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A good read on the nature of the murderous virus is
Samantha Power's "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide", in
which she reviews the causes and consequences of recent mass killings, and the
ineffectiveness of national and international legal systems in preventing
them.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 9:40
AM
Subject: RE: [Futurework] My ongoing
struggle to see the obvious :: Basic question for economists
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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