Thread: How to obtain world peace?

So tell me...what do you think is necessary for us to have world peace?

I'd say destroy all humans, but then the monkeys would probably develop politics...

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

I'd say destroy all humans, but then the monkeys would probably develop politics...

They already did and nuclear weapons!

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

I'd say destroy all humans, but then the monkeys would probably develop politics...

They already have war in parental primates.

You got two kinds of primates, tournament and parental. Humans are inbetween. Tournament species have large males that migrate between groups of females. They females raise the children of the best mate they can find, the male has indiscriminate sex with anything that moves. Parental primates have the females migrating between groups while the males raise the babies. Because the males are all related, they're less competitive with each other and more competitive with other groups of males.

Major depopulation combined with a one world government.

So theres no way to obtain peace without a bunch of people dying?

Well, widespread lobotomies might be a step in the right direction.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Well, widespread lobotomies might be a step in the right direction.

Um how?

Well, I think the only way to have world peace with the entire population still intact would be if everybody was a slobbering idiot. Even then though, they'd still fight. But it wouldn't be organized enough to call war.

Originally Posted by Atras

So tell me...what do you think is necessary for us to have world peace?

What do you define as world peace? An environment in which no one on the entire planet comes into conflict with another individual?

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

What do you define as world peace? An environment in which no one on the entire planet comes into conflict with another individual?

No wars, no major violence, people doing things in the interests of others, not themselves. As a generality, obviously its impossible for EVERYONE to be peaceful.

Originally Posted by Atras

No wars, no major violence, people doing things in the interests of others, not themselves. As a generality, obviously its impossible for EVERYONE to be peaceful.

Well every action is in the interest of one's self. That is why action is carried out, to remove a felt unease.

I think a great way to start off toward something like "world peace" as you define it is to get rid of the State. It is an institution which engages in mass violence against a group or other state. The perception is that the United States is fighting Al Qaeda in the present period but that isn't true. The "United States" isn't fighting anything. A certain group of people who define themselves as "Americans" are fighting a group of individuals who call themselves "Al Qaeda." People don't exactly think in this manner. They postulate that since these "Americans" are fighting the battle and they are also apart of the institution known as the "U.S. Government" which has domain in this geographical local and since they are under perception that the "U.S. Government" is elected by on the basis of a majority, then a majority of people in this given geographical area must support & engage in this battle. Therefore it is no longer seen as a small group but a giant mass and that is essentially what war is...mass violence.

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Well every action is in the interest of one's self. That is why action is carried out, to remove a felt unease.

It's hard to say if world peace will ever really be possible. Individual conflicts will probably always exist, but maybe our society as a whole will develop and mature enough in the future to become relatively pacifist. We still seem to be a stupid and destructive species at times, but I think we've come a long way in terms of tolerance and self-control from say a few hundred years ago.

The way I see it, the society we live in is like one big social experiment. Over the course of history, we've developed a lot of beliefs and ideologies (such as Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, etc), and we've tried them out to see if they work. Through the democratic process, we can pit these ideas against each other and pick the one we think is best for solving our problems. Over time, all of these ideologies go through rigorous testing and we then know which ones to keep and which ones to throw out. We don't always learn from our mistakes though, and we can sometimes keep using the same flawed methods, which keep producing the same undesired results. But if we do learn from the lessons of the past and reshape our culture accordingly, we may one day find an efficient system on which our society can run. This will enable us to tackle our many problems (like poverty, unemployment and dwindling resources), which will hopefully lead to a more peaceful world.

By Force. History agrees with me.

Originally Posted by MrBlonde

By Force. History agrees with me.

Force involves violence. We will never obtain peace through violence, in my opinion.

Originally Posted by Atras

Force involves violence. We will never obtain peace through violence, in my opinion.

Most major civilizations were founded by force. Now all we need is one big global force that can make this all good.

Originally Posted by MrBlonde

Most major civilizations were founded by force. Now all we need is one big global force that can make this all good.

You can "found" things with force, but you cannot cultivate it with violence. People just won't have it. How can you ensure that this global force that has power to submit everyone else under its rule can be just? How do you intend to choose such institution, who has a right to claim such throne? History has proven that humans cannot handle power. As Atras said, you can never achieve true victory by bloodshed. You can destroy people, civilizations and nations, but it is hard to eraise memories. Hatred and revenge will just spawn a circle. And it will bite you in the ass eventually.

Free trade. When people are freely trading goods and services to each other, they are less likely to want to harm each other as it would go against their best interest. If you are selling stuff to someone, why would you kill them and risk losing all that money? And if you are getting stuff in return, why risk losing all the products that you want or may need?

You might say that people don't want to trade and would rather invade and steal it, but if given the choice people will usually rather just trade which results in a better profit, since wars can be extremely expensive. It is when you cut off trade, and refuse to talk to people that problems begin to come up.

