What is this word salad? "Spirit?" Intention? Disarm the "warrior narcissist?"

Good luck - this flies in the face of the entirety of human history.

> "what would it take to turn an AK47 or an AR15 into a water pump?"

As someone who has manufactured these from billet: why would you do this? (hence "word salad") Why does one thing at all relate to the other? Why not just manufacture a pump from the same raw resources? Why not both?

> Those who think weapons are necessary must always take lesser priority than those who invent technology to make the lives of their fellow human beings better.

Did the Allies in WWII not "make the lives of their fellow human beings better" using violence? Why didn't they just ask mean old Hitler: "Hey, be nice! Have a good spirit!"? The world has finite resources, inherently making anything often denies those resources (your time, actual materials, etc.) to other causes. "Better" is subjective.

> There are so many examples of the tool-makers winning harder and at greater scale than the bomb-manufacturer.

These organizations are often one in the same.

> We wouldn't be here now if the balance was the other way

The balance is already the other way regardless of your citation-free assertion. You're using the internet to proliferate this tripe - famously a DARPA invention.

> Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most.

Why is a high-performance stealth aircraft required for this? Why does one thing have anything to do with the other? What peaceful purpose does stealth capability serve?

> Imagine if those ships were being used to bring power to the villages that need it most.

No need to imagine, this already happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powership

> Disarm them too.

With what? Words? Precisely how do you non-violently disarm someone who is willing and demonstrated to use violence to prevent you from disarming them? Again, the world's resources are finite, and control of these resources inherently requires violence.

Your ability to spread these "ideas" are rooted in violence: taxation, freedom generally. Freedom isn't free, and the price is paid in blood.

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rpdillon a day ago | parent | next [-]

There's a real problem with governments that invade other countries and attack civilians, and we're in a particularly hot time right now. That gives many current examples, though: should Ukraine prioritize manufacturing water pumps? Or do they mostly need weapons to fight back in the war?

I get that folks don't like war. I hate war. I've seen much more evidence that deterrence produces peace more readily than disarmament. On the flip side, more destructive weapons may be used more rarely, but they kill more people when they are used.

I'm not sure what the optimal approach is, but it almost certainly requires nations to arm themselves in case they are attacked. "Provide for the common defense" was not specified idly.

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MomsAVoxell a day ago | parent [-]

Ukraine should prioritize making peaceful relationships, as should the Russians and Americans and British - and the rest of the world should be making sure they do so.

That they have not made that priority, choosing instead to prioritize their nations' collective warrior narcissist identities rather than valuing the human life of each, is why those nations are on the brink of destroying each other.

Warrior narcissism is infectious and contagious and insidious. You can see it at an individual scale and you can see it at nation scales, too. The solution is to smash the mirror: deny any and all of the identities involved their right to their own identities, until they see, underneath it all, the true value of human life.

There is no American/Russian/Ukrainian/British identity worth more than the human lives in each state. There is no Israeli/Palestinian identity worth more than the human lives in either state.

The fact that one identity is held as more valuable/important/special than the other, is what gives each the justification (not right) to murder the other.

If the rest of the world had shunned the Russians and the Ukrainians and the British and the Americans at equivalent levels until their identities were no longer of any perceived value, the conflict would not have perpetuated. The fact that Russians clung to the identities of the Russian-speaking humans in the Donbas, the fact that Ukraine nationalist identity took higher priority over respect for human life, the fact that Americans gloat over their own cultural identity of warriors, as do the Brits - is why we have the conflict.

>I've seen much more evidence that deterrence produces peace more readily than disarmament.

Bullshit. Deterrence did not stop a single human life being murdered in any of the current conflicts. "Deterrence" is just warrior narcissist speak for "I've got my mirror, it's bigger than <theirs>, and that is all that matters".

	▲	15155 a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Ukraine should prioritize making peaceful relationships Ok, let's steel man this thing. Russia is not going to be peaceful regardless of your idealism - this isn't a disputable fact. Now, how does Ukraine "prioritize making peaceful relationships?" Specifically, what concrete actions should Ukraine take to prevent violent incursion by an outside actor? No word salad: if you are the benevolent dictator of Ukraine today, what do you do? Counting on third parties to "shun" is out, it's not an effective option (and it arguably already happened with sanctions, but still.) > Deterrence did not stop a single human life being murdered in any of the current conflicts. What would Ukraine look like absent any donated war materiel from third parties? Why does Russia not own Kiev in that scenario?
	▲	rpdillon 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		"Prioritize making peaceful relationships" is entirely unhelpful along the lines of saying "Do the work". The way you're writing so dismissively of other people's analysis of this topic demands that you provide something far more specific than you are. As it is, you're writing seems completely divorced from reality.

