I get into debates about war pretty frequently but I never have been able to translate my thoughts and feelings on the subject into words that really get the message across. Last night I was debating war with an imaginary opponent (lol I argue with myself all the time), and finally my anti-war side constructed some words that really expressed what he was thinking. I managed to scribble it all down on paper too. Here comes the first symposium post in semi-comic book format

!BEWARE OF PROFANITY AHEAD!
(hope I'm not too far out of line here... I know the rules say no bad language or offensive material but this view just can't be expressed in a polite way)

http://lavalizard.deviantart.com/art/WAR-What-is-it-Good-For-159486681

So there. Lava's view on war. Am I a nutcase or am I onto something? Feel free to add to the debate. I know there's more good arguments to be made. Infact I have one in mind already so I'll probably draw up another page of this comic thingie tomorrow with another point of view in the mix.

(P.S. You can delete this if it's inappropriate... I get all nervous about sharing this sort of thing cause I don't know how to tell what's cool and what's not... But I'll never learn to understand it if I don't just throw stuff out there and see what happens. My inner monologue unleashed upon the world in it's pure uncensored form for the first time! X-D )

This is a perfectly fine topic to debate about, so no worries. It's controversial certainly, but we've already dipped into things like healthcare and religion in other threads, so war is fair game.

My stance on war is mostly the same as yours. War (or violence in general) is senseless. The expression "an eye for an eye" is small-minded and short-sighted, because violence does not positively solve a problem. It simply creates more violence, and that violence spawns more violence, and it continues in an endless cycle.

War creates a scenario where it's easy to believe in stark contrasts like righteous (us) and evil (them) because it shuts out the key factor that really solves problems: open communication.

Communication is what allows one group of people to learn that they are not so different from another. There is no black and white, good/evil meter that each group chooses a side on, rather every group is really some similar, mostly good shade of grey.

I don't believe there's a situation where diplomacy (aka talking to each other) is a worse option than fighting. No communication means that there's no opportunity to ease the tensions between the conflicting groups short of one side overwhelmingly overpowering the other and forcing the other to unanimously give up. That's easier against an organized group like a country, like Japan in World War 2. It doesn't pan out so well against unorganized or distributed cell forces, like most of our modern opponents (Vietcong in Vietnam, Osama bin Laden and friends, the rest of Al Qaeda wherever else it exists, insurgents in Iraq, and Somali pirates to some degree).

It's amazing to me that there's a large percentage of Americans that actually believe that insurgents in Iraq are attacking our troops because they hate our freedom. It would be nice if they tried to have some perspective on the matter.

Let's say that Russia decides that Obama is a terrible leader for the United States that is destroying our country. They send their jets and warships to Washington DC, decimate the city in bombings and raids to obliterate our government and remove Obama from power, and leave hundreds of thousands of US citizens dead, injured, or homeless.

Next, they write us a new constitution, styled after their own government system, and appoint a leader of their choice to run the new administration. As for our old government, they disband our military forces and the local government systems like the police. At the same time, they carve up the responsibilities of repairing the country and give them to Russian companies who will earn substantial profits from the reconstruction efforts rather than to American workers.

Finally, they tell us that we will owe them for their good work, but luckily we will be able to repay them through the resource harvesting efforts that the Russian reconstruction companies are enabling. Russia even included some details of this into our new constitution in order to streamline this process.

As these systems go into effect, Russia sends tens to hundreds of thousands of troops to police our country until we re-stabilize and we start repaying our debt. They build permanent bases to indefinitely house Russian forces in our country so they can ensure that we will never step out of line again.

Do you think a situation like the one I just outlined would cause at least a small "extreme" group of people to protest violently? Most likely. Russian citizens, safe back in their own country, watching these events unfold on their TVs would look at those extremists and wonder why they would be attacking them when Russians are doing good in the United States. Do they fight because they hate Russians' philosophy of being righteous and combating evil? Is it because they hate the Russian government system? Do they fight because they don't like vodka?

Seems kind of ridiculous when you turn the tables.

