Among the Kwakiutl it did not matter whether a relative had died in bed of disease, or by the hand of an enemy; in either case death was an affront to be wiped out by the death of another person. A chief's sister and her daughter had gone up to Victoria and because their boat had capsized they never came back. Immediately the tribe set up the war pole to announce their intention of wiping out the injury, and gathered a war party. They set out and found seven men and two children asleep and killed them. Then they felt good when they arrived at Sebaa in the evening. From
Anthropology and the Abnormal, by Ruth Benedict
This creepy passage has been rolling around in the back of my brain ever since someone posted it in an on-line forum. My first reaction was “What planet is Ruth Benedict from, anyway?” This reminds me of a whole lot lot people from many different cultures all over the world. My second reaction is that the Kwakiutl really are pretty rare and highly abnormal in their clear, pristine limpid, straightforward in your face honesty about their motivations. As our species is probably the biggest collection of bullshitters within 30,000 light years of galactic central point, the human norm is to plaster these base urges over with layer upon layer of garbage about Freedom, Justice, the Will of God, Allah, Amaterasu, whoever.
Whether masked or barefaced, the spirit of the Kwakiutl chief lives in everybody’s head as part of our basic makeup, this notion that we are owed someone else’s pain whenever we are in pain. Mostly we hold him in check. Mostly, when he threatens to cut loose, Jimmy Buffet (who is also in everybody’s head) righteously slaps him down with a rousing chorus of “Hell I think, well it could be my fault.” Mostly, the worst that happens is hollering at family members when we lose our car keys, or insist for a few minutes or hours that since our day got off to a really crappy start, that our families, friends and coworkers need to have lousy starts to their days too.
But sometimes it gets worse. Sometimes, anything bad happening to people means they are entitled to a pile of burned, bleeding broken bodies in return, and it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference whether any of the victims had anything to do with the original bad event. Sometimes there is road rage that leaves dead bodies at the side of the freeway, or busloads of schoolchildren blown up, or planes flown into buildings. And since 9-11, this particular Kwakiutl chief has had full and complete control of US foreign policy, and Jimmy Buffett is nothing but a girlie-man who could never be a commander in chief.
Here is a list of countries: United States of America, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan. One of these will surely strike people as an anomaly, but what all have in common are things like mutual refusal to ratify treaties on the rights of women and the rights of children, capital punishment, AIDS prevention by abstinence only. All have in common heavy political influence or outright control by religious fundamentalists. The anomalous country is anomalous in that fundamentalist control of government is at total odds with the cultural norms of its majority, which is rendered relatively powerless by peculiarities of its constitution originally intended to preserve slavery, granting the Kwakiutl chief 20 votes for every Jimmy Buffett vote.
The chief must always get his dead body, innocence be damned.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_3_63/ai_101261133Hearing a death row. inmate's appeal, Justice Laura Stith of the Missouri Supreme Court displayed exasperated incredulity when questioning Assistant State Attorney General Frank Jung. According to a February 24, 2003, New York Times article Stith said, "Are you suggesting that even if we find Mr. Armine actually innocent, he should be executed?" Jung replied, "That's correct, your honor." A second justice, Michael Wolff, recast the question to make sure he had heard Jung's reply correctly. He asked, if DNA evidence proved a convict's innocence, should the state nonetheless execute her or him if there was no procedural error at his trial? Again, Jung said yes.The chief has been in charge of Wahabism and its various offshoots for 150 or so years, but more recently he has also assumed total control of a huge subset of the nominally Christian. The Jesus of the Gospels told the disciple who had sliced off the ear of the high priest’s servant to put up his sword and healed the ear, and his most physical hissy fit had nothing but moneychangers’ tables as victims. The chief has transmogrified the Jesus of the Gospels into a figure of horror, worshipped by the purchasers of 60 million copies of the
Left Behind books.
In the latest installment, "Glorious Appearing," Jesus merely speaks and the bodies of the enemy are ripped open. Christians have to drive carefully to avoid "hitting splayed and filleted bodies of men and women and horses."
"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again."
Jesus melts enemy soldiers like wax, creating a 5-foot wide/deep river of blood, walks through it, and the "remnant" worships him with traditional Christian hymns. Then he rides his horse toward Jerusalem, quoting various Bible verses, and every time he says something people are decimated like roadkill under a semi.
Can the rest of the world ever get the chief under control, before endless rounds of “I got you last” played out by religious crackpots of various stripes destroy everyone on earth who remains capable of empathy and self-criticism? Stay tuned—we’ll find out one way or another in less geological time than you might think.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
