I doubt many professions are ‘rocket surgery’ once you understand it 
War is not inevitable. Conflict is inevitable. Do all conflicts have to be resolved by war? No they don’t.
Take my family for instance. Sometimes I have a conflict with my wife. Do I dress up in camouflage, grab a rifle, and shoot her in the head? Do I start punching her until she surrenders? Do I scream at her and belittle her? Do I calmly explain that the next time she disagrees with me she’ll be back in the gutter where I found her?
Or do I discuss the problem with her and find some compromise acceptable to both of us?
We haven’t had a war with Canada since 1812. Why is that, if war is inevitable? Because we’ve been able to resolve our disagreements with Canada without violence for 200 years.
Right now we’re dropping bombs on some guys in Syria. That’s war. Is it inevitable that we’re doomed to always drop bombs on Syria? No, in fact, we used to not drop bombs on Syria. So there’s every reason to expect that in the future we’ll find some way to stop dropping bombs on Syria, and our participation in the war will end. Will we decide we wanna drop bombs on some other guys? Seems likely. But if we drop bombs on some other guys in the future, that wasn’t inevitable, it’s a choice we made. Maybe it was a good choice, maybe it was a bad choice, maybe if we’d started earlier and done something else we could avoid those future wars.
For a while, France and Germany used to have a major war every generation or so. War seemed inevitable. Well, they haven’t had a war between them for 70 years. Only the oldest citizens of those countries remember the war. So if war is inevitable, how did this cycle of war end?
It ended because people spent a lot of effort setting up institutions that offered alternative ways of resolving disputes short of violence.
War is big business, there will always be a reason to go piss on someone’s cereal
All I want to know is: who did start the fire?
The OP may appreciate Let Us Become Cowards by Arthur Silber.
I think he’s cribbing a bit from the The Fog of War by Errol Morris. I noticed some clips from it, anyway. McNamara’s position is that war is so huge and chaotic that it’s beyond the understanding of any one person, which is how so many poor decisions are made. War in this sense is like a hurricane or the stock market.
This! But I understand if this was unclear, the beginning is brief.
War probably made humans the way we are. Without war we wouldn’t be human, love it or leave it. But lets find all the good things about war.
Like: * War drive innovation.
- War makes for thrilling stories and movies.
As long as people find a peaceful solution to problems to be ineffective, impossible, or unsatisfying, they will resort to war and violence.
Your thread reminds me of an article I read recently, The Ongoing Tension Between Power and Morality:
I guess the answer is that ethics are also a part of human nature, they demonstrably go wayyyy back, but it is something that has to be cultivated and nurtured in people, otherwise you only get their baser, raw instincts.
So, maybe peace is possible if there comes to be widespread global education in the classic philosophical questions. But that is problematic. People will not be able to agree on the answers to those questions, to the point of polarization and conflict. The PTB won’t want this in their populations as it will give people tools to undermine oppressive power structures and tilt them more in their own favor. Religions won’t want it because it will tend to undermine their power structures. And some people are simply deaf to ethics, or else toss them aside if it is advantageous- the highly educated and intelligent villains often cause the most damage.
To me it looks like peace is theoretically possible, but highly unlikely. OTOH, the historical trend other posters point out is a decline in war, so it is hard to be entirely cynical.
You need civilization before you can have war, and humans evolved into their current form thousands of years before we started up civilization. We sure as fuck killed each other before that, of course, but ten guys braining eight guys with rocks isn’t exactly “war.”
It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.
- Robert E. Lee
I once was in a discussion here with someone who insisted that war only started once we had agriculture/settlements as that was when there was something to fight over. I was of the mind that since apes have been observed in clan conflicts that didnt seem a reasonable assumption. So this ought to shut up whoever the hell that guy was! Remains of oldest scientifically dated human conflict found
n/m
Is this a recruiting video?
To the OP(and others throwing the word around): Define “War”, please. I mean, there is the basic definition of “a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state”…but that means that when you condemn “War”, you condemn those who fight on both sides of the conflict, don’t you?
Civilization, like war, is older than our species of humans. Neanderthals had civilization. Organised tribes, art, religion probably.
Chimpanzee goes to war. The most striking thing when digging up stone age remains is how many of them were killed by other humans. I’m not one of those who says we can never become better, and eventually stop war altogether. But war did help shape us and made us what we are today.
Absolutely not
“I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for just ten minutes?”
–Mr. Incredible
Why on earth not?