I have been reading “The World Until Yesterday – What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies”, by Jared Diamond. It’s the 3rd book of his that I’ve read. In it, he writes about the lives of small tribal societies that still lived in recent history (1800s-1900s) as hunter gatherers. His research included written accounts from anthropologists and explorers who lived with and studied these tribes, as well as his own firsthand personal experience living among them in New Guinea.
He then compares and contrasts the behaviors, rules, customs and laws of these tribes to modern nation states. It’s absolutely fascinating.
First he categorizes societies by population.
- Families
- Bands
- Tribes
- Chiefdoms
- Cities
- States
He explains that once a society gets beyond a certain population size, it cannot function without rulers, chiefs or government. That size is common across different societies across the world. It’s when everyone in the society can no longer know, have personal ties and maintain close relationships with everyone else in the society.
The reason is because of conflict resolution, disputes and violence.
With the small tribes, violence – often murder, is the method for dealing with anyone from outside of the group.
It’s was surprising for to me to hear how often murder happens between members of neighboring tribes that may trade with each other, occasionally intermarry and even traverse each other’s lands.
I used to think that people were generally good, peaceful and kind. His book has me thinking that maybe I was mistaken because I’ve only lived in society where the government has a monopoly on force and we have have been conditioned by laws, norms and customs not to murder each other.
I started thinking that maybe what happens among gang bangers and drug dealers in the US inner cities suddenly makes a lot of sense. If we look at traditional societies, humans have been using murder as a means for controlling territory, exacting retribution and protecting your own people for thousands of years.
The fact that we don’t have more murder occurring in everyday society seems like it the exception vs. the rule.
And suddenly, all the online hate, the road rage, the quickness to shoot strangers, and the anger that we read about in the news everyday has some logical explanation. We’re just a few evolutionary steps away from being violent monkeys. In terms of evolutionary time, we’ve lived as “civilized” people for just a fraction of a second. The capacity and tendency for fear of strangers, violence and murder are ingrained in our genetic codes and societal norms.
That’s a much different perspective for me to consider.