what other species has advanced to this point where we kill each other out of spite, malace, or our supreme sense of our specialness. Like when we first came to America & these silly natives considered their source of sustanence & life , the buffalo sacred? we r like so inteligant, its no wonder...& my best friends are Blackfoot, how silly is that?

If the buffalo had been smarter than us, they would have known we were coming and moved to a nation with fewer guns.

The Native Americans wiped out a whole species of wolves before the white man was even introduced to the continent.
They weren't saints, there was fighting between tribes over resources in that colour variant of the same species, just as there was in all the other colour variants.
Animals do fight amongst themselves as well. A tiger will fight another tiger. It too is over resources.
Human being infighting is usually over "percieved" resources.

But you're right, there come times when people harm one another for reasons we can't construe as resources, but you're wrong to attribute that to humans only. There are animals out there that do things that every bit as disgusting as we are.

Animals have been going extinct before human intervention, and they will continue to do so after we're long gone.

And last, but by far not least, human beings "are" natural.
Human beings are a part of the nature of this planet.
We aren't separate from the ecosystem, this is Our ecosystem.
People are animals.
Omnivorous apes.
Thinking about us as something separated from "nature" doesn't help us, and doesn't help mother nature.

Quote from: Fallout
War. War never changes.

The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire from its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower.

But war never changes.

In the 21st century, war was still waged over the resources that could be acquired. Only this time, the spoils of war were also its weapons: Petroleum and Uranium. For these resources, China would invade Alaska, the US would annex Canada, and the European Commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling, bickering nation-states, bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth.

In 2077, the storm of world war had come again. In two brief hours, most of the planet was reduced to cinders. And from the ashes of nuclear devastation, a new civilization would struggle to arise.

I walked by a redneck truck the other day with a bumper sticker which read:
"Rome became an empire by killing those who opposed it."

I was like...uh, wow. At least we aren't mixing words anymore.

Roman mothers used to tell their sons; Come back with with your shield, or on it.  As that custom declined, so did Rome.

Paraphrase of Will Durant.

The whole concept of the American Empire is fascinating to me. The intricate ways in which the powers that be have made it look to the masses like we are in the position reluctantly is propaganda at it's finest, and people keep buying it.

Maybe it's guilt. As beneficiaries of the Empire's might maybe it feels like biting the hand that feeds you to even see it's true colors, I dunno.

I think that the federal government was (at least at one time, some 100 years ago) reluctantly put in the position that the flag has to follow the dollar and it became the policy of the government to protect the business interests.

Some of the other stuff was almost accidental - I don't think that anyone intended for American values to become so widespread though TV/movies, but they have, and what few people within it understand - those values can be totally corrosive.

"the human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty. if you wish to find that which becomes the dividing line between mankind and other biological classifications, it rests not in brain size, dominance, or even emotional capability, but lies in the unique capacity for human beings to reflect on their actions and show regret, what is most certainly the ability to empathize, that gives them their position.

all animals understand love and affection, but only man shows the propensity to place himself into the shoes of another lifeform. losing this capability, among individuals of this species, reduces them below their much heralded position, and readies the climate for the likely fall of man, the fall from grace"

Well, we did manage to kill over 100 million of our own kind in the 20th century.  We must be pretty good shots!

Those getting the most credit are the leaders/dictators of countries:

Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50)   49-78,000,000
Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39)   23,000,000 (the purges plus Ukraine's famine)
Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945)   12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII)
Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908)
Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44)   5,000,000 (civilians in WWII)
Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915-20)   1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20)
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79)   1,700,000
Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94)   1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)
Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78)   1,500,000
Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970)   1,000,000
Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982)   900,000
Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994)   800,000
Suharto (East Timor, West Papua, Communists, 1966-98)   800,000
Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88)   600,000
Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1987)   570,000
Fumimaro Konoe (Japan, 1937-39)   500,000? (Chinese civilians)
Jonas Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002)   400,000
Mullah Omar - Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001)   400,000
Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979)   300,000
Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71)    300,000 (Bangladesh)
Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII)   300,000
Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97)   ?
Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996)   220,000
Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000)   200,000
Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972)   150,000
Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-99)   100,000
Hassan Turabi (Sudan, 1989-1999)   100,000
Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79)   ?
Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974)   70,000 (vietnamese civilians)
Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala, 1982-83)   70,000
Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71)   60,000
Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990)   40,000
Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan, 1947)   30,000 (popular uprising)
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20)   30,000 (dissidents executed)
Francisco Franco (Spain)   30,000 (dissidents executed after the civil war)
Fidel Castro (Cuba, 1959-1999)   30,000
Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968)   30,000
Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000)   25,000
Khomeini (Iran, 1979-89)   20,000
Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe, 1982-87, Ndebele minority)   20,000
Rafael Videla (Argentina, 1976-83)   13,000
Guy Mollet (France, 1956-1957)   10,000 (war in Algeria)
Harold McMillans (Britain, 1952-56, Kenya's Mau-Mau rebellion)   10,000
Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997)   6,000
Osama Bin Laden (worldwide, 1993-2001)   3,500
Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973)   3,000
Al Zarqawi (Iraq, 2004-06)   2,000

For as much as Americans hate bin Laden, he's really a slacker compared to the top performers.

