not_IOpropaganda rule
TheTechnician27For general context, the opinion piece was published April 2014. Bezos owned The WaPo at the time and had since 2013. Author is Stanford historian and archaeologist Ian Morris.
zikzak025I looked at the premise of his book that this article seems to connect with, and it basically boils down to “History shows that societies becomes a lot more peaceful and productive after periods of war.”
Wow, who’d’ve thought that things get better for the people who survive a war? It’s a good thing we can apply survivorship bias to the whole of human history with such confidence like that.
TotallynotJessicaSo it’s not that war makes things better, but that we become better off after we stop fighting? We become better off after we decide fixing our problems peacefully is a good idea? Brilliant.
It’s also not true when you consider all the times war follows war and societies see decades if not centuries of decline involving numerous civil wars. On top of that, when war is not devastating for those that start it, it does not inspire them to change; rather it becomes part of their norm.