War! What Is It Good For?

Is it really, absolutely nothing!?

In June 1970 the song War was recorded by Edwin Starr and marketed as a single, the song was asking a normal question: War! What Is It Good For? And the answer that the song gives is very logical: absolutely nothing!

For sure war is a devastating thing, we will not need to talk about it, in the last century, 150 million people died due to wars, hundreds of millions have been displaced, and injured

But Ian Morris in his book War! What Is It Good For? Suggests a different answer, for him, wars are an essential reason for the prosperity and peace we live in today, let’s develop this idea a little bit …

For thousands of years, humans have been living as if in a jungle, war has always been an option but starting from the second half of the twentieth-century things are starting to change.

According to the United Nations, in ancient agricultural societies violence was responsible for 15% of the deaths, in the twentieth century was 5% and in the early 21st century “ our century now ” violence caused less than 1% of deaths.

The question we must ask now is how did this happen? Currently, humans have the most dangerous and powerful weapons in history it is not normal that things start to improve at all, especially with these weapons.

Here comes the answer from Ian Morris that says that war is a major reason for the end of wars ( or we have a lot fewer wars and on a much smaller scale )

Over the past 3000 years, societies have been fighting each other, and each time the victorious society swallows up the defeated society, and with time, statistically, this will reduce wars because societies are becoming less numerous, for example when there are 10,000 societies, it is normal to be wars more than if there are 200 societies ( 200 countries now )

Another point, in the past, economics was based on matter, if a society has a gold mine, then it is a rich society this is the state of the primitive economy but advanced economies are built on knowledge, for example, what does it benefit China to occupy Silicon Valley? (if she could) there is nothing tangible that you can benefit from, indeed, what benefits China is not war, what benefits her is to deal with high-tech giants like ( Google, Microsoft, and apple ) this guarantees billions of dollars in income from economic cooperation, not from war

War is an unfortunate thing for the people who lived through it but this may be the only way to make societies grow more, except for a few exceptions like the European Union or Dynastic Marriages, other than that, war is an excellent way to bring communities together and open them to each other, I am not saying that all wars have been beneficial but enough of them were beneficial, and contributed to our current community

Finally not because you read this story, it means that you knew everything, there are other stories you haven’t read yet and other stories you will read in the future 😁

Thanks for reading. 🥰

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