Does war in human societies also serve function of being a cleansing agent of bad ?

[Fleetinglife]

Or let me phrase this as to not sound so egregious,

Does war, apart from the it's seeming randomness, unpredictability and collaterality in it's destruction and destructive tendencies, also serve as a check on ridding the obstacles to the progress of humans and societies by rooting out and showing the consequences of, by standards of a current social development, no longer sustainable views and ideas about the functioning and foundations of a human society, as in the sense of dispelling all seeming contradictions, illusions and dellusions within societies and showing them the actual state of things as they are and as they were before developing to this moment without being changed or intervened upon?

Or, In short as the etymological meaning behind the original Germanic root of the word war in English suggest, meaning "warren" - fog of war, or confusion, is war just bring up on the surface the mental confusion and fog between people that existed in a society upon the surface for all to see and to show the consequences of it not being resolved by them that it leads to the destruction and self-destruction by insisting and wanting to remain living within that fog, or in other words does it contain creative tendencies within it by showing people the depth of the fog and confusion they have been living in and therefore forces them to adapt to new ideas and ways in which that society might in the future function

Or to put it more bluntly, in a similar way, but in a radically different context the way Leo said in one of his videos about societal evolution, does death, destruction and suffering caused by war actually have a net positive of ridding the world of no longer unsustainable views and ideas for the present world and current society that we are living in?

Is it actually deep down in ourselves that we are looking towards that what might be destruction for some egos might also spell creative potential for others?

I say all this with a deep sympathy and sorrow for the people of Ukraine and what they have to potentially go through now and face and I hope, even rather I feel naively,that they can somehow avoid the tragedy that might befall some of them, for I feel I don't want to wish destruction to befall upon others so destruction wouldn't eventually befall upon me for wishing it in a self-deluded and unconscious way.

Keep in mind, I don't yet personally myself yet grasp of how destruction and creation are sometimes intertwined though I have some ideas, images and thoughts in late hours when I can't sometimes sleep of how they actually might play out and serve a function in a progress and transformation of a society and humanity at large when I am, often morally solipsistically i.e. without much academic and empirical investigation and literature reference, thinking about topics in world history and politics.

 

 

Edited January 22, 2022 by Fleetinglife

[Roy]

Yes, for example - in a way you could argue WW2 was the greatest thing to ever happen for humanity. To summarize off the hip, it was a sort of purge of some of our worst tribalism and toxicities, it showed the absolute limits and reasons we needed to transcend nationalism and move onto higher ideas. The struggle forced technology to advance in order to fight for survival. In turn we developed nuclear weapons, which ironically were made to be the ultimate card of war, are in some ways directly responsible for the longest enduring peace we've ever had. We now live in a world that while yes is unequal for a lot of people, is factually materially more prosperous for more people than ever before, not being limited to just Aristocrats. Global trade and cooperation has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

The thing is we are selfish and short sighted, people just see what we have now and take it for granted. They don't want to think about what came before, and they don't want their circumstances to change, even if it will be necessary for future people. They don't want to be made to realize there is a cost to everything, but as they say, there is no such thing as a free meal.

People might have an impulse to moralize and interpret this as a view that justifies suffering and excuses human (or animal) casualties as a price that must be paid for something considered more worthwhile, or that the ends justify the means. I don't see it this way.

I find this is the only way to really explain and make sense of the atrocities and needless suffering going on in the world. That there is some kind of higher intelligence at play, and it will continue to do so regardless of how inconvenient or confusing the conditions might be for our small, tiny little egos.

I get the sense one might think this sort of intellectualization of this topic is incompatible with being able to empathize or appreciate the seriousness of suffering. I can understand those thoughts but personally I don't find it to be the case, for me it's actually been the opposite. Before I thought I understood suffering and what it meant, now I'm even more in touch. I study a lot of history in my spare time, and when watching videos and material on the Holocaust I actually cry.

At risk of sounding arrogant, I don't actually believe the majority of people have such emotional or vulnerable responses. They say they comprehend how awful something like the Holocaust is, and they will crusade against Nazis at every opportunity. But I think they are really just putting on more of a cloak for their own ego, and the depths of their empathy is much more shallow than they will ever admit.

