I believe part of the problem is that people fail to fully understand the reality what an actual war involves. And I think it goes back to a fundamental aspect of the human psyche: that tension, conflict always makes for a good drama and we humans are naturally interested in drama (and conflict). And the most extreme tension/conflict one can usually create in a story is when lives are at stake, or multiple lives are at stake - or the entire world is in danger. We humans love this kind of drama. It always makes for a suspenseful story in a book, or a movie, or a Shakespearean play.
But when we take these imaginary gripping stories of drama, and make them a reality in real life, it becomes a horror that is a far cry from a stage play. The problem is, you can walk out of a movie theater, you can close a book when you are done and pick up another book. But war is all about murder - daily, permanent removal of human beings - it is human dismemberment. Real war is suffering you have never seen, abject terror that no novel, or movie will ever truly convey. The reality of war is not the same as the war in human imagination. War needs to stay in the human imagination - and the human race must (eventually) mature enough to not create actual war. William James wrote about this problem of war, and argued a good outlet for human "war tendencies" would be imaginary enactments of conflict (like the video games we have today) - to provide a healthy outlet for the "war" impulse and help people understand the horror of actual war, and learn to avoid it.
Today's drama for humans in Gaza. Abubaker Abed & family will eat pet food if alive to stay alive. . Homeless pets will be busy staying alive also in the reality of war.
The problem with using games, especially video games, for the purpose of sublimating the war impulse, is that we know enough now, about how the brain works, so we know that such simulations may well be increasing both the interest in war, and undermining empathy at the same time.
There have been quite a number of psychological studies regarding "video games" and many of them do not reach the same conclusions you suggest. In fact, William James' original supposition appears to be correct: they provide an outlet for the "war impulse" - without people engaging in actual war.
That moral panic, alas, is extremely popular and well-funded. Lets a lot of people off the hook while venting on tech billionaires, admittedly a loathsome bunch. I think you’d like the work of Peter Gray. He deconstructs what even the lefties are unwilling to deconstruct.
i was a child during the second world war and remember the fear when the air raid siren went off. i didn't understand the horror (as my mother and grandmother would have done) at the time. they tried to make it into a game for me so i wouldn't be afraid, and they succeeded largely, i felt safe with them sheltering under our iron table ! (crazy or what ?) i now enjoy playing games on my pc, world of warcraft being one, but i'm smart enough to know it's not real life, or anything like it. what our stupid prime minister is up to at the moment, trying to make himself into an important figure by promoting a war, is beyond insanity. and what he's doing to palestine in our name is beyond belief. may he rot in hell along with trump.
It's an interesting human paradox. We are naturally drawn to conflict in any good story, and the tension is created by the stakes involved. And is not war the ultimate in human stakes?
The human psyche is simply not all good and bad. And I agree with those who say we all are capable of evil given the right circumstances, or making the wrong decisions.
Some say consciousness is an experiment. We have become self-aware of the good and evil actual life is capable of. We are aware of the paradox and enjoyment of conflict - in our football games, our stage plays and movies, our thousands of novels written on all the varieties of human life and drama. The protagonist and antagonist is as old as Ancient Greek times.
I do not think then, it is so much an issue of eliminating this aspect of our human psyche, since it is so fundamental to our consciousness, but more a matter of evolving and maturing enough to manage these instincts (impulses?) for drama and conflict in a fashion that does not become destructive to ourselves and the human species.
Although it would seem, at the rate we're going right now, self-destruction is on the menu - either via planetary ecosystem destruction, or nuclear annihilation. The experiment of consciousness will then have failed. Maybe this is the likely fate of other intelligent civilizations in our galaxy or other galaxies - which would answer the Fermi Paradox.
I struggle to even grasp at a thread of hope that the H. sapiens experiment in consciousness is not doomed to failure, but that thread is thin indeed. Because I essentially agree with you that managing the direct conflict and the drama/passive aggression is key -- whether it be instinctually generated by the triune brain or an acquired conglomerate of that plus the chaotic society. But do most people even approach that level of realization?
I think there is some hope when we realize the psyche is much more involved than just the conscious (ego) part we can easily observe on the surface level. There are unconscious forces at work as well - in people's dreams every night, in complexes that surface with events that seemingly happen in a person's life.
The life work and erudition of Joseph Campbell - with myths and symbols, I think demonstrates how the human psyche will spontaneously produce mythologies and fairy tales, and that moral values also rise from the unconscious much as do all other instinctual behavior. One of Campbell's well known quotes (besides follow your bliss) is: "The dream is a private myth, and the myth is a public dream."
Which then leads one to ask, what is a human dream? Why does it come about? And on a more profound level, the question of 'What is consciousness?' I believe has not yet been fully answered. Certainly not by our current scientific knowledge today. Consciousness remains quite enigmatic.
Frederico Faggin writes in his fairly recent book, 'Irreducible': "It is becoming ever more evident that unconscious matter cannot produce consciousness, while conscious can produce phenomena that behave like unconscious matter. "More" cannot come out of "less," though the opposite is clearly possible. Crucially, when consciousness and free will are irreducible properties of nature, the evolution of the physical universe can no longer be the work of a 'blind watchmaker'."
Currently, my philosophical leanings are with Frederico i.e. consciousness has the peculiar nature of not being reducible to anything else. No matter how hard scientists have attempted over the last century and a half to reduce it to something else, all attempts (so far) have failed. Now when Frederico then invokes a 'blind watchmaker' - this is where we tread on very tricky ground. For me man made religion is the garments put on over the innate mythology that springs spontaneously from the human psyche. The garments themselves are just clothes, not the real thing. And there are many different garments people have worn throughout human history. Underlying all the religious clothes are the fundamental stories under-girding human existence and the human experience especially the primacy and ireducibility of the psyche. What that means in terms of "God" and I dislike using the term "God" because it has been used in such a manipulative fashion throughout human history - but probably one needs to look more in the direction of the phenomena of consciousness itself, that consciousness, especially the unconscious produces the Gods we believe in, and the morals we live or not live by.
My hope then, small as it is, is that there are other forces in the psyche private and public that will try to compensate for what has become a very "ego" driven world, where self-satisfaction, and power - sociopathic power (like Sauron's One Ring) have become far too dominant - over the much more useful paradigm of cooperation and collaborative efforts one can find throughout human history, even current human history.
Then again, I really am just as lost in the mystery as everyone else here. Maybe the reductive materialists will be right in the end, and Frederico is wrong - maybe we actually do live in a universe that is simply a blind watchmaker that somehow managed to develop consciousness out of random mutations of inert atoms. It certainly is the dominant myth of our current milieu. And you and I will be long gone before some new Myth arises - will be my guess. Long gone to what though? Or is there even a What?
