Firearms discipline and my grandfather

Let me explain my comments on the use of arms and the ban on that use. I believe strongly in restrictive legislation on the possession and the use of arms. I was raised with those restrictions and still deeply respect the restrictions.

I hail from a family of hunters, gamekeepers and forest guards who maintained strict discipline about handling guns when out in the field and locking them securely away at home. My grandfather had three guns: a Ferd. Reuss double-barreled shotgun caliber 12, a Mauser rifle caliber 22 and a FN rifle caliber 22. He had official licenses for all three of them since the Dutch gunlaw was installed in 1917.

He always took one of those arms with him during rounds of inspection in the park woods or winderness. Poachers could become dangerous. Back home her took his keys for pocket, opened the gun cabinet, put the gun back, locked the cabinet and put the keys back in his pocket. Fixed ritual. This behavior was paet and parcel of the society he lived in.

At the picture, you see my grandfather as first left. Notice the safe directions of two guns:

Of course, installing proper legislation, against the will of a minority or majority in society, may reduce the number of accidents. But a force symptomatic for the American society, the strongly lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA), resists calls to install good legislation for long already.

I remember how those calls came up after the release of the dramatic movie ‘Joe’ back then in 1970. Sadly enough, they did bring new legislation.

So, what is in the American culture that makes, for instance, the NRA so powerful? By thinking deeper about this culture we go beyond the fighting of symptoms and touch on forces that may be causing many other problems in people and social life as well.

Joe, 1970: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYQUnA-q26M

Genes leading to the demise of humanity

Will our genetic makeup lead to the demise of humanity?

I propose to consider three tendencies that seem to be inborn and endanger our survival: greed in all members of the group, male inter-group strife for territory, and male power struggles within the group accepted by females.

Of course, genes that counter-balance fatal inclinations are to explored also.

Probably, greed has been in us already before we took to farming. We can see this greed in chimpanzee behaviors already. But for chimps and early humans there are hardly opportunities to store what is gathered beyond what can be consumed immediately.

With the rise farming, though, humans developed the technical and social means to store surplus food and in due course the products of crafts and arts as well. This inclination has derailed into an ongoing drive for more consumption although it leads to over-exploitation on of the planet.

The male inclination to fight neighbors for territory, to the intended benefit of all within the group, is perhaps too strong in humans to arrive at reasonable agreements between countries and companies in order to save the planet. Have you seen this video with an inter-group chimp fight about territory? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7XuXi3mqYM

As Nicole Bea Pastoukoff wrote me on Facebook, human males have an inborn tendency to fight one another as rivals in getting access to women. This gives women the strongest offspring possible within the group and contributes to the survival of the group.

But the males may get obsessed with gaining ever more power. These power struggles may make them ignore sometimes necessary adaptations to available resources, let alone consider future needs.

Palestine-Lebanon Corridor: Tragic Till Today

PALESTINE-LEBANON CORRIDOR: TRAGIC TILL TODAY

Did you know that east of the Mediterranean Sea there’s only a narrow strip of fertile land before the mountains rise up? No?

Well, quite likely you have heard a lot about this area in the media, without realizing it is just a narrow strip of land with lots of people living there.

Here are the present-day names: Palestine, Israel, Lebanon and Syria. And you may say: ‘Hey, it’s that area where rage and suffering never ends. The people have fought one another since biblical times and it still goes on.’

That’s right. The violence is structural and old.

See, the fertile strip of land was part of the Fertile Crescent, where humans took to the cultivation of food grains 12,000 years ago and populations grew rapidly.

But in the narrow corridor they had much less space for expansion than in other parts of the Crescent, such as in Egypt or Iraq. So, in the Corridor the population grew beyond what the fertile land could provide for. People resorted to life in the mountains which brings small communities existing fairly isolated from each other or fighting each other.

Second, while communities in and near the Corridor remained weak by their small size and mutual fights, other societies in the Crescent expanded and built large armies. They moved over long distances and often came through the Corridor.

Next to scarcity and mutual fighting, the Corridor communities faced a long series of terrorizing occupations, oppressions, exploitations and deportations by the empires of Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans and, in the end, also West Europeans.

So it came that the formation of stable political structures in and around the Corridor remained disrupted. Fragmentation reigned and mutual fighting between small communities went on. This became so deeply ingrained in the unconscious of people that we see the pattern still continued.