[Roy]

To sum it up as sharply as possible -

Change is painful, because it means what was once before has to die, in order for the next.

[Carl-Richard]

Addressing conflicts head on can create a period of temporary stability, whether through coercion, mutual agreement or compromise.

[Bojan V]

It is very easy to talk about the war when people don't experience it directly. Personaly i did not experience war directly, only indirectly, when walking on the bridge above the river, avoiding tank-mines, which were there to prevent the serbian army to cross over the bridge. Also few kilometers away from me there was shooting and in the city further away there were battles and we could see and hear the explosions. Also radical political party bought my father's car and their leader was killed in that same car. And of course there was hatred among people combined with the radicalization of society. But that happend on the whole teritory of ex-Yugoslavia. I wasn't involved in war back then, but only because i was to young. If i was older i don't doubt i would be recruted in croatian army. I don't know how that would end. Personaly i never hated the Serbs, maybe i would not comply with the military, i don't know, and this is only one of the personal dilemas i have to deal with.

War reveals (and causes) so much hardship on so many levels, personal and collective. Maybe it really is some form of purification, but it is the worst one...

Edited January 23, 2022 by Bojan V

[Lyubov]

In a way. I would say it more-so has a greater design baked into it where these hardships lead to greater wisdom. We can make society so conscious that conflict won't have to be solved through violence. Humans largely learn through mistakes and trial and error however. So war leads to a lot of pain and misfortune but from that wisdom then comes. Thus the same mistake isn't made again. 

Edited January 22, 2022 by Lyubov

[BlueOak]

No. I can think of plenty of wars that left things worse off than before for example. I was going to make a more ambivalent response but on this one no, war only teaches people to hate war. For it to be the absolutely last thing you want to live through in your lifetime. The alternative is bits of people die inside to survive it.

Not everything that happens in life has a net benefit to people or in this case countries. Its a bit naive to think every challenge or problem you come across ends up to your or our benefit. Life just sometimes sucks and in the case of war it sucks for everyone involved.

Can a war end in change that comes about for the better, maybe, but paired against all the suffering it took to get there, I'd question it, and i'd also question if peace wouldn't lead their anyway.

Edited January 22, 2022 by BlueOak

[DocWatts]

From a dialectical perspective, World War II could be seen as the way that issues like eugenics and great power hegemonic competition got 'resolved' in Western cultures. I would argue that a war that killed 80 million people is a sub-optimal way for that to happen (to put it very mildly).

While it's perhaps justifiable to see the outcome of that conflict as beneficial for mankind, it's easier for us to say some 80 years later because later generations benefited from things like fascism and eugenics being discredited without having to pay the human cost of that conflict.

Edited January 22, 2022 by DocWatts

[Fleetinglife]

20 hours ago, Roy said:

At risk of sounding arrogant, I don't actually believe the majority of people have such emotional or vulnerable responses. They say they comprehend how awful something like the Holocaust is, and they will crusade against Nazis at every opportunity. But I think they are really just putting on more of a cloak for their own ego, and the depths of their empathy is much more shallow than they will ever admit.

Not at all, quite the opposite I think you are more alligned that way of being more truthful and realisitc towards yourself and the society that you are currently living in.

It is as you say, imo, rather a convineint unconscious emotional and ego self protective cloak for a person and the people that he is living with I would be more rather inclined to say, to facing up to the rather unpleasant and bitter pill reality on the capability of themeselves to become such people they often demonize and distance themselves from as ever potentially being capable of becoming. 

The Balkans (or the ex-Yugoslav spaces) are a picth perfect example of the peaks of the heights of the utter twistedness that this type of behaviour might reach and cognitive biased and moralistically warped, limited and narrowly directed emotionality to pre-selected and biased group favorites I think.

For example, many groups on the Balkans will decry and feel their moral and deep emotional traumatic outrage over the extent and depths of fascist/Nazi ''inhumane'', ''hate-driven'', ''bestial'' and ''sadist'' behaviour and collaboration of their opposite group counterparts during the WWII occupational times while at the same time actively shielding, ''whitewashing'' and justifying away the very similiar and almost qualitetavily non-diferentiable behaviour of the members from their own group they identify with.