Wow. Thanks for reminding me to reference Campbell. I sometimes push him into the periphery of my thinking. You should really be discoursing with my former academic curriculum partner Fred who's been burying himself in this question since he finally retired; and has been trying to engage me fully. But I'm too angrily busy screeching out Israel and my freaking country and burying my mind in music to salve it away from intellectual activity.
I'll just say that the conclusion that consciousness and free will are irreducible properties makes sense to me, although my mind then flies off with minimal tether, which hearkens me back to the mentally regenerative fungi of earlier times.
Let us not get trapped in reductive materialism. It is essentially narcissistic , even if we don't limit it to human neural tissue as the generator thereof. We say, ok, we admit that other species with brains --- or colony minds -- have a form of consciousness, but it's all generated by networks of neurons. And ultimately, amigos, who's got the fanciest neural network. Why humans . . . and their AI. Reductive materialism seems to boil down to that narcissism in the end.
The only certainty is that you and I will be long gone and the question still debated.
Don't you just love how the 'executive' went to Congress and gave them all the rationale for having a war with a country that has no money, only pride and justice on their side?
Don't you just love how Congress, after serious deliberation and much consideration, decided that it was in the interests of the American people that Yemeni civilians should be attacked?
Don't you love how those incredibly brave airmen and women took off and dropped munitions on an apartment building because (maybe) one individual that the USA declared a 'terrorist' may have entered an area where those incredibly brave airmen and women knew that civilians including women and children were situated?
Don't you just love how those incredibly brave men and women knew they were in contravention of the rules of war, in contravention of their oaths and in contravention of 18 US code 2441 'War Crimes'
(D)Murder.—
The act of a person who intentionally kills, or conspires or attempts to kill, or kills whether intentionally or unintentionally in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.
that carries on conviction :
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.
:
Yeah right PJ, who gives a fuck, they were just Ayrabs and theres plenty of them.
God forbid that an Israeli should lose sleep because the sirens went off when a missile was 1,000 miles away and according to the Israeli government was shot down hundreds of miles off-shore.
Israeli shut-eye is much more important than 30 innocent Ayrab children or women.
Doctors Without Borders is still seeking justice for the people who died in one of their hospitals in Kunduz province in Afghanistan. Back in 2015, a US Air Force AC-130 Gunship shot up the place for 30 minutes, even though they knew it was a hospital!
Introducing Trump's cast of responsible Americans who are making America great ---
During the few years I held a security clearance, I guarantee you that had I transmitted secret info on an open rather than a red network, my ass would’ve been terminated instantly!
Accident? Mr. Waltz No excuses, jerkoff!
As Glenn Greenwald told us, Waltz himself added Jeffrey Goldberg, formerly IDF, to the signal group in question.
Just more evidence of the tentacles of that horribly destructive entity of 7 million running Trump admin. foreign policy, just as it has run US foreign policy since it ordered up the assassinations of the Kennedys
Continued docile puppy-dogging on Israel's leash is the lowest form of cowardice, which is essentially, mah fellow ‘Muricans, what we’ve become.
Chang, I guess I'd give you Max Blumenthal's take on it. The way JG went public was actually a wimp half coverup -- I'm not quoting Max, just trying to paraphrase him. Here's the gist of what Max asserted: were JG a real journalist, he'd have jumped into this with both feet, of course what Max himself would've been salivating to do. Because JG commonly sides with the Ds, Waltz et al. are conveniently using him for their ends. I'm obviously not doing Max justice here. Judge Nap, Tuesday -- Max starts talking about JG at around 12:00, continues 17:00 after Hegseth blathers. There's another video of Max as well that I can't pinpoint at the moment.
It's true, Jenny. And Jill Stein wound up getting such a small percentage of the votes.
I noticed that some people really thought Trump would be a saviour, and I can't help but wonder how those people feel now, especially those who have been affected materially.
Chris Hedges wrote an interesting article about that, Jenny.
He said that at the time they often don't, but when they've become veterans, and especially when they fall in love, they can't cope with the horrible memories they have of what they've done. This often results in suicide.
Yes. I do read all his posts. One of the best on war writing.
...........or just the inability to have a normal life. It's good that we now know about PTSD now although it looks like Trump is busy disintegrating the Veterans Admin.
I just sit here in France wondering how much more we can take.
There is some hope here in Europe as Italy has refused to send troops to Ukraine and I am pretty sure Spain will be next. Hopefully Van der Leyen will be ousted and the EU ceases to exist.
I'm glad to hear that there are hopeful signs in Europe.
Here in Canada, it's a little scary, but still has the reputation, it seems, of being more sane than its neighbour to the south. A little more, but that could change if Poilievre is elected. He's Canada's version of Trump -- talks like he's for the working person, is funded by billionaires.
I'd agree with you, except that I recently experienced a friend who is very busy, and didn't believe me when I told her that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, supported by the USA and the west.
She asked me if I get my news from Joe Rogan(!). It made me realize how effective the filters are these days.
I gave her a bunch of information, and quoted some people we both respect, Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis, Gabor Maté, and left her with that.
idk, if she knows joe rogan's position, she probably also looked further into it (or deliberately not). she might be behind a filter but she very much knows it's there, imo. she made a first choice, hope she made a turn.
Good grief! Biden couldn't find his behind with both hands! He wasn't in charge of anything but more a figurehead or scapegoat while the evil minions used autopen to do the globalists bidding. Such a disaster that the Americans allowed with their eyes wide shut! 99.9% of our bureaucrats are completely corrupt and sold out to the lobbyists who infest the halls of DC.
Jill Stein is a socialist through and through. As an American I checked her out and was repulsed by what I read on her site. No solution there and I do not believe any woman is going to be able to handle the powers that ought not be. They are wicked mean to the core and only focused on their power.
Not in the eyes of this American. Socialism does not equal communism. I’d love to know what part of Stein’s platform this person disagreed with. I agree with most of it.
Rep. Tlaib has chosen to struggle WITHIN the Democratic Party, therefore she cannot run for office for another party (unless her party agreed & obviously that would not happen in this case). Also, a third party cannot sit out an election because then they start all over again to qualify for the ballot in the next election, an extremely expensive process. Jill Stein was not supposed to be the candidate, she came in after Cornel West dropped out to do his own thing; by running she saved the Green Party’s very hard fought, expensive ballot access. Both Tlaib and Stein are in separate lanes driving on the highway of progressive struggle. Pick a lane and resist—and unless you organically represent a Palestinian physical electorate—that is most effective outside the Democratic/Republican duopoly of the 1%.
