Believe it or not, we're living in the most peaceful period of human history thus far. I'd recommend the book The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker which talks about how far we've come. That said, I see the threat of global warming, lack of fresh water, famine, and energy scarcity becoming threats to the current status quo, though. If we don't figure some things out as a species, we're likely in for some turbulent times in the next hundred years.
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Lack of fresh water and energy scarcity is already becoming a problem in Africa iirc.
I had the impression that those struggles have been going on for a long time. Like 30+ years.
Is the issue growing worse, or was the previous struggle sensationalized to an extent?
You are right. Thank you for the insite!
The world is fighting fewer wars than ever in history. That doesn't mean there are no wars, they're just much fewer in number compared to the past.
We’re also competing and dominating resources in other, less violent ways. Economically, technologically, socially etc.
Peace isn't possible without the abolition of borders.
And sadly the powers that be rely on borders to stay in power.
Unfortunately, I think even without borders there will always be disputed territories.
A lot of people will blame conflicts on power hungry individuals, on war profiteering, or on relatively simple characterizations of cultural prejudice ("Americans hate brown people!"). There's truth in these viewpoints, but they're limited by being framed in current sociocultural issues.
It's very important to understand that there are ancient cultural feuds that people who were born and raised in the US are mostly ignorant of. For instance, India and China.
The reason that Afghanistan is such a mess internally today is that it was never a cohesive national culture in its history. The people who live there are comprised of many different cultural groups, many of whom are the descendants of various groups of invaders throughout the region's history - and as such, many of the groups hate each other due to past territorial conflicts.
Every place you might look at in the entire world, the history is like this - an endless fractal of groups trying to conquer each other, or running away from some other conquerors and getting into conflict with the locals whose land they ran away to. It goes all the way back to the time that the first hominid picked up a rock and hit another one over the head. The conflicts are so old that no one remembers how, why or when they started, but the fear and the hatred remain.
These conflicts aren't the product of modern international economic competition or ideological differences (capitalism v socialism, etc) or nationalist political division. Rather, the modern competition, differences and division exist today as an expression of the old conflicts.
To get to the world of peace that you have in mind, it would be necessary to wipe the slate of history clean.
Afghanistan is technically isolated throughout its history. The current government of Afghanistan couldn't survive without overhaul of the economy.
I was thinking about how we (USA) are always in continuous (ghost) wars and never try to negotiate for peace, to my knowledge.
The US has supported or started many pointless wars, but that we have never negotiated for peace or avoided war is not accurate. One example is that the US, as part of the UN, participates in peacekeeping efforts across the world.
One country and one languague or would a world power have to forcibly join everyone together?
So, you know that 'one world government' is a thing that terrifies a lot of religious conservatives because they think it means the antichrist and the end of the world, right? The language thing is difficult too. From what i recall the most common language worldwide is Spanish, with 2.5-3 billion people speaking it, which means 5 billion or so people would have to learn Spanish, or we'd have to pick some other language and even more people would have to learn that.
I agree that nationalism is harmful, but overall it would be very, very difficult to persuade every country in the world to give up their language and national identity. Also, as central planning doesn't work very well, any world government would have to be segmented to provide effective governance for regions, which would mean basically... like now... each region has it's own government.
Most likely the reasonable thing to do would be to try to encourage countries to work together peacefully, rather than try to abolish nations.
or we’d have to pick some other language and even more people would have to learn that.
Esperanto enters the chat, saying things no one understands
Is the most common language really Spanish? I thought it might be Mandarin.
Yeah, I looked it up and I am way off! It’s actually…. (drumroll) English at about 19% followed by Mandarin with 13, then Hindi at about 8%.
You mean to tell me that 60% of the world speaks “other”?
Apparently. Here is a list, sourced from the CIA World Facebook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
The top 10 add up to about 65%, with the last several having about a 3.5% share each.
I think the scariest thing about a world government isn’t some daft prophecy about the antichrist but that if it turned tyrannical there’d be very little anyone could do about it. Power inevitably corrupts and to say otherwise is wishful thinking; we’d have created the ultimate power and therefore the ultimate source of corruption, imagine the world government underwent a palace coup and we ended up with a regime like Stalin’s or Mussolini’s but you couldn’t even flee it as a refugee or hope for foreign intervention.
Balances of power rather than monopolies on it are probably best in my opinion.
Star Trek suggests we just need 3 successive wars (the 3rd being a nuclear world war) then meet aliens, and we'll be OK.
World peace is possible, but only in a post-scarcity world. Scarcity is what cause conflicts.
There's a book for you to read: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (Steven Pinker)
"Progress over profection" That's a saying in the 12 step program, but it applies to everything related to humans. We will never be perfect, but we can always be better.
I honestly don't think it'll ever happen, people are too different for that.
No and I'd say diversity is worth over a homogenized society even if it comes at an increased chance of conflict. And it's not like people who live in the same country and speak the same language don't fight each other. People argue over mundane stuff like tv shows after all, and get into online wars and exoduses over social media platforms.
The peace you seek is probably only possible through massive brainwashing or an absolute privacy infringing totalitarian state that monitors everyone and is rapid in exterminating dissidents that are flagged for abnormal behavior.
To learn how to fight, you need to take part in fights.
I don't know that a completely peaceful world has ever really existed because human beings tend to be very tribal in nature. Therefore there is inherent competition that rises and falls in cycles.