And these collective (tribal) representations and notions remained firm and were later used to push, in a revisionist way, the later set of Balkan and Yugoslav dissolution wars that unfolded 50 years later.

This also applies to more differentiable groups and their notions of themsleves and each other carried over from even earlier pre-WWI and WWII wars that unfolded in this often historically conflict and war stricken region.

In other words, the depths of their empathy, solidarity and understanding ends to the most and largest only towards members from their own group that they feel like they belong to and that they identify with, nedless the say, the oligarch-controlled media here is happily pushing that divisiveness view that they economically and culturally profited from before at the onset of the most latest wars.

So yes, you captured the essence of that self-deceptive use of that (real) pinned down emotional traumatic energy and moralism over the inherent humanism of each and everyone human being here, in its limited extent and rules of exception of those deemed and collectively defined as the ''out-group'', as a mechanism the shield oneself's ego to the extent of his moral and emotinal hypocrisy in feeling different towards other human beings deemed different from his own group in which's security and safety he profits and benefits for the advancement of his own survival enhancement psychic and physical needs.

It is still inherently very self survival-serving in its emotional rawness, as the recent behaviors of IDF snipers towards Palestinian civilian rebels and protestors in Palestinian zones of almost all age groups demonstrates and the current active fascist/Nazism historical and current political revisionisms of some groups with that past and ancestral background demonstrates.

Instead, one should rather aim to ask and exploreoneself radically honestly and introspectively, in a  way Horst Mahler, one of the former West German-based leaders of the radical left militant and terrorist organization Red Army Faction honestly put it forward his parents and his friends and comrades were ''To which extent Nazi are/were you, were you a little bit of a Nazi, here or a bit more Nazi, there???'' when honestly approaching one's relationship towards these types of questions and topics and to perhaps tap more honestly and deeper emotinaly into the "potential and parts of the little Nazi still sitting there within you right now?'' in order to unlock that true depth empathization and understanding of that suffering since you remove your Nazi shadow part that prevents you from seeing that some of this and/or an aspect of this could have been done by you or inflicted upon you as this also a possible aspect of yourself given the right circumstances and it's potential inherent tragedy, and ther you unlock the potential of the universal self accepting all parts of itself, the Nazi one and the Holocaust one, and seeing it all as part of itself ordeal and trial and error seacrh for it's true self and it's ultimate love and self-acceptance.

To finish it on one of the lessons that might entail in striving towards an ultimate non-dual perspective and its implications for every aspect of yourself's existence and its uncompromising self-acceptance and self-recognition.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Fleetinglife

[Fleetinglife]

8 hours ago, DocWatts said:

From a dialectical perspective, World War II could be seen as the way that issues like eugenics and great power hegemonic competition got 'resolved' in Western cultures. I would argue that a war that killed 80 million people is a sub-optimal way for that to happen

I often don't like to use WWII as an example because of the often moralistic notions often hiddenly entrenched within existing societal norms regarding its history as resulting from their attempt to form the future unshakeable basis and foundation for the post-war international order as always portrayed as the ''righteous war'', ''just cause'' and the ''war that needed to be fought'' that often misses, ignores, mystifies and sidelines the other crucial points that can be made about it, that you just demonstrated using your pre-existing knowledge in viewing by using the dialectical framework from the philosophy of history.

I will use also another example of the Iran/Iraq long 80s war and its later consequences leading up to the Kuwait 90's war and 2003 Iraq war as being and their consequences and also possibly to some extent parts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and current Russia/Ukraine crisis, IMO, the prime example of the dispelling and disproving the legitimacy of the ideas of political realism in the post-war world order in regards to using it as a lens to base and center great power foreign policy around based around the ideas of, as fp advisor and political scientist Stephen M. Walt defines it:

''realism begins with the recognition that wars occur because there is no agency or central authority that can protect states from one another and stop them from fighting if they choose to do so. Given that war is always a possibility, states compete for power and sometimes use force to try to make themselves more secure or gain other advantages. There is no way states can know for certain what others may do in the future, which makes them reluctant to trust one another and encourages them to hedge against the possibility that another powerful state may try to harm them at some point down the road.''

to be replaced with the following fp notion:

''Liberalism sees world politics differently. Instead of seeing all great powers as facing more or less the same problem—the need to be secure in a world where war is always possible—liberalism maintains that what states do is driven mostly by their internal characteristics and the nature of the connections among them. It divides the world into “good states” (those that embody liberal values) and “bad states” (pretty much everyone else) and maintains that conflicts arise primarily from the aggressive impulses of autocrats, dictators, and other illiberal leaders. For liberals, the solution is to topple tyrants and spread democracy, markets, and institutions based on the belief that democracies don’t fight one another, especially when they are bound together by trade, investment, and an agreed-on set of rules.

