4.3.0 Anthropology – What’s In The Chapter?

Anthropology is concerned with human development in many diverse spheres.

Remember that earlier on I said that we might need to unlearn many beliefs, prejudices and attitudes in our ambition to protect children and vulnerable people in our society?

That is the principal reason why I include this Chapter which I hope will become clear as you read it.

I believe that the process by which we developed over countless generations into who and what we are now – to be specific; how the principal values that influence our day-to-day behaviour evolved, or, what is attractive to us and what is not – is of deep interest to anyone who aspires to journey with vulnerable people.

Just to give an example; we are attracted to, have an urge to protect, and hold babies in high esteem because natural selection over thousands of generations favoured those who wanted babies – it is a simple matter of ensuring that our species not only survives but thrives. We don’t have to learn that in school!

Or, on another note, the competitions involving sportspeople in the prime of their lives (traditionally male but nowadays female also) are the most popular with the general public – not the competitions involving those who are children, teenagers, or old people, or indeed people who have a disability. The prime of life competitions are the ones that fill the stadiums to the brim and garner the enormous level of TV and sponsorship rights that we have become so accustomed to.

This is almost certainly due to projection (as we described in a previous Chapter) – we (unconsciously) are attracted to that which we would like to be ourselves – youthful winners that will optimise our species increasing and multiplying.

Of course, evolution in any sphere of life is, by definition, never over, and growth, development, and change are ubiquitous.  I am hopeful, for instance, that this website will assist in the evolution of methods of supporting families affected by imprisonment.

This Chapter is divided into Six Sub-Chapters.

4.3.1                ANTHROPOLOGY – INTRODUCTION

4.3.2                HUNTER GATHERER SOCIETIES

4.3.3                OTHER ASPECTS OF HUNTER GATHERER SOCIETIES

4.3.4                CLASS DIFFERENCE IN SOCIETY

4.3.5                CULTURAL/SOCIAL AND LEGAL/JUSTICE

4.3.6                ANTHROPOLOGY – CONCLUSION

4.3.1.1 Anthropology; Introduction – Initial Words

In this Chapter we are concerned mainly with human development.

In respect of supporting families in distress two aspects of human development, or, if you like, anthropological branches are relevant.  These are the social/cultural and the legal/justice branches.

But before we explore those it might be interesting to describe what life might have been like thousands of years ago before any history was written down, and before civilisation as we know it nowadays came to be.

At that time societies were very much in tune with all aspects of not only nature, but the natural world as I described it in the Introduction.  Much of this website is concerned with awareness of that world.

Also, there is a lot of evidence to indicate that the day to day pressures (the stress and strain described in the previous Chapter) of the modern world are causative factors in many of the mental illnesses and much of the emotional distress that occurs nowadays.

In other words, their incidence may be more down to environmental and cultural factors than factors intrinsic to us humans. (Though, you may argue, it was factors-intrinsic-tous-humans that caused us to construct both our environment and culture over many millenia to what it is today)……….

Neither is it a big step to conclude that neurosis, mental distress, addiction and high anxiety among those of us who care for children may also be causative factors in our being out of tune with children’s needs.

As an aside, and without doubt, some of our neuroses, fears and anxieties were imprinted tens of thousands of years ago. 

Jared Diamond in his book Guns, Germs and Steel cleverly proposes that this might explain why we are afraid of spiders and snakes – that rarely if ever kill us – and not cars – that kill millions of us.  (Though to challenge Jared a little on this one; I believe that another factor is that we are in control of a car, but not in control of a snake, which leads us to – falsely – assume that we are safe hurtling along the road covering fifty meters every second in a metal box)!

There is also the fact that we are afraid of (and get totally panicky actually) in the face of viruses like Covid 19 but we seem to be in denial of the dire consequences of global warming that might kill tens of millions of us – indeed some might say make our planet uninhabitable.

All the above are fears of our physical safety – which, of course, cannot be ignored when we think of how we feel.

However, I will be focusing on many of our deeper psychological and emotional fears and anxieties that are undoubtedly of more modern origin and come from our obsession with our place in society, our image, and ultimately what many describe as our class.

