Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much… the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons. – Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Ch. 23)
Section 1: War
(Conjecture) 11
Even if the conditions necessary for life occur throughout the universe, most places would only have microbes, and intelligence like ours would only develop in unusual situations. Even so, the universe is so huge that even rare events could happen millions of times. Other intelligent life might never develop technology, or some may have progressed until they almost destroyed themselves. A few might survive by accepting themselves and finding their Sacred Grove, yet before people reach this stage, we must rediscover a few facts about ourselves. In our temple, the fifth perspective is us.
People have complained about the way I use the words civilized. They think that I am insulting foraging cultures by not calling them civilized. I use the term civilization to refer to cultures with enough technology to separate themselves from nature. I do not consider civilization to be a better way of life. We should live closer to nature.
In the book “Coming Home to the Pleistocene,” the ecologist Paul Shepard says we have the bodies, minds, and needs of foragers. Our ancestors foraged for millions of years, as natural selection molded our bodies into foragers. The forager is our Nature, and what a person thinks about foragers equals what the person thinks about our Nature. The movie Croods (2013) portrays cave dwellers as crude. The portrait is not true; Archeologists found mythological symbols people made during the last Ice Age (Tattersall, 2008 ch. 6). This art shows that a lot was going on in the minds of Stone Age people. Stone Age people were not too different from us.
The sacred name of the fifth perspective is YESUO. Renaissance occultists put the S in YHVH, and they would pretend it was a Hebrew spelling for the Christian Jesus. The S is supposed to represent salvation, and since those occultists equated salvation with being progressive, for them, the S represents the progressive fixer of the world. I prefer not to think of it that way. In our temple, “Y” means conception, “E” means birth, “S” means learning, “U” Means maturity, and “O” means old age. This name contains the five stages of Life and the points of the body. Y matches the head, E matches the left arm, S matches the left leg, U matches the right Leg, and O matches the right hand. Life stands on the Earth at the middle pillar in the center of the temple, balanced between everything, and the common name for the fifth perspective of homo sapiens is Mars.
For the Roman writer Ovid, Mars is the personification of war (Fasti 3:1). Is war a necessary part of us? In the TV series “Cosmos,” Carl Sagan blames primitive parts of the brain for warfare.
“We see here a conflict between our passions and what is sometimes called our better natures; between the deep, ancient reptilian part of the brain, the R-complex, in charge of murderous rages, and the more recently evolved mammalian and human parts of the brain, the limbic system, and the cerebral cortex.” (Cosmos episode 13)
Sagan wanted to control our aggression with cultural improvements where the civilized takes priority over the Primitive. Carl Sagan seems to have good intentions; however, the wrong process used to correct evil could intensify evil. Civilized societies invent more reasons for us to kill each other when people fight over political propaganda and economic growth. The civilized writer Clausewitz thought these traditions were normal.
“War is the continuation of politics by other means.” (Clausewitz, 1832 ch.1 sec 24)
Prehistoric people most likely had politics and economics; however, civilization has enhanced these activities into artificial institutions, and civilizations invented more ways to kill than tribal war ever would (Keegan, 1993 ch. 4). Instead of each person dealing with conflict, modern civilized society outsources resistance to the military and the police. They keep citizens insulated from the killing approved by governments; therefore, civilized culture seems peaceful to the protected.
Our primate animal side is not all warlike. Research by the zoologist Frans de Waal shows animals with empathy, fairness, and reconciliation. We have inherited these abilities.
“There is no sharp dividing line between human and animal emotions.” (de Waal, 2013)
We are a social species where individuals care about other tribe members. However, our behavior can not be easily defined. Neuroscientists have found complex relationships between parts of our brain (Sapolsky, 2017). Combinations of emotions adjust combinations of emotions. Humans are also heavily influenced by culture.