After the Cold War, Western elites concluded that realism was no longer relevant and liberal ideals should guide foreign-policy conduct. As Harvard University professor Stanley Hoffmann told Thomas Friedman of the New York Times in 1993, realism is “utter nonsense today.” U.S. and European officials believed that liberal democracy, open markets, the rule of law, and other liberal values were spreading like wildfire and a global liberal order lay within reach. They assumed as then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton put it in 1992, that “the cynical calculus of pure power politics” had no place in the modern world and an emerging liberal order would yield many decades of democratic peace. Instead of competing for power and security, the world’s nations would concentrate on getting rich in an increasingly open, harmonious, rules-based liberal order, one shaped and guarded by the benevolent power of the United States.''

 

Edited January 23, 2022 by Fleetinglife

[Fleetinglife]

17 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Addressing conflicts head-on can create a period of temporary stability, whether through coercion, mutual agreement, or compromise.

Yes, ignoring to do such may be interpreted as yet another emotional ego shield actually self-serving mechanism of justifying itself on the notions of a twisted version of ''pacifistic non-action'' and ''hypocritical posh below me moralism''.

[Leo Gura]

That's the function of all conflict, not just war.

There's not much difference between war vs a fight with your parents vs snow buckling into an avalanche. It's a dissipation of pent up unstable energy. The energy is released to reach a new equilibrium point.

[Fleetinglife]

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That's the function of all conflict, not just war. There's not much difference between war vs a fight with your parents vs snow buckling into an avalanche. It's a dissipation of pent-up unstable energy. The energy is released to reach a new equilibrium point.

Or as I saw one philosophy and political analysis account on Twitter also define it in terms of political affairs using Freudian and postmodernist terms:

''you can find similar stories of mass political liberation followed or even accompanied by a corresponding executive crush from 1790s France to Reconstruction America to post-colonial Africa to revolutionary China, this reterritorialization of a mass libidinal politic, of course, the nature of the reterritorialization is different; sometimes it operates in the name of the mass politic, and sometimes against it, ultimately the procedure always encompasses an appropriation of the libidinal force unleashed in the liberation. Totalitarianism demands attention, it demands desire, it demands a level of engagement in the charade of the body politic from all people. It is a consumption of all into its own dramatis personae. If fascism could be said to be anything it is the appropriation; i.e. reterritorialization; of mass libido-political force in the service of a pre-existing industrial capitalist world order.''

Edited January 23, 2022 by Fleetinglife

[Fleetinglife]

On 1/22/2022 at 0:01 PM, Bojan V said:

It is very easy to talk about the war when people don't experience it directly. Personaly i did not experience war directly, only indirectly, when walking on the bridge above the river, avoiding tank-mines, which were there to prevent the serbian army to cross over the bridge. Also few kilometers away from me there was shooting and in the city further away there were battles and we could see and hear the explosions. Also radical political party bought my father's car and their leader was killed in that same car. And of course there was hatred among people combined with the radicalization of society. But that happend on the whole teritory of ex-Yugoslavia. I wasn't involved in war back then, but only because i was to young. If i was older i don't doubt i would be recruted in croatian army. I don't know how that would end. Personaly i never hated the Serbs, maybe i would not comply with the military, i don't know, and this is only one of the personal dilemas i have to deal with.

War reveals (and causes) so much hardship on so many levels, personal and collective. Maybe it really is some form of purification, but it is the worst one...

