When you train men with guns to be "peace keepers" there can't be peace because they have guns and they have guns in order to use them.

You can't accomplish peace by killing your enemy, because they want to live and you will find they don't go peacefully.

You can't accomplish peace by enforcing it on the population because you will need a peace keeping force with guns.

Enforcing peace with mind control or drugs or low EM waves is just wrong.

Not everyone will be willing to give up their guns. It would not be wise to do so anyway. Once you do, you are at the mercy of .... the ones who don't care about you or peace.

Yes we want peace. It begins with being at peace in your own mind. Stop resisting what is. This is a shared reality and everyone is trying to survive. Everyone is afraid of the big bad wolf, the governments, the aliens, their neighbors, etc.

That's the way it is.

I avoided saying we need to agree on purpose. We need to make the personal gains not just a matter of opinion but actually tangible. If it were just a matter of agreement we would be twisting perception in order to make unfair exchanges seem generous in both directions while I am saying that we should make sure everyone actually gains something of quality for lesser expenditures on their part.

As for having a bigger entity that will punish you for stepping out of line, it doesn't really have the flaws people think.
The flaw it does have is that when people have some behavior that has been criminalized and thus cannot approach the law enforcement entity to minimize the damage from abusing interactions they must take up arms for themselves and are no better off than if it did not exist. It's still big so they keep hiding from it just as before.

So when you think of groups like the Mafia that is what you get in the absence of that arm of the state that is an unbeatable behemoth. In societies we are familiar with that absence is only small gaps among certain groups but if you look at history such a system has been absent to many people in various nations and the way they react is the same, aside from some minor formation details that vary by culture.

No, if men are left to their own devices, there will always be constant struggle and violence. Man is distinct from all other life forms on Earth. But, in some ways we are quite similar to the animal kingdom. Violence can be irrational and inexplicable at times. On other occasions, it is the manifestation of a "stronger" individual asserting himself [herself] over those he [she] wishes to suppress, eliminate, or control.

There will never be a "Utopian" society because we are fallible and imperfect. Though, in Christianity, the Bible speaks of a day and an age when there will be no more wars, suffering, or killings. It also speaks of an eternal life.

War is a direct result of the mind-control already in place on people everywhere. To eliminate war, people must TRULY be free first. After everyone can think again after being freed, logic should be able to iron out the major problems. TA-DA! No more war. Ever.

But "gain" is inherently intangible. It is based entirely on a subjective estimation based on personal desires (purposes). "One man's trash is another man's trasure" my be trite, but it is nonetheless true.

Good education, good education and good education is the answer .

The Internet rules. It allows (most of the time) a free flow of information.

Governments control by controlling information and keeping people in ignorance.

I am addressing the 'canned' statement:

No, if men are left to their own devices, there will always be constant struggle and violence.

Yes I have heard it before, so many times. "IF men are left to their own devices..." What exactly does that mean? Does it mean "IF men (humans) are allowed to be free..." ... there will always be constant struggle and violence."

But what is it that we usually say we are fighting for? WE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. We fight to survive. We fight for the right to live free.

And yet your statement implies that if men are "free" that they are "left to their own devices" ... therefore it follows that they should not be allowed... to ....be.... free.

This is the rhetoric and propaganda espoused by those who will take away your freedom, and seek as much control over you as possible.. and they will tell you it is for peace and freedom because they know that is what you really want.

I say leave men to their own devices. Insure their survival, don't threaten it. The money used in all the wars could probably feed and support everyone in the world and be used to build safe societies of peace. But instead it is used for war because they have said that..

if men are allowed to be free... left to their own devices.. they will murder and kill each other.

I simply do not believe that.

No, it's not. Having children that survive to have more children is a very discrete measure. We don't usually work out equations in our heads and come up with a number for how much we think any particular thing will impact that, but we behave as if we had most of the time. Dogs don't calculate lift and gravity when they go to catch a frisbee either, yet they go to grab it right where those equations say it will be.