4.3.1.2 Anthropology; Introduction – Why Do We Work?

I first began to be interested in anthropology some years ago when I was watching a programme on the San tribes of Botswana and Namibia.  The presenter of the programme (whose name I have forgotten) jokingly said that the workaholics of the tribe work about 12 hours per week.  Or at least did – before the Government encouraged some of them to take up farming and thereafter become consumers.

But we don’t have to go to Botswana or Namibia to illustrate how our work habits have changed!  Interestingly, Jürgen Osterhammell in his book The Transformation of the World points out that in Europe, before the Industrial Revolution really got going, (e.g. the mid-1700’s) when almost everyone worked on the land (with little or no labour-saving machinery) ordinary people, over a full year, actually worked less hours per week than when they were working in factories and service industries in the 1900’s.

Over approx. 200 years, as peoples’ disposable income gradually increased, the proportion of it that they spent on necessities like food went down. Engel’s Law also notes this. It states that in the process of industrialisation, (which – it is hoped – has the effect of raising the standard of the poor to that of the middle classes), a country must produce more food with fewer people. But the amount of food needed remains the same. Therefore they spend more on luxuries, which then become necessities.

As society industrialises, people purchase more things, take up outside interests, begin to go on holidays, but then have to work longer to maintain their new lifestyles. We evolved from living in an age of discomfort, need and necessity to an age of comfort, leisure and convenience.

Nowadays, if we’re too cold we turn on the heat, if we’re too warm we turn on the air conditioning.  If it’s dark we flick a switch and it’s not dark anymore.  If we want to go on holidays in a distant land we hop on a plane, if we want avocados in rainy Ireland we can get them flown in from tropical countries half a world away any time of the year.

We invent things (like the internal combustion engine, plastics, aeroplanes, drugs and medicines, nuclear power, even electricity) that bring us comfort beyond anything our near-ancestors would have dreamed of.  Then rather than using the inventions sensibly for life-affirming purposes we use them in a way that ultimately cause harm – with our motives almost always driven by profit alone, such profit being in the hands of a few – not shared equally among the majority of us.

And when, artificially, in communist countries such as the Soviet Union and its satellites, an attempt was made to share profits equally in huge state-controlled businesses it turned out – going on the evidence over many decades of the 20th century – very badly

One day, just as an exercise, I tried to imagine what it might be like to pare down my life to necessities – or at least the minimum of comforts.

What would life be like to have nothing except what is needed for food and shelter, and to live like someone of modest means in or around the year 1750.  I wondered (challenging Jürgen Osterhammell a bit), would going to the well for water instead of turning on a tap, or collecting wood for a fire to boil the water to cook instead of flicking a switch be counted as work?  I’m not sure of the above – but I do know after doing the exercise that it is very difficult to imagine a life without modern comforts or conveniences.

The above paragraph implies that the vast majority of us tend to value things more than time and I wondered at the root causes of this preference – because it is undeniable.  Is comfort and convenience an illusion?

Which would you prefer?

To work in the fields, every day being different, through times of scarcity and plenty, in the cold and heat of unpredictable nature, vulnerable to diseases and viruses, with simple local food but with little prospects of ever going far from your own village, dependent on a landlord to whom you have to pay rent, and have loads of time off;

Or

Have food supply certain and predictable, have all the comforts of modernity, be able to afford foreign holidays, with chemists and hospitals close by to cure you of any illnesses, for an unchanging wage and have to work 40 hours every week of the year.

Obviously, we prefer the latter – because – through a mixture of our own preferences and the (already described) awesome power of corporate closed-ness – that is what we have chosen!

Nowadays, a substantial proportion of our week is taken up working.  And why are we working?  It is often far more, in the Western World anyway, about keeping up with the demands of modern society than it is putting food on our tables, clothes on our backs, or a roof over our heads.

Curious about this, and encouraged by the programme that I saw on the San tribes-people, I began reading about early hunter-gatherer tribes and how they lived in the past and indeed how they are living now. What interested me most is how they managed to sustain what we would describe as a very basic lifestyle over hundreds of generations – and how each generation passed on their values to the next.

