division offense/defense=illusion?

Post Reply New Topic

Here's another example. Every single government, company etc. that exists today grew into its current form from something. The company didn't just go from non-existent to 15'000 employees overnight. It began somewhere. Same with a state or any other entity. And even if it is the case that a company has x amount of employees from day one, the money that was needed to start that company, the know-how etc. didn't just pop up out of nowhere, it came from investments that individuals, families, organizations etc. had made over a long time. Maybe a person saved money for 20 years doing menial job so he could start a company with 5 employees. So now there is a company with 5 employees that the owner has to try to preserve, but all the way up until that point it was offensive action, exertion of power. You don't earn 20 years worth of money by sitting on your ass. So, if you look at a country or a company at a certain point in time, a freeze-frame, it might appear to be a static entity. But it isn't. If you roll the tape you see it growing up from nothing into its current form.

It doesn't seem to be in conflict with itself, as far as I can tell.

The line between offense and defense is probably more blurred the more interconnected the two opposing entities are. If there's a small sea-living organism with nothing but water for several meters around it, and then a big fish comes darting against it as if out of nowhere and eats it, then I can see how you might possibly see that as offense on the fish's side, although perhaps if you were to get theoretical and abstract about it and extrapolate into a wider context you could perhaps debate that. But when you have a technologically advanced and globally extremely interconnected society, the cold war is literally fought on a million fronts, and then the question seems to morph into something of a different nature.

Here's an analogy that I came up with right now. You have two bathtubs side by side with water in them. In one bathtub is you tied to the bottom. In the other is your friend tied to the bottom. Each of you have a hand pump with a tube that is long enough to reach the other bathtub. The bathtubs are right next to each other with no space between and it is an enclosed area so either of you have nowhere else to aim the tube but into the other bathtub. When there is an equal amount of water in both tubs the water is over both of your noses and both will drown. You can't breath through the tube because it's glued to the pump. So the one who is the most efficient pumper will survive. And simultaneously kill his friend.

What do bathtubs have to do with war?

I posted the same topic on three forums. On the other two there were no replies at all. And here this. What is the problem? Is this beyond people's comprehension or what? Not that it's the first time I post something and get that response though.

I believe both bathtubs have the right to defend themselves.

The question is whether the division between offense and defense is an illusion. In the case of the bathtubs, every single liter of water you pump out of your own bathtub in order to allow yourself to breath, is a liter pumped into the other person's bathtub making it harder for him to survive and increasing his chances of being killed. Replace the two bathtubs with two companies, two states or two other entities. Every minute of commercial time on TV X on Friday night that company A has bought makes people skip the product/service of company B and choose the product/service of company A. With countries defense works in a similar way. Defense can be to maintain trade that benefits 5 large companies in your country, and hurts 5 large competitor companies in another country, by for example trying to undermine the operations of the 5 companies in the other country. Let's say there's discussion about whether to build a certain highway or instead build a certain bridge in the other country. You know that the 5 companies would profit more if the highway is built, so you do everything you can to further the cause of the bridge. You pay x million dollars for a commercial about the great benefits of building the bridge. You pay x million dollars to an environmental organization that protests against the highway. You recruit 100 people to join the environmental organization to stand in the streets with placards, which gets on the TV news. All such actions are in defense of your country, yet offensive actions against the other country. The two are indistinguishable.

I will defend your illusory right to offend yourself.

I guess the level of abstraction is simply too high.

Quite the contrary.

The height is inversely proportional to the width: A wider generalization equals a lower level of abstraction.

Not necessarily. In any case the subject was obviously beyond anyone's grasp.

It is always the case; an unconditional consequence of how abstract concepts are formed.

Depends on what one means by abstraction.

And even if you want to contrast abstraction to generalization as in zoom in/zoom out, it can be argued that I'm zooming in into the concepts offense and defense. In a war for example you can see that as two countries, and then you can zoom in a lot and all of a sudden you see those thousands of fronts I talked about. My point is that nobody cares about this topic for some reason except you and you didn't seem to bother to think about the topic and wrote the following, which was borderline trolling:

Not really. It is merely a matter of hierarchical structure.