chicago public radio
"Welcome back to the show, Al Gini (resident philosopher at NPR)."
"I'm sorry to be here talking about this topic," says Mr. Gini.
Al Gini teaches at Loyola University (in Chicago) and is a frequent commentator on the program Eight Forty-Eight on Chicago Public Radio.
Today's topic: War.
The next five minutes or so is spent quoting famous philosophers (Kant, for example, figured very heavily in the conversation) and proving Gini's theory that war has become accepted as a tactic for achieving certain things (power, dominance, wealth, etc.). I thought it was sadly funny that Gini also said, "I'm not a pacifist. I prefer non-agressive tactics, but if someone threatened my family, I believe that I have the right to act violently to protect them."
Then they talked for a bit, abstractly, about peace. I'd never thought about it before, but they made a good point that peace isn't just the absence of war.
Finally, the thing that ties this all back to the "real world" is the foiled terrorist plot from the UK. I don't know much about what was supposed to happen other than that some liquids were planned to have been smuggled on-board in order to make some sort of bomb. Now the knee-jerk reaction of the TSA is to ban all liquids in carry-on luggage. That's right, you better pack your toiletries in your checked baggage. *rolls eyes* What's next?
Another thing Gini said was that he thinks that human nature is something in-between war-loving and peace-loving; humans are unsociable social creatures. In other words, we need other humans in order to survive, but we have a natural impulse to competition (for resources, etc.) that could be the root cause of all our conflict.
What do you think? Is human nature "nasty & brutish" or are we peace-loving? Or is it something else entirely?
"I'm sorry to be here talking about this topic," says Mr. Gini.
Al Gini teaches at Loyola University (in Chicago) and is a frequent commentator on the program Eight Forty-Eight on Chicago Public Radio.
Today's topic: War.
The next five minutes or so is spent quoting famous philosophers (Kant, for example, figured very heavily in the conversation) and proving Gini's theory that war has become accepted as a tactic for achieving certain things (power, dominance, wealth, etc.). I thought it was sadly funny that Gini also said, "I'm not a pacifist. I prefer non-agressive tactics, but if someone threatened my family, I believe that I have the right to act violently to protect them."
Then they talked for a bit, abstractly, about peace. I'd never thought about it before, but they made a good point that peace isn't just the absence of war.
Finally, the thing that ties this all back to the "real world" is the foiled terrorist plot from the UK. I don't know much about what was supposed to happen other than that some liquids were planned to have been smuggled on-board in order to make some sort of bomb. Now the knee-jerk reaction of the TSA is to ban all liquids in carry-on luggage. That's right, you better pack your toiletries in your checked baggage. *rolls eyes* What's next?
Another thing Gini said was that he thinks that human nature is something in-between war-loving and peace-loving; humans are unsociable social creatures. In other words, we need other humans in order to survive, but we have a natural impulse to competition (for resources, etc.) that could be the root cause of all our conflict.
What do you think? Is human nature "nasty & brutish" or are we peace-loving? Or is it something else entirely?