Human Nature and War: Is Peace an Archievable State for the World - Research Paper Example

With globalization creating economic interdependencies, it is likely that peace may exist based upon dependence rather than through emotional ties of loyalty and alliance. Where war is a learned response, survival may end war as states depend on one another for economic survival and aggressive threats are no longer valuable in relationships between states. Human Nature and War: Is Peace an Achievable State for the World? Introduction It might be said that the nature of human beings is defined by what is observable in how war is conducted.

No matter what period of time is studied, there has always been war available to help to define that time period. Wars have been between nations and between coalitions of nations. They have been economic, ideological, religious, and a combination of reasons. Sometimes they exist because of the need for resources where other times they come purely out of the need to dominate. Sometimes war comes when people need to free themselves from tyranny and other times it comes when a faction wants to commit tyranny.

War is a constant and even though each generation hopes for peace, somewhere in the world tension breaks into violence and war begins. The following paper will discuss how on the dynamics of war, the discussion about the nature of aggression as innate or as a learned behavior, will define the future as it provides support for how war is approached. Background The psychology of war and the theories as to why it is always a presence somewhere in the world can be divided into two concepts. The first is based upon the idea that violence is a part of human nature and it must therefore be expressed in some form or another.

The state becomes the conduit between the human need for violence and the expression of that violence (Ko?chler & Grabher, 1999). The other conceptual theory on war is that human violence is a learned behavior and is not instinctual, but is perpetuated through each generation as reactions are cultivated to experience the learned behavior of violence. This would mean that these behaviors would be unlearned or refocused into other methods of resolving international and internal conflicts for a state (Payan, 2006).

Very few people would disagree that the desired state of affairs in the world would include no war. Just war and unjust war bring the same result, that of death, destruction and diminishment of the human spirit. Enlightenment and forward advancement is stalled when war becomes a part of the reality of a state. Answering the question of the nature of war as it relates to the human condition is important towards supporting potential of a world at peace. It must be said, however, that one growing reality might bring peace throughout the world through economic pressures.

As globalization is connecting nations through economic dependency, that dependency will likely have the effect of chaining any belief in using violence as a means of resolving conflict because the costs to the aggressing nation would be too high (Shiva, 2006). In light of this new reality, the question as to the foundation of war, whether it be innate expressions of the human instinct or a learned behavior, are gaining increasing importance as the world begins to become somewhat homogenized through