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The
fact is that it takes place, has taken place and will likely take place
again.
National and international legal systems are in place to try to ensure
that it doesn't happen again.
It is
in this way that things are getting better in the world. At least we now
know that humans have some sort of a murderous virus that erupts from time to
time (especially when we know we can beat/subjugate/murder the other).
Knowing the problem brings us a good part of the way to solving the
problem.
arthur
I've been halfway through Diamond for a little over a
year now and must finish it someday, although I don't think I've ever finished
a book in my life. In my view, one reason why hunting and gathering
groups attack and destroy each other is that they are motivated by fear of
something they cannot really understand. Competition for resources
may be another reason. There is something of a classic case in Arctic
Canada, where the modern Inuit (the so called Thule Culture) replaced the
Dorset Culture (Tunit) beginning about a thousand years ago. From what
little I've read, the lifestyles of these two peoples were very
different. The Inuit used dogs, moved about a lot, lived in tents in
summer and snow houses in winter. The Tunit were sedentary, lived in
stone houses (or really holes covered by stone roofs), and did not use dogs
- they apparently used sleighs that they dragged about themselves.
It would seem that the Inuit pictured the Tunit as some kind of strange and
sinister population of giants that posed some form of shadowy, omnipresent
threat, and it was therefore necessary to get rid of them, which is what seems
to have happened. As they spread across the Arctic from west to east,
the Inuit also needed access to Tunic hunting and sealing areas. As a
distinct culture, the Tunit disappeared about 400 years ago, although a highly
resepected anthropologist I once knew told me that the last Tunit he knew of,
a woman, died on Southampton Island in the 1920s.
I repeat a point I've made frequently on this list:
inter-group or inter-ethnic strife is a very difficult thing to decompose into
its elements. It is far more complex than an envious alpha-male jumping
up and down because he wants to wear the same war-paint as the chief in the
next valley over and is willing to part with his virgin daughter or kill
people to get that paint.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 8:54
PM
Subject: RE: [Futurework] My ongoing
struggle to see the obvious :: Basic question for economists
I
am about one-quarter of the way through Guns, Germs and Steel (The Fate of
Human Societies) by Jared Diamond. So far the picture that seems to
emerge is that humans tend to band together and with a murderous rage will
defeat the other band if they can. The stronger culture will
defeat/murder/subjugate the weaker culture simply because it
can.
Its a sort of Darwinian survival of the strongest (measured in terms
of resources, technology , social organization, tactics and strategy)
I
don't think its so much about status but about power and control and maybe
its natural, the same way that animals in the wild will hunt down and kill
sick and injured animals.
I
suppose the whole legal system is in place to offset this sort of
acitivity....and we are mostly successful in keeping the stronger from
defeating/murdering/subjugating the weaker, although I am sure there are
some on this list who would disagree.
arthur
Brad,
At 07:50
18/12/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Why doesn't all economics
education and inquiry start with the
principle:
Friends hold all things in
common.
(--Desiderius Erasmus, and others)
?
Since we have markets and
such, the first
lemma one seems forced to deduce from this
principle
is that "the economy" is a realm of social
relations
which are at best not friendly (and
which in fact often are in
varying degrees
positively(sic) unfriendly).
I am being
entirely serious here.
You've got the picture in
one! Congratulations!
When the leader of one group of early man saw
the leader of the neighbouring group in war paint -- that is, with whom he
was having a difference at the time -- of a particularly virulent shade of
orange (iron ochre), he badly wanted some of the ochre for himself so that
he, too, could look so splendid. But he couldn't lay his hands on any
because there was none of this desirabvle rock in his own group's
territory. So he had to he had to parlay with the neighbouring group's
leader one fine sunny day when they were not at war (for, of course,
warfare is only an occasional event) and decided to exchange one of his
recently \post-puberty daughters whom he'd restrained (because she was
about to leave anyway to find a partner elsewhere -- disposed to do so by
what is called the 'patrilocal instinct' by the behavioural
pscyhologists) for some "leadership paint". The deal was done and during
the trading transaction the two leaders were pretty friendly.
The
next day, or perhaps a month or two later, the two groups were at war
again -- perhaps one the group had invaded the other's territory and
stolen a pig -- and this time both leaders were wearing war paint. They
made sure that they didn;t kill each other -- leaders seldon do that. They
make sure that the honour falls to an underling.
And, while
they were wearing their war paint -- or perhaps retained it for days or
weeks after wards -- both leaders would have been very attractive
indeed if any post-puberty girls from yet a distant third or fourth group
had come wandering by looking for a mate.
Keith Hudson
\brad
mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before
men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove
all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes
5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. /
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