A 'Guardian' article heaps praise on the distinguished anthropologist
Jared Diamond:
Some tribal customs, such as widow-strangling, will not be missed, of course. "We should not romanticise traditional societies," he says. "There are horrible things that we want to avoid, but there (sic) wonderful things that we should emulate."
Things like being permissive with our children (aren't we already?) or respecting our elders.
Well, when we aren't bumping them off, that is...
Nomad tribes, particularly those in the Arctic or deserts, faced with insufficient food will often kill old people or abandon them – or encourage them to commit suicide, a grim policy taken to extremes not just by the Kaulong but by people of the Banks Islands in the Pacific, whose old and sick would beg their friends to bury them alive to end their suffering, and the Chukchi, who live in the northeastern corner of Asia, who used to encourage their old folk to let themselves be strangled on the promise they would get preferential treatment in the next world. Yes, it sounds grim, admits Diamond, but it has a cruel logic: food supplies are limited and what else should they do when resources dry up? Let their children starve?
Actually, Jared, I think you'll find that's one of the 'horrible things we want to avoid' and we should probably
not emulate it...
7 comments:
It seems Jared has uncovered an early trial of the Liverpool Care Pathway.
Chukchi jokes tend to be very black as a consequence.
Or the other alternative option: ensure food supplies are not limited by being an advanced western society.
Luckily, we are already there.
"It seems Jared has uncovered an early trial of the Liverpool Care Pathway."
Indeed!
"Chukchi jokes tend to be very black as a consequence."
Probably not many start 'Have you met my mother in law..?'
"Luckily, we are already there."
Too much so, according to half the politicians!
Its like that advert on the TV right now about providing money to dig wells for poor folk in Africa to give them clean drinking water.
well for a start,how about stop letting your livestock wade about in and piss and shit in your drinking water?
How about filtering and boiling your water before you drink it?
Sorry,but if such simple measures are beyond you then do you really deserve to survive?
If Africa is the cradle of Humanity why are they so fucking useless at looking after themselves?
I don't laugh at things like that....with the "greens" saying that the supportable population of this country is, and should be, 13 million, I think it likely that a form of "bury-your-granny-alive will likely be political policy before long. Or the modern equivalent: Freeze a granny a day.
Africa might well be the cradle of humanity. Fortunately there are some of us who left the cradle a while back.
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