Blurts & Spasms

From Quora discussion: "Why is there so much violence in the world? What can be done to eliminate it?"

There is a growing body of research that suggests that, historically, societies that developed in environments with consistently abundant resources, low human populations and little competition (i.e. few predators or other humans who invaded the area), tended to be less war-like or aggressive, with less evidence of violent tendencies and an equal valuation of the contributions of men, women and the elderly. Many of those cultures, however, did not remain peaceful when more aggressive populations migrated into their region, or when changes to their environment or their population density made resources less plentiful. So there seem to be gross correlations between population, resource availability and cultural valuations of physical strength and the skills of violence. These are broad generalizations, mind you, and there are plenty of exceptions and ways to interpret these correlations differently, but there is sufficient evidence over the course of human civilization to invite closer scrutiny and a few interesting hypotheses. Personally, I believe that we can - and in fact must - morally mature as individuals and as a global society, so that how we view property, wealth, status, work and so on becomes more cooperative and communally-oriented, and less competitive and individualistic. Capitalism will need to be replaced with more advanced political economies, human population will need to be stabilized or decreased, inequalities of influence, privilege and wealth will need to be diluted, and "us verses them" tribalistic groupthink will need to attenuate. I also think that, when the population on planet Earth has interbred enough that distinct racial traits are more universally distributed, the artificial boundaries of nation states and their accompanying nationalism will naturally begin to dissolve. It's a ways off, to be sure, but I can see how humans will learn to live peacefully with each other. Well, at least until the violent, predatory aliens arrive from outer space....