Keith Croes, yes, taking your bait, I do believe the Defense budget should be protected. We need a lot of protection in a chaotic and violent world. The Defense budget should contain various measures to keep us safe, using proven techniques and technology, not pie-in-the-sky idealist notions on what hypothetically or theoretically should keep us safe. For example, tanks and bombs have often been instrumental in keeping some people safe, but usually fail to ensure the safety of the people being shot at. In theory tanks, bombs, and all the various implements of war should at least keep one countrys citizens safe, but in practical application, even if only one side is considered, I dont know of a single war wherein there were no casualties. Worse yet, the casualties of the other countries inspire those countries surviving citizens to become more hostile towards us, making future casualties more likely. This is all well-documented. Equally well-documented is the higher effectiveness of less-used defense strategies, which should be phased in to replace most of the idealistic, theoretical violence-based defenses. These proven strategies for defense of humans in groups involve methods of conflict de-escalation, team-building, and resource-sharing, and generally motivating others without violence. The lack of violence is important because its been observed from multiple lines of evidence that the main cause of violence is enduring violence (including even severe punishment). This simple human mental architectural feature explains why military defense is so very limited in its capability of keeping people safe. Phrased a different way, its pretty obvious well never be safe while we have enemies. Its also pretty obvious that killing enemies makes more enemies, not fewer overall. Therefore the only way to be safe is to make enemies into friends. That should be the core of our defense budget. Of course these methods are harder on the short scale if youve just been shooting people, so theyll have to be phased in, not swapped out instantly. (You cant punch someone and then expect them to immediately be your friend.) Why weve been using the ineffective method of violent (military) defense so much is that we habitually confuse the translation between the personal scale and the national scale. Throughout most of our evolution, killing an enemy worked well enough on the personal scale, however, applying the idea of killing an enemy to the scale of national defense does not mean killing enemy soldiers. It means genocide. Violence without genocide can only breed more violence. Not a very good strategy for defense. For the sake of full disclosure, making friends inevitably at some point involves sharing. We teach children to share and at first they dont want to because it means having less pie or higher oil prices, but after they do it for a while, eventually they see the value in it and continue to benefit from its downstream dynamics for the rest of their lives. Our defense strategy should focus on sharing and its generalization, sometimes called the golden rule.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 06:23:01 +0000
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