[Paleopsych] Fw: [bigbangtango] Slowly Slicing The Violence Out of War

Mon Oct 11 20:20:22 UTC 2004

I was impressed by the situation in "Dune," where people
flew in their space ships to battlefields where they fought
with swords.  That is honest combat.

Steve Hovland
www.stevehovland.net

-----Original Message-----
From:	Geraldine  Reinhardt [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net]
Sent:	Monday, October 11, 2004 12:45 PM
To:	paleopsych at paleopsych.org
Subject:	[Paleopsych] Fw: [bigbangtango] Slowly Slicing The Violence Out 
of	War

----- Original Message -----
From: Geraldine Reinhardt
To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org
Cc: bigbangtango at yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2004 11:36 AM
Subject: Re: [bigbangtango] Slowly Slicing The Violence Out of War

Rob and Howard,
I think both of you present succinct and clearly defined arguments not 
unlike what we see and hear from American's two presidential candidates 
Bush and Kerry.  Howard, not unlike Bush, believes in laissez-faire style 
capitalism while Rob offers a somewhat softer, gentler picture that Kerry 
also presents i.e. stressing the importance of universal health care paid 
for by taxing the wealthy 2% in our nation, retaining jobs in the USA, 
assisting the disenfranchised, protecting our environment etc. Classic 
liberals like Howard (and really not unlike Bush) differ from modern 
liberals such as Kerry in that the ultimate result would be the 
deindustrialization of the West.  Whether or not that brings about the 
disintegration of America is a strong issue that must be addressed.  My 
guess is that China is off to a running start and will be impossible to 
overtake.  Besides, why do we need retain topdog status when a softer, 
gentler stance seems to be what many Americans now wish.

Best wishes,
Gerry Reinhardt
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Rob Kritkausky
  To: bigbangtango at yahoogroups.com ; paleopsych at paleopsych.org
  Cc: bigbangtango at yahoogroups.com
  Sent: Friday, October 08, 2004 1:58 AM
  Subject: Re: [bigbangtango] Slowly Slicing The Violence Out of War

  Howard:
  Thanks for the excellent editorial.  While I enjoyed your analysis, I 
must admit it left me feeling rather malnourished.... even cheated.  I fear 
the public(you ...me all of us) have been happily thinking on a diet made 
up almost entirely of the junk food  that the media has been preparing for 
us daily.  I fear this type of big picture, politically detached, data 
driven thinking you are serving here, may no longer be relished by a large 
segment of the population.  We are being fed a most unhealthy 
diet.......information is expected to come processed, slanted, sweetened or 
spiced up.. The objective communication/description of events (news) is 
currently exceedingly rare and in fact, come to think of it, I don't even 
think objectivity to be a goal of the media these days.
  All that being said....I loved the piece, but don't be surprised if it 
keeps getting sent back.  "Excuse me, I ordered my information spun and 
could you sugar coat it a little for me?"

  Regards:
  Rob Kritkausky

  howlbloom at aol.com wrote:

    a?oIt is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization 
 witnessed by the history of mankind:  You are the nation who, rather than 
ruling by the Shariah of Allah  in its Constitution and Laws, choose to 
invent your own laws.a??  Osama bin Laden explaining to Americans why they 
are Satanic, Message To the Ummah May 12, 2004

    Western Civilization gives the right to do it your self, diy, the right 
to createa?"the right to create new movements, the right to create new 
artforms, the right to create our own constitutions, laws, theories, and 
beliefs. Osama wants to take all that away.

    Every pecking order battle between groups is a battle between 
hypotheses in the mass minda?"guesses about the best way to do things. 
Osamaa?Ts guess, his hypothesis, has been tried out in Sudan and 
Afghanistan. Its result is a living nightmare.

