RE: How a Weak Country can Prevent Being Conquered by a Stronger Country
Yes, I have studied philosophy among other things. If you're not familiar with the arming of populations then you're just not familiar with any period of human history. Arming and disarming populations is an important part in all periods of human history. I don't know where you're from and I'm most familiar with the education system in the United States, so I can point out the change there. Around 1900 the education system underwent a significant change. Before that the idea was to teach the Great Tradition which focused on teaching the history of western civilization, largely ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and medieval Europe. In the modern education system history almost isn't taught at all, and to the extent it is it's made into a weird trivia, instead of actual understanding. That could be why you're seeing that gap in your understanding. For Sun Tzu, it sounds like you have a very light understanding both of what he's talking about and how that would apply to any of the situations I talked about. Sun Tzu and I would agree and understand what we're talking about. If Sun Tzu was a general during a war then he would have fought many battles and killed many people. We don't know if he was. A person unwilling to fight is naturally a slave or dead. Aristotle points this out, Gandhi points this out. My article is literally talking about how weaker nations can not be conquered by larger nations. Often, if a larger nation does not think that it can conquer a smaller nation then it will not attack. This is winning a war that doesn't have to be fought. Very Sun Tzu. It sounds like you're probably just getting into philosophy, history, war, etc. There are a lot of rabbit holes to go down and it's easy to get lost. Try to balance out the purely theoretical with the historical and it will be easier to see what actually applies and what doesn't, which will save you years of time in understanding.
Good morning – and thank you for your detailed reply, perhaps the start of a discussion ;-)) It seems that, like me, you consider words to be a powerful tool in disputes. I would go so far as to say that they are the only legitimate means, or, if you like, the only legitimate weapon.
I am aware that throughout history, populations have repeatedly been armed and disarmed. However, I dispute that this has ever made sense. There has never been stable peace across regions. Perhaps we should stop continuing to do things as wrongly as we have done in the past and present...
So I am not against fighting, as long as it is not carried out with weapons. That would correspond roughly to Gandhi's idea of necessary struggle. Sun Tzu was a general, that much is certain. However, in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, this rank was not awarded for service on the front line, but for the right background. As a military strategist, Sun Tzu himself fought as little as a ballerina. But he established the theories that can be used to avoid wars. These are still taught at military academies today. Today's officers and generals know that it is not really possible to win a war. It is an illusion; everyone loses, even the ‘victor’. That is why no commander will send his men into battle without good reason. Politicians do that... (Except in countries that consistently refrain from having their own military – and no, they do not all become protectorates!)
However, you want to arm civilians who lack both the strategic knowledge and the inner conviction of the necessity of peaceful solutions.
Oh yes. I was born in 1965 in a country that no longer exists. You may remember it from history books as the GDR. And yes, I have had some time to engage with philosophy, sociology and geopolitics. Epistemology can be quite magnificent and inevitably leads to a pacifist attitude.
Gandhi didn't mind violence, he even advocated for people being armed and fighting. Sun Tzu literally wrote a whole book on how to most effectively conquer people, including effectively fighting, attacking, convincing your own soldiers to die, killing spies, etc. These are not pacifists. Pacifism works if you're willing to accept slavery. Or if you don't realize there are other people killing and dying for you to be a pacifist. Gandhi considers pacifism cowardly. It is certainly possible to both win and lose wars. The Mongols may be the best example, they won and others lost. You're making the case that the women and kids that the Mongols killed and enslaved acted rightly by not fighting. You're advocating for death and slavery.
No! I am in favour of peace. And peace can only work without weapons; it requires insight and moral values that are superior to military-industrial greed. We have now had enough time to develop these, and many people have succeeded in doing so. Others have not. But that must not be a reason to fall back to the Stone Age level, where the stronger party is always right. Then you cannot break the cycle of the arms race, and we will indeed soon wipe ourselves out.
For the Earth, that would be no loss...
