Any peaceniks here? Anyone who knows much about the topic of peace as policy?

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

I'm looking for a scholarly study of the idea of what would have happened over history, and what might still happen, if all the money spent on wars were instead spent on peace. If the massive resources were spent to build rather than destroy, to help rather than hurt.

I cannot help believing that it is only a failure of imagination and an incorrect belief that war is the only way to achieve peace that keeps us on this never-ending path to annihilation.

I've tried googling and haven't found much, and nothing of a serious, comprehensive nature.

[woodsprite]

1. My friend works for Nonviolence International.

They have some info on their web page at http://nonviolenceinternational.net/wp/,
but I also found where they linked under "Resources" to

https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource-library/

I'm at work so can't search a whole lot right now, but you might find something there.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

4. Thank you!

I have to get offline now myself, but I will check that out later. Thanks again.

[SamKnause]

2. Please post if you find out anything.

I would like to know as well.

I would think the world would be a much better place if we 'bombed'

countries with food, clothing, medicine, and knowledge.

I fear religion would still remain a barrier.

Another problem is the rich do not desire peace.

There are fortunes to be made in warmongering.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

3. No doubt the war profiteers (meaning most corporations, I suspect),

are anti-peace, but there has to be a way the greedy bastards could make a huge profit off of a peace plan. Though, that they can't, or at least not as much as in war, is probably a fact and one of the huge stumbling blocks to a peace offensive as policy.

Religion being a barrier to peace seems a historical problem that does not speak well for religion.

[MineralMan]

5. Human beings evolved as territorial, tribal beings.

Competition for resources during human evolution and the essential need to band together reinforced that nature. We learned the concept of "us" and "others" early, it seems. As human populations grew, the groups we associated ourselves with grew, as well. Subgroups developed within the larger groups.

Despite a lesser need for competition for resources, we still retained a competitive, tribal nature. Since those are evolutionary characteristics, they remain with us now as well. Each of us, normally, is part of multiple groups, local, regional, racial, cultural, educational, language, religious, geographical and even national. Each of us belongs to those groups and often we're competitive with "other" groups in all of those categories and more.

We've developed technology for violence, based on all of that. That technology, as technology does, has advanced and is now at the point where it can even destroy entire cities in one blow. Given our competitiveness, tribal and group associations and fairly easy identification of "others" in geographical and other contexts, we're a fairly warlike sort of creature.

Wars started between small tribal units competing with each other for limited resources and reproductive issues. Now, our wars involve entire nations or even global regions. Now, we have groups of nations in competition. We invest heavily in defensive and offensive arms, capable of global warfare. It all gets down to our nature, which has evolutionary roots.

We both develop our civilizations on various group bases and prepare for competition, which, in the case of nations, often leads to warfare. I doubt that there is a way to break from our evolutionary tendencies and end that. I'm afraid we will always be in conflict, as groups of all sizes, with the "others" out there. I've seen no evidence to the contrary.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

7. Thanks for the reply, though it I can't see how it's not, at its core,

a suggestion that we all just back down & accept the turbulent, violent world Trump, his cronies, and his followers seem to want for us.

I wasn't unaware of the history you related, but I've never seen it as necessarily dooming us inevitably to any particular fate, unless we give it that power. 164 views of this post and 4 replies, half of which basically say, Hey, that's just the way it is. Don't waste your time even looking into the possibility that we might be able to change it.

Seems to me that few are willing to even give a moment's thought to alternative possibilities. There must be people somewhere with more imagination and a will to find a better way.

[zipplewrath]

6. Kinda hard to do

For one thing, without the wars, the world/countries as we know them today wouldn't exist. Truth is without war, there'd be little in the way of anything other than a isolated "city state" kinds of structures. Unification at any higher level probably wouldn't exist because there'd be no need for it.

Wars are an outgrowth of our tribalism. Tribes became larger in order to defend themselves in larger numbers. And of course as people move around due to plagues, drought, or other natural disasters, that creates conflicts over assets like food and water.

A question a tad closer to your pursuit is what would a world without the threat of war look like? How would disputes between peoples be settled? If the whole world today stop fighting, there would be many oppressed peoples left. How would that be "solved"? What would happen in North Korea if there was no possibility of organized violent resistance? Does a world without war mean there are no tyrants?

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

8. Thanks for the reply, but it doesn't really even address my question. Of course, there's no way

for my question to be definitively answered, and answers to the questions you suggest would certainly come as part of the larger answer to my original question.

But, you seem to be circumventing that original question with unproven answers to related questions.

"...without war, there'd be little in the way of anything other than a isolated "city state" kinds of structures."

That may be true, but we simply do not know that. That is not the only possibility.

Where are the comprehensive studies, or even the serious discussion, representing a genuine investigation of what the world might be like now if at some point all the resources put into the terror, destruction, and injury of war had instead been put into the opposite?

It appears that most who even consider the question decide they already know the answer. Shouldn't people who claim to value facts and reason, not to mention a peaceful world, do more?