[lit-ideas] Re: On the prospect of World Peace
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 04 Sep 2006 19:30:45 -0700
Eric: We were imagining the conditions which might give rise to a
stable, warless world. I could imagine some Master Oppressor forcing
a warless world on us, and could not imagine a warless world arising
without supreme coercion of some kind. It would be interesting to
read your take on that.
My take is pretty straightforward: I can imagine it. If you're saying that you
believe that 'some Master Oppressor' is a necessary condition for the absence
of war, then I guess I'd like a richer story. A few minutes ago Mike listed
some of the things that might lead nations (or their leaders) to start wars.
It's a funny but also a sensible list, and one thing it shows is that wars are
usually overdetermined and causes assigned to them according to the shapes of
historians' spectacles. (See Lawrence's worry over what his 'real'
reasons were
for wanting to avoid the party.) As Andreas has pointed out, California
isn't at
war with Washington, nor, I might add, is Oregon. What keeps them apart? Could
it be that they just don't want to go to war? Does California have all the
nukes?
I had asked for a fuller account of something 'essential to the human spirit'
that perpetual peace would deprive us of. Eric wrote:
The sense of a lawless frontier, free from the peace-enforcing Master
Oppressor, a place to hide from all that peace, for one thing. Also
the degree of homogeneity and uniformity that would result from the
Master Oppressor's World Government would require the removal of
those aspects of culture that create stress and conflict--and these
stressors could be as simple as which side of the soft-boiled egg one
opens. Something would be lost if we only were allowed to open the
short end.
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