Poirot

‘I agree that in a well-ordered community, be it tribal or industrial, the onus is on cooperation.’

It’s nice that you agree with me. Pity that’s not what I said.

I meant basic human nature being cooperative in the egalitarian sense. I was not using the term ‘cooperation’ as a basis for how communities are ‘ordered’. Cooperation can also be used – and often is – to maintain exploitive hierarchies and to perform acts of appalling brutishness.

As for all your comments re tribal societies and men’s and women’s work, I’ve long since tossed out all that macho-anthropology stuff that evolved out of 19th century male-only academies. A lot has been discredited, but the myths persist.

According to a thousand prehistoric-‘man’ documentaries – men spent their lives romping over the plains stalking long-extinct mammoths, sharpening spears and bonding around campfires away from petty female domesticity. And women happily spent their lives confined to the hut, out of sight of camera crews, venturing outside only occasionally to pick up the nuts and berries that obligingly grew close to the hut so their frail little legs didn’t have to walk far.

‘It's only in technologically advanced, modern industrial society that the lines have been blurred and women have moved into areas traditionally occupied by men.’

Excavations of pre-‘civilisation’ sites from Anatolia, Minoan Crete and Old Europe indicate otherwise. Gender roles were fluid and women participated as much as men in public life. Not surprisingly, military warfare and class either didn’t exist or were minimal.

Killarney, you've read too much Rousseau. The claim that humans deep down are 'good' and then only corrupted by society is a myth perpetuated by Rousseau. All you've done is exchange one myth for another.

Please yourself, Killarney.

If you want to believe that women in pre-civilisation tucked the tiddlywinks under their wings and accompanied their menfolks on their expeditions, then so be it.

I'm fascinated by the way you dismiss women's valuable work as them having ".....spent their lives confined to the hut.....venturing outside occasionally to pick up the nuts and berries that obligingly grew close to the hut so their frail little legs didn't have to walk far."

Why is it that dyed-in-the-wool feminists devalue women's contribution in traditional society?

My next question is why feminists believe that women who did stay closer to the hearth would have had no role in the pubic life of a traditional or tribal community?

Women and their contributions were central to those communities.

Those women knew that.

So did the men.

I'm fascinated that the only values you can bring yourself to extol regarding women in traditional society are those that (you imagine) emulate the men.

It seems to me that true feminists won't or can't handle the fact that women are nurturers by nature. And that nature requires a settled home base to raise human children who are dependent for so much longer than other mammals.

Rampaging over the countryside in league with men, hunting or fighting, isn't conducive to bringing up junior at all.

http://www.academia.edu/408392/Evidence_for_Warfare_on_Crete_during_the_Early_and_Middle_Bronze_Age

Killarney, you really should do this professionally. Your talent for satire is prodigious.

Poirot, you're right, of course. Humans self-organise at every level and the most fundamental level is that of the pair-bond. It has taken 50 years of aggressive feminist propagandising, (as so aptly lampooned by Killarney) backed by large amounts of corporate and government support and subsidy to break the pair-bond as the primary organisational unit and I give it only another 20-40 to return to dominance.

On the subject of militarism and "chivalry", the quid pro quo for the soldier has always been the availability of women. A man returning from a war is in a privileged position, with many of his competitors for female attention no longer around and a grateful population of women to compete for his attention. My mother had 3 "maiden aunts" who never married after losing their fiances in WW1, but who served as helpmeets for their sisters and brother in raising their families.

We are trying to pretend that being a soldier is a "profession" and to give its practitioners the same "progressive" attitudes that are common in some civilian sectors, which are based on a narcissistic drive to self-perceive as "good" and to fit in with a group that is dominated by women. Soldiers KNOW they're good. They're so good they're prepared to die for those women. They have no need for posturing and the women they attract don't either.

There aren't too many poseurs in a platoon of infantry. It's a shame that the top brass seems to have forgotten, or perhaps never learnt, what it means to be a genuinely competent man doing man's work.

They should be disciplining internally and telling everybody else to just go away. The "whistleblowers" should be summarily dismissed. They are dingos who'll "walk beside you for miles then turn on you when you need them".

While there are some men and doubtless women too whose behaviour could bring the military into disrepute, their numbers are low compared with the large numbers of servicemen and servicewomen. We really have to separate the media sensationalism from the reality. We also need to talk about risk and risk management and in a professional way. That wouldn't appeal to a Defence Minister who needs to kick the sexism can for his boss Julia Gillard, feminists, or the media who want an audience.

There are numerous other examples where lobbyists adept in manipulating the media and the media themselves have managed to spread very misleading views and hysteria for secondary gain.

Back in the Fifties and later, the Australian media bothered about fathers in isolated areas who murdered their loved ones. The papers played a few very sad crimes over and over, making it look as though they were common events. It sold papers.

Similarly, recently some mistakes with parole have enabled the media to sensationalise that, calling for populist 'solutions'. The fact is that thousands are released on parole and the system works, but absolutely nothing in life is without risk, including the parole system. However the authorities cannot say that for obvious reasons. So promises are made to 'improve' parole, just as promises are made to 'reform' the military.

Some people on this topic are proposing the old "noble savage" concept where tribes built classless and female sensitive societies and everyone lived Edenic peace. Such a premise is laughable.

Barbarian lives have traditionally been hard, brutish and short. Primitive hunter gatherer societies need an immense amount of land to ensure the survival of only a small number of people. Seasonal variations, droughts, floods, and pestilences ensure that tribes are constantly encroaching upon the claimed territories of other tribes, making tribal hostility and warfare an everyday event.

The reason why the Australian Coastwatchers were so hard for the Japanese to exterminate in WW2 was because many Coastwatchers were either District Officers or plantation owners who were held in great respect by the local native populations. The Australian administration had put an end to millenia of inter tribal headhunting and cannibalism, and there was much relief by the natives because of that one fact.

The use of females as warriors in tribal societies is so rare an event as to be considered statistically insignificant. One reason why the Lewis and Clark expedition was considered by local indians as not being a territory invading war party, was the presence of the young indian woman (and guide) Sacagewaya, who was carrying a baby.

The degree to which tribal societies are very hostile to each other can be gleaned from the fact that 12 months after the Battle of the Little Bighorn,warriors of the Latoka Sioux who had defeated Custer were being used as scouts to help the US army exterminate the Mandans. The Indians hated each other more than they did the US Army.

Tribal fights were usually brief affairs involving very low casualties and tribal fights were often more about day long ceremonial posturing rather than full on killing. What is driving soldiers insane today is the length of time that a modern soldier can expect to be in continuous combat, and the lethality and impersonality of modern weapons creating random deaths and immense casualties.