Poor, Hard, Brutish, and Short
Yesterday in the American Thinker James Lewis discussed the Rousseauian concept of the `Noble Savage` and how modern anthropology is discovering that this idealized utopian figure never existed:
Wade presents compelling evidence that humans appear to be genetically predisposed to warfare. Among ancient hunter-gatherers, "incessant warfare" was the norm, just as it is today among the Stone Age tribes of New Guinea and South America. Humans have a long history of cannibalism, so much that we carry genes to guard against the toxic consequences of eating human flesh (similar to Mad Cow prion disease). Modern humans are less aggressive than our ancestors were. The very fact that we can live in mass societies at reasonable peace with each other is an extraordinary advance.
Anthropologists have long tried to close their minds to the plentiful evidence for murderous tribal warfare. When they encountered tribal wars, they pointed out that not many people seemed to get killed in any fight --- forgetting that raiding one's neighbors is often a weekly sporting event, like Monday Night Football. So war death rates go to thirty percent over a lifetime, not counting injuries, rapes and ethnic cleansings. And it turns out that even the "peaceful" peoples, like Bushmen, boast of their human kills. They justify killing by explaining that they just get really mad.
Anthropologists have become famous by writing that cannibalism was just a slanderous lie invented by the West. It all fit the neo-racist myth of the White Man's Guilt --- as at Duke University. Such people peddle the myths of the peaceful Hopis and Bushmen, the Gandhi-esque Hindus, Buddhists and Sufis, and all the morally superior non-White cultures. (They somehow forget that Gandhi's independence movement led straight to four million ethnic killings during the Partition of 1948).
Mr. Lewis makes the case that Mankind has become less aggressive, less violent in modern times. He`s right in so many ways.
Warfare with knives and spears and arrows is less efficient, but where is the bloodlust in killing with a rifle from a mile away? We are often told that modern weapons make us more destructive, but is that necessarily true? A gentler person can kill with a rifle (though he may not want to do so) but hand to hand combat makes for real killing, and those with a propensity for violence grow to love the murder and mayhem. Primitive peoples would, indeed, find great joy in the butchery of their enemies. The clinical necessity of modern warfare makes for a less exuberant type of fighting. Knives, spears, and arrows mean killing an enemy and watching him die as you glory over his body. Then, flush with the thrill of the hunt and the kill, the successful warrior will probably slaughter anyone else he finds-elderly, children, non-combatants, etc. He may rape the women, torture the weak, anything to keep the adrenaline high going.
I once heard it said that the word berserk comes from `without shirt` because the Vikings, upon hearing the sounds of battle, would often storm into the fight without taking the time to dress. They lived for the thrill of bloodshed. Can the same be said of the modern American soldier? I don`t doubt their commitment or passion, but I suspect that rarely do Marines get worked up into such a killing frenzy, because they don`t do things to stoke the fires of bloodlust. Modern warfare tries very hard to avoid that very thing. Guns make it harder to stoke those fires.
That`s not to say there isn`t a thrill in killing with a gun-how else can one explain hunting? Gangbangers certainly thrill to the sound of the Saturday night special. My point is, after a short battle it`s over, while the old ways meant continual adrenal fixes. Bloody violence is addictive.
That`s where Mel Gibson had it right with Apocalypto; the villagers rightly feared seeing men in the forest, because any stranger was probably an enemy. Turns out they were right...
If we are to take the advice of philosophers, we should be more willing to listen to Hobbes than to Rousseau.
Wade presents compelling evidence that humans appear to be genetically predisposed to warfare. Among ancient hunter-gatherers, "incessant warfare" was the norm, just as it is today among the Stone Age tribes of New Guinea and South America. Humans have a long history of cannibalism, so much that we carry genes to guard against the toxic consequences of eating human flesh (similar to Mad Cow prion disease). Modern humans are less aggressive than our ancestors were. The very fact that we can live in mass societies at reasonable peace with each other is an extraordinary advance.
Anthropologists have long tried to close their minds to the plentiful evidence for murderous tribal warfare. When they encountered tribal wars, they pointed out that not many people seemed to get killed in any fight --- forgetting that raiding one's neighbors is often a weekly sporting event, like Monday Night Football. So war death rates go to thirty percent over a lifetime, not counting injuries, rapes and ethnic cleansings. And it turns out that even the "peaceful" peoples, like Bushmen, boast of their human kills. They justify killing by explaining that they just get really mad.
Anthropologists have become famous by writing that cannibalism was just a slanderous lie invented by the West. It all fit the neo-racist myth of the White Man's Guilt --- as at Duke University. Such people peddle the myths of the peaceful Hopis and Bushmen, the Gandhi-esque Hindus, Buddhists and Sufis, and all the morally superior non-White cultures. (They somehow forget that Gandhi's independence movement led straight to four million ethnic killings during the Partition of 1948).
Mr. Lewis makes the case that Mankind has become less aggressive, less violent in modern times. He`s right in so many ways.
Warfare with knives and spears and arrows is less efficient, but where is the bloodlust in killing with a rifle from a mile away? We are often told that modern weapons make us more destructive, but is that necessarily true? A gentler person can kill with a rifle (though he may not want to do so) but hand to hand combat makes for real killing, and those with a propensity for violence grow to love the murder and mayhem. Primitive peoples would, indeed, find great joy in the butchery of their enemies. The clinical necessity of modern warfare makes for a less exuberant type of fighting. Knives, spears, and arrows mean killing an enemy and watching him die as you glory over his body. Then, flush with the thrill of the hunt and the kill, the successful warrior will probably slaughter anyone else he finds-elderly, children, non-combatants, etc. He may rape the women, torture the weak, anything to keep the adrenaline high going.
I once heard it said that the word berserk comes from `without shirt` because the Vikings, upon hearing the sounds of battle, would often storm into the fight without taking the time to dress. They lived for the thrill of bloodshed. Can the same be said of the modern American soldier? I don`t doubt their commitment or passion, but I suspect that rarely do Marines get worked up into such a killing frenzy, because they don`t do things to stoke the fires of bloodlust. Modern warfare tries very hard to avoid that very thing. Guns make it harder to stoke those fires.
That`s not to say there isn`t a thrill in killing with a gun-how else can one explain hunting? Gangbangers certainly thrill to the sound of the Saturday night special. My point is, after a short battle it`s over, while the old ways meant continual adrenal fixes. Bloody violence is addictive.
That`s where Mel Gibson had it right with Apocalypto; the villagers rightly feared seeing men in the forest, because any stranger was probably an enemy. Turns out they were right...
If we are to take the advice of philosophers, we should be more willing to listen to Hobbes than to Rousseau.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 5:07 AM
2 Comments:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Hobbes had both feet in the real world and wrote with a thorough understanding of human nature. Rousseau was a murderous Romantic, cruel, misanthropic and vindictive and not wholly sane. He is the poster boy for every mass killer in the last 200 years.
Incidentally, the most deadly 4 hours of combat in the history of man was in 216 BC, at the battle of Cannae. Carthage under her general Hannibal slaughtered 60,000 Romans using spears and swords.
Life then was as Hobbes said it was, ‘solitary, poor. nasty, brutish and short.’
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