murder and rape

[wil]

A contemplation spurred as a spinoff of discussions in the panentheistic thread.

Are murder and rape vestiges of a time past?

Are they something we are evolving out of?

As/if/when we grow in consciousness, will they eventually disappear?


Ok, here is the contemplation.

Our animalistic nature lead us to use these 'tools' They were normal past behaviour to establish territory and procreate.

In an age of unequal rights amongst the sexes our male dominated society the alpha male took what he wanted, and eliminated any agressors.

As society devoloped it was still common to go to other villages and take women, and once a woman was taken and raped, she was now a member of the other tribe and wife. This still occurs today...

Then societies devoloped further in one of few ways...either establishing value for the woman where the suitor would provide gifts to bargain for her hand in marriage, or lessor value of the woman, a dowry would be created to entice someone to take her away, or families would arrange marriages... All of the above still occurs in various societies today.

I mean isn't our current abhorence of these events not an indication that what was once acceptable is becoming unacceptable in some societies??

So is it possible, with education and enlightment that a time will come when murder and rape is no longer in our psyche as part of a process, therefor no longer occurs??

 

[Thomas]

Are murder and rape vestiges of a time past?

Not really. They are part of an animal nature distorted by human rationality. Murder and rape as acts are defined by human moral constructs, you can't really accuse animals of the offence, even though they practice such acts.

Are they something we are evolving out of?

Evolution implies a biological change. I would say no. Are they something we grow out of? Sadly, no. Both are misuses of power, although murder can be argued as a matter of survival. That's why a court decides.

As/if/when we grow in consciousness, will they eventually disappear?

One would hope so.

Our animalistic nature lead us to use these 'tools' They were normal past behaviour to establish territory and procreate.

They still are, just more sophisticated methods.

In ancient cultures, unwanted children were simply abandoned — there's that letter from a Roman legionary to his wife: "If it's a boy, keep it, if a girl, kill it" — nowadays we have birth control and abortion, and science working hard on designer babies so we can predetermine the traits we want in our offspring. Same thing, really.

My daughter is an Sign Language Interpreter for the deaf. Medical science is working to identify and correct the causes of deafness — meanwhile the deaf community has taken out charges of genocide against certain individuals ... it's eugenics really, 'breeding out' the unwanted strain, the deaf, the poor-sighted ... Marie Stopes, the champion of birth control in the UK, was a total fascist. Her idea was to prevent to overbreeding of the working classes. She disowned her own son when he married a girl who wore glasses.

In an age of unequal rights amongst the sexes our male dominated society the alpha male took what he wanted, and eliminated any agressors.

Females do also, although the balance of power, as it were, is against them. But they would do the same, if the situation was reversed. They saw it as defending the tribe/whatever. The strong ensures safety — and certain rights accrue to them.

As society developed it was still common to go to other villages and take women, and once a woman was taken and raped, she was now a member of the other tribe and wife. This still occurs today...

Yes, but it was always regarded as morally wrong.

Then societies devoloped further in one of few ways...either establishing value for the woman where the suitor would provide gifts to bargain for her hand in marriage, or lessor value of the woman, a dowry would be created to entice someone to take her away, or families would arrange marriages... All of the above still occurs in various societies today.

All societies, I would say. The 'aristocracy' of every country works on the same principles. Even 'Sex and the City" works on those principles. Remember that sons were equally regarded as pawns in the trading game. In Europe and the US, the matriarch in society wielded power behind the throne, as it were, still do.

I mean isn't our current abhorence of these events not an indication that what was once acceptable is becoming unacceptable in some societies??

Yes ... with the proviso that 'evolved' societies find ways to mask the basic imperative.

So is it possible, with education and enlightment that a time will come when murder and rape is no longer in our psyche as part of a process, therefor no longer occurs??

No. I don't think so. Every culture evolves, reaches its peak, and goes into decline. Moral disorder is usually a sign of decline. The 'free love' movement of the 60s was a sign of something wonderful — autonomy — that devolved into a shagfest.

Take the domestic video recorder — it's a matter of record that the porn industry was a prime mover in its uptake into society.

So, basically, people haven't really changed at all. Society has, according to the sophistication of its technologies, but all that's external. People remain essentially the same.

Thomas

 

[path_of_one]

Are murder and rape vestiges of a time past?

Actually, violence was relatively unheard of in most hunter-gatherer societies, and given the egalitarian nature of said societies, women were rarely raped or abused. Divorce was generally easy to get- sometimes so easy that all you did was move the guy's stuff out of your temporary shelter. Anger and so forth was generally handled through mediation or through some folks moving away for a while. You could do this since you were nomadic and had a lot of room.

Murder and rape, while found throughout human history, were relatively infrequent and highly unacceptable until the domestication of plants, settling of the landscape, and then increasingly became common as state-level socieities (nations) took off.

Murder seems mostly tied to feeling social angst with no where else to go. Rape is tied to a general lack of respect for women, which is tied to a lack of women having an important direct role in the economy. It is also tied more generally to strong stereotypes of gender, dual gendered systems like ours (men vs. women, as opposed to those cultures with third or fourth genders), repressed and manipulated sexuality like in our culture (i.e., women are sexual objects in the media but are supposed to be "good girls"), etc. There is an article I can dig up if anyone wants it about rape-free vs. rape-prone societies by an anthropologist.

Are they something we are evolving out of?

Seems more like something we culturally evolved into.

I hope we get to a point where we evolve out of it.

As/if/when we grow in consciousness, will they eventually disappear?

I certainly hope so, at some point in our evolution of consciousness.

I confess it is hard for me not to take a feminist stance and point out that the rates of women doing these acts is much, much lower... all over the world, more or less. I don't know what it is about men that cause them to do this.

Our animalistic nature lead us to use these 'tools' They were normal past behaviour to establish territory and procreate.

