[extropy-chat] Gandhi and EP was Bushido

[Keith Henson]

At 02:26 PM 4/25/2007 +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

snip

>Rather than adopting Bushido, we could have everyone including governments 
>and criminal gangs adopt Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence, and 
>everything would be hunky-dory.

I really doubt it.

The trick to keeping humans out large scale violence is to keep their 
"bleak future" detectors off.  The modern equivalent of game and berries is 
income per capita.  Steady or rising income per capita keeps a population 
out of "war mode" unless they are attacked.

Population growth faster than economic growth, the "per capita" term, is a 
formula for a population going into war or if they can't into related 
social disruptions like terrorism.  That's where the IRA came from.  And 
because a generation ago Irish women cut the number of children they had to 
about replacement, economic growth got ahead of population growth.  That's 
why the IRA eventually went out of business.

I speak as if this mechanistic view of wars was cut and dried, widely 
accepted.  It isn't of course, but I don't know of a better model that is 
rooted in evolution, evolutionary psychology and accounts for wars.

Certainly the *least* likely countries in the world to go to war are those 
with the lowest population growth.  Of course if the income side starts 
looking bleak, that could change rapidly.

Keith Henson