[ExI] Religions are not the ultimate cause of war

[BillK]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 12:11 AM, Keith Henson wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 1:37 PM,  John Clark wrote:
>> I don't believe it is. Saudi Arabia is not a poor country and yet almost
>> all the 911 hijackers came from there, and all were middle class.
>
> Before 9/11, the was a 75% drop in the per capita income for Saudi
> Arabia.  It was due to a rise in the population of factor of two and a
> fall in the price of oil by half.  That seem to be enough to trip the
> population wide "bleak future" detector.  And in the stone age, the
> relatively well off warriors were infected by the same "kill the
> neighbors" memetic mechanism as the rest of the tribe.
>


Terrorism is not the result of a nation switching on to 'war-mode'.

Terrorists are mostly a tiny minority (even including non-involved
supporters). And as John said terrorists are often more middle-class
than poor. Terrorism is probably used because it is the only method a
relatively powerless small group have available to inflict damage on a
hated powerful nation.
(e.g. resistance fighters against WWII German invaders).

Starvation and high food prices is linked with internal rioting and
political upheaval.
The US is facing bleak times with 46 million surviving on food stamps,
but they are completely uninvolved in the US wars. Even a lot of the
killing is now done by remote control, by soldiers playing a real-life
computer game.

It seems illogical to say that the richest country in the world is
fighting wars because it faces 'hard-times'. They are certainly
inflicting 'hard-times' on many other countries.


BillK