War and Peace

War happens because of a lack of technologies that make life thrive.

War Is a Sad, Apoptosis-Like Solution

When there is not enough energy to sustain a population of living beings, the population tries to maintain itself not by increasing the energy but by reducing the number of lives. This phenomenon can be seen not only at the human scale but at the scale of other living things as well. War is a sad, apoptosis-like¹ solution.

Energy is mediated through concrete material forms such as food. Everything we humans call “resources” is energy in concrete form. Fossil fuels dug up from inside the Earth and the plants and animals mass-produced on its surface are all energy for sustaining life. We humans ourselves are also a form of energy, existing so that we can keep one another alive.

Exchange and Basic Energy

Suppose there are two “rich countries,” each amply blessed with the energy to sustain its population. In this case, what happens between the two countries is not war but exchange. Because we humans have it in our very nature to work to keep one another alive, groups that possess enough energy to sustain life exchange energy with one another to make life thrive.

When one side is rich and the other is not, or when neither is rich, conflict over the distribution of energy inevitably arises. For living things, energy means the energy required to sustain life: all the primary energy, such as food, needed to maintain daily living. What all of us need is not a basic income but this basic energy². It is something needed not only by humans but by all living things.

Life Shares Energy and Work in Order to Cooperate and Prosper Together

The view that whatever survives the struggle for existence through natural selection is what has evolved is a mistaken idea from an era when energy was scarce. Life shares energy and work in order to cooperate and prosper together, and evolution arises inevitably as a result of this division of roles.

Organelles do not engage in a struggle for existence with one another. Internal organs do not engage in a struggle for existence. Neither the cells nor the tissues that make up a living organism engage in a struggle for existence. Why, then, did we, multicellular organisms, beings with multiple internal organs working in harmony, beings who live through our interactions with one another, come to believe in a mistaken “theory of evolution”? It is because of the selfishness that arose from a lack of energy.

Peace Is a State Achieved Through the Evolution of Technologies That Make Life Thrive

Peace is not something to wish or pray for; it is a state achieved through the evolution of technologies that make life thrive. In other words, by contributing to the evolution of technologies that improve the energy efficiency of growth and nurture, we can avoid war and achieve peace. We simply need to keep raising energy efficiency until war is no longer necessary. This is not an empty theory on paper but a theory that can be physically realized.

Peace begins with the child³. And by “child” we mean not only human children but the young of all living things: plants, animals and fungi. We at Polymath Research are always looking for partners to improve the growth technologies that, in the language of Earth, go by the names of “agriculture” and “education.” If you take the perspective of energy, move beyond the subject–object dualism of producers and consumers, and stand on the cosmic understanding that everyone is a converter and an improver, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please feel free to get in touch.

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Footnotes

1. Apoptosis is a type of death of the cells that make up the body of a multicellular organism: a managed and regulated cellular suicide, that is, programmed cell death, actively triggered to keep the individual in a better state. ↩

2. A concept original to Polymath Research: the idea of supplying all life with the energy it needs to sustain itself. “All life” includes us. ↩

3. Words of Maria Montessori. ↩