Julie

Quote from: Bellaon7 on September 13, 2009, 12:13:38 AM
what other species has advanced to this point where we kill each other out of spite, malace, or our supreme sense of our specialness. Like when we first came to America & these silly natives considered their source of sustanence & life , the buffalo sacred? we r like so inteligant, its no wonder...& my best friends are Blackfoot, how silly is that?

Quote from: Miniar on September 13, 2009, 07:29:06 AM
The Native Americans wiped out a whole species of wolves before the white man was even introduced to the continent.
They weren't saints, there was fighting between tribes over resources in that colour variant of the same species, just as there was in all the other colour variants.
Animals do fight amongst themselves as well. A tiger will fight another tiger. It too is over resources.
Human being infighting is usually over "percieved" resources.

But you're right, there come times when people harm one another for reasons we can't construe as resources, but you're wrong to attribute that to humans only. There are animals out there that do things that every bit as disgusting as we are.

Animals have been going extinct before human intervention, and they will continue to do so after we're long gone.

And last, but by far not least, human beings "are" natural.
Human beings are a part of the nature of this planet.
We aren't separate from the ecosystem, this is Our ecosystem.
People are animals.
Omnivorous apes.
Thinking about us as something separated from "nature" doesn't help us, and doesn't help mother nature.

As far as I know, the only animals that fights "wars" are Humans, Ants, and the Common Chimpanzee. And no, ants and chimps aren't always fighting over resources, but rather because those they kill are not their own. Ants find that the scents given off by the enemy is not the same, so they kill them. Chimps kill other chimps because they are from another troop.

As far the wars of the native North Americans? For the most part, their warfare was not of the same model as Old World Warfare, exempting people like the Celts. The objective of North American Warfare was not the total annihilation of the other side, or even conquest. It was primarily for prestige, not even necessarily in killing the enemy - such as counting coup or theft of property. It was more akin to a sport that killed people than war in the way we think of it now. That reminds me of that group - I don't recall who - in SE Asia where Cricket games have replaced warfare.


"Animals have been going extinct before human intervention"? Well yes, but not at the current rate. Human activities are causing a mass extinction event right now. It won't end the world, but it's not good for the well-being of anything that lives on the Earth, that's for certain.

Quote from: tekla on September 13, 2009, 12:42:38 PM
Roman mothers used to tell their sons; Come back with with your shield, or on it.  As that custom declined, so did Rome.

Paraphrase of Will Durant.

That is wrong, that is what Spartan mothers told their sons, not Romans. And no, the decline of such a custom was not the reason for the decline of the people in question regardless of whether we mean Rome or Sparta. The decline of Sparta was caused by a low birth rate and a lack of scholarship. Their highly unusual social structure led to a low birthrate and those who did survive could be killed if they were not ideal. Being so geared towards war fearing rebellion by Helots, they did not develop new technologies to deal with the changing nature of war, and were as a result, bad at siege warfare. Their whole social structure was quite frankly retarded, it was all to keep the Helots in check. Why should someone want slaves if it's more work to keep them in check then to do the work yourself?

EDIT: I forgot to mention, Rome on the other hand, collapsed in on itself due to economic issues and a lack of popular support. It was not a miltary issue.

Bees also conduct wars.

Quote from: Becca on September 13, 2009, 12:41:05 PM
I walked by a redneck truck the other day with a bumper sticker which read:
"Rome became an empire by killing those who opposed it."

I was like...uh, wow. At least we aren't mixing words anymore.

Many of us have suspected American policy has been built on detailed scholary debate.

I think there was a comment in Robert Heinlen's 'Starship Trooper' that suggested that all wars have been based on economic advantage. I think it may be so, cannot off hand think of one that hasn't. Of course the fodder aren't allowed into this concept

Cindy

Cindy

Many of us have suspected American policy has been built on detailed scholary debate.

Pretty much this, and superior firepower.

And I was only quoting Durant, I'm sure it was the order of the day in Imperial Rome also, who's economic problems were directly linked to the cost of maintaining an empire in the first place, though they did OK for longer than anyone else. I'm sure its the order for all people's either defending themselves, or having a military based expansion (empire).

