Will we ever exist without war ?

[megalithic]

I guess since war became a necessary evil back in the neolithic there's no real way of avoiding conflict due to a compoetition for resources, so can we ever exist without it ? till we eventually bomb ourselves back into some type of stone age, and start the cycle again that is ?

 

 

Apologies to those who've done this a thousand times btw, never come across this during my tenure here, and never discussed it elsewhere.

[PaliRichard]

I guess since war became a necessary evil back in the neolithic there's no real way of avoiding conflict due to a compoetition for resources, so can we ever exist without it ? till we eventually bomb ourselves back into some type of stone age, and start the cycle again that is ?

 

 

Apologies to those who've done this a thousand times btw, never come across this during my tenure here, and never discussed it elsewhere.

 

Do we have the potential to? Yes I believe so.

 

Will it ever happen? I think that is highly unlikely

[johncocker]

the more feminine we become and I mean that in a "sophisticated co equal sense" the more chance we have ,the world is a over masculine brutal mess it has been for centurys ,plus the femininist "pretend men " do just as much damage as the men they're imitating.get rid of them too while were at it and we might stand a chance

 

 

 

" war is to man what chidbirth is to woman"

[MrSmith]

Since humans are sometimes very emotional creatures and quite often passionately disagree with each other, its highly unlikely we will ever stop fighting, having said that, most people that do fight want to win, so as long as we can guarantee mutual destruction we should be able to avoid allout war.

 

One problem, some people believe that there is life after death and that death whilst fighting for a good cause will guarantee them an eternity in a better place, obviously these people don’t care if they die so mutual destruction won’t stop them fighting.

[Cavegirl]

I guess since war became a necessary evil back in the neolithic there's no real way of avoiding conflict due to a compoetition for resources, so can we ever exist without it ? till we eventually bomb ourselves back into some type of stone age, and start the cycle again that is ?

 

 

Apologies to those who've done this a thousand times btw, never come across this during my tenure here, and never discussed it elsewhere.

 

If we were to regress to such an extent that we relied upon Stone Age technologies, we probably couldn't advance into a new Bronze Age again. We've mined all of the easy to reach ores already, we now have to have advanced technology to reach the deep pockets that are left. It would take millions of years for the Earth to replenish these surface ores.

 

That said, I believe that for 50,000 years homo sapiens have engaged in cooperative, egalitarian, non-warlike (but not non-violent) behaviour. That's the natural order of our species. Even mathematical game theory supports the view that optimised behaviour is cooperative, not competetive and nature always optimises, that's the basis of evolution.

 

So for 3000 years now (since individuals began to hoard rather than share precious metals) we've behaved abnormally. We have short life spans so we rarely recognise the longer patterns, but if we lived for 500 years we would have direct knowledge of all of these revolutions:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebellions#1500.E2.80.931699

 

I think the length of that list highlights how highly unstable we are as a competetive society. For a global society under that level of almost constant instability, as Yeats puts it "the centre cannot hold", something has to give and it will. That's the nature of nature.

 

Warfare will end one day, it's inevitable, I just hope it comes about through philosophy and human behavioural studies rather than through plague, famine or war as many think is more likely.

 

---------- Post added 16-04-2013 at 09:44 ----------

 

Since humans are sometimes very emotional creatures and quite often passionately disagree with each other, its highly unlikely we will ever stop fighting, having said that, most people that do fight want to win, so as long as we can guarantee mutual destruction we should be able to avoid allout war.

 

One problem, some people believe that there is life after death and that death whilst fighting for a good cause will guarantee them an eternity in a better place, obviously these people don’t care if they die so mutual destruction won’t stop them fighting.

 

I think there's a big difference between interpersonal violence (crimes of passion if you like, where one person attacks another for some perceived reason) and warlike behaviour (where a leader sends those under his/ her control into war in order to gain control over resources). I don't believe that the former will ever vanish from human society but the latter most certainly will.

[MrSmith]

 

That said, I believe that for 50,000 years homo sapiens have engaged in cooperative, egalitarian, non-warlike (but not non-violent) behaviour. That's the natural order of our species. Even mathematical game theory supports the view that optimised behaviour is cooperative, not competetive and nature always optimises, that's the basis of evolution.

 

 

The first human wars started when humans organised themselves into cooperatives some 12000 years ago, with each community warring over resources. Before that time the small humans groups would have still fought with each other over resources.

[Cavegirl]

The first human wars started when humans organised themselves into cooperatives some 12000 years ago, with each community warring over resources. Before that time the small humans groups would have still fought with each other over resources.

 

Can you point to the evidence of that? As far as I'm aware there are no mass graves, no forts, no weapons that would be considered designed for war as opposed to hunting (such as swords) or any other evidence for mass murder from 12,000 years ago.

 

Why would Late Upper Palaeolithic people fight over resources? Aren't wood and stones plentiful enough?

 

I'm not talking about cooperatives in the modern sense of the word I'm talking about cooperative behaviour- sharing as opposed to hoarding.

 

There's no evidence for warfare until the Bronze Age (in Britain until the Late Bronze Age) as this article demonstrates:

 

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/gabrmetz/gabr0002.htm

 

OK I found your evidence on Wikipedia. It states

 

Before the dawn of civilization, war likely consisted of small-scale raiding. One half of the people found in a Nubian cemetery dating to as early as 12,000 years ago had died of violence.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#History_of_warfare

 

It's quoted from a book by L.H. Keeley (1996). However, it doesn't state how many people 'half' is, it could be 1 or it could be 50. Secondly, it describes the site as a 'cemetery' not a mass grave. There's an important difference here- a cemetery is used over a period of time, a mass grave is used to bury the dead of a specific incident. Cemeteries are not indicators of warfare.

 

The evidence you're referring to could be as palsy as 5 people dieing violent deaths over a period of 100 years- hardly evidence of warfare is it? It's just as likely that these deaths were caused by interpersonal violence.

 

The author also discredits himself by trying to use evidence of intertribal raids between American Indians as a means of stating that prehistoric hunter-gatherers were engaged in warlike behaviour. He omits the fact that the American Indians had had contact with civilised societies such as the Inca, Aztecs and the Mayans (who did fight over resources) and thus had a very different historic cultural influence.

[Anna B]

While ever we have arms dealers making profits and propping up economies we will have wars. It is in their interests that wars do not end.

 

Did you know that weapons is one of our biggest exports? And the men David Cameron took with him on his tour of the Middle East were mainly arms dealers?

[Draggletail]

I guess since war became a necessary evil back in the neolithic there's no real way of avoiding conflict due to a compoetition for resources, so can we ever exist without it ? till we eventually bomb ourselves back into some type of stone age, and start the cycle again that is ?

 

 

Apologies to those who've done this a thousand times btw, never come across this during my tenure here, and never discussed it elsewhere.

 

Someone once wrote a song about this very subject.

that!

[JFKvsNixon]

While ever we have arms dealers making profits and propping up economies we will have wars. It is in their interests that wars do not end.

 

Did you know that weapons is one of our biggest exports? And the men David Cameron took with him on his tour of the Middle East were mainly arms dealers?

 

I think that you have the equation the wrong way around, I believe that it's more a case of whilst we have wars there'll always be arms dealers.