h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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I am of the opinion that we can have concepts without the words - even if we have to invent words, or circumlocutions to convey the concept - for (very small) instance, I annoyed my son by inventing the term Keymark, to denote a key ring type thingy which has a latch to attach it to a belt, and then years later, seeing them advertised and learning they have a name which neither of us can remember, though Jim says quite crossly, "they're not called keymarks!" (That'
s not a good example I just realised, because keymarks exist, and I had seen one - I just couldn't buy one when I wanted because no one knows the term... Or - the thingy at the back of the throat - it's called the 'uvula', but when we were kids we didn't know that.
Oh, I'll probably think of a better example later.

On the subject of:

"...murder is a specific form of making someone dead and that we consider it a crime."

Edward asks:

"The first bit I don't question. The second I'd like a source on. Could the confusion be one of concepts of justice?"

The source is the Ten Commandments. A fundamental concept of the 3 great western religions which are based on the old testament. The idea of murder as a sin or crime is a concept unknown to most of the world's people until the age of European missionary/colonial conquest.


~jwf~

The traditional Celtic view was that murder was a crime punishable by ... compensation. Everything in Celtic ("Brehon") law was punishable by having to pay compensation. It certainly didn't take the introduction of the monotheistic Christianity to Ireland to bring in the idea that murder was wrong.

See...the 10 Commandments are one view, which says there is a divinely ordained 'good' and 'evil'. This probably originates from proto-Zarathustrianism. But it by no means universal. Amongst the Inuit, for example, when one person kills another, the response is 'well, there must have been a reason for it. Was he jealous? Or hungry? And the response (they don't use the concept of 'punishment' as such) is partly determined according to the reason. Sensible, when you think that theirs was a society in which all were mutually interdependent. A 'murderer' set adrift on an iceflow was one less person to haul in a whale carcass. All this carries on to modern times in the Greenlandic penal code.

What I was meaning was...is there a source for the Africans/ Missionaries story? It's quite possible that they didn't have a concept of 'murder' because their justice system didn't have just one special case of 'Murder'

Then...neither do the British or American systems have a single, clear cut word or phrase: Murder One? Capital Murder? Treason (the deliberate killing of a Monarch)? Corporate Manslaughter? Death by gross negligence? Unlawful killing? Which commandment are those covered by? And does the commandment distinguish between 'murder' and 'military action'? So it goes.

>>...is there a source for the Africans/ Missionaries story? <<

It was anecdotal from my Anthropology prof many years ago. Perhaps she was working on another thesis; I know she didn't care for Margaret Meade. But I took her at her word having no reason to doubt her. At the time Mow-Mow terrorists were disembowelling every white man they could lay their hands on so it was easy to accept as an explanation for such seemingly unbridled and wanton slaughter.

It was a second or third year course on 'cross cultural anthropology' where we often came back to focus on the question of missing concepts in different societies and whether these absent ideas were caused by environmental, linguistic, psychologial, racial or cultural deficiencies and omissions.

The discussion arose as we considered the general notion known as 'running amok' from several Polynesian or Pacific cultures. The same phenomenon is called other things in other 'primitive' societies, such as the Innu you describe, and is generally understood to be a kind of psychological 'rite of passage' when murder and mayhem may result. A kind of anti-social 'mid-life crisis' that causes individuals to wander away from the tribe for days or even weeks, sometimes returning for food in an agitated and violent state doing property damage and causing bodily harm to anyone in their way. (I say mid-life crisis based on the much shorter life expectancy of primitive peoples so as to avoid saying this occurs mainly in teenagers and young adults because 'teenagers' are a purely modern and western demographic created by consumer marketing.)

Those who undergo this temporary psychological anti-social inversion are more pitied than condemned for their actions and will inevitably bear some guilt, especially if lives are taken or serious harm is done to communal property; but no shame is involved and punishment is not a consideration - although compensation (usually voluntary but also by tribal concensus) does sometimes occur.