That makes sense. I see. But I’m sure that’s not what appalled the person you responded to. I, too, love Rashida Tlaib. She’s the best we have in Congress. It’s really been eye-opening to see how weak, greedy, and downright criminal so many of our lawmakers are as they support genocide and fail to stand up against fascism at home.
When you have lived your life in a Republic, which is what America actually is (not a Democracy) socialism is not even a contender. Socialism always divides a country into two classes, the haves and the have nots. It has been tried many times and pretty much always failed. Do your own history search on it.
I didn't like really like any of Stein's platform. Too much socialism through out. For the record I didn't care for any of the candidates but America has a Uniparty system and one is as bad as the other. Until that is broken, no third party will ever win the Whitehouse.
We are all entitled to our opinions but we should be kind to one another. Don't even play the racism card here. Has absolutely nothing to do with anything for me.
Many Americans during Biden’s pretend presidency fought back and lost their Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and PayPal accounts. Some like Scott Ritter had their homes invaded, computers & files snatched and livelihoods destroyed. Plenty of nonviolent environmental activists became political prisoners. BLM protesters were kidnapped at demos and thrown into unmarked cars by unidentified secret police, and some killed by vigilantes who received no punishment (Kyle Rittenhouse). Guantanamo remained in use (military prison holding framed-up prisoners with no access to the legal system). Of course Biden drone-killed Americans with no legal or political process (started by Obama).
We do. I believe (observing world events) that we are in a unique period in history where "peaceful protests" and "intellectual words" will not suffice for the 99% to right the wrongs of the 1%. Something MUCH STRONGER is needed (on a global scale)...I also believe it is a matter of WHEN and not IF.
The only argument that I find works is this: "We sent 80 BILLION last year to Israel to carpet bomb GAZA (population 47% children). Is that where we want out tax dollars to go? It would only be 11 BILLION a year to house all the homeless. I think US citizens should have that money! Do we want to spend our tax dollars on killing people or in improving the lives of Americans?"
Bombing Yemen, the most impoverished country in the ME with taxpayer funding is horrendous enough! Add to that, since 2015, the US has been complicit in the genocide of the Yemeni people by giving the Saudis bombs and tactical support to murder systematically approximately 100,000
men, women, and children over the past decade! Saudi Arabia purposefully and relentlessly bombed civilian infrastructure including potable water facilities that facilitated a rampant cholera epidemic that still lingers today in Yemen. And now, the good old USofA, spreading its usual goodwill, peace, prosperity, and democracy wherever it decides to drop its bombs is seeking to annihilate an already beleaguered and devastated country where the US has no real viable interests to begin with. Is Iran next on DT's Zionist-dictated agenda? It's a good possibility! The hubris and murder go unhindered, courtesy of the United States and its NATO minions.
Actually, I think this is called slaughter against indigenous people at the behest of Israel, the overlords of our government. We need to find candidates who are not beholden to AIPAC or Israel. We need to take our country back.
“The focus on “new wars” was always a dopey arbitrary distinction meant to shelter Trump from criticism of his extensive warmongering throughout his first term, but his restarting the US bombing campaign in Yemen in order to protect Israel’s right to commit genocide means even this feeble excuse has gone up in smoke.”
This is absolutely true. Trump supporters have always clung to this narrative to paint him as an “anti-war” president, when nothing could be further from the truth.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a UK-based think tank, the US launched 2,243 drones during the first two years of Trump’s first term. This compares with 1,878 strikes during all eight of Obama’s years in office.
Yeah, it’s ridiculous and I agree. Don’t misinterpret that last part as praise for Obama… it was merely meant to illustrate the absurdity of the “anti-war” label so many have pinned to Trump.
Let's not forget the 59 missiles that Trump fired into Syria soon after he got into office in his first term. And now Yemen. And soon Iran. Those bombers parked in Diego Garcia are not just decorations.
Trump and his good ol’ boys’ frat-party Signal jocks will probably launch a full-scale war on Iran. And that, my friends, is World War III. All hail the President of Peace™.
The the average Western mind is so vacuous never ceases to amaze me. The expansion of NATO is a war. The money and arms going to Ukraine and Israel are Wars. The bombing of Yemen is a war. How can any rational person not see this? Every day now, more and more I begin to suspect that the US is the WEF mover. I hope I'm wrong because if I'm right God help us all!
Thank you Joy in HK. More than 38 countries in one way or another are under US sanctions. Cuba has been under sanctions and embargoes for 60 years or so. Now the Trump administration is targeting Cuban doctors who go anywhere in the world they are needed.
Sorry about the oversight. Sanctions are an evil tool and only create hardship for people and foment hatred. They are a large part of why we are on the verge of a world war.
Maybe that will be as good thing. The US bully has held sway for too long. Brics may lead to a true multi polar world which could turn out to be a good thing. Why should the world have to bow to the US dollar? Independence from the dollar may yet prove to be the world's salvation.
The Western world has been on a war economy for so long that I'm not sure if enough people can be woken up to have a significant effect on stopping it. It has become a way of life. The whole rotten system will have to be torn down if we are to have any hope of starting again. Any ideas?
If I had any weird old trick that would fix humans, I would havce used it a long time ago.
It is famously written that "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice". With all due respect to Dr. King, this does not correspond with observable reality.
Rather, the arc of the universe bends towards power.
Frighteningly true. Sooner or later the power mongers will turn on each other as they are steeped in greed. I think it will be their downfall. At least I certainly hope so otherwise we are all finished.
Airstrikes...historically proven to not win wars on their own, and a tried-and-true way of pretending that something is being done about a certain problem, when it does nothing...except to enrich the MIC. Western over-reliance and overuse of air power just telegraphs weakness and hypocrisy.
Really? So you think there were no boots on the ground in Libya or Syria (military, paramilitary and proxy forces)? Also, Serbia's ground forces survived intact despite the intensive NATO air campaign directed against them. If the idea was to turn Serbia into a failed state at the time, well it failed.
Syria did have boots on the ground, but no real combat with the Syrian government, who were the real targets.
Libya didn't really feature boots on the ground from any NATO forces. For that matter, in Yemen, there are militias not on the side of Ansarallah.
In Serbia, the bombing campaign got what it was intended to do, which was to force Serbia to give up Kosovo, and eventually regime change in favor of a western puppet.
No real combat? Who trained and supported those proxies in Syria that deposed the Syrian Government then?
