22A009 Where Wars Come From by Jim Davies, 3/1/2022

Crass, near-universal stupidity.

Their immediate cause is of course governments, for there never was a war that was not begun by a government. The very existence of these malevolent institutions is the source of all the misery, mayhem, destruction, dismemberment and death caused by every war. But stupidity is what enables governments to exist. And it is so widespread that you are reading one of the rare publications that opposes that existence, root and branch; almost everyone else supposes that governments must exist.

They must not.

The latest, a squabble between two former members of the Soviet Empire, has the terribly dangerous potential to escalate into a worldwide conflict in which one warring government will unleash nuclear weapons, prompting others to do likewise in retaliation. Then if any part of humanity survives, the centuries-long process of building civilization will have to start over. Perhaps, like most wars, this one can be contained, to the Russia-Ukraine corner of the world - but the almost unbelievable stupidity of the half-wit in the White House, and of his pals in London, Berlin, Paris and elsewhere - is making that unlikely; they are piling blame on Russia and trying hard to isolate her from peaceful trade.

They have even aimed their "sanctions" at Putin and Lavrov personally; two men who I'd say are the least irrational of the world's "statesmen." Biden and Bojo are recklessly pouring gasoline on the fire. Stupidity, on stilts. Although I was glad that Ukrainians threw out a communist president in 2014 whom they saw as too close to the Kremlin, the Kiev government has been so stupid as not to let people in the pro-Russian eastern part of that country determine their own future; that could have been done fairly easily at any time since, but it wasn't. The result is the present war, and to prevent its escalation the best outcome now would be a swift Russian victory followed by withdrawal.

The stupidity of government people themselves is hard enough to understand; but the stupidity of everyone else who allows them to function would be incredible, if it were not so endemic. There is a Modern Fairy Tale, which I reproduced in 1993; it tells of the Namuh people on the distant planet of Tenalp, who frequently become infected with a dreadful disease whose source had been identified. Yet they went on using it! Why? Why? How stupid could they be?

Humans are rational, without question. Dogs and dolphins and horses and apes show good signs of intelligent thought and tool-making, but hom. sap. is superior to all of them in rationality, by several orders of magnitude. We reason things out, we imagine then invent and build, to a degree unmatched in the known universe. I don't mean that rationality is our only attribute - far from it; a range of emotions, barely yet understood, are prominent too. Choice of a spouse, for example, should be made rationally - but hardly by that means alone! But rational thought is our main distinguishing feature.

And yet we are so colossally stupid as to allow governments to exist.

To do that is fundamentally IRrational. It's so glaringly obvious! Try this:

That is rational, hence consistent with human nature; it's also perfectly simple. One would need an IQ in single digits, not to grasp it - yet here is the human race with an IQ of 100, usually supposing that G is somehow desirable or necessary.

It's neither. Anything desirable will be delivered by an unfettered market, often better or cheaper, including protection from malefactors foreign and domestic.

True, "getting rid of G" is a non-trivial task, since G will resist the process, but it can be done; provided only that we want it to be done.

This is not just a desirable option. It's an existential necessity.