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Originally Posted by Ustwo
The Nobel Savage is just a figment of the Western mind.
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I'm well aware of that, Ustwo, and I also agree with it heartily. I think that idea is just as naive as it is arrogant to think that only industrial societies have evolved to be non-violent.
Highthief, thanks. However respectable he may be, Nicholas Wade is a science reporter, not an anthropologist. When I asked for a source, I was looking for peer-reviewed work that showed quantitative evidence of violent activities from society to society, controlling for socio-economic levels and population size. If you could show me a study like that, I might be more convinced.
Thing is, the problem is not that I think all hunter-gatherer societies are singing kumbaya and waving flowers around peacefully... quite the contrary. I'm well aware of scale of violence in many of those types of societies, that's nothing new. You're right about Richard Borshay Lee and the !Kung--and while I tend to agree with the materalist approach of the book you mention by Johnson & Earle, Marvin Harris' ideas--the source of materialist theory--just can't be used to explain every aspect of cultural evolution.
To make an all-encompassing statement that industralized societies are more peace-loving and less violent than hunter-gatherers is rather absurd. Have you lived among hunter-gatherers? I have. We're ALL capable of being violent assholes, depending on our circumstances... not because we're more "evolved." Let's put you in the middle of the 9th Ward or the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina and see how peace-loving you manage to be.
I was also reading along with your Wade quote, and came to the last sentence: "the different set of intellectual capacities that is rewarded by the institution of property."... what do you take from that? What does the institution of property have to do with intelligence? Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but tell me what you got from that.
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Originally Posted by highthief
Further, Keeley in War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage says that more than a third of the Yanomamo males, on average, died from warfare.
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Yeah, yeah, the famously violent Yanomamo. That's anthropology 101, no need to bring them up.
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Originally Posted by highthief
Now obviously, we - due to our technology and large nation-states - are capable of inflicting more death in war, but the average guy or gal sitting in front of his computer monitor is likely to be less violent than a Yanomami or !Kung or New Guinea tribesman, IMO.
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Does it occur to you WHY the "average" guy--who happens to own a computer, and have the time to sit in front of it, rather than trying to get the next meal from the Savannah--MIGHT be less violent than someone who isn't sure of where their next meal is coming from? Come on, you can come up with a better argument/example than that.