Any aspies have trouble understanding concept of war?

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Regardless of whether or not a war is justified, suicide rates tend to drop, and social unity becomes a lot stronger, even if it is in competing factions.

One of the big reasons people seem to like war is that it gives their lives meaning. People are either arguing an unjust war should be stopped, or pressuring everyone into supporting a war against some vaguely defined 'enemy'.

When you factor this into the money that gets spent on war, there are a lot of people who want it. If there's not someone genuinely worth fighting, they'll use convoluted logic to make someone worth fighting.

It's all about money and feelings. Morality doesn't always factor into these decisions. (Sometimes it does, but it's usually not very important.)

Everyone knows that the Taliban just hated the US for their support of Israel. Now, all other NATO countries are on Bin Laden's "target list". Nice one Canada!! If I die in a subway attack in Toronto one day, I shall say, "why did we have to fight the Taliban? They didn't target us."

Most people seem have a strong desire for their "team" to succeed at something. This can take the form of sports, but also political parties, wars, etc. Nationalism, for instance, is the "team spirit" of the country in which you live.

"Of course it's tempting to close one's eyes to history, and instead speculate about the roots of war in some possible animal instinct: as if, like the tiger, we still had to kill to live, or, like the robin redbreast, to defend a nesting territory. But war, organized war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and cooperative form of theft. And that form of theft began 10,000 years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide. The evidence for that, we saw, in the walled city of Jericho and its prehistoric tower... That is the beginning of war."

- Jacob Bronowski (1908 – 1974)


Shoes at Auschwitz

Last edited by Diamonddavej on 06 Apr 2010, 4:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.

If this is the case, I find it disgusting that people would find "team spirit" in an event that could kill millions of lives.

Understanding what war is, is trivial. Understanding why they are started, is a more difficult matter.

ruveyn

I was just thinking...it must suck being a soldier because you are merely a robot being controlled by whatever your government or army leader tells you to do. And how does a soldier judge whether or not to draft dodge? Things aren't always as they seem in a war. You will most likely have a biased view of things (the view will be in favour of what your government wants you to know about the conflict, probably saying why you are the "good guys" while demonizing your enemy).

I don't care if your autistic or NT. People shouldn't have to understand war. The reasons for war are usually for greed and domination...not because safety is at risk. Look up some past wars and you'll see exactly where I'm coming from. War is wrong...no ifs, ands, or buts. Peace FTW!!

It's not explicitly billed as such, but to a certain degree that's the undercurrent. That and the general population fairly quickly desensitizes to people dying when they see it again and again and again.

I think this sums up what I was feeling about it. I understand once people are angry and have given themselves permission to act upon it that violence is inevitable. I don't understand how a well intentioned leader could consider it a correct course of action. It's in how they are allowed to begin that the mystery lies. Like any premeditated murder, there is time to think and to recognize that people, including those not in the armies, will die. Violent acts on the battlefield are more forgivable than the carefully pondered choice to declare war.

War is a financial transaction between nations.

To me war isn't a great mystery. It's pure greed, selfishness and the idea that one side thinks that they know better than the other. And, the truth of the matter is that neither side knows better than the other. And, since this is the case, it boils down to a matter of differences and lack of understanding and respecting and acknowledging differences and appreciating them. One side has to impose their views because they think they know what is best and that somehow their lives would be soo much better. Emotions and tempers rise. Voila! Conflict.

People become too self righteous and think that they just damn well know what is best when I know they don't. I know I don't. The best they can do is take an educated guess. One thing I see in NT's is that they are so damn slow to learn things and are always contradictory and hypocritical. Honestly, this isn't to target NT's, it's just that I don't know any RL aspies. So, I can't say either way as far as they are concerned. NT's will twist things soo far that it boggles my mind. The cycle is easy to pinpoint and once you see the cycle, you just go...oh yeah of course.

Look at it however you want but there will always be war. Well, always as long as there are people left to make and fight wars. It's just the nature of us humans so it's not going to change.
That being the case then the best defense against a nation being attacked or provoked is having a strong military.

Weakness invites attack.


Si vis pacem, para bellum: If you wish for peace, prepare for war.

If everyone gave up violence, and destroyed their weapons, the world would be a much better place for everyone. If some gave up their weapons, and others didn't, those who kept their weapons could take everything, and probably would. If everyone keeps their weapons, everyone suffers.

The issue of War in itself can be determined by classic Game Theory. A big part of the problem is that we're not just dealing with two parties. There are several hundred countries with militaries, and if we played this game someone would keep their guns. Whoever kept them would probably be intent on using them. So, everyone keeps their guns, and everyone is the worse for it.

And so the Darwinian arms race fought between ape and lion, caveman and neanderthal, it's accelerated quite a bit. We already have nuclear weapons and stealth aircraft. I can only imagine what terrors we'll create over the next thousand years.

That's true.



That isn't. At least, not completely.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is like a "constitution" for all branches of the US military, states very clearly that soldiers are only required to carry out lawful orders. If an order is not lawful, i.e., it violates another article of the UCMJ, the soldier is not required to carry it out.

This can be problematic, however. If you've got bullets whizzing past your ear, it can't be easy to stop and attempt to figure out the "lawfulness" of orders. If your platoon leader screams at you to "Shoot", you shoot. It's a hell of a conundrum.


Regarding the original question about the concept of war, most creatures above the level of earthworms are territorial to a greater or lesser extent, and engage in ritualized disputes over space or access to resources. So that part of it is nothing new.

What's new is the lethalness and efficiency of the weapons. African lions, for instance, are territorial in the extreme, but for all their ferociousness, they can only kill one enemy "soldier" at a time. We, of course, can wipe out millions at the push of a button. If chimpanzees, say, developed M-16 rifles and cluster bombs, they would no doubt use them just as we do.

I wouldn't say war is a "breakdown" of the rules. I'd say it was a hyper-extension of them. It's territoriality carried out to a grotesque degree. Territoriality as a strategy works well for most species. It worked well for us, for the first two million years. But we got too good at it.

At this point in history, it looks to me that the only thing between us and "mankind's final war", as John F. Kennedy so poignantly put it, is the restraint and statesmanship of our leaders. And when I say "our leaders", I mean the leaders of all of us on the planet ... all of humanity.

It seems inconceivable that any nation would be so hellbent on beating up another nation that they would actually launch nukes. Surely, they understand by now that no one would win an all-out nuclear exchange. But on the other hand, I suppose I could see some extremist whacko gambling that his first strike would take out all his enemy's retaliatory capability. Or perhaps he's wagering that the rest of the world would be so terrified of world war as to capitulate to him. Either way, it's scary as hell.

You do realize Toronto has a pretty big Muslim/Arab population, right? I would think that in itself would put Toronto at a much higher risk of a subway attack.