"If there is a common enemy around which humanity can unite, it is the institutions that protect privilege for an elite network with extraordinary power and minimal accountability," Pilisuk wrote in an e-mail. "At present, hopes for peace look most promising in the decentralized myriad of creative local actions of people wanting leaders to respond to their true needs."Taking this idea a step further, Richard Koenigsberg, a former professor of psychology at Queens College in New York City, argues that it's not governments, but the idea of countries at all that creates war.
"Warfare is linked to the human attachment to 'nations.' As long as people believe that countries are the most significant thing in the world and that 'nations have the right to kill,' then warfare will persist," he said.
Perhaps if humans come to see ourselves as residents of a single planet, rather than citizens of individual nations with specific interests, war will be unnecessary.
"War is not part of human nature," Koenigsberg told SPACE.com. "It is intimately linked to our psychic attachment to countries."
So it's possible, they argue, for people to be peaceful, if we break down society into microcosms and eliminate nations. Obviously this seems immediately impractical. But conversely, look at the Amish. They live their life in a microcosm, mostly cut off from the rest of the world, and they are imminently peaceful. Amish kids often leave the society...but many return, disillusioned by the chaos and conflict of the outside world. Gregg Easterbrook's book The Progress Paradox argues that "the better we live, the worse we feel."
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