Further reading opened my eyes as to how they treat growth and development of children – which I found very interesting (and is one of the reasons why I am including this Chapter). Another reason is that some of the literature concerned how we became conscious of what class we belonged to – and how we began comparing and competing with each other!

In particular, I felt that by way of contrast to how our society is ordered now in the 21st Century and how we tolerate all the things that bother us (corruption, poverty, exploitation and the apparent rising anxiety) but we do nothing about, a short description of how hunter-gatherer tribes live might be of interest.

4.3.2.1 Hunter-Gatherer Societies – Initial Words

Quite extensive anthropological research took place over the 20th Century, in particular the latter half, which challenged the image portrayed of primitive savages, or warlike tribes living in remote parts of the Earth. This image had been widespread among those who lived in what were referred to as the civilised world in previous centuries.

Dozens of small hunter-gatherer societies (mostly in the warm climates of Asia, Africa and South America, but also in Siberia and Northern Canada), who had not come into contact with the so-called developed world were discovered and then studied for the benefit of the developed world, and now you and I!

Some of these societies were in jungle type terrain, but others were in remote deserts. They usually consisted of small groups of about 50 people who moved within relatively small areas, sustaining themselves by hunting available game and eating seasonal plants.

In these small groups, who had friends and relatives in neighbouring groups, sharing of food and resources, non-directive child-rearing, and respect for individual decision making were dominant in their culture.  Over and over again, it was found that group decisions were made by consensus, and while there may have been influential elders (leaders) there was no boss as such.  Major decisions were made by the band as a whole not a dominant leader.  More about this later!

As a core value, equality was paramount – as inequality got in the way of survival itself

What they meant by equality was, predominantly, that each person was entitled to food and all means to gather or hunt (or provide shelter) – what we would call material goods – were shared.  Those who didn’t share, or who got greedy were shunned by the group – as a way of keeping upstarts in line so to speak.

Many anthropologists, of different nationalities, report similar stories from many different sources.  While there may be slight variations (some might not be quite as classless or as peaceful as others) the prevailing views are the same.  After careful cross-checking and thorough examination, it was found that those groups, bands, or tribes who were found to be warlike or violent were either all cultivators or farmers or had come into contact with modern cultures.  Some of these had been subjected to slavery, exploitation, cruelty and violence from European colonists – so were certainly not untouched.

These findings (from studies done in 1988 onwards – so are relatively new) surprised many people.  After all, we humans, in every type of society that has ever been known, get on well enough together (otherwise we wouldn’t be here at all) but, when under pressure, or faced with threat, typically resort to violence, punishment, coercion, hierarchy and even abuse and mistreatment of other humans to either restore order or simply get what we want.

Equality, peace, freedom, human rights etc. are, all too often, desirable qualities that we aspire to rather than the reality of our lives.  And as I mentioned elsewhere in the blog, inequality, poverty, lack of human rights, etc. are causative factors in almost all the trouble that there is in the world (including a significant amount of crime).

How do hunter gatherer tribes maintain and sustain all the positive attributes that are described above?

When reading about this I was enthused by what we, in our modern technological societies, could learn from societies that seem to have got on okay with minimal technology – and I began placing what I read about their behaviour,  lifestyle and ethos in the context of the root foundations referred to in the Chapter on the Universal Theories of Change.

4.3.2.2 Active Egalitarianism And Reverse Dominance

In my reading about hunter-gatherer societies one of the things that interested me was that tribes were actively egalitarian [1].  By being so, they continually ensured that strong egos were diluted or tempered and that humility was promoted.

It is my opinion that promoting humility (and, in turn, disfavouring boastful or arrogant behaviour) could only happen in a group of people where a critical mass among them are sufficiently intelligent – see towards the end of this post – to do that. That is, intelligent enough to be self-confident and possess a deep inner sense of security – both of which, I believe anyway, require humility.

