From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Sun Oct 05 2003 - 10:24:58 MDT
At 09:35 AM 05/10/03 -0600, you wrote:
>[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.
That's just not factual. I can understand why you would not want to
believe it, since the news was met with a great deal of disbelief over the
period of time where it came out in a number of studies.
>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.
Of course. I am talking about rates, killings per 100k of population per
year. It is one of the things you have to compensate for when comparing
societies. There are relatively few killings by primitives, but there are
even fewer primitives. People who study in this area find that up to 25%
of the male population died from violence. Try PREHISTORIC WARFARE IN THE
AMERICAN SOUTHWEST Steven LeBlanc review here:
http://hallamericanhistory.com/americas/667.shtml
Or this about another of his books:
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues03/may03/books.html
There is a good sum up here: http://www.johnhorgan.org/work12.htm Quoting
a bit,
"The next tribe to be anointed noble savages were the Kung of Africa's
Kalahari Desert, who were celebrated in the book The Harmless People and
the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. Actually, the murder rate among the Kung
is four times higher than in the U.S."
snip
(Re Yanomamo)
"Chagnon's most disturbing finding was a correlation between killing and
reproduction. Like most tribal societies, the Yanomamo are polygamous. Men
who killed the most had two times as many wives and three times as many
children as non-killers, according to Chagnon."
snip
"The best news I've got for you is that our world is much less violent than
it used to be. In the 20th century, about 100 million men, women, and
children died from war-related causes, including disease and famine. The
total would have been 2 billion if our rates of violence had been as high
as in the average primitive society. In other words, things are getting
better."
>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.
See above.
>[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?
See above
>[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.
I don't see how your comments are responsive to the statement you are
replying to.
>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...:)
You don't need to convince me about white collar crimes. Don't forget I am
a refugee because I tried to expose crimes in this class.
Keith Henson
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