: This may be off topic, belonging more in the realm of social science, but I found this rather interesting.

: "And peace is a possible reality, meaning that all coud be free if they chose to be, then maybe we could work on the : problems which confront earths inhabitants at a much faster pace, which would give us better odds at long term survival."

: I just noticed your quote and I must disagree on both counts of peace and freedom. : 1)peace: : I don't think world peace is possible. This may be a pessimistic viewpoint but as long as two people remain of the face of the earth, confict will persist. It really depends on how you choose to define peace. Peace makes me think of happy happy, people all around the globe rejoice and hold hands. That's simply not believable. : I think that there is constant struggle for power that's ever present. War is merely overt conflict. Conflict still persists in times of peace but does not openly manifest its self because neither party involved, stands to gain anything by waging war. For example, America sparingly engages in all out war on other countries, unless it's a matter of self interest and they have alot to lose (but not going to war) or alot to gain (by going to war). However, American imperialism persists in other forms, be it economic or cultural.

: To say that it's possible to live in peace without war, is to change human nature. You said it yourself, we're nothing more than animals with a slightly higher evolved tool. We're still very much subject to our primal instincts.

: 2)freedom: : We humans tend to believe that we are much freer than we actually are. For instance, we fancy ourselves free through our ability to choose anyone we like to be our sexual partner. But statistics show that there's an extremely high probability that one will marry only within ones own race (even in culturally diverse countries such as northamerica). : Which brings me to the more philosophical problem of free will. Would you say that we have free will? I love discussing this topic.

I must say, you are very optomistic in your pesimisim :) There are fewer wars today at any one time than ever before in history, although the ones there are are alot bigger and destructive (last 2 decades), but if the governments of the world could come together out of some necessity (giant asteriod...) them we would have to forget our differences and look at our similarities (we are all human), thus it would be necissary to pool our resourses under the direction of a single symbolic rule, because our best chance would be to leave earth, not try to halve the global killer as the movies portray. This would be just another step in the inevitable. Once this step is accomplished the next would probably be an entirely new constitution because the world pulling together would (hopefully) destroy the system of capitalism, we are not going to put up with letting them make a profit on All of us trying to save the human race and as much life as there is left are we? If so, then we deserve it. But it is good that we have huge military machines and government systems in place, for this along with the "supposedly" seperate system of free enterprise would provide the technology, communications, organization, and resourses nesissary to achieve the task. I proposed such a thing on the model united nations floor at Harvard, the big one in Chicago, whats the name? as well as Berkley and Washington, D.C. during my school years, of course I was ignored, and all it was was a proposal to do a study on how it could be acomplished in terms of nesissary resourses and infrastructure, leaving the political aspect in limbo until after the results of the study were complete. Then we would at least have the bigginings of a plan in case of such a reality. Most of the information is already there in all the various parts of the United Nations, all it would have to be is retrieved and organized to find what was lacking in such a plan which would be mostly infrastructures. I will try to find the resolution I wrote and proposed and see if I can figure out how to post if from a computer file.

What was the second thing? Oh yes, freedom! Of course I was refering to internal freedom, freethinking such as this is a product of such a philosophical view, even the ones who claim all manner of loyalty to stuff, they have alot of internal freedom. Anyway, a move through the nesessities of man kind simular to the one I used as an example would also create a need for a total adjustment of the way business is conducted and relates to the individual, I don't mean a controled state, but one in which a long term common goal overides the petty reasons why we accept the corrupt government systems of have and have not that we see today. Sorry rich folks, your fortune will not keep you decendents in control of others forever. Gotta run, the dinner bell! Coming Honey!

• The world is decrepid cesspool of hate and despair - tenacious - October 2, 1999 - 00:36 UTC
  • Sigh - Phil.o.sofir - October 2, 1999 - 03:41 UTC
    • Fair enough - tenacious - October 2, 1999 - 20:15 UTC