My view on "World Peace, Is this Still Possible?" by @jeaneth

Yesterday @Jeaneth wrote an article asking the question in the title: World Peace, is this still possible? It's a good article with a well described write up of her views on this question. Reading through it though I found that my views are very different, and revealed a striking difference in our lives, caused (in a large part) by the difference in the country we live in and how the society we live in is working. There were some points in the article though that i disagree with and motivated me to write a reply and it grew into a piece that is way to big to post as a comment. That is why this article exists.

Please take a moment to have a look at my sponsors. They've got awesome content!

DISCLAIMER/WARNING:

In this article I express MY opinions on various topics that have a tendency to trigger some people to feel offended, or enrage them disproportionately. If you are easily offended or have low tolerance for opinions and views other than your own, please stop reading. My opinions are my own, no one else. My sponsors do not share my views and opinions, nor are they responsible for them.

War is a fundamental part of History

In the first part of the article she starts by stating war has been a fundamental part of our history among other things which I didn't understand, probably due to translation. Humanity staying in people's hearts and violence being an anchor of superiority don't really make sense to me. Any explanations of those concepts would be appreciated.

But I can only agree full heartedly with war being a fundamental part of our history. Without war we as a species, and technological development wouldn't have been as advanced as it is today. Humans have displayed technological and civilization advancing leaps due to war, becoming very good in inventing ways to kill other Humans.

Drivers for achieving great things

The driver, the motivation, to do so though was almost never the desire to kill but the unwillingness to die. I agree with Neil DeGrasse Tyson who states there are three great drivers that move Humanity to achieve great things, which are:

• I don't want to die

• I don't want to die poor

• Worshipping

  Neil explains these in this video, here related to scientifical advancement:

Of those drivers the last one isn't applicable these days. No great works are being done to worship anymore. No one's building pyramids or great monuments to worship their god or king these days.

The other two (War and Economy) on the other hand very much so. With war being the one that is still the most effective one.

Money?

@Jeaneth goes on to state that wold peace is so hard to achieve because of greed, with which I disagree, the reason for that I will explain during the course of this article. One of the statements made in regards to this is that money is too powerful and can change a person's perspective on life. While that might not be entirely without merit I feel compelled to point out something about money.

It's easy to regard money as evil and blame it for violence and human's inhumanity. But the question i always ask in reply is: "How would you suggest we organize ownership of goods and trading of goods between 2 parties (especially if those goods are different of nature)?"

What I mean is how would you suggest we arrange the exchange of goods between a farmer who has animals and animal products and a carpenter who has wood and his ability to make stuff from wood? How would you arrange the exchange of grain that one nation has in abundance and bicycles which another nation is very good at making? Just simply the exchange between a baker and a farmer is impossibly cumbersome without money. Besides the point of valuation (how many bread is one cow worth) simply carrying out the transaction is a painfully complicated thing to achieve. The farmer has to bring the cow to somewhere and the baker needs to haul a load of bread to the same place. Then there needs to be a negotiation to determine the value. This requires the Baker to be knowledgeable about cows to be able to judge the cow's quality. It requires the farmer to have the same knowledge about baking bread to determine if the baker's bread is low quality or high quality. Then when the transaction is completed the farmer has to transport the bread home, and the baker needs to get the cow to his home.

These are just simple examples for why our civilization could not exist if we hadn't invented money. It would have changed little in relation to the violence and war in our history, because the real driver: possession of places and stuff, would still be the same even when money hadn't exist.

Greed

So while greed has been cause for much violence in the past it has hardly been the biggest cause of war. On a smaller scale it is a big cause for violence, with robbery, stealing and the punishing of robbers and thieves causing loads of violence.

But war, organized violence between two groups of people united to form a single identity, was the result of something else entirely most of the time: Culture/Religion. (I'll expand on this more later)

Politicians, racism and equality.

