We can rely on Poul Anderson.
Ythrians:
"...are as fundamentally territorial as man is fundamentally sexual, and we'd better bear that in mind."
-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 15-32 AT p. 30.
As flying carnivores, Ythrians need a larger area per individual than either herbivores or omnivores. (On Earth, each antelope needs some space and a pride of lions needs many antelope.)
Merseians:
"'Because we Merseians have such instincts that most of us actively enjoy combat, we tend to look on combat as an end in itself. And that is not true. That way lies destruction. Combat is a means to an end - the hegemony of our race."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER THREE, p. 27.
Hegemony is the end sought by the Wilwidh culture, not by all Merseians, but their instincts must be common to the species.
12 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It's my belief that in "Night Piece" Anderson strove most deeply to examine how two races could be "intelligent" and yet be mutually incomprehensible to each other. Plus, some of the archetypes used in that story were extremely disturbing to Anderson.
Ad astra! Sean
Humans -are- territorial because we spent millions of years being social carnivores.
Bone analysis indicates that hunter-gatherer humans were, except in extreme environments, hunters first and foremost. Neanderthals, for example, ate pretty much nothing but the flesh of large grazing animals -- they hunted mammoths and woolly rhinos and occasionally cave lions, 1000-pound carnivores.
(Cro-Magnons, the h. sap. sap. types that replaced them, got about half their calories from large grazing animals, and the other half from smaller animals, birds and fish. It's roughly the difference between lions and wolves.)
We retained the ability to digest vegetable foods as a "fallback" for times of dearth. But if you look at the difference between a chimp's digestive system and that of a human being, you see that the human system is extremely 'streamlined' -- that's why chimps have big bellies.
It's not fat, it's complex digestive systems designed to break down coarse vegetable matter. You'd die if you tried to live on a chimp's diet.
Modern humans prevailed over and replaced other sub-varieties of hominid because they're more socially cooperative and hence had greater numbers and larger tribes; this seems to have emerged between 80K and 60K years ago, with a drop in male testosterone levels.
Re: that drop in male testosterone levels.
Can you point me to something that discusses the evidence for that.
In a way it seems like the inverse of the Biblical Fall. It didn't make humans angels, just less like devils.
The book "Humankind. A Hopeful History" in discussing how humans are less nasty than news headlines would have us believe, mentions how in some hunter-gatherer cultures the most boastful & violent males tend to get an arrow in the back. Perhaps that is the reason for the drop in testosterone levels.
Kaor, Jim!
People who are excessively aggressive and bellicose in ancient time were very likely to get that arrow in the back. These days they are likely to end up in prison. Which leads me to say a big reason why the State arose was to protect us from each other!
Ad astra! Sean
The State, bodies of armed men, arose to protect granaries controlled by a priesthood.
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree, those were only side effects or some of the consequences of states arising. The prime duty of any State is to keep the peace and that requires a monopoly of the means of violence.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Disagree.
Bodies of armed men are only side effects of the State monopolizing violence? I thought that the bodies of armed men WERE the monopolized violence.
Paul.
Well, it made them less -internally- conflict-prone, which gave them an advantage in -group- competition. See --https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beastly-behavior/201701/did-drop-in-testosterone-civilize-modern-humans
To tamp down violence, you have to supress violence in general.
They control violence by -other people-, which was ubiquitous in more primitive social structures.
The skeletal evidence indicates that in pre-State societies, the average way for an adult human male to die was to be killed by other humans. Which is typical for social carnivores, btw.
Adult females were less prone to that, but only about 40% less.
There was another quantum drop in interpersonal violence in the modern period, which modern state structures developed.
For most of humanity's existence, you had to be afraid of any stranger, and not too confident about people you knew either.
Kaor, Paul!
Because, as Stirling said, those "armed bodies," police and armies, controls/discourages/penalizes violence by others, both internally and externally.
No State, even a bad one, and we get Haiti.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I don't see how what you have said responds to what I said.
The main role of the first body of armed men was to protect accumulated wealth for the minority that controlled it and against the majority that had produced it. This is necessary when there is only a small surplus of wealth that cannot be distributed equally.
I really have replied about Haiti innumerable times! Haiti is not a society in which advanced technology is used to produce abundant wealth which is democratically controlled and equally distributed and in which the main social goal is not to compete for larger shares of wealth but to develop the fullest potential of each individual. Causes of violence that exist now in Haiti will no longer exist in such a society if and when we build it in future. Surely you remember that when you say "Haiti," I reply with this argument. Discussion can and should move on from this point but should not continually return to it.
Paul.
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