    Margaret Mead said that every primitive, indigenous tribe in the early 
days of man forbade the murder of human beings. The problem was the 
definition of a human. The name of our tribe meant we were humans. Everyone 
from another tribe wasna?Tt human at all. he or she was fair game. In early 
tribes like these, said Mead, the number of a?ohumansa?? whose lives were 
sacred was only 50 to 75. The rest of the earth's population was a 
legitimate target for murder. But today, Mead pointed out, the number a 
single society says a?othou shalt not killa?? is much, much greater. In 
India and China your fellow tribe members, your fellow human beings, your 
fellow Indians or Chinese, your brethren who youa?Tre not supposed to kill, 
is 1.2 billion.

    Two anthropologists, William Divale and Marvin Harris, combed through 
data from 561 primi-tive tribes and discovered that 21% of the males were 
killed off violently before they ended adolescence. One out of every five 
men in these primitive, indigenous tribes died in skirmishes and war. The 
percentage of the slaughtered skyrockets if you include the women and 
children wiped out by indigenous peoples like the South American Taulipang, 
who burned dozens of families in their huts, loved the screams of pain 
inside, then marched home shouting a joyous "hei-hei-hei-hei-hei!"[i]

    If our techno-modern society killed at the old tribal rate, roughly 720 
million modern humans would be blasted to smithereens in wars or homicides 
every generation. Compare this with the 55 million who died in WWII, and 
the bloodlettings of the last hundred years, are less than one-tenth of 
what they'd amount to under tribal or hunter-gatherer ways.

    Much as many of us hate Donald Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld tried to invent a new 
form of humanitarian war in Iraq. He tried to achieve it with smart bombs 
and with missiles that could jet down the street, turn a corner, and go 
directly into the room where a military group was hiding out.

    Total American deaths in Iraq now total 1,100. Civilian deaths come to 
a maximum of 13,603 . The total deaths in a regional conflict of this sort 
150 years ago, the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856, came to 615,378.[ii] For 
every 41 people killed in the Crimean War, the Iraq War has killed only 
one.

    The war in Iraq is grisly, ghastly, and deplorable. But for all 
practical purposes, the War In Iraq has saved 600,000 lives. That is a huge 
reduction in violence.

    Compare the deaths in the current Iraq War, revolting as it is, to 
deaths in the war that dragged on between Iraq and Iran from 1980 to 1988. 
That war lasted eight years and cost more than a million lives.

    Or compare this to a total of a million deaths every year worldwide in 
car accidents. Or compare it with the deaths worldwide each year caused by 
cigarette smoking, which total about 5 million[iii]. Every death is 
horrible and every war is deplorable. But thanks to industrialism, 
capitalism, technology, cultural advances, the spread of western values, 
and thanks to what some of us call cultural imperialism, we are making 
progress.

    Therea?Ts an unspoken moral imperative to capitalism. It says to those 
who practice it, a?osave thy neighbora??. Save her with a delight. Save her 
with a moment of joy. Save her by taking her out of herself for a minute, 
an hour, or a day. Save her by giving her new powers. Save her by giving 
her new comforts and new consolations. Save one neighbor and you make a 
dollar. Save a thousand neighbors and you can make a thousand dollars. Save 
ten million folks youa?Tve never seen, folks who are your neighbors on this 
planet, and you can make ten million dollars.

    If you forget that your mission is to understand your neighbora?Ts 
needs and serve them, you will go home empty at the end of the day. 
Youa?Tll wonder why youa?Tre among the mass of men who lead lives of quiet 
desperation, why youa?Tre among the hollow men, heads filled with straw, 
trudging without purpose through life. Save your fellow human beings with 
what we call products and services and you can go home knowing that someone 
needed you today. You can go home knowing that you were a part of something 
far, far greater than yourselfa?"the advancement of others.

    And perhaps you were even a part of something that Osama deplores and 
we should celebrate-- the handmade evolution of the human race.

    ----------
    Howard Bloom
    Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the 
Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big 
Bang to the 21st Century
    Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; 
Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute
    www.howardbloom.net
    www.bigbangtango.net
    Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: 
Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; 
founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of 
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American 
Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and 
Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board 
member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.
    For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: 
www.paleopsych.org
    for two chapters from
    The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
    For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the 
Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net

  www.worldblend.net - Where art and science conspire to produce a digital 
world ruled by the imagination and where the possible exists within the 
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