In the next part of her article @Jeaneth goes on to state that Justice only applies to people that can afford to bribe police, judges or others with the power to influence court cases. This to me is an incomprehensible reality that, very rare cases aside, belongs to the distant past. In our justice system there are checks and balances that make it near impossible to get away with corruption like that. Especially on the level of judges and politicians. Corruption hasn't been an issue of note for centuries, at least on the level of Judges and politicians. On the street level it may have been decades but generally speaking corruption is as good as non-existent and has been for a long time.

Why that is falls outside of my range of knowledge mostly but I suspect that a big part of it is making sure that those susceptible to corruption have enough income and make the penalties for corruption so high that the gains from corruption isn't worth the risk, or that the cost of corruption gets so high it isn't worth the costs to the criminals. Another big part of preventing corruption is implementing a system that makes it as hard as possible to get away with corruption. If the chance you get caught taking bribes is 80% or higher (and the penalty for it is high enough) than no judge with the intellect required to become judge is going to risk taking a bribe.

Racism.

Another statement made in the article is that people have no access to premises because of the color of their skin. I realize I live in an area that is ahead of a lot of other areas on the planet in these things but in Western Europe there are no places that are inaccessible for some because of the color of their skin. In fact I dare say that racism, especially racism by the state, is mostly no longer accepted in any way shape or form. Of course there are still racists among the people, and people still experience racism in one form or another, but this is on the level of individuals or very small minority groups.

Racism not always racism

It might seem more prevalent than it does though, because of several reasons. One of them being that racism is so unacceptable and such a topic freely discussable these days that those feeling they're being discriminated against feel free to report this and talk about it. Another reason is that it often gets abused by minority groups because they know that if they blame something on racism, it gets immediate attention and action is taken almost immediate. Denial of racism very often causes those that deny it to be branded racist just for the fact of denying racial motivations, regardless of the issue that initiated the accusation in the first place.

No, we are not equal, nor do we want to be.

WOW WOW HOLD ON! LET ME FINISH!!!

It shouldn't matter we're not equal in relation to rights and opportunity. That is something that is fundamentally wrong with the way we look at the rights and duties, and the interactions between us and perpetuates the problems in our civilization to this day and into our future.

A man is different from a woman. Simple fact, scientifically undeniable.

A sexual preference for persons of the same gender you are is not normal. The vast majority of people does not share that preference, and biology as well as evolution is based upon one gender sexually preferring the opposite gender. Also scientific fact.

Two major examples of inequality that is simply fact of life. And i say it should not matter legally, socially and economically. Your gender or your sexual preference (or color) should not be a factor in deciding which rights or duties you have in society. It's the laws, culture, social and economy that must be equal, not the people. Humanity thrives on and has developed driven by the differences between us. We should stop denying the differences between us and start not letting those difference be a factor of influence on decisions and valuations of people.

Farmers scammed? Here they're subsidized...

Another point from the article I was astonished by was the part in which it's said that farmers are scammed. I'm not saying that farmers have no problems and that everything they experience in their lives is fair but, in western Europe, farmers are actually systemically and fundamentally protected, and compensated, by the governments. The price they receive for their goods is largely subsidized by the governments because if they weren't prices would get so low that the majority of farmers would go bankrupt. It would be the end of the majority of farms in western Europe which would result in famine across the globe.

My country for example is the second largest exporter of farm products, of food, in the world. Only a small percentage of what farmers produce here is consumed locally. If those farmers would disappear and we would no longer produce enough to export anymore, a lot of people would go hungry!

I'm sure there are plenty of places across the world where things are different, but if my country, with only 33,500 km2 of Earth's 148.94 million km2 of land, can produce enough to become the 2nd largest food exporter on the planet I think it is quite incomprehensible that there are still starving people, farmers, dying from hunger. It's not like our farmers use magic or something. Nor are the techniques and methods our famers use secret. In fact we'll even send you experts to teach anyone who wants to learn how we achieve our farm's production.

Drugs causing violence.

