whoa nellie!

[Murthy Yenamandra]

RICHARD ROMEO writes:
> Diane--first, can you provide an example of any groups of humans who do 
> not/did not  propigate domination, slavery, and/or destruction.  I can 
> think of many non-western ones that have:  Turks in Armenia, the 
> Indonesian state and native tribes, hutus tutsis,, etc. etc.  

The dichotomy of western and eastern is a false one - when it comes to
domination and empire building, there is not much to differentiate
between the west and the east even though the western cultures might
have taken it to a whole another level over the last few centuries.

To answer your question, consider most of the countless indigenous
hunter/gatherer tribes of Africa, Australia or the Americas that still
survive (but not all). Be careful to distinguish between fighting with
neighbors to establish territory and waging war to propagate domination,
slavery, and/or destruction. Most groups do the first, which is
necessary for survival, but not the second. Of course we try to equate
our wars with theirs to make it seem that humans have always waged war
and that what we're doing is normal and inherent human nature - it is
not.

I don't mean to say that these small cultural groups are peaceful, but
whatever fighting they do, they do it on a small scale and mostly to
establish their territorial boundaries with their neighbors - they don't
go out and try to dominate, enslave or eliminate entire populations. If
you look, you can find plenty of groups who lived and continue to live
without doing any of these things. The idea that all human groups are
inherently evil is a pernicious myth propagated by us to make ourselves
look normal, just like the idea that all human life is "nasty, brutish
and short". It's not human nature that's screwed up, it's our culture
and it's not universal.

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota. mailto:yenamand at cs.umn.edu
    "I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time can not decay
     I'm junk, but I'm holding up this little wild bouquet
     Democracy is coming to the USA" - Leonard Cohen