Peaceful nature of man?
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010LeBlanc, was originally a believer in the peaceful nature of man. The evidence he found as an archeologist forced him to change his mind.
It took more than twenty-five years and a great deal of additional fieldwork for me finally to change my initial naïve view of the past, and humans in general. My take on warfare is now very different from what it was. Though these new ideas about conflict seem exceedingly obvious to me, I arrived at these conclusions not by means of abstract theory, but by being forced to look at warfare based on conclusive evidence found on the ground. The central importance of warfare throughout known history came to me slowly, prompted by archeological fieldwork in a number of different region and reinforced as I tried to reconcile theoretical positions that became increasingly impossible to accept.
Steven LeBlanc, “Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage” page 3
Way back in our hunter-gatherer days, a few tribes decided they were not going to arm themselves at all. They decided to be peaceful and not resist their neighbors should they try to take their territory, or their women, or anything else they possessed.
All those tribes went extinct. I wonder why?
But you can rest assured, the surviving tribes passed along their genes. And those folks who inherited their genes are your neighbors today.
Not only are human societies never alone, but regardless of how well they control their own population or act ecologically, they cannot control their neighbors’ behavior. Each society must confront the real possibility that its neighbors will not live in ecological balance but will grow its numbers and attempt to take the resources from nearby groups. Not only have societies always lived in a changing environment, but they always have neighbors. The best way to survive in such a milieu is not to live in ecological balance with slow growth, but to grow rapidly and be able to fend off competitors as well as take resources from others.
Steven LeBlanc, “Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage” page 73
That describes why human nature has evolved the way it has. We still have the exact human nature that we had during our hunter-gatherer evolution. It is totally irrational to deny that human nature will be any different in the near future than it was in the past.
“When law enforcement vanishes, all manner of violence breaks out: looting, settling old scores, ethnic cleansing, and petty warfare among gangs, warlords, and mafias. This was obvious in the remnants of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and parts of Africa in the 1990s, but can also happen in countries with long tradition of civility. As young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin’s anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 A.M. the first bank was robbed. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that had competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist).”
Steven Pinker, “The Blank Slate” page 331.
How to feed people in the near future:
Actually the most apt question is; ‘How are we going to feed all these people during the transition?’ It’s fine to consider how things might transition more peacefully, but people are anything but friendly when it comes to eating when there isn’t enough food. Survival instincts will kick in and chaos, mayhem, marauding gangs will ensue. Small towns will block entrance to strangers and martial law will become the law of the land. It will breakdown into the lowest common denominator until there is enough food to feed everyone that remains, and then, and only then will some semblence of order be re-established. It’s pure cornucopian dementia to think it can transition peacefully to a lower state of food production.
Part of Ecclesiastes 9, found in the Hebrew bible:
7 Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.
8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil.
9 Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun— all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.
Anyone remember the Mose Allison tune “Ever Since the World Ended”? The last line is:
“Ever since the world ended,
I face the future–
With a smile.”
Shiduri, in Gilgamesh: A New English Version
“… until the end comes, enjoy your life,
spend it in happiness, not despair.
Savor your food, make each of your days
a delight, bathe and anoint yourself,
wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean,
let music and dancing fill your house,
love the child who holds you by the hand,
and give your wife pleasure in your embrace.
That is the best way for a man to live.”
No, seriously: Whose story is that?...