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Pastimes : WORLD WAR III -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chaosad who wrote (446)	3/19/1999 7:56:00 PM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 765

I really would rather avoid any tangled metaphysical discussions on "human nature," but I can point out some elementary anthropology to you. It seems you are a determinist and are determined (no pun intended) to argue that irrationality is inevitable and unavoidable because its in some way the natural order of things. You seem to believe that human behavior is as inevitable and immutable as physical laws. Poppycock. Its no accident that determinism has been dismissed for decades amongst anthropologists. Human beings are not driven by instinct, we are rational animals in the broad sense of the term. Meaning that humans, and primates in general, rely on socialization instead of instictual reactions to adapt to their environment. We no more have a genetic propensity to wage war than we have a genetic propensity to recite Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, it is only modern Man that so easily and with such leisure murders his fellows by the thousands. War may be necessary, but only as long as bad ideas fuel the bad justifications for stealing one's neighbor's belongings.