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Message: <blockquote data-quote="xenoflare" data-source="post: 1291539" data-attributes="member: 12431">hmmhi guys!  this is a great discussion. i'll just throw in some bits and pieces of stuff, hope this contributes a little.   In ancient Southeast Asia, land and resources were plentiful for the people, generally - there was usually not enough people in a state to exploit and tap all the resources of the land. (note that i use the word "state" in a very vague term - not exactly the "nation-state" we would all be familiar with in today's context - but i'm getting ahead of myself.)  Hence, when wars were fought, more usually than not, they were not fought to gain land and resources, as one may think, but rather as raids to steal another state's people to work on one's own lands. The warriors of old were accorded great respect for being able to subdue their foes without killing them, and the rulers of the various lands did their best to hype their own regimes as being sanctioned by the gods and spirits, as good regimes that gave their subjects enjoyable and fulfiling lifestyles. It's akin to the process of "osmosis" haha, where moisture gets sucked to an area with more moisture - the "virtuous rulers" tried to attract virtuous subjects that way, i guess.  The rulers did not rule concretely defined, sovereign states - they controlled polities that may best be understood as "mandala" polities. Mandala refers to "circle", and bascially, the ruler is the nexus of his polity, the centre of the circle of that political reality that he espouses. It's a mixture of a cult of charisma backed up by solid coercion through military force, that is very solid in the centre (near the court and cities) but tends to get diffused and very tenuous around the borders. As the people on the fringes begin to get tired of the ruler's policies, they can just shift over to the other side, maybe to another ruler, as there were so many resources and land available. Wars were not fought when people crossed the border, breaching any concept of one nation expanding its state into anothers' "sovereignity" - indeed, this concept of "sovereignity" that we hold to be sacred may not have its same emphasis in all situations? Wars, on the other hand, were fought to get people to develop an existing polity's own resources.  i'm just presenting an alternative reality that has already happened, where wars are fought with an emphasis on non-lethal force, with different goals, and different conditions of victory. i hate to be a party-pooper - but what about this manifestation of war? Where sovereign territories are not that important, where killing of foes is not the emphasis? Is war, then, still a necessary evil?  (i realise there may be a bit of cross-culture clash here - just to illustrate that, slavery, another conventional evil, was regarded here as somewhat of a good thing, in some societies. Noble houses would choose craftsmen who were the best in their professions to be their "slaves", to be bonded to their houses as servants who would be well-fed and well-paid. Is this slavery good or evil then?)  Apologies if i rambled off track. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-P" title="Stick out tongue    :-P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":-P" />yours,shao</blockquote>

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