This diary will not be a comfortable one to read around these parts, but it is really quite a simple work! It was prompted in light of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the arguments around here about the hoped for proper course that this conflict should ideally follow, I have been thinking about human reality and whether progressive thought has been or can be realistic or just an outlier of potential human behavior? If the latter, what would have to change to make progressive ideology and actions the norm
If you were assured of your and your loved ones basic needs being met for now and in the relative future, would you risk your life in a war?? Why? On the other hand, if the ability of yourself or your loved ones to survive now or in the relative future was at risk, would you perish quietly while others took the available resources so they could survive? What is the carrying capacity of any environment and how do humans not exceed it; OR do they exceed it and thus kill each other off?
Mankind groups together in societies to try and assure that society’s survival, IMO. When that society’s inhabitants sense survival threats, they try and assure enough resources for their survival even if other groups cannot thus survive! Sound familiar? Abraham Maslow described a pyramid of need to show motivation behind human behavior. A graphic of this pyramid is below.
While our deficiency needs MUST be met for survival, our being needs are continually shaping our more optional behaviors. This statement to me means that people will fight to survive by almost any means, but their upper level behaviors after their survival is assured is more arbitrary and optional. I think that many of us here are discussing upper level motivations while much of the world, including the US government, is acting in the must area for survival! This explains why we talk about all these solutions that never actually happen because our solutions do not deal with the survival reality of many groups. If we want progressive ideas to be embraced by the future of mankind, we must assure that the lower level Maslow needs for everyone are assured for now and the relative future.
Now how do we actually do that??? (See poll)
From a scientific point of view, there’s nothing like historical reality…
Oh but I disagree. There is a public health paradigm about the limit or asymptote of any environment to support a species. Some species like fruit flies will always overshoot the carrying capacity of their environment and result in a massive die off. Other species seem to sense the carrying capacity of their environment, and stop having offsprings before the massive die off is needed.
Now where do humans fall in this continuum?? For one thing if the religious fundies have their way, we will be forced into the fruit fly paradigm even if our natural instincts would prevent it.
Remember, we are not necessarily talking the entire earth here, but regional environments.
The political solution for me would be to stay within the carrying capacity of the earth and use politics to disseminate resources fairly to prevent war necessity. However once the carrying capacity of any regional environment is/was reached, war and die offs will result. If we ever reach the actual carrying capacity of the earth for humans, global conflict will be assured as opposed to quiet die-offs, IMO!
A case can be made that when the carrying capacity is reached in an area, war is the result, and that this behavior, evolved in hunting-gathering times, goes back in our species possibly several million years.
If this is true, then to avoid war you need to bring the population back into balance with the environment. There are several ways to do that:
Reduce the population via
or expand the carrying capacity via
If current (or the perception of imminent) resource scarcity (read: declining standard of living) will “prime a society” for war (unless the collapse is so sudden and total that the resources for war do not exist, in which case one might argue that the society itself no longer exists) then the current history of the Middle East becomes clear: the masses are facing resource scarcity (because regimes are hoarding wealth for the aristocrats), and even the educated young of the middle and upper class face declining prospects as the oil is projected to run out. Such people are ready to receive the message of extremists that the US and Israel are to blame for their problems, and to the degree that the record supports that claim, the case for jihad is made even stronger.
On its side, the Israelis face the same resource issues and the same pressures on their population, waiting to be primed by demagogues on their side.
There’s not even enough water for everyone there, for crying out loud, never mind higher needs on Maslow’s pyramid.
No wonder any spark lights a flame.
Efforts at “fostering understanding between peoples” will never “capture the hearts and minds” of the majority until basic needs are met and the threat of scarcity is gone. Even Aquinas, who certainly had a vested interest in pushing the philosophy of peace and love of the Church, famously said “A man who’s hungry can’t be happy and won’t be good.”
So we have a choice: Options 1 through 3, or options 4 through 6. The current regimes have chosen the latter. As in the great majority of wars, it may take sufficient bloodshed for the fury to spend itself out before cooler heads prevail and options 4 through 6 can be considered. Those options would look something like the following:
If we want to foster long-term peace in the region, “fostering understanding” must be followed up with education to promote (1) the rights of women (which causes a lower birthrate) and (2) the technologies that will expand resources and make new resources available: decentralized solar and wind power; desalinization plants; improved agriculture suited to the climate (possibly hydroponics using wastewater?); developing industries that create exports or bring in tourists; etc.
In the meantime, smuggling birth control pills into these societies for their young women might be a creative option. How many Bibles were smuggled into the USSR and China for a half-century or more by believers?
And there’s always this to hold onto:
“[War] is instinctive. But the instinct can be fought. We’re human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands! But we can stop it. We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today!” — Captain James T. Kirk
Well done, and thanks for the effort!
There is a reason the dark ages existed, and to the extent that we are heading back to a religious fundamentalist caused dark age, the outlook for man-made intelligent actions to prevent overshooting the carry-capacity of environments looks bleak. To put it another way, I sure hope there is a God that gives us manna from heaven, but its track record for the last 3 thousand years on preventing war isn’t good.
Man can do this with science and logic, but again his track record for evolutionary progress in this population resource allocation area isn’t too good. I actually think it is getting worse now as the greed is good crowd (Gordon Gekko-another fictional character) wins power in the world.
This is where “country” and “God” indoctrination comes into play. Participation in military training activates the “belonging” and “esteem” levels. Once in combat, then the individual drops down on Maslow’s hierarchy to safety and physiological needs. When members of one’s military group gets injured or dies, then the participation gets personal.
Applying this to the oil and energy corporations explains the drive to own the oil and means of production and distribution (minus the love).
So many forces at work who benefit from conflict.