Comments | onefamiliarface: 208,002 Books Never Written.

onefamiliarface

208,002 Books Never Written.

Apr 15, 2009 01:26

I was reading a little bit on World War 2 today, and it pushed my mind into all of those bodies that I could never possibly understand. This is not only because they have participated in events which I literally cannot fathom, but also because of how many lives were lost. The lives of people roughly my age or a little younger. A whole generation ( Read more... )

Comments 8

zigmazag18 April 15 2009, 00:04:26 UTC

Oh you know perfectly well the "start of war" is more involved than that. It's not as though a few thousand people got together and declared in unison that they wanted to kill some rival group of humans for their land and such and then did it. War was created before personal identity. So you're an able bodied man of ancient Greece and the world was formed by so many gods. Why did they attack Troy anyway? By all accounts of history it was the workings of a small number of gods, some squabble, an honor slighted --> the largest recorded instance of all out war. Why'd the individuals do it? What the hell else were they doing? it was just what you did then ( ... )

onefamiliarface April 15 2009, 02:20:41 UTC

Yes, and I am quite aware of the trappings of Social Darwinism among other things and purported causes. But it boils down to my above reasons, and what you said is exactly what I am talking about ( ... )

zigmazag18 April 15 2009, 17:27:28 UTC

oh no. in the beginning nobody survived by themselves. the only thing that survived was community, and society based around that. The community wasn't made to protect the individual, it de facto came about to protect itself, to survive ( ... )

onefamiliarface April 16 2009, 03:29:07 UTC

I want to make clear again that I was more talking of the origin of modern wars than I was the origin of war as a concept. Still, I disagree that all wars are waged over resources, in that those resources have not always necessary (and that latter is the key word). If the resources are not necessary, then they are not the base reason ( ... )

zigmazag18 April 17 2009, 16:40:11 UTC

Alright, so there was a semantic thing with resources. I can't think of any national-scale war that began for resources in your sense. Part of this I'd say would be due to the human condition of not fighting when you're beaten down. Slaves, sweat shop workers, etc. historically are extremely reluctant to fight back against their conditions until things start looking up for them. So long as they're beaten down they tend to stay down. So on a national scale, they're not about to wage war on a neighboring nation for resources ( ... )

onefamiliarface April 18 2009, 16:51:21 UTC

I am not dealing in semantics when talking about resources. We are talking about the same resources (with the same definition), so there is no semantical difference. The difference is that you are saying that we pursue these resources for biological reasons, whereas I say that such is not the case ( ... )

zigmazag18 April 20 2009, 16:28:44 UTC

Oh I wouldn't say the modern era is being marked by an unprecedented bout of peacefulness. Surely we've seen more war than any other century in the history of the world. At the moment things are more calm than they have been, but the middle ages had its peaceful decades as well. It's all a bit out of perspective with the difference in information travel time and transportation etc ( ... )

onefamiliarface April 21 2009, 08:17:29 UTC

I just happened to pick nationality, religion, and certain resources out of a hat. The point is merely that I was originally arguing that wars are not caused by the undervaluing of human life (though that is involved). After your initial comment, I also added that, in my opinion, War is not rooted in biological causes ( ... )