On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 3:35 AM, Kim Jones <kimjo...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> > > > On 30 Mar 2015, at 11:19 am, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 30 March 2015 at 08:39, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > >> On 3/29/2015 3:55 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >> >> Please! "Hunter Gatherers" - "warriors" is a boys' club term for it. >>> >> >> I can accept that the term "warrior" glorifies something nasty, but >> what term to use? "Hunter Gatherer" is not what I mean. >> >> > > But that's what you are. You go to the supermarket, don't you? > Sure. I am also not a warrior. I'm not sure I understand your objection here. > > > > I refer to the people who directly confront other groups in battles to the >> death. >> >> > > Them? They're just idiot warmongers like the brutes they are confronting. > Takes one to know one. > Usually the real warmongers don't go to war. You are simplifying the issue too much. People have gone to fight wars for all sorts of reasons. My country was at war with its former colonies until the mid 70s and several men in my family and other people from that generation I know went to fight that war. Nobody asked them if they wanted to go. They are fairly regular people, and mostly anti-war because they know how it actually looks like to be in one. > As soon as you have "my tribe" you also unfortunately have "not in my > tribe". > This is one of the tragedies of game theory. The problem is that, even if you reject tribalism, you have no control over what other groups do, and they will probably attack you at some point to obtain your resources. I say probably because natural selection will favour such groups. I share your desire for a world without violent conflict, but I don't think it's an easy problem to solve. Removing resource scarcity seems like the best bet, because then there's nothing to fight for. > Besides, some of them only may be warriors. Most are likely twelve pound > weaklings who were hit over the head in the middle of the night and told > they had this brilliant career ahead of them in the armed forces. > Isn't that how you raise an army? > I am under the impression that the most successful armies (from the Romans to modern USA) depend a lot on special units made of highly skilled people who went through a quite stringent selection and training process. There are, of course, always openings for cannon fodder, but you I don't think you win a war with cannon fodder. I also suspect that the vast majority of a military consists of people performing logistics, engineering, etc tasks rather than directly confronting the enemy. > > > > > Men are naturally more suited for this sort of thing due to endocrine >> system differences, that leads to bigger bodies, more muscles and more >> aggression. >> >> > This last being in fact the dominant characteristic which means it should > come at the head of your list. Men are sacks of testosterone and adrenalin. > Yes, but man and women are expressions of the same species, and historically women seem to show a preference for men who are sacks of testosterone -- because the ones who did were more likely to spread they genes. This is a species issue, not a gender issue. > Add to that the limited reach of human perception and you can find > yourself in a pitched battle at the drop of a hat, particularly where the > tension is already high. > Right, but this is just the outcome of an evolutionary process that "just is". Considering Darwinism, I don't think you could expect anything else. I believe we can transcend the tyranny of biology, but what's the point in blaming people for how they are, when they had no say in being one way or the other? > > One of the job requirements for joining ISIS is that you are able to > squirt testosterone out of one ear and adrenalin out the other. What real > warriors these guys are!!! > I think ISIS is pure evil, but I don't think they gained control of such a large territory in such an unstable region by being idiots... > > >> I think it's silly to say "warrior" glorifies something nasty. >> > > > Yet there may be good reasons for sending up the concept as I am doing. I > mean, warriors can be good boys or bad boys. I take it that there are three > kinds of warriors: good, bad and imbecilic. These are tribes too and cut > across the other tribal, clan lines. You might be a lowly footsoldier, > though a good and trusted son of the Empire while your commanding officer > is a rapist and a murdering despot that everyone would prefer to see > deposed. > > I also take it that the badder the boy, the better the warrior. Kind of > axiomatic. > I don't know. I associate "the bad boy" with extreme individualism, and it appears to me that the army is the opposite of individualism. Bit none of these things are simple, of course. > All the guys who beat me up in the playground in Primary school later on > in life became cops! Go figure. > Well, they did better than mine, who mostly became supermarket cashiers. There are a lot of cops who are cops for the wrong reasons, no doubt. The militarization of certain police forces is also extremely worrying. You won't see me defend any of that. > Warriors do a dirty job - they're like cleaners. They do what you and I > are simply not tooled-up well enough to do ourselves. Besides I can't > squirt anything out of my ears. When some thug comes into my shop and > points a gun at my head and I blow him away, that makes me a warrior, > right? But he was a warrior too, see: it was on his teeshirt; he saw > himself as fighting for some cause, so he is now a martyr. > This sounds like armed robbery followed by self-defense. Warrior are people who fight wars, which are generally understood as armed conflicts between large groups that control some territory. Typically the way of life and survival chances of each group is at stake to some degree. Wars seem to be an expectable consequence of natural selection. Which doesn't make them good, but you also don't get rid of them with wishful thinking. > > > > That's a politically correct judgement looking back at a different era >> through current glasses. >> > > > I am looking at the present era. The concept of "warrior" has never > evolved in meaning. Today's warriors are grunts doing a dirty job just as > they always did. > The closest person to what I would call a "warrior" that I know in person is the father of a childhood friend, who fought and then commanded a special operations unit in the jungle for 10 years, during the Portuguese colonial wars of the last century. He stayed married to the same person for decades and to this day, raised two kids and is one of the most polite and considerate persons I ever met. I always liked going to his house because every wall is covered with books. He's also a source of wise advice, usually encouraging us to solve problems thorough intelligence and communication instead of confrontation or violence. He always shows a lot of sympathy for his enemies at the time, and says that "we were all stuck in a terrible situation". > > > > Having good warriors was sometimes the difference between survival and >> extinction. >> > > > That's right. And when the war is over, the warriors get together to form > a junta which kicks out the useless government that led to the conflict in > the first place and they then install a military dictatorship. Once a > warrior always a warrior. "The way of the warrior" in fact. You never give > up on power. > Again, in my country, it was the military who fought the colonial war that decided that enough was enough and proceeded to overthrow the fascist regime of the time. Then they formed a temporary military government to organize a free electoral process. They stuck to their word and Portugal is a free democracy to this day. The guy who commanded that revolution disappeared from the public sphere immediately after the elected government was in office, gave very few interviews for the rest of his life time and simply said that he was just doing is duty of protecting the Portuguese Constitution. Telmo. > > Kim > > > > Is what the men did in holding Bastogne "nasty"? >> > > > They were attacked. I'm sure they did many nasty things in the course of > defending it. Get over being nasty already. Warriors are nasty bastards. > > K > > >> > Absolutely. If all men were cooperative then a single defector could rule > the world, or at least make out like a bandit. Hence we have what I think > is called a Nash equilibrium? > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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