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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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