Corridor king David killed 22,000 Syrians after they had surrendered and been taken captive. That immense cruelty happened around 1,000 BC. The Israelite Old Testament tells us about it in Chronicles.

Around three hundred years later, this Corridor kingdom found its demise in confrontations with big empires of the time. An Assyrian army marched up, defeated the Israelite army and carried away thousands of Israelites. They resettled them in other parts of the Fertile Crescent as forced laborers in large projects such as irrigation systems, temples, palaces, massive fortifications and roads.

Once upon a time, there was a people living in the Corridor, between River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea that I’ll tell you about. They were called Palestinians, after their land Palestine.

Then, in 1947-1949 more than 700,000 of them, around 80% of the population, were forced from their homes and lands by a penetrating Israeli army. Recognize the pattern? This period is called Nakba. You can find the ruins of villages just by searching for old trees planted for their shadow by the erstwhile villagers.

When the perplexed and defenseless Palestinians finally came to organize resistance they were called terrorists. But the real terror was inflicted by the Israeli army during the Nakba. The terror has been going on since then. Violent liberation actions are pinpricks compared to the mass murder and cruel oppression by the occupying forces.

Humanity derailing beyond survival needs

To coordinate larger-scale works and get labor done for the common good, central leadership evolved. This generated social hierarchies that could enforce, in a top-down way, the labor efforts that to workers did not seem to satisfy their immediate needs.

Central leadership also arose in order to store and distribute harvests for an entire year and keep a minimum of grains as seeds in the next season. Men, with their physical superiority, were the ones using chances to rise in the hierarchy. Women were easier to subjugate and force to work for the common good.

In due course, social hierarchies solidified and started to derail into unnecessary violent discipline. From there, forced labor and slavery were introduced.

With low seasons giving time to specialize in crafts and arts, and storage of harvests getting larger, it became attractive to assault neighboring villages and loot their cereals, along with products of crafts and art.

It made humans learn the taste of blood. Before, conflicts between neighboring groups usually boiled down to limited skirmishes for territory. But now that there was free time in the low seasons and popular food seemingly easily accessible, people’s genes proved able to make us murderously greedy.

This new type of inter-community thrive further contributed to inequality between the sexes as male warrior bands, after having killed the inimical men, raped the women and brought them home for slave work.

Something else influenced neighbor conflicts. The emerging type of warfare also grew in scale. Permanent farming allowed for large populations and in the low season men could be recruited in huge numbers for the armies. Moreover, because of population growth, the survival of communities got less in danger with losses of many lives in warfare. Armies of 50,000 to 100,000 soldiers were seen marching against enemies near and far in West Asia.

Yet another force reshaped patterns of conflict between neighbors. It had to do with men having grown used to top-down enforced labor discipline in the organization of farm work. This familiarity facilitated the organization of large armies in similar ways. It made many a soldier more afraid of the commander than of the enemy and fight nearly mechanically. Once a field battle was won, the lid of discipline was taken off and all hell broke loose for the surviving male and female enemies.

The Assyrians, in the valley down from the Zagros Mountains were farming started, got especially known for their highly skilled warfare. And once they had conquered another community, they used extreme cruelty to destroy the enemy’s sense of identity and any hope of rebellion. Their ferocity went so far as to skin prisoners alive, cut off body parts, including tongues, and displayed collections of human skulls.

And so, Fertile Crescent humanity set of for a future of oppression, exploitation, limitless cruelty, wild greediness and mass murder, all beyond what a community needs for survival.

Unlikely matriarchs

The idea of a matriarchal era in our evolution has been proposed since the 19th century and adopted as proof that women are well able to rule the world or that humans have a deep tendency to be ruled by women.

But quite likely, women never ruled the world. Yes, there have been matriarchal societies but they constituted a tiny part of all societies. At present six matriarchal societies exist that attract attention of anthropologists, feminists and tourists.

Some argue that a range of tribal societies, from about 25,000 years ago, made small, voluptuous female figurines that would represent matriarchy or female dominance.

Although there’s much evidence found for the existence of these figurines, this interpretation is contested. The so-called Venus figurines are rather seen as representing nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or the bounty of the earth. Others believe these figurines were made by men to express their sexual longing for women.

