-- Robert Bruce Thompson

-Zbigniew Brzezinski, Former National Security Adviser, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 14, 2007

Cultural side note:

"For Hindu thought there is no Problem of Evil" -Alan Watts, The Way of Zen

There is great anxiety among the Western Judeo-Christian tradition about "Evil winning out over Good" that is not so much felt by far Eastern cultures (Hindu, Zen, Taoist etc.). For instance, the concept of Yin and Yang and how they define each other and rely on each other.

St. Thomas Aquinas actually paralleled this concept quite briefly in The Summa contra Gentiles, though such an idea is quite taboo among many fundamentalist Christian traditions today:

>There are in the world many good things which would have no place unless there were evils. Thus there would be no patience of the righteous, if there were no ill-will of the persecutors; nor would there be any place for a vindicating justice, were there no crimes; and even in the physical order there would be no generation of one thing, unless there were corruption of another. Consequently, if evil were entirely excluded from the universe by the divine providence, it would be necessary to less the great number of good things. This ought not to be, since good is more powerful in goodness than evil is in malice, as was shown above. Therefore evil should not be utterly excluded from things by the divine providence.

WW2

American Revolutionary War

The Roman-Carthaginian wars

Genocide of the Ainu in Japan

Genocide of the Neanderthals by Homo Sapiens in Europe (Maybe; it's theorized at least)

The Gombe Chimpanzee War

I'm sure I can come up with more if you like.

The primary reason Jews, Christians, and Muslims are having trouble solving their problems using violence is that they're not using enough violence.

Which led to the perpetuation of slavery for another 90 years (which the British were in the process of abolishing throughout their holdings), among other "issues."

The American Revolutionary War resolved the conflict between the two parties rather satisfactorily. I did not claim that it ended all violence.

Was the original question. The point is that while it solved one conflict, it deferred and prolonged another (quite major) one -- which might well had been resolved had the colonies not seceded from the Crown.

The execution of John Wayne Gacy.

The problem of those groups is that they can't prosper in peace. Violence is not a solution for that. Rather, violence is the essence of their problem.

Basically, if you want to be realistic there can never be "enough violence". Reasonable people prosper because they understand this and seek to solve their problems in a peaceful manner rather than to escalate the violence until one side perishes.

-John Adams

So yes, empires do rise and rule for a time but in the end they grow weak from over reliance on luxuries and having no real competition to fight. In the end these empires based on war always collapse.

But let's take WW2 for example. WW2 led immediately into the Cold War, and the Cold War led into the War on Terror. It is also worth noting the arbitrary national lines drawn along tribal boundaties after WW1 and WW2 and their direct contributions to the enflamed tensions in the middle east today.

>The primary reason Jews, Christians, and Muslims are having trouble solving their problems using violence is that they're not using enough violence.

That is M.A.D.

What exactly is the issue here, what is the end goal that is achieved through violence? It's survival, right?

If we are to ensure survival amidst such increasingly rapid technological proliferation, mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.

[1]http://www.masshist.org/publications/apde2/view?id=PJA01d005