111–120 of 600 posts
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I don't understand why that's toxic. Striving, struggle, and violence are critical for any living thing to survive. Short of reaching post-scarcity, this can't change. If we define toxic as harmful, then violence is the opposite. It's the only reason we have civilization.
Cooperation, not violence, is the reason for civilization.
I think he highlights some fundamentally toxic aspects of human nature with this bit: “The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do.” The engineer in me wishes we could substitute the soldiers with construction workers or something, but I can’t deny enjoying war games growing up. These da…
Kids just don't know any better. I would imagine that those who actually spent some of their childhood in a war zone would have a very different perspective. What's toxic is when grownups end up glorifying war or thinking of it as a solution to hard problems.
I think he highlights some fundamentally toxic aspects of human nature with this bit: “The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do.” The engineer in me wishes we could substitute the soldiers with construction workers or something, but I can’t deny enjoying war games growing up. These da…
Violence sells better than sex at the cinema.
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Imagine erasing such murderous despots as Kathrine the Great and Elizabeth Tudor because of their genitalia.
Neither of whom were outside of a single standard deviation from the norm in Europe at this time. I find the GP argument less the convincing, but I believe that women haven’t been the face of genocide and war because of lack of opportunity - But all such are historical outliers - regardless of sex.
The only way people can lie to themselves that women rulers have less blood on their hands is by not studying history.
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I don't understand why that's toxic. Striving, struggle, and violence are critical for any living thing to survive. Short of reaching post-scarcity, this can't change. If we define toxic as harmful, then violence is the opposite. It's the only reason we have civilization.
Pretty much this. Humans are not peaceful by nature. And when one group of humans want something another group of humans don’t want them to have, violence is the ultimate option to solving that conflict. Thankfully many countries see the cost of solving conflict through violence and seek to avoid it, but it’s always there.
You can't make a broad sweeping generalization like this. There have been so many peaceful, even pacifist civilizations throughout history.
That they have been wiped out or dominated by the violent ones is a valid historical point, but it doesn't disprove that human "nature" can just as easily be peaceful, given the right conditions. Failing to protect yourself from external violent pressure is not the same as intrinsic nature.
The only strict statement about human nature that we can confidently make is that we are extraordinarily adaptive to and malleable by the conditions we live under.
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I don't think this counts as Godwin's law given the context, but: What exactly is your solution to the sort of naked aggression by Hitler in WW2? Is war not a solution to that problem?
Lets translate your question. What exactly is your solution to the sort of [war] by Hitler in [war]. Is war not a solution to [war]?
You do not get to choose whether someone else is violent or not. If you aren't prepared for violence, you can only be a victim of it.
Does anyone know why Hitler hated Stalin and communism so much? The article alludes to how Russia was always the main target, and he was friends with industrialists, but I've never seen a good reason why.
I think he highlights some fundamentally toxic aspects of human nature with this bit: “The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do.” The engineer in me wishes we could substitute the soldiers with construction workers or something, but I can’t deny enjoying war games growing up. These da…
a few personal notes: - as kids we all did fight games, from just kung fu fights for fun, to team fights where we somehow considered a group strongly as "not our friends" - maybe remains of evolution needs to make kids ready to fight for survival ? it might sound primitive but some bits are important because life may become chaos and ability to secure your own vital space is life critical (even in a modern world)
My daughter would not have touched toy soldiers with a stick. And her older brother always picked up war movies from a dump on the floor, while she picked up only films about "relationships".
>team fights where we somehow considered a group strongly as "not our friends"
I was amazed, watching myself playing on a PvP server in World of Warcraft, how easy it is to hate another faction - even though you play it yourself half of the time.
>remains of evolution needs to make kids ready to fight for survival
Evolution does not need anything. It just so happened that populations where boys did not like to play war games are now dead. That's the process of evolution. But it does not care if your population is dead or alive in the next step. It goes on anyway.
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>I sometimes wonder if I were not very smart, girlfriendless and a delivery rider if it wouldnt appeal to me too. How do you explain that 45% of votes for Nazis came from Women? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Nazi_Germany#Nazi_fem...