Nature alone did not create civilized armies. A perversion of our Nature makes people part of a team of disciplined fighting machines, and sometimes soldiers are told to put personal feelings aside. Politicians use our feelings. Even love becomes a tool used to support war when politicians tell us how the war will help our families. Our sense of loyalty gets used to encourage people to fight. Consider how, in civilized societies, families do choose where to send their children to fight; the government makes that choice. Sometimes, they send your kids to fight in places far away for reasons that you might not understand.
The anthropologist Brian Ferguson claims Stone Age cultures were peaceful (Ferguson, 2018). However, the idea that foragers had lots of war has been reinforced by the book “The Better Angels of Our Nature” by a psychologist named Steven Pinker. There are fewer wars today than a hundred years ago (Pinker, 2011). Does this evidence show civilized progress improved our lives? But What if progress originally caused those wars by disrupting culture, leading to centuries of war from which modern society is now recovering? I was unable to determine if Pinker was correct. Pinker writes about many interesting topics and could be right about a lot of stuff; however, archaeological evidence does not always tell us the whole story. Suppose researchers find the remains of someone with an arrow in their back. Pinker might assume the death was a murder. Ferguson might assume the death was a hunting accident. I also mistrust Pinker’s interpretation of statistics, which uses small samples to get large numbers (Ferguson, 2013).
Pinker realized we have the potential for good and assumed civilized changes have helped to cultivate the potential goodness in people. Pinker prefers the modified people’s ways and not the original ones. Did domestication make us good, or do cultures become stable when our social instincts encourage peace? The improvements brought about by progressive enlightenment would never have been accepted if people lacked a mechanism to make our species want those changes. A species without this mechanism would not find these changes enlightened in the same way earthlings do. We should appreciate the Animal inside’s contributions to creating a peaceful society.
In the late twentieth century, the wealthier nations stopped fighting each other; potentially, the world will unite into a Global Nation (Talbott, 1992). For Pinker, reason, science, and humanism improved our lives. Of course, modern science has done a better job of revealing the universe than any other method. Modern technology moved beyond anything our ancestors could do, but progressive civilization made itself the only option. Warfare continues when civilized governments have a war against the citizens as they try to control us. Consequently, peace will never come from this civilized order if the future ends up with a police baton forever beating us into submission.
Section 2: Lies
(Conjecture) 7
A few centuries ago, explorers brought back stories about human sacrifice. The English Captain James Cook recorded one in Tahiti (Journal, 1777). You might assume that such behavior was typical of uncivilized people, and Cooks’s story has some details that we should consider. An organized priesthood performed the ritual; it was done as preparation for war, and the king approved of the sacrifice. These are features of a civilized society. There must have been Tahitians who opposed the sacrifice and were not allowed to stop it. But then, the whole story could be fiction.
Stories one culture says about another tend to be inaccurate. The Protestant English settlers in 17th century North America mistook ceremonies among the Native Americans for the sacrifices of people and thought the Native Americans worshiped a Devil called Okee (Smith, 1624 bk. 2). Rather than trying to understand Native American religion, the settlers invented stories. These settlers were not the only ones inventing stories.
Before the development of anthropology, the information scholars had about tribal societies came from rumors invented by missionaries and prospectors who wanted to exploit fresh opportunities. Unfortunately, even the educated believed these stories. An Englishman named James George Frazer collected these rumors in a book called “The Golden Bough.” Though the book mostly tells stories about farmers, not foragers, readers easily mistake the stories as typical of all uncivilized tribes. Frazer thought primitive people believed killing would make the crops grow, and then Frazer interpreted agricultural stories about rebirth as evidence of people being sacrificed (Frazer, 1926 ch. 47). These stories portray the loving care a farmer gives to their job.
