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As some make the claim that war and violence can lead to revolutions in technology and human organizations, I am going to propose the claim that it also prepares the human race against external threats. Namely, aLieNS. Here's why. When we meet aliens they will likely be aggressive. In fact, if we look at life on this planet as evidence, life seems to be pretty aggressive! Think about it. Complicated life forms need to eat other life forms in order to survive.That means most of the life on the planet has to be aggressive to others in order for its very survival. Like almost all of it! Almost every living thing is a savage beast devouring other life forms constantly........... So you really think aliens are going to FOR SURE be that cool? Not likely, from the evidence. Even if they have totally switched to using synthetics for their energy, I would still see the obvious evolutionary advantage to keeping an aggressive, opportunistic gene in the gene pool. War and violence and governments and large corporations and huge superpower forces of humanity all struggling against each other in a human eat human world might be our only chance to mature enough to deal with aliens. Most large scale animals are completely dominated, as is most vegetation and land mass. We have some issues with bacterial and viral forms of life but that's about it right now. But as a race? As a power in the universe? We are doing crazy good! We just took over a planet for crying out loud. One life form suddenly gaining dominance over most others would be a strain on any planet, we deserve a pat on the back. And we did this all by "aggression" towards the natural state of the planet. Otherwise we wouldn't even have food let alone shoes, cellphones and rocketships. Maybe being aggressive towards another is exactly what we need to harden and expand our power at this point. Unless we completely annihilate ourselves, we are the only thing left to challenge us. And as most capitalists would agree, competition breeds streamlined and effective systems. Which we will need when the aliens come.... It just doesn't seem like the NAP is a stable system, or that it even does any good for humanity as a struggling species. It only makes sense for small local systems that have no outside forces or ability to expand. Fortunately for us, we are starting to hit up the solar system for energy and resources so really we are in expansion mode. A bit of good old fashioned evolutionary brute competition might just be what the doctor ordered. grin As long as we don't end it all by accident first.