All violence is not equal

[Murthy Yenamandra]

RICHARD ROMEO writes:
> 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.

Well I guess if you don't see the qualitative difference between
head hunters and the crusades/Hitler, then there isn't much I can do to
make you see it. Fighting with neighbors in a display of strength (like
the head hunters do) is qualitatively quite different from the
ideological and empire-building wars.

> 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.

Violence in individuals members of a group and skirmishes and enmity
between neighboring groups are facts of existence (animals do it too,
not just humans), but not wars intended enslave and eliminate other
groups and definitely not idealogical wars intended to make other groups
believe the same things we do. This is done by only a few cultural
groups (which of course dominate most of the modern nations) and whoever
these groups come into contact with have no choice but to use the same
methods (liberation wars etc). These, being in reaction to previous wars
and domination, are still the same kind of wars that led to them. But
this doesn't make them universal human nature.

> Violence on a small scale is still violence.

The point is not merely the existence of individual or group violence,
but the goals behind the violence and the effects left behind. We, of
course, would like to believe that our type of wars are the same as any
other violence, but it's just an assertion that serves to make our wars
look normal.

> But how does one differentiate one's nature from the 
> culture it came from, or disentangle one's biases from that culture?  

You see what ideas are universal among all cultural groups and what are
not. I'm not saying that individual violence doesn't exist or that
groups don't fight with their neighbors - just that these things don't
attain the status of wars as we know them. To treat them all as the same
kind of inherently human violence is wrong.

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