Socioatwork’s Weblog

War is an international relations dispute, characterized by organized violence between national military units.[1]

In the age of modern globalization, where economies are booming and populations are growing, more and more humans are being cramped together in a fixed amount of land and space. Human conflicts in this kind of living and working environment are bound to happen.

Rational humans are guided by self-interest and actions would be based on the ones that would allow them to derive the greatest utility for themselves. Moreover, psychologists have argued that human beings are inherently violent and are suppressing their need for violence in the normal civilized society that we live in everyday. So, this innate violence in humans coupled with differences in ideological stands, displacement, marginalization etc, will inevitably lead to wars happening.

For example, in the case of ideologies, every man will feel that his ideology is the best for the world, and they are perhaps really sincerely trying to bring about the best for the world by promoting their ideology. They feel that if the whole world operates with their ideology, the world would be a much better place to live in. They truly believe in the powers of their gods and want the world to enjoy the same enlightenment as them. I believe that some of them truly believe that they are helping the world by spreading their ideologies. However, perhaps they are just doing it in a too extreme way and adopting too violent methods.

But to me, all these theories will ultimately just remain as theories. Living in Singapore, where we are so protected by our government in everything we do, I do not really feel the impact of the terrorism and war that is happening to other countries around us. Even when, the September 11 attacks happened in 2001, when I first heard the news of the Twin Towers of New York City, most of us only treated this piece of shocking news as just a normal piece of news.

Somehow, I feel that the war and terrorism happening would not possibly affect us as we are all safely tucked around in our own small little red dot, where no disasters, be it natural or man-made can impact us. We are so used to our peace and serenity that we have sort of taken it for granted. Even when it was known that our Yishun MRT station was almost bombed, we did not feel the seriousness of the situation as nothing actually really happened to Singapore. All the public really knew was that a great disaster had been averted as the bomb was found in time; we once again did not experience the disastrous effects.

Singaporeans are getting so used to their peace and protective government that when the time really comes for us to stand up and defend ourselves, I really fear that we would not measure up.