Humility in hunter-gatherer tribes is usually promoted by teasing and a kind of light ridicule, what we might call slagging in Ireland.  Once again, I believe that the humorous teasing that has this effect is possible only in a group that has secure identity, high self-confidence, and good relationship – but particularly good relationship.

One anthropologist proposed the theory of reverse dominance [2].  In all modern societies, a few people dominate the vast majority.  In hunter-gatherer societies, the overall ethos of the group seems to dominate any individuals who begin to develop an ego that rises above an unspoken, implicitly agreed level.

(Actually this reminded me of what we in Ireland call begrudgery – which I think comes from a slightly less communitarian standpoint… but…. perhaps it has distant origins in reverse dominance-type teasing)!

The more extreme sanction, (that is, if teasing doesn’t work) is actually ignoring, or shunning.  This is seen to be a very powerful way of keeping someone’s behaviour in line with the norms of the tribe.  Being ignored, in such a small, closely knit and inter-dependent community is experienced as being quite devastating.  For example, showing strong emotions is not favoured among some Eskimo peoples.  This is because losing one’s temper has the power to manipulate and control others.

Think about this and look around you.

Do you think that it is true – i.e. do you know anyone who is able to control others because they have a bit of a reputation, or are known to be people who might lose the rag? 

The fact that the vast majority of the hunter-gatherer group adhere to the sanction of shunning makes it very effective against upstartism, as it is called by some.  If the person moves to another tribe, the same practice is carried out again – so his choice is limited really [3].

(When I was reading this it reminded me of what is fashionable nowadays in the world of disciplining children i.e. putting them on the bold step).

The reverse dominance has implications for leadership in particular invitational leadership. (This will be described in the next Section in the Chapter on Leadership). 

Having humility when in charge invites others into trying to find a solution to a difficult problem – whereas domination (and sometimes even simple assertiveness) doesn’t do this.

This is why (I believe anyway) that the high esteem in which assertiveness is held is very much a developed world phenomenon – it doesn’t seem to hold too much attractiveness – in fact, it struggles to have meaning – in cultures where dominance is shared and not confined to one strong person or a small group of dominant decision makers.

Also, it is obvious (and worthy of note for those of us who wish for a more equal society) that in a culture where decision making is shared, it is far more difficult for one person or a small group to control resources, accumulate wealth and then dispense it on their terms only. 


[1]. An egalitarian society is a kind of ideal, where there is genuine equality and democracy, and care for fellow man trumps profit, greed etc.  It is a place where people, as well as being legally free, actually feel free.

[2]. This term is used by Christopher Boehm; in his book Hierarchy in the Forest (1999) – a very interesting read!

[3]. Reading Boehm’s book I was wondering in the modern day, if such a person did not fit in, he might move to a non-hunter-gatherer society where his egocentricity might be appreciated, and where he’d feel more at home.

4.3.2.3 The Importance Of Play

Peter Gray [1] in his book Free to Learn, (here‘s one of his videos) states that hunter-gatherer societies sustain equality and consensus decision-making through their willingness to be playful.

From my Catholic upbringing I paraphrased the saying beloved of our religious leaders of old; ‘the family who prays together stays together’ – remember that? – into ‘people who play together stay together’.  (Together, to me, meaning both at ease in each other’s company and in a good place emotionally).

Playing with others, to be enjoyable, involves cooperation (even to make up the rules – or keep to them if they are already made up) and suspension of dominance i.e. all are equal at play. Much of the play of non-human primates involves the stronger player deliberately self-handicapping, and reducing aggression, so that the weaker one will have a chance to compete and/or feel safe in the game.  After all, if one player ended the game – play would be over.

True play moderates domination and power, and fosters a sense of inclusion rather than the winning at all costs that is associated with modern day sports.  (I deal with this topic in more detail in Section Five – when I describe what a Playful Organisation might look like in the Chapter on Organisational Matters).

In hunter-gatherer tribes, the play thread is woven into the fabric of their lives.  This continually reinforces equality and fairness in their relationships.  Even the above mentioned sanction of people in the tribe becoming arrogant (the teasing, or slagging) has a playful element to it.