Haha yeah, what we're doing in Iraq looks a lot different from that angle. I feel like rooting for the insurgents now X-)

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So to elaborate a bit on my comic in a more civilized manner... What is it that I'm getting at here? Why am I hating on people who stand up for what's right and protect the world that I love?

I was looking at the things I really love in this world: Trees, animals,
children and adults who never "grew up"... pure nature in all it's wild awesomeness. What is it that they do different than the humans around me who follow standard western culture and make me feel angry for unexplained reasons?

At first I said "it's because they don't fight", but that answer was wrong. Everyone gets mad and hits someone at some point in their life. A mother bear will battle to the death to protect her babies. But she's still an awesome creature. Why? What's the difference?

Then the image started to clarify a little. The big difference between cool life forms VS uncool ones is: Beliefs.

Animals have no beliefs. Little kids have no beliefs. Trees have no beliefs. There is no "right" and "wrong" and "bad" and "good" in their world. The emotions are all there... Happy, sad, mad, scared... They feel all of these like we do, but unlike us, they don't stamp words like good or bad on them. Someone takes their food, they become mad and hit the thief if they can. They're not fighting for "what's right", they're just plain mad and that's what a mad critter does. Someone gives them food and they're happy. The person who gave the food isn't "good", he's just something to be happy about.

This is where nature wins and human culture fails. Beliefs are what standard grown-up humans have that ticks me off. Someone takes their food, they believe that person is bad, doing something wrong, and must be destroyed at all costs because it's the right thing to do. That's what makes me pissed. He's not seeing the *real* world, acting on *real* feelings... He's acting on HIS own beliefs... Acting in what boils down to a fake fantasy land in his mind. There is no truth to his actions, just blind beliefs. And this, getting back to the topic at hand, is the reason for, and the problem with, war.

So, as mentioned in my comic there, if me and my happy little friends are sitting here enjoying life, and then an army of gun-toting, belief-driven humans comes to enslave our race and torture/kill all who oppose them... In the *real* world, free of beliefs, that's just the end of the story for me and my happy friends. A disaster struck and wiped us out.

You might think we should have stood up for ourselves, but to do that we would have to first leave our true feelings and lives behind, stamp "good" on ourselves and "bad" on our enemies, and then "fight for what's right". At which point we would BE our enemies. Creatures no longer living in the real world. Creatures running on a system of made-up beliefs. And that would be a worse fate than death. If we let them kill us, our story ends with us in our true, natural, belief-free form. If we take on beliefs and go to war, our story continues to see us progress down the same corruptive road our enemies followed and become the same as them. So yeah...

Now it is important to note that there is one other possible outcome too. Maybe me and my happy friends become royally pissed when the belief-clogged humans come to destroy us. Because we're so awesome, our minds never pick up that whole "right" and "wrong" nonsense, and we just attack these guys running on pure, wild, natural RAGE. Maybe we just happen to be hella tough and actually defeat them. Our story continues as true, natural, belief-free critters of the wild world... who just happen to be epically bad-ass in combat. Now that's my kind of ending, and how a war can conceivably be fought in a way that doesn't upset me.

But alas, in all of human history that's never been the case. Beliefs are the most powerful force ever produced by a life form, and no life form free of beliefs will ever win :<


So yeah, to wrap it all up, I would classify large groups of belief-driven people coming to wipe you out just the same as a natural disaster like an earthquake, or a forest fire, or more accurately, an epidemic. Just another all-powerful force of destruction unleashed upon the land. It's not bad, it's not good, it's just a thing that's happening. You feel whatever emotions you're gonna feel about it, you do whatever you can to not die, and that's how it goes. If you're mad, you fight the thing with all your strength, if you're sad you cry, and if you're happy you just sit back and see what happens. Never once do you place judgment or beliefs on it.

That's the LavaLizard way to live.


Now this post I feel better about. My comic said basically the same thing but I felt a little bad for spewing such disrespectful anger in it, and felt like I wasn't getting the message across clearly. Now I've said it the healthy way
( I think so anyway X-D )

But still, feel free to rip me a new one if I'm off my rocker.