I mean the legion sucks so much they don't have a real sense of Brotherhood to each other at all since everybody is disposable
It doesn't mean that there is no brotherhood, it just means that there is
absolute egality. A legate is just as disposable as a standard legionary, but being equal in the eyes of a believed higher power can encourage brotherhood, since it creates a common ground between a regular man and his hierarchical superiors.
It also means that if you are a victim of a crime (or a criminal), your social rank won't matter in the judgement. Cassidy would have been avenged for her caravan, if she lived in Legion's territory, and Alice would have been crucified, even as a member of the high society. It's absolute, heartless equality, for the better and the worse.
Compare that to the "chain that binds" in the brotherhood of steel, which separates them instead of uniting them. My point is, by the time of New Vegas, you don't exactly see them conquering lands anymore, unlike Caesar.
IMO blaming technology is a copout. Humans have never needed technology to be violent.
That's true, but humans didn't have weapons capable of wiping out entire civilizations in a matter of seconds before. How would the NCR have dealt with Flagstaff or Maxson State, if they had seized the Divide's arsenal ? That's Caesar's concern. He thinks that it's only a matter of time before the Republic goes nuclear and makes the same mistakes the old world did.
Sure, he's a monster. The legion is made of assholes. But what if that monster and his assholes are the only real power standing in the way of total destruction ?
Sure, there's House, and there's a reason why I usually side with him. But apart from the Courier and Benny, nobody really KNOWS about House's potential, so...
Considering divergence, we can still show that for at least most of human history people became less violent with more of it. The rest we can chalk up to a resource shortage, driven not by the advance of technology but the stagnation of society, which caused a global socioeconomic crisis
A global crisis that witnessed nuclear explosions and the destruction of Europe, Tel Aviv and the U.N., decades before the "great war". And during this one, people were already so desensitized by violence that they didn't mind seeing cold blooded executions of civilians on TV. Humanity was totally fucking fucked, big time, long before the china-US war.
The main point though is that people hold responsibility for their actions.
True, but there is a reason why nobody knows "who shot first" when it came to the big nuclear disaster : it doesn't matter who's responsible. At all.
What matters is that one of them butchered billions of people one morning, and that mustn't happen again. China or the Enclave could go on and say "we did it, sorry", nobody would even listen to them, because it's irrelevant after the deed is done, nobody is there anymore to grant forgiveness or justice, not even the said governments.
Technology can't do right or wrong, it can't make choices, it can bear no responsibility. Ultimately it's anti-intellectualism (which the Legion embodies) that drives irresponsible and thus irrational uses of technology.
This is precisely why Caesar took a slavery template for his society : not leaving people the capacity of making choices or bearing responsibility. Also, what risk of irrational uses of technology, when the said technology is systematically wiped out beforehand ? If anything, we see the result of that philosophy in Lanius, when presented to the defeat of the Omertas. He's glad that he lost that very valuable military asset. In his eyes, anything that would be contrary to the philosophy of Caesar would be a misuse and a dishonor. I don't exactly imagine him, Vulpes or Lucius deciding to claim the Securitrons for themselves, if Caesar dies.
Also, the legion is not anti-intellectual ; its cultural template is made of lies, myths and censorship, but not anti-intellectualism per se. In a single generation, his subjects learned a totally new language PLUS the English, spoken and written, a new made up cult, which means that they have a functional education system. Of all the smart NPCs Caesar meets, every single one of them ends up being promoted to a higher social level, not the contrary (sure, one of them ends up burned and thrown in the grand canyon, but that's not because of intellectualism). He makes no secrets of his philosophical ideas, even to a profligate who could very well tell them to everyone.
Sure, the whole cult of mars is made of lies, but Caesar doesn't exactly present himself as a hero of the common folk, rising against the tyranny of an intellectual elite, quite the contrary. He invented a new template of intellectualism, made of lies and selected truths, but he doesn't prevent people from reaching it. He wants them to be molded by it, that's not anti intellectualism. Anti progress or anti technology, sure.
Again, don't get me wrong : the legion is an oppressive dictatorship of heartless slavers and child soldiers. But, gotta leave to Caesar what's due.
That's actually called doublethink. Peace cannot be created by starting conflicts. It can only be achieved by ending them.
Yes, and that's exactly what Caesar fights against. In his eyes, at the moment the NCR gets nuclear weapons, it will achieve peace by ending every conflict they have, in the fastest way possible.
In a way, peace was achieved by the nuclear war. The conflict ended in a day, but that's exactly the situation Caesar doesn't want to see. He wants to end this conflict before it even begins, to kill it in its egg. That's a bit different.
Another nuance, in Caesar's eyes : accelerating a conflict in order to end it quickly and with the minimal damage possible is also part of his plan, since he believes that the civil explosion of the Republic is inevitable. His way would accelerate it, but also end it in the same move.
The Legion, being built on anti-intellectualism and constant war, is as good a recipe for a second apocalypse as it gets.
They don't have the means to do so, though, since they are kept on a low technological level on purpose. For them to change, they would have to conquer the west, otherwise, they'll keep on conquering tribes like they always did, and have no reason to evolve.
Not sure how they could end the world without weapons of mass destruction. They could engulf the western America in constant wars (and even then, Lanius himself isn't too sure of their capability to do so), but ending it entirely ? That's beyond their scale. Maybe if they decide to extend their chemical warfare, but that's a long stretch.
On the other hand, we know for a fact that the brotherhood prefers blowing up their own homes rather than surrendering them to the NCR, and the NCR wouldn't hesitate long if they seized some nuclear arsenal (and let's not even talk about the dangers of Dr.Hildern's projects. The OSI could actually end up the world
by accident) If anything, the least dangerous faction in the long run could be Mr.House. Peace (or numbness depending on who you ask) by prosperity and consumerism.
Setting that aside, as Caesar himself notes, tribal warfare is child's play compared to what the Legion does. So they actually replace conflict with a much worse one. That's called escalation. Simply drawing a line and saying 'somewhere in the future that'd be peace' is just wishful thinking.
I would want to agree, but... I don't know. There are times in history when escalation brought war, but prevented something worse. I mean, the Generalplan Ost was prevented by a global escalation. Same for the ethnical projects in Kosovo. So, I don't know. Don't really have an opinion of that, I just have these examples come to mind.