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MomsAVoxell a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

	▲	15155 a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Do you not know how to use a dictionary, human? What words did I seemingly misunderstand or misuse? I'll wait. Where does the dictionary come into this discussion? > It is the unknown human peace-makers who have made it possible for you to sit in your chair and type such hate spew. Is DARPA full of "human peace-makers?" Is calling someone a "warrior narcissist" not "hate spew?" Genuinely curious here how you split this. > I'd do it to make one less murder weapon in the world Why would someone who has weapons let you? What power do you have specifically? Remember: you can't use violence (and I'd argue that extends to basically every means of sanctions - including your "shunning" garbage.) > Did you carve that billet for profit - did it feed you? Yes. Now what? > Because de-weaponization is more important than your identity. OK but how does that involve AR-15s and AK-47s? Why do I need to take a manufactured object and somehow Rube Goldberg it into something else instead of just melting it down? And at that point, the raw resources should've just been used for that purpose and there's no point in mentioning rifles. > Because it is there Again with it is "there." No, it is not "there." Does it just operate itself for free? > hey learn each others language! Ok: what happens when two nations speak the same language but declare war? Does war just magically go away because of linguists? Why the fuck does spoken language in 2026 have anything to do with political ideals here? LLMs exist, Google Translate has existed for decades: clearly this arbitrary "speak the language" nonsense is not helping. > Your identity is not worth more than life. I'm not going to stop, now what? What are you going to do?

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aa-jv a day ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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Brian_K_White a day ago | parent [-]

I could say the same thing of you for this very comment. And you have just joined in the fighting and the othering in the finest and noblest tradition. Textbook.

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MomsAVoxell a day ago | parent [-]

So you're in the camp that would rather murder than learn another language, then?

"Nice identity there. Be a pity if someone smashed it."

The only real enemy is the warrior narcissist, whose identity means more to them than another human life. Try not to look too hard into that mirror, it will consume you.

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scarecrowbob a day ago | parent | next [-]

I love your line of thinking here.

Just pure, unadulterated bat-shit craziness.

There is no world where the globe-spanning, petroleum based colonialist empire that produces F35 is going to somehow, out of the goodness of it's oil-pumping heart go swords to plowshares.

I mean, of all the many folks displaying cluster-b disorders on this site, you're quite expressive of certain trends. You're unable to look past your own identity within the hegemonic order to understand how absolutely out of touch with the material world your positions are.

Congratulations or outdoing so many other folks here in expressing the most radically contradictory and simultaneously un-self-aware positions.

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15155 a day ago | parent [-]

> many folks displaying cluster-b disorders on this site

I would argue this is more Cluster A (schizotypal) than B.

Cluster B disorders can at least be logically rationalized using some framework - this is something else entirely.

	▲	aa-jv 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Classic warrior narcissist response. Look it up, its just as real as your claim. I'm with the OP. Its time to resist this heinously hate-filled culture that justifies the murder of innocents because they are inferior.

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15155 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> So you're in the camp that would rather murder than learn another language, then?

What happens if I already know the language of the people I have conflict with? What's the next cheat code?

> "Be a pity if someone smashed it."

Can you see the irony in calling people "warrior narcissists," decrying violence, and then talking about "smashing" things?

What are you "smashing" them with? Feelings?

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aa-jv 11 hours ago | parent [-]

>What happens if I already know the language of the people I have conflict with? What's the next cheat code?

Lived there for a while? Eaten their food? Done your best to improve conditions in their lives?

>What are you "smashing" them with? Feelings?

Its a metaphor, a kind of an advanced thought where you create an analog of something - an idea - and smash it. Exactly the opposite of smashing actual childrens' limbs, and always a better choice to make instead of you know, dropping bombs.

And after that, the cheat code is, you don't do any more physical harm, because .. you know .. you've expanded your mind well enough that you do actually respect the people you once thought you had to bomb, or else their Bad People would hurt you.

	▲	scarecrowbob 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		One of the problems for me is that the people I disagree with are the white supremacists who operate the empire. I know them pretty well. It actually has been quite difficult to extricate my thinking from that culture which raised me and I still struggle to do that work. I know they are incredibly violent. Hoping that you could take their firearms manufacturing and get them to shoot flowers isn't just dumb, it's a dangerous misreading of the structure. F35s aren't going to start dropping aid packages. Thinking they might is dangerously naive because it misses the structural forces that create them in the first place. And further, that kind of "the miliitary could be used for good if we just use the power of our minds to levitate the pentagon" style thinking is what leads folks to develop vicious technology without worrying how it may be used. The folks with the guns and the empire often hold a belief that the technology that they produce has not underlying system or ethical structure that produced it, so it could be use for "good" just as easily as the violence to which it will enviably be put. The US liberals and conservatives who hold these views generally think that if we just have more [trans/well-trained] bomber pilots or [black/class-transitioning] billionaires, all the violence in the world could be put in the bottle and chucked into the sea. When I write that the person who is creating all this text is a fucking nut, this is the kind of thing that I am talking about: "de-weaponization means, disconnecting the user from using technology in destructive ways". You can't. Thinking that you can is dangerous and just hides the problems. Thinking that somehow the teleology of the technology can be reduced to a single person's motivations for using it is the exact same structure that the folks who are using it for violence think. It destroys any hope of understanding the social structures that lead to folks using technology for violence. It's what has led to the IMF, World Bank, and WTO doing so many crimes. It's lynch pin that allows folks in the US to think somehow their thoughts and prayers for how all the tech they produce just needs to be tweaked a bit and somehow that will stop the ecocide of the planet. "Sorry we destroyed your economy and caused massive instability, but you were holding it wrong". I mean, I have in the past "expanded my mind" to understand that none of the terrible violence inflicted by this empire is necessary- you're right that it is not, but the problem is that anything I do after that is "all in my head". The material reality, though, is that either we're not doing anything material at that point (which is certainly a kind of narcissism in its own right) or more typically we don't fully understand the deep violence maintained by something such as the US capitalist world order, which is (as far as I can tell) even more narcissistic and violent.