Cooperation and conflict

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The “Deep Roots” of War

The debate continues as to whether war extends deep into human pre-history. This tends to break down into two camps: (1) the “deep roots” advocates, who argue that inter-group aggression extends to the origins of our species (or perhaps even earlier), and (2) those who propose that hunter-gatherers were essentially peaceful until the advent of agriculture. 

On his website “Why Evolution is True,” Jerry Coyne has been summarizing the various critiques that deep-rooters like Steven Pinker and Michael Shermer have been piling on against the science writer John Horgan, who has argued that war is a recent innovation.

I think the reason for all the confusion is that the best way to resolve the debate is to have a systematic review of the archaeological record. Of course, that is very hard to do, since there are gaps in what we know about the past, and not all humans leave traces of their existence. But the public debates often encourage cherry-picking of the data, sometimes highlighting prehistoric groups that show signs of intergroup violence (and they did exist), or at other times highlighting peaceful groups (so did they!). Rarely is there a systematic, big-picture approach. 

In an essay I wrote last year, “Genocidal Altruists,” I took a different approach, arguing that our ancestors were complex. I cited the archaeologists Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli, who actually did attempt a systematic review. To quote myself… 

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“My religion is kindness”

The Dalai Lama wrote this soon after September 11, 2001. I think it cuts across all faiths and religious traditions.

 

“Today the human soul asks the question: what can I do to preserve the beauty and the wonder of our world and to eliminate the anger and hatred — and the disparity that inevitably causes it — in that part of the world which I touch?

 Please seek to answer that question today, with all the magnificence that is you. What can you do today … this very moment? A central teaching in most spiritual traditions is: what you wish to experience, provide for another. Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience — in your own life, and in the world. Then see if there is another for whom you may be the source of that. If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another. If you wish to know that you are safe, cause another to know that they are safe. If you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things, help another to better understand. If you wish to heal your own sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of another. Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding and for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for love. My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”

 

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The Allison Center for Peace

“Flowers are better than bullets.”       – Allison Krause, 1970

 

This week marked the 46th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State University. On May 4th 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired 67 shots at college students who were protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Four unarmed students were killed, while nine others were seriously injured.

A few months ago, I found a website named after Allison Krause, one of the young students killed that day. Just as this website is named after my brother Kevin, Allison’s younger sister, Laurel, created the NGO The Allison Center for Peace in honor of her memory and as a way to search for the truth for what happened that day.

In 1979, the relatives of the victims at Kent State received an out-of-court settlement from the state of Ohio and a “statement of regret and intentions” from Ohio officials. However, even today, they do not have all the answers. In 2012, they formally requested that the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague consider justice at Kent State. And this Wednesday, they asked that the FBI release whatever relevant documents they possess.  

Laurel Krause cited the British government’s apology for the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings in Northern Ireland as a possible model “for America to heal the wounds of Kent State.” There are parallels between Bloody Sunday and the Kent State incident, both involving government troops firing upon their own citizens. After a lengthy investigation and report, in 2010 British Prime Minister David Cameron had this to say:

“What happened should never, ever have happened. The families of those who died should not have had to live with the pain and hurt of that day, and a lifetime of loss. Some members of our armed forces acted wrongly. The government is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the armed forces. And for that, on behalf of the government — and indeed our country — I am deeply sorry.”  

The families of the victims of Kent State are looking for more than “a statement of regret and intentions.” An apology and an honest accounting can both go a long way.  As I’ve written before, several governments have shown courage by confronting some of the more difficult parts of their past. In addition to Bloody Sunday, the Japanese government apologized for colonizing Korea, and the U.S. Senate apologized to African-Americans for slavery and segregation. My favorite example comes from 2007, when the Danish government apologized for the Viking raids of Ireland, which occurred 1,200 years earlier.

If an apology can be extended (and accepted) after a millennium, then perhaps there is no statute of limitations on confronting a difficult past, for understanding, or even for reconciliation. While others have warned that apologies and truth commissions are not a panacea, and that “confronting the past is ineluctably political,” it is clear that the families of Kent State should not have to wait 46 years for their wounds to heal.   

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Bacteria and Nuclear Weapons: The Boundaries of Our Existence

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”

-W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming (1919)

 

In his 1997 book “Full House,” the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould discussed the idea of progress in evolution. He noted that Darwin went back and forth over the idea, at times arguing that natural selection had the power to refine organisms and “tend to progress toward perfection” and at other times writing that “after long reflection, I cannot avoid the conviction that no innate tendency to progressive development exists” (p. 137 and 141).

