On war.

[Danioover9000]

   In Leo's latest blog, he writes about understanding war and provided a video. The video unfortunately I can't access due to the content creator not letting access from my country, but I've come across another video that give a shorter explanation about war in terms of evolution, which also has a follow up video showing how war contributed to better civilizations:

   What are your thoughts on this?

Edited June 7, 2021 by Danioover9000

[Danioover9000]

   Here is the follow up video:

 

[Danioover9000]

   What's your opinion on war?

[Milos Uzelac]

Here is an example I thought about since the ICTY trial and ruling of genocide conviction on Bosnian Serbian general Ratko Mladic during the Bosnian War of the '90s is part of the cultural zeitgeist here in this country, which many see as problematic due to setting a bad precedent for the people here of having a people's army being complicit in committing a genocide, not a massacre or war crime, but a full-fledged genocide.

The civil war in the instance of the collapse of the former Yugoslavia had a distinct unleashing of repressed antagonisms and judgments about other people's caused in part due to the economic depravity and crisis that the country prior to that went through that was also in large part caused by the refusal of the IMF and the US at its head to give more loans to the country suffering an economic downturn and crisis in the late '80s and early '90s and by the staunch demand of the IMF for the country to start to carry out economic neoliberal policy reforms in order for it to be eligible for more loans and a political system reform demanded by the US.

The war was as I see it a result of these held and repressed antagonisms being unleashed once the country went through a severe economic downturn for long enough for people to lose employment and jobs and to find in their repressed residuum of the psyche someone or something to blame for their misgivings and misfortune and for their long-repressed feelings and judgments to be unleashed in some way, destructive and barbaric in this case.

For example, the Jewish philosopher Georg Zimmel posited his theory that undeveloped human beings have a natural tendency to form enemies to blame for life's hardships and problems and fight against caused in part by the inherited trauma of psychic wounds from their ancestor's genes that lived in more resource-scarce and unforgiving times that then in civilizations needs from time to time to be unleashed on a massive scale when repressed enough in the collective unconscious residuum of repressed feelings and desires in the form of war, that was his theory I paraphrased at least on some of the causes of WWI. The Italian philosopher Primo Levy called it the atavism carried under the veneer of civilization.

As for war or the fear about war being a civilizational drive towards progress, I am not so sure I think it only applies to already well-developed and expansive empires or colonial powers in the past and the great powers of today in their pursuit of hegemony and being the next beacon of civilization and the civilizing process on the earth, which is in itself, very contradictory and often carried out through repressive and barbaric means hidden in the cloak of technological superiority and technical supremacy, nowadays I think.

Edited June 10, 2021 by Milos Uzelac

[Danioover9000]

@Milos Uzelac

23 hours ago, Milos Uzelac said:

Here is an example I thought about since the ICTY trial and ruling of genocide conviction on Bosnian Serbian general Ratko Mladic during the Bosnian War of the '90s is part of the cultural zeitgeist here in this country, which many see as problematic due to setting a bad precedent for the people here of having a people's army being complicit in committing a genocide, not a massacre or war crime, but a full-fledged genocide.

The civil war in the instance of the collapse of the former Yugoslavia had a distinct unleashing of repressed antagonisms and judgments about other people's caused in part due to the economic depravity and crisis that the country prior to that went through that was also in large part caused by the refusal of the IMF and the US at its head to give more loans to the country suffering an economic downturn and crisis in the late '80s and early '90s and by the staunch demand of the IMF for the country to start to carry out economic neoliberal policy reforms in order for it to be eligible for more loans and a political system reform demanded by the US.

The war was as I see it a result of these held and repressed antagonisms being unleashed once the country went through a severe economic downturn for long enough for people to lose employment and jobs and to find in their repressed residuum of the psyche someone or something to blame for their misgivings and misfortune and for their long-repressed feelings and judgments to be unleashed in some way, destructive and barbaric in this case.

