Fucking dickwads in this thread who can't understand that violence has solved more problems in human history than any other solution. Its like, "oh, I live in a peaceful society, therefore all other societies in the history of humanity should have known better" when they don't realize that america is very violent, has always been violent, and has more capacity for violence than any other society in the history of the…
I think a lot of young folks (many in HN) know history from what they watch/read/hear in daily news, which is a terrible source. So that may be why. Major nations of modern era (since end of WW2) have not gone to total wars simply because of the availability of nukes. Not because people suddenly became enlightened and refused to fight a war.
Do you think telecommunications networks have had a smaller effect than the nuclear threat? Those networks have grown exponentially since the wars.
I don't know what you're trying to say. That violence has been used as a solution to problems? Sure. It has. That violence has, rarely, in some cases, been a sufficient answer for a problem? Sure. You cited a few. But that's not what you started out saying. You said that violence has "solved more problems in human history than any other solution" which is ridiculous. Oh, and I don't think hunting animals for food is…
What solution solved more problems in history than violence?
My more educated friends go a step further and start calling things 'Hegelian' and such when I'm just trying to get directly at matters.
A fun drinking game is to ask them to rigorously define what “Hegelian” is, and every time the explanation becomes pointlessly vague or self-referential, drink. I take no responsibility for the inevitable stomach pumping though.
Hegelian just means that ideas are situated in series:
And that while there is truth, there is no true idea. That what we experience as truth is a segment of dialectic that gives us emotional satisfaction enough to stop. But that this is personal and another person might need a longer chain which includes the antithesis of your ultimate (i.e. chain ending) idea.
I was in the infantry for over a decade. I joined before 9/11, but I did reenlist some years afterward, and I deployed a bunch, and fought many times. The thing about the article is that he says right there in the first couple paragraphs... Nobody that hasn't been there will understand the core message here. Worse, it's not socially palatable to embrace your innate human violence, despite it being such an intrinsic b…
Jordan Peterson has said similar along the lines of "we are all capable of becoming a guard at a Nazi concentration camp".
I think saying team sports is a good substitute for war is like saying that if you need a good substitute for afternoon tea, just eat a bag of mushrooms. At first blush, this might seem like a funny joke, but there are times in combat that feel almost psychedelic: Colors seem brighter and you get a kind of tunnel vision, your senses are not only highly engaged but more sensitive, your heart is pounding, your mind is…
I feel like you’re arguing the obvious, something your OP almost certainly understands. Actually I think your point would be stronger if your agreed with them—that sports do substitute for war in important ways, and use your knowledge and experience to show specifically where and when that stops being true.
For my arguing something so obvious, you sure seem to have missed what I said. You think my point would be stronger if I agreed with the parent instead of disagreed... Except that my point is that I do not agree with his post at all and it's obvious that he does not almost certainly understand the difference. Suggesting team sports as a "good substitute" for wartime experience plainly demonstrates a lack of understanding, really a true failure to grok. This suggestion has some features in common with the idea that Call of Duty somehow captures what combat is like. It's immediately recognizable as something a distant spectator would say. Someone that watches sports and war on television, for example. But it's not a good comparison at all, and certainly not a good substitute. Since you think this is such an obvious thing, perhaps you can compare and contrast your own combat experiences with his proposition to get what you were hoping to get out of my post. If you're not speaking from experience, then I'd ask that you not add noise by trying to oversimplify something you're only guessing at. If you don't know what it's like, that's totally okay, but I'd suggest not trying to shoehorn posts that do come from experience into the narrative you want to find, which is that it is somehow possible to "substitute" team sports "in important ways" for war. I'm telling you that they are only superficially, vaguely the same shape if you squint across a dark room. Add a few layers of abstraction, and they share cosmetic similarities. Otherwise they are not comparable in any way, let alone important ways, and I do not agree with the parent I replied to.
I don't know what you're trying to say. That violence has been used as a solution to problems? Sure. It has. That violence has, rarely, in some cases, been a sufficient answer for a problem? Sure. You cited a few. But that's not what you started out saying. You said that violence has "solved more problems in human history than any other solution" which is ridiculous. Oh, and I don't think hunting animals for food is…
>Oh, and I don't think hunting animals for food is the kind of "violence" we're discussing. You didn't understand what he was trying to get at. He was talking about hunting as an outlet for anger, so in that context I suppose he is framing violence through hunting as an outlet and hence a solution to anger.
> You’re eyes become open to the savage visceral reality that we’re nothing more than primates that talk. If you look at all the accomplishments of mankind in science and art, how can you say that?
Humanity is what happens when we tame human nature.
I think “civilization” might be a better word for that.
This article resonated with me. I was a Marine (no combat), didn't like it, but knew and respected the hell out of people who made a career out of it. I learned several lessons in the service, many of which people don't want to talk about. It takes only a few armed and motivated men to dominate hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. So disarmament and pacifism is not a workable strategy until the day we start program…
> It takes only a few armed and motivated men to dominate hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. So disarmament and pacifism is not a workable strategy until the day we start programming people as if they were machines This is was a lot people don't see. How easy it is to create a dictator ship with a "system" like that
The same phrase you quoted resonated with me. South Africa does have some violent crime. I don't know how it relates to other countries. We are fourth on the list when it comes to expenditure on private security per capita[1]. That's not all we spend money on. Next week a contractor is coming to fit an electric fence around our block of flats. Most homes now have high walls, alarms, sensor of all sorts. I grew up in a small town there were hardly fences. Fences were probably to protect against pesky kids stealing fruit and prevent cows eating up people's gardens.
To your point, it is just a small group of violent thieves that have the rest of us under siege. Everyone is security conscious and not at ease. I don't think trying to talk sense into these gangsters is going to work. It makes me mad that another man is making live life in a manner that I loathe.
I was in the infantry for over a decade. I joined before 9/11, but I did reenlist some years afterward, and I deployed a bunch, and fought many times. The thing about the article is that he says right there in the first couple paragraphs... Nobody that hasn't been there will understand the core message here. Worse, it's not socially palatable to embrace your innate human violence, despite it being such an intrinsic b…
Jordan Peterson has said similar along the lines of "we are all capable of becoming a guard at a Nazi concentration camp".
That's largely a different issue, isn't it? The excitement of war isn't involved in being a prison guard.