This universe will end in entropy but how did it start and how many universes are there? Within this universe and for part of its history, energy progressively overcomes inertia. When all societies are fully developed, there will no longer be any need for conflicts either between or within them. Instead, there will be the possibility of maximum freedom, dynamism and creativity combined with long term preservation of the natural and social environments: energy and inertia. Poul Anderson quotes some speculations about consciousness surviving the heat death of the universe but such hypotheses go beyond my comprehension. Meanwhile, we have more than enough to cope with here and now. Imagination helps.
32 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree, people don't need to be poor or have rational reasons to fight and quarrel. Anything will do! Which is exactly what we see in Tahalla, in GENESIS.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Disagree. Anything will not do. There can be peaceful conditions where there is no reason to quarrel or fight. We can build those conditions, instead of saying that they are impossible.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I believe you to be unrealistic. People can and will fight about anything, no matter how prosperous they are.
Ad astra! Sean
And I believe myself to be realistic. There are many civilized situations in which people do not fight about anything and those situations can be extended.
Paul: they -temporarily- may not fight about anything. Note how Swedish politics have changed in the last generation, for example.
In general, one should suspect one's own reasoning when it tells you something you very much want to be true.
Kaor, Paul!
We are going to have to agree to disagree. I simply don't believe in what you hope for. I believe my views, and Stirling's, to be more realistic.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I don't think we are trying to agree. Just clarify disagreements. (I think I am more realistic but saying that doesn't get us anywhere.)
Paul.
At this point I will give qualified support to Paul's position.
Some societies have more or less violence than others. We can look at the other differences to try to find causes for the difference in violence. Cf: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker.
We see that wars *between* democracies are vanishingly rare, though wars in which one side is a democracy & one isn't are not particularly rare. We can look for reasons for this pattern & what factors help to make and keep a society a democracy.
Whether such things will ever *eliminate* violence can't be known until we try.
Kaor, Jim!
I remain skeptical. If Nation A has less crime and violence than Nation B, that will be due to the State in A being more willing to crack down on such things.
I am also skeptical about what you said as regards wars between democracies. All you need for such a war is for one nation to get so enraged at another nation that a war starts.
As long as human beings are human we are going to have violence, strife, contention, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
But our pre-human ancestors cooperatively changed their environment with hands and brains and changed themselves into linguistic human beings in the process and we continue to do this so that there is nothing unchanging in us or anywhere else. Nothing is unchanging. I have presented this argument but subsequent discussion continues to refer to humanity as if it were something unchanging. Nothing is unchanging. I understand that this argument is disagreed with but not why it is not referred to.
Kaor, Paul!
Exactly, I don't believe mere technological/economic changes will somehow remove the innate propensity all humans for potentially being violent, quarrelsome, contentious, etc. Anything can and will very likely trigger violence. A favorite example for me being chess players quarreling and fighting over their games.*
Nothing in real history and life convinces me you are right in your hopes. Our flaws, and their consequences, can only be managed, not "solved" or eliminated.
Ad astra! Sean
*The US Chess Federation's manual for the laws and rules of chess has lengthy and detailed legislation for managing and resolving disputes between chess players.
Sean,
But technology and economics are not "mere." They are what we do and what we do affects how we are. I do not accept that these propensities which you list are innate. They are potentials and therefore need not be realised. Many people whom we know are physically capable of committing murder but it is psychologically and morally unthinkable that they would do so except under the most extreme provocation which need never be allowed to occur.
Anything cannot and will not very likely trigger violence. How many chess players fight? And they can be brought up in circumstances where most and eventually all learn to accept chess as a game that it is unthinkable to fight about. Any that might still fight can become very rare aberrations at most.
Everything in real history and life shows that we have changed and can change further - not, of course, that we have made any future changes yet! Our flaws can be transcended and eliminated. I merely reply to your assertions with my assertions and we merely repeat ourselves.
My point that we are products of change and that therefore there is nothing unchanging in us is still not addressed.
BTW, no posts today because, for seven and a half hours, several hundred of us have been on a counter-demonstration.
Paul.
Sean:
"being more willing to crack down on such things."
A factor yes. The *only* important factor, I doubt it.
Yes. The observed rarity of wars between democracies does not mean they will *never* happen. Still having one war is better than having hundreds of wars each of similar destructiveness to this one hypothetical war between democracies.
So if it is 'a condition to be managed, rather than a problem to be solved', we can see what policies 'manage' it best.
We may never reach perfect peace, but anything that brings humanity closer to that is desirable.
(I now regard these dialogues as exercises in understanding another point of view and in clarifying my own point of view but no longer as trying to persuade the person on the other side of the argument. My point of view has changed immeasurably from the one in which I was indoctrinated and which I originally tried to defend. I hope to learn a lot more in another twenty or so years of life.)
Kaor, Jim!
For a State, any State to do what needs to be done to preserve law and order is precisely that, a crucial factor in whether the society that State rules is tolerable. And, of course, a factor in that State retaining legitimacy.
Given my belief in the imperfect, even Fallen nature of mankind, forms of gov't doesn't really matter as regards the rarity of wars. Because the potentiality for strife leading to wars remains in all humans.
