[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by Puster Bill

You know, nothing in the past 5,000 years of written history leads me to believe that this will some day come to pass. Sadly, there will be more wars (and some really bad ones) in the future.

It is inevitable.

The best we can hope for is that the 'Good Guys' win (or, at least the 'lesser of two evils'), and that they are over quickly.

I am not so pessimistic about the future (that being the distant future). Though now we see conflicts occuring constantly and people suffering around the world, people have been suffering for a very long time. People have been warring for a very long time. Pose the question of why do we fight and the answer could be the solution. It is theorized by some that our male-dominated patriarchal society began as a need for a strong military tradition in order to be able to survive the kind of tribal warfare that was breaking out over resource pockets needed to survive. Back when technology was in its most primitive form available resources were so scarce that survival was fascilitated by war; stealing from others what was needed to survive. Fast forward to the 18th Century and we find the science of economics well in development. The guiding principle of economics, that which drives all that it is concerned with, is scarcity. Scarcity is defined as a lack of sufficient resources to fulfill need or possibly want. Scarcity means hunger, thirst, and anything else humans need to survive. War began, so the theory goes, as a means to survival. In the ensuing thousands of years society has grown into many varied hierarchies and the class system has come to define our needs, wants, and capacity to fulfill the former 2. However today technology has given us the ability to say something we've never been able to before. We can fulfill the basic needs of nearly every, if not every, person on the planet. Don't misinterpret that as being the capitalist needs (like BMWs and face lifts) but the old fashioned needs, you know the ones that peasants had. Now people continue to die and suffer even though we have the ability to aid them. But now we have the potential to alieviate all basic human suffering. That gives me hope. Why? Because there is a chance that people might gradually wake up and become active citizens of their nations and actually realise that war is not necessary. That sounds utopian but Europe was once constantly at war and now is in a Union. One day the whole planet could be that way. Not within my lifetime or my children's or theirs children's or even my great grandchildren. But life goes on. Humans always survive and grow. In the last few hundred years the importance of the individual has become prominant in society. Theoretically individual rights are paramount to the integrity of society. Maybe one day all individuals will have empathy for those who suffer unjustly and maybe we'll help them rather than kill them.

There are no good guys. There are no bad guys. There are only human beings. And human beings are more than anything the product of their circumstances. The wealthy and powerful stand to gain most from war but they do it with the support of the poor and meek. Look at the Russian revolution. It ultimately failed but it proved that the power of the meek trumps that of the few wealthy. All we need to do is collectively recognize our true potential. Those who fight believe they must. We can give them a better life and we must remember that fighting is obsolete.