Frazer wrote stories about a king getting replaced (Frazer, 1926 ch. 24) and assumed the new king killed and ate the old king. The idea of peaceful retirement seldom occurs to Frazer, who sees a sacrifice in almost every myth. Frazer assumes primitive tribes live in fear of the terrible wilderness, and ignorant of how to fix this situation, the tribes use magic. These ideas led Sigmund Freud to assume civilized behavior saves you from the misery produced by the savage hidden in your mind. Freud’s writing influenced popular culture’s view of foreign tribes. Unfortunately, the image of a bloodthirsty primitive culture supported a stereotype in which all primitive tribes acted like the natives in the movie King Kong (1933).
For Frasier, refined civilization produced religion, whereas magic was an ignorant superstition of primitive minds (Frazer, 1926 ch. 4). Before Frasier, the philosopher Auguste Comte preached how civilized progress replaced superstition (Mill, 1865). A change may have occurred when civilized people became more detached from Nature, but this change was not better. A civilized person fears the jungle, whereas people living all their lives in it feel at home. Fear makes us build stories to support fear; misinformation gets combined with errors, becoming bigger errors.
The Golden Bough makes primitive cultures seem cruel, though even if most of these reports are wrong, a few could be true or partially true when a writer gives a sinister tone to something harmless. Question how often anyone practices these cruel practices or how closely people follow the tradition. Rebels or reformers may reject the tradition. Stories about evil acts might have been invented to show the evil in performing such acts.
Frazer thought primitive people had a limited point of view. Frazer did not know that thinkers in foraging cultures equal the greatest of civilized thinkers. The Native American Black Elk talks about a circle of people, which makes more sense than when civilized preachers pretended to know what your soul needs. Black Elk was a Thunder Dreamer who observed the Morning Star. This puritanical idealist fit in civilization by working as a deacon in the Catholic Church (DeMallie 1984, pt. 1). Even so, Black Elk still had a strong vision of the connection with the land and wanted to be a helper of the people, and this is what a holy person should be.
Section 3: More Lies
(Conjecture) 8
According to the poet Schiller, people only know animal impulses without civilized refinement.
“The savage despises Art and recognizes Nature as his sovereign mistress;” (Schiller, 1794 Letter 4)
Such talk will give the impression that good art only happens in civilization. Of course, artists use time and effort to refine their work; however, we should not equate this refinement with civilization since all cultures produce artists. I must admit, German music in Schiller’s time was beyond anything any other culture ever made.
Edith Hamilton, the author of a famous book called “Mythology,” says that primitive cultures never had lovely visions and then claims the Greeks had risen above the primal slime. The Greeks in Homer’s stories love to rape, steal, and murder, and in real life, Greeks raiders took other people’s property. Edith Hamilton came from a culture that also took other people’s property. Such beautiful people ignore their own ugliness, while a feeling of superiority lets them destroy cultures without considering how the thoughts in other cultures also have value.
The colonial British government wanted Native American land, so they paid money for Native American scalps (Nies, 1996 ch. VI). Such civilized programs exterminated thousands of cultures all over the world in the name of progress, leaving the colonized nations full of poverty and disease. The English had company in their attempt to take over the world; their primary competitor was Spain. The Spanish historian Bernal Diaz would accuse Spain’s targets of sacrificing people (Diaz, 1568). The Spanish made the Aztecs look bad after conquering Mexico and destroying the native literature. Only the conqueror’s ideas survive once a culture’s history has been erased. The Aztecs might not have been bad.
Consider how Ancient Greek technology seems primitive compared to our modern gadgets, yet scholars still look for answers in old philosophy books from the ancient Greeks. Though the best philosophy books from India, Greece, and China were written not long after 700 BC, the books contain ideas that people talked about long before anyone wrote books. In the book “Tristes Tropiques,” the anthropologist Levi-Strauss noticed tribes in the Amazon jungle used various symbols.
“they are moved by a need or a desire to understand the world around them, its nature and their society.” (Levi-Strauss, 1978 ch. 2)
The desire to understand the world motivates thinkers in all cultures. Joseph Campbell collected meaningful stories from all over the world. Therefore, we should not be surprised if even rationalists, skeptics, and progressives lived in prehistoric societies. A religious expert from 30,000 BC would resemble a religious scholar today, and an atheist from 30,000 BC would have the same doubts as atheists today.