For example, the Jewish philosopher Georg Zimmel posited his theory that undeveloped human beings have a natural tendency to form enemies to blame for life's hardships and problems and fight against caused in part by the inherited trauma of psychic wounds from their ancestor's genes that lived in more resource-scarce and unforgiving times that then in civilizations needs from time to time to be unleashed on a massive scale when repressed enough in the collective unconscious residuum of repressed feelings and desires in the form of war, that was his theory I paraphrased at least on some of the causes of WWI. The Italian philosopher Primo Levy called it the atavism carried under the veneer of civilization.

As for war or the fear about war being a civilizational drive towards progress, I am not so sure I think it only applies to already well-developed and expansive empires or colonial powers in the past and the great powers of today in their pursuit of hegemony and being the next beacon of civilization and the civilizing process on the earth, which is in itself, very contradictory and often carried out through repressive and barbaric means hidden in the cloak of technological superiority and technical supremacy, nowadays I think.

   Thanks for sharing your thoughts on war. I've thought about it and there's sine connection to evolution, not just the biological, but on a collective ego level. It seems throughout history, war in particular, that kind of ego is getting more and more sophisticated to the point it could squeeze some benefits from conflicts and small wars.

[Danioover9000]

   @Natasha has posted a thread about the possibility of China invading the USA. Personally, I think it's a very long stretch, so long the war would probably take place after a few generations pass on, abd still it's largely gonna consist of ideological warfare, economic and trade more so than classical warfare, although China is flexing its military might lately.

   Speaking about China's military, this is a good breakdown on China and Taiwan below.

 

[Milos Uzelac]

"the root of the English word ‘war’, werra, is Frankish-German, meaning confusion, discord, or strife, and the verb werran meaning to confuse or perplex. War certainly generates confusion, as Clausewitz noted calling it the “fog of war”, but that does not discredit the notion that war is organized to begin with.

The student of war needs to be careful in examining definitions of war, for, like any social phenomena, definitions are varied, and often the proposed definition masks a particular political or philosophical stance paraded by the author.

Cicero defines war broadly as “a contention by force”; Hugo Grotius adds that “war is the state of contending parties, considered as such”; Thomas Hobbes notes that war is also an attitude: “By war is meant a state of affairs, which may exist even while its operations are not continued;” Denis Diderot comments that war is “a convulsive and violent disease of the body politic;” for Karl von Clausewitz, “war is the continuation of politics by other means”, and so on. Each definition has its strengths and weaknesses, but often is the culmination of the writer’s broader philosophical positions.

An alternative definition of war is that it is an all-pervasive phenomenon of the universe. Accordingly, battles are mere symptoms of the underlying belligerent nature of the universe; such a description corresponds with a Heraclitean or Hegelian philosophy in which change (physical, social, political, economical, etc) can only arise out of war or violent conflict. Heraclitus decries that “war is the father of all things,” and Hegel echoes his sentiments. Interestingly, even Voltaire, the embodiment of the Enlightenment, followed this line: “Famine, plague, and war are the three most famous ingredients of this wretched world…All animals are perpetually at war with each other…Air, earth and water are arenas of destruction.” (From Pocket Philosophical Dictionary).

Alternatively, the Oxford Dictionary expands the definition to include “any active hostility or struggle between living beings; a conflict between opposing forces or principles.” This avoids the narrowness of a political-rationalist conception by admitting the possibility of metaphorical, non-violent clashes between systems of thought, such as of religious doctrines or of trading companies. This perhaps indicates a too broad definition, for trade is certainly a different kind of activity than war, although trade occurs in war, and trade often motivates wars. The OED definition also seems to echo a Heraclitean metaphysics, in which opposing forces act on each other to generate change and in which war is the product of such a metaphysics. So from two popular and influential dictionaries, we have definitions that connote particular philosophical positions."

from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Article the Philosophy of War https://iep.utm.edu/war/