John Locke's Idea Of Warfare

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We can only develop as far as we have discovered. Learning is something we all go through, it is how we come to have an understanding of our surroundings. When we learn something new one question is answered but then five more appear. The idea of the unknown excites us. It is the reason why we are always looking out towards the horizon, wanting to explore new ideas or new places. John Locke was one of the early philosophers who touched the surface of this idea when he argued that humans are born with a blank slate (Locke 126). John Locke believes strongly in the idea that humans are born knowing nothing and everything we do learn we learn through experience. He writes in Of Ideas, regarding the mind, “How comes it to be furnished? […..] To this I answer in one word, EXPERIENCE”. All our knowledge of the world is provided by our senses and what we reflect it to be in our minds. …show more content…

In her piece, Warfare: An Invention—Not a Biological Necessity, Mead removes the human component and examines what warfare really is. Her belief is that warfare is not a part of human nature and it is not something that cannot be avoided. She believes that warfare is, “[…] an invention like any other of the inventions in terms of which we order our lives” (Mead 275). What she means is that societies have created warfare because we learned to use it for a purpose. Mead examined different societies around the world to see if warfare was indeed a universal idea. What she discovered was that there were societies in which warfare was nonexistent. Her two examples are the Lepchas who are peaceful people and the Eskimos who are aggressive people, both societies have no concept of warfare. She writes, “The idea of warfare [….] was absent” (Mead 276). “A people can only use the forms it has” (Mead 278). The Lepchas and the Eskimos have not learned about war so they do not practice