whoa nellie!

[RICHARD ROMEO]

Murthy wrote:  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.
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Murthy--I agree, no argument there.
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then you said:  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.
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I'm not so sure.  I'm no anthropologist, but we are talking about degrees 
of violence in any human construct of society, within a major industrial 
nation, or some long lost tribe living in the forest.  Frankly, I don't 
see what makes violent headhunters any less frightening than the 
Crusades, or Hitler's Panzers .  I come from the inarguable fact that war 
is a fact of existence and is part of our nature which must be repressed 
in any way.  Also, where do we draw the distinction between wars of 
liberation and wars of destruction.  Violence propigating only more 
violence--when does it end? Shining Path, Khmer Rouge, some of these way 
out rightist groups here in the US, et al they're all claiming just 
cause.  A fine example of two equally brutal societies is in Vollman's 
_Fathers and Crows_, not only the French but the Iroqouis.  These 
distinctions between just wars and wars of mass destruction become 
muddled in my mind.
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and again:  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.
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Violence on a small scale is still violence.  Again, check out Barker's 
The Ghost Road.  She says it better than I do.  Theoretically, this is a 
fine argument.  But how does one differentiate one's nature from the 
culture it came from, or disentangle one's biases from that culture?  
American Indians despise new-agers and hippies for trying to practice 
their religious beliefs and rightly so. Also, white kids talking black, 
calling each other the n-word.  Sure we can say it's our culture that 
breeds this covetness, but you cannot detach yourself from it.  Isn't 
that ultimately the failure of hippies, punks, civil rights, feminists, 
etc, subverting from the outside and not from within?  Is that even 
possible??

Richard Romeo
Coordinator of Cooperating Collections
The Foundation Center-NYC
212-807-2417
rromeo at fdncenter.org