Slake

\SLAYK\, transitive verb:
1. To satisfy; to quench; to extinguish; as, to slake thirst.
2. To cause to lessen; to make less active or intense; to moderate; as, slaking his anger.
3. To cause (as lime) to heat and crumble by treatment with water.

intransitive verb:
1. To become slaked; to crumble or disintegrate, as lime.

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We must always care for one another's lives.

On this principle alone, I think, the concept of a doubly justified war (as discussed in class) is entirely impossible. Imagine a situation in the hunter-gatherer era, just to make matters simpler. Due to flash floods, one tribe (Tribe B) has been forced into another's (Tribe A) land. There is nowhere else in the world for them to go--they must occupy the same territory. To add, there are insufficient resources to support them both. Nature has willed them into this position.

What if Tribe A, with no resources to support Tribe B, waged war with them to protect their territory, and Tribe B, forced into these circumstances, waged war to survive in the face of limited resources? Both of them require the land and its resources, and there is only enough for one tribe of people.

This is a situation in which both sides' survival is at stake, and even if both sides were moral thinkers, the end result of this combination is certain death for half of Tribe AB. The truly moral thing to do, I think, and it bridges on being supererogatory, is for Tribe A to allot Tribe B a position in their land, and graciously share the resources, facing the hardships together. Even in this situation, war could be averted, though war is a far more likely choice.

In this situation, it is hard to claim that war is unjustified from either side. But the key element here is someone has to strike first. Someone has to claim the survival of their tribe of superior importance than that of the other tribe. Someone has to announce an enemy.

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Humans have not traveled far from the subconscious instincts preceding self-awareness. If an enemy threatens survival, all of the emotions that flicker on (fear, anger) lead to the intellectual presumption of "evil" and the rousing of hatred. These are severe defense mechanisms: intellectualized notations from the body to protect and fight in order to survive. Applied on a large scale, however, these concepts are dangerous.

We can reason, and as such make the case that none exemplify or even meet the conditions of this base conception of "evil", because of its very nature as a base conception. As such, aggression becomes harder to justify. When we can reason with our enemies, we have less excuses to hate them, and they to us. Even when thrust into situations in which our survival depends on some dying, such as above, we would still have a responsibility to one another rather than purely to our own. We recognize other humans as being worthy of life. We can no longer fight amidst ourselves, without alternatives, purely to survive. The situation simply no longer occurs. Instead, we are faced with a continuous responsibility to recognize one another as humans, and care accordingly. Even taking care of our own does not infer aggression as the first step--only as a last result.

What I'm getting at with all of this is that the hypothetical situation I outlined above is the closest thing to a two-sided fully justified war. I cannot think of a scenario closer, nor one that can fulfill this prescription. And I think the reason is that we have a responsibility to respect and be concerned with the lives of each other, at least as much as we care for ourselves (sounds like the golden rule, maybe it is). As moral beings, we must refuse tactics that attempt to justify our actions, like labeling our enemies evil, or labeling aggression self-defense. These are childish things, I think. But if we undid all our actions, perhaps, we'd find ourselves replete with childish motivation.

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If the concept of just-war was understood and adhered to worldwide then there would be no war. That alone should invoke an understanding about the aims and morals of war. It is only reasonably justified for one side at a time (much like individual murder). That is the nature of conflict--even though both may be experiencing equally difficult emotions, the first to harm is always in the wrong. This is reminding me of a quote from Jesus Christ now, and in this respect he (or whoever wrote his dialogue) was correct.

We have a responsibility to examine the intentions and hardships of our supposed enemies before unrighteously denouncing, condemning, and forcefully seeking to destroy them. I am not claiming we should stray from self-defense of ourselves or those experiencing horrors like genocide--I am only inferring that we have the responsibility to exhaust to a reasonable degree other means of interaction. And while that is an enormously vague area, I do believe that if it were even attempted, if diplomacy was the standard instead of aggression, then it would welcome our enemies into a more comfortable arena of respect and war would no longer exist.

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We are able to reason. And if a two-sided, morally justified war is unreasonable, then war itself is unreasonable. We must take care not to be on the side of aggression. If we were to relate this to another moral issue, murder, we must take care not to be the attempted murderer. And to this effect, largely using presumptions of justification rather than actual justification, we (and plenty of nations throughout the history of humanity) have failed.

However, I do think a peaceful arena is possible, and that, despite the spikes on the chart, we have been slowly and steadily moving toward it. At the very least, perhaps, we are slowly applying the standard that everything deserves life, first to our human friends, then to humans in general, as well as, more reluctantly, our human enemies, and finally, perhaps, to all sentient things. Perhaps I'm wrong; I hope I'm not.