unattributed
^^^^big part of the problem; thinking in aggregated collective wholes, rather than in terms of diverse individuals.
I've probably lapsed into thinking in and describing aggregated collective wholes accidentally, elsewhere on this thread. It's how the mainstream generally teaches us to think, starting pretty much from birth.
There isn't any community of individuals of any size that is wholly composed of :
- The losers for whom planting bombs, or killing other people as part of their own suicide - seems like the best opportunity available to them. Whatever the reason might be; charity any relatives they have might receive after their death, fame, notoriety, meeting 72 virgins in heaven(incidentally, those virgins might all be goats)...
- The machiavellian power seekers who want to rule people (and to live parasitically off the productive efforts of the people who they want to order around).
any society that consisted entirely or in any significant proportion of those two groups, would starve to death very quickly. they're totally un productive and can only detract from the well being of any society that they are members of (I can give the full reasoning for why
the practice any politics at all can only make the society poorer).
I don't know whether there are people who grow up to become members of one of those groups who were actually born that way. Perhaps some genetic pre disposition plus brain damage at birth?
I'm guessing that significant "environmental" factors are needed for most who end up that way, and that some people on the margins could become losers, politicians, or normal members of society who try to do decent things. It depends on what incentives and opportunities they see.
The current lamestream education, is paid for by money taken from us, and tells us that we need to thank the useless narcissistic and psychopathic liars that are politicians for everything that is good.
The exact opposite is true.
Send an army or conduct air raids? that means that productive people in the west get taxed for the useless service of killing people and making very expensive rubble and bomb craters (sure, a handful of people with political pull in the military industrial complex get rich at everyone else's expense, and give kickbacks to the politicians).
If some individuals think shooting or bombing is needed - let those individuals buy their own guns and bombs and go try it.
I'll not stand in the way when it comes to those same individuals owning the full consequences of trying it.
And what of the effects of military action?
Losers:
are generally unfulfilled people. They are either not sufficiently productive or they lack other preferences that are necessary for them to become producers. At the same time, they are not sophisticated enough to become politicians. They would like to be noticed, recognized and respected by other people, but they simply do not have the capacity to gain that respect the "right" way.
For a marginal type, conflict does not have a large cost because his life is in such a condition that he has nothing to lose. He either has no family or that family is in the state of disintegration, and his property is negligible because of his unproductivity or it is on shaky grounds because of his criminal lifestyle. Moreover, conflict is one of the ways in which a marginal type may try to be noticed by other people and to gain their respect. You will often hear a marginal type boasting about being on bad terms with someone. That’s a form of self-affirmation. Being on bad terms with someone shows that you matter; you can't be ignored. So, just as for politicians, conflict is of particular importance for the marginal types as a way of achieving their life goals.
ref
http://predragrajsic.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-mechanism-of-war-components.html Rajsic, as his name suggests grew up in the former Yugoslavia and its wars. I highly recommend his whole series of blog posts on the mechanism of war.
Politicians don't tend to own their own factories, warehouses, shops etc
so war doesn't damage them particularly either. If anything it gives them an opportunity to parade around pretending to be great leaders... rather than the useless, arrogant, lying shits they really are.
The people who it does damage and damage very badly, are the people in a society who make good things and do good things... The butcher, the baker, the brewer, the girl in the sandwich shop, the guy who drives the delivery van, the therapist, the gym owner, the mum with children, the ptsd forum member trying to heal...
The people who actually make society, things worth having and lives worth living.
If people can be incentivised to end up in the two useless groups I alluded to; the sort who have so little to lose that carry out violent shit, and the sort who manipulate people to do it.
what incentive is created by destroying everything that decent people value and turning their lives upside down?
and what incentive is created by an education that tells people that good things can only come by means of politics?