Reasonable as this may sound, more convincing is that in tribal societies women and men tend to have a complementary division of labor, with women mostly collecting plant food and men mostly collecting animal food, which remains unrelated to dominance by either sex. This pattern seems to have existed all over the planet and for 6-7 million years of human evolution.

Agrarian societies, from over the last 10,000 years, also made female figurines whereas these societies are patriarchal or male dominated. Male dominance arose with agriculture with men gradually leaving the domain of hunting and pushing women out of control in the domain of plant food, although women kept working a lot in agriculture.

Democracy was not invented

Democracy was not invented in the modern West. Neither was it not invented in other parts of the world and earlier times. Democracy has been present throughout the human evolution.

Small human groups have organized themselves fairly democratically for millions of years. It was and is what some simply call ‘tribal’ life, ignoring the many stages of ‘tribal’ organization, from the smallest groups to extensive kingdoms.

Women of the small groups jointly enter the jungle near camps to collect plant food, babies on their back, children around, while casually chatting, deliberating about pros and cons of a plant, or warning one another for dangers. Women with proven knowledge and wisdom may be more listened to than other women. Often they are the elder ones, but not always so. Don’t forget that staying alive is a daily concern. Listening to proven wisdom contributes to survival of the group. But all women chat.

Their men go out in hunting parties to shoot or catch prey animals. For strategic reasons they operate silently but signal to one another about a nearby prey animal or to warn for a predator or other dangers. Men with proven knowledge and wisdom may be more listened to than other men. They may be the elder ones, but not always so. Also here, survival is a deep concern and listening to proven wisdom a necessity.

Before and after the hunt men also deliberate. And in the camp a lot of talking goes on. The wiser members, female and male, may listen to all and express opinions when they feel it needed. Women and men with proven knowledge and wisdom may be more listened to than others, be they the eldest ones or not. Those habits lead to joint decisions for the good of the group.

If the group does not tap in on joint knowledge and wisdom it risks to perish and mistakes die out. If joint decisions are effective, the group survives and transfers apt thinking, feeling and acting to next generations.

But there was another force that endangered the original democracy. That came in the form of larger-scale communities with hierarchies that installed oppression and exploitation by force.

Lucky are the communities and societies that grew to large-scale size and could maintain parts of small-scale democracy. The Netherlands are an example.

Female farming paved the way for patriarchy

Once the breeding of cereal grasses such as barley, einkorn and emmer appeared to worthwhile, more and more groups of people decided to settle and build fenced villages and gardens. They did not plant one variety in straight lines as their Babylonian and Assyrian offspring would do in the plains and industrial farmers do today. No, they did it in casual, haphazard ways. Tribals in Karnataka, India, name this style ‘mandika tanam’.

Men were needed to protect plots against attacking neighbors and wild aninals while, in turn took to raiding other villages and loot the popular cereal produce. Men also came in to help growing the popular cereals. With long sticks they would poke holes in the soil to allow women put seeds in the holes. Women pulled the weeds. But for heavy work in the processing of harvested grains men got involved again. In short, they penetrated the plant domain of women.

Population growth made groups to leave the foothills and settle in the plains where they cleared the wild shrubs and trees in order to grow, along with soft foods, the new cereals. As this cereal production grew in size and workload, men contributed more time and attention to it.

It took thousands of years to learn breeding better cereal varieties, planting in straight lines to make weeding and harvesting easier, bringing water to dry places, using hand plows and finally go for deep plowing with draught animals. With those developments men got increasingly involved in the farming, the organization and building of larger-scale irrigation works and the overall leadership of agrarian affairs.

Unintentionally yet, if you want, tragically, the women who started farming facilitated the men taking control over most of the food supply. As a consequence, men came to control family life and wider social life as well, on the road to patriarchy that has poisoned interactions between women and men till the present day.

Women started the agricultural revolution

Women were the first farmers. Yes, I know, when you hear the word ‘farmers’ you think of men. But, no, not men were the first farmers. Women started the agricultural revolution, a crucial turn in the course of our evolution.

How can it be? Let me ask you this: remember that, next to hunting by men, women were the ones collecting edible plants as the large part of food supply to the group? They had the knowledge and skills to find and gather soft foods such as fruits and vegetables that could be eaten as they were.

And women brought grains, nuts, seeds, roots and pulses home to be crushed with stone tools, as you can see some animals do. Later those hard foods were roasted in camp fires. In due course, humans also learned to pound, to pulverize, those hard foods. They took all that trouble because hard foods, like meat, provided proteins, whereas hunting for meat was more tedious and dangerous.

