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

[TehWhack]

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]

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

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]

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]

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

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]

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

You don't even know how much sense you did by saying that.

[jprox445]

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]

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]

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

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]

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.