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

[iironiic]

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]

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

[iironiic]

Originally Posted by Niala

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]

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]

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

[Niala]

Originally Posted by iironiic

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]

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]

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]

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.

Originally Posted by yo man im awesome

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]

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]

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]

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]

everyone would have died out hundreds of years ago from overpopulation

[ScylaX]

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]

Originally Posted by FFR4EVA_00

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]

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~]

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]

Originally Posted by FFR4EVA_00

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]

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]

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?