Place Your Wager

[plumtreeblossom]

[Poll #966068]


Don't worry, I'm not in a bad mood. Just don't feel well.

Comments

[beowabbit]

Not everybody is afflicted with pestilence, war, or famine, but the death rate is still one per person. I know how to recognize a winner!

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Wonder how you would have voted if I'd made the 5th horseman Tomatoes.

*kiss*

[wellstar.livejournal.com]

For the record, I consider "dammit" as its own word, to be used in exclamatory isolation rather than for actual purposes of damnation. For the latter, I would go with your third option.

[dpolicar]

Interesting.

I guess I agree in some technical sense, but in practice I find it's a distinction without a difference, as I'm never actually choosing words for purposes of damnation.

Do you often find yourself engaged in actual damnation, rather than referring to it for exclamatory purposes?

[wellstar.livejournal.com]

Not often, no. I would say "damn it to hell," though, focusing my frustration on a particular negative situation, as opposed to a general frustration, which would warrant the more general "dammit!"

[marius23.livejournal.com]

Pestilence, famine, and even death are all a matter of biology, which is potentially tractable. War, however, seems to be human nature....

[dpolicar]

Hm. You seem to suggest that "human nature" transcends biology in some intractable way; I'd be interested to hear you expand on that suggestion.

[marius23.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't forgotten about this; it's just taken a while to get to it in the queue. There's also a lot to think about this topic, but I will try to keep it to the bare bones.

Anyway, I actually wouldn't say that "human nature" is completely intractable; humanity does seem to have made some progress in gradually reducing the relative levels of destruction wreaked by wars in spite of a vastly increased technological capacity for destruction. My argument is more that ideology and attendant conflicts thereof, which seem to be at the root of much of modern warfare, being an epiphenomenon of biology, will require a vastly more complex level of knowledge and wisdom to master, and may well prove to be too chaotic (in the technical sense) to ever really control in any meaningful sense.

While I know arguing from science fiction is not valid (as my wife often reminds me), still I think Lord of Light by Zelazny is a perfect example of what I believe here. In the world envisioned, for all practical purposes pestilence, famine and even death (through practical reincarnation) have been conquered, yet wars for power and ideology continue.

[docorion.livejournal.com]

C'mon, I gotta go with Pestilence; otherwise I'm out of a job! (Well, War can keep me busy, too, but for the Big Fun, you have to go with Pestilence).

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

Hope you are feeling better:)