Do not assume the brain got bigger after it invented civilization. Our ancestor’s brains were about the same size as ours. Homo sapiens have had large brains for over 100,000 years (Tattersall, 2008 ch. 6), while modern civilization has been around for less than 12,000 years. Species related to homo sapiens, such as Neanderthals and Heidelbergensis, also had large brains.
Civilized scholars used modern educational methods to become specialized in a few kinds of knowledge. Meanwhile, the forager lifestyle requires much more use of the mind than a civilized lifestyle, and people living in the wilderness develop an intricate understanding of their land (Diamond 1997 p. 21). High intelligence becomes unnecessary in a civilization where services get provided for you and where your brain can become permanently damaged. At the same time, technology keeps you alive, even allowing you to reproduce. Domesticated animals lack the skills of their wild ancestors. Consider how domestication turned a wolf into those little nervous dogs who shake constantly. Our descendants will eventually become dumber (Crabtree, 2012).
The idea that civilized people are better than primitive people has led to misunderstanding, and the ignorance of where we belong allowed civilized writers to invent a cruel image of people in nature, where primitive people struggle to survive. Such a harsh assumption makes civilization seem necessary. An essay called “The Original Affluent Society,” written by Marshall Sahlins, refutes this belief by claiming hunters enjoy more leisure than people in industrial societies. One of the main sources Sahlins used was the researcher Richard Borshay Lee, who portrayed the San in the Kalahari (Lee, 1979); however, Lee mentions how the San got stuff by working with agricultural cultures (Kelly, 2013 ch. 1); therefore, the San might not be a reliable example of foragers.
Section 4: Anthropology
(Conjecture) 10
Societies that depend on crops, animals, and machines have taken over the world. Reliable information about foraging people would help us understand how everyone lived before agriculture. Unfortunately, stories about foragers might not be reliable because no living society is the same as our foraging ancestors. The ancestors of the Innuits were foragers; however, they used advanced hunting tools and sophisticated boats that I don’t think existed twenty thousand years ago. Innuits should be classified as technologically advanced. African Kalahari people have been forced to live in deserts where few people can live. This gave anthropologists the impression that foragers lived in small groups. Thousands of years ago, foragers lived in places that could support larger societies.
Back in anthropology class, the students were shown movies about foraging cultures. These cultures include the African San, Aboriginal Australians, and Inuits. These movies were pieced together using actors to portray how anthropologists thought foragers would act. Karl Heider writes about the makers of ethnographic films taking artistic license.
“Rather, they would take a selection of data and interpret these data in a particularly enlightening and convincing manner. The truth perhaps, but certainly not the whole truth.” (Heider, 2009)
Did that author call lies enlightened? Whenever anyone tries to understand people, there are all kinds of unknown variables, and we tend to fill these variables with what we believe. Sometimes, field researchers pay for information, and the Native American writer Charles Eastman noticed how informants learn to make a profit by inventing stories the scholar expects to hear.
“Give a reservation Indian a present, and he will possibly provide you with sacred songs, a mythology, and folk-lore to order!” (Eastman, 1911 xii)
I am not saying all stories are fake. To understand foraging cultures, we should use the information published by reputable academic institutions, though remain skeptical. Even the best scholars interpret what people do using other people’s interpretations. Ideas about people end up being more imaginative than truth.
Over a century ago, the scholar Auguste Comte thought people progressed from primitive thought to more advanced consciousness. Such scholars supported their speculation with words such as fetish, fertility, and taboo. Since people will study these words rather than cultures, a scholarly tradition of assumptions led to strange hypotheses. For instance, the psychologist Carl Jung thought myths came from archetypes in the unconscious mind (Jung, 1964). This archetype model would explain why all cultures seemed to share similar stories, but we should consider the possibility that scholars found myths to fit this model by ignoring parts of stories that do not fit. Archetypes only exist in the minds of scholars, and the stories seem the same because the people collecting the stories all came from the same culture and all shared a similar perspective.
