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Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
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From: Mycos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"That a hypothesis derived from study of man's evolutionary nature
may have predictive value receives a certain confirmation from the
lamented Vietnam war. In 'The Territorial Imperative' I inspected
the history and the nature of a biological force called territory,
first diagnosed in bird life by the British amateur ornithologist
Eliot Howard. Today we can predict that in many species other than
birds the mole will defend his territory - his exclusive bit of the
world's space - against all intrusion with a high probability of
success even though the intruder be the stronger. A corollary to the
proposition I termed the amity-enmity complex, the likelihood that a
group of defenders of a territory will be drawn together, united,
and their efforts compounded by the intruding enemy. I suggested
that man is a territorial species, and that we defend our homes or
our homelands for biological reasons, not because we choose but
because we must. "I was writing early in 1966, when escalation of
American power in Vietnam was less than a year old and American
optimism was still a native resource. Applying the territorial
principle, I published my conclusion that the war was unwinnable. A
powerful intruder, uninhibited by world censure, may with a single
blow annihilate a territorial defender. But an effort to escape
moral obloquy through gradual escalation of force gives the weakest
defender opportunity to escalate his own quite incalculable
biological resources. Incapable of playing the Hitler, we played
instead evolution's fool...."
Robert Ardrey, The Social Contract, 1970, pp 23-4.
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