Another thing mentioned in the article is that crime causes much violence on the planet, and it is implied drugs are largely to blame. I can't not respond to this, as it is the upside down reasoning that drives me crazy. The only reason criminals at large are so interested in and violently carving out their piece of the action is that drugs are illegal across the planet. Well, most of the planet these days as the shift to realistic views has finally begun.

If drugs would not be illegal, prices would reflect the actual costs of production and criminals would not be interested in it. The profits that make criminals so aggressively attracted to get involved with drugs are as high as they are because it is illegal, and there's the risk for anyone involved in producing, transporting and selling drugs of incarceration (and death in some countries).

And what makes this even more crazy is the fact that a drug which is the most damaging to users, as well as the second most PHYSICALLY addictive, on the planet is freely and openly produced, transported and sold across the planet (save for a couple of tiny places). Alcohol isn't illegal almost everywhere, and compared to other crimes hardly even causes enough crime to be listed. So its the governments who insist on criminalizing drugs that are the cause of the crime and violence related to drugs, not the drug or its users.

The reason we haven't achieved global peace

In the conclusion of her article @Jeaneth states that the sole reason for not obtaining world peace is greed. I disagree vehemently with that. Besides the notion of there being one single reason for it, blaming greed for not obtaining world peace is wrong. Sure, greed causes much suffering and violence. But it is far from the only reason, and certainly not the greatest cause of war and violence on Earth. IF I had to point the finger of blame at one thing as the cause of not having world peace than it would without doubt point to religion.

Do it yourself, god seems to be busy.

@Jeaneth states "You've done everything you could, you did your part, so let God do the rest. He's in control of everything." which for me summarizes one of the fundamental problems with religion. There is always more we can do, not everyone is doing their part. If God's in control of everything than God's either screwing up or the most evil malevolent individual in the history of the universe.

But God's evilness is a topic for another time, another article. What is the topic is the fact that more people have been killed because of religion throughout human history than all other causes of death combined. For as long as religion exists people have killed other people for believing in a different god than they did. Sometimes believing in the same god isn't even enough. Just worshipping the same god in a different way is enough to get you killed. Murdered. Eradicated (ask the Cathars for example).

This ease with which the religious kill other humans is understandable though, if we take the Christians for example, when God seems to be okay with it and in fact demanded it from his faithful. In Deuteronomy chapters 7 and 20, as well as Joshua 6, 8 10, 11 and so on, God orders the Hebrews to exterminate, commit genocide, to annihilate "the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites" and leave "alive nothing that breathes.". God himself would be the greatest perpetrator of genocide ever, killing the whole human population of Earth except for 8 people; an old man, his three sons and their four wives.

Throughout history there has never been a moment in which there were no people killed for religious reasons. There is no religion on the planet which didn't have followers that killed other people because of their religion. Let that sink in for a moment, then again tell me to let God do the rest, and that God is in control of everything.

Failure to see the big picture and FOMO.

Most here on readcash are into crypto at some level. The other big reasons for humanity not achieving global peace should therefore be familiar. In crypto the most often given warning is that you should look at the big picture, not focus on some details that suit your preference. The biggest warning is not to succumb to FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out. Those two are the biggest hindrance to achieving world peace after religion. If we'd all see the big picture, that if we all united, and manage the global resources globally, no one would need to die of hunger. Poverty would be gone within a decade. Economic power would be devoted to eliminating disease and poverty and illiteracy instead of military. But for governments to unite they'd have to let go of their fear of missing out. The fear that their local people would be treated less than other peoples, and get less from the resources than other peoples. That is something that will, sadly, never happen.

The only thing that can unite humanity

The way I see it there is only one thing that can bring world peace, is a united humanity.

And there is only one thing that will unite humanity.

The threat of extinction.

If we get invaded by Aliens, or face an Asteroid that would kill us all, or any other threat to all of humanity then there is a chance humanity would join together and unite to survive. Then our worst enemies would become our brothers and sisters. Then our squabbles and local little conflicts would be forgotten, and we'd be one race, one nation, and we would have peace.

Thank you for reading this.

Stay safe and stay happy!

@AnonSunamun