Why war is necessary

[gerald]

John, if I understand you correctly, two of the reasons for war is a "shortage" of resources ( like the story of the red and black ants ) and the "forgetting" of what war is like by the younger generation, which has not experienced a war.

However, I think there may be another reason operating on a different plain or context -- almost mystical, for lack of a better word.

And what is that? It is kinda like people - not all - need to build and create, the problem is that more can be built and created than is needed or normally consumed. War solves this problem by destroying the results of productive effort and killing those that are productive. Thereby providing "space" and need for the cycle to start over again.

hmmm

[ElmarR]

This is plausible, but it does not stop there - GD is a multi-dimensional matter and thus hard to make firm predictions.

Here are some of the dimensions that should be taken into account:
1. it seems to me that GD cycles are culture-based (typically within a "country" - this is a concept that is only about 100 years old, prior to that borders flexed, except when empires existed in the Roman sense). However, it seems that these cycles converge into super-cycles which are dependent on influence of a major regional power. In the past, this tended to be by having feet on the ground in the form of military garrisons; today, it seems to be more economic.

2. in a dictatorship, a country collapses into one person, then it seems to me the GD are influenced by the personality of that one person - if he lasts for one turning only, then he can have a major influence on what happens next, e.g. by causing the skipping or compression of a turning. In ancient times, this happened often when kings = dictators with absolute power. Consider the story of David and Goliath when by defeating one man is equivalent to defeating a whole nation.

3. even the 80y cycle seems to be flexible, if we go by the definition of saeculum as "all of those who were born are no loner alive", then when lif expectancy in a culture / society drops to 45, this must have an impact - I suspect that phase 1 drops from 20 to 15 (or somewhere there); Ph2 from 20 to 15; Ph3 to 10; and Ph4 to 5 (after all, wisdom comes with grey hair.

4. when a hegemonic power takes over in a region, other societies may be at different places within different turnings. "very quickly" though depending how controlling the power is, it will force the societies in its sphere of influence to converge with itself at a speed which depends on how aggressive it is (cp. East and West Germany.)

and I am sure there may be more, but this is just off the top of my head.

[Tom Mazanec]

The case against peace (and it's not Malthusian): http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/17/the ... ald-trump/