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-   -   How would life change if there was no war or suffering? (http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/vbz/showthread.php?t=119889)

iironiic 08-3-2011 12:10 AM

How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
I understand that life is a balance between good times and bad times but let's avoid reality for a bit and venture into an idealistic world. What if life was filled with trusted people whose purpose is of no harm and no greed? How would people spend their days in this given lifestyle. What would life be without crime, rape, and war? Discuss.

Niala 08-3-2011 12:11 AM

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?

iironiic 08-3-2011 12:13 AM

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

Originally Posted by Niala (Post 3515084)
Are we assuming I'm also a good person who has no intention of harm or greed?

For the sake of discussion, yes :3

T-Force 08-3-2011 12:17 AM

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.

pmonibuv1 08-3-2011 12:19 AM

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... :/

Niala 08-3-2011 12:23 AM

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

Originally Posted by iironiic (Post 3515087)
For the sake of discussion, yes :3

"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

yo man im awesome 08-3-2011 12:33 AM

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.

Niala 08-3-2011 12:45 AM

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."

Artic_counter 08-3-2011 12:53 AM

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by yo man im awesome (Post 3515103)
In other words, no one would truly understand happiness.

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

virus003 08-3-2011 04:18 AM

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.

Patashu 08-3-2011 07:03 AM

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.

Reincarnate 08-3-2011 09:49 AM

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.

FFR4EVA_00 08-3-2011 11:02 AM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
everyone would have died out hundreds of years ago from overpopulation

ScylaX 08-3-2011 11:17 AM

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.

cixOclock 08-3-2011 11:40 AM

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

Originally Posted by FFR4EVA_00 (Post 3515230)
everyone would have died out hundreds of years ago from overpopulation

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)

FFR4EVA_00 08-3-2011 12:12 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
see, i thought that the thread was asking about what if there was NO suffering, not just a lack of crime, rape, and war
if you want to start another thread about how many people the earth could sustain and all your related conspiracy theories go right ahead, i'm not getting into that here

at any rate, if there was no crime, rape, or war, there would not be a need for law or ownership. presumably you could trust people enough to use a pure socialist system

~kitty~ 08-3-2011 12:42 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
I don't like how everyone's saying that the world would be boring without war, because war is not involved in our everyday lives and definitely isn't what makes life interesting. There are much more different forms of "chaos" you can go by if you want entertainment, such like in nature.

Suffering is necessary, though. On an extreme level, maybe we can see about that, but I don't know what my answer would be.

cixOclock 08-3-2011 02:54 PM

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

Originally Posted by FFR4EVA_00 (Post 3515248)
if you want to start another thread about how many people the earth could sustain and all your related conspiracy theories go right ahead, i'm not getting into that here

Its not a conspiracy theory anymore than a fish can swim. The Earth has more than enough land including Africa, which has by far some of the most nutritious land for growing crops if a proper irrigation system could get implanted without corrupt dictators taking over.

And yes that has happened.

Seriously it doesn't take much research to find this crap out. Try looking up stuff in something besides Google.

ScylaX 08-3-2011 03:05 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
Back in the ancient Greece, Africa was a very fertile land. Granted. But that's not the debate right there and corruption has nothing to do with the philosophical question of this thread.

Patashu 08-3-2011 08:35 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
Forget about land and food supply, what is your 10billion+ population going to do once all the fossil fuels, metals, rare earth metals and so on are exhausted?

Reach 08-3-2011 10:15 PM

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

Originally Posted by iironiic (Post 3515082)
I understand that life is a balance between good times and bad times but let's avoid reality for a bit and venture into an idealistic world. What if life was filled with trusted people whose purpose is of no harm and no greed? How would people spend their days in this given lifestyle. What would life be without crime, rape, and war? Discuss.

No crime, rape and war? It sounds like life would be wonderful. My life would remain relatively unchanged, since I don't experience these types of things very often, and our population as a whole would be better off being in a similar situation.