The anthropologist’s personal feelings may influence how the anthropologist describes cultures. Colin Turnbull wrote a book depicting happy Forest People after one of the Forest People, named Kenge, made Turnbull happy. Turnbull also wrote another book portraying the Ik as miserable after becoming frustrated with the Ik. Turnbull did not see kindness in them. In contrast, a documentary called “Ikland” (2011) shows how the Ik are not the monsters Turnbull portrayed. Never consider one person’s observation valid unless the observations get tested multiple times by more than one person.
We should learn about other cultures by listening to what members of those cultures say in their own words. In a famous speech, the Native American Chief Seattle felt such a strong bond with the land that losing a part of the land was to lose a relative. Unfortunately, the speech is a forgery (Anderson, 1991), and we will never know how the real Seattle felt. The fake speech reinforces the stereotype that all Native Americans love the Earth. I learned the stereotype was false while visiting a Native American reservation where some residents had different opinions about the Earth.
The sources of information also tell stories from their point of view. Margaret Mead collected information from a few young girls and then used this information to support the claim that the Samoans were easier going than Western culture.
“The girls’ minds were perplexed by no conflicts, troubled by no philosophical queries, beset by no remote ambitions.” (Mead, 1928)
Contradicting Mead, Derek Freeman collected information from older people who considered themselves guardians of tradition, and these elders led Freeman to believe the Samoans had a rigid culture with lots of rules (Freeman, 1983). After Margaret Mead had died, a lady named Fa’apua’a Fa’amu claimed to be one of the girls Mead used, and in the video “Margaret Mead and Samoa” (1988), Fa’apua’a Fa’amu said the girls misled Mead. I do not think the girl lied to Mead since our opinions of ourselves tend to change when we get older. The person said what seemed true to a kid and later said what seemed true to an older person. Mead made the mistake of assuming the Samoans were different from our culture. You can get similar stories from young girls in any culture. In society, each person is part of more than one process; people feel more than one way, and anything an individual says only tells part of the story. People also exaggerate when telling stories.
Information about some cultures was lost because the people realized they had to keep secrets. Conquerors will kill people for following harmless traditions. For example, the Spanish Conquistadors used dogs to kill men who dressed feminine.
“Vasco discovered that the village of Quarequa was stained by the foulest vice. The king’s brother and a number of other courtiers were dressed as women, and according to the accounts of the neighbours shared the same passion. Vasco ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs.” (D’Anghera, 1530)
Unfortunately, almost every culture in the world was absorbed or destroyed by the larger world culture before 1890, so now people have to read books to learn about their ancestors. Few books stand out as good sources of information about what life in tribal society was like before assimilation. One such book about a Native American is called, “Lame Deer, Seeker of Vision.” Notably, Lame Deer’s book contains an insightful comparison of cultures where Lame Deer talks about our Western culture from the point of view of someone who knew the old traditions. Lame Deer also gave one of the best explanations for visions in all religious literature.
I visited different cultures with a wide variety of opinions; both religious and atheists live in the same town; conservatives and liberals live in the same neighborhood; philosophers and dimwits are found in the same family, so why assume Foragers were any different? Perhaps foragers were everyday people with traditions similar to anyone else. When a group portrays their ancestors, such as how the Inuktitut shows them in the movie “The Fast Runner” (2001), we see people behaving similarly to people in other cultures. Cultural differences are minor compared to similarities.
Section 5: The Messiah
(Conjecture) e 8
Sometimes, tribal cultures get blamed for the wrongs civilization did. For instance, my relatives thought that the Native Americans killed off the Buffaloes. They were never told how Native Americans had a special relationship with the bison and other life.
