WAR...Greed, fear or Instinct?

[Roland_Deschain]

Ok I will start off subtle. Since the beginning of the human race the whole world has been fighting each other. We seem to be just be unable to live with different races and beliefs together in harmony. We grow paranoid and package our fear into nuclear weapons. Back in the day people would fight to claim territory, or for religion or laws, also people wage war over resources.

There are many different reasons we have war in the world and it seems almost impossible that it will ever stop. As humans become smarter, so do their weapons. As our technology advances we continue to kill each other.

Now my question is do we wage war through fear, greed, or is it just instinct.

In my personal opinion I think in this day and age "fear" is being used as a tool by those who have a lot of "greed". I also think that war and the desire for it comes from deep within ourselves as well (instint). If we do not have a good reason to fight than will we create reasons to?

Also is war really a necessity, or have we just created the necessity? I believe it never was a necessity but the more war exists and the more time we spend time trying to solve our problems using it....the less chance/time we have to actually find a solution to these problems. Example given.. The more time we pour our funds into war for petrol than the less money we have for research to find an alternate fuel source. Also the more money we pour into godless wars with people we do not even know than the less chance we will ever continue space travel or discover a new place to call home. It seems to me that weapons have the most emphasis for technology these days....I think thats a shame. We have abandoned our persuit to the stars so that we can further destruction of the only planet that we do have with weapons that we have created.

I also feel that the more we involve humanity in war than it will be just that much harder to ever fully escape the concept of war. I honestly still have some faith in world peace, perhaps not in my lifetime but I still think its possible. As the days go by that idea and view has become harder and harder to hang onto. Why has religion become a tool for war? Why has freedom become a tool for war? Less people care about the generations ahead of them these days.

This is just the start of this thread and its open to debate as people can compare wars, reasons, beliefs, and opinions about this. Just be nice to everyone.

 

[Sum1sgruj]

Greed is what causes war. That is pretty much a moral truth. Religion, in it's initiation such as the Levites pillaging cities may be a special exception, but other then that, greed is often put in the form of excuses. Crusades= religious excuse from warping the Bible. WWII= greed through warped delusion of being a master race. Revolutionary War= greed through objection that 'you came from our land, this land is ours'. And so on and so on.
That's how I see it.

 

[Donald Trump]

Clausewitz said that 'war is merely the continuation of policy through other means'. It's a view that I have a lot of sympathy for. To me, war is just a way of getting what you want. I wouldn't call that greed though. There's a certain element of Social Darwinism to war, that is if you are strong enough you can take what you want from people that are weaker than you.

 

[DarkShadow]

War is waged mainly from from greed most notably by the government of the USA, though countries like Isreal engage in war (in Palestine) through a nonsensical belief of fear. The main problem though, lies within the corrupt western governments with imperialistic policies,most notably again the US's government. The only solution to this is if countries were more independant and democratic with a transparent government. If countries can't be more self-reliant and democratic war will always exist no matter what.

 

[Shaissa]

They say war is the father of all things, and sadly thats true.
Think about it, most technology can go back to being used first for military purposes, computers, radios, tv's, even lots of medicine, we can thank war for it... Nations are even made and destroyed out of war...

So is it greed or instinct?

I say it can be both, but it is more instinct than anything else. If you feel like someone is taking something away form you that you believe is truly yours, you will fight back to keep it out of instinct. Same thing for even nations, if overall a nation feels like another nation is a threat, they will go to war out of instinct that if they don't attack first, they will be attacked on there home soil.

Now greed can play apart of war don't get me wrong... But in war, you have to get people's support so you have to make them feel the instinct that they are being threaten there way of life will be ruined if they don't go to war, which is why people are able to make reasons for war... Religion... Politics...means nothing without peoples support and there instinct to defend what they hold dear in their heart.

 

[Roland_Deschain]

They say war is the father of all things, and sadly thats true.
Think about it, most technology can go back to being used first for military purposes, computers, radios, tv's, even lots of medicine, we can thank war for it... Nations are even made and destroyed out of war...

I feel that and I agree that it has been, but in retro perspective do you really feel that we are farther along than we could have been if humanity was united from the start? I realize we would have had different set of problems with the mass amount of poverty, yet also time to deal with that. War has created poverty and seperated mankind since the begining though. Do you think if war was not something we had to worry about than perhaps our prioritys may have been different and mankinds average future potentially better? As for as we know we shouldnt be thanking war but questioning it. Most of the technology has been seconded from military designed things, but what if the money was invested in things for humanity and not agaisnt it? Who is to say how the world couldn't possibly be different in ways that benifit.

 

[asm]

I'd say greed, and that it compasses fear and instinct aswell. Perhaps there are various layers of greed, some being institutional and some being innate, and greed in the sense that everyone must conform towards something you think is favourable for some other entity (greed-by-proxy I guess), but in general there'd be no wars if there were no (material) things to lose or gain. That's why no one is slaughtering eskimos for their nonbelief towards whatever people want to propose for them, at least currently. People are persecuted for their valuable assets, whatever those assets may be.

Israel-Palestine was mentioned in this thread, and I'd say it's a textbook example of greed aswell. The difference is, while they have ideological "support" for bickering, the biggest fighting points are greed-related (arable land, water, etc).