I find the fact that some of you seem to think that this would make life 'boring' a bit laughable. I mean.....seriously?

How many times do you wake up and experience crime, rape or war? Hopefully never. These are global issues that cause harm and destruction on a large scale that filters down into a smaller scale, but it thankfully doesn't end up affecting most of us.

Do you even know anyone that has experienced war? If so, do they have anything positive to say about it? Probably not. It isn't fun. It's terrifying. It's not something to glorify or think highly of. It's an abomination that causes widespread suffering; it should be avoided at all costs.

Crime too. How would the lack of crime do anything but improve your current life? Things would go on normally save for the fact that you would never have to worry about things like having your items stolen from you or being held at gunpoint. Can you seriously not amuse yourself in the absence of this? You get off in knowing that there are people out there that might rape your future daughter? It really wouldn't make your life better knowing that this never happens?



As for an absence of 'suffering'; this is significantly more ambiguous, so I won't even bother addressing it. If we're going to define it as something like torture, my answer is the same. If we're talking about experiencing pain or distress though, things are very different (I would like to point out that in order to remove these things, we would have to completely alter the human brain. Even in a 'perfect' world with no war, no crime or hatred, there will still be many challenges to face and there will certainly be pain and distress).


Quote:

Forget about land and food supply, what is your 10billion+ population going to do once all the fossil fuels, metals, rare earth metals and so on are exhausted?
We're going to exhaust them either way, unless you plan on killing off everyone.


War and crime aren't limiting factors in our modern population anyway. People that experience more of these problems have more children. Advances in modern healthcare and technology are mostly responsible for our recent population growth. We know this because we have seen this boom in countries for some time now that begin to adopt modernized medicine and technology. Their populations eventually plateau though because as they rid themselves from systemic problems, their birthrates go down (see most of Europe for countries with no population growth). War is entirely unnecessary in this respect (at least currently. maybe it was in the past).

cixOclock 08-3-2011 10:22 PM

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

Originally Posted by Patashu (Post 3515404)
population going to do once all the fossil fuels, metals, rare earth metals and so on are exhausted?

So are you implying that humans are dependent on fossil fuels? When there are hundreds of viable different resources that can also create power?

For instance you can use the gas that is emitted from animal feces, garbage and other material's along with hydro for those that have human made dams, to create power.
As for metals, and rare metals there is always the grand idea of recycling, even though it is not nearly as effective as most of it turns into unusable waste, but also your old laptops and computers along with cellphones aswell as the metal from old unused buildings.

There are thousands of ideas out there all with possibilities, and if it really came down to it, man has survived for ages without electricity, gunpowder, and processed food.

Where there is a will there is a way, and if you think that the only possible good future is one that still has internet or one that still tries to run on fossil fuels, try and do some studying on how the Earth is able to keep producing these minerials and materials.
Its a little bit on the amazing side.

Man just needs to control his greed and we would already have a world without war and suffering.
A greed for sex turns into a rape, the greed for oil turns into a war in some country that just happens to have some under its soil.
However, that is all I desire to write about. Just figure it out.

Patashu 08-3-2011 10:52 PM

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

Originally Posted by cixOclock (Post 3515436)
So are you implying that humans are dependent on fossil fuels? When there are hundreds of viable different resources that can also create power?

Well, what do you think would happen if everyone woke up tomorrow to discover all the oil in the world had vanished? It wouldn't be pretty.

Recycling is a possibility, but it's never going to be more efficient than mining was without some kind of super advanced robot system sorting things.

Quote:

Where there is a will there is a way, and if you think that the only possible good future is one that still has internet or one that still tries to run on fossil fuels, try and do some studying on how the Earth is able to keep producing these minerials and materials.
Can it produce them faster than on a geological scale?

cixOclock 08-3-2011 11:00 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
Alright name how many people that would all of a sudden die just because fossil fuels gave out?

