Post by MagnetMan on Mar 3, 2008 12:32:45 GMT -5
Courage, like sharing/work/heart/communication/art and intellect, are all carefully cultivated ethics. Without proper social guidance, followed by personal disciplines, none of those ethics surface and the human is left stunted and dysfunctional.
I am not saying we humans invented any of those ethics. In their natural states they are atomic attributes. Even insects instinctively exhibit them. Bees share, have a work ethic, show courage, art, communication etc. But in humans our instincs have been modified by tens of thousands of egnerations of artificial social cultivation. Those basic ethics no longer surface instinctively. The genetically imprinted over-lay of social disciplines has to go through a process of parental reminding in every new-born. If this were not so, we would be trying to rear a chimpanzee with every new born. Even so it takes all of 21 years o bring them all back to the forefront of current consciousness.
Courage, like sharing and the work-ethic are foundational ethics upon which all our higher ethics are structured. (When one fully understands the evolutionary intelligence that underpins the Ages long structuring of the human character and the foundational preparation for the structuring of more complex future ethics, one cannot help be think it is all by Divine design.)
During the Bronze Age, pubertal initiation rites and ordeals, designed and over-seen by the clan elders, prepared a boy to have courage in battle. Those rites where the equivalent of today's army boot camps. No soldier should be sent to the front line of battle without extreme preparatory training pressure designed to evoke the courage imprint. Raw courage is one thing. Cultivated courage is a refined ingredient that has important implications when the human heart is evoked. It sweetens and strengthens human love beyond that of any other animal. It allows man to know the Love of God and experience super-natural states of bliss and ecstacy.
Hunter/gatherers had no need for initiation rites. Hunter/gatherers make no serious inroads on the large cat's territories. Gazelle are killed only occasionally, so the leopards are not starved. Large antelope are an even more rare kill, so the lions are not bothered. Over the past two million years the big cats have learned to give man a wide berth, we are too clever for them. Man no longer registers on their food chain and they run when they see us. There are accidental occasions when they become man killers.
In order to understand the social relevance of what I am talking about, as regards the cultivation of courage, we have to go back to the beginning of the Bronze Age.
When man turned to agriculture the whole of Nature was artificially impacted, the ecology went into a chain-reaction - (which is still on-going) The domestication of goats, sheep, swine impacted on the medium sized cats who retaliated by night raids on the fenced flocks. Farmers were able to dispatch leopards without much courage needed. A pack of dogs to track and tree the culprit, followed by an arrow from below was all that was needed. Every year or so the hunt had to be repeated as other leopards occupied the vacant niche. Leopard hunting still goes on to this day in rural Africa.
But domesticating cattle and the large pastures needed to husband them made serious inroads on the lions. Lions are unique felines. They hunt in prides. Their massive bodies need the kill of a large animal every two or three days. No Bronze Age herdsman could afford such in-roads. The lions had to be exterminated. They are too heavy to be treed. So dogs and arrows were out of the equation. When a lion is hunted it retreats into heavy thicket. So throwing spears at a distance is also out of the equation. The only answer is to beat them out of cover into the open. This operation requires twenty to forty trained and organized men, who do not panic when a five hundred pound cat, armed with eighteen razor claws and two inch fangs tries to break through the line.
Training lion-fighters begins at puberty. The whole of mankind was involved in this operation. Lions once hunted all of Europe, Asia and the Americas. They are all extinct on those continents. Bronze Age cultures were responsible for the mass extermination. It took untold generations to accomplish. As the tradition set in it, together with dirt farming, altered the basic structure of hunter/gatherer family group cooperation in to the collective cooperative of the extended family. The formation and maintenance of standing lion-fighting guilds, changed human social habits and led to the practices of chiefdom authority, bride price, polygamy, totem ism, shaman ism and elder councils.
I can go on and on explaining the social repercussions - leading from lion-fighting guilds to clan feuding once the lions were conquered, to the formation of warrior regiments and outright warfare. It is all recorded in Psyche-Genetics. My theory on prehistoric human behavior and how that impacts on present and future prospects is both original and somewhat controversial I know. Hence all the objections that new thought inevitably generates in minds that have not had enough time a assimilate all the ins and outs of how the new conclusions were arrived at.
I believe, with perhaps some level of correction, the Psyche-Genetic theory will stand the test of further anthropological scrutiny. I did years of leg-work on this. It did not take a rocket scientist to figure it all out. But it did take decades of practical field observations among exiting Stone and Bronze Age groups, and a lot of basic common sense. As a documentary film maker, born and raised in Africa, I was well equipped, well located and well motivated to do the job.
