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| Thread: Is war evil? And if so, is it nesscissary? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 · NEXT» |
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gnomes2169
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posted January 07, 2011 05:35 AM |
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Is war evil? And if so, is it nesscissary?
I want to know how people feel about this. Post however you want, but be prepared to defend your opinions with well thought out facts.
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mvassilev
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posted January 07, 2011 08:30 AM |
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It is only good to fight a war in self-defense. Otherwise, it is evil.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 07, 2011 09:36 AM |
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This is another example, why the good-evil stuff is just nonsense.
War is evil. No dicussion about it. Defending in a war means, that (the) evil (aggressor) forces you to use the same evil means in order to prevail, not be oppressed or killed or enslaved or whatever. But since this will invariably lead to innocents suffering, it's "evil" as well.
So the only difference is the excuse or reason for doing what you do, and there are no absolutely good or evil reasons.
In short - good and evil are overused categories that are invalid in real life . it's too complicated for that.
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Duncan
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posted January 07, 2011 09:42 AM |
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It is. Period.
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bixie
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my common sense is tingling!
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posted January 07, 2011 09:51 AM |
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Quote:
It is only good to fight a war in self-defense. Otherwise, it is evil.
of course then the question becomes "How far does self-defence need to be in order to be justified."
war is a nessecary evil, unfortunately, unless the human race transcends aggressive instincts simultaneously.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 07, 2011 09:55 AM |
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You do realize that "necessary evil" is making the good-evil stuff completely meaningless, do you? I mean, how can something necessary be evil?
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del_diablo
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posted January 07, 2011 10:52 AM |
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War is well.... human.
It is not a good solution, but it is one of one the brutal solutions to things. Well, it is not a solution, it is more like mongering for power.
To understand war, you must understand conflict, to understand conflict you must understand that 2 random people of the streets can kill each other if they are pissed off enough.
A country, a group, or any form of structure, still implies there is a human on the top of it, even organisations without structure still has some sort of "leadership", even if its is just the cells leaders. And then there is the craving the power, something too human. Power, recogination, group pressure and a lot more.
Everyone craves more, if in the least a bit subtle way. When a group comes together, the leader will perhaps crave for more or the groups pressure for craving will come onto the poor fellow.
Then the next problem is that there are things free to be grabbed. Law, social moral, and a lot of things can be ignored, frankly because we can ignore them. The other problem is that there also exist people who have a culture for rape, pillaging and burning. Combine that with a nation without the ability to properly even attempt to defend itself, and you will have quite a lot of rape, pillage and burn.
I am a bit unaware of how much the Jante law is present in basic human psychology, but I won't surprise me if it is present as a basic. A group will dislike another group having more, and thus they will get more even if they do not crave more.
Of course, in a weird longterm perspective, it sort of has only been recently that information has been allowed to be flown freely enough for the common man to have a opinion. And for the common man to have enough "security" for him or her to actually voice the opinion, and freely speak it.
The other thing is that we are aware of how much war costs, meaning that just starting a war would not be profitable because it is not a secure thing to do. Even the superior dictators don't try to expand anymore, mainly because it is not worth it. War these days is either guerillja or some sort, or large scale industrial backed.
War is more or less a personal conflict takes to the scale of a nation, at that scale it don't really make much sense, except for grabbing more power.
War ain't evil, it just don't server a meaningful purpose.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 07, 2011 11:08 AM |
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del_diablo
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posted January 07, 2011 11:27 AM |
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Jolly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_conflicts Sort of turned into a staredown over at that page doesnt it?
And this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_2003%E2%80%93current
Most of these have large amounts of tension, hatred, a history of blood being spilled against those on the other side of the border.
If there suddenly was a 10 year drop of just peace no and funny tension, there would suddenly be quite a lot of stability, and then went down the war number doesn't it?
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JollyJoker
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posted January 07, 2011 12:20 PM |
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I think, you are over-over-simplifying things.
First of all, war is VERY profitable, whether large-scale or small-scale. Not necessarily for the warring parties, but that's not the point.
"War" doesn't have to be fought with weapons either - it may be fought in a court battle as well -, and even THERE people are profiting: the lawyers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_armament_manufacturers
This is a very simple list of companies who profit from, let's say "high tension". The end of the cold war has been a bit of a setback in terms of revenues...
Anyway, with international affairs, it's not so different as with national affairs. Within a nation there are strict laws, there are law inforcement agencies and there are courts.
As long as this isn't true INTERnationally as well, there is no reason whatsoever, NOT to try and force the "interests" of a nation with all available means, if the risk is low. A war fought with weapons and soldiers is just too clumsy and dirty most of the time, but isn't the only possible "war".
What we currently have on a worldwide level is comparable with crimne syndicates operating within a large country. It's more or less lawless, and that will change only, when those "syndicates" hand a large part of their power to international institutions. This is of course unthinkable for the more powerful syndicates. 
Anyway, "war", in any form, takes place on those levels where the law and the law enforcement doesn't reach - it's quite natural, even if you take it to a personal level. Imagine a weak, but clever person, and a strong, but dumb person. If the clever person uses his cleverness to somehow screw the dumb person over, it's completely ok when the dumb but strong person uses his strength in a physically violent way to return the favor, and vice versa. Physical violence isn't worse than any other form of "violence".