When I was writing this part of the website I wondered how we first became obsessed with winning when playing.  I concluded that the desire to win (or perhaps, the obsession about winning) came with the move to agricultural societies and the competitiveness that grew within us over some thousands of years which I will describe in a following post.

It is certainly very challenging for us to think that winning, and the feeling of unbridled elation that it brings, may be more about domination and power than true en-joy-ment.


[1]. Dr Peter Gray is a Research Professor at Boston College in USA. His book referenced above Free to Learn is an easy to read and stimulating account of how we might look at the education of our children differently – the references to hunter-gatherer societies are only a small part of a larger exploration.

But we don’t have to go to Boston College to discover creative ways of educating children!

A man from County Longford, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (inventor, and father of the writer Maria Edgeworth), believed, in the late 1700’s, that learning through playing with educational toys was superior to learning by rote and founded a school to this end that Catholics and Protestants, girls and boys attended – unheard of in those days. (Actually, unheard of when I was growing up in the 1950/60’s)!

4.3.2.4 Childbirth And Childrearing

Following tens of thousands of years of evolution, I have often wondered why we are not better equipped to deal with the difficulties that can be part of birth.  That is, if everything has a purpose in evolution, I have often wondered why human mothers have to go through so much pain to bear a child. What is the purpose of that pain?

I don’t know that answer to that question, but the obvious answer to the physiological question is, of course, that our brains grew too quickly without a parallel physical development of the female body.  But surely even the preservation of the species would have favoured some such development to make childbirth easier – and safer.

Whatever the reasons, one major success of our developed technological world has been the reduction in deaths of babies and mothers at time of birth.

A (high by modern standards) mortality rate at birth is a feature of hunter-gatherer societies, keeping down overall life-expectancy.  However, hunter-gatherer mothers reduce the risk of death at childbirth not by clinical or medical means, but by having babies at longer intervals (4 – 5 years) than their early farming pre-industrial counterparts.  These longer intervals are made possible by breastfeeding as long as the child needs to, with no force to wean onto solid food. This reduces fertility and some researchers’ opinions are that the constant hard physical work of gathering roots and berries also has this effect.

There is also the incidence of infanticide and/or allowing children who are thought to be non-viable to die so that stronger children would survive.   This is abhorrent in our modern culture – though pre-birth infanticide – abortion of foetuses that are not viable – isn’t.  And in fact, before we criticise hunter-gatherer societies, we need to remember that we civilised humans are very well practiced at getting rid of humans that we don’t want through violence, war, genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Much has been written about the parenting methods of hunter-gatherer tribes-people.  When a child gets over the risky birth and infancy, and begins to grow and thrive, a notable aspect of the hunter-gatherer child-rearing is the level of trust that parents place in children in respect of their growth.  The level of non-directivity in parenting is striking.

Most anthropologists will argue that it is this type of parenting that produces adults who are non-aggressive towards each other and treat each other kindly.  And it also makes sense.

Recent studies of the brain challenge the dominant values in education in the Western World, i.e. 1): that children’s education is best achieved through fear, pressure and bribery, and 2): that constant competition, comparison and consumption will bring us long-term happiness.

Books, papers or blogs by Richard Lee and Darcia Narvaez are also worth reading if interested in the lives of our early ancestors, and here is an interesting article describing the rituals around birth and parenting among the Himba tribe in Namibia.

But in this short piece on child-rearing in hunter-gatherer societies, I’ll leave the last word to Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, who, in her book ‘The Old Way’ describes parenting in the Ju/’hoansi tribe in the Kalahari desert thus:

Ju/’hoansi children very rarely cried, probably because they had little to cry about.  No child was ever yelled at or slapped or physically punished, and few were even scolded.  Most never heard a discouraging word until they were approaching adolescence, and even then the reprimand, if it really was a reprimand, was delivered in a soft voice.  We are sometimes told that children who are treated so kindly become spoiled, but this is because those who hold that opinion have no idea how successful such measures can be.  Free from frustration or anxiety, sunny and cooperative, the children were every parent’s dream.  No culture can ever have raised better, more intelligent, more likable, more confident children”.

