The Purpose of all Wars, is Peace

The reason all these have the same date, is because I worked on them at different times its just that I posted them all at the same time.

- "The purpose of all wars, is peace." -Saint Augustine

This quote is an incredible paradox, is it not? Well, the purpose of all wars should be to end all wars, but as we know from the painfully current events, it too often isn’t.

This paradox makes sense because war should be fought only with the intention of the highest good. The Dalai Lama believes that force should only be used with a compassionate concern for others well being. Saint Augustine shares a similar belief in this paradox, in that war should be used only if it ensures peace as best it can.

Rudkin tells us that paradoxes are good, and should be embraced. Most people when they hear the word paradox, shy away, and dislike the word and the concept. But I agree, this being not the first social science course I’ve taken, I seem to notice that paradoxes really bring a lot to the table, when studied.

I know the word dichotomy very well from the course, feminism through an international perspective, I took here, at U of I. But the word dialectic sounds pretty knew to me. The chapter only gave a read between the line definitions of what the actual word means. Dialectics are logical methods and processes of thinking designed to arrive at the truth. The chapter summarized the many paradoxes present in the book.

The dialectics were past and future, the tension between reflecting and action, between science and values, between self and community, similarities and differences, things changing and things staying the same.

The dialectic of past and future reflected in a way upon many “hard” sciences like physics, or biology making disprove theories absolute, according to Rudkin. But I disagree with Rudkin, even in “hard” sciences, disprove theories have their place, definitely a larger place than was gotten from the reading. But the paradox is that the past does play a larger role in the social sciences than it does in the “hard” sciences. Also, once a problem in the hard sciences is solved, it will stay solved, until it’s disprove by something more advanced or because somebody’s experiment doesn’t match. But in the social sciences, some problems aren’t really solved completely, and have to be resolved and resolved numerous times in many different times and places.

An interesting parody was the tension between action and reflection, between activists and academics; it said that community psychologists are placed in precarious position, by having to be both of these roles. I am kind of surprised that Ruskin is telling to be part active. I like this stance, and I support it.

I always thought that values played an important part in science. The values of research, logic, thoroughness, unbias, should be placed first. I didn’t get completely what Rudkin had to say here. I must admit that I don’t like the way Rudkin writes sometimes, it seems like she just tries to fill up the page and kina avoids getting to the point.

A paradox that Rudkin stressed was the one between the self and community. The lesson from this paradox is that issues should be solved on the right level between the self and the community and not just the self how it was preached for the longest time.