Does Anyone Win a War? by James Glaser

It doesn’t matter, the good war, the just war, the bad war, the cold war, any war, it doesn’t matter which war. We all lose with every one of them.
War is not the start of a conflict. It doesn’t matter if there was a sneak attack or one with a up front declaration. Wars are the result of failed communication and the loss of patience. If there is a problem with language, then both sides can be working toward the same goal of peace and not know it.
If in a war, one side totally dominates and crushes the other, there is still no victory as not only have the victors made generations of the vanquished hate them, but the conquering armies have to live with the very acts of war that brought them victory.

Every action that we take in this life leaves a mark of remembrance on our minds and with the soldier that remembering will effect not only their life, but those of their family for may Read more »

Hospital Windows (Author Unknown)

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs. His bed was next to the room’s only window.

The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back. The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.

And every afternoon when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window. The man in the other bed began to live for those one-hour periods where his world Read more »

Happiness is back

Growing incomes in western societies no longer make us happier, and more individualistic, competitive societies make some of us positively unhappy/ Public policy should take its cue once more from Bentham’s utilitarianism, unfashionable for many decades but now vindicated by modern neuroscience. • Over the last 50,.years, we in the west have enjoyed unparalleled economic growth. We have better homes, cars, holidays, jobs, education and above all health. According to standard economic theory, this should have made us happier. But surveys show otherwise. When Britons or Americans are asked how happy they are, they report no improvement over the last 50 years. Mere pyopl.e s.uffer from depression, and crime – another indicator of ttis^atisfaction^’.• is also much higher. These facts challenge many of the priorities we have set ourselves both as societies and as inviduals. The truth is that we are in a situation previously unknown to man; When most people exist near the breadline, material progress does indeed make them happier. People in the rich world (above, say, $20,000 a head per year) are happier than people in poorer countries, and people in poor countries do become happier as they become richer. But when material discomfort has been banished, extra income becomes much less important than our relationships with each other: with family, with friends and in the community. The danger is that we sacrifice relationships too much in pursuit of higher income. The desire to be happy is central to our nature. And, following the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, I want a society in which people are as happy as possible and in which each person’s happiness counts equally. That should be the philosophy for our age, the guide for public policy and for individual action. And it Read more »