CIA paramilitaries were working with the rebels in Libya. And who do you think trained and supported those forces that toppled the Gaddafi government?
The Bombing campaign in Serbia/Kosovo failed to deter attacks on civilians by the Serbian military, and also failed to degrade the Serbian military's ability to attack the civilians. It took the deployment of ground forces to stop that from happening in the form of KFOR.
The conditions for regime change were already sown through international sanctions against Serbia. What happened in Kosovo was not the main cause for the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic.
As I have said before in my original post, and I'll say it again, Air Power on its own is ineffective.
Even taking at face value your statements about Syria, Libya, etc., it's not as if the CIA don't have ready proxies in Yemen to do the same thing as was done elsewhere.
And if you think that the War on Serbia had nothing to do with the collapse of Milosevic's government, well, imagine what would have happened if Serbia had clearly won the war, A coup is a lot harder to imagine in that context.
...which goes back to what I have said repeatedly about Air Power being ineffective on its own.
You implied that the NATO Air Campaign was the main cause for the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic, which is not true. If NATO did not commit GROUND TROOPS, Kosovo would still be in Serbian hands.
"when it does nothing...except to enrich the MIC. Western over-reliance and overuse of air power"
It also kills many people, destroys habitat, infrastructure and the means to sustain life. Or is that not worth discussing, as the sole issue is how it affects the perpetrators, not those on the receiving end? Or perhaps I have misunderstood your point?
Look at how these brutal "liberals" are gloating at the idea of Muslim citizens being put in concentration camps. They don't put a distinction between muslim citizens who can vote and people getting deported who can't vote. Genocide never mattered with these democrats.
Support a third option that actually opposes AIPAC because neither "major" party does.
They don’t seem to realize that the Abandon Harris websites are down cause….the election is over. Not out of a sense of shame. Very sleezey people but that’s all they have is smugness and an interesting ability to overlook genocide.
Nonsense. War does not appear until state-level political organization. Tribes may feud but they don't have organized armies. In Native American tribes there were chiefs, but a chief generally had no power to command the men of the tribe to go to battle; it was a voluntary choice. And likewise, in fact, for Classical Athens, our model for democracy; citizens generally joined up when a war campaign began, but it was not a requirement.
Much like little fish can become big fish, so can small wars become nuclear war. Denying a human being shelter is making war against that person, and that person could, in theory, push a nuclear button… war is not limited to armies and, in fact, are as numerous as there are people who are denied basic needs…
Aggression of one person against another is not war. To call it so is to trivialize the problem. And you seem to have a fixation on shelter. The truth is that the homeless are the least likely to rise up against their oppressors, because they have the fewest resources at their disposal. A shopping cart full of clothes is not much of a weapon against a tank, or even against a Volkswagen beetle.
I have mentioned the lac of shelter as a driving force that fuels war. You could and should include any basic need, food for example, which is a basic necessity for survival. It’s not the shopping carts full of belongings you need to fear, but the army tanks full of ammo , all of which are the result of the way we treat each other with a war-like mentality. Get rid of the threats, and you will get rid of the wars.
It’s not the homeless which should be feared, but those who build arsenals as the result of seeing what happens to people when they are powerless, as you have well exposed. Nuclear arsenals did not suddenly burst onto the scene, that are the result of the millions of small wars that have been fought as the result of our aggressiveness.
War is an act which threatens the life of another. When we collectively deprive people from shelter, we threaten their lives. If and when we stop homelessness anywhere on earth, we might end wars. You are welcome to continue this exchange as I value opinions on the subject…
Homelessness is the result of actions taken by society and of being in charge is someone else’s well being… when someone is deprived of shelter for any reason, that someone has the right to defend himself/herself… and defending each other from each other constitutes war…. Which in the end will become a nuclear war, in which case we will all be homeless…
I don't like War. The world should be at war with Israel. Make Palestine Palestine again afterwards, for Peace.
I believe part of the problem is that people fail to fully understand the reality what an actual war involves. And I think it goes back to a fundamental aspect of the human psyche: that tension, conflict always makes for a good drama and we humans are naturally interested in drama (and conflict). And the most extreme tension/conflict one can usually create in a story is when lives are at stake, or multiple lives are at stake - or the entire world is in danger. We humans love this kind of drama. It always makes for a suspenseful story in a book, or a movie, or a Shakespearean play.
But when we take these imaginary gripping stories of drama, and make them a reality in real life, it becomes a horror that is a far cry from a stage play. The problem is, you can walk out of a movie theater, you can close a book when you are done and pick up another book. But war is all about murder - daily, permanent removal of human beings - it is human dismemberment. Real war is suffering you have never seen, abject terror that no novel, or movie will ever truly convey. The reality of war is not the same as the war in human imagination. War needs to stay in the human imagination - and the human race must (eventually) mature enough to not create actual war. William James wrote about this problem of war, and argued a good outlet for human "war tendencies" would be imaginary enactments of conflict (like the video games we have today) - to provide a healthy outlet for the "war" impulse and help people understand the horror of actual war, and learn to avoid it.
Today's drama for humans in Gaza. Abubaker Abed & family will eat pet food if alive to stay alive. . Homeless pets will be busy staying alive also in the reality of war.
Wage Peace..
The problem with using games, especially video games, for the purpose of sublimating the war impulse, is that we know enough now, about how the brain works, so we know that such simulations may well be increasing both the interest in war, and undermining empathy at the same time.
There have been quite a number of psychological studies regarding "video games" and many of them do not reach the same conclusions you suggest. In fact, William James' original supposition appears to be correct: they provide an outlet for the "war impulse" - without people engaging in actual war.
Violent video game engagement is not associated with adolescents' aggressive behaviour: Evidence from a registered report: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331409534_Violent_video_game_engagement_is_not_associated_with_adolescents'_aggressive_behaviour_Evidence_from_a_registered_report
That moral panic, alas, is extremely popular and well-funded. Lets a lot of people off the hook while venting on tech billionaires, admittedly a loathsome bunch. I think you’d like the work of Peter Gray. He deconstructs what even the lefties are unwilling to deconstruct.
Fake violence is fun.
No hard feelings.
No emotion.
Just tactics, strategy, and points.
No harm in that.
Just don't do those mean things to real people.
That's not nice. :)
Well there is some emotion involved, but it's still just a game, that you can walk away from, or reload at your last save! ;)
Ahh.
A kindred spirit. ;)
This is entirely intentional.
