Has Science Found a Way to End All Wars?
Given adequate food, fuel, and gender equality, mass conflict just might disappear.
This was published by Discover magazine two days ago. By John Horgan:
Frans de Waal stands in a watchtower at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center north of Atlanta, talking about war. As three hulking male chimpanzees and a dozen females loll below him, the renowned primatologist rejects the idea that war stems from “some sort of blind aggressive drive.†Observations of lethal fighting among chimpanzees, our close genetic relatives, have persuaded many people that war has deep biological roots. But de Waal says that primates, and especially humans, are “very calculating†and will abandon aggressive strategies that no longer serve their interests. “War is evitable,†de Waal says, “if conditions are such that the costs of making war are higher than the benefits.â€
War evitable? That is a minority opinion in these troubled times. For several years I’ve been probing people’s views about war. Almost everyone, regardless of profession, political persuasion, or age, gives me the same answer: War will never end. I asked 205 students at the college where I teach, “Will humans ever stop fighting wars, once and for all?†More than 90 percent said no. This pessimism seems to be on the rise; in the mid-1980s, only one in three students at Wesleyan University agreed that “wars are inevitable because human beings are naturally aggressive.â€
Asked to explain their views, most fatalists offer variations on Robert McNamara’s remarks in the documentary The Fog of War. “I’m not so naive or simplistic to believe we can eliminate war,†said McNamara, who was the U.S. defense secretary during the Vietnam War. “We’re not going to change human nature any time soon.†War, in other words, is inevitable because it is innate, “in our genes,†as my students like to put it.
Even given adequate food, fuel, etc., people might still find reasons to make war, but they'd be far decreased. I'd worry more about massively destructive individuals.
May 15th, 2008 - 13:02
The basic idea I think is right. If the costs of war outweigh the benefits then it can perhaps be averted. Unfortunately throughout history and still today war has been an incredibly profitable exercise – not for those actually fighting in the trenches of course, since they’re disposable – but certainly for those who instigate it and supply equipment/materials. I agree with Jacob Bronowski’s view of war as a kind of organized theft.
May 15th, 2008 - 15:09
I see war slowing-down from the more “rational†warmongers, those that want land or money or power; but not from the more irrational brands, in which I include religious and political maniacs.
Of course, even this type of warmonger will be watered-down by increased prosperity and standard of living.
May 15th, 2008 - 19:29
What we have seen thus far in human history when it comes to war has been bloody competition between nation-states. Potentially, this could change in the coming century and after. From a dystopian viewpoint, the scope of war could change to include corporation battling for land/resources/consumers/products with private, mercenary armies or private armies of hackers in an age of information warfare. Either way, there will still be those that suffer for the greed/death lust of others. War will change, no doubt, but for a thing as cold and brutal to vanish forever, I have little hope. “Europa Revolts!” and there’s our old enemy again.
May 15th, 2008 - 20:31
It does look bleak in many respects, particularly in the short-term, but there is hope.
see:
Biological altrusim.
Game Theory altrusim.
Coordination games.
Memetics.
Glenn Reymold’s “Army of Davids.”
Paul Hawken’s “Blessed Unrest.”
Things ya didn’t see on the internet five years ago. (Well, ya saw ‘em, but they usually wanted money.)
change the world:
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make  the world a better place
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pay it forward
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helping others
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open source
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doing the right thing
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helping people
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May 15th, 2008 - 21:14
They forgot the R-word.
And I don’t mean resource.
View the CSPAN video: Pentagon’s New Map
May 16th, 2008 - 03:31
If you could design and create a virus (can also be seen as a metapher…you may use ‘technology’ instead) in you garage with the ability to prevent wars from happening (by changing the minds of the participants, disable them or even killing them),
what would you do? And if there are many people able to do that – how many of them would it really use to start their own war?
Some things could change within this century. It depends on us.
May 16th, 2008 - 23:36
@Javan:
You could use techniques from 4th and 5th gen warfare, info ops, propaganda, intel ops, group psych, non-violent forms of asymmetric warfare…and change the narrative and memes to generate a positive outcome. You’d have to interact with various and numerous identity groups, disciplines, venues, ideologies, activists, scientists, politicians, etc., etc., in order to ‘spread the message.’ Tailor your words specifically to that demographic in order to communicate to that demographic properly. By using as multi-layered ‘message’ and using multiple means and tools such as metaphor, analogy, allegory, humor, conflict, philosophy, facts, references and resources…
It is time-consuming though…requiring a very broad knowledge base and extreme forms of commitment, even a sort of uber-fanatical commitment. Inertia is a stone-cold bastard to overcome, though. …but it can be done. One person working alone with limited means and an internet connection can do it by him or herself, but it takes several years to begin to have a substantial impact.