This is my point. You have a fundamental delusion about human nature, which is common. The truth is hard to accept, so you have rejected it to feel better. You say, "And peace can only work without weapons;", this is so historically delusional that we're back to you just not being acquainted with history, even though you've been alive through significant parts, which is why it's not ignorance but delusion. These are really simple things. When humans didn't have weapons, did they have peace? Do the uncivilized tribes have peace? Do unarmed prisoners have peace? Do toddlers have peace? No. You also reveal the bind you've put yourself in and why you won't be able to get yourself out of your delusion. In your last sentence you note that human extinction wouldn't be bad for the Earth. That's a revelation of a value structure that leans toward anti-humanism. If you were to accept human nature, which isn't peaceful, then you would support the extinction of humans. You might even support the extinction of humans now. If I go out on a limb here I'm going to guess that you support human sacrifice now, which is historically common, in the modern form of abortion. Let me know if that guess is correct. This conflict that you have with reality naturally leads to resentment and then a tendency toward destruction. You see this in Cain, Marx, and school shooters. It's the same mentality. To reconcile that you have to go through hard emotional processing of acceptance. It's simple, but hard. Buddha pointed out how to do it thousands of years ago, although the Buddhists distorted the teachings the keys are still there for mindfulness directed to the body.
Good morning! Before I answer, thank you for your openness to a little debate ;-)) It's become rare here...
Okay. Where to start...? At least I don't succumb to the misconception that people don't use the weapons they own. But that's only half the truth. The other half tells me that many people/civilians/citizens who are given a weapon will certainly learn to shoot at targets wonderfully, but would not pull the trigger on a human being in an emergency. Let's compare it to the bite inhibition of some dogs... They are then in greater danger than without a weapon – they give the impression of being a dangerous opponent and are therefore attacked more fiercely than a supposedly defenceless victim...
I find it amusing to lump Cain, Marx and rampage killers together ;-)) The only anti-humanistic element in this list, in my opinion, is the rampage killer. As a socialist, Marx was certainly not right in all areas and was not necessarily free of hypocrisy, but fundamentally, the socialist idea is very much concerned with humanistic ideals. Cain – today, I suppose he would be diagnosed with one syndrome or another.
Abortion is a difficult topic and certainly cannot be dealt with conclusively in a few sentences. My position on this is ambivalent. I can only decide for myself whether it would be acceptable. And for myself, as a young woman, I have already decided that I could not do it. However, I cannot judge other women; it must be an individual decision and viewed from the outside without judgement.
Human beings are part of nature, the environment, the ecological system of this earth. They have neither outgrown nor risen above it. Their role in nature is marginal. So we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously ;-)) Our nature, on the other hand, which in this case refers more to fundamental traits and predispositions, can be controlled and changed over long periods of time thanks to our developed consciousness, moral and ethical values, and capacity for reflection. Away from the archaic, warlike model and towards a rational, coexistent one.
This is my point. You have a somewhat coherent philosophy, it just happens be to coherently delusional as a denial of reality. Many intelligent people have this same delusion as well, because it makes them feel better. Einstein was a socialist, he realized for it to work human nature would just have to be changed, and it naturally would result in mass slavery, but if people are fine being slaves then it could work. You have the same basic philosophy, that things would be fine if humans could be comfortable being slaves. William James thought that humans could replace war with civil service. Another delusion that didn't prevent WW1 or WW2. You see child sacrifice as just a personal preference, as you noted in your stance on abortion. You see murder as not anti-humanistic, as noted in your stance on Cain. You see mass enslavement and killing as not anti-humanistic, as noted in your stance on Marx. You make the case that humans won't use weapons so they shouldn't be given them, and you make the case that humans will use weapons so they shouldn't be given them. You can see here that it's not a type of reasoning, it's an ideological and even religious belief that you have that humans should be disarmed, and you'll use any possible reason to arrive at that conclusion. You make the case for disarming victims, making them easier victims. You can see how you still have that East German anti-humanistic philosophic idealism of creating victims and the trans-humanistic philosophy of changing human nature.
@blessedlife 💖🔥
