- Theodore Koblesky
- Boulder, CO
- United States
Graduate Student - Physics,
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Does war only push human beings backwards?
The highlighted quote from this TED talk by Hans Rosling is: "Avoid war, because that always pushes human beings backward."
Is this really so? In terms of average life expectancy this seems to be so. But what about in economy or technology? WW2 is what allowed America and Western Europe to become such an economic and technological powerhouse of the 20th century. Neil DeGrasse Tyson says that human beings were driven to land on the moon because of the Cold War.
War is clearly a horrific thing which sacrifices human lives for a slew of reasons, some good and some bad, but it may also be viewed as an accelerator of political, economic, and technological change.