Blessed are the PEACE Makers, not the WAR Mongers!
i was a child during the second world war and remember the fear when the air raid siren went off. i didn't understand the horror (as my mother and grandmother would have done) at the time. they tried to make it into a game for me so i wouldn't be afraid, and they succeeded largely, i felt safe with them sheltering under our iron table ! (crazy or what ?) i now enjoy playing games on my pc, world of warcraft being one, but i'm smart enough to know it's not real life, or anything like it. what our stupid prime minister is up to at the moment, trying to make himself into an important figure by promoting a war, is beyond insanity. and what he's doing to palestine in our name is beyond belief. may he rot in hell along with trump.
Football is also a "good" war replica.
It's an interesting human paradox. We are naturally drawn to conflict in any good story, and the tension is created by the stakes involved. And is not war the ultimate in human stakes?
The human psyche is simply not all good and bad. And I agree with those who say we all are capable of evil given the right circumstances, or making the wrong decisions.
Some say consciousness is an experiment. We have become self-aware of the good and evil actual life is capable of. We are aware of the paradox and enjoyment of conflict - in our football games, our stage plays and movies, our thousands of novels written on all the varieties of human life and drama. The protagonist and antagonist is as old as Ancient Greek times.
I do not think then, it is so much an issue of eliminating this aspect of our human psyche, since it is so fundamental to our consciousness, but more a matter of evolving and maturing enough to manage these instincts (impulses?) for drama and conflict in a fashion that does not become destructive to ourselves and the human species.
Although it would seem, at the rate we're going right now, self-destruction is on the menu - either via planetary ecosystem destruction, or nuclear annihilation. The experiment of consciousness will then have failed. Maybe this is the likely fate of other intelligent civilizations in our galaxy or other galaxies - which would answer the Fermi Paradox.
I struggle to even grasp at a thread of hope that the H. sapiens experiment in consciousness is not doomed to failure, but that thread is thin indeed. Because I essentially agree with you that managing the direct conflict and the drama/passive aggression is key -- whether it be instinctually generated by the triune brain or an acquired conglomerate of that plus the chaotic society. But do most people even approach that level of realization?
I think there is some hope when we realize the psyche is much more involved than just the conscious (ego) part we can easily observe on the surface level. There are unconscious forces at work as well - in people's dreams every night, in complexes that surface with events that seemingly happen in a person's life.
The life work and erudition of Joseph Campbell - with myths and symbols, I think demonstrates how the human psyche will spontaneously produce mythologies and fairy tales, and that moral values also rise from the unconscious much as do all other instinctual behavior. One of Campbell's well known quotes (besides follow your bliss) is: "The dream is a private myth, and the myth is a public dream."
Which then leads one to ask, what is a human dream? Why does it come about? And on a more profound level, the question of 'What is consciousness?' I believe has not yet been fully answered. Certainly not by our current scientific knowledge today. Consciousness remains quite enigmatic.
Frederico Faggin writes in his fairly recent book, 'Irreducible': "It is becoming ever more evident that unconscious matter cannot produce consciousness, while conscious can produce phenomena that behave like unconscious matter. "More" cannot come out of "less," though the opposite is clearly possible. Crucially, when consciousness and free will are irreducible properties of nature, the evolution of the physical universe can no longer be the work of a 'blind watchmaker'."
Currently, my philosophical leanings are with Frederico i.e. consciousness has the peculiar nature of not being reducible to anything else. No matter how hard scientists have attempted over the last century and a half to reduce it to something else, all attempts (so far) have failed. Now when Frederico then invokes a 'blind watchmaker' - this is where we tread on very tricky ground. For me man made religion is the garments put on over the innate mythology that springs spontaneously from the human psyche. The garments themselves are just clothes, not the real thing. And there are many different garments people have worn throughout human history. Underlying all the religious clothes are the fundamental stories under-girding human existence and the human experience especially the primacy and ireducibility of the psyche. What that means in terms of "God" and I dislike using the term "God" because it has been used in such a manipulative fashion throughout human history - but probably one needs to look more in the direction of the phenomena of consciousness itself, that consciousness, especially the unconscious produces the Gods we believe in, and the morals we live or not live by.
My hope then, small as it is, is that there are other forces in the psyche private and public that will try to compensate for what has become a very "ego" driven world, where self-satisfaction, and power - sociopathic power (like Sauron's One Ring) have become far too dominant - over the much more useful paradigm of cooperation and collaborative efforts one can find throughout human history, even current human history.
Then again, I really am just as lost in the mystery as everyone else here. Maybe the reductive materialists will be right in the end, and Frederico is wrong - maybe we actually do live in a universe that is simply a blind watchmaker that somehow managed to develop consciousness out of random mutations of inert atoms. It certainly is the dominant myth of our current milieu. And you and I will be long gone before some new Myth arises - will be my guess. Long gone to what though? Or is there even a What?
Wow. Thanks for reminding me to reference Campbell. I sometimes push him into the periphery of my thinking. You should really be discoursing with my former academic curriculum partner Fred who's been burying himself in this question since he finally retired; and has been trying to engage me fully. But I'm too angrily busy screeching out Israel and my freaking country and burying my mind in music to salve it away from intellectual activity.
I'll just say that the conclusion that consciousness and free will are irreducible properties makes sense to me, although my mind then flies off with minimal tether, which hearkens me back to the mentally regenerative fungi of earlier times.
Let us not get trapped in reductive materialism. It is essentially narcissistic , even if we don't limit it to human neural tissue as the generator thereof. We say, ok, we admit that other species with brains --- or colony minds -- have a form of consciousness, but it's all generated by networks of neurons. And ultimately, amigos, who's got the fanciest neural network. Why humans . . . and their AI. Reductive materialism seems to boil down to that narcissism in the end.
The only certainty is that you and I will be long gone and the question still debated.
100%
Don't you just love how the 'executive' went to Congress and gave them all the rationale for having a war with a country that has no money, only pride and justice on their side?
Don't you just love how Congress, after serious deliberation and much consideration, decided that it was in the interests of the American people that Yemeni civilians should be attacked?
Don't you love how those incredibly brave airmen and women took off and dropped munitions on an apartment building because (maybe) one individual that the USA declared a 'terrorist' may have entered an area where those incredibly brave airmen and women knew that civilians including women and children were situated?
Don't you just love how those incredibly brave men and women knew they were in contravention of the rules of war, in contravention of their oaths and in contravention of 18 US code 2441 'War Crimes'
(D)Murder.—
The act of a person who intentionally kills, or conspires or attempts to kill, or kills whether intentionally or unintentionally in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.
that carries on conviction :
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.
:
Yeah right PJ, who gives a fuck, they were just Ayrabs and theres plenty of them.
