How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

Are we assuming I'm also a good person who has no intention of harm or greed?

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

For the sake of discussion, yes :3

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

As bad as this would sound, it would be boring.
If there was no chaos, which we will dub war, greed, harm, etc, life would be monotonous. Nothing to rebel against, nothing to shake things up with. Nothing that would go against the norm. Humanity would become nothing but robots following the same routines.

As much as I am against war and such, there must always be some form of chaos. It makes life exciting.

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

Life would be plain. Everyone follows rules, none are broken, no wild stories, just regular lives... :/

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

"For the sake of discussion" how rude.

EDIT: Also, for the sake of pointing this out, just because there's no crime doesn't mean that it would be boring. Assume our current states of mind about correct social conduct. Now, remove the fact that we have laws from the equation. Suddenly, no "crime" but people are performing socially unacceptable acts. Life would be, in all likelihood, even more dangerous than it currently is, more chaotic, and significantly less "plain" because, while something is understood to be "wrong" there's no repercussions for acting in such a way.

:3

EDIT2: Another point, assuming my first assumption is wrong: in comparison to our current lives, yes it might seem "boring" because things we consider wrong now wouldn't be. But if we weren't brought up saying that these things were "wrong," or even having the existence of war, rape, crime, etc. then we wouldn't have the understanding of them to begin with, and our lives would actually be the same as they are currently. Nobody would be aware that we're missing out on something because those somethings would never have existed, and other socially unacceptable acts would arise. The world wouldn't change in the slightest.

:3

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

People would take slowly forget the joy of the lack of "chaos", and would, like T-Force said, become monotonus and boring. Without some sort of chaos, the world will turn into something like that of "The Giver".

(For those who haven't read it, everything is completely controlled, in that the weather is always sunny, immediate and permanent painkillers are given, competition is unheard of, color is no longer visable to most people, and when one is "released", they're brought into a room, have either their arm or forehead impaled by a syringe, and killed, with the body being thrown into the dumpsters, without the public knowing.)


In other words, no one would truly understand happiness.

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

I think that argument is only valid assuming we all just wake up tomorrow and suddenly crime and war and other bad things don't exist. Now, we are just theorizing here, but I feel as though theorizing based on a logical starting place, i.e., we grew up without these issues, is more realistic than just saying "I think it's this way because it can be."

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

I read The Giver a long time ago. It was a good read.

I for one do not think it would be boring. I get a lot satisfaction from acquiring knowledge and since it wouldn't affect my ability to get it, I wouldn't find it boring.

Also, just because their is no ill intentions it doesn't necessarily means there can't be challenges and problems. Solving these can be pretty exciting.

From what I see, as we are now, there aren't a lot of people who understand happiness and how to achieve it.

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

violence drives a lot of people, if there wasn't war, this country would have a shit more money, and we wouldn't be in ridiculous debt. but at the same time i think we'd be fruit cakes if we didn't have war or anything, we'd have no idea how to fend for ourselves, this is a good thought though, since all i do is technically driven on violence, aka call of duty, i'd probably run and stuff, instead of being big.

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

Without suffering, there is no drive for existence.

Think about an evolutionary arms race - because two or more species are in competition for the same resources, any new mutation or behaviour that puts one in an advantage over the other is capitalized upon, and the other species either suffers for it or finds a new niche to exist in, or counters with an advance of your own (note: evolution isn't actually teleological and it may or may not help you b/c of how random it is)

now imagine the same kind of scenario but without suffering. with suffering there is no punishment, and so genetic drift is random - every mutation is equally beneficial and so features we consider 'good' from our perspective would be just as meaningless as complete gibberish nonsensical features. nothing would do anything of interest or efficiency because you'd live anyway.

I imagine a similar thing would happen in an everyone is immortal no one can suffer post-human scenario - there's no ultimate disadvantages or pressures behind anything, so behaviour will sooner or later 'randomly drift' to whatever requires the least effort.

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

War is easier to argue, but suffering is the sum effect of all sorts of negative stimuli which exists purely because of evolution itself. Removing suffering would be pretty tough because negative stimuli is what drives us away from things that harm -- towards positive stimuli, which help us survive better over others.

If we make a society where nobody suffers, we pretty much have to artificially select who we'd want to breed -- typically the fittest/happiest. If you have a genetic disease, you're out of the pool. If you're prone to depression, you're out of the pool. And so forth. Instead of allowing people to grow up and suffer, you prevent them from living to begin with.

Life would probably be a lot better that way for those that make it -- but there would be some serious ethical concerns during that transition process where you're basically telling most of the population that they can't breed.

The alternative is to do something like in Equilibrium where you drug everyone and change their brain chemistry. Of course, this simply numbs you or makes you misinterpret negative stimuli, which increases the chances that you die/don't reproduce anyway.

Suffering is basically a natural eventuality of the environment -- if you're not suffering, you're either perfectly fit or your bloodline is on the way to extinction.

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

everyone would have died out hundreds of years ago from overpopulation

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
Oscar Wilde

What does "no suffering" implies ? That you just made your mind accept a larger tolerance of "bad things" and makes it sound as it was "neutral", see people as more "trustful" when they actually aren't but just feel like they're more worthy of your trust ? Or litterally no suffering in the sense that your mind cannot recognize anymore such things like suffering in the world for whatever reason and not by internal control ?

Once you got along with the fact the world went "fully good", your standards will level up, you will have less tolerance for anything that just doesn't feel right and the least problem will feel way more severe than today. But, yeah, let's consider this world doesn't know such thing as "problems", whatever they can be.

If there is no more suffering, for the children that would be raised in that "perfectly good" world, there would be no such tool for them to distinguishes what's just good in their everyday life, because there would be nothing "evil", and they will probably never feel happy or anything like that. You need a shadow to enhances the light, if there is no more shadow, and all is light, how will you be able to recognize that glow ? You will not.
But then, if you identifies "not being happy" or something like that as "suffering" (because it isn't good, right !) then you should just have to drug everyone, as Rubix said.

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?

False. The Earth has the ability to provide food for a number far exceeding our current population, but do to corruption in the political and other departments the majority of food rots in warehouses while people starve in other countries because they lack "funds".

Currently there is no real structure to provide food to the world.
When you go to the supermarket you don't buy food just for that day, you buy food for the rest of the week.
So what happens to the rest of the food that doesn't get bought?
Since supermarkets always flood their shelves with overstock because of greedy consumers that need ten gallons of ice cream, or ten gallons of milk, instead of doing what everyone specifically needs just for that day.

...Yeah I just wrote that... (Psalms 72:16)