Your reasoning that societies where mutual interdependence is a matter of survival and every hand is needed to hunt and haul and heave was essentially the explanation we heard. The exceptions were the larger agriculture based societies of Africa and Polynesia where hunting and gathering are less dangerous and tedious and no member of the tribe is indispensable to maintaining the common good. (IE: 'life is cheap' being the prejudicial western perception)

In these easier or more succesful societies the 'amok' fever was less likely to 'make an important or valuable person dead' but traditional responses were culturally ingrained and tolerance and forgiveness and even celebration were the expected aftermath.

To some extent the story of the 'prodigal son' has remnants of this tribal behavior. Of course by that time, the advance of agriculture and resulting larger populations had given rise to the civilisations of the biblical east and had lost even more of their primitive response to the natural world. The ambiguity of the tale isn't just in our modern comprehension, it is there in the contemporary telling or at least the original 'writing down of it'.

Side note: Canadian communications guru Marchall Macluhan once defined an eskimo family as a mother, father, five kids and an anthropologist.

http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/

~jwf~

In Ancient Irish law, if a woman found her husband in bed with another woman, and she killed him within two days, it was considered a crime of passion, while if she waited more than two days it was cold-blooded murder. The latter had a much more serious fine than the former. So the law acknowledged that some murders were worse than others. The Polynesians on the rampage may have been similar. There's no doubt that some cultures seem to value human life more than others: look at the ancient Hebrews and the way they trampled into Canaan killing everyone they met and taking the land for their own!

The notion that the concept of murder begins with the ten commandments is tidy, but won't wash.

Evolutionary anthropology (well summarised in Pinker's "The Blank Slate") has a lot to say on the subject of murder; in pre-state ("primitive" or "hunter-gatherer") societies it is common practice -- many times more so than the present worst parts of the worst US cities -- and is done mostly in the context of raiding neighbouring groups for wives (a man's sexual success is greatly enhanced by murdering someone) -- and often provokes retaliatory raids.

One very interesting point from the Old Testament is the idea of "cities of refuge". The Law (which ran to a lot more than ten commandments) dictated that when the Israelites set up their state they should set aside a certain proportion of cities as places of asylum, where murderers could go for protection against their victims' family members, who would be pursuing them seeking revenge.

>> Canadian communications guru Marchall Macluhan once defined an eskimo family as a mother, father, five kids and an anthropologist.



Thanks for that jw.

B

We're a long way from Language and Linguistics...but what the heck.

>>At the time Mow-Mow terrorists were disembowelling every white man they could lay their hands on so it was easy to accept as an explanation for such seemingly unbridled and wanton slaughter.

Interestingly, the best estimates suggest that the British response to the Mau Mau entailed slaughtering them in equal, or slightly greater numbers. Plus the worst violence occured after the British army was sent in respones to the murder of a single white family. Don't know what all this says. (And in the course of fact checking this, I discovered that 'Mau Mau' translates as 'Burning Spear' - which I surprisingly didn't know, given that he's one of my all-time favourite reggae artistes). As some of the other posters from a land nearby will agree, the British are traditionally biased in the recording of the history of liberation struggles.

On a tangentially related topic - here's an interesting deebating point: Which national leader should be considered as the greatest mass murderer: Oliver Cromwell, Josef Stalin, Adolph Hitler or....Leopold II of Belgium. http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/leopold.html

On a lighter note....husband and wife anthropologists were doing field work in neigbouring villages. One day the husband sends for his wife to tell her of his amazing discovery. "Look," he says, "the people in my village don't distinguish between different species of animal!" He points at a pig and asks a villager "What's that?". The villager says "Ungawa". He points at a monkey and asks "What's that?". The villager says "Ungawa". Then a bird and a dog...and finally a person. Each time the response is "Ungawa." Finally, his wife says to him "Dear, ask them the word for 'index finger'."

