Re: Faith, Nationalism and the Middle East

Rumpelstiltskin wrote:
On Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:40:00 -0700, Islander <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

<snip>

Doesn't that raise the question of whether militancy produces setbacks or regressions in the path to a more tolerant society? Did the militancy of the British delay peace in Northern Ireland? Did our invasion of Iraq delay their progress toward a more secular society? Does the militancy of Israel push the Palestinians toward fundamentalist Islam?

Perhaps we should just ship computers and communications equipment to troublesome regions instead of sending armies!


Unfortunately, I'd say that aggression has evolved because it really is necessary for a competitive species to survive.

The aggressiveness has to be tempered. Too much aggression is dangerous because one might get hurt fighting unnecessarily. Too little aggression is dangerous because one might get hurt not fighting back against attack, or even if one's not attacked one might not get what one should out of life because one lets other people push one out of the way. There's no set rule
for what's best - species survive only because they were
fortunate enough not to run across other species against
whom their strategy wasn't successful.

Education can only get rid of the dumber reasons for
fighting, like religion.


I prefer to think in terms of access to knowledge rather than education. Knowledge improves the chances of survival. How else could a relatively weak, naked species survive to dominate all other species?

Think about how competition can be redirected. An individual competing against all other individuals is weak relative to a group of cooperating individuals who have learned to redirect their competition. Likewise, there are business models which focus on building relationships rather than focus on competition with the associated risks and sometimes destructive results.

The human species is about much more than "fight or flight" and the ability to accumulate knowledge, passing that knowledge from generation to generation is vastly more important than aggression, IMV.

There is certainly an abundance of aggression in the Israel/Palestine dispute and that aggression has done little to assure the survival of either nation.
.

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