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Post by jreitsma on May 24, 2016 6:13:51 GMT
Moderator: Julia Reitsma
In the article The Psychology of War, Doctor Steve Taylor addresses possible reasons for why humans have engaged in war in the past. Factors of possible reasons for in engagement of war are biological, psychological, social-cultural along with many other possible predispositions being the underpinnings behind wars. The article mentions aggressive genes that want to be replicated; these might be another factor in wars. Moreover, it is believed that wars create unity between groups, which is believed to be a positive aspect of war if there was a positive to be looked for.
I believe that war is not natural for human kind. Our world did not have a war for awhile until the first one broke out over 10,000 years ago. Once precedent was made that it was acceptable to kill groups of people for land or goods such as oil and jewels. War is not an accident or impulsive; it is well planned out, meaning we cannot blame instincts or erratic thoughts, because of the duration of time put into it. War is an evil of human kind that countries try to justify for their economic reasons. Some excuse countries use to stop other countries from violence, but violence does not cancel out violence. War is a complicated thing, and isn't just human nature that people like to blame it on, it's an intentional decision, that shouldn't be made lightly, which our world has abused and millions of lives have been lost because of unthought out decisions of selfishness.
Thought Question: Why do you believe we human are willing to fight or start wars even if it means killing innocent individuals? Do you believe the costs out way the rewards? What is a serious enough reason to go to war?
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rkipp
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Post by rkipp on May 25, 2016 3:13:16 GMT
I think people start wars with a mindset that they are doing the right thing. Such as America getting involved in Vietnam in hopes of preventing the spread of communism. America thought it had good intentions, but then the war ended up being a huge mistake. In instances like the Vietnam war, the costs do not out way the rewards. However, sometimes good things can come out of war. As awful as WWII was, some believe it may have contributed to the end of the Great Depression. If we didn't get involved, the world would most likely be an entirely different place today. Although I personally do not favor the idea of war and wish that nations could settle disputes through diplomacy rather than deaths, I do think when nations get too out of hand and violence is inevitable (i.e. WWII), war can have a positive outcome for the future generations.
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paola
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Post by paola on May 25, 2016 8:32:46 GMT
jreitsmaYour thought questions make me think of a film I once watched in my literature class in high school; the film was about the Vietnam war, and it included exclusive interviews with the American soldiers who fought in it. As I listened to the soldiers’ responses to questions regarding their thought processes throughout the war and their opinions on what was happening, it was clear that they had been desensitized to the idea of death, to the act of killing, to the act of seeing corpses, etc.. It was evident that they were conscious of having done so much damage to innocent people, but their body language and responses made it seem like they were totally okay with it. Some soldiers alluded to the fact that they had been desensitized, mentioning that they were under “authority” and just obeying this authority. In my opinion, it’s almost as if the soldiers had been trained to kill, and had been trained to be okay with such acts. Such - desensitization and being under the influence of authorization - is a reason why humans are willing to fight, even if it means killing innocent people.
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Post by cliffordzhang on May 25, 2016 22:32:31 GMT
War is old men talking and young men dying.
I think the reason why we are willing to go to war and kill people is because of our sense of patriotism for our country. If Obama declared war tomorrow on Russia and convinced us that it was to better the world, I'm pretty sure a lot of us would follow him into battle even though we personally don't have any connections at stake. We joined World War I late. We almost didn't join World War II until the Japanese forced our hand. But when they attacked Pearl Harbor, it gave the American people a reason to fight because it suddenly became personal. But for situations like you mentioned such as Vietnam, it was pretty clear that many soldiers had no clue why they were there in the first place or what their objective was. A lot of the "missions" during the Vietnam War was just to take certain hills that were supposedly important or just wipe out as many Viet Cong soldiers as they could.
This is really the only reason why this is the only war that America has ever "lost". Eventually everyone realized that we had no business intervening in Vietnam and losing thousands of lives for no reason and support for the war died out.
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Oliver Micklewright
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Post by Oliver Micklewright on May 26, 2016 19:14:41 GMT
Although I agree that war is not an accident or impulsive I also think that the causes of war can quite often be an accident or impulsive. Take two tribes for example, a member of the first tribe might accidentally kill a member of tribe 2 in hunting accident but the following premeditated attack of the second tribe could lead to war between the tribes.
We have talked about this is class but people can get easily carried away and can easily conform even if what they are doing goes against their own moral beliefs. I think we mentioned how people manage to separate their perusal morals from their job morals - this could explain how the german's got carried away during WW1.
I don't think there is a good reason to war but sometimes, in self defence, it is a necessity. I think a problem arises with the question of what is self defence and what is attacking - because sometimes the only way to successfully defend one selves is to attack
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Post by emmajessicalin on May 27, 2016 0:14:23 GMT
I personally believe that humans have an underlying thirst for blood. Even when there lies little cause for conflict, people can find reasons for starting wars. In addition, we often say that our reasons for war are due to conflicting ideological beliefs or patriotism or morality, but typically they are for economic or political purposes -- to gain power or land or money. (But this is not to say that ideological/religious/moral wars do not exist).
The benefits that come out of a war are not usually distributed equally among the participants of the war.. usually the winners take something from the losers. It's hard to quantity whether the costs outweigh the benefits of war, because you'd have to look at each participating country/group individually.
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