OMG!! People would have to walk?! :O
Trust me humans adapt and are made to adapt, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as Mad Max makes it out to be...

ledwix 08-5-2011 01:35 AM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
No suffering implies no pain. Pain has already evolved as a mechanism to tell us when we are doing something that could potentially eliminate our existence, so to eliminate pain would seem almost magical. You would have to either reprogram our nervous systems or....just hypothetical conjure up a bunch of magical situations. It would be a world with no car accidents....no terrible accidents at all...and no one would be suicidal or jump off cliffs or anything. It would be impossible for anyone to make any huge mistakes, because we would all be too perfect for that.

Obviously a lot of occupations would have to shift. The existence of war and pain have created a lot of jobs. We would all be civilians doing jobs that exclusively support other civilians.

But overall, the world would be awesome, because awesomeness is pretty much the elimination of perceived bad things. It would be heaven. It seems almost robotic, but if our emotions were still intact, we would all be happy.

But what about death? How could you have a world without suffering if people still died, leaving behind their loved ones? The elimination of suffering would either mean that people didn't care too much about the death of their loved ones, or that people didn't die at all. Eternal life would make life pointless, so lack of suffering would imply that people didn't care when their loved ones died. And that seems like a robotic, emotionless world to me.

Overall, life is a competition totally driven by risk management and the attempted elimination of suffering. There is no plan for what we would do if there was no suffering. Suffering is a property of life, so taking it away seems like trying to make an apple pie without apples.

Writhz 08-19-2011 05:34 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
I believe that if greed, harm, and rape were gone, it would have to be because the emotions which cause such acts would be nullified. We'd be without our natural instincts nor have a drive to succeed (after all that's what prompts rape and greed, right?). In other words, unless an outside force prompted us to get anything done, such as reproduction or the bettering of society, we as a race would wither away.

And our everyday life wouldn't necessarily be better. Without our core instincts, nobody would care whether we were living hand to mouth or in a life of luxury. And because of that, we'd probably all resort back to a nomadic lifestyle. We'd lose all our infrastructure, and the whole population can't survive as nomads. What I'm getting at is that, even though we wouldn't be killing each other nor mean harm to each other with the purpose of betterment, we would cause harm to each other in our apathy.

Silver Sky 08-21-2011 12:41 AM

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

Originally Posted by Writhz (Post 3523894)
I believe that if greed, harm, and rape were gone, it would have to be because the emotions which cause such acts would be nullified. We'd be without our natural instincts nor have a drive to succeed (after all that's what prompts rape and greed, right?). In other words, unless an outside force prompted us to get anything done, such as reproduction or the bettering of society, we as a race would wither away.

And our everyday life wouldn't necessarily be better. Without our core instincts, nobody would care whether we were living hand to mouth or in a life of luxury. And because of that, we'd probably all resort back to a nomadic lifestyle. We'd lose all our infrastructure, and the whole population can't survive as nomads. What I'm getting at is that, even though we wouldn't be killing each other nor mean harm to each other with the purpose of betterment, we would cause harm to each other in our apathy.

Try this world would be a lot better without war and suffering. Peace on earth. No suffering as sickness and all? I guess you would be referring to. Life would be grand. We would actually have an economy. Not wasting billions of dollars on war efforts spiraling into debt. Everything would be better. People who are driven to war and suffering should check into a mental institute. They need help. lol

Emithith 08-21-2011 01:50 AM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
There really wouldn't be much.
Almost all of our inventions are from war, and some form of suffering. If there wasn't any of that we wouldn't have stairs, we wouldn't have the wheel, we probably wouldn't even have jumped out of the tree thinking "I'm sick of lice and fleas!"

edit: half of zero looks like this (

edit2: you guys seem to be looking at this in a way of if YOU didn't have to. But what about on a larger scale: If it never existed in the first place. There is probably a chance alot of us wouldn't even have been born, due to things being so radically different.