Nope. I mean, maybe if you go back far enough. But for 90% of human history, we were foragers and didn't need to establish territory due to a low population on a large landscape. Furthermore, it doesn't seem people need any assistance in procreation. Human females are among the most sexually receptive animals on earth. Evolution hid when we were in heat, making us receptive almost all the time. Furthermore, we tend to naturally pair-bond for short periods of time (about 7 years), creating a stable sexual environment for procreation. So, in fact, the opposite from rape should have occurred. This is furthered by the observation that rapists rarely rape women because they want sex. Rape is usually about controlling other people. It is an act of dominance and aggression that gets mixed up with sexual arousal.

In an age of unequal rights amongst the sexes our male dominated society the alpha male took what he wanted, and eliminated any agressors.

Actually, studies of really alpha-male dominant animals, such as babboons, indicate that the alpha-male usually is not as successful in procreation as the nice, easy-going male. The females often sneak off with the nice males and have more sex with them. Additionally, the alpha-male often gets sick and/or dies because he spends no time eating or sleeping. The constant stress of fighting and watching limits his capacity to procreate.

As society devoloped it was still common to go to other villages and take women, and once a woman was taken and raped, she was now a member of the other tribe and wife. This still occurs today...

But again, was unusual for most of human history.

Then societies devoloped further in one of few ways...either establishing value for the woman where the suitor would provide gifts to bargain for her hand in marriage, or lessor value of the woman, a dowry would be created to entice someone to take her away, or families would arrange marriages... All of the above still occurs in various societies today.

Yep. Interestingly, societies that place a high economic value on women generally operate under bride price, in which the groom's family pays the bride's family. This compensates her family for the loss of her valuable labor. Dowries typically exist in societies where women have low status and are viewed as a liability; larger dowries attracted more wealthy grooms. Dowries are also sometimes given to the bride as her personal property as a sort of insurance against her husband's death or abandonment, since in these societies women are economically useless.

I mean isn't our current abhorence of these events not an indication that what was once acceptable is becoming unacceptable in some societies??

I don't know. Every society is different. Some have never found rape or murder acceptable, and still do not. Others always found them acceptable, and continue to do so. U.S. society says that it does not find either act acceptable, yet both acts are exceptionally common for a first world nation. Rape is such a nuanced thing and so problematic to define, report, and prosecute in our nation that I'd say we're a ways from really perceiving it as unacceptable. There's a lot of mixed signals about sexuality in our culture.

So is it possible, with education and enlightment that a time will come when murder and rape is no longer in our psyche as part of a process, therefor no longer occurs??

Like I said, I hope so.

 

[wil]

I was hopin our resident anthropologist currently on sabatical would show up.

So my original thesis completely wrong but more recent observatons close and hope is not misgiven....I'll take that.

 

[path_of_one]

Glad to be of some service. LOL

Your original hypothesis is totally understandable and logical. Humans are just a crazy lot.

 

[Tao_Equus]

Are murder and rape vestiges of a time past?

Are they something we are evolving out of?

As/if/when we grow in consciousness, will they eventually disappear?

They are in no way a "vestige".... as a facet of the collective human condition both are still thriving. And I think it will remain so for a good while yet.

I strongly disagree with PoO's assessment that "Actually, violence was relatively unheard of in most hunter-gatherer societies..." and think her infected with too much California sunshine ... In my opinion the rapid expansion of our species across the world is due entirely to our dark and aggressive potential. Life was not some sort of "The Gods Must be Crazy" ideal. Staying in California think about gang culture and imagine its roots and what modern gangs would be capable of if there was no police force. My belief is that human expansion was so rapid because the more peaceable groups were trying to get away from nomadic predatory gangs. As global population increased and tribes bcame nations such gangs were assimilated and the murder and rape defacto legitamised as the behaviour expected of the soldier. In oyr written histories it seems hardly a generation has experienced life without war. To imagine it was different in prehistory is a leap of faith I could not take.



That said I have to thumbs up PoO on every other point you made. It is a complex question when you get down to the individual case, case types and the social dynamic of the society in which it takes place. The complexity is killing me! Its everywhere!

 

[Tao_Equus]

BBC NEWS | Africa | Guinea massacre toll put at 157

everyday some really bad *** happens somewhere...

 

[path_of_one]

They are in no way a "vestige".... as a facet of the collective human condition both are still thriving. And I think it will remain so for a good while yet.

Sadly enough.

I strongly disagree with PoO's assessment that "Actually, violence was relatively unheard of in most hunter-gatherer societies..." and think her infected with too much California sunshine ...

Yours is an interesting hypothesis, but so far from my studies of foraging societies (and I had entire classes that were solely on them), it isn't upheld by evidence. It's a logical hypothesis, but unsubstantiated. Certainly there are/were foraging societies that were violent, but they are far outnumbered by those who were not.

As global population increased and tribes bcame nations such gangs were assimilated and the murder and rape defacto legitamised as the behaviour expected of the soldier. In oyr written histories it seems hardly a generation has experienced life without war. To imagine it was different in prehistory is a leap of faith I could not take.

Global population is not indicated to have substantially increased until the arrival of the nation-state, which was preceded by the domestication of plants and animals and the rise of agriculture.

Written history is even later, substantially after the rise of the nation-state.

So its relevance (as well as theories about population pressure) are very limited for discussing "human nature" in terms of the bulk of human history and evolution. It's comparing apples and oranges in terms of social, emotional/mental, and environmental pressures.

That said I have to thumbs up PoO on every other point you made. It is a complex question when you get down to the individual case, case types and the social dynamic of the society in which it takes place. The complexity is killing me! Its everywhere!

Aw, thanks. Bugger the complexity. Makes it hard to say much of anything general that is universally useful.