Never bring a paleobiologist to an ethics fight.

Many people erroneously believe that humans started as polygamists and then developed monogamy via civilization. This is actually opposite of the truth. Pleistocene humans, as they first climbed out of the trees and stood upright quickly learned the advantages of pairing. As the gender roles were realized (woman takes care of babies, gathers nuts and berries with toddlers, men travel distances and hunt game, battle neighboring groups for water and food rights, etc.) the early hominids realized the value of mated pairs. One father and mother would stick together. The necessity of a single father per child is evident in the increasing complexity of hunting techniques used by early humans. Polygamy only emerged as a popular concept around 6000-5000 B.C as complex agricultural societies sprang up. Once a social hierarchy was developed, only then did it become possible for elite male humans to support multiple wives, and by extension, multiple families.

So when it is argued (against me) that our war-like nature is in fact defeatable because we defeated our innate desire for polygamy, I have to wonder how much the author of such arguments actually knows about anthropology.
Suffice it to say, I am not ethics expert, nor am I a military man. I write these posts entirely based on my own experiences and feelings, so when I state that humans are inherently hunters and killers, I am stating that because I read it in a book, or saw it on the Discovery Channel, or heard about it during an anthropology lecture. Things like interpretation of religion are very hairy issues for me. My sister and brother-in-law are both UofChicago educated theologians, and probably could tie my brain in knots when it comes to theology. At work, the electrical engineers talk about wave-boards, rectifiers, and God only knows what and I can only shake my head and think how much I love gears and motors. There are things I do not know (see below).

But I do know that humans sprang down out of trees, stood up, surveyed the expansive grasslands, saw Neanderthals, and discussed with one another the most effective way to kill every last one of them and take over the place. The reason monogamy worked back then, and is the root relationship base for humans, is because humans lived such simple, half-starved lives in communal, loose tribes, that it would be impossible for a male to effectively supply foodstuffs for two sets of children, and teach two sets of children his hunting skills.
"But lions are effective group hunters in the Savannah, aren't they?" the reader might argue.
Well, true. But lions are still effective group hunters in the Savannah to this day. They have yet to put a lion on the moon, or on top of Mount Everest. No lion has ever invented anything.

Anyway, maybe I'm going off about this, but I feel pretty vehemently that humans are a violent species. That's just the way we are. Sometimes groups of humans are so motivated by their own personal desires to kill that there can be no changing them. They are simply justifying through modern devices a reason to tap the innate concept in them to kill other humans. The only way to stop those violently inclined individuals is to satiate our own inner violent urges until one group wins.

I'm sure there are many, many cases when violence was an end-game strategy only. After negotiations, tariffs, protests, and every other measure of diplomatic pressure had been applied, only then was violence used as a choice. But I think we are kidding ourselves if we really believe that we just short-shifted into fifth gear and that a magical fourth gear - some other unused diplomatic strategy - was not used. There are times when a group absolutely must take up whatever arms they have and apply them against violent individuals. Or even against non-violent individuals that would inevitably become violent.

It was also argued that I (and my audience) should read Hobbes, presumably Leviathan. In part one of that book, Hobbes gives his first law of nature: every man ought to endeavor for peace, and when he cannot obtain it, that he seek and use all the advantages of war. That is precisely what I am arguing for. Further, in that book, Hobbes argues against freedom of speech and argues for censoring the press. The book is in general an argument for an absolute dictatorship, going so far as to argue that members of a social contract should take a pledge to absolve themselves of their personal rights and of their right to dissent on any matter whatsoever. Hobbes saw chaos, all right, and argued for Stalinism. (TAE absolutely is not an expert on the writings of Thomas Hobbes, only an expert on Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson)

Now I am not trying to pick a fight here, but when my arguments (and the arguments of anyone who believes there is a time to saddle up the horse and ride with the posse after the bandits) are cast aside as underdeveloped I feel I must mount a defense! I am not, I repeat, I am not arguing that we shoot everyone that gets out of line, I am trying to argue that part of human nature is a well-developed sense of how to hunt and kill, and when a religion or government uses incentives to motivate their followers to access that sense of violence, it is very likely that the least harmful thing for all parties involved is to just kill the crap out of the terrorists.

Truman understood me. The Japanese culture had turned death by martyrdom into a glorious death, and the Japanese infantry fought like men eager to see the afterlife. A long island-to-island conflict against an army with no self-protection mechanism and nothing to lose would have meant many, many Americans and Japanese would die. Although Truman didn't have to drop the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only a dotard would argue that the cost of human life would have been less great had he refused.
The Pakistani terrorists are just the same. They won't negotiate. They want to kill, and don't mind dying in the least. They are in easily-defendable positions that would cost many lives to root out. The easiest solution, the solution that will, in the end, amount to the least blood shed would be to turn northwest Pakistan into a parking lot.

And that's all I have to say about that!


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