Peace fights War and wins
Apr. 30th, 2013 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anansi133Playing wargames, thinking about peace. Watching Game of Thrones, thinking about War of the Roses. And asking really boneheaded questions about why constant warfare seems preferable to a robust peace.
Something comes to mind that's so simple, there has to be more to it than this. It's related to why the battlefield is always divided into two sides, never three or more. (life and death are binary states, by the time you've given yourselves permission to kill, then the whole world is only enemies and allies. There's no room for more than two sides.)
So the reason that war seems preferable to peace, is that peace is complicated and uncertain. Despite what the flower people preach, it's not straightforward at all. You have to model your opponent's needs and wants, and gauge that against their power to do mischief or help. And if they're not honest or competent, this becomes a guessing game. And for peace to work, they are doing the same for you. Repeat for as many different factions as exist on the playing field.
Humanity can't do peace because collectively we're not smart enough for it.
-which isn't to say it's not worth pursuing, but just that there's a compelling reason to try to get smarter.
{and questions of population control, environmental stewardship, taking care of an entire planet, we'd need to be smarter for that as well, too. Figuring out problems of peace just serve to expand the human attention span so we can look as bigger solutions. Otherwise, your best plan to fix global warming is trumped by some barbarian one country over who advocates a more short term solution, and you have to fight them before you can fix the atmosphere.)
Something comes to mind that's so simple, there has to be more to it than this. It's related to why the battlefield is always divided into two sides, never three or more. (life and death are binary states, by the time you've given yourselves permission to kill, then the whole world is only enemies and allies. There's no room for more than two sides.)
So the reason that war seems preferable to peace, is that peace is complicated and uncertain. Despite what the flower people preach, it's not straightforward at all. You have to model your opponent's needs and wants, and gauge that against their power to do mischief or help. And if they're not honest or competent, this becomes a guessing game. And for peace to work, they are doing the same for you. Repeat for as many different factions as exist on the playing field.
Humanity can't do peace because collectively we're not smart enough for it.
-which isn't to say it's not worth pursuing, but just that there's a compelling reason to try to get smarter.
{and questions of population control, environmental stewardship, taking care of an entire planet, we'd need to be smarter for that as well, too. Figuring out problems of peace just serve to expand the human attention span so we can look as bigger solutions. Otherwise, your best plan to fix global warming is trumped by some barbarian one country over who advocates a more short term solution, and you have to fight them before you can fix the atmosphere.)