God forbid that an Israeli should lose sleep because the sirens went off when a missile was 1,000 miles away and according to the Israeli government was shot down hundreds of miles off-shore.
Israeli shut-eye is much more important than 30 innocent Ayrab children or women.
Doctors Without Borders is still seeking justice for the people who died in one of their hospitals in Kunduz province in Afghanistan. Back in 2015, a US Air Force AC-130 Gunship shot up the place for 30 minutes, even though they knew it was a hospital!
Law is meaningless. Enforcement is the only thing that matters.
Introducing Trump's cast of responsible Americans who are making America great ---
During the few years I held a security clearance, I guarantee you that had I transmitted secret info on an open rather than a red network, my ass would’ve been terminated instantly!
Accident? Mr. Waltz No excuses, jerkoff!
As Glenn Greenwald told us, Waltz himself added Jeffrey Goldberg, formerly IDF, to the signal group in question.
Just more evidence of the tentacles of that horribly destructive entity of 7 million running Trump admin. foreign policy, just as it has run US foreign policy since it ordered up the assassinations of the Kennedys
Continued docile puppy-dogging on Israel's leash is the lowest form of cowardice, which is essentially, mah fellow ‘Muricans, what we’ve become.
>>"As Glenn Greenwald told us, Waltz himself added Jeffrey Goldberg, formerly IDF, to the signal group in question."
That's what I have questions about ->
(1) Why did Waltz knowingly (I assume) add Jeffrey Goldberg to the Signal chat?
(2) Assuming that Jeffrey Goldberg (a former IDF soldier) is on the side of Israel and Trump, why did he go public to the media the way he did?
I don't think we're getting all the information here. Something doesn't seem to compute (in my mind).
Chang, I guess I'd give you Max Blumenthal's take on it. The way JG went public was actually a wimp half coverup -- I'm not quoting Max, just trying to paraphrase him. Here's the gist of what Max asserted: were JG a real journalist, he'd have jumped into this with both feet, of course what Max himself would've been salivating to do. Because JG commonly sides with the Ds, Waltz et al. are conveniently using him for their ends. I'm obviously not doing Max justice here. Judge Nap, Tuesday -- Max starts talking about JG at around 12:00, continues 17:00 after Hegseth blathers. There's another video of Max as well that I can't pinpoint at the moment.
https://rumble.com/v6r8zi2-judge-napolitano-max-blumenthal-hegseth-reveals-us-war-plans..html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
Thanks for the info Vin. Let's see how this unfolds...
it smells like a limited hangout of some kind to me, but not sure what they were hoping to expose exactly
I really wonder what people who supported Trump are thinking now. How many still support him as he shows himself to be the wrecking ball that he is?
He could end all this by withdrawing support for Israel as it continues its genocide against Gaza, but he's made it clear that he would never do that.
I so badly want to see the killing and destruction in Gaza stopped, and to see food and aid get to the people in Gaza.
There certainly wasn't much choice for whom to vote for other than Jill Stein etc BUT no Americans vote for the Duopoly everytime.
Would warmonger Biden have shut Israel down?
It's true, Jenny. And Jill Stein wound up getting such a small percentage of the votes.
I noticed that some people really thought Trump would be a saviour, and I can't help but wonder how those people feel now, especially those who have been affected materially.
Once people decide so-and-so is Good they will hold onto that like a bulldog.
It's hard watching people who were on the progressive end of the spectrum now standing up for what can only be considered fascism.
Do they actually feel Diane? I have some doubts.
Probably feeling around for their handy justifications and rationalizations.
Chris Hedges wrote an interesting article about that, Jenny.
He said that at the time they often don't, but when they've become veterans, and especially when they fall in love, they can't cope with the horrible memories they have of what they've done. This often results in suicide.
Yes. I do read all his posts. One of the best on war writing.
...........or just the inability to have a normal life. It's good that we now know about PTSD now although it looks like Trump is busy disintegrating the Veterans Admin.
I just sit here in France wondering how much more we can take.
There is some hope here in Europe as Italy has refused to send troops to Ukraine and I am pretty sure Spain will be next. Hopefully Van der Leyen will be ousted and the EU ceases to exist.
I'm glad to hear that there are hopeful signs in Europe.
Here in Canada, it's a little scary, but still has the reputation, it seems, of being more sane than its neighbour to the south. A little more, but that could change if Poilievre is elected. He's Canada's version of Trump -- talks like he's for the working person, is funded by billionaires.
i'm no longer buying the 'really thought'-stuff. they knew and didn't care. if they seem to be shocked now, they're pretending, imo.
I'd agree with you, except that I recently experienced a friend who is very busy, and didn't believe me when I told her that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, supported by the USA and the west.
She asked me if I get my news from Joe Rogan(!). It made me realize how effective the filters are these days.
I gave her a bunch of information, and quoted some people we both respect, Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis, Gabor Maté, and left her with that.
It really surprised me.
idk, if she knows joe rogan's position, she probably also looked further into it (or deliberately not). she might be behind a filter but she very much knows it's there, imo. she made a first choice, hope she made a turn.
I hope she did too, martin.
Good grief! Biden couldn't find his behind with both hands! He wasn't in charge of anything but more a figurehead or scapegoat while the evil minions used autopen to do the globalists bidding. Such a disaster that the Americans allowed with their eyes wide shut! 99.9% of our bureaucrats are completely corrupt and sold out to the lobbyists who infest the halls of DC.
Jill Stein is a socialist through and through. As an American I checked her out and was repulsed by what I read on her site. No solution there and I do not believe any woman is going to be able to handle the powers that ought not be. They are wicked mean to the core and only focused on their power.
Is there something wrong with Socialism>
Not in the eyes of this American. Socialism does not equal communism. I’d love to know what part of Stein’s platform this person disagreed with. I agree with most of it.
She has Russiaphobia......that put me off. But I am not a US citizen.
I would not have voted unless I had Tlaib on the ticket.
Rep. Tlaib has chosen to struggle WITHIN the Democratic Party, therefore she cannot run for office for another party (unless her party agreed & obviously that would not happen in this case). Also, a third party cannot sit out an election because then they start all over again to qualify for the ballot in the next election, an extremely expensive process. Jill Stein was not supposed to be the candidate, she came in after Cornel West dropped out to do his own thing; by running she saved the Green Party’s very hard fought, expensive ballot access. Both Tlaib and Stein are in separate lanes driving on the highway of progressive struggle. Pick a lane and resist—and unless you organically represent a Palestinian physical electorate—that is most effective outside the Democratic/Republican duopoly of the 1%.
