I have recently had some intriguing insight on the topic of war. I hope everyone can go along with me observing it in a purly scientific way, not as a democrat who’s likely to be drafted the second we turn eighteen.
Okay, so this kinda ties in with my posts on Ismeal about everyone getting what they want without having to lift a finger. In today’s system, natural selection is utterly fucked up. It no longer exists! It doesn’t really matter if you’re strong, or smart, you’re still gonna be able to mate before you die. Every trait will continue to be passed on, not just the desirable ones. So what’s the answer? Well, my friends, the only remaining stand of natural selection that I can see today has gotta be war. Now, it certainly works nowhere near as well as it did in the good ol’ days where if you couldn’t fight off your preditors long enough to mate you got eaten. Now a days, instead of weak individuals getting picked off, it’s the weak countries. Compare WWII to a tribe living out in the jungle, and each country is an individual, and there’s a rise in the population of jaguars at the time. Well, they come sweeping though and kill all the countries who are too weak to fight back. But this really isn’t gonna help our species much in the long run, because countrys who are hugly successful sometimes have the weakest military, and if their doing the world good in other ways, like the advancement of science or industry, they certainly don’t deserve to be destroyed.
So I’m not pro-war. I’m pro-natural selection. And these days war is the only thing that’s looking anything like natural selection at all. So unless there’s some competition between individuals, then I think war is a neccesity to keep our weaker ones, be them individuals or countries, in check. Can anyone think of any other way to bring back natural selection?
Mmm…food for thought…
~Ian
There've been 18 whole comments
10:45 pm on 1/2/2005 1. Blau
Hmmmmmmm. I started to think about this during biology class the other day. I mean, the human race has completely overcome all of its challenges, and now we have a monkey sitting in the white house. The thing is that natural selection got us here in the first place. It weeded out the stupid people until we finally had great leaders to guide us and geniuses to create our technologies and advance our civilizations. Now since we have all of those technologies and great civilizations, natural selection no longer affects us. It’s a catch 22 and there isn’t really anything to do about it.
I have thought long and hard about if war is natural selection or not and I have come to the conclusion that it is but it is a very ineffective form. At first, it just seems as though the strongest country will defeat all the others, and therefore the country could be as smart of stupid as smart as any other country. But power in war means better technology than the opposing country. That means you need to have really smart guys making your technology back home. So in a way, the smartest country does win and the country that isn’t as smart looses. You also need good generals to use the troops and weapons effectively but once again they are kept far away from the actual fighting.
Problems with my theory: Even if a stupid country gets defeated in war it doesn’t mean that all the stupid people will die. It just means that members of the military will die. What if a country is really smart (so they have a lot of smart people) but they don’t use it for military research. So even though they might be the smartest country, they still get killed. Another problem is that maybe a country just had one really smart guy and one really good general. That doesn’t mean that the entire country is smart. Or what if they have only a handful of smart guys and good generals. The rest of the country might be corrupted and stupid but it doesn’t matter because their military has the best weapons and best strategies.
So I guess war is just a contest between smart people to see who can kill more of the other person’s guys. But that means that war isn’t natural selection at all. I’m really confused now.
P.S. I didn’t mention the soldiers themselves because it doesn’t matter how strong or smart you are if you are shot or blown up.
11:15 pm on 1/2/2005 2. Nella
That’s all true. An exceptional individual can always make a huge difference in the course of war, there are lots of examples of this, even recently. And now that we’ve reached the pinnicle of our system, we’re just supposed to sit on our asses and suck up all the recources of our planet? I don’t think so. We have to have something to keep us trying to do better; that’s been my arguement for everything the last few days. And if war is the only thing that can make us do it, okay. If there’s something better, I would leap at the chance. Giving food to other nations is a start. Any other ideas, anyone?
6:10 pm on 1/3/2005 3. Jackie
Ok, first you talk about war being the only way to “keep us trying to do better” because natural selection just isn’t working and we don’t have enough competition, and then you talk about giving food to other countries…now what is wrong with this picture. Personally i think the burning half the farms in the US was a better idea. Let those areas regrow, let some people feel more need, let there be more competition…you don’t need to fight other countries and kill people needlessly. And here’s what happens when you give food to other countries that can’t support themselves in the first place-they get more food, so they keep on living, still hungry. They reproduce and the population grows, and they’re still hungry. and it goes on and on…no matter how much food you give them they are still going to be starving. I don’t want to say that we should just let them starve, but one generation is better than several that have to live through pain. Let them figure out how to live off the land again…or better us “smart” people should teach them. And what about those people here at home who are starving? What are we going to do for them.
Ian, you called me dumb for bringing up a scenario about canibals that were living in harmony…and here you are promoting senseless mass killings of people just to have competition…shame shame…
6:36 pm on 1/3/2005 4. Sam
I don’t think that there’s any logic in calling other nations stupid. I think burning farms is really stupid, just because it’s wasting things that are needed and it’s also polluting the world. There are many other more resourceful thing they could use those crops for.
