From: Mermaid (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Sun Oct 05 2003 - 09:35:10 MDT
[henson]Put "primitive tribe murder rate" in Google and read a few articles. The high murder rate for primitives was an unpleasant surprise for a lot of people when studies showed this to be the case.
[Mermaid] http://www.ncpa.org/pi/crime/crime71.html > I picked this one from the slew of google results.
It is not my argument that primitive tribes are not violent. My argument is that primitive tribes probably have much lower violence than non primitive tribes. Would you consider Texas frying thousands of 'criminals' every year as 'violence'? In that case, we can also consider tribe sanctioned killings as murder and hence violence.
On the other hand, its extrapolation that 'proves' that primitive tribes are more violent than non primitive tribes. How many cops and troops and lawyers and laws do the non primitive societies have? Are those figures extrapolated too? There are far fewer policing agencies in tribal societies than in non primitive socities. Extrapolate, if you want....Is there any specific study or paper that you have in mind? Because what I see online hasnt convinced me.
[henson]The tribe *is* the social group. Being expelled is an effective death sentence in really primitive situations, i.e., if the tribe expelling a person doesn't kill the person, some tribal enemy usually does.
[Mermaid]So are you saying that expelling a tribe member is an act of violence? And so primitive societies are more violent than non primitive societies?
[henson]I wasn't even thinking of the legal system in Western culture, it suffices that a person can be expelled from a community (for example a town) and *not* be
killed as an outlaw. This system was still in effect, though perhaps starting to fade, at during the time Greece was the cultural center what became the western world.
[Mermaid]Thats not how it works now. Felons cannot vote. So there is taxation without representation. Capital punishment is alive and well. Incarceration for petty crimes is high. Most important of all, poverty is the most violent form of punishment upon most of the disadvantaged. By contrast, white collar crimes go unnoticed which makes the punishment of the lower strata of society doubly violent. We should consider all factors before we compare tribal and modern societies. Extrapolation of one set of figures is bad science...err.i mean.. statistics...:)
---- This message was posted by Mermaid to the Virus 2003 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=54;action=display;threadid=29437> --- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Oct 05 2003 - 09:35:51 MDT