, it’s not a strategy that pays off for the vast majority of the globe; peace and trade produces better results. The exceptions are areas of civil strife, like Syria, wherein fighting against a corrupt, authoritarian regime can indeed be a rational strategy. So, supporting the spread of democracy and trade is a potent anti-war weapon.
As for transhumanism, that’s potentially a viable strategy for the future, if necessary.
I find it troubling that during my grandparents lifetime there has been World War 2, The Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, The Soviet-Afghan War, Iran - Iraq War, Gulf War, Afghanistan War, Iraq War and now the Islamic State War.
This of course does not even scratch the surface, War In Darfur, Rwanda War and so on. I’m wondering if anyone hear generally believes that war will ever truly bring about the peace we’re promised so often? Again, I’m not some naive pacifist, a group like ISIS will not be stopped through words alone but how can anyone believe that land or resources are more important then human life.
What opinions are you fishing for? War is obviously bad? Innocent people shouldn’t get shot?
What contrary opinions did you think might come forth that you could start a debate about?
That goes to my point: those wars had 60-85 million; 1.2 million, 0, 800k-3.8 million, 1-1.6 million, 1 million, 20-35k, 47-61k, 176k-1.1 million, and 250k (total for the Syrian Civil War), respectively. The trend is fewer wars, smaller wars, and less deadly wars.
The OP may care to read Steven Pinker’s The Better Angel’s of Our Nature. You can challenge some of Pinker’s conclusions but the trend is as you say, less violence over time.
I watched the video, you failed to show your premise that war is beyond human understanding - I find war understandable (though unpleasant) and have no real idea how you could make that claim. I don’t see anything really new or shocking in the video either, it’s just a variety of war footage and speeches. I honestly don’t get any real message from the film, if you were trying to convey something other than ‘a bunch of bad stuff happens in war’ I don’t know what it wass.
If you want to ask if peace is possible, you’ll need to define what you mean by ‘peace’ - we’ve certainly been on a peaceful trend since the end of WW2, with the number of people killed/injured in warfare going down both in absolute and relative terms. Developed countries have highly peaceful among each other - there’s been no significant warfare between the US, EU, Russia, China, or India in quite some time, the casualties come from interventions by those countries into less developed countries, fights between less developed countries, and civil wars. The current trend seems to be that the more the ‘third world’ moves up to ‘developed’ status, the less war we’ll see.
but, he did a really good job of selecting the correct images/clips and not making them too long. Most ametures don’t understand that a 1/3 of a second is better than 3 seconds… and it takes a lot of work to gather enough content when most of the items are only 1/3 or a second long.
As I stated in my original post, if war is part of the human nature can peace ever truly be achieved? There’s a lot to debate there. Through my own experiences many have argued that war is not part of human nature, that it is instead the circumstances and choices we make that lead to war.
That is of course true but I would say that to make such choices we as human beings, must have war in our nature. Then the question is why do so many people such as MLK and Ghandi stand against warif it is indeed within our nature? Well I would say they have complete control over such instincts and that we should all take steps to do just that. Resolve our conflicts through diplomacy. But there are those that will never submit themselves to such a process, someone like Hitler will fight to the last child. So how can genuine peace ever truly be achieved?
That’s the sort of conversation I was hoping for but with differing opinions to my own and one’s that I’ve already heard. I’ve read through this website for months and unlike most debate forum’s the user’s here actually know what they’re talking about!
Why do you say he selected “the correct images”? They don’t seem to have made any coherent argument except that “war is bad” - which I’m not hearing a lot of disagreement with.
I appreciate your entire message and by no means do I feel I know all there is to know about war, hence why I raised the question in my first post. I’m here to debate and learn, quotes like the one above are much appreciated in that process. You are right in saying we are on a ‘peaceful trend’ but this is due, in part, to the creation of nuclear weapons. For the first time in human history we have the capability to wipe out the entire human race, if peace is born through that is it really peace at all? This is just question I asked myself after reading your post. I personally believe in the MAD doctrine, as unsettling as it is.