Why are some
societies more violent than others? South American societies were violent
when Hegel described them in 1827. Societies go through developmental
phases. The Western societies that today are relatively peaceful were
ravaged by warfare in which peasants were murdered, raped and pillaged
by their own troops in the 1300s.
South and Central America have countries where political violence is
the norm and others where the politics are relatively peaceful. one
thing distinguishes the two. The handful of countries where peace is
common were not colonies of Spain, they were colonies of England. The
differences have nothing to do with race. Both sets of countries are
mixes of blacks, Indians and Europeans. They're differences of culture.
Something causes a tremendous shift in society from the premium placed
on violence among people like the Sioux or the Yanomama to the premium
placed on non violence in a society like ours, where parent's groups
rise up to protest the violence on television and the spread of violent
toys, or like the China of the 15th century, where the bulk of the citizens
refused to fight an invasion. There's a massive shift from the premium
placed on violence in 15th century England, where cock throwing was
an exercise in personal violence and hunting was regarded as a noble
sport and as a practice for war, to today's England with it's unarmed
police officers and its incessant demonstrations for peace.
Yes, hard as it is to believe today, English citizens in the 1500s loved
small instances of violence. They loved to watch bull dogs and pit bulls
tear apart the bodies of living bulls and to watch the bulls strike
back and try to gore, to spit and shish kebob the dogs. They loved bair-baiting,
tormenting a bear intolerably. They loved to tie chickens to a post
and pelt them to death with stones. Today all of that is gone. It's
scarcely even remembered. Why?
South American countries seem to respect power and brutality. They hate
the United States and fantasize about treating America with brutality.
We keep trying to win their friendship. In Venezuela, the locals wanted
to tear Richard Nixon apart and burn the pieces. They almost succeeded.
Nixon was the symbol for America to the Venezuelans. If the Venezuelans
or a great many other people in the so called Third World, had their
way and rose in the hierarchical scale sufficiently to have power over
us, they would treat us with a harsh violence it's hard for us to imagine.
Both militant Islam and Marxism idealize violence. Militant Islam sees
itself as perpetually at war with a non-Islamic world. And Marxism holds
as one of its highest values revolution. Revolution is the use of a
gun to redistribute power. Marxist Nicaraguan children in the days of
the Sandinistas were taught to count using coloring books with pictures
of men with machine guns. Tiny Marxist states in the 1980s had standing
armies that dwarf those of democracies. Marxist Ethiopia in the 1980s
starved its citizens so its soldiers could have guns. When mankind glorifies
violence, the killing of other men cannot end.
Some societies encourage violence toward children. Some say "spare
the rod and spoil the child," a phrase that was once a common guide
to parenting in our own society. Today our society even discourages
spanking.
What's the difference between a society that dictates violence and one
that dictates peace? What's the difference between one that dictates
turning the other cheek and one that believes in an eye for an eye and
the glory of battle? During the Russian Revolution, crowds gathered
to see thieves beaten to death. Cries of pain were greeted with thrills
of delight. A stable society has to de-emphasize violence. Violence
is the primary means of redistributing resources. A stable society remains
stable because the current resource distribution is more or less satisfactory.
Differing experiences during the growth of an animal or a human, cause
different areas of the brain to develop. The brain of a cat raised indoors
is different from that of a cat raised outdoors. Could this account
for the abhorrence of violence that tends to accompany a large, stable,
well organized empire and the love of violence that seems to characterize
more primitive cultures? Are the brains of children in societies that
idolize the violent sculpted by their violent heroes and their mass-murdering
superstars? Fifty percent of the brain cells with which we're born are
chiseled away by the time we're roughly five. Only those brain cells
our society seems to value survive. Are the brain's violent capacities
nurtured in a culture of violence during those first five years of life?
Do those brain cells that restrain us and make us non-violent undergo
preprogrammed cell death and morosely wither away?
Maslow's hierarchy of needs may help explain the rise of permissiveness
and the shift from a violent orientation. What is the hierarchy of needs?
If you can't breathe, you don't pay much attention to gourmet food.
But if you've been breathing regularly for some time now, you come to
take oxygen for granted and may become obsessed with the pursuit of
caviar. in the days of hunters and gatherers, proto-Japanese were quite
delighted to find berries and nuts in the woods. By modern times, when
food was more plentiful, nuts and berries were referred to contemptuously
in Japan as "famine food."
The shift from love of violence to its abhorrence probably comes as
a society moves up the hierarchy of needs. The more needs it takes for
granted, the less violent it wants to be. Now let's look at a possible
reason for this quaint phenomenon. It's the old adage, "when you
ain't got nothin' you got nothin' to lose." A pre-Englishman hunting
acorns for tonight's meal and living in a cave could gain a great deal
by clubbing his neighbor then making off with his mammoth chops and
wife. But if a fifteenth-century Chinese citizen chose violence as his
daily lot, he'd lose the comforts of the latest high tech gadgets and
of food as exotic as morsels of roasted human baby flesh. He'd trade
that in for life in the field, horrible rations, and a probable return
to home in a box.
There's another plus to non-violence. You can turn your time to making
things that others want and will pay you for. When you concentrate on
production and innovation, you enrich not just yourself, you enrich
your neighbors and you enrich the folk thousands of miles away who trade
with you. The more production, the more there is to consume. Peace can
bring riches. Violence can bring poverty.
In the days of the Romans and later, in the days when Arab armies conquered
half the known world, violence brought you booty. Violence gave you
the palaces, jewelry, wives, and daughters of those you conquered. But
not today. Today violence destroys cities. Violence destroys wealth
and leaves little to plunder. Violence leads to wreckage. Violence turns
gardens into a desert. Violence leads, let me repeat, to poverty.
________
In a message dated 98?03?11 07:12:25 EST, (friend) writes:
<< Just listened to the Audio Book of "How the Irish Saved
Civilization". Describes how St. Patrick converted the Irish, taught
them the ways of Christ's Peace, and set them up to be whipped by the
Vikings later on. FASCINATING. The Darwinian social dilemma is that
with predator avoidance the first priority in life, it is easy to learn
to kill strangers. >> ESPECIALLY IF YOU ACCEPT THE IDEA THAT INTERGROUP
COMPETITION PLAYS A SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN EVOLUTION. THIS WOULD MAKE KILLING
STRANGERS BUT *NOT* KILLING YOUR FELLOW GROUP MEMBERS A NECESSITY. TO
KILL OTHERS IN YOUR GROUP WOULD BE TO DIMINISH PART OF THE PROTECTIVE
MECHANISM WHICH IS YOUR SHIELD AGAINST OTHER GROUPS??THE GROUP TO WHICH
YOU BELONG AND WHICH DEFENDS YOU WHEN YOU COME UNDER ATTACK OR WISH
TO ATTACK TO RAISE YOUR OWN GROUP'S STATUS AND BOUNTY. THE ONLY "BRETHREN"
YOU'D WANT TO KILL WOULD BE "CRIMINALS," THOSE WHO BEHAVE
IN SUCH A WAY AS TO WEAKEN THE GROUP STRUCTURE. cheers?? howard
...post
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