Is Humanity too Destructive to Survive

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I have only lived for 42 years but in all my living memory I cannot remember a time when there was no war going on in the world. Reading our history books, and learning history in school, it seems that history is one long sequence of war for as long as we can remember, or since records were kept.

It seems conflict is the human condition, and that we cannot live without wars breaking out.

Do you think humanity will ever reach a point where we figure out how to live without battling each other? If so, what will it take?

In times past war lasted much longer. Look up the hundred year's war which actually last 116 years and the thirty years war.

According to Stephen Pinker the human race is becoming on the whole less violent than it used to be.

ruveyn

A lot of Religions preach love and compassion, but not all teach how to cultivate these qualities to make them grow in you. Hinduism and buddhism teach this. It's through meditation. I think it was the Dalai Lama who said that if we taught meditation to all children in the world, violence would disapear in one generation. I think it's a too optimistic estimate, but teaching metta meditation is the only way to realy end violence in the world. Otherwise, I think it will be almost impossible for humanity to survive in the long run.

No, and the reason I say that is because people don't learn, and people don't make drastic enough change to prevent war to begin with. Even if one or two countries in the world decided to seclude themselves, they're still subject to attack from other nations who blindly hate them and as a result would either A) Die off from attacks, or B) Have to fight back to keep themselves safe.
There will never be something so drastic (short of killing off 90% of the population of Earth) that will promote true change and balance in the world. People will always kill each other over stupid crap, and societies will always have to be monitored by law in order to keep some peace. And so long as there are multiple nations, there will never be true peace.

Since we've pretty much exterminated all our natural predators and we're to stupid to ever admit the dangers of overpopulation, the sad truth is that we need wars as population control. Without war, humans would probably be a lot worse off right now.

Seventy years ago there was a world war.
Forty years ago there were no world wars.
Now there are only small wars.
The nature of people is much more quiet now than 40 years ago.
"The day will come when not one person will raise their fist above their head in anger." That's the prophesy.

Yes, I vote for a 90% population reduction.

It will not take war, they will do it to themselves.

Coming soon to a planet you are on.

I´d also say, that humanity can look forward. So we are only doing small steps, but if you look over centuries about 4000 years there was an heroic saga about an greek sailor, who robbed and plundered everything on his way, and he was admired to do so. Nowadays this is ridiculous. 2000 years ago, there was a man with some crazy new ideas, like helping foreigners that you find without purpose on the street, this seemed to be so radical in earlier days, they even wrote a book about it. ^^ Sure, we do not go straight forward, so there are also times when we go some steps back into earlier cruelties, genocides and so on. But in general I think its getting slowly better, so only a step forward in every generation, but with this we made miles from ancient history on.

Accepting of limits on ressources. Happy people dont go to war and dont think about killing others. Starving people, surpressed people, people that see their children dying before their eyes because of lack of water and so on... the fear, pain, anger is the seed for others in which they can grow their seed of hate and war and false religion in.

As example: Nestle Company built a factory 40 km from Lahore, the Capital City of Pakistan. They drill there for groundwater they sell in plasticbottles at a price that is 25% of the monthly loan of poor person there. There always have been a village which is now neighbor to the factory. Since Nestle is drilling the ground water sank from 100 feet to 250 feet. So many of the dwells of the village are not longer deep enough and the few dwells that are deep enough now contain water that is affected with bacterias. Many of the villagers are so poor that they cant afford the material they would need now to cook the water. And instead of sending their kids to school to get some basis knowlege they now have to pay for cooking material.

So they cannot drill deeper dwells. They cannot move away. They cannot cook the water. They cannot stop to drink the water. Right now children are dying because of this. And when they asked Nestle if they would allow them to at least get their drinking water (it is a small village) for free, the company who is responsible for the village children dying, that is selling millions of these water simply said "No".

So when a muslim fanatic comes into that town, telling people lies of the quoran they cant prove because they couldnt afford their children to visit school, and telling them of the western civilisation that is doing war on them and responsible for their children to suffer and that they should suffer the same: Its not surprising to me that they will find followers.

In this case you wouldnt need something great. No society to change, no reformation of the complete economy, no communistic sharing everything.... only a small faucet to provide a village with its own water, at least for drinking would be enough and can change the fate of a complete villages generation.

Rubbish. Has the devil laid eggs in your brain??

What we need is centralised leadership, not this ancient and feudal warlord system

Go to another planet and you will see.
Its not like bands of monkeys all squabbling over resources and food like here on earth

They have unified purpose, instead of tangentially all pulling in different directions

The UN one world government will save us

If humanity can survive through this time of fighting and the possible plagues that seem to be lurking, than it is possible. As a group, humans seem to have made forward progress over the centuries with regard to human rights, equality and democracy. Unless there is a total breakdown of societies, than I think we will continue in this vein.

Our ability to kill is greater than ever because of nukes, and other weapons of mass destruction.

So the pontential for destruction is greater.
We cure diseases, kill off predators, but at the same time can leash the powers of nature for destruction. So we are our own worst (and only) real enemy now.

But as several above have pointed out above, despite how it seems in the newspapers, we are actually trending toward less violence in the world- atleast in proportion to the world's ever increasing population.

So there is reason for cautious optimism that we can survive our own collective suicide.

After the humans dispense with each other,the age of the reptiles will begin
Thank you all for the global warming,our eggs will hatch nicely.

I once briefly wrestled a 3meter male komodo dragon on the island of Komodo, to save a person from getting bit
They called me Komodo Dundee
True story

This.

Beautiful scales > creepy smooth skin.

Komodo's have a toxic mix of bacteria in their mouth.The babies culture the bacteria by eating after the adults.the one that are raised in captivity do not have this as they never have costumed the toxic culture.
The local folks supposedly know charms to protect themselves from the dragons but they keep these secret.
They can swim great distances between those islands and a female is capable of producing her own fertilized eggs,her first clutch will hatch all male,to insure a partner.
The ones raised in captivity bond with their keepers and are the most intelligent of all reptiles.
Many new studies with reptiles testing higher in intelligence than mammals.

I'm guessing reptiles are a special interest
They certainly have some strong adaptive behaviours
When they isolate the grow the tail back hormone thingy
Might be useful for me as I lost my penis in a car accident