War and conflict will ALWAYS exist.
No matter what in the future, Humans will find reasons and causes for war and cruelty. Murder is in our nature, we will always have an insatiable urge for conflict. As long as there is free human thought, there will be disagreements, and spawned from those "disagreements" will be conflicts of ideas or opinions, and from those conflicts, causes. And from those causes, people will group together and savagely attack anyone who disagrees with their group and their causes or opinions.
This is why we have the term "touchy subject", to label things people break out into argument over. Such as religious topics.
Oh and its not just about beliefs people are willing to kill over. Because all beliefs and opinions have the potential for that. If pushed too far people will cling to the first thing they can and hold it above their heads as "reason" as they rampage out of control.
Our species loves to battle. And when their is no other thing to attack, we will attack ourselves.
Human nature is war. The biggest of pushes of our technology have been in times of war. Canning of food and learning how to preserve it and keep it safe longer? War. Some of our biggest advances in Medicine? War.
I'm not saying war hasn't pushed technology, but rather am wondering why the stress of war has to be the spark to ignite the flame of inspiration. The ocean flooding our cities, running out of non-renewable resources, shouldn't scientists be more focused on issues of self-preservation, rather than self-defense, let alone attack?
Its the idea of competition. In war we strive to be the winners, the survivors, the conquerors.
The inspiration comes from the idea of the other side getting their first, beating us.
It will drive us to new extremes to make absolutely sure that our side will make it there before they can.
And inspiration does come from other things as well.
But war, war drives us to new measures that other things cant. The idea of BEING conquered, taken over, and beaten FORCES us to come up with new methods, new ways.
EDIT: Merged accidental double post.