If it was the competition between different species that drove evolution to create...?

Question

... the complexities we see today, and the competition between different human tribes (through war) that drove the technological progress we see today...

Then is war a necessary process of evolution that will assist in our progress to reach our ultimate destiny?

Will that destiny be our destruction?

Or will we reach the stars and populate planets throughout the universe?

*Please note I am not intending this question to have anything to do with the debate on whether God created us or not

Answer 1

One of your question is tough to answer. However, it looks some of us are positive to transport human population to planets outside earth.

It takes billions of dollars just to take one human to moon or mars. Just imagine the investment to colonize a planet outside earth. However, some of us are fantasizing it.

And as for as wars are concerned. That is how we have communicated and come in contact with other nations, tribes and societies on this planet. At least Alexander knew there are nations outside Greek, so he wanted to conquer them. But there are tribes even today who are not aware of any outside world. They do exists in some pacific islands.

Without wars, the modern day technology would not have evolved so much. They needed guns, bullets, then better guns then long guns and so on until there are continental missiles. Until they reached moon and planets outside.

Even today, if we do not imagine atleast a war with aliens we will not invent better rockets and space ships to fly afar efficiently and effectively.

Answer 2

The way we are going today, I do believe it is possible that we may be the cause of our own destruction. We are already destroying our envirment and killing each other for money. We develop new technologies and put forth money in procedures that invent better ways of killing lots of people at once with a single blow (aka the machine gun and gun in general....) As for populating the universe.. we can't even get our butts out of Earth anymore...

Ultimate destiny= i guess we'll have to wait and see

Answer 3

Nature is trying to find the secret of eternal life so that it can have a rest from all its experiments. Eternal life may not be possible.

Answer 4

War is not *necessary*, however, it can drive technological advance, but so can exploration. This about the technologies that we invented from traveling to the moon (which was a bit of a technological competition between two countries), or what technologies we have made simply trying to survive without killing other people.

War drives technological advance and certainly speeds it up, but it is not necessary for advance, nor does it always mean advance. Native American tribes were at war just as much as Europeans, but when the two groups met, it was the Europeans that were more advanced.

What civilization needs is a balance of conflict, exploration, and innovation.

Answer 5

Evolution is driven by natural selection, the removal through various means of those individuals most ill-suited to their environment. As it could be said that mankind no longer feels environmental pressures and in fact dominates its surroundings then there is argument that we no longer evolve but only refine the present design on a much smaller scale.

War on the other hand is a product of human action rising from society, we are naturally lent towards miss trust and anger when faced with an unknown group of people, or those who do not share our beliefs.

When we fought for dominance these characteristics were probably necessary but now only cause difficulties. I believe evolution and war have a link only in that at one time or another it was beneficial for human beings to be aggressive to one another in social groups to survive in an environment. I do not believe that aggression now drives human evolution, in fact I lean more towards the idea that we have effectively ground to an evolutionary halt.

Answer 6

Thank you for a great question!

I see a distinction between natural evolution which is *opportunistic* (something will always exploit a gap, which may well be to the detriment of some other organism) and technological advance which may well be *driven* by human conflict.  Not all technological development is driven by human conflict - unless you count normal economics or humanity's battle against harmful natural phenomena as conflict.

So, is war necessary?  I'd say 'no' but, given the nature of humanity and tribalism, that does mean it is not going to happen.  Will war assist us towards our final destiny?  That's a hard one because the only*'final* destiny is our demise - until then we keep rolling along, evolving and squabbling.  In the case of our demise, 'assist us' somewhat understates it.  The question would come down to: 'Could war wipe us out'?  Yes, that's possible.  Is that inevitable?  No, I don't think so. Is war essential to our biological or technological evolution.  It is not apparent that it is.  Will we populate other planets?  That takes us into the realms of guesswork so I have no basis on which to make a meaningful comment.  Good set of questions though.  Thank you.