As for native North Americans - you can't generalize like that.  There were not just separate tribes - but at least five different civilizations functioning.  They each had their own models, some peaceful, some, not so much.  Not too long before Cortez landed in what is now Mexico we have records of the Aztecs killing 25K people in a day (or two) for some special celebration.  No doubt very special for those dispatched.  We also know that several of the Great Plains tribes had a special way of killing buffalo, they stampeded them over cliffs, and let gravity do the hard work. The Anasazi built wonderful towns - engineering masterworks, but allowed the population outstrip the local resources and had to abandon them.  Some tribes had highly sophisticated political systems, like those in the Northeast, some in the Southeast had written and published languages, some were nomadic, some highly urban, some had fantastic handcrafts (weaving both rugs and containers, jewelery, costumes, others, not so much.  Some tribes had towns, a variety of living situations, some tribes, particularly those on the southern West Coast (now California/Nevada) were scarcely one step above cave-dwellers.  Some tribes had highly developed slavery systems, others had no such system.

The Federal Government recognizes around 550 separate tribes and governing bodies. It's hard to lump anything that big together as 'one'.

Even the number of natives is a huge debate.  Somewhere between one and 18 million at the time of the arrival. 

I always recommend the writings for General Smedley Butler, U.S.M.C. - at the time the highest decorated Marine and two-time winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor.  You can google him, he wrote and spoke a lot, and his stuff is all over the web in easy to understand words, because he's a Marine and not an academic.  Here's a taste.  (And remember here kids.  Old Smed, he ain't no tree huggin hippie peacenik,  He's a general in the USMC, with 2 MoHs, and just about every other medal also. 

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Every species of animal that has a territory instinct, will attack another member of the same species that wanders into it's territory (unless they're both in the mood for sex).
Chimps will eat babies of members of their own tribe with the mother sitting and screaming in front of them, even in cases where other food is plentiful, there's no known other reason for them to do that other than "felt like it".
Dolphins rape one another and sometimes beat another member of their own family group to death.
Monsters exist in all of nature, including human beings.
We aren't separate or even really all that different from the rest of nature in any way other than we have some unique quirks. Almost everything a human being does can be found somewhere else in nature, being done by something other than a human being.
And yes, we have driven other species to extinction, but we're not the only species of animal who's done that.

Quote from: tekla on September 19, 2009, 07:12:07 AM
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.[/i]

Money makes the world go 'round.

Someone say Starship Troopers?

"Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that "violence never solves anything" I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms."

Quote from: tekla on September 19, 2009, 07:12:07 AM
And I was only quoting Durant, I'm sure it was the order of the day in Imperial Rome also, who's economic problems were directly linked to the cost of maintaining an empire in the first place, though they did OK for longer than anyone else. I'm sure its the order for all people's either defending themselves, or having a military based expansion (empire).

Rome's expenses were obviously a problem, but there are reasons why they couldn't afford them. Various issues that had existed since the Punic Wars came back to bite them.

For example, due to the import of excessive amounts of luxury goods from the Silk Road. They produced little that the traders wanted, other than precious metals. Currency was made with smaller and smaller amounts of valuable metals and became devalued.

Also, small farmers could not compete with the slave-run latifunida. Farmers left and went to the city, but since this is a pre-industrial society, they had no where to work. (Unlike what happened when agiculuture was consolidated later in Europe at the start of the Industrial Revolution.) As a result, ridiculous numbers of people were unemployed. This necessitated the Roman welfare state, which drained even more money.

Due to a number of issues, more than just the aforementioned ones, the economic situation decayed in the Western Empire, until they could not afford to maintain their military forces, so they raised taxes. Increased taxes killed agriculture.

Quote from: tekla on September 19, 2009, 07:12:07 AM
As for native North Americans - you can't generalize like that.  There were not just separate tribes - but at least five different civilizations functioning.  They each had their own models, some peaceful, some, not so much.  Not too long before Cortez landed in what is now Mexico we have records of the Aztecs killing 25K people in a day (or two) for some special celebration.  No doubt very special for those dispatched.  We also know that several of the Great Plains tribes had a special way of killing buffalo, they stampeded them over cliffs, and let gravity do the hard work. The Anasazi built wonderful towns - engineering masterworks, but allowed the population outstrip the local resources and had to abandon them.  Some tribes had highly sophisticated political systems, like those in the Northeast, some in the Southeast had written and published languages, some were nomadic, some highly urban, some had fantastic handcrafts (weaving both rugs and containers, jewelery, costumes, others, not so much.  Some tribes had towns, a variety of living situations, some tribes, particularly those on the southern West Coast (now California/Nevada) were scarcely one step above cave-dwellers.  Some tribes had highly developed slavery systems, others had no such system.

The Federal Government recognizes around 550 separate tribes and governing bodies. It's hard to lump anything that big together as 'one'.

Okay, there was a lot of variation, I agree. My point however was intended to be that not all cultures follow the models we have. On the other hand, the Aztecs are not a North American Tribe. I didn't say "North American" rather than "Native American" because I wasn't referring to the civilizations of Central America or South America.