This was in response to my vote for Greed as the cause.
The reason I capitalized Human Nature is because I get tired of so many things being dismissed by simply declaring “Well, it’s just human nature.” You can find some people who exhibit any kind of behavior you care to name, does that mean all of these things are Human Nature? What about things like serial killers. Is that Human Nature? There probably are some basic characteristics of human beings that are virtually universal. Whatever those may be, those are the things I would ascribe to Human Nature. Aggression is not a universal human characteristic, for example.
When I took a Cultural Anthropology course, I learned about some Pacific islanders who engage in competitive gift-giving. For two years or so, all the members of one group on the island make gifts for the members of the other group. The way one group achieves elevated status relative to the other group is to give better gifts than the other group presented to them last. I think that’s really cool.
We have become so accustomed to a world organized and operated on militaristic principles, especially as spread by a few European cultures, that we think that’s the only way for the world to operate. That’s not true. And I don’t consider this mode of behavior to be Human Nature. It’s primarily cultural, and not universal.
Any ideological beliefs based on unsupported ideas and opinions. Religion makes up the bulk of these, but not 100%.
I decided not to pick radical Islam because that on its own can’t cause fighting on a “threat to world peace” scale without other ideological beliefs in the background.
The mistake people make about religious beliefs is that they think religion drives aggressive invasions. Its the other way around.
If a society becomes crowded and short of fertile land, water,and living space (lebensraum) they find a reason to move next door. The neighbours do not like this. Ergo the invading party finds a reason to justify the invasion such as they are heretics, we are bringing them to God etc.
The point is such invasions are driven by population pressures and religion is a useful excuse - not a reason in itself.
Religion may not be the reason a leader decides on a policy, but the power it has to cause larger numbers to follow such policies is barely rivalled. Also, it can and has been used as an excuse for far less rational purposes than lebensraum.
Many of these groups also showed off their status by putting their possessions into a pile and burning them. It was a way of showing they were so successful they could afford to destroy their wealth.
Excessive anti-acquisition can be just as stupid as excessive acquisition.
Actually a pretty brilliant thing to do when food abundant, and people are tempted to live day to day without making the stockpiles that can get them through a famine. Sacrifice encourages people to produce a surplus, while keeping that surplus from flooding the market and discouraging production.
China doesn’t represent a major violent threat. Geographically, they have no viable ways to expand, and they have more than enough land and population. More importantly, they really do mean it when they say they are not expansionist. Now, there are some questionable exceptions when it comes to what they consider “historically an intrinsic part of China,” but beyond those areas they really have no desire to invade any place. Even enthusiasm for taking back Taiwan is dying down among politicos, and basically they only reason they throw bones to the idea is to keep the peace among the unfortunately influential extreme-nationalist crowd, who has picked it up as the cause.
Yes, they deal with some bad mofos in Africa, but that’s not really by choice. All of the good mofos and somewhat-sketchy mofos have been in bed with Western powers for ages. All that’s left for China to be influential among is the people we decided we wouldn’t touch for one reason or another. China is largely concerned with doing business in the area, and they’d probably much prefer to do that business with regimes that are stable and un-crazy.
Anyway, there are certainly shifts in power, but it’s extremely unlikely that China is going to show up in major violent conflicts any time soon
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned this yet. As long as there is poverty or the threat of poverty, people will fight for survival by any means possible.
“At a meeting of South-East Asian nations in 2010, China’s foreign minister Yang Jiechi, facing a barrage of complaints about his country’s behaviour in the region, blurted out the sort of thing polite leaders usually prefer to leave unsaid. “China is a big country,” he pointed out, “and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact.”…total military spending in 2012, based on the latest announcement from Beijing, will be around $160 billion. America still spends four-and-a-half times as much on defence, but on present trends China’s defence spending could overtake America’s after 2035…China worries the rest of the world not only because of the scale of its military build-up, but also because of the lack of information about how it might use its new forces and even who is really in charge of them..
In the South and East China Seas…things look different. In the past 18 months, there have been clashes between Chinese vessels and ships from Japan, Vietnam, South Korea and the Philippines over territorial rights in the resource-rich waters. A pugnacious editorial in the state-run Global Times last October gave warning: “If these countries don’t want to change their ways with China, they will need to prepare for the sounds of cannons. We need to be ready for that, as it may be the only way for the disputes in the sea to be resolved.” This was not a government pronouncement, but it seems the censors permit plenty of press freedom when it comes to blowing off nationalistic steam.”
The article agrees it is unlikely that major conflicts involving China will occur any time soon. But that’s an awful lot of saber-rattling and threats from a country undergoing major military expansion. And the Chinese don’t seem to share your view that there are no outlets for territorial expansion in the region.
I don’t know about global peace but in my house the main threat to peace is definitely the toddler. She starts all sorts of wars with the ten year old and the cats. She’s also trying to take over the television and has invaded her sister’s room multiple times.
So encourage the building of stockpiles by destroying them? That seems like a plan that’s really unlikely to work.
If I was living in a society that had a practice of destroying any excess in a display of status, my response would be to make no effort to accumulate any excess. Why work on producing resources that are going to be destroyed? Instead I’d put out just enough effort to produce what I need to live as I needed it. In other words, I’d be doing exactly the kind of day to day living you’d oppose.
It doesn’t create stockpiles, it creates increased production that could be stockpiled if need be. It makes sure farmers are planting a little extra each year. That doesn’t matter 9 years out of 10, but when that one tough year comes around, the fields will be prepped, the labor force ready, and the store houses big enough to get through bad times.
And it is converted into something immensely useful- status. You live in a society that basically does the same thing. Indeed,
I disagree. It’s virtually impossible to tell what somebody is thinking. So it’s better to judge them by their actions. And China is expanding so their actions say they’re expansionist. And if they’re expansionist now, why assume they won’t stay expansionist in the near future?
I agree China is mostly expanding into regions the West has ignored. But China is expanding into those regions. There was no requirement for them to do so. Countries don’t need to expand - it’s a voluntary choice they make. If China was genuinely non-expansionist, they wouldn’t be expanding at all not merely expanding into places where they have easier opportunities.
And this isn’t all just economic expansion. China is forming agreements for military bases as well.