Above is a funny picture that I saw on the Internet which I think fits well with Elizabeth’s observations!

And staying with the colourful continent, perhaps the African proverb below seems to fit with the norms of hunter-gatherer societies when it comes to child-rearing, in respect of the Western World model:

‘The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth’

How many children in our world (and not only those from so-called disadvantaged families) grow into adults who behave destructively towards their own society?

4.3.2.5 Reality Check!

Of course, it would be ridiculous and naïve of us to think that hunter-gatherer societies were without problems.

There is some debate on the intensity of the reverse dominance mentioned above – that is, the methods by which egalitarianism are imposed.  Shunning is mentioned already – but if shunning doesn’t work expulsion can be imposed, and the final sanction is assassination of the upstart or the person who is causing discord in the Group.

This can sometimes be undertaken by people in his extended family – they are convinced to do it by the wider group and by doing it in this way non-retaliation is guaranteed.

Another aspect of such societies appears to be male dominance of women – and incidence of violence within the family – though as stated above, some anthropologists contend that detailed studies revealed that they had come into contact with settled humans – and that in untouched hunter-gatherer societies, non-violence and respect for women is the norm.

Of course, all this fits with the paradox of being human – after all, in modern society great kindness and compassion is also matched by harshness and cruelty in human relationships.

And anyway, if, in some kind of real-life Day After Tomorrow scenario, most of the human race was wiped out and all that were left were a few hunter gatherer tribes, the smart money is on the likelihood that we would evolve again into farming/agricultural and then technological societies – because that is what happened before – so it probably is in our nature!

4.3.3.1 Positive Anarchy – Hunter-Gatherer Societies

This post will focus on how anarchy is a feature of hunter-gatherer societies. (In a later Chapter I include a post on the implications of anarchy in respect of energy available to humans). 

Because of the dominance of the top-down centralised Western World and the primacy of our way of being, hunter-gatherer societies are nowadays very rare in the world in general. For good or bad, better or worse, more and more tribal societies that once lived at one with nature are moving to farming and/or towns and cities to go to school or work.

On this note, I always feel a little guilty when I am watching programmes about the Amazon rainforest and such places where the (always a Western World) presenter is tut-tutting at farmers cutting down trees to grow cash crops or logging companies doing the same to use the wood to make a profit. Since humans became farmers, in every part of the world, trillions of trees have been cleared for farming, profit and thereafter, human habitation.

I don’t have a solution to this problem and I truly understand the importance of the rainforests, the lungs of the world, as they are known. But for us well-fed Western Worlders to be criticising those who are trying to do the exact same as we did over many centuries is a little hypocritical.

It does bring it home to me though that hunter-gatherers are the only societies that truly respect the environment and are in relationship with it rather than trying to dominate it.

Getting back to anarchy, one anthropologist, the Russian Piotr Kropotkin, who lived from 1842 to 1921, linked the lives of hunter-gatherer societies to a kind of positive anarchy. In the best case scenario, Kropotkin argued that the level of mutual support that is evident in such societies can be an example to modern, developed society.

He argued (as I do, in a different way, in this website) that very little in the way of positive substantial change for people who need it most will arise from initiatives from Governments as we know them.  (The Pillars of his time)! Of course this was Russia (and Switzerland, where Kropotkin also lived for a time) in the late nineteenth century, but I don’t think that things have changed that much really.

He also argued that voluntary organisations (the TSO’s – remember them) had much more potential to bring about change in people’s lives than organisations set up by Government.  In his writing he argued that what he called Bushmen, or savages (for example those in the Kalahari Desert) had been terrorised and subjugated by so-called civilised society (agriculturalists) who saw the nation state as the only valid society. 

(Just as an aside, Kropotkin used the term savages in a very positive way – but then it began to have negative connotations.  I have, however, heard young people nowadays describe very positive experiences as savage, so perhaps there is a little positivity coming back to the term or else Kropotkin was way ahead of his time)!

