I had a cancer infusion today and had about 6 hours to think. OOh boy! That’s dangerous. Me thinking. Anyway during the 6 hours I read a book review of, “War Before Civilization” by Lawrence H Keeley, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I quote, “Indeed, for the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, unimportant, and, like smallpox, a disease of civilized societies alone. Prehistoric warfare, according to this view, was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild.” Not so says Keeley.
In one incident, Keeley introduces evidence of a massacre in S Dakota where over 500 men, women, and children’s scalped and mutilated bodies were found in a mass grave 150 years before the arrival of Columbus. (Oops! I mentioned Columbus. Is that still OK?) A ritualized game – I don’t think so. The noble savage never existed. He was always brutal, efficient, and deadly. The men he attacked rarely avoided death, the women slavery.
How is he different from today’s savage, those that ravage our big cities by night? He is pretty deadly too. This past weekend he committed violence in 6 states; Washington, Georgia, Texas, Illinois, N Carolina, and Ohio. Two people died in the Washington violence. Two others hospitalized. One killed and seven injured in Georgia. Four injured in N Carolina gun violence. Fourteen injured in Austin, Texas. Four were killed and 43 were wounded in Chicago over the weekend. And three died in Cleveland. Innocents didn’t escape the violence. One survivor was only 18 months old.
One thing I’d like to know is whether anyone in S Dakota blamed the violence on the rocks, arrows, knives, axes, and whatever else was used to kill and maim those 500 victims in the mass grave? Today we blame inanimate objects. Indeed Chicago Police Superintendent, David Brown, blamed gangs, guns and drugs for the violence in his city. As used by Brown these things are all inanimate. But the term gangs as inanimate as it is, is comprised of individuals, savage individuals who care not whether someone dies during their violent outbursts.
Lock these individuals up – FOREVER! Don’t let them out. After all that is where civilized society is different than that in prehistoric times. We have courts. And Prisons. And juries of our peers. Never doubt that this is war, war between civilization and prehistoric savagery. Do your duty. If ever serving on a trial of a violent offender, put him or her away. Whatever the maximum sentence is available for the crime committed is the one the savage among us must serve. Don’t feel sorry for these beasts. They are not civilized. They are not even equal to prehistoric Neanderthals who at least buried their dead.
If we need more prisons, build them. That is the cost of civilization I guess. Or else we just have civilized savagery – war. God help us if we let it continue.
The Racinian 