Writhz 08-23-2011 02:13 PM

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

Originally Posted by Emithith (Post 3524771)
you guys seem to be looking at this in a way of if YOU didn't have to. But what about on a larger scale: If it never existed in the first place. There is probably a chance alot of us wouldn't even have been born, due to things being so radically different.

Assuming you believe in all aspects of evolution, not only would none of us exist, but I don't think animals would have developed as they did. I mean, you can't have carnivores if eating another creature causes it harm.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silver Sky (Post 3524747)
Try this world would be a lot better without war and suffering. Peace on earth. No suffering as sickness and all? I guess you would be referring to. Life would be grand. We would actually have an economy. Not wasting billions of dollars on war efforts spiraling into debt. Everything would be better. People who are driven to war and suffering should check into a mental institute. They need help. lol

I don't really know how this is a response to my post, but it's not as simple as there is no human-caused suffering thus there is world peace. The original question didn't mention sickness, so I assume it's still plausible as well as famine and societal decay. Also, if there was no greed, then there would be no "economy." Most likely we would only gather enough resources to provide for our survival. But, if I took a step back and thought, "Well what if there was an economy," I'd say it would be pretty lacking since war and greed are what drive the economy to get the most done.

ffraxis 08-23-2011 08:53 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
Life without suffering or war would be just like Eden, paradise.

of course you would have to give up "knowledge" and all sorts of things.

TehWhack 08-24-2011 12:04 AM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
Life would cease to exist (as some people have already suggested).

I don't like making generalized statements like that, but for a generalized question it seems all but fitting. As you said, you can't have good without the bad, this includes varying degrees in between.

Consider: Suffering can be viewed as extreme as a third-world child staving from famine to as miniscule as a first-world child being fed a few minutes late from his or her feeding time.

When you see the implications of suffering, you realize everything that makes you human constitutes suffering. The unpleasant, but necessary process of cell death and cell adaptation, whether it is from a noticeable injury or the continuous regeneration of single, dieing cells.

There is no life without death.

Emithith 08-24-2011 02:07 AM

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

Originally Posted by Writhz (Post 3525940)
Assuming you believe in all aspects of evolution, not only would none of us exist, but I don't think animals would have developed as they did. I mean, you can't have carnivores if eating another creature causes it harm.

You bring up an excellent point, but I wasn't going that far. Though, I do mean from like sitting in the tree I guess. xD I don't know now.
If you were to go farther than that, we wouldn't even have life on earth.

Oh well, you know the saying: To make an omelet you need to crack a few eggs.

Silver Sky 08-24-2011 12:29 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
Writhz:I don't really know how this is a response to my post, but it's not as simple as there is no human-caused suffering thus there is world peace. The original question didn't mention sickness, so I assume it's still plausible as well as famine and societal decay. Also, if there was no greed, then there would be no "economy." Most likely we would only gather enough resources to provide for our survival. But, if I took a step back and thought, "Well what if there was an economy," I'd say it would be pretty lacking since war and greed are what drive the economy to get the most done.[/quote]

Well just think about if everyone actually got along. Even shared. No actual greed. Then that being the case is what I meant. We actually wouldn't have problems. Sorry did go off topic some. You can build so much onto that question. lol I mean shoot, we wouldn't need an economy. We wouldn't have to worry about survival of the fittest. It is possible. But greed has gone so far that there is no affection for one another. The love has gone. And therefore things will only get worse before they get better.

Writhz 08-26-2011 04:58 PM

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

Originally Posted by Silver Sky (Post 3526390)
Well just think about if everyone actually got along. Even shared. No actual greed. Then that being the case is what I meant. We actually wouldn't have problems. Sorry did go off topic some. You can build so much onto that question. lol I mean shoot, we wouldn't need an economy. We wouldn't have to worry about survival of the fittest. It is possible. But greed has gone so far that there is no affection for one another. The love has gone. And therefore things will only get worse before they get better.

