Has our Earth and mankind experienced more war or peace? -

[Ntwadumela]

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of my late father's last week, and he wanted my thoughts on whether or not the world has experienced more war or peace the entire time civilization has existed.

I replied with this:
Since the devastation of wars and catastrophes such as WWII and 9/11 leave a massive impact on our psyche, we become paranoid and believe it to be a daily occurrence, even pessimistically thinking that our entire history has been composed entirely of war. However, if you ignore all of those incidents for a minute and view history without this tunnel vision, we can really see that the history of mankind is equally balanced between such periods of calm and chaos, and such is natural. After all, light cannot exist without darkness.

 

[DirkBloodStormKing]

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of my late father's last week, and he wanted my thoughts on whether or not the world has experienced more war or peace the entire time civilization has existed.

I replied with this:
Since the devastation of wars and catastrophes such as WWII and 9/11 leave a massive impact on our psyche, we become paranoid and believe it to be a daily occurrence, even pessimistically thinking that our entire history has been composed entirely of war. However, if you ignore all of those incidents for a minute and view history without this tunnel vision, we can really see that the history of mankind is equally balanced between such periods of calm and chaos, and such is natural. After all, light cannot exist without darkness.

I would definitely say that humans probably, if not definitely experienced more war than peace, which is depressing because let's face it, war fucking sucks and living in a war torn country where there is almost zero signs of peace coming about is especially awful. It makes it even worse if said country is a highly authoritarian dictatorship where there are little to none human rights for the average citizen and they can barely flee said country.

 

[Ntwadumela]

I would definitely say that humans probably, if not definitely experienced more war than peace, which is depressing because let's face it, war fucking sucks and living in a war torn country where there is almost zero signs of peace coming about is especially awful. It makes it even worse if said country is a highly authoritarian dictatorship where there are little to none human rights for the average citizen and they can barely flee said country.

That's a good point.
However it also further demonstrated my previous statement on why people think this way. Dictators and such like Hitler and Saddam have reigned mostly within the last century or last couple of decades, and even before thousands of years they eventually meet their end.
When ever have you last watched the news and seen something positive? Rarely if ever. And yet even when people are getting killed and oppressed, at the same time exist people somewhere else going through a normal, peaceful daily routine.
War has definitely occurred but it's not a daily event in most cases

 

[Todesfurcht]

That's simple:
War.

 

[Gym Leader Elesa]

War, but I don't necessarily mourn this as long term peace is impossible for an animal as ultimately primitive as a human being (myself included before anyone thinks I am a supremacist or something.)

 

[ToroidalBoat]

long term peace is impossible for an animal as ultimately primitive as a human being

When you combine that with what you said earlier about humans never really leaving Earth, it really paints a bleak picture of humanity, doesn't it?

 

[Gym Leader Elesa]

When you combine that with what you said earlier about humans never really leaving Earth, it really paints a bleak picture of humanity, doesn't it?

Damn, I never describe myself as cynical, but maybe I am being dishonest with myself.

 

[Chad5⋅5]

A bit hard to quantify, but if we're going by all human history, then I'm inclined to say war. However, with the total war being a less viable contemporary option, it could be said that we're going to be going towards a very peaceful future. Even when we conduct war, it'll be nothing compared to say, Nam, WWII, or the expansion of the Assyrian empire. This is, of course, not counting nuclear war.

Over the past 10 years, internet as a battlespace has become a very appealing option for the intelligence community at large.

 

[GV 998]

War, easily. You'd be hard pressed to find a period in our history where someone wasn't warring on this planet.

Even if it wasn't something large scale, it could have been a war between two small pissant tribes in Africa. There's always been war. Even in pre-history, our ancestors probably warred over territory, food, women, etc.

 

[The Sourdough Region]

I'm going to have to go with war as well. Human beings will always find some reason to quarrel. There will never be true peace, just less physical violence.

 

[ICametoLurk]

There are well over 50 ongoing armed conflicts and wars across the globe going on right now (which is a higher than in 2013 in which there were only 12 wars and 30 conflicts going on), and the Private Military Company industry is now in the hundreds of millions compared to the 20 million something figure it was before 2001. If anything war is on the rise.

 

[Mariposa Electrique]

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of my late father's last week, and he wanted my thoughts on whether or not the world has experienced more war or peace the entire time civilization has existed.