“It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit.” (Neihardt, 1932 ch. 1)
This relationship lasted for thousands of years before Europeans came along and converted the wild grazing land to farmland, causing the bison’s decline (Nies, 1996 ch. VII). My relatives want to believe that what they do is better than what other people do. Perhaps all tribes have people who feel that way. The ancient Jews consider themselves the Chosen People, who must obey the laws God gave Moses.
“And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.” (Genesis 17:7)
When people think of themselves as better than other people, they also like to think of someone else as worse. In Jewish holy books, the Canaanites were accused of burning children in sacrifice to Moloch (Leviticus 18:21). Archeologists found Canaanite writing at Ugarit (Coogan, 2012), and these show the Canaanites were ordinary people. Perhaps the Canaanites never burned children to Moloch, and the Jews were never the Chosen.
The Babylonians conquered the ancestors of the Jews (2 Kings 25). People were taken from their homeland. Later, the Persians allowed displaced people to settle in Judea. These settlers tried to bring back the laws of Moses (Ezra 3), and they reconstructed what they believed the old ways to be. Bible passages describe how, before the conquest, the people forgot the deal they had with God and started worshiping idols.
“So I went in and looked, and I saw portrayed all over the walls all kinds of crawling things and unclean animals and all the idols of Israel.” (Ezekiel 8:10)
Stories developed that said God punished people for not being faithful to the old laws.
“Son of man, when the land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out mine hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it:” (Ezekiel 14:13)
Another story developed where the Messiah would restore the Jewish kingdom for those faithful to the old laws.
“And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:14)
The settlers were rebuilding old ways that might have never existed. The ancestors of the Jews might not have been different from other Canaanites. Whatever the case, the settlers built a religion that would last for centuries and significantly influence history. Thousands of years later, orthodox Jews still wait for the Messiah. Christians claim the Messiah came to Earth, founded the church, and then died to save us. Christians claim Jesus will one day return, and to get salvation, you must find faith in Jesus.
“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:17)
Since the Jesus story first gained popularity when Rome manipulated other nations, consider the possibility that the Christian idea of salvation came about because of a need to escape the horrors civilization inflicts. Stories about savors come about when governments are cruel to people, and a feeling of hopelessness motivates them to look for hope. Unfortunately, when the oppressed forget how to build a kinder society, the oppressed enforce cruel religious laws. This happened recently in the Middle East when, after years of war and torture by ruthless dictators, a bunch of angry young men set up the Islamic State, and these terrorists think the messiah Mahdi will help them spread Sharia law around the world (Wood, 2015). Cruelty causing more cruelty also explains what happened in Germany after World War One. It might also explain the hostile activities of Black Lives Matter. The results of resenting are never good when the oppressed become the privileged.
We need better ideas than the angry outbursts of disgruntled victims. I searched the world literature, and privileged people have good ideas. Thomas Jefferson is one of my favorites. Jefferson founded the United States, Muhammad founded Islam, and both tried to build what each believed to be a better world. Though both owned enslaved people, Jefferson knew slavery would be abolished someday, for Jefferson was an educated gentleman who saw beyond one’s time, knowing later generations would improve all plans. Jefferson’s beliefs were written in stone on a wall in the Jefferson Memorial.
“As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.” (Jefferson, 1816)
Muhammad did not see beyond tribal traditions and assumed that the ways of one tribe were the only right ways, which would never change.
“(This was Our) way with the apostles We sent before thee: thou wilt find no change in Our ways.” (Qur’an 17:77)
Plus, Muhammad claimed to be the last prophet.
“Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but (he is) the Messenger of Allah, and the Seal of the Prophets: and Allah has full knowledge of all things.” (Qur’an 33:40)
Which direction will earthlings go in the future? Will we boldly go where no one has gone before, or will we submit and stagnate in religious fundamentalism? There is no last prophet, and we will continue to produce visionaries.