Gould himself acknowledged that it certainly seems like life has progressed over the billions of years it has existed on earth:

“And yet, undeniably (even for such curmudgeons as me), a basic fact of the history of life – the basic fact, one might well say – seems to cry out for progress as the central trend and defining feature of life’s history. The first fossil evidence of life, from rocks some 3.5 billion years in age, consists only of bacteria, the simplest forms that could be preserved in the geological record. Now we have oak trees, praying mantises, hippopotamuses, and people. How could anyone deny that such a history displays progress above anything else?” (p. 145)

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Compassion at the Crossroads

Robert Kennedy, on the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination:

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”

I know posting this won’t matter much. A few people will watch the video below (thank you). Fewer will care. It’s not very anthropological, or analytical. I have little to add to it. Some, in the Jonathan Haidt school of thought, could take umbrage that citing RFK and MLK is just more evidence of the liberalism of academics.

It just feels like a time when social divisions continue to grow. Injecting a little bit of compassion into the blogosphere simply feels right.   

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Your Life is a Logical Absurdity

“Think of it: zillions and zillions of organisms running around, each under the hypnotic spell of a single truth, all these truths identical, and all logically incompatible with one another: ‘My hereditary material is the most important material on earth; its survival justifies your frustration, pain, even death.’ And you are one of these organisms, living your life in the thrall of a logical absurdity.”  

— Robert Wright, The Moral Animal

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“It’s never too late” to do the right thing: UXO in Laos

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Laos on Sunday, foreshadowing a visit by President Obama sometime this autumn. It will be the first ever visit by a U.S. President to Laos. There are probably several reasons for the visit, including strengthening ties, checking Chinese power in the region, etc. Most relevant to me is the hope that more will be done to alleviate some of the damage done during the war years, especially by removing leftover unexploded ordnance (UXO).

A CNN article mentions two emotions that Americans might feel toward President Obama’s position towards Laos: guilt and optimism. It quotes Channapha Khamvongsa, who founded he NGO Legacies of War, which works to raise awareness of UXO in Laos.  Continue reading →

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Year in Review: Top Posts of 2015

Congolese children play on a destroyed military tank in Kibumba, DRC. Prime Collective.

Congolese children play on a destroyed military tank in Kibumba, DRC. Source: Prime Collective.

These were the most viewed posts of the year. It wasn’t the biggest year for this blog in terms of number of visitors, but there were a few highlights. Themes included war, human frailty, sex and love. I ranked them below, with #1 being the most read.

 

13) …And They Shall Beat Their Tanks into Playgrounds (Mar 24th, 70 words) 

   A simple collection of photos that I thought would inspire hope. “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares.”

 

12) Thoughts on PTS and “Moral Injuries”  (Jun 24th, 898 words)

    “If there is any good news, perhaps it’s that individuals who suffer a moral injury must, almost by definition, have some deep reservations about certain acts of violence. After all, one’s sense of morality cannot be injured if it didn’t exist in the first place. Secondly, the concept of ‘injury’ implies that healing is possible.”

 

11) Did the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Affect Child Growth? (Jun 1st, 705 words)

   Yes. A look at some old data.

 

10) Courage and the Past (Apr 20th, 710 words)

   “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”  ― James Baldwin

 

9) Confronting Human Frailty (Mar 4th, 557 words)

   Seeking lessons from the Tragic and Utopian perspectives of human nature.

 

8) “The Fundamental Connection That We All Share” (Jul 28th, 222 words)

   Very short post on President Barack Obama’s observing famous fossils in human evolution. All people have evolved from our common origins. We’re all connected.  

 

7) “To Tame the Savageness of Man” (Aug 4th, 981 words)

   Another attempt at finding hope. “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.” –Robert F. Kennedy, on the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination (1968)

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“An Extraordinary Miasma of Untruth”

“There’s no them. There’s only us.”

I first read Dervla Murphy’s book “A Place Apart: Northern Ireland in the 1970s” over twenty years ago for a class on the anthropology of Ireland. In it, she described her conversations with people from various perspectives in Northern Ireland (Catholic and Protestant, etc.).

To be honest, so much time has gone by that I’ve forgotten much of it, but every once in a while certain segments come back to me. The part that returns to me the most, particularly of late, is this:

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The Modern Scourge of Civilized Men

“Nothing is more useless in developing a nation’s economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road to social development than the financial burden of war. War is the arch enemy of national progress and the modern scourge of civilized men.”

                                        – King Hussein, Address at Tulane University, April 1976 (Link)