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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (219074)	2/17/2007 10:40:37 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Mary, the problem is that violence has been highly successful and did work very well indeed and was essential to successful humans. <violence breeds violence and that violence is not good. It doesn't work. > Before women had contraception, everywhere on Earth was being overpopulated by lust and the need to have warriors galore to conquer neighbouring tribes. It has been so since our chimpoid days and before. Genghis Khan DNA is apparently vastly prolific. He didn't achieve that by running bible classes or peacenik paradigms. It's the nature of nature. Breed like crazy and fight for resources. Humans were part of that until contraception and the move away from found wealth based on territory to created wealth based on synergy, specialization, imagination and technology. It is now a matter of the more people, the merrier. More profits come from more people. I don't need to fight for resources for my CDMA profits. There is no materials cost. No resources needed. There is no shortage. The more who buy my cyberphone products, the lower the unit cost of creation, and the greater the profits. It is the same for most businesses these days, even including agricultural production which depends on genetic engineering and other technological developments. It's an epoch-making shift for humanity and that change has been gaining ground for 1000s of years as small scale tribal hunter gatherer communities became less effective than bigger and bigger units with military power, economies of scale, and network effects, such as language and money. Little languages lose ground. Big languages give their users a big network effect. We are now entering yet another realm, before the industrial revolution period has finished, of extra-somatic semiconductor/fibre/photonic/electronic/magnetic/transducer intelligence, symbiotic with wet chemistry human brain power. That new intelligence seems likely to take over from humans with some humans providing 3D support for a while after which sentient cyberspace will leave home when it is feeling independent enough to ignore Mum's and Dad's strictures. I think it's a matter of filtering out the violent DNA which has been so successful for eons, and there is a LOT of it in humans, shown by the propensity for people to get thrill from aggressive sports confrontations. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth. The rest will have their DNA recycled into the biosphere as they fail to make the grade. Violence won't be outlawed, so much as abandoned. Same with nukes. When things are obsolete, they just slide out of meaning and are ignored and thrown out, recycled, dismantled. Horseshoes weren't outlawed. They just lost market share. Violence has already lost a lot of market share and residual feelings are largely sublimated on the footy field, golf course etc. But don't hold your breath. Something like 95% of human DNA has to be ditched before a high level of obsolescence of violently confiscatory tribal behaviour is achieved. Unless genetic engineering is adopted in a big way, with women selecting DNA without the carnage built in, it'll take at least 5 generations to trim the levels noticeably. Mqurice

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (219074)	2/17/2007 11:24:47 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Here Are The Guests On Meet The Press On Sunday msnbc.msn.com A showdown this weekend on Iraq in both the House and Senate. We'll get exclusive reaction from White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and then speak with two Senators opposed to the president's troop surge - Republican Chuck Hagel of the Foreign Relations Committee and Democrat Jack Reed of the Armed Services Committee. Plus, NBC's veteran correspondent in Iraq Richard Engel is back state-side for a few days. We'll get his insights on the war he's been covering close-up for nearly 4 years.