I don't see how we wouldn't have to worry about survival of the fittest. Survival isn't completely dependent on your fellow men, but on living conditions and your genetics as well. A child born with a severe medical condition can still die because the doctors were incapable of saving him. Same for a someone who lives to be 30 and then develops a terminal cancer. That's not human cruelty, just a harsh reality.

And I know you were more talking about if everyone was good and shared. I guess I was taking isolation more into consideration. A man who isolates himself and lives out his life in solitude has no intention of causing others pain. However, if all of society become/remain ignorant of his fellow men's struggles, nobody can be blamed for the hardships, despite being indirectly the cause of it. I find that aspect of this prompt especially interesting. At the very least, it's something to consider before saying automatically "Man isn't going to war and being greedy? World is fixed!" And don't get me wrong, I understand where you're coming from; a lot of our societal issues are centered around greed and violence. If you really wanted, you could argue that living a life of isolation or ignorance is self-centered.

Still, this doesn't really affect my original opinion that removing greed and war from the human race would break some natural instinct. I mean, greed is born from self-preservation. Without self-preservation we wouldn't care whether we lived or died, that's ascertained. What we don't know is if you can have a world without greed, but still have self-preservation.

Silver Sky 08-29-2011 01:15 AM

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

Originally Posted by Writhz (Post 3527434)
I don't see how we wouldn't have to worry about survival of the fittest. Survival isn't completely dependent on your fellow men, but on living conditions and your genetics as well. A child born with a severe medical condition can still die because the doctors were incapable of saving him. Same for a someone who lives to be 30 and then develops a terminal cancer. That's not human cruelty, just a harsh reality.

And I know you were more talking about if everyone was good and shared. I guess I was taking isolation more into consideration. A man who isolates himself and lives out his life in solitude has no intention of causing others pain. However, if all of society become/remain ignorant of his fellow men's struggles, nobody can be blamed for the hardships, despite being indirectly the cause of it. I find that aspect of this prompt especially interesting. At the very least, it's something to consider before saying automatically "Man isn't going to war and being greedy? World is fixed!" And don't get me wrong, I understand where you're coming from; a lot of our societal issues are centered around greed and violence. If you really wanted, you could argue that living a life of isolation or ignorance is self-centered.

Still, this doesn't really affect my original opinion that removing greed and war from the human race would break some natural instinct. I mean, greed is born from self-preservation. Without self-preservation we wouldn't care whether we lived or died, that's ascertained. What we don't know is if you can have a world without greed, but still have self-preservation.

I understand what you mean. I mean if you got rid of one thing another would pop up. It's bound to happen one way or another. Hence why were imperfect. It's in our genes.

Squares, the Cube 08-29-2011 07:57 AM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
I can't answer this question just yet. Is the question referring to an entirely different world were these things don't exist? Or is it referring to this world? (In a sense that one day we woke up and got along.)

Rocrocket 10-2-2011 02:06 AM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
Well, what I have to say about this is a bit awkward sounding but if there was no suffering or death...wouldn't that cause more pain in a way? If there is no death then a problem of population control would erupt. But if there was a situation where no one felt pain or suffering and this world was perfectly populated so that everyone was fed, people would either have to be invincible and not reproduce or people would have to some how disappeare out of no where like to fade away at some point in there life as if they were chosen by an outside force in order to keep a proper number of people in a given area.

Some researchers say that there are multiple worlds in an assortment of vibrational frequencies and maybe the perfect world is just on the other side. Like when we die, billions of people say that we go into an alternate universe, different vibrational field, or even get reincarnated in a more peaceful place depending on who they were in a previous lifetime. This really is just common knowledge or a simular way of thinking between religous and non-religous populations around the globe.

cornmaker 12-17-2011 10:42 AM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
life would change in a good and bad way. like for example, good way that some innocent people will not suffer anymore and bad way that bad people will not pay for what wrong things they have done.

Spenner 12-17-2011 05:58 PM

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

There wouldn't be any bad people if there happened to be no suffering or war causing thugs.