Everyone has some resources that others do not, and improving trading all across the world would likely result in a much more peaceful relationship between each other.

Really any type of connection you can build between countries will make them more peaceful. I bring up trade specifically, because trade is more stable over the long term. Unlike say, combing all our currency into one, like the EU did. That caused a lot of problems, but there are not wars in the EU like there once was. If you go back a few hundred years ago, they were always fighting, nonstop. Both World wars started in Europe, they were as bad as the middle east.

Economic benefits are what people look for first, but anything will help. That is why people are so intersted in gaint one world governments. The problem with that, is that they want to force stuff on people, and forcing isn't peaceful and it doesn't work.

No one wants to really get involved in anything, unless they get a benefit out of it, and they definitely don't want to be involved by force. Which goes back to the trade, where people come together for mutual gain.

As long as we are organized on the state level, our violent tendencies will manifest themselves on the state level (in other words... be blown massively out of proportion).

I think violence is in our DNA. That's not an expert opinion, but it's not a wholly uninformed one either. Furthermore, I have reason to doubt that total nonviolence is a productive goal. But like I said, violent tendencies don't have to be magnified by the state like they are.

Get rid of everyone besides hippies and beauty queens?

Unfortunately, it just seems like human nature. I don't think world peace is a possibility, unless there is a massive transition in thought/consciousness as some people think will happen in 2012, and that just isn't likely at all. I'd say people are 90% more likely to wipe themselves out than achieve something like world peace.

I think it will take something really bad to happen before people start waking up. Unfortunately.

Wait, are we talking about humans in this thread?

As we are now that goal is not achievable. People cannot even live in peace in a little house that is full of cameras and booze.

First contact.

One of the keys to problem solving is to clearly define the problem first. Often by doing this the solution presents itself. The original question is way too vague and nobody has really defined what would constitute a real and realistic solution. It's also the kind of phrase that people don't usually use when they want a real answer, but just to pessimistically bemoan human nature or dream unrealistically of some distant utopia.

I'm getting tired of hearing about how flawed human nature is. Don't we already know this? And is it really only human nature that makes us violent? Isn't violence a basic component of life itself? In order to live, isn't it always necessary for one thing to feed off the deaths of others- animals and plants alike? Some are scavengers benefiting from the random deaths of others, some are parasites or predators. But at root, life itself grows from death. Even plants need soil to root in, and soil is essentially dead plant matter for the most part. And yet we bemoan human nature as if the rest of nature is blissful and idyllic!

It is true that since achieving consciousness of a human level we've become a lot more adept at destroying other species and displacing them to build our homes and cities, and at killing each other and doing collateral damage to each other for profit or greed or necessity.

Sometimes I have to laugh when I see one of those cheesy sci-fi movies from the 50's where the whole message is that there's a galactic federation of peaceful aliens and humans as an emerging species are too warlike to join and must be eliminated. It seems childishly simplistic. I suspect if there were a galactic federation the other species would be just as warlike as us if not more so. Hell let's face it... the whole REASON we became the dominant species is because we became the most efficient species at killing and at using the resources around us for our own benefit - even if those resources were already in use by wildlife or another race of humans. So yes, violence and destruction is in our nature, as it is in the nature of all living things, and I don't believe it would be a realistic possibility for the human race to exist without doing violence or destruction. We'd first have to become completely unnatural.

Growing technology has made it possible for us to destroy the world many times over. Somehow we still haven't done it. Other technology has also allowed us to accidentally or purposely destroy habitats of entire species. We sometimes do and sometimes don't. As we were developing this technology our attitude was one of progress and prosperity. It's changed now, and we've become much more aware of our responsibility - but unfortunately it's already too late in most respects to dismantle the technologies that have been wreaking havoc on ecosystems... the automotive industry and factories, nuclear plants etc. And if it were possible, would we? Doubtful in most cases. Governments depend on oil politics in order to continue to exist, and no government will willingly destroy itself for ecological or utopian purposes. Our burgeoning civilization has massive systems in place... governmental, transportational, waste disposal, etc... infrastructures I believe they're called, that can't just be destroyed overnight and new ones built. It would uproot entire cities and be cost-prohibitive. I know I'm going beyond the topic of world peace, but I'm trying to keep it in a realistic perspective... we can't just make changes without utterly devastating the systems we have already in place.

So in order to more realistically answer the original question, it becomes a matter of more clearly defining what would constitute a possible level of peace. Does peace require some degree of force? Of course... unfortunately there are differences between people, and they're going to fight over these differences. Racial, sexual preference, political affiliation, some are poor while some are rich, some don't even have the basic necessities of life while some waste them ridiculously.

Alright, I'm losing my focus and don't know what else to say, so I'll just stop here.