That makes sense. I see. But I’m sure that’s not what appalled the person you responded to. I, too, love Rashida Tlaib. She’s the best we have in Congress. It’s really been eye-opening to see how weak, greedy, and downright criminal so many of our lawmakers are as they support genocide and fail to stand up against fascism at home.
You are not very nice to assume such things.
When you have lived your life in a Republic, which is what America actually is (not a Democracy) socialism is not even a contender. Socialism always divides a country into two classes, the haves and the have nots. It has been tried many times and pretty much always failed. Do your own history search on it.
I didn't like really like any of Stein's platform. Too much socialism through out. For the record I didn't care for any of the candidates but America has a Uniparty system and one is as bad as the other. Until that is broken, no third party will ever win the Whitehouse.
We are all entitled to our opinions but we should be kind to one another. Don't even play the racism card here. Has absolutely nothing to do with anything for me.
Glad you asked that Jenny.
Many Americans during Biden’s pretend presidency fought back and lost their Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and PayPal accounts. Some like Scott Ritter had their homes invaded, computers & files snatched and livelihoods destroyed. Plenty of nonviolent environmental activists became political prisoners. BLM protesters were kidnapped at demos and thrown into unmarked cars by unidentified secret police, and some killed by vigilantes who received no punishment (Kyle Rittenhouse). Guantanamo remained in use (military prison holding framed-up prisoners with no access to the legal system). Of course Biden drone-killed Americans with no legal or political process (started by Obama).
indeed, the choice between a 'socialist' and genocide is obvious, isn't it? (sick, sick, sick- qotsa).
martin, It is socialism or death!
Well said Kilgore Trout!
Hi Chang
Remember the Animal Liberation Front? And the Environmental Liberation Front?
What we need now is a POLITICAL Liberation Front, to “liberate” us from the Zionist cocksuckers in congress.
By any means possible.
We do. I believe (observing world events) that we are in a unique period in history where "peaceful protests" and "intellectual words" will not suffice for the 99% to right the wrongs of the 1%. Something MUCH STRONGER is needed (on a global scale)...I also believe it is a matter of WHEN and not IF.
You’re thinking that they think - in my experience, that’s not the process happening in their brains.
One right wing site I read is bending over backwards to defend everything Trump does. One person pointed out his warmongering and was called a troll.
I’ve been calling out his hypocrisy and boy do they pounce on me.
Plus they’re cheering that he’s firing thousands of people, but never touching the people who have money and power.
The only argument that I find works is this: "We sent 80 BILLION last year to Israel to carpet bomb GAZA (population 47% children). Is that where we want out tax dollars to go? It would only be 11 BILLION a year to house all the homeless. I think US citizens should have that money! Do we want to spend our tax dollars on killing people or in improving the lives of Americans?"
VERY good argument, susan. Hard not to get that.
Thank you Diana. Me too!
Linda
It's a cult. It doesn't matter what the cult leader did or didn't do.
They'll just move to the next memorized talking point. Water off a duck's back.
Bombing Yemen, the most impoverished country in the ME with taxpayer funding is horrendous enough! Add to that, since 2015, the US has been complicit in the genocide of the Yemeni people by giving the Saudis bombs and tactical support to murder systematically approximately 100,000
men, women, and children over the past decade! Saudi Arabia purposefully and relentlessly bombed civilian infrastructure including potable water facilities that facilitated a rampant cholera epidemic that still lingers today in Yemen. And now, the good old USofA, spreading its usual goodwill, peace, prosperity, and democracy wherever it decides to drop its bombs is seeking to annihilate an already beleaguered and devastated country where the US has no real viable interests to begin with. Is Iran next on DT's Zionist-dictated agenda? It's a good possibility! The hubris and murder go unhindered, courtesy of the United States and its NATO minions.
Good on you, Eric Jacobson. What do they understand about Yemen's ethics and humanity.
Actually, I think this is called slaughter against indigenous people at the behest of Israel, the overlords of our government. We need to find candidates who are not beholden to AIPAC or Israel. We need to take our country back.
“The focus on “new wars” was always a dopey arbitrary distinction meant to shelter Trump from criticism of his extensive warmongering throughout his first term, but his restarting the US bombing campaign in Yemen in order to protect Israel’s right to commit genocide means even this feeble excuse has gone up in smoke.”
This is absolutely true. Trump supporters have always clung to this narrative to paint him as an “anti-war” president, when nothing could be further from the truth.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a UK-based think tank, the US launched 2,243 drones during the first two years of Trump’s first term. This compares with 1,878 strikes during all eight of Obama’s years in office.
1,878 drones launched gets you a Nobel Peace Prize?
Yeah, it’s ridiculous and I agree. Don’t misinterpret that last part as praise for Obama… it was merely meant to illustrate the absurdity of the “anti-war” label so many have pinned to Trump.
Maybe Trump will be Bigger & Better and get 2 Nobel's !
It's the same war. US/Israel against the people of the world.
Let's not forget the 59 missiles that Trump fired into Syria soon after he got into office in his first term. And now Yemen. And soon Iran. Those bombers parked in Diego Garcia are not just decorations.
Trump and his good ol’ boys’ frat-party Signal jocks will probably launch a full-scale war on Iran. And that, my friends, is World War III. All hail the President of Peace™.
A number of pundits are saying the current buildup by Trump is just Trump's usual "bluster". But is it?
The chances that he will blunder into a full-scale war seem extremely high. There are no adults in the room.
Who knows? I find him most unpredictable. He does whatever he feels like doing at the moment.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it?
The the average Western mind is so vacuous never ceases to amaze me. The expansion of NATO is a war. The money and arms going to Ukraine and Israel are Wars. The bombing of Yemen is a war. How can any rational person not see this? Every day now, more and more I begin to suspect that the US is the WEF mover. I hope I'm wrong because if I'm right God help us all!
Sanctions are war also.
Thank you Joy in HK. More than 38 countries in one way or another are under US sanctions. Cuba has been under sanctions and embargoes for 60 years or so. Now the Trump administration is targeting Cuban doctors who go anywhere in the world they are needed.
Sorry about the oversight. Sanctions are an evil tool and only create hardship for people and foment hatred. They are a large part of why we are on the verge of a world war.
Sanctions are NOT working: what they are doing is pushing countries towards BRICS.
Maybe that will be as good thing. The US bully has held sway for too long. Brics may lead to a true multi polar world which could turn out to be a good thing. Why should the world have to bow to the US dollar? Independence from the dollar may yet prove to be the world's salvation.
Yes it's working well for the Western powers!