He was also a proponent of systems theory, maintaining that history, ecology, geography, ethnicity, culture, politics etc. were all interrelated and interdependent.  His notions of mutual aid and sharing are relevant for our time and in particular supporting vulnerable people.

He pointed out that anarchists did not want to end society but instead envisioned a completely different society,  not simply a clone of the top-down society typical of that era – and that is still, in a different guise, popular today.  And, how it suited the bureaucratic centralised nation states of his time to promote the centrality of the family to society – to better exercise control.

He concluded that because the origins of mutual aid among humans stretched back to the days of hunting and gathering, it must be of great value to humankind, and it has survived to the present day. This resonates with modern studies on attachment, as we have come across already – in particular our care-giving tendency.

In another Chapter I state that the family is the basic unit of society as we know it today – and our support should be designed to include the family if we are to protect the children who need it most.  Obviously, the typical family that prevails nowadays (Mammy, Daddy and children) was not how children were/are brought up in hunter-gatherer societies.

Mostly, Kropotkin, (like modern anthropologists) drew on personal observations of tribes that had not been modernised positing them as examples of the sharing and co-operation ethos which he deemed to be most desirable for society to thrive. 

4.3.3.2 Attitude To Death In The Family

In most hunter-gatherer societies, killing of children and allowing elderly people to die (i.e. not doing much to help them stay alive – perhaps even hastening their passing) was permitted if it was felt that they would not survive anyway, and/or would bring some disadvantage or even threat to the tribe.

We mentioned already that the ultimate sanction of execution could be visited upon those who became so dominant that they upset the egalitarian ethos that prevailed.  And the tribe would obligate the family of the person who becomes the threat to carry out the execution – so that there would be no reprisals.

So the sharing and generosity did not apply, apparently, if the tribe deemed their survival, viability or even the general well-being that would arise from maintenance of their ethos, to be under threat.

This behaviour is in stark contrast to the efforts that are made nowadays to care for infants who are never going to be able to fend for themselves when they grow to be adults; and/or the lengths to which we go to prolong the life of the elderly, when, without pharmacological/technological means, life would end naturally.

And most modern, forward-thinking countries have disavowed capital punishment as a method of deterring people from criminality – i.e. putting our well-being under threat.  And imagine what we might think of a country that demanded that the family of a criminal execute him!

It is easy for us to condemn making a demand on a family to kill one of its members, as vicious, cruel and uncivilised.  But then again, as I mentioned in a previous post, nation states and great civilisations have been killing people who they deem to be a threat to them both by executing them and killing them in wars, for many thousands of years.  Some countries that call themselves civilised still execute people.

I thought about this for a while.

I concluded that one of the principal differences between modern society at war and a hunter-gatherer tribe demanding that a criminal’s family kill him is that we are usually not in contact with the bereaved family when killing a foreign enemy, whereas we are when ending the life of a person who has become a liability in, or a threat to our own tribe or extended family – and the immediate family who are bereaved will need our support.

And when someone is executed in the modern world, there is firstly the yawning gap of the entire judicial system and secondly abhorrence of the criminal by society which keeps the family of the executed person both physically and psychologically far away from the person or people employed by the state to do the killing.

In respect of allowing non-viable children and elderly die, I am sure that, being human, hunter-gatherers love their children and their elderly as much as we do. So the obvious answer to the question as to why we save infants that we know will be dependent adults, or prolong elderly people’s lives is, of course, that we have the technology to do it nowadays whereas hunter-gatherer societies in past times did not – and if they could have, they would have.

I don’t know enough about the lives of modern hunter-gatherer tribes-people to comment as to whether they use modern medicine that is available in their countries to either assist ill infants or prolong the life of the elderly – my intuition would suggest to me that they do.

(If you are from a hunter-gatherer tribe I’d love to hear more about this topic as it interests me greatly).

But I believe that there is something else going on too.

Perhaps that something is, as we develop technologically, we tend to become non-accepting of reality and the inevitability of suffering when those who are going to suffer are close to us and particularly if they are in our own family.

And we begin to believe the myth that we can sort everything.

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