In the end it doesn't matter, whether a country is ruthlessly exploited economically or conquered in a war - both is against the interests of its inhabitants, both is destructive, and both is kind of a war.
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Elodin
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posted January 07, 2011 02:24 PM |
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Edited by Elodin at 14:46, 07 Jan 2011.
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Quote:
This is another example, why the good-evil stuff is just nonsense.
Lol!
Sorry, but I must disagree. Raping a baby is evil. Cutting of the fingers and toes of babies is evil. I could name any number of evil actions.
I find philosophies that can't account for good and evil to be nonsense.
Quote:
War is evil. No dicussion about it. Defending in a war means, that (the) evil (aggressor) forces you to use the same evil means in order to prevail, not be oppressed or killed or enslaved or whatever. But since this will invariably lead to innocents suffering, it's "evil" as well.
Sorry, but self defence is not evil.
It is not evil for a nation to defend itself from a nation that is invading it. It is not evil for me to defend my family from a home invader. If someone invades my home and I blow his off with my shotgun I have done a good thing, not an evil thing.
Quote:
So the only difference is the excuse or reason for doing what you do, and there are no absolutely good or evil reasons.
Lol!
So your claim is that it is evil for a woman to fight back to prevent herself from being raped. It is evil for a mother to fight someone trying to snatch her baby. Ect.
Sorry, I can't agree that fighting back against preditors is evil. In fact such actions are good. Defending oneself against evil is not evil.
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baklava
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posted January 07, 2011 02:27 PM |
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Edited by baklava at 14:30, 07 Jan 2011.
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Quote:
Raping a baby is evil.
But what if the baby raped you first?
Also, stop saying "Lol!" at people's posts, it's a tasteless provocation and goes against the CoC.
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Elodin
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posted January 07, 2011 02:36 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
Raping a baby is evil.
But what if the baby raped you first?
Also, stop saying "Lol!" at people's posts, it's a tasteless provocation and goes against the CoC.
No, the moderators ruled it is ok to say Lol if you find a post funny and indeed I can quote places where it has been typed before and after their ruling.
A baby is not capable of rape.
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Corribus
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The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted January 07, 2011 02:58 PM |
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Funny how Elodin has to bring raping babies into every discussion. I worry about him.
Anyway, I'm with JJ and find good and evil labels meaningless, especially when it comes to "things" such as war, auto mechanics and toothbrushes. At best, evil is a term that should be reserved as a descriptor for certain people, and even then I think it's overused.
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baklava
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posted January 07, 2011 02:58 PM |
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No, the mods ruled it was ok for us non-Elodin people to say Lol.
Of course a baby is capable of rape. When they get together they can be like piranhas.
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money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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bLiZzArdbOY
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posted January 07, 2011 03:19 PM |
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War is a bar fight on a macro level. There's generally thousands to millions to billions of entities involved in it in one way or another, so it is impossible to cleanly judge it as you would judge an individual fight between 2 people. The best you could do is break down each individual person and try to determine their role in the wide-scale war, and such trials are often tasteless and pathetic in themselves, since really everybody knows that it's a half-justice either way and you're just trying to sort out a few select 'bad guys' for the sake of sating the public's desire for justice and/or vengeance. They're like sacrificial lambs.
If you look into it further, you can see just how chaotic war really is. One of the common fallacies I see is how people make such a strong distinction between killing combatants and killing civilians. JJ mentioned that war can be manifested in various ways, whether with physical violence or with economic warfare; either way you can cause immense damage to large groups of people. So what exactly makes a 45-year-old woman working on an assembly line in a tank factory any less of a target than a 20-year-old marine on the front line? Both of them are actively contributing to the war effort.
Not that I approve of mass bombing civilian centers, but it's food for thought. My point is that war is a very expansive business and I think very few people come out of it completely innocent or completely guilty. Politically, it's just easier to draw clean lines between the innocent and guilty.
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baklava
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Mostly harmless
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posted January 07, 2011 03:25 PM |
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Edited by baklava at 15:26, 07 Jan 2011.
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Quote:
working on an assembly line in a tank factory
Or a hospital.
Or on television.
Or driving across a bridge when it gets bombed.
(These are not random examples.)
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Elvin
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posted January 07, 2011 03:34 PM |
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All this talk of evil reminds me of this. I am not in favour of war but sometimes you cannot wait to see what happens. Take the Greek revolution, if we hadn't started a war we'd still be under Turkish dominion. Ghandi I deeply respect but he was practically a saint and I am not convinced that every situation can be resolved in a peaceful manner. If the cause is justified so is the war despite the harm it brings.
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del_diablo
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posted January 07, 2011 03:50 PM |
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jj: it seems we agree, but not on the scale and terms.
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OmegaDestroyer
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Fox or Chicken?
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posted January 07, 2011 04:04 PM |
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Quote:
war is VERY profitable.
Sadly, I can't help but think a third World War would get us out of the economic slump.
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