[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 86, Issue 13

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 5:00 AM,  BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> John Horgan has an article in Scientific American about why tribes go
> to war that might be of interest. I know that Keith has suggested that
> war is caused either by hard times or an expectation of hard times,
> but I feel this is a weak theory as it seems to cover all cases and
> therefore is untestable.

That's nonsense.  The theory would be instantly refuted if you found
*one* case where a society doing well with a bright future started a
war.

The US Civil war was a total mystery to me until I realized that
anticipation of a bleak future was as effective in sparking a war for
sound evolutionary reasons.

> Horgan thinks that war is learned behaviour.
>
> Some Quotes:
>
> Analyses of more than 300 societies in the Human Relations Area Files,
> an ethnographic database at Yale University, have turned up no
> clear-cut correlations between warfare and chronic resource scarcity.
> Similarly, the anthropologist Lawrence Keeley notes in War before
> Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (Oxford University
> Press, 1997) that the correlation between population pressure and
> warfare "is either very complex or very weak or both."

Amazing they would say this.  "Population pressure" is a variable.
War in China followed weather because a population that could be fed
in times of good weather could not in times of bad weather.

> Margaret Mead dismissed the notion that war is the inevitable
> consequence of our "basic, competitive, aggressive, warring human
> nature." This theory is contradicted, she noted, by the simple fact
> that not all societies wage war. War has never been observed among a
> Himalayan people called the Lepchas or among the Eskimos. In fact,
> neither of these groups, when questioned by early ethnographers, was
> even aware of the concept of war.

Given what is now known about Margaret Mead's studies I am amazed that
anyone would quote her as an authority.  Himalayan people live at the
edge of what humans can adapt to.  That keeps their numbers down.  As
for the Eskimos, they killed each other at a high rate.  You can call
it war if you want too.

> Warfare is "an invention," Mead concluded, like cooking, marriage,
> writing, burial of the dead or trial by jury. Once a society becomes
> exposed to the "idea" of war, it "will sometimes go to war" under
> certain circumstances. Some people, Mead stated, such as the Pueblo
> Indians, fight reluctantly to defend themselves against aggressors;
> others, such as the Plains Indians, sally forth with enthusiasm,
> because they have elevated martial skills to the highest of manly
> virtues.

Sheesh.  Citing Mead is just stupid.

Keith