Kip Francis

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am currently a student at Stevens Institute of Technology and took John Horgan's "History of Science and Technology" class in 2009, the one in which he proposes that war can end. With that out of the way, let me now state that I agree with his views. I don't think Mr. Horgan is saying it will happen tomorrow, or that when it does happen that it will be at all easy to achieve. He simply states that war is not an inevitability, and I can't see my way through to any argument against his stance that would hold water. War is a behavioral phenomenon, not an instinctual or reflexive one. We as human nations DECIDE to go to war. We, as humans, also have control over our actions, do we not? I can't control the inner workings of my body, such as the beating of my heart, but I can control whether or not I clench my fist and raise it in anger. War is absolutely not an inevitability. In order to end war, humankind would have to make the decision and act on it, and this is certainly no easy task. But the end of war is by no means impossible to achieve. I'll be interested to read some arguments to the contrary because I just can't think of any myself that wouldn't just consist of a pessimistic diatribe. We're talking probabilities here, not pessimism versus optimism. The probability that at some point in the future there will be peace on earth is non-zero. Prove me wrong...