But if we make the difference between options greater you'll very easily be able to say which one offers the better conditions for child rearing: living with one mate and however many children you can support in the wild gathering any edible plants nearby and hunting animals with whatever you can make from plant materials and rocks and defending yourself from more desperate people who hope to live another day by stealing any animals you may have killed but not yet eaten
vs
living in a shack someone else built by shining other people's shoes in exchange for coin with which you can buy foods other people have prepared and giving up some of that coin to people who are prepared to defend you if someone else tries to steal your livelihood.

Both are still rough living but one is much better, and at the level I described you should be able to see how a bunch of people living the first way could just about go straight to living the second way by making frequent exchanges.

People talking freely doesn't really "fix" anyone who has learned about the world in an ignorant fashion. What people do most with internet forums is deposit their opinion as if they're dropping it into a ballot box.

Evaluating anything that disagrees with what you already know is barely existent in these settings.


Then how about what I've been saying?

If (wo)men are left to their own devices they will do whatever works. In our old setting war and that sort of thing worked but in a well constructed society those do not work very well.

I do like that.

Alright. As of right now our society isn't structured towards giving people incentive to behave better than that. We've probably progressed away from it about as much as we have by luck.

Many of the controversial issues of the day have solutions on one side that work against the nasty mode of life. I think a lot of liberals ask for things that are excessive and unrealistic but the general idea of extending support systems to help people in desperate situations would go a really long way. We could cut violent crime down 10 or maybe 100 times.

Cutting down war is a little bit trickier because by supporting local people you often hinder businesses (but if the hindrance is getting sued for allowing your employees to be electrocuted thanks to exposed wires in the shower I don't think anyone in their right mind would just let them do that to drive down costs.)

Japan mostly figured out that quality was the key to long term success and that quarterly reviews were garbage, way back almost on the radioactive death gasp of their war effort. We've been much slower to realize that. We still offer incentives for abstract thinking in the face of research showing that hinders productivity and we've had to learn several times that building fake value ends almost tragically.

So I think there is a solution on the global commerce front as well, and if we got all of the countries of the world involved in the upper end of that you'd never want to go to war just because of how badly it would screw up consumer products- shooting them would basically be the same as shooting yourself.

I have often thought something similar. If we have our business in other countries, and they have their business in ours and our economy depends on trade and commerce, then war would not be to our advantage.

Therefore it would be a safe bet that if you don't do business with the big kid on the block they have no use for you and they might not hesitate to engage in war, especially if you have something they want.

So business and capitalism could be the thing that does lead to peace.

Yes, it is.

There is nothing in the following (regarding “gain in value”) that does not include a subjective estimation based on personal viewpoint.

What is the “gain” here? More people? How “valuable” is that, considering that a big enough gain in population would completely deplete the resources of the planet, resulting in the extinction of the entire race?

Greater itself is a statement of relative value, based on a personal viewpoint.

And again, “better” is a statement of relative value, based on a personal viewpoint.

Now you’re getting off into a proposition that there is some “absolute” measure of “living”. But I guess that is a required premise for your whole argument in general.

What I am saying is that there is no such thing as “absolute value”. There is nothing that everyone agrees has the exact same degree of value. Not even life itself. All value is relative by the very definition of “value” itself.

The gain in children is that your genes stick around. This isn't necessarily the meaning of life or anything but there's that easy to grasp logic that the genes that don't get passed on don't stick around. Obviously having such long lineages of people who passed on their genes it's something we usually try to do, only because the people who don't try eventually get squeezed out of existence by everyone else.

Children are awfully expensive so if we didn't almost universally want them people wouldn't waste their time, money, and effort on them.

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No, I meant greater as in many transactions instead of just one. Numbers bigger than one are greater than one. Simple math.

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No, that's not relative. Foraging in the woods is not as safe as menial work in a city. Whether you have nasty neighbors or not you are flat out less likely to be killed when there are police to protect you instead of just yourself and close family. You are less likely to starve when other people devote themselves to food and you get it in exchange for some task they don't spend their time on. You are less likely to be injured when you can specialize in a single task instead of having to do everything necessary for survival on your own.

