Well Memorial Day brings the usual crew out

[nadinbrzezinski]

It's like veteran's day...

Still, perhaps it is my nihilist side, or the study of chimps and other critters on this world that ALSO go to war. Folks, I know we all would love to forget about war, and put it into our past... what if it is encoded? Look, fact is chimps go to war, and so dolphins... it is just a fact. And the historic pattern with humans is that we go to war, and our kids don't... now our grandkids... well you know honor and glory and all that.

Some nations (read empires) go to war more often. It is just the nature of being an Empire, but fact is... humans go to war. We are tribal (you might want to call it nationalism, but it is the tribe) and we will fight for resources. Whether those resources are hunting grounds way in the past, or water rights today...

Not that I wish to get rid of this war forever... today I had a dream that all nations would make war no more... but if this is encoded... evolutionary... well then, I have then no hope that we will be able to overcome our nature. So to those of you who think that we can rid of the military, I wish you luck... but somehow I don't think so at this point...and we are like all other species, hi order species on the face of this planet. The only thing that makes us different, is that our tools are better for the job at hand... but Chimps don't use tools! I can hear it now... au contraire mon ami, they do.

I know miss sunshine should be my middle name at this point. So go ahead, call me that way. I will not deny it.

[av8rdave]

1. I just try to remember the words of John Kerry....

And try not to confuse the war with the warrior...especially since I was one at one time.

I have tremendous respect for those who serve. I have NO respect for those who abuse them and commit them to causes that are unjust or false.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. I know that, the soldiers

don't make policy... they follow it... at least in the US military. There are other militaries where they have... and that is not something you want to live through, as bad or good as our system is... we have yet to have a military coup. And if we ever do... god help us, if you believe in a deity that is.

[Arctic Dave]

8. If warfare is encoded in us, why give a rats ass about the soldier at all?

If this is the case we should just kick all the dead into a big hole and sharpen our knives for the next time.

Should we change Memorial Day and Veterans Day to Sucks to be You Day?

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. that is a good quesiton

and when we need to ask if we tool makers are capable of overcoming that encoding. Things like the World Cup might be an adaptive way of dealing wit that impulse, while blowing up people might not. Know what I mean? From that POV the Olympics, which I loathe, are an excellent idea.

[L0oniX]

2. Everyone goes to war over a piece of dirt which ends up going to some others later on.

What you fight for now later on becomes nothing worth fighting for. Who you go to war against becomes a trading partner 20 years later. Who you sell arms to now becomes our enemy later on. FUCK THAT!

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. I guess chimps have that pattern too

in fact, we go to war all the time... just that not all of it involves guns... and our language involves conflict... so companies engage in ritual warfare.

Fuck that... if this is encoded at the genetic level, good luck. It MIGHT have had an evolutionary advantage. Technology though makes that advantage be quite mal adaptive today, but that is another matter.

Now if all you can do is fuck that... well then, why even discuss this possibility? If this is the case, we'd better find a way FAST where we will not destroy each other...

[L0oniX]

5. I will defer to those much wiser than I.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." - Dwight Eisenhower

That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them! – Albert Einstein

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Was either of them an evolutionary biologist?

The first was a military officer, and everybody who's been to war shares that sentiment. See what I said about their children usually not going to war, but grand kids, of course.

And Einstein also said that he did not know what form WW III would take, but WW IV would be fought with stones and sticks... guess why he wrote that?

I am just suggesting what is at the leading edge of CURRENT research.

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/050209_warfrm.htm

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/07/19/the-chimps-of-war/

[2Design]

7. good quotes