Adopt an Adult Orphan, by Jean Liedloff
Quote:
Many customs of the Yequana are directed toward meeting the requirements for emotional well-being that will keep people feeling social. Their maintenance of what we call law and order does not include law, only internal, individual order, based on the assumption that man only becomes anti-social when deprived of the support appropriate for all humans.
Illness, pain, bereavement, hunger, isolation or humiliation, if allowed to become too intense or too enduring, can exhaust a person's powers of adaptation, of resilience. The result is a measure of bitterness, resentment, jealousy, frustration, anger, despair or loneliness. The natural inclination to protect and further the interests of one's people will become strained and distorted. A sense of natural justice will suggest that a person withdraw his endeavors from the common cause and put them toward his own interests, as the support of others is withdrawn from him.
The Yequana are careful not to allow this to happen by providing for any eventuality that puts a strain on the individual's ability to take such stresses in stride. For instance, the best hunters and fishermen share their catches with everyone so that hunger and jealousy cannot build up in their neighbors. Grief is mitigated by appropriate demonstrations of solidarity. People do not ever try to persuade one another to change their minds by using emotional pressure. Humiliation is sensitively precluded, and no one is expected to live alone. Thus, the "adoption" of orphaned adults.
In this rich atmosphere of respect and provision for these human needs, not just the gross ones of food and shelter but the complex social requirements, the Yequana enjoy their high state of well-being.
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Whoever said that "greed" is an evolutionary trait of survival, was wrong. Or just "civilized". Imagining only slaves and slave masters. Imagining a big brute eating everything and having others serve him...
People lived in groups tribes, it was better than living alone, people are social beings, and greed in such conditions works against the greedy.
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One day there will be so many houses, that people will be bored and will go live in tents. "Why are you living in tents ? Are there not enough houses ?" "Yes there are, but we play this Economy game"