Why Can’t We Have World Peace? One has to wonder why the human race settled on war to solve conflicts. Were we so dumb as to think there would be no consequences to the country starting the war? Wars probably started out between individuals livening in caves then just kept escalating throughout history. Maybe the leaders who started the wars were misled by their advisors who told them it would be an easy conquest? That is still happening today. Look at Russia and the Ukraine. I am sure Putin believed he would just run roughshod over the Ukraine and conquer it in a few days. What he underestimated was the will of the Ukraine people, the ability of his military and the opinion of his citizens. I have always said one of the toughest wars is between people speaking the same language. It must seem like fighting brothers. Sometimes when ancient leaders recorded their wars, they would embellish so much on how they won, they probably convinced themselves, even if the war was a stalemate. This was obvious in some of the records left by the ancient Egyptians. How come another solution to these problems between countries didn’t happen. One of the reasons was the quest for power by the leaders which still exists today. These kind of leaders didn’t want parity with other countries, they sometimes not only wanted to conquer them, they wanted a slave force and soldiers for their armies. The Romans, who had great respect for the ancient Greeks, didn’t let that stop them from enslaving them. As a matter of fact, I am going to compare something which loosely illustrates my point. Today in the United States and in other countries, a sign of wealth and power might be a very expensive and limited production automobile. In ancient Rome that symbol was having Greek slaves in a household. The more educated they were, the greater the prestige for the family. Some of them were not treated badly, but they were still slaves. Some countries which are more warlike, like to keep you thinking they are very powerful and threaten you constantly to sort of keep their name in the news. Take North Korea for example with their constant firing of missiles over Japan. Someday one of the missiles might malfunction and land in Japan and this could start a war. North Korea is relying on the fact it is a nuclear power and Japan is not and they wouldn’t dare fight back. That may be what the Russians thought when they invaded the Ukraine. War is such a bloody mess and today is more dangerous than ever. I say this because we have the potential that never existed before and it is the power to destroy the earth and wipe out everyone. It is not just with the nuclear weapons, but all sorts of diseases which have been weaponized. Then there are the chemicals, some of which are so deadly just one drop can kill thousands of people. We truly are living on the edge and the truth is, this makes no sense. The problem today is it is too easy to kill. People are being killed all the time and some of the people killing them are using weapons which look like video games. They have a joy stick and a monitor and they steer drones carrying weapons which can be fired at the touch of a button. It just doesn’t feel like killing and that in itself is wrong. Killing people which might be necessary in war, should feel like killing people. Taking this feeling out of the equation just makes killing too easy. That brings me to all those video games which feature killing. There was a science fiction movie which featured children learning how to get proficient at killing characters in a game, much as many of the games which are out there now. What they didn’t know was the government was really preparing them to fight a war. They were to become the operators of consoles which looked just like the game consoles except the people they were killing in the game were now real people in some far off place. Could something like this really have happened, are video games like this there to prepare people to become operators of deadly weapons which feel like playing a game? The United Nations was formed to get countries together so they could all get along, but politics quickly caused all sorts of problems with the organization. Tons of money were poured into it, much of it by us, and yet when it came to the biggest problems, the agency was impotent. Sure, they were sometimes useful in relatively small matters where they were protecting people to keep the peace, but were relatively useless when the more powerful countries had disagreements. It was founded in 1945 and look at all the wars since then. Before the United Nations there was the League of Nations a similar organization which could not prevent World War II, or even the Spanish War. Was the problem these organizations were following the wrong formula, was it too political, or was it just human nature hampering the successful operation of the organizations? I believe many think it was all three. I often think why can’t countries improve themselves if they want to make things better for their people without ever thinking about going to war? Why do some countries want to rule the world? Why isn’t China, a very ancient country, not happy with all its success and why doesn’t it treat its people better? Why does it feel it has to take over the South China Sea and eventually rule the world? When we drill down to the meaning of life, isn’t it to be happy, love our families and try and help as many others as we can? According to reports China doesn’t treat their citizens very well and God forbid they get Covid, they then get locked into their homes and some are left to die, sometimes by starvation, or lack of water. In countries like China, it seems no one is happy. The leaders want more power and are willing to go to war if they have to, to get it. The Chinese politicians are not happy because they have to toe the line and the citizens for the most part are not happy and that is why they are rioting. One would think by now we would have figured out how to eliminate war so we all could settle our differences peacefully, but world peace is still as elusive as ever.
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