Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology.
Interpretation
Wars are primarily driven by deeper human motivations rather than mere scarcity of resources.
Steven Pinker's quote emphasizes that the root causes of most wars lie in human emotions and ambitions, such as the desire for power, the need for retribution, and ideological convictions, rather than the physical lack of essential resources like food and water. This perspective challenges the conventional view that scarcity alone sparks conflicts, highlighting the complexities of human nature in the context of warfare.
In practice
In a debate on the causes of historical conflicts, this quote can help illustrate that wars are more complex than simple resource struggles.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
The will of God is always a bigger thing than we bargain for, but we must believe that whatever it involves, it is good, acceptable and perfect.
To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.
In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.
Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
When everyone is determined to present someone as a monster, there are two possibilities: either heβs a saint or they themselves are not telling the whole story.
A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
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