I am not saying we humans invented any of those ethics. In their natural states they are atomic attributes. Even insects instinctively exhibit them. Bees share, have a work ethic, show courage, art, communication etc. But in humans our instincs have been modified by tens of thousands of egnerations of artificial social cultivation. Those basic ethics no longer surface instinctively. The genetically imprinted over-lay of social disciplines has to go through a process of parental reminding in every new-born. If this were not so, we would be trying to rear a chimpanzee with every new born. Even so it takes all of 21 years o bring them all back to the forefront of current consciousness.
Courage, like sharing and the work-ethic are foundational ethics upon which all our higher ethics are structured. (When one fully understands the evolutionary intelligence that underpins the Ages long structuring of the human character and the foundational preparation for the structuring of more complex future ethics, one cannot help be think it is all by Divine design.)
During the Bronze Age, pubertal initiation rites and ordeals, designed and over-seen by the clan elders, prepared a boy to have courage in battle. Those rites where the equivalent of today's army boot camps. No soldier should be sent to the front line of battle without extreme preparatory training pressure designed to evoke the courage imprint. Raw courage is one thing. Cultivated courage is a refined ingredient that has important implications when the human heart is evoked. It sweetens and strengthens human love beyond that of any other animal. It allows man to know the Love of God and experience super-natural states of bliss and ecstacy.
Hunter/gatherers had no need for initiation rites. Hunter/gatherers make no serious inroads on the large cat's territories. Gazelle are killed only occasionally, so the leopards are not starved. Large antelope are an even more rare kill, so the lions are not bothered. Over the past two million years the big cats have learned to give man a wide berth, we are too clever for them. Man no longer registers on their food chain and they run when they see us. There are accidental occasions when they become man killers.
In order to understand the social relevance of what I am talking about, as regards the cultivation of courage, we have to go back to the beginning of the Bronze Age.
When man turned to agriculture the whole of Nature was artificially impacted, the ecology went into a chain-reaction - (which is still on-going) The domestication of goats, sheep, swine impacted on the medium sized cats who retaliated by night raids on the fenced flocks. Farmers were able to dispatch leopards without much courage needed. A pack of dogs to track and tree the culprit, followed by an arrow from below was all that was needed. Every year or so the hunt had to be repeated as other leopards occupied the vacant niche. Leopard hunting still goes on to this day in rural Africa.
But domesticating cattle and the large pastures needed to husband them made serious inroads on the lions. Lions are unique felines. They hunt in prides. Their massive bodies need the kill of a large animal every two or three days. No Bronze Age herdsman could afford such in-roads. The lions had to be exterminated. They are too heavy to be treed. So dogs and arrows were out of the equation. When a lion is hunted it retreats into heavy thicket. So throwing spears at a distance is also out of the equation. The only answer is to beat them out of cover into the open. This operation requires twenty to forty trained and organized men, who do not panic when a five hundred pound cat, armed with eighteen razor claws and two inch fangs tries to break through the line.
Training lion-fighters begins at puberty. The whole of mankind was involved in this operation. Lions once hunted all of Europe, Asia and the Americas. They are all extinct on those continents. Bronze Age cultures were responsible for the mass extermination. It took untold generations to accomplish. As the tradition set in it, together with dirt farming, altered the basic structure of hunter/gatherer family group cooperation in to the collective cooperative of the extended family. The formation and maintenance of standing lion-fighting guilds, changed human social habits and led to the practices of chiefdom authority, bride price, polygamy, totem ism, shaman ism and elder councils.
I can go on and on explaining the social repercussions - leading from lion-fighting guilds to clan feuding once the lions were conquered, to the formation of warrior regiments and outright warfare. It is all recorded in Psyche-Genetics. My theory on prehistoric human behavior and how that impacts on present and future prospects is both original and somewhat controversial I know. Hence all the objections that new thought inevitably generates in minds that have not had enough time a assimilate all the ins and outs of how the new conclusions were arrived at.
I believe, with perhaps some level of correction, the Psyche-Genetic theory will stand the test of further anthropological scrutiny. I did years of leg-work on this. It did not take a rocket scientist to figure it all out. But it did take decades of practical field observations among exiting Stone and Bronze Age groups, and a lot of basic common sense. As a documentary film maker, born and raised in Africa, I was well equipped, well located and well motivated to do the job.
