RAF, I`m not sure that certain ethic groups do have a higher propensity to wage war. It seems much more to do with historical factors and culture. Canadians basically share the same ethnicity as Amercans, but a comparison of the homicide rates for murder by shootings indicates a chasm between the two cultures. Mike
--- On Wed, 12/12/12, R A Fonda <[email protected]> wrote: From: R A Fonda <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Zen] Re: Compassion and zen To: [email protected] Date: Wednesday, 12 December, 2012, 14:54 On 12/11/2012 7:23 PM, mike brown wrote: >those of us too young to be guilty.. How does that line above fit in with the "genetic propensity" to drop nuclear bombs on Japan (or at least wage war)? Short answer: a baby already has genetic propensities, but has not had time to manifest many of them; it has not done anything evil ... yet. I was just saying that those of us who were too young to support the political warmakers had no responsibility for their nuclear atrocities, yet we are living in a nation diminished by that and so many other evil acts. Of course, realistically, individual citizens could do little to stop the elites, but might NOT, for instance, have volunteered to fight. Nor is it likely the Japanese would have refrained from using nukes on us if they had been able to; it seems to me they were only restrained by capacity, rather than propensity, so I am not saying Americans were especially evil, but that they had the national capacity to wage imperialistic war, and were attracted to/supportive of the sort of political elites who were inclined to use that power. All human populations have the propensity to wage war, though it does seem to be more highly expressed in some ethnies and cultures. The thing that has made America such a menace is the national economic-industrial- resource (rather than genetic) capacity to sustain technological warfare. I did not mean to imply that the American population had a particularly war-like genetic propensity, but, rather, that they do not have any particular social virtues that would make them resistant to the manipulation of their political elites. Right off hand I can't think of any ethny that has resisted the imperialistic ambitions of the political power-seekers. We humans come from ancestors who were selected for fitness competition rather than pacifism. On the other hand we were also selected for cooperation, so we have a propensity to cooperate in waging war. RAF