…but it can be done.
May 17th, 2008 - 02:30
We really should get rid of all the dictators soon, because I don’t think we can survive the next arms race with supersuperweapons. After that, when the whole earth has been liberated as democracies there are no reasons for wars.
May 18th, 2008 - 13:51
Wars are fought by people, but wars are not fought for people. Wars are fought for memes and memeplexes, such as nationalistic memeplexes, religious memeplexes and all kinds of genetically determineted traits and biases such as power-over-others-feels-good and the barbaric I-don’t-mind-killing-people mindset still so prevalent among humanity. Free will and individual choice is absent. Humans do the bidding of pandemic memeplexes like they do the bidding of any viruses. We are hapless victims, our minds contaminated and controlled in so many ways and so totally it’s incredible that we have come as far as this without experiencing more destruction (WW 1&2 were pretty bad, but it could have been worse, much worse, were it not for the U.S.A.). If we cannot gain control over the memeplexes as our power over physical matter increases our chances of survival are going to go down rapidly.
Virulent negative, irrational memeplexes with views incompatible with and at odds with physical reality should be recognized as a threat of the greatest magnitude to the survival of humankind, because they actually make the choices regarding our lives, not the people infected by them. The whole of history is proof enough of this.
‘Nuff said. It you ain’t grokking it, I pity your memeplex infested hapless neurons.
July 7th, 2008 - 16:33
A few pressures in the direction of increased conflict to consider:
1. Military robotics and information technology may greatly decrease the casualties and financial costs incurred by technologically advanced powers in conflicts with less advanced ones.
2. Increased global demand for commodities, driven by global economic growth, will exacerbate the ‘resource curse’ and related military conflicts in the less developed countries. This could become truly extreme if robotics supplants human labor very widely, increasing the marginal importances of natural resource inputs still further.
3. Excess unmarried males in Asia, or ‘bare branches.’ The link between excess males and conflict is better-established than the above items (lack of food, fuel, etc, are in substantial part caused by poor institutions and civil strife).
4. Unstable arms races due to advances in automated weaponry and manufacturing, and ‘pre-emptive strikes’ to prevent the development of advanced military technology by the target states.
5. The acts of terrorist groups inciting wars between states. If 9/11 enabled two substantial wars, a nuclear or biological attack on an American, Russian, or Chinese city could bring far more havoc. For most plausible terrorist attacks with disastrous effects this would actually mediate most of the damage
July 14th, 2008 - 01:12
A friend of my called Daria Khaltourina has discovered a couple of years ago that civil wars in Africa have been very strongly correlated with reduced food consumption (in calories per day per capita). I think their findings were used by Russian president Putin a few years ago at one of the international summits on the topic of Africa.
So at least some wars will most certainly be prevented by adequate food supply.
P.S. References to relevant articles available on request.
May 30th, 2009 - 07:07
That warfare is a series of conflicts between two or more groups, which does bring to question who are the leaders in the conflicts. This is different from the war of the flea which has people searching for, supplies so survival arrangements for survival can be made along with, arrangements so supplies for survival can be had. Once those Guerrilla-Warfare groups grow, the politicians will supply the old materials and old agreements as much as possible, to the following group.
If items haven’t changed enough the guerrilla-warfare people will just need to arrange for personal-survival until, stable agreements and stable supplies are arranged. Those formal-wars are arranged by the people which are in political-power-positions, which act to maintain their short-term power even when this will destroy supplies needed for survival and materials needed for survival.
Those people which believe Guerrilla-Warfare to be a fun thing, which have not been homeless as I was in the past, will not understand there are agreements about all of those food supplies, including the dumpsters. These supplies and agreements are connected, which is how the man on the bottom is coerced. The mere act of staying alive is an insult to the eugenics-culture in America, which does deny the fact, any ignorant people on the bottom are often killed.
The group of people which push psychiatry then brag about how good they are, this sending of them to psychiatric-treatment so the can be methodically mutilated is a good idea. There’s plenty of cultures which have methods of forcing their worst possible futures from coming, those people in the position will proclaim, to pay them or things could happen. Every one of the horror-movies does prepare people for one thing, supplying the situation where every item feared will arrive in the most horrible possible way.
Those which feared the arming of the lower-class have paid for those arms, by recruiting them into the military. These people which don’t want violence on the street, want for law-enforcement to be funded by the property which can be taken, so the War on Drugs does create corruption. This situation will lead to drugged out zombie-like people with Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC)weapons, randomly attacking until the infrastructure does collapse, that’s my predicted happy-future.
September 12th, 2011 - 12:37
Psychiatric science is evidence based with its own peer-reviewed double blind experiments and scholarly journals.
It also saved me from insanity.
If you have evidence of ‘methodical mutilation’ please let us know