8:26 pm on 1/3/2005 5. SuperDave
Ian, you are a fuckhead, but my 18th and 21st amendment rights permit me not to elaborate.
9:23 pm on 1/3/2005 6. Andrew
ah yes, the abolishment of your right to drink alcohol, and the re-establishment of that right.
9:43 pm on 1/3/2005 7. Jackie
Sam, I do hope you agree with me when i say that “burning” also known as any means of disuse…is better than warring with weaker countries as a means of “natural selection”…cause that was what i was comparing it to
10:36 pm on 1/3/2005 8. Nella
Okay, well I see this did not get a warm response, but you guys… We need some suggestions. No one proposed an alterative to war as a modern means of natural selection, besides the ressurection of my crop burning idea, which I know is dumb, but I also know that Jackie’s right about the fact that giving food to other nations doesn’t work that well either. (I’ll Jackie and Sam come to a conclusion on that one.) I agree perfectly that war is by no means the best solution, but these days it’s the only one that’s actually going on. So come on guys, some helpful insight would be nice, rather than, “Ian, you’re a fuckhead!Hehe…it’s funny ’cause I said fuck!!”
4:32 pm on 1/5/2005 9. microman
You say that the process of natural selection is a thing of the past, eh? Well you have to realize that although we have conquered the very big, we still have not come close to fathom the very small. We still have bacterium and viruses that weed out the week. If we created a super strain of ebola and realeased it upon the unsupecting public, surely that would weed out many people, only leaving those with strong immune systems on earth.
9:18 pm on 1/5/2005 10. SuperDave
Well, if this super strain of ebola is realsed, great, the more the marrier. You see, I have been diagonosed almost every disease known to man, this turns out to be quite benificial. All of the diseases fight each other within my body, and they are so busy fighting each other they never bother hurting me, in fact they want to keep me around long enough to finish off the other diseases, and knowing how many diseases there are known to man, I could be around for awhile. So the more illnesses I get, the longer I live
11:50 pm on 1/5/2005 11. Nella
Actually, I think a war does a better job of picking off our overall less beneficial members of our species. We’ve gotten to a point where our immune systems are good enough, and if they ever aren’t, we have a handy-dandy little thing called medicine. War at least keeps alive more positive attributes than simply physical strength. But disease is definitly a pretty good one. Not as good as taking away food though. That’s gotta be the best. I’m still lookin’ for some better ones here…
7:30 pm on 1/6/2005 12. Jackie
The thing about the strain of ebola…it doesn’t necessarily leave those people with strong immune systems…it leaves the people who happen to have a resistance to that strain ( i should know…i did a project on a mutation that prevents you from getting black death/aids) What happens if you have all those people, then another disease comes along which isn’t prevented with that type of immune system? Good-bye homo sapiens…
8:08 pm on 1/6/2005 13. SuperDave
Except for me of course, beacuse i’m immune to all diseases
as I mentioned in comment 10. Oh yes, and all the people in nuclear submarines and ships, all the people in space, all the people in bomb shelters from the fifties, people in govenment bunkers, people on uncharted islands, tribes deep in the Amazon rainforest, people trapped in basements with a comicly mismatched co-star, criogenically frozen people, the amish, the Cubans, vampires, zombies, people struck in traffic,
anyone that lives in sibreia, social drinkers, paper-pushers, nerds, cat-lovers, the city of Sant Paul, civil war renactors, anyone above the age of 60, hobos, billionares, attornies, stockbrokers, consultants, those with O- blood, people that walk up the down escaltor or down the up escalator, tea drinkers, chocoholics, the blind, the annoying, the tall, the control-freaks, the obsesive-compulsive, and of course, the people that lick their finger before they turn a page. But everyone else will die
9:49 pm on 1/9/2005 14. Nella
Sean, I looked into it, and those categories cover everyone in the world except for this guy in Nebraska named Jim Whootilington. So I guess he’s the only one effected by this ebola virus. Ah, well, he had it comin’
2:31 pm on 1/17/2005 15. Anonymous
I enjoyed this site very much and have taken away a better insight. I will recommend this site to everyone I know. More people should step into .
2:46 pm on 1/17/2005 16. Sam
Thank you very much Mr. Anonymous. It would be even nicer if we could get to know you another way besides Anonymous.
∼Sam
9:09 pm on 1/17/2005 17. Jackie
In terms of Andrew’s latest post…”word”
7:05 pm on 9/5/2005 18. I think
It all depends on what you refer to as ‘the strongest’. Believe me, if the world were brought down to an agrarian level - losing all technology- it’s the fat white war supporter sitting behind the wheel of his SUV that will bite the big one first.
And the peoples who still know how to farm- raise animals- keep food fresh and themselves clean without modern plumbing or electricity will kick everyones ass in the end.
A very wise man said to me once “When you see a man standing in the street throwing a rock at a tank, the rock-thrower will win in the end.” Think on this.