I replied with this:
Since the devastation of wars and catastrophes such as WWII and 9/11 leave a massive impact on our psyche, we become paranoid and believe it to be a daily occurrence, even pessimistically thinking that our entire history has been composed entirely of war. However, if you ignore all of those incidents for a minute and view history without this tunnel vision, we can really see that the history of mankind is equally balanced between such periods of calm and chaos, and such is natural. After all, light cannot exist without darkness.

War, definitely war.

 

[Broken Pussy]

Humans, as a species, seem to like the idea of peace, but not its practice. We have the brainpower to imagine ideal societies, but we can't govern our own behavior well enough to actually make them possible. We probably won't get off this planet and we probably will go extinct. Mostly because we're not really evolved enough for the long-term. We fuck stuff up. We just can't seem to help it.

 

[ZeCommissar]

In the Grim Darkness of all of human history there is only....WAR

 

[Some JERK]

The answer is (as it is usually) it depends.

It depends on what you mean by "war". Are you just talking about violence for money, women and fabulous prizes? Are you talking about civilizations employing violence to gain land and settle political issues? What's your threshold for a "civilization"? Do Native American tribes fighting over territory for thousands of years count?

Recorded history only stretches back about 7 thousand years or so. Humans (and civilizations) have been around a lot longer than that. Prehistoric warfare is a hotly debated topic in the anthropological community. The bottom line is that we don't exactly know what went down for like 97% of human existence on Earth.

 

[Broken Pussy]

The answer is (as it is usually) it depends.

It depends on what you mean by "war". Are you just talking about violence for money, women and fabulous prizes? Are you talking about civilizations employing violence to gain land and settle political issues? What's your threshold for a "civilization"? Do Native American tribes fighting over territory for thousands of years count?

Recorded history only stretches back about 7 thousand years or so. Humans (and civilizations) have been around a lot longer than that. Prehistoric warfare is a hotly debated topic in the anthropological community. The bottom line is that we don't exactly know what went down for like 97% of human existence on Earth.

Good point, but if human warfare is an increasingly high stakes game in which human beings develop more ways to actually bring about an extinction-level event, does our possible relative peaceableness in our lower-technology past really even signify? Does it matter if prehistoric man threw rocks at each other or does it matter that modern man is willing to throw the end of the world at each other? Especially when humans are disinclined to engage in multigenerational planning?

 

[Some JERK]

Good point, but if human warfare is an increasingly high stakes game in which human beings develop more ways to actually bring about an extinction-level event, does our possible relative peaceableness in our lower-technology past really even signify? Does it matter if prehistoric man threw rocks at each other or does it matter that modern man is willing to throw the end of the world at each other? Especially when humans are disinclined to engage in multigenerational planning?

Exactly. That's why it all depends on where you draw lines and what you mean by "war". Modern warfare is nothing like ancient warfare, just as modern civilization is vastly different than ancient civilization. In the far-flung past, the global population was so low that different races co-habited the Earth for millennia, blissfully unaware of each others existence. A "war" was most likely something that happened once upon a time in the distant memory of your great-great-grandfather. Some weird looking guys showed up and said "Give us your shit or we'll kill you!" and then great-great-grandpa's people said "u wot m8?" and blood was spilled. Either way it fell out, it was basically over forever.

The question (as I read it) is basically "Do humans invariably trend towards war, peace, or some equilibrium of both?" and my answer to that is that the question is far too broad for such a complicated subject.

 

[Broken Pussy]

Exactly. That's why it all depends on where you draw lines and what you mean by "war". Modern warfare is nothing like ancient warfare, just as modern civilization is vastly different than ancient civilization. In the far-flung past, the global population was so low that different races co-habited the Earth for millennia, blissfully unaware of each others existence. A "war" was most likely something that happened once upon a time in the distant memory of your great-great-grandfather. Some weird looking guys showed up and said "Give us your shit or we'll kill you!" and then great-great-grandpa's people said "u wot m8?" and blood was spilled. Either way it fell out, it was basically over forever.

The question (as I read it) is basically "Do humans invariably trend towards war, peace, or some equilibrium of both?" and my answer to that is that the question is far too broad for such a complicated subject.

Totally fair. I think with a qualifier of humans in their current and probable future state of evolution, the answer is definitely toward war.

 

[Some JERK]

Totally fair. I think with a qualifier of humans in their current and probable future state of evolution, the answer is definitely toward war.

Very possibly. Although I think the true answer to that is less of a single positive statement and more of an anthropology dissertation.

 

[Broken Pussy]

Very possibly. Although I think the true answer to that is less of a single positive statement and more of an anthropology dissertation.

A particularly preachy episode of Bones at the very least.