Section 6: Now what?
10
The foragers in places such as Australia and the Andaman Islands experienced extreme cultural disruption once outsiders entered their land. Thousands of people died, and we do not understand why because we do not understand ourselves.
You will discover yourself wrong in physics and biology if your predictions do not fit observations. Unfortunately, we can not observe a tribe before they encountered modern civilization. Whoever recorded the first contact was probably not the first civilized person the tribe ever saw. A friendly tribe will have changed after a group of invaders killed and raped their families. We might never know how aggressive or peaceful they originally were.
With the unpredictability of human behavior, even contradictory viewpoints could both have some truth. Of course, not all anthropological reports are wrong, and an outsider could research a culture well enough to understand it better than its members. Most likely, there are a few good books somewhere, though I cannot tell when ones are right, and using unreliable information to support opinions would be dishonest. I am unable to determine if our species naturally does war or if war is abnormal for people.
Even though reliable information about people is hard to find, progressives still talk about people as if they are evil and need to be domesticated. The term toxic masculinity is used to blame various forms of masculine behavior for a wide variety of problems. For example, a complainer can claim that men using harsh language exclude feminine people. The complainer wants a timid society and does not represent all feminine people. Some ladies like harsh language.
People without evidence tend to become demanding and pushy. They can become so confident in their ideas that they want to apply social engineering to force people to be what they want. The American Psychological Association guidelines give the impression that masculine roles infect people who need saving from themselves (APA, 2018). I do not know if the research cited by the guidelines shows traditional masculine roles are harmful. I suspect the guidelines were written by scared people who say whatever aggressive social reformers tell them to say.
Masculine people are happy being masculine, and people living with masculine people are also happy. I understand that society needs masculine behavior. I do not want people to fear male behavior until they ask authorities to restrict our behavior. This will have horrible consequences for future generations if we end up in a society where people are not allowed to be people. Should we choose the enforced safety of civilization or the freedom of the wilderness? Before we answer that question, we should at least try to understand our species. Misinformation will put us in places where we do not belong.
Beware of policies that promise safety because restrictions you set up to restrict the other guy will one day limit you. Consider how laws get used in ways the creators never intended. Tyrants do not build tyrannies from scratch; tyrants use existing laws. The economist Friedrich Hayek tried to tell us socialism leads to fascism.
“We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may prevent its use for desirable purposes.” (Hayek 1944)
Should we return to an ancient law, or should we take advice from Pinker and build a better world? Sadly, so much of our thinking is influenced by fear of people. The fearful ignore examples that do not fit their beliefs and only see what supports fear. The mistake of our utopian fantasies seemed like good intentions as we created restrictions that became building blocks of our prison.
You have probably never seen a rabid dog attack. You can knock it back, and it will keep attacking. Our culture has become a prison of fear. We will keep attacking everyone around us if we do not find a better way to understand people.
I do not think we will ever understand people until we see people in their natural environment. We do not need all the gadgets civilization has given us. These devices have become an unnatural cage. There must be some way to downsize civilization and find a way of life that is closer to how humans are biologically fit to live. Only then will we see people grow to become what they are supposed to become.
We, the civilized, live an artificial life. Is it life? Are we even human, or are we just ghosts of our primate ancestors? A tiny population on the Andaman Islands is the last to live like our primal ancestors. Are they the last of us?
Next Page Chapter 6
Sources
Adams, Douglas. The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. London: Pan Books, 1979.
Anderson, Ross. “Myth-Quoted: Words of Chief Seattle Were Eloquent – But Not His.” The Seattle Times, 1 July 1991.
APA “APA Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men” American Psychological Association, (August 2018).
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. Director Zacharias Kunuk. Sony Pictures, 2001. Film.
Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
Clausewitz, Carl von. On War, 1832. Translated by J.J. Graham. London: Trubner, 1873.
