Thursday, October 14, 2010
Has the evolution and development of weapons affect the world positively or negatively?
Just jot down a few ideas, but make sure you have evidence to back up what you are saying. You will need to do a little research on your own, but we will be providing two articles in a later post, just please leave opinions so we can develop questions for our upcoming debates. Thanks!
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Aloha! alright so I have an opinion on the most recent debate question:
ReplyDelete"I believe that the evolution and development of weaponry has had a positive effect on mankind, because it has certain people of our society more power over others (a quality necessary to begin civilizations in which a common law is enforced).
sorry, it has GIVEN certain people...
ReplyDelete"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
ReplyDeleteAlbert Einstein
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAloha! The evolution of weapons has had positive and negative effects which I will state and leave to yourself to decide which side is more believable. On the positive side of advanced weapons, it makes wars quicker. Instead of the days of the Trojan War when men would go away to war and not come home for 20 years, wars end very quickly nowadays. "Wars are getting more efficient, like machines, getting faster and faster as the years go on." On the negatives there is the fact that wars now kill many more people. Instead of wars where 1000 men die, now there are wars where 1 million men die. Finally, now the wars involve everybody, from the oldest woman, to the youngest child and there is always the chance of them dying at anytime with stealth bombers and nuclear devices. Mahalo.
ReplyDeletepersonally i think that the stakes are immeasurably higher now that one country alone has enough nukes to wipe out all life on planet earth many times over, and other countries have similar arsenals. these countries cannot afford to go to war because of the concept of MAD(mutually assured destruction). it is this fear that keeps the peace now, but MAD does not prevent war between countries with nukes and countries or groups without them.
ReplyDeleteearlier developments weren't as important in affecting society. without tanks we would still fight wars but they would be fought differently. the number of dead would be different, as well as the tactics employed. nuclear weapons alone have the ability to make everyone afraid of anyone with enough nukes.
as war is at present, it makes the world a much worse place. there are two groups, the nuclear club and the weak. any member of the nuclear club can do whatever they like to a weak country because they can afford to resort to militarism to force them to bow. the weak are without nukes because the nuclear club imposes sanctions and political pressures to try and stop them from joining that elite group. the nuclear club become the bullies of the world and the police expected to stop the bullies, a system that can't be trusted to stop a nuclear country from exploiting a non-nuclear one.
in the future i can see only three possibilities:
1) complete nuclear disarmament of the world
2) complete nuclear armament of the world
3) MAD becomes reality
i prefer not to think about number three. and number two runs the risk of leading to number three. the final option is number one, nukes need to go. we can clearly see that this particular weapon of war has a negative affect on society.
what of other weapons of war? i don't really care.
As much as I want to agree with you, I can't. If we destroy or disarm all nuclear devices of every country in the world, there will still be an "elite club" that could be bullies of others, because there are other weapons that can destroy every person in a country, should the aggressor want to. We could still be the bullies of the world without nukes by threatening with conventional ballistic missiles which have the power to destroy entire cities with the press of a button. Then, if we disarm everybody with those, we still have B-2 Stealth Bombers that could destroy an entire nation with one sortie to threaten others with. So if you don't care about other weapons, you should.
ReplyDeleteYip the Great
ReplyDelete"Anonymous" presents some interesting ideas about the future of war - at some point the world will disarm its nuclear weaponry or everyone in the world will have them. If everyone has them, then there will be the concept of MAD.
I agree with with Brian's comment that it is unlikely those with nuclear weapons will voluntarily and cooperatively agree to disarm. They will, more than likely, continue to "bully" the rest of the world. So, are we left with the eventuality of all nations having nukes at some point in human history? If that is the case, will MAD kick in?
In my opinion, the answer unfortunately is probably no. As "Anonymous" has pointed out, it is impossible to control all the different factions and groups within nations that could come into control of some nuclear weapons. The articles I sent the group were mostly Cold War documents concerning the mutual need of both the US and the Soviet Union to not engage in nuclear war. Both I wonder if they ever considered the risk involved when a group like al-Qaeda gets their hands on nukes? This is a group that has people willing to complete suicide missions to achieve some quasi-religious goal with a fanaticism that the west simply does not understand.
So, in short, I believe the technological achievement of humanity is ultimately negative and self-destructive.
Luke H
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I'd like to remind everyone that they must identify themselves on the blog, or their comments will be removed, no matter how impressive they are.
Secondly, as most of you know, I have strong opinions. In this case, I believe that the evolution of weapons has made the world worse, and threatens all of mankind much more than it ever has. All the big important countries are nuclear, and even some less important ones are nuclear too. True less people are starting to die in wars, but the threat of ultimate destruction is greater than ever. Like Mr. Yip said earlier, If a group like Al-Qaeda gets hold of nukes, what does this mean for all the countries that aren't muslim enough for them? Certain demise without a doubt. This group isn't humane, you all saw what happened on September 11th, 2001. If they can kill that many people and cause so much fear and disorder in the entire world with 4 planes, then they'll do so much more with nuclear weapons. Back in the Cold War, this wasn't so much a problem, Russia and USA didn't want to cause the end of the world but who knows what Al-Qaeda will do. Not everyone in the world can handle the responsiblity of nuclear weapons, and humanity may never be able to handle that responsibility. Sure bigger weapons helped us out in WWII, but then two major powers in the world almost blew everything up right after that. Humanity should not be playing around with this sort of stuff, that "judgement day" that all the religions talk about may not be caused by god if humanity doesn't do something to stop advancing with so much weaponry.
