[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I keep wanna calling you weiner because I keep misreading your name.

I don't think that its too simplistic at all. Human Nature is based and built around violence.

You're stating this as if it's fact when most of the scientific evidence available to us refute this.

Our greatest accelerations forward have come during periods of great violence.

Again, this doesn't jive with what we know. Our greatest accelerations forward have actually come within the last century, often during times of peace.

Whether its instinctive for us to cull the weak and take what we posses, even the most pacifistic of men can either be moved to violence, or cause violence directly or indirectly. I don't buy that its something that will no longer happen and that humanity will become more cooperative as time passes. As we move further into the crisis states caused by the economy, declining food stocks, declining resources, man will devolve to what he knows best, and thats to take from and exploit the weak. And whether its direct physical acts of violence or non physical acts of violence propagated by the threat of violence, its going to happen.

I don't think the point of his thesis is that we'll see the end of violence. That would be absurd. He's merely challenging the view held by many that we live in extraordinarily violent times. Did you read the entire article?

And yes Nature insists on dominance and is built around a system based on the strong surviving. Even cooperative actions are usually parasitic in nature.

And again, there is no scientific basis to this statetment. We can see numerous examples of cooperative nature, not to mention the fact that basic nature hasn't been nearly as crucial to human survival as the development of culture has.

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I don't buy it because technology has given us the ability to be more selective in our application of violence. Wars will probably have lower casualty counts but will be every bit as destructive on an economic scale. If you look at the two wars that the American's fought recently, the casualties were far lower then what you saw in previous wars because of the use of technology.

Wars also aren't being fought on the large scale that they were previously. Every American conflict after WW2 (possibly excluding Vietnam) has been fought against a foe who isn't marginally close to being the superpower the U.S. is.