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Intro: I had posted a link and expressed my hatred of humanistic solutions and the destruction they cause (the hyperlinked Wiki page is very biased in favor of Humanism, it is much more specific then the European authors of that page have detailed).
My friend, Nevin, responded with this:
Nevin: I think that anti-war posturing i've heard you making is one of those ''humanist solutions" you talk of. meaning the ones that leave a lot of destruction and unintended consequences in their wake.
Me: If being anti-war is to be intrinsically linked to humanism, we're definitely headed for WW3. I oppose war not on a respect for the human being (if human beings make wars, how can a humanist oppose it?) but on a respect for life & the idea that a nation can sin by sending its citizens to kill. While it's stupid to take war off the table, it has been WAY too common for our nation in the past 125 years and especially in the last 20. You can call it humanistic if youd like, but humanism in and of itself is not theistic and, therefore, is incompatible with my stances.
Nevin: my point is that wars are actually good for life. If you have a respect for life, deeper study in the matter should take you to the conclusion I'm at right now; that war is a good thing for life. Lets leave the theology out of this and look at it from a scientific perspective, like a good political scientist would do. Even from the theological perspective, killing isn't sin. Anyway, humans going to war with each other helps keep population densities down to a more sustainable level. World population at present is not a sustainable thing, which means we need war and we need it now.
Me: lol I would have to say that there are no 'good' political scientists...and to be a good political scientist you must be theological ;) Those who wrote the Constitution and the Declaration were theological, werent they? ;)
This has to be long to counter the incredible stupidity of the statement 'we need war.'
Looking at the resource-technology squares (which i will draw and post on friday if you want me to), as you expand tech capabilities, you expand available resources. For instance, a Japanese farmer gets 16 times the yield per acre our farmers do and we get upwards of 30x the amount African farmers do...so, using mathematics, the world would be entirely fed if Americans produced the same amount per acre as the Japanese do and the market distributed it effectively. As for the availability of fresh water: Tokyo, Beijing, and New York purify dramatic amounts of water for their citizens.
What does this all mean? Dont be an idiot, Nev, we do not 'need' war as a way to bring down population; to see it that way is very shortsighted and does not take in the lessons of history. If the Chinese on the eastern coast all used the methods of modern Africans to acquire suitable living conditions for that 1.1billion people, there wouldnt be 1.1billion people on the coast. There is a pressing need for an massive increase in the market's ability to distribute resources to those who need them.
In the 1930s in America, bad government policies under the Agriculture Adjustment Admin. mandated crops to be slashed and burned just 50 miles outside Topeka, Kansas as people in Topeka, Kansas starved to death. In the United States today, the government stores billions of pounds of food until it rots while thousands of children in Africa starve to death. We have effectively developed the free market to meet our needs at home, now we have to export that, and the food that comes with it, to the closed places of the world. The problem here is the UN and the EU (and the WTO and the IMF...etcetc): they block most of these proposals because major member nations (China, Japan, UK, France, Russia, us) continue to extract natural resources out of the 'former colonies' in Africa. Those who are extracting are allied with African dictators and so-called "illiberal democracies" who further block/take the aid shipments international organizations dont stop.
Here is where theology comes in: the Church can bypass all that bullsh*t...and they do. Though, instead of going over on just another mission trip, why not work to supply these mission groups with big government aid packages to be delivered and distributed by faith-based volunteers? Bush got that and pushed for it. Obama does not and is opposing it.
War is stupid, better government is necessary.
Nevin: The founding fathers were not particularly theological. They were mostly all masons, and were a lot closer to pagans or atheists than they were what you would probably consider pius christians.
Let say humanity went the route you're speaking of here. Lets try to predict where that is going to take us and the world.