Wyatt-
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion the evolution and development of weapons really has not done the world any good except to the people who want to harm others. Which I think we can all agree is not a good thing. The development of weapons has for the most part just caused war and killing of more people. As "Anonymous" was saying the people with the weapons gain the power and as the weapons grow so does their power so they just get the ability to push others around even more, and eventually the "bully" countries will keep growing and others will just become part of it or be overcome by them. so eventually there would only be few countries left that would probably destroy each other but I doubt it would ever get this bad... we would probably destroy each other long before that
Phil-Your Fearless Leader
ReplyDeleteObviously i believe you all know exactly what im going to say. The evolution and development of weapons has most certainly been beneficial to the world. i mean where would we be without the ability to slaughter masses of people for the shear fun of it. (that was just a joke) in reality however, i do believe that this has been beneficial to us. i mean look at the cold war, sure it was a dangerous time, but there would have been friction with the soviets even if we didnt have nuclear weapons, and if we didnt have nukes a war would have definately developed and thousands if not millions of people would have died. now the Soviets may be able to handle this i mean, 2.5 million people was a drop in the bucket for them when they marched on Berlin in 1945. but for us however, since we pride ourselves on being a "citizen army" a million casualties would have been unnacceptable (someone should have told this to the high generals planning the invasion of the japanese mainland) therefore the nukes saved us because without them there would not have been a threat of world destruction of MAD, so there would have been an all out war between the United States and The United Soviet Socialists Republic.
Deirdre (the most important leader ;D)
ReplyDeleteI completely disagree with Phil. Weapons seem to have only made things worse. I mean, even reading about our, the "good" guys', arsenal it was frightening! We have enough enough power to do serious damage, which we wouldn't have to deal with if they weren't there in the first place. Which is where most people say "well we need them for defense." And to you I say BAH, humbug. If they were never created, then we would need nothing to defend ourselves with. Now, I will agree (though grudgingly) that some weapons are necessary. I think that we should have stopped at swords and knives. It makes things much more personal. Instead of a twitch of a finger you must think about thrusting the sword into someone else's body in a way and with enough force to kill someone. That way soldiers who are trained can deal with it, but the common person is much less likely to do it. So I believe guns and anything of the sort are unnecessary and worsening the world undoubtedly. But, what about nuclear weapons? Obviously the common person doesn't have to deal with it, but what about leaders? Well, I agree with Luke. The bad people will have no problem doing this, if they think it is for a "cause." The good people will sit and contemplate the side effects and nothing will probably be done because of the loss of life. So how helpful to the world are these? Well, if massive quantities of people being blown up is good.. I won't deny the flaw in my logic, there is no way to prevent them from being made, if we didn't do it first someone with less "noble" intentions would have come along and built it and used it. But I am disregarding that, they are bad, and should not have been created.
I think that it is not possible to stop human progression in anything. Therefore, there is no way to stop new weapons being developed. The people working on the Manhatten Project weren't necesarrily thinking about the implications of the weapon they were creating, or the future of it. They pursued the creation of the Atom Bomb because they were being payed to do so, and because they love discovering new things. Creating a weapon to kill thousands of people was not evil to them, it was a job. The people who created the Atom Bomb are not the problem, it was those who gave them the funding.
ReplyDeleteBraeden Dorocz
ReplyDeleteThe develpment of weapons has been surely been benefical to the human race.
1. Dozens of civlian technologies were orginally derived or discovered during weapons research.
2. Arms keep peace. Imagine this analogy, there are two street gangs in a turf war. One shows up to the rumble completely unarmed, and the other comes with all sorts of weapons; bats, knives, guns, bicycle chains, and the whole nine yards, are the unarmed gangsters going to want to fight? Of course not, they will likely be ready to surrender, negotiate, or flee. The same applies with nations. This was proved true during the Cold War. In the face of MAD, nations did not fight often in fear that they would initiate their struggle.
3. This ultimately comes to my third point: there is a need for a balance in world power. All times of peace in world history derive from their being an equal balance of power between the primary powers of the world/particular area. Look at the Cold war, and all the wars that have occured since the fall of the USSR. Look at how World War I started after the secession of Serbia and the military mobilization of Germany, events that through off the balance of power in Europe. The only other way peace can be acchived is via total domination. Look at the Pax Romana, Pax Brittania, and Pax Americana. Weapons allow these two scenarion of peace to occur.
Deirdre
ReplyDeleteBraeden:
Hmmph,
1. If we were not focused on creation of weapons, would we not have the time and money to pursue other scientific inventions and discoveries?
2. The unarmed gangsters, would be slaughtered.
3. Is no weapons not also equal? If we all had nothing, what option would we have but to talk things through?
Luke H
ReplyDeleteBraeden, I agree with all of Deirdre's points. Try to save some stuff for the debate though guys! It's gonna be THIS Thursday!!!
Dierdre,
ReplyDeleteI want to agree with you, I really do but I can't. If we were all unarmed, there still would be no equality. There will always, always be a bully somewhere somehow. Imagine being at the playground in second grade. Is anyone there armed? Are those 7 year olds walking around with guns and pithcforks? They are not, thus everyone is equal from an outsiders perspective. But somehow there is still a bully. How is this? My theory is that there will always be a stronger, more talented, luckier, or more charismatic person, who is better than everybody else. If this is true than universal disarment will not be helpful because there is always an unequality somewehere. More advanced weaponry gives the weak a chance to grow strong and therefore levels the playing field a bit for those who are smaller. I am reminded of the book "The Mouse that Roared." It is about a small country "Grand Fenwick" that has no chance at all against their enemies in a war, their enemy being the U. S. However, they get control of a massive weapon that could create a havoc big enough to destroy the world. Because they have this weapon, they are now equal with the great powers of the world and are able to get what they want which is really respect.