"Policies" will be a big factor in how and when wars happens. So, since perfection is impossible, we have to expect blunders, fiascoes, acts of impulse/anger, etc., potentially leading to wars at any time by anyone.
Ad astra! Sean
"Policies"
And going by the historical record the best policy for preventing the blunders that lead to war between two countries is for both countries to be democracies.
Humans don't have to be perfect to look for what ways *reduce* the chances of catastrophic mistakes. Even if humans are "Fallen", that doesn't make such policies useless.
Kaor, Jim!
I disagree, democracies, like any other forms of gov't, can get into wars. The War of Jenkins' Ear occurred because popular passions forced a reluctant UK PM to agree to war with Spain.
Similarly, democratic War Hawks pushed thru a declaration of war on the UK in 1812.
And the democratic US waged a war of aggression against a weak, strife torn Mexico in 1846.
And the "Trent" affair in 1861 might have led to war between the UK and the US if a dying Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, hadn't revised the British Note to Pres. Lincoln allowing him to back down without being humiliated.
I agree with your last sentence--with the proviso that I don't expect all such efforts to succeed.
Ad astra! Sean
Perhaps I don't sufficiently emphasize what the claim of Democratic Peace Theory IS.
It is not that democracies don't go to war, it is that
DEMOCRACIES don't go to war against *OTHER DEMOCRACIES*
The cases you raise are not evidence against DPT because they are cases of democracies fighting non-democracies or cases where democracies got into a dispute that was settled without fighting.
I will add that in 1812 neither the US or the UK was fully democratic.
In fact, democracies haven't been around long enough for an analysis. Female suffrage only came in during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for example.
Most of the participants (Russia aside) in WW1 were -as- democratic as each other.
Kaor, Jim and Mr. Stirling!
Jim: Then I will make clearer what I was trying to say (with thanks to Stirling), I don't believe one bit in the "Democratic Peace Theory," primarily because humans in democracies are just as corruptible and prone to violence as anyone else. Second, Stirling raised a good point, democracies as you seem to understand that form of gov't, have not been around long enough to make categorical assertions about how peaceful they are alleged to be.
Mr. Stirling: Yes, but even Tsarist Russia, because of the Constitution of 1906 and the reforms of Peter Stolypin, was well on the way to becoming as "democratic" as the rest of Europe by 1914. No Sarajevo means no WW I allowing the monstrous Lenin his chance for seizing power in 1917.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
"...the monstrous Lenin...seizing power..."
Please acknowledge that there are different understandings of what happened and who did what in Russia. Do not agree. Just acknowledge.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I acknowledge there are "different understandings" of what happened in Russia.
And I emphatically disagree with all who sympathize with Lenin. The real hero of early 20th century Russia was Stolypin.
Ad astra! Sean
FWIW I got most of my understanding of the claims of Democratic Peace Theory from the book "Never At War" by Spencer Weart.
The Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_at_War gives a summary of the book which fits well with my recollections from reading the book quite a few years ago.
A crucial point is that for purposes of Weart's thesis, what we would consider imperfect democracies because they don't have *women's* suffrage, count as democracies if at least 2/3 of the male population could vote.
This increases the data set for evaluating the thesis to many states before the 20th century, including both the classical Greek city states, and the city states of parts of late medieval & early modern Europe.
He also notes that in oligarchic republics the elite that can vote lives in fear of rebellion by the non-voting majority. So he has two means of differentiating between oligarchic & democratic republics that give the same answers.
Note that by these criteria, in 1860 the northern US was a democracy & the Confederacy was an oligarchy.
Check the Wikipedia article to see if the book would be worth reading.
Sean,
We know by now whom you emphatically disagree with but there has to be an acknowledgement that many informed people disagree with you about that. Therefore, it is simply inadequate to state as if this were the full facts of the case that an individual monster seized power - end of.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Why are you so fixated on defending that hideous and monstrous creature? The Reign of Permanent Terror and the gulags forever condemns Lenin!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
There you go again. "That hideous and monstrous creature," stated as if it were a simple indisputable fact. Many people disagree with you. I have outlined at least twice, maybe three times, in combox discussions on this blog what I think happened and what then went wrong in Russia, the last time quite recently. I am not going to go through it again, especially since subsequent discussions simply do not refer to anything that has been said.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, it should be accepted as indisputable what a monster Lenin was! Solzhenitsyn, in THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, stripped away the last tattered rags of Lenin's "benign" mask. I read all three volumes and Solzhenitsyn relentlessly traced the origins of the horrors of the Soviet regime to the words and acts of Lenin.
I mentioned Lenin because almost any mention of Russia, esp. in the early 1900's, brings that tyrant to mind. Esp. when I think of vastly better men and alternatives, such as Peter Stolypin.
Russia is a dying nation in a demographic death spiral because of the regime Lenin founded! That angers me when I think of how hopeful the prospects were for Russia in 1914.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I ask you not to restate your view but to acknowledge that there are other views.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I did acknowledge the existence of such views above.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Yes but, if you try to round off a discussion by effectively saying that you are obviously right and the other side is obviously wrong, then that will never end the discussion!
Paul.
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