> BeoWolfe wrote:
> People have, google Ghengis Khan, Alexander the Great and Hitler. All had a vision of a one planet society. Had they succeeded we would be a 1 on the scale... not sure if thats the most important thing to strive for but you would have it. And on a smaller scale - people embrace this issue everyday but do so in pockets. If you don't like the society your in - you pack up and move to a location that has the values you embrace. It is the minority mindset to live some where you hate and try to get the society to conform to your beliefs.
You refer to conquerors, whose actions resulted in some of the most heinous atrocities the world has ever faced. I don't see the relevance at all. Or are you actually suggesting that war-imposed peace is the means by which civilizations raise themselves to the next levels on the Kardeshev Scale?
If we have learned anything from history is that wars beget wars, resulting from animosities which linger from wars prior, sometimes centuries after such wars have taken their tolls.
War simply results in further divisions even during peacetime thereafter; they do not, ever, unify us. Name one example from history where any war resulted in any lasting unification of various peoples? Rome? Umm...where's the unification that Rome brought to the world today? No where. In fact, it caused further division after its fall, dark ages that set Europe behind by centuries.
The Islamic world which was one which brought nations into its fold by the sword; look at how divided it is. And don't some still refer to Euros as crusaders even today?
And what of the European conquest of North America? You'd be hard-pressed to argue that even Native Americans today are truly integrated into American society, and this is how many centuries later? What about China? Well, even thousands of years haven't brought the ethic minorities of China truly into the fold; they still hold onto their respective beliefs, languages, cultures, traditions, etc., as well as their animosities.
I don't think there is any people, any nation on the planet who can say their people, their culture, their 'nation' hasn't been direly, negatively impacted by wars past. As a result, people of those nations have lingering animosities which may never really be forgotten.
For many, many generations, thousands of years even, after wars take their toll, people affected by these wars don't bury their hatchets. And any war of conquest is doomed in its objective from the very start; any successes of such conquests, as history has proven, are, inevitably, short-lived indeed.
'to divide and conquer' is a meaningless maxim; the maxim should be 'to conquer is to divide'.