Lets say we get africa to start farming with better techniques. In fact lets say we get the whole world farming with the best techniques for efficient farming we know of. Prices go down, living becomes easier, become a lot less concerned with how many kids they have and population continues to expand. However efficient your farming methods are, they aren't infinite, so once your population reaches a point that a certain plot of land can no longer feed them, what will that population do? Expand out past the edge of wherever their current farming ends.
This cant go on and on into infinity, because there is only so much space on our planet. I'm sure at some point you had one of those science classes where they tell you about the cycle of life, and organism A eats B, B eats C, C eats D, D eats A sort of thing. Larger in scope, but you understand the concept. If one organism disrupts the cycle of life it will eventually come back on them. For example, if we just kept expanding our farming, we'd be depleting sh*t loads of everything in the process, but lets just talk about the rainforest for instance. If we clear all the trees and vegitation so that we can feed more people from farming, there wouldn't be enough oxygen being produced, not to mention all the effects to the life cycle not having a rainforest would do.
So I hope this makes it clear, that there is a point of critical mass we can reach where we will have no option other than to fight each other over resources. We would be quite foolish to ever take the situation on this planet anywhere near that point. Which is why a good means of keeping our population at sustainable levels is absolutely necessary for the continuation of life on this planet, or we could have another mass extinction.
I think war, with a set of intelligently designed rules and regulations for it, is the best way to control our population, as opposed to birth control and one child policies like China has enacted. That is a connected topic, and its tough to see why war would be better, but it is. Is there anything you would further dispute here?
Me: For their time, the Founding fathers were very theological...by today's standards? Not that much, but we cannot project modern values on them and their (it might be said "wacko theological") contemporaries i.e. soldiers.
Theoretically, technology can expand resources indefinitely. If there is 'only so much space on our planet,' we'll find another one. Hydroponic farming in laboratories has increased even the Japanese farming techniques by more than a hundred fold in yield. We simply need to invest heavily in these techniques (Detroit is probably the best place to begin large-scale hydroponics...they have a very large number of unemployed, many empty buildings, and an incredible amount of potential that is suppressed by union culture and horrid schools) and bring it to profitability. Do not be European and put an artificial limit on resources...that is the path to rationing and, given the response to this health care artificial limitation: that is NOT the way we do things this side of the pond. We overcome our problems with production; that is why there are no limits to where this people can go.
Argh, Nev, you've been corrupted! Watch The Patriot: there is no honor and no rules in war! War destroys resources even further than going to war over them! It has taken 150 years for Georgia to overcome Sherman's march to the sea! Your argument is self defeating...
In the 60's and 70's, the Soviets were designing a type of submarine...not your average, everyday type of submarine. This one would hold enough nuclear power to eliminate an EIGHTH of the EARTH. For example: BAM! and 1/8 of the planet's crust would be gone. They were going to design 9 of them....8 to destroy the world and 1 to especially nuke the Great Lakes region. They would be detonated if communism failed: if the Soviet Union lost the Cold War. Thankfully, this was denied halfway in...but only because it would destroy the 'other communist nations' and 'proletariats,' not because it was evil.
I'm curious, Nev, why not kill yourself? And, on that note, why not systematically hunt down all your facebook friends and kill them? Your parents and grandparents, your brothers and sisters. Annette Richards? Michael Dean? Surely this would keep the population down nice and well.
Catch your tongue and consider what it would be like if it was done to you: if you, or the young lady youre interested in, fought, suffered, and died in one of your wars. Me? I'm not going to risk a cousin or a brother in a war I wont fight in unless it is undeniably necessary. Even then, I would seek daily absolution for that most egregious sin.
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I know it gets off topic (especially me) once in a while, but I hope it's got you thinking about war and its applications. I'm just sad that the Goldwater/Reagan anti-war Republican standing broke down under Bush. Throughout the 20th century, war was always a Democrat going to the other side of the world and trying/failing to change it. You'll notice that war did not bring down the Soviet Union, an inspired peace did.
Make sure to comment with your thoughts! I've set it so you dont need an account and can post anonymously!
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