But hey, if you want to argue that a significant group of people don't care about starvation, protection, and accidental cripplings then I guess there's not much point trying to convince you otherwise.

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I doesn't matter how much people value these things. As long as they can see that something is better than something else it does not matter how much better they think it is.

Well actually no, if they think it is better when it is not then they go out in the woods alone and die and we're left with only the people who value things close to how much they actually help them stay alive and produce children that follow in suit about as much as they actually help them do those things.

If there's excess we move that back into the making babies thing because you typically want to find someone who displays that they're about as good (physically and mentally) as you. Instead of merely staying alive we're expected to have an education now and earn more comforts to help deal with the stress of having been educated and doing heavily specialized work.


...I know that people have a lot of resistance to anthropology. Being reduced to numbers is almost incompatible with our values of individuality. Individuality is one of those subjective things but this is why it's not a universal trait of human cultures. If you study people you find a lot of things that are in EVERY culture.

There may still be some subjectivity in those things but there are objective if you understand that everyone that didn't value them died. There is something functional there, whether we can put our fingers right on what it is or not.

Regarding the above conversation here is my two cents.

Abundance is measured by the ability to survive and procreate in the most desirable manner possible.

"Gains" have to do with anything that aids in the survival and procreation of the life forms what ever that is.

Food, water, shelter, safety etc. come first. Comfort, luxury, social status come next. What do people want? They want abundance.

They want a sufficient occupation where they themselves can survive, then one great enough to support a family and procreate.

Things will probably have "value" if they are things that serve to increase personal abundance.

And still there has been no "absolute" value presented. Everything presented so far has been relative to some personal or group desire or viewpoint.

So why do you require an "absolute" value?

Well actually a mix of capitalism and socialism seems best. Socialist necessities and then capitalism if you want more than minimal living (and everyone does.)

So you are saying that "I'd prefer not to be killed by my neighbors" isn't absolute and the same with "I don't want to starve" and so on.

How far are you going to argue this? Do you think that getting shot by bullets is subjective? That people only bleed to death because of what they thought about guns? What does absolute even look like to you?

To someone who is suicidal, being killed by a neighbor could be desireable. And to someone who is on a hunger strike, starving is desireable.

As far as I'm concerned, it hasn't gotten any farther for a long time. But I'm willing to argue it as far as you want.

Nope. I'm saying that the "value" of being shot by bullets is subjective. Again, to someone who is suicidal, that can be exactly the most desireable thing.

To me, absolute means that it always applies to all possible circumstances. It only takes one exception to prove something is not absolute. (And so far, there are exceptions to every single thing you have presented.) But to prove something is absolute is a logical impossibility.

So what does absolute look like to you?

I do not believe in a world of peace. It is not only human nature, but the natural order of the world to consist of chaos. The level at which natural chaos (as funny as that sounds) exists and is different at any given place or time. But none the less, chaos is part of the natural order of things. We can however cause change in how we as a species, and as a society effect this chaos/the world. I do believe with human nature being as it is, war will sometimes be a necessity. It is up to us to determine whether or not it is at a given time. At times when it is I thank god that we have a military powerhouse, with people who are brave and willing to give up so much for their country. It is also up to us to learn from the past and history so we do not repeat its mistakes. Causality, study evolution, early hominids, other species on this planet like ants. Their is more to war than people think, and people have the right to think as they will. But, mind control really. You sound like a communist/hippie. Just because you don't like war and obviously have issues with governments (that last part is kind of an assumption) doesn't mean people are not truly free. You can do anything you want, with in physical reason, but seeing as everyone else being free, and since we set up rules and regulations that to some extent people agree with, then people will react in a way that follows said rules, or in a way that they feel they should. Those who are free, are free to react to situations others place them in. People are in fact free, we only choose to act within the norms or to follow the rules. We all make decisions on how to act based on what we think the reaction will be.