Conflict/Progress ( Archived) (8)

If all conflict in this World would cease,
would progress also stop?

Your thoughts are priceless!

Conflict does provoke idea which in turn could create progress in some areas. But, I feel quite strongly that the world could make progress in so many other areas (research, for example), if governmental dollars could be put to use somewhere besides our defense budget.

My vote is to eliminate as much conflict as possible and concentrate our energies and resources on progress in areas not related to squabbles over land, religion, etc.

"If all conflict in this World would cease,
would progress also stop?"

I suppose that all depends on your semantic take on the word "conflict".

If conflict means to challenge any idea at all then of course there wouldn't be any progress without conflict because a lot of initial ideas were dead wrong, and if you can't challenge them then there's no room for progress.

However, challenging ideas does not need to be seen as "conflict", or at least it certainly doesn't need to escalate to hostile conflict. Many scientific ideas have been challenged without hostility, both Relativity and Quantum Theory challenged Newtonian mechanics without becoming a hostile situation.

Some of the earlier ideas of Galileo, Copernicus, Mendel, and even as recent as Darwin have met with hostility, but this was almost always religious-based hostility. In fact, most hostile conflicts are often based on religion, greed, or a lust for power which have little if anything to do with progress.

So my answer would be that hostile conflicts aren't even conducive to progress, while intellectual curiousity and challenge is.

i will cosider conflict to mean international violence towards one another

having said this

i would almost betthat the new energy would be used to advance space exploration as to move on to interplanitary conflict

just the nature of man

but what do i know

No need to worry about what ifs, cause conflict will never cease, it's a part of every humans nature.

when people hear the word conflict, images of fighting, wars and turmoil from somewher else often fill their minds
when the truth of the matter is that every person, that is and will be, have a natural need for conflict built in.

Perfect peace in this world would be very non productive and boring to say the least.

"Perfect peace in this world would be very non productive and boring to say the least."

I could never agree with that one. Nothing boring about peace for me. I would be glad to live on a peaceful planet for all of eternity. There's plenty of excitement in life without hostility as far as I'm concerned. There's also plenty of things to be productive about without getting hostile about them. Peace does not equate to boredom for me.

I will agree with you that it's never going to happen on this planet though.

Thats not what I meant.