The oppressors are not the only ones who show bias in recording history. A recent re-evaluation of Cromwell's campaign in Ireland asserts that, contrary to the man's bloody reputation in Ireland, the only people he killed here were those fighting for King Charles I. No one was fighting for Ireland, except in the sense that Charles was also king of Ireland.

The famous massacre in Drogheda has been re-examined and found ill-documented. It appears only the garrison was killed, and no civilians, according to all contemporary records on both sides, and the slaughter story came into being at a later date.

Oh good! Then we British *do* have our very own republican hero.

The irony of it! Up the Republic!

Which brings me back to linguistics and an old old joke about an newly painted wall.

The first grafitti on it showed a nice grid of three columns neatly labelled "Sport" "Sex" and "Politics".

The first entry in each column was "Up the Reds!"



B

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>> ..look at the ancient Hebrews and the way they trampled into Canaan..<<

One doesn't have to look far to see they've been up to these same old tricks the past 60 years or so. Which raises the question of words and the-concepts-behind-them which are found to be missing in some languages. Does Hebrew not have words for multi-culturalism, racial tolerance or peaceful co-existence? The word and concept of 'racism' seems to elude them completely except in the one specific form 'anti-semitism', a word which spasms forth in knee jerk reaction to cover a multitude of perceived sins including, I'm sure, this posting.

~jwf~

>>.. (a man's sexual success is greatly enhanced by murdering someone)..<<

It was ever thus. At least at a primitive naked ape level it was.
Hollywood has often given us 'proof' that sex after murder (especially of a rival suitor) is usually better than incest.

Because women naturally favour males strong enough to protect them and keep them, it is hard to deny such primitive instincts. But one hopes that our modern and liberated women can rationalise their way past all that.


~jwf~

>> ..discovered that 'Mau Mau' translates as 'Burning Spear' - which I surprisingly didn't know, given that he's one of my all-time favourite reggae artistes..<<

See we all learned something today. I didn't know anyone was still listening to reggae.

~jwf~

>> The oppressors are not the only ones who show bias in recording history. <<

Yes indeedy! Victims have a way of exaggerating their losses and suffering. Told often enough it might even get written down and become official history.

I would be interested in more unbiased history of the Cromwell days in Ireland. My own ancestors were from Lisburn, a small town up the river road from Belfast, where three churches were constructed on a 'cross' of roads. One Catholic, one Anglican and one was Church of Ireland. Depending on which army was marching down the road they would hide in the appropriate sanctuary and hope the officers were civilised enough to restrain the ranks from pillage and butchery. According to a family history written some 150 years ago we (like all residents of the town) were patrons and practitioners at all three churches and were baptised and married in all three and are buried in all three churchyards. All three churches were burnt and rebuilt several times between 1603 and 1675. Perhaps the history has been exagerrated by the victims but there do seem to have been three armies on the march.

~jwf~

There was a very good book on the subject by an Irish historian called 'Cromwell: An Honourable Enemy'. Can't recall the historians name though

>> On a tangentially related topic - here's an interesting deebating point: Which national leader should be considered as the greatest mass murderer: Oliver Cromwell, Josef Stalin, Adolph Hitler or....Leopold II of Belgium. <<

Moa Tse Tung by a country mile.
The figure I heard was 65,000,000.
When I checked I discovered that in addition to the countless military casualties in the ongoing conflict with the Nationalist Chinese Army, the Chinese Communist Revolutionaries inflicted 65 million non-combatant deaths on the general population. While more than half of these were in later years of consolidating power it must be remembered that during the long march his army left nothing alive behind them. (Some say this was merely a savagely methodical scortched-earth policy to discourage pursuit, but more sympathetic writers actually claim it was more merciful to slay entire villages after all their food and livestock was consumed than to leave them alive to starve or be eaten by the pursuing Nationalist Army.)

And that 65 million figure was calculated before the late 1960s when he came up with the idea of the Cultural Revolution and told teenagers to go out and shake things up a bit. No one really knows the death toll from that period of youthful anarchy but you know what kids are like.

~jwf~