anti-mili rave

Honestly, there is a militarist aspect at all injustice.
That is a puzzling factor,
the militairy option is a political one and as such should be used by the shifts to benefit the people, so why does it keep popping up as the food for the root of evil?

Abuse of powers and militairy representation really are among the closest of relations.

With no exception we agree we promote the human factor, we have a consensus of fighting injustice, and we are even motivated, proud, through it.

However when you zoom in on the warfare aspects, of northern european culture
a thing we dearly mention civilisation, the reality might be less charming then it appears.

Plainly put, the nort-west european culture and her derivates, the colonised continents, are not at all more peacefull in the vertical component of the function,
they are just sinusoid on the horizontal. In other words , we don't fare war as often but we inflict quitte as much damage.

This the european culture tends to mistake for attitude, "a peacefull attitude",
but it is merely the impact of the climate on the european power structures.

Let me elaborate: we don't even need to consider organised warfare (although possibly it was the first thing to shape this psychology) but we can in a thought experiment even analyse the pre-technological aspect.

Most technologically undeveloped (often stone-age) cultures europeans met tend to
have concepts of warfare, or struggle. It is exceptionally hard to proof this is no result of the interaction with technologically more evolved cultures, however in many cases (majorly the americas and the arctic and isolated tropical reserves),
it can be proven some concept of warfare existed, in clan, family or tribal context.

The conclusion drawn from this is that at some point in time population pressure expresses in violent relations, (in the americas eg +- 17k bce)

For the sake of analyses it helps to consider south american cultures as pretechnological, ironworking in this case apparently being sufficiently a limit.
(although the case could be made for the wheel, or the domestication of (working)
bigger animals like , horses, oxen, camels, elephants and cows.) And eventually also for bronze.(i would think they made alloys by accident sometimes, since they worked copper, gold and silver that all mix neatly with tin), anyhow because of the relative scarcity of natural copper they focussed on precious metals.

So having established a major pretechnological setting for the south americas,
let me continue to consider warfare.

The americas are like the total of the continents basicly mostly northern. Inuit occupied all the (northern) arctic climates offwards only 8k bce, so the americas had been greatly isolated over a long period.

There is no strong indication that the initial colonisation of the americas came with much warfare or violence. Also the second wave seems to have peacefully fitted in (correct me if i am wrong i just don't find evidence it was not).

This is very much according to the antropological model in general: People occupy territory that is available, even rather outbound ranges, before settling into conflict.

At some point in time, i am not original in my opinion that this was when the initial waves reach patagonia i think, (so 17k bce), warfare kicks in.

Not all of the americas have known warfare from then on but most has.
islands, remote areas, and generally marginal territory got largely spared.

Logically in an anti mili rave i would have to look there for examples.
So.... here goes: For reasons that will be completely obvious later i will treat this in a north south fashion..

The storys of the very north, tell of a big war when the arctic was invaded by another people of subarctic offspring, the now (asian/russian/mongoloid) inuits
I think they came from the north-east asian coastal and inland regions.
However this conflict was apparently partly fixed in the traditional fashion.
On many places coexistence and mixing are suggested in the storys.However the initial culture("technology" in archeological terms) does not anymore exist.
The now inuits use a larger part of the arctic then the former did.

Apparently when land was scarcer clashes are quitte common.
Story telling from after this period, does not relate much war.
Crime , in the form of criminal raids exists, and there are storys of expeditions,
for loot, revenge or mere hollidays. No storys of war.

Somewhat further south in what is now canada, although the migrations etc. etc.
are complex, (western NS, eastern SN, central NS, WE, NS, and their opposites)
the resettlement of many more southern tribes in colonialist times to canada obviously suggests a culture of greater tolerance.
The storys of what is now the US, are the cowboy and indian storys, and we have many of them. Also because of the better climate and enlightenment era in europe there actually are attempts on scientific anthropological description from the very beginning of the colonisation, it's a huge source now, although the start was much like the graberobbery kind of start of archeology in europe, torturing people for mythical storys of gold eg..

Carefull observation of the material reveals that bar exceptions (like in the glades), most if not all of these cultures were familiar with a concept of ritualised war.
That tended to get greatly aggrevated by the indisparaty of weaponry introduced.
From any native point (also the victims ) point of view it could only be considered 'smart' when someone obtained european weaponry initially.

The traditional (that one always heroic) norm for violence and war, was therefor ruthlessly (a characteristic of heroism) applied in a traditional context.
It soon resulted in massmurder, and most if not all larger scale torture is of suggestively european context.

2 conclusions can be drawn: further south warfare was not any more a family or clan affair, with at most vague animosities on tribal level, It was a clan or tribal affair with indeed vague animositys on a national level.

long story short in even more proliferate climates , yuca eg;), the middle americas and the south, war scales up again, nations and tribes fight nations and tribes and nations and tribes allie nations and tribes.


This system is basically diferent from eurasia in that its axis is north south,
Eurasia naturally has a more chaotic profile.
I am not aware of any socio anthropolocial studys incorporating the possible case of mystification of this event in the tales of the representative populations, but it would be appreciable.

I think i have shown to you that climate at least has a lineair impact on circumstances and perception of war, its shapes and storys, and so i want to pick up the argument.

Europeans that like to think they are peacefull and civilised.
The mojo, the idea is set out in rough lines, so let me now tell you what is really the matter with us.

In fact we are a wary people, the europenars, we have so many wars on our list and so many arms in our hands , we are and have been actually involved in any sizeable violent conflict across the globe. So , we are not very peacefull in fact we are quitte ready to represent our civilisation, our cultures.

So the peacefull bit , as in peacekeeping, might be somewhat of a misconception,
then the civilised bit must be flawed, uhm leading to the line of thought:

That perhaps we are not *more* civilised then others.( only different)
That we have no better hallmark for 'civilisation' then anyone else that tells her own story.