Neither did I, but from some of my research, I became more aware that with everything that unfolded in ex-Yugoslavia it was Serbian nationalism, the rise of Milosevich, and the Kosovo question problems with the Albanian people there, act against their leaders and people there and their status and rights that were the first domino in the domino effect that leaders and people in other republics just kept reacting to and reinforcing the intensity of the reaction to each other to in a vicious mutual, interdependent cycle out of fear and worry for the future of their own republics and people there, that the socialist Yugoslav system was hijacked and being used to achieve something else which it was not supposed to and started breaking some of its core principles that it was founded and agreed upon all sworn upon to respect and uphold in order to save people's cooperation, understanding, tolerance, inter-ethnic mixing and unity for the only benefit of people from all of the republics while it was blossoming and working.

I as someone who is defined as a Serb by the citizenship, socially, culturally and to a degree exploring self-referentially and understandingly to what aspect I myself also comprehend and understand myself and my position and role in the world as that respect that you shared a part fo your story this openly and honestly with me and I also want to apologize on the part of the soil I share here with my countrymen for all the intense pain, fear, suffering and trauma yourself and your loved ones, people you might have endured and have been caused by it ? - I became more recently aware the effect that initially the reawakening and resparking of Serbian nationalism had for the whole region, as a Serb, the initial domino effect as someone who lives in the country where it was advocated and spread uncritically and one-sidedly that try myself not get uncritically pulled in by the shadow aspects of my instincts and biases that I need to work on, though I never truly identified with deeply on a personal level even during my adolescence.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Fleetinglife

[BadHippie]

On 23/01/2022 at 1:14 AM, Leo Gura said:

That's the function of all conflict, not just war.

There's not much difference between war vs a fight with your parents vs snow buckling into an avalanche. It's a dissipation of pent up unstable energy. The energy is released to reach a new equilibrium point.

The problem with war is that the build up energy is released in a destructive manner - especially in war.

But you can turn the energy into more constructive and creative energy, simply by working with it at a more conscious level. 

Sure war has it's purpose, but I feel like humanity has had enough war (in the sense of killing each other with weapons).

Feels like this is on big shadow of Americans - the notion that you want to believe in the "righteousness" and necessity of all the bombings and stuff you do. Sure it was "necessary" for the growth of consciousness, but that doesn't mean we have to repeat the same stuff over and over again. 

Most if not all of those wars were illegal - according to the Charta of the United nations. I think most people don't even know of it. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force_by_states

You need a "permission" - even if that sounds stupid. At least legally, but if no one knows about it, and politicians get away with it.... 

 

 

[Jodistrict]

To assess the value of war, you need look no further than the Vietnam war.  The total number of deaths from 1965-1974 has been estimated at 1,353,000.   But what did that achieve?  The US now trades with Vietnam, and could have done that from the very beginning, except for a faulty theory believed by circles which ran US foreign policy.  Do you realize that thanks to media propaganda, Americans use to look at Vietnam the way people now look at Covid 19 or terrorists.  It was a big scary country that kept you awake at night.  Vietnam was a threat to your survival.   Unfortunately, the same cycle of war repeats itself, over and over, i.e Iraq, Afghanistan.  You can expect more wars in the near future, because we are ruled by apes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties#Total_number_of_deaths
 

Edited February 10, 2022 by Jodistrict

[Danioover9000]

@Fleetinglife

   Yes and sometimes no. It's a cleaning agaent, but that doesn't men only evil people get killed, some good people get killed too.

[Bojan V]

@Fleetinglife Thank you for your kind reply.

But no apology is needed. 

I am half Slovenian/ half Croat and i should also apologize for the croatian persecution of almost 200 000 Serbs at that time, which was such a terrible tragedy!

Non of this is our fault, my brother.

All is well between us??.

Peace?

[DManKee]

If this war happens many people will die. Young people will die for the ideologies spun by old farts in power in their countries. I understand that many circumstances have led to this point and many interests are at play. I see that like Leo said in his videos this situation has become a force that no single person controls or has the power to stop. It is a reflection of the state of human consciousness. All this makes me very sad. ? 

It makes me sad that people are willing to kill each other. That we are unable to see our common humanity. That we are unable to work together and see past our perceived differences. I understand that like in WW2 at the end there is a potential for growth to arise from destruction. People will be shown their delusions and will be forced to drop belief structures. I just wish war wasn't the answer.

[JTL]

@Leo Gura I just re-saw Understanding War & Conflict - Part 1 and just wonder if you could elaborate, about why culture wars are necessary for progress?