Coogan, Michael. Stories from Ancient Canaan, Second Edition. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.
Cook, Captain James. The Journals of Captain Cook. London: Penguin, 1999.
Crabtree, Gerald R. “Our fragile intellect. Part I and Part II.” Trends in Genetics, vol. 29, no. 1 (2013) pp. 1-5.
Croods. Director Kirk DeMicco and Chris Sanders. DreamWorks Animation, 2013. Film.
D’Anghera, Peter Martyr. De Orbe Novo, 1530. Translated by Francis Augustus MacNutt. Vol. 1. New York: Putnam, 1912.
DeMallie, Raymond J. The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
de Waal, Frans, and Frans BM Waal. The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates. New York, WW Norton & Company, 2013.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997.
Diaz del Castillo, Bernal. The Conquest of New Spain, 1568. Translated by J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1963.
Eastman, Charles A. The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1911.Frazer, James. The Golden Bough – A Study in Magic and Religion – abridged edition. New York: Macmillan, 1926.
Ferguson, Brian. “Pinker’s list: Exaggerating prehistoric war mortality.” War, peace, and human nature: the convergence of evolutionary and cultural views (2013) pp. 112-150.
Ferguson, Brian “War Is Not Part of Human Nature” Scientific American, 1 September 2018.
Frazer, James. The Golden Bough – A Study in Magic and Religion – abridged edition. New York: Macmillan, 1926.
Freeman, Derek. Margaret Mead and Samoa: The making and unmaking of an anthropological myth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.
Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1942.
Heider, Karl G. Ethnographic film: revised edition. University of Texas Press, 2009.
Holy Bible. King James Version. Oxford, 1769.
Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. London: Penguin Books, 1998.
Hume, Lynne. Anthropologists in the Field: Cases in Participant Observation. Columbia University Press, 2012.
Hayek, Friedrich. The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge & Sons, 1944.
Jefferson, Thomas. Jefferson: Writings. New York: Library of America, 1984.
Jung, Carl. Man and His Symbols. New York: Doubleday, 1964.
Keegan, John. A History of Warfare. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
Kelly, Robert. The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
King Kong. Director Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack. RKO Radio Pictures, 1933. Film.
Lame Deer, John (Fire) and Richard Erdoes. Lame Deer Seeker of Visions. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
Lee, Richard B. The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society. Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques, 1955. Translated by John and Doreen Weightman. New York: Atheneum 1973.
Margaret Mead and Samoa. Director Frank Heimans. Wombat Film and Video, 1988. Film.
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. New York: William Morrow, 1928.
Mill, John Stuart. Auguste Comte and Positivism. London: Trubner, 1865.
Muhammad. Qur’an. Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. Lahore, Pakistan, 1934.
Neihardt, John. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. New York: W. Morrow & Co., 1932.
Nies, Judith. Native American History. New York: Ballantine Books 1996.
Ovid. Fasti. Translated by James George Frazer. London: Heinemann, 1931.
Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking Books, 2011.
Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Random House, 1980.
Sagan, Carl. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. New York: Ballantine Books, 1978.
Sahlins, Marshall. “The Original Affluent Society.” Man the Hunter symposium (1966).
Sapolsky, Robert. “Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.” New York: Penguin Press, 2017.
Schiller, Friedrich. On the Aesthetic Education of Man, 1794. Translated by Reginald Snell. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954.
Shepard, Paul. Coming Home to the Pleistocene. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1998.
Smith, John. The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. London: Michael Sparkes, 1624.
Talbott, Strobe. “The Birth of a Global Nation.” Time Magazine, 20 July 1992.
Tattersall, Ian. The World from Beginnings to 4000 BCE (New Oxford World History). Oxford University Press, 2008.
Turnbull, Colin M. The Forest People. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961.
Turnbull, Colin M. The Mountain People. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.
Wood, Graeme. “What ISIS really wants.” The Atlantic 315.2 (2015) pp. 78-94.