I think if we NEVER had to endure pain and suffering, we'd probably be a bunch of hippies sitting down tripping on psychedelic substances to fuel our creative drive for new ideas. But I agree that many of our inventions exist today as a result of someone finding a solution to a problem that involved some form of suffering. Whether or not we'd NEED those inventions in a world without suffering is debatable, seeing how much they've evolved and turned simply into convenience devices seen today, such as a wireless phone. Whereas back in WWII it was used for necessary communication on the battlefield.

That being said someone might think "oh, I can feel the vibrations of sound coming from your body, i wonder if we can harness this energy into a device~~~dood~~" and perhaps they'd eventually stumble on the same thing. But indeed there wouldn't be the same drive for it.

I don't think it would be a bad world at all, but then again I'm just going to be sitting around doing art all my life so it wouldn't really make a difference!!!

stargroup100 12-17-2011 09:42 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
I hate it when people use the "life would be boring" excuse. This only applies to the "what if heaven existed" argument because that is eternal. I, for one, would love a life that is free of suffering.

This argument is as simple as it gets. It would be nice if life was that simple. Too bad it isn't and can't be.

You also can't directly answer the question "how would life change" because such a world is impossible. It's like saying "how would life change if time travel was possible" and the answers are unpredictable because such a scenario can't plausibly happen. (A world with no suffering is technically plausible, but it's so unrealistic that for the purposes of my argument it's the same deal.)

ScylaX 12-17-2011 09:55 PM

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

I hate it when people use the "life would be boring" excuse. This only applies to the "what if heaven existed" argument because that is eternal.
You don't even know how much sense you did by saying that.

jprox445 01-10-2012 11:56 AM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
Life would be very boring without War and such suffering.
if you look at it from my perspective, Life is like a coin and it has "Two" sides...
on one side there is good, and on the other side there is bad...
if one were to Disappear then the other would collapse under all the weight.

Emithith 01-10-2012 12:05 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
though it's probably wise to say it's boring without war and suffering I think that we will never really know for sure what it's like. I know the human race finds things to do even without certain elements already, and I believe we would all find SOMETHING to do even without the progression of technology because of war and people suffering.

/changed opinion.

jprox445 01-10-2012 12:09 PM

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

Originally Posted by Emithith (Post 3611660)
I believe we would all find SOMETHING to do even without the progression of technology

Life without technology wouldn't be the same in my own opinion, it would be like taking a chicken in the farm from grazing and putting them in a metal cage so that all it can do is lay eggs all day...
surely you wouldn't enjoy that kind of life day in day out until the day you die, would you?

Cavernio 01-10-2012 02:40 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
We have these human-made things called games and competition. Not all struggles must be for outright survival. (Of course, when a game becomes too realistic it becomes as important as survival. But then we can make nested games!)
There's also something called discovery that any scientist lives their life for.

jprox445 01-10-2012 03:38 PM

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

Originally Posted by Cavernio (Post 3611724)
We have these human-made things called games and competition. Not all struggles must be for outright survival. (Of course, when a game becomes too realistic it becomes as important as survival. But then we can make nested games!)
There's also something called discovery that any scientist lives their life for.

I can live without video games an such, it's just life isn't as fun without it because traveling costs a lot of money and there are a lot of diseases and messed up places out there. I'm actually afraid of the world from past experiences...

and if we lost all our technology... we would be back to square one, killing each other over food and water etcetera

Cavernio 01-10-2012 07:42 PM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
"it's just life isn't as fun without it because traveling costs a lot of money"

Considering that cost is largely made-up by society, you've just agreed with my point.

ddrxero64 01-11-2012 05:31 AM

Re: How would life change if there was no war or suffering?
 
We'd all be robots in my opinion. All those bad crimes and types of suffering stem from emotions do they not? I mean asking for that would be to remove our emotions and sense of expression. Even animals suffer and fight, a world like that would have to rob us of anything emotion based.


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