World peace has been the dream of hippies, Nobel Laureates, and beauty pageant contestants pretty much since the first time two tribes of cavemen went at it over the best hunting grounds. Just as people's seemingly insatiable desire to kill each other has grown and evolved, paradoxically so has their desire to get along, but considering that we now have the ability to destroy the world, and then destroy it 7 more times just to be safe, it strikes me as kinda odd that we wouldn't have developed a similarly powerful "weapon of peace". By "weapon of peace", I mean some peaceful way to help everyone get along. MAD (Mutually assured destruction) doesn't count, because it uses the threat of violence to keep other nuclear powers from pulling the trigger, like pointing a gun at someone's head while they have one to yours. Now I'm not saying that MAD was the wrong way to go about things during the cold war, in fact I think it was absolutely the right thing to do, i just want to make the point that forced peace doesn't count as world peace, and what really does? Is it when all countries have promised to never fight again, when all countries have formed into a single global union, or when there is nobody left on earth to fight each other?
Do not misstate me for a liberal, I'm really not the kind of guy that really enjoys a long day of protesting private health care, and I'm not saying that we should just hold hands and be buddies with every last country on the face of the earth. I am just wondering if it is even possible for world peace to ever be a reality. No matter how much I hate war (which is a lot), I still know it is sometimes inevitable and justifiable, and i don't think that is ever going to change. I also think that it is an essential part of human nature to be violent. Going back to the cavemen again, they didn't care about how their rival tribe felt about anything, they just knew that they were competing with them for resources or generally threading their survival. Its what has allowed us to survive as a species, because evidently nature just loves a good fight.
The problem is, now we fight with aircraft carriers, submarines, icbms, and a whole lot of other stuff that can kill an entire country fairly quickly. So, under what circumstances could world peace ever exist?
1.) If somehow (say alchemy or genetic engineering or space mining or whatever) we could eliminate competition for resources internationally.
2.) Every country became so economically dependent on every other country that it would be financially disastrous to attack anyone (Think super-globalization)
3.) If some common enemy of humanity (alien invasion, like Independence Day.....no, seriously) were to come out of nowhere.
All three of these examples are either way far in the future, highly unlikely, or the stuff of conspiracy websites; maybe all that says is that I have a poor imagination-or that I'm just crazy- but to me it seems like world peace is not likely to happen during my lifetime. If anybody thinks that they have a way to make it happen though, I would love to hear it.
You raise some interesting points but in response to your topic I just dont think it is possible. War has always been driven by the natural human instinct to get power. you just can't take that drive away. When you look at all the wars for resources and territory, even if you took away that competition you can't take away that hunger for power. If you look at the war-hungry militaristic countries of today (discounting Russia many of them are backwards and poor third-world countries such as North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran. In these countries, the militaristic tyrrants maintain control because their people is unable to do anything because of the poverty and "backwardness' of the country. Some thinkers, such as Marx, might state that if you put everyone on an equal playing field with each other where they were all equal in resources property, and freedoms, world peace would be achieve.d However, as we have seen, the human drive for power has torn these possibilities apart. We can strive for peace as the Lord wishes and achieve it, but we can never iradicate the things that cause world peace to seem so far away.
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. - John Locke
You raise a very good point, and I would have to agree that human greed for anything (power, possession, love...) would be a huge issue with world peace. That is why, while I don't believe it will ever truly happen, world peace would have its best chance with my number 2 reason. If we were to go to war with China, for example, the United States would lose it's access to cheap consumer goods that it provided. Consequently, our economy would be shot, money would hemorrhage out, and our leaders would be made powerless before they would be overthrown by the resulting coup. In the modern world, money is the real power, power that would be lost in a war with China. If every country were so inextricably bound by finance to every other country, would there ever be war for fear of losing money and therefore power? I do note that this is so unlikely that it is essentially a fantasy, but I think it is an interesting situation to wonder about.
In Peace Forever
Marek