Newsflash: humans are the most brutal, sadistic creatures to ever crawl out of the muck. We only got to this point in history by being ruthless murders with instinctual homicidal tendencies. Our history is defined not by our good deeds, but by the wars we've fought, the people we've tortured, and the civilizations we've raped and pillaged.
These child-soldiers are not warped beyond what is human, they are human. They experience life and death in a manner our comfortable, homogenized-milk-drinking minds wouldn't be able to comprehend....it is we "civilized" humans who are warped beyond what is "human."
Humans vs Homo Sapiens
Actually no, this is a holdover from our biological past. The same as for other killer species, notably wolves and chimpanzees. This is what it means to be homo sapien NOT human. There is a massive difference between homo sapiens and humans. Language, thought, consciousness. Non-human homo sapiens are exemplified by feral children, stone aged cultures, and a few incredibly primitive tribes in the Amazon.
Trying to lay it all on our being human is as stupid as trying to credit our having genitals or two eyes to being human. Utterly fucking ridiculous. Or alternatively, the same as trying to say that information, knowledge, decision-making and thinking (things that software can do) are what it means to be a Being. Utterly fucking ridiculous.
This is what you get with magical tihnking morons who are incapable of thinking in terms of logic and syllogism, but instead think in terms of excerption, association and correlation. Humans have toes? Then toes must be what it means to be human!
Moderns vs Primitives
Furthermore, Europe hasn't had a war in 50 years. Neither has China. Technically, China hasn't had an (external) war in a lot more than 50 years. And in the 18th or 19th century there was a great century of peace for Europe. Peace is definitely possible for moderns. Even if primitives are in a near constant state of war.
The first thing you learn in The Origin of Consciousness In The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is that consciousness is inhibitory. Paying attention while doing something doesn't prime the action, it inhibits it. That's why when you learn typing and make typos then you try to very carefully do correct actions ... that's counterproductive. Anyways, consciousness is inhibitory .... and it is fully capable of inhibiting the subconscious impulse for aggression, murder and death. At least, for those nations that actually have higher consciousness.
Primitives without consciousness don't even make any excuses for war. They just go to war because they feel like it. Because they're in a "killing mood". Conscious beings need an excuse so that slows down the pace of warfare. The more conscious people are, the better the excuses have to be, which again slows down the pace of warfare. In primitive tribes, half the population dies of homicide / suicide. In World War 2, even with ridiculously effective weapons, less than a fifth of the population of Europe died.
Higher Mode Childrearing
It isn't an accident, it isn't happenstance, that the way we moderns raise children "correctly" just "happens" to reduce aggression, irrationality and warfare. We do not fucking like those things. They are not productive. And we want and plan to eradicate these things from our psychological makeup.
We go to extreme lengths to care for babies and raise children with ridiculous amounts of attention and care for no other purpose than eradicating irrationality and neurosis and psychosis and aggression in general. Of which warfare is the most quintessential example.
We moderns raise children so they will have the widest possible emotional flexibility and adaptability. And so they will have principles. All things which severely inhibit warfare. Because it "just happens" that nations which don't go to war prosper better than those who do.
You see, moderns want their children to prosper, rather than to "follow in their footsteps" or "obey their elders". And since war is adverse to prosperity, it follows by inescapable logic that moderns want their children to not go to war. Something that wasn't true even 50 years ago, but nevertheless is the culmination of a consistent trend over the millenia.
Affordance Of Consciousness
Furthermore, the observer effect (inhibition of the effects of abuse by recognizing it as abuse) which together with two genders produces a ratchet in childrearing modes (the child of two parents will effectively be raised in the higher of the modes the parent was raised in) ... is a product of consciousness. Consciousness which is the essence of what being human means. Therefore, being human means that we naturally FALL straight towards peace. We're just taking a long time falling because the nature of homo sapiens is incredibly brutal.
Parents deliberately and consciously inhibit irrationality to the same level that they've achieved themselves. And it is the nature of consciousness to inhibit irrationality. Hammers are uniquely suited to hammering nails and that is what we deliberately use them for. Consciousness is uniquely suited to inhibiting irrationality (including warfare) and that is what we deliberately use it for.
Summary
So on a trivial and superficial level, that stupid stupid comment seems correct and profound. But when you examine it and tear it apart, it is the exact opposite of the truth. It is the biological nature of homo sapiens to be a brutal killer species. It is the psychological nature of humans to deliberately go counter to their biological nature in order to be peacemakers. Between them, it is psychology that triumphs.
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