Of course they are wars. What does anyone propose to do about it?
The Western world has been on a war economy for so long that I'm not sure if enough people can be woken up to have a significant effect on stopping it. It has become a way of life. The whole rotten system will have to be torn down if we are to have any hope of starting again. Any ideas?
If I had any weird old trick that would fix humans, I would havce used it a long time ago.
It is famously written that "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice". With all due respect to Dr. King, this does not correspond with observable reality.
Rather, the arc of the universe bends towards power.
Frighteningly true. Sooner or later the power mongers will turn on each other as they are steeped in greed. I think it will be their downfall. At least I certainly hope so otherwise we are all finished.
In such event, they will quickly be replaced by a different set of sociopaths.
Power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats, and socipaths will do Whatever It Takes to get their paws on power.
Airstrikes...historically proven to not win wars on their own, and a tried-and-true way of pretending that something is being done about a certain problem, when it does nothing...except to enrich the MIC. Western over-reliance and overuse of air power just telegraphs weakness and hypocrisy.
Airstrikes worked just fine in Libya. The goal was to turn that coutnry into a failed state, and the US got what it wanted.
For that matter, they also worked in Serbia, and could be said to have worked in Syria.
Really? So you think there were no boots on the ground in Libya or Syria (military, paramilitary and proxy forces)? Also, Serbia's ground forces survived intact despite the intensive NATO air campaign directed against them. If the idea was to turn Serbia into a failed state at the time, well it failed.
Syria did have boots on the ground, but no real combat with the Syrian government, who were the real targets.
Libya didn't really feature boots on the ground from any NATO forces. For that matter, in Yemen, there are militias not on the side of Ansarallah.
In Serbia, the bombing campaign got what it was intended to do, which was to force Serbia to give up Kosovo, and eventually regime change in favor of a western puppet.
No real combat? Who trained and supported those proxies in Syria that deposed the Syrian Government then?
CIA paramilitaries were working with the rebels in Libya. And who do you think trained and supported those forces that toppled the Gaddafi government?
The Bombing campaign in Serbia/Kosovo failed to deter attacks on civilians by the Serbian military, and also failed to degrade the Serbian military's ability to attack the civilians. It took the deployment of ground forces to stop that from happening in the form of KFOR.
The conditions for regime change were already sown through international sanctions against Serbia. What happened in Kosovo was not the main cause for the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic.
As I have said before in my original post, and I'll say it again, Air Power on its own is ineffective.
Even taking at face value your statements about Syria, Libya, etc., it's not as if the CIA don't have ready proxies in Yemen to do the same thing as was done elsewhere.
And if you think that the War on Serbia had nothing to do with the collapse of Milosevic's government, well, imagine what would have happened if Serbia had clearly won the war, A coup is a lot harder to imagine in that context.
...which goes back to what I have said repeatedly about Air Power being ineffective on its own.
You implied that the NATO Air Campaign was the main cause for the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic, which is not true. If NATO did not commit GROUND TROOPS, Kosovo would still be in Serbian hands.
Well you can't have soldiers coming back in body-bags!
"when it does nothing...except to enrich the MIC. Western over-reliance and overuse of air power"
It also kills many people, destroys habitat, infrastructure and the means to sustain life. Or is that not worth discussing, as the sole issue is how it affects the perpetrators, not those on the receiving end? Or perhaps I have misunderstood your point?
What did you think I meant, especially with the last sentence in my comment?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/27/2312846/-The-Abandon-Harris-Crowd-Is-All-Of-A-Sudden-Very-Quiet
Look at how these brutal "liberals" are gloating at the idea of Muslim citizens being put in concentration camps. They don't put a distinction between muslim citizens who can vote and people getting deported who can't vote. Genocide never mattered with these democrats.
Support a third option that actually opposes AIPAC because neither "major" party does.
workerstrikeback.org
They don’t seem to realize that the Abandon Harris websites are down cause….the election is over. Not out of a sense of shame. Very sleezey people but that’s all they have is smugness and an interesting ability to overlook genocide.
War is endemic to our species… trump is just a reminder of who we are… we are at war with ourselves, and the enemies are us…
Nonsense. War does not appear until state-level political organization. Tribes may feud but they don't have organized armies. In Native American tribes there were chiefs, but a chief generally had no power to command the men of the tribe to go to battle; it was a voluntary choice. And likewise, in fact, for Classical Athens, our model for democracy; citizens generally joined up when a war campaign began, but it was not a requirement.
Much like little fish can become big fish, so can small wars become nuclear war. Denying a human being shelter is making war against that person, and that person could, in theory, push a nuclear button… war is not limited to armies and, in fact, are as numerous as there are people who are denied basic needs…
Aggression of one person against another is not war. To call it so is to trivialize the problem. And you seem to have a fixation on shelter. The truth is that the homeless are the least likely to rise up against their oppressors, because they have the fewest resources at their disposal. A shopping cart full of clothes is not much of a weapon against a tank, or even against a Volkswagen beetle.
I have mentioned the lac of shelter as a driving force that fuels war. You could and should include any basic need, food for example, which is a basic necessity for survival. It’s not the shopping carts full of belongings you need to fear, but the army tanks full of ammo , all of which are the result of the way we treat each other with a war-like mentality. Get rid of the threats, and you will get rid of the wars.
It’s not the homeless which should be feared, but those who build arsenals as the result of seeing what happens to people when they are powerless, as you have well exposed. Nuclear arsenals did not suddenly burst onto the scene, that are the result of the millions of small wars that have been fought as the result of our aggressiveness.
*Our* species?!? Cats get into fights, sure, all the time, but we don't really make war.
War is an act which threatens the life of another. When we collectively deprive people from shelter, we threaten their lives. If and when we stop homelessness anywhere on earth, we might end wars. You are welcome to continue this exchange as I value opinions on the subject…
Lots of cats are homeless. We still don't make war.
Hell, Nazi Germany and the USSR had robust social safety nets, compared with the USA of 2025, yet they had no shortage of wars.
Re the USSR, yes, there may have been safety nets, but only if you agreed with the boss… otherwise Siberia awaited
Homelessness is the result of actions taken by society and of being in charge is someone else’s well being… when someone is deprived of shelter for any reason, that someone has the right to defend himself/herself… and defending each other from each other constitutes war…. Which in the end will become a nuclear war, in which case we will all be homeless…
Bully Boy Bombing Heroic Yemen. Bomb, Bomb, Bomb--Bomb-Bomb Yemen ... next: Bomb, Bomb, Bomb--Bomb-Bomb Iran, anyone?