The Peace Project

The Value of Life

A thesis has been advanced time and again over the last few years: large-scale war between major states is obsolete.

One possible theory (among many) for this notion is that the costs of war have simply outweighed the benefits. For developed nations with a large amount of intellectual capital, the loss of individual life which accompanies war is no longer outweighed by the marginal societal benefits of winning power struggles. Increasing standards of living (lower birth rates, higher levels of education, more societal investment in each citizen) results in a value system driven by individuals. When parents know they will not lose half of their children in the first years of life, they allow themselves to love each one to the full capacity of the human heart. When society places an emphasis on free and public education for all, it begins to invest in each individual, putting time, money and thought into giving each person a chance for success. When the loss of each life becomes painful for a country, when numbers of military casualties in the hundreds are just as unacceptable as numbers in the hundreds of thousands were in the past, then governments will begin to take their decisions to begin war (particularly war with other developed countries which have massive destructive capabilities) much more seriously.

Could this kind of thinking represent a new path for the spread of peace throughout the world? While it is important to argue for nations and groups to avoid violence as a solution, it might be just as important to bring up the standard of living so that the cost of conflict becomes so prohibitive that the idea of war for material gain becomes untenable.

People all over the spectrum (not just on this blog) struggle with the definition of "peace" in real terms -- is it merely the absence of conflict or the betterment of all of mankind? Even if peace is narrowly defined as the former, this kind of analysis shows that achieving the latter is paramount to any kind of success.

(thanks to TMQ and AJK for this idea)

posted by Sammy @ 11:05 PM