These food habits came up and still occur all over in the world.

Now, we’re narrowing things down. Women, as close watchers of vegetative life, noticed how plants reproduced themselves. For the purpose of future food supply they studied and respected such processes. While being familiar with the process of reproduction within themselves, they could identify with the creation of new life in the world of vegetation around them.

Their identification with reproductive processes may have made them trying to cultivate the plants. Their concern with food supply made them grow the plants they liked as food. In this way, they came to settle at one place for a while and cultivate plant varieties in gardens and nearby. This pattern we see at quite some places in the world.

For the breeding of popular cereal grasses climate and soil conditions were often not favorable, as humans found out with regret. But around 12,000 years ago climate change in West Asia made cereal grasses grow abundantly. This spurred women to use their experience with the cultivation of other plants to collect cereal seeds, plant them and harvest the fruits.

Women in the Zagros Mountains of Iran were the first ones to do this. It was not in the western part of Fertile Crescent, as many think, but at the eastern side. They started what’s perhaps the biggest revolution of humanity.

That’s what paleontological excavators believe at present. Tomorrow they may surprise us with new findings.

http://hppr.org/post/farming-got-hip-iran-some-12000-years-ago-ancient-seeds-reveal

Bans and prohibitions are carts before horses

If part of the Americans want to get an arms ban accepted in a society that largely prefer a free possession of arms, they’ll have to change this society first. That’s not a flight of fancy but a sober acknowledgment of societal logic.

But mind you, even installed bans and prohibitions don’t remove aggressive or addictive tendencies stored in people. With each new ban or prohibition those tendencies will seek other ways to surface. It is better to try and create supportive, caring social environments that diminish aggressive or addictive tendencies.

So, these are two reasons for the organization of thorough thinking about the creation of wider changes in society, be these changes very hard to achieve and take a very long period of time. But carts before horses don’t ride at all.

Humanity's road to the glory of control

At the junction of Africa, Asia and Europe, some 12,000 years ago, intensified control of plants and animals was on the brink of birth.

What future was this control going to create for humanity and the planet? What features of later humans were shaped by this birth of intense control and could perhaps, albeit difficulty, ever be unlearned again. And what genetic makeup existed already for seven million year and would be nearly impossible to adjust.

In order to facilitate better plant growth, the people learned to build irrigation systems. Their rise of construction capacities generated permanent houses in village clusters and cities, with store houses, market places, palaces, temples and tombs within or outside the stone fences.

They developed script to record quantities in their collective farming and distribution of harvests between people and over the year, and keep track of seasons and celestial bodies that influence plant growth.

To coordinate labor in the large projects, they created social hierarchies that gradually solidified into organized discipline, forced labor, slavery and derailing cruelties.

Labor specialization depending on the positions in a hierarchy grew further. Low seasons gave time to specialize in a range of crafts and arts, and engage in peaceful trade relations with neighboring villages or cities.

The low season brought yet another thing. Now that early tribal life based on what nature gave during the one day gave way to annual cycles of farming and storage of harvests, people came to attack other villages and cities and loot such storage. It meant a shift from territorial fights with neighbor communities to fights for both territory and food. In later stages the looting involved valuables produced by craftsmen as well.

Next to looting and large numbers of men, yet another force entered violent conflict between neighbors. That was the maintaining of social hierarchy as learned in the organization of farm labor. Most men got used to operating in hierarchical settings, be disciplined or discipline others. These experiences facilitated the organization of large armies both before and during battles in the field.

But something else also changed neighbor conflicts, something large. The new type of war grew in scale. Permanent farming allowed for huge populations and in the low season men could be recruited in large numbers for the armies. Moreover, the survival of large populations got less in danger with losses of lives such as in warfare. So, don't underestimate the enormous size of those armies. They could count 100,000 soldiers or more.

Thus humanity took off on the road to inequality, exploitation, oppression, cruelty, looting and mass warfare.

And there’s one more, highly important feature that emerged in the Fertile Crescent waiting to be brought on the stage. That is the shifting division of labor between women and men. It comes in my next post.

Key words: human evolution, Fertile Crescent, early farming, warfare, exploitation, oppression, cruelty, genetic makeup.

Key :-)