Wich is by the way so obvious i wonder why noone noticed before.

Superficially we come of neatly.. small scale warfare by some inuits, my are we good!
but , the nr of people involved is not the ony measure of the scale of a war.

Firstly more northernly there just happened to be generally less people.
On a usual battlefield the chance to score a hit from a relatively safe position would be smaller. Secondly to consider our current mentality , what we call civilisation, technology comes into play.

However it is not a needed element, to explain what we misunderstand, because what we basically misunderstand is how our natural notion of ethics is much related to our preferred ways of faring war, and not as much with maintaining peace.

What we also mostly miss is that our storys, onwards from our myths, justify just our behaviour. So that we perform in a very selfconfirming way.

In a way all human reasoning here is on a similar nonsensical(egoistic) level, no matter what geographical location, but since we do have a technological capacity,
when we are aware what we are doing it changes more, then levying all the nations.

So let me try to unwrap the relation of our method(s)of war, with our political selfclearance, our posture as a peacefull nation.
(the US climate is somewhat similar to the european).


War apparently takes the form of raids, with inuits, and slightly more south.
In european (written) history this trend is completely obvious.
The vikingera and what was before that everywhere north of the german coast
proofs easily a cold climate rewards only expeditionairy war.

That is easy to explain. Half of the year everything is frozen, moving is a pain,
and food is scarce. So in justice and prowess (theft,adventure), a warlike event had to be thorougly planned and prepared. I would be a all or nothing based calculation,
and the resulting battle is still reknowingly gruesome.

However be carefull not to draw comparisons to south america, the viking era was a representative ironage pre-gunpowder time and not a pre-technological.

Metals provided bigger means for the build up of resources for war, not in the least wooden objects (i would guess this becomes relevant by now;), boats, firewoods, temporary storagerooms eg. then an inca would imagine.

(the inca thinks i'll build a city of that wood btw;)
I think it is important to stress that the trend of the northern cultures to implement expeditionairy warfare is thus as i argued above, of completely ancient origine. Long, long, before even the iron age, people there , would involve in that kind of warfare. Again: for justice, revenge, adventure or profit and otherways for mere survival.

Ofcourse the social acceptance of that age old situation is great. It describes the perimeters of a survivable defence (hence we live), and constitutes much of our emotions about heroism or any other parole. Naturally as it suited survival of the subgroup. Wich indicates how much the profit argument is the initial instigator of most any war, with the premise of a post-cro-magnon like population pressure on the european continent. (>30kbce)

In general terms the english/irish islands are a flattened curve of the northern and coastal technologys in historical and protohistorical times .
Their relative isolation means expedition was even the only means of warfare,
in historical times and so their methods and probably their mentality shape to a slightly more northern pattern then climatologically would be expected 15k years ago.

Anyhow it seems so, because they adapt well into the general north-west european ethical and consensual patterns. Perhaps indeed being less continental.

Time to try to incorporate the forest/steppe model temperate climate zone into the model.(1)

Since continental (from now on) europe is mostly militairy characterised through east<>west militairy movement untill the roman times, partly due to the alpes, balkan (pyrenees less important because of the atlantic frontier) partly due to aforementioned steppes in the east, past 12k years significantly aided by the donau.(2) wich ofcourse also represents a south-north notion, except occasional outposts ,
(pyrenees, lithuanian moors, netherlands), the militairy perceptions rather generalise and in fact blend, on a continental scale. Overall the procedings are invasive but everywhere single examples survive and blend in. (swiss comes to mind)


The resulting mentality is not very geared to conflicts on a tribal level, excempting any outposts, the bigger notion of nations of tribes in movement provides the food for conflict, the resulting wars are of the conqueror kind, much like the less technologically developed just more resourcerich cultures of the southern americas. However still the climate plays a major role in the regulation of the conflict, as harvests have to be made and seasons other then the summer, when the circumstances favour battle, and autumn when the reserves where high, prohibited every major campaigning untill.. i think the firepower argument settled the score.

The idea would be that sufficiently overwhelming firepower would provide you with city's and hence the more nasty aspects of rain and wind etc. could be deterred in a decent defensive position.

Let's hope ww2 was the end point of that development.

Back to the facts, the residue of , over the alps cultures , is very much characterised by seasonal warfare, with the northern and coastal parts still raiding.

People (animal after all) and "cultures" adapt to war when it is a neccesity for survival. As a result north-west europeans have an ethical subset for just their methods of warfare. These are imcomparibly more brutal then north american because of the huge nations involved in the east-west trends and less (?) the permanent negotiation of a similar southeast northwest trend. (italy only gets really significant 2k bce or so.) This last trend is a reflection of the source of agriculture in a similar way as thebes was a reflection of the wealth of the egyptian empire on a smaller scale.

In the end effect the more developed agricultural cultures to the east would profit
from the development of eg. the egyptian or european culture, whence optionally engaging it militairy. (culminating in historical relations of eg. xerxes.)(3)

On with the subset of ethics that motivates northwest european cultures militairy.

At some point in this story i will meet the romans, but before i shed a light on that subject i want to try to aproach the subset of ethics that prevailed in pre-roman times for obvious reasons. (because rome was about to change everything)

tbc.


(3) pitty for them agriculture comes with desertification or they would have won the war on wood.

(2)
hm, i think ill put the donau upstream under mediterenean;)Alexander rules still.
I would think classical greece much minimised the impact of the donau on militairy movements in (c.)europe.

(1)I wonder if the steppification through agriculture and militairy invasion are somehow related now. It's the first time i understand ukraine as a source for agricultural culture in eastern europe.

(some edits made 01-07-2007)