HOW TO ELIMINATE STEALING? Private property begets two groups of people: the accumulation of wealth at one pool and poverty at another pool. But when everything is held in common stewardship and use, there is nothing to steal because everything will be for public use. According to Wikibooks, “Foraging” used to be the number one mode of survival for humans. Foraging was the most common mode of production for over 90% of the time that humans have existed. However, it has become nearly extinct today, equaling approximately 1% in terms of modes of production. The extinction of this production mode may be due, in part, to the lack of land availability. In the past, and in some societies today, foraging is responsible for the initiation and survival of cooperation. Foragers are also known as hunter-gatherers. Although hunting may be an inconsistent resource for a community or family that relies on it, if coupled with gathering, it can be significantly more dependable. As the foraging cultures move from location to location, the older women are responsible for planting durable crops, grains, and tubers, as well as knowing when these plants will be ready to harvest. An example of a successful foraging culture in existence today is the Ache people of Paraguay. The men spend their time hunting for game. The women follow behind, gathering resources such as fruits, palm starch, and larvae. Most of the time they split into pairs, but the Ache people is always within ear shot, ready to help each other. They cooperate in hunting game which is necessary to their diet. The men also help women in physically challenging tasks, such as climbing and cutting down trees. With this cooperation comes the expectation that resources will be shared among each other. Hunters never eat their own catch; it is usually distributed among the community and those involved in the catch. An important part about the Ache culture is that they distribute their game evenly amongst all people. The hunter never eats his own catch, and his family receives just as much meat as every other member of their tribe. Gathering is slightly different; women who gather usually keep slightly more than half of their findings. A San man from Namibia. Fewer than 10,000 San live in the traditional way, as hunter-gatherers. Since the mid-1990s the central government of Botswana has been trying to move San out of their lands. Some of the goods that were normally foraged were from the coast, such as fish and mollusk, and from the forest, game, honey, insect larva, fruit, palm fiber, and greens. Foraging isnt as dominant as it once was because overuse drains the land of its resources. Foragers usually inhabit a space of around 5/6 k/m per person. Although they occupy a large amount of land, foragers maintain a nomadic lifestyle and travel in small groups of 10-100. Their way of live is sustainable because they take up a large portion of land for the small amount of people that actually inhabit it, allowing the land to replenish itself. An example of a foraging society is the JuHonsi of Kalahara. Another example of this type of society would be the Huaorani, (Also called Waorani or Auca), an indigenous tribe located in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. The main mode of production for this group of people is foraging and hunting. They have an incredible knowledge of the trees and forestry in their area, as an extremely important part of their culture (uses for hunting, medicine, and traditional ceremonies etc.) Almost 90% of prehistoric people were hunting-gathering societies. Hunter-gatherer societies share the food; hoarding marks you as an anti-social deviant. What this means is that you could put all that work into growing plants (clearing the field, planting, weeding), but others would think nothing of harvesting the plants when they ripen. Or you could get to the point of harvesting and storing the crop, but then everybody else in your community would expect you to share it. The sharing ethic of hunting/gathering societies prevents the kind of dominance through force, wealth, or ownership that goes with our popular image. So, the finder/possessor of “most desirable food” interacts with her/his society not by controlling access or rewarding certain behaviors, but by sharing with everyone, which undercuts control. This ethic results an egalitarian society where people are not encouraged to think of themselves or strive to be better than their neighbors. Richard Lee tells us that amongst the !Kung a hunter who brags about his ability to kill big game will soon be put back in his place through kidding, insults or, in the most extreme cases, ignoring the person. The !Kung call this kidding, whether done by the hunter or by others in the village, ‘insulting the meat’: the hunter may say “I almost didn’t want to kill the animal because it was so small.” or one of the people who helped cook the meat may say, “This is a poor animal, it is hardly worth the cooking.” And all the time they are saying these things and laughing, the people are eating and enjoying the meat with great gusto [Lee, R. 1990. “Primitive Communism and the Origins of Social Inequality,” in The Evolution of Political Systems: Sociopolitics in Small-Scale Sedentary Societies, S. Upham Cambridge: Cambridge University Press p 225-245] From our perspective we would assume that the hunter who killed the animal naturally owns the meat. However amongst the !Kung arrows, not hunters, are thought to be what kills the game and the owner of the arrow is then the owner of the meat. Arrows are exchanged, given away and generally circulate freely throughout the group. Therefore the owner of the meat is as likely to be an old woman as a man in his prime. Similarly, amongst the Batek the owner of the blowpipe is the owner of the meat and pipes are often borrowed [Marshall, L 1998. “Sharing, Talking, and Giving: Relief of Social Tensions Among the !Kung” in Limited Wants, Unlimited Means: A Reader on Hunter Gatherer Economics and the Environment, J. M. Gowdy (ed) Washington DC: Island Press p. 75] In both !Kung and Batek societies, the person who owns the meat gets to distribute it to the group. The hunter benefits from not having to take the responsibility of sharing out the meat if the arrow or blowpipe belongs to someone else and the owner of the meat is able to feed their family first and then distribute the meat according to the protocols the group has established governing animals of that size. The protocols ensure that, if the piece of meat is big enough, everyone gets some and nobody goes hungry. Sharing food is an absolute obligation to the Batek, not something the owner has much discretion over. As one Batek hunter said: ‘If I didn’t take the meat back to camp, everyone would be angry at me’. A person with excess food is expected to share it, and if this is not done others do not hesitate to ask for some… Recipients treat the food they are given as a right; no expression of thanks is expected or forthcoming, presumably because that would imply that the donor had the right to withhold it. If someone were hoarding food, it would not be considered ‘stealing’ (maling) for others to help themselves to it… Their attitude seems to be that it is more immoral to withhold food from those who need it than to take it without permission [Endicott, K. 1988. “Property, Power and Conflict among the Batek of Malaysia,” In Hunters and Gatherers 2: Property, Power and Ideology, T. Ingold, D. Riches, and J. Woodburn(eds) Oxford and New York: Berg p.117] Lorna Marshall, an anthropologist who worked many years amongst the !Kung in the Kalahari Desert in Africa, asked what happens if someone kills an animal and eats it without sharing. They respond that it could never happen. She says of their reaction when she pushed them to imagine such a situation: “The idea of eating alone and not sharing is shocking to the !Kung. It makes them shriek with uneasy laughter. “Lions could do that,” they say, “not men.” [Marshall, L. p72 1998. “Sharing, Talking, and Giving: Relief of Social Tensions Among the !Kung” in Limited Wants, Unlimited Means: A Reader on Hunter Gatherer Economics and the Environment, J. M. Gowdy (ed) Washington DC: Island Press] Thus, for the !Kung, not sharing is an inhuman behavior – one which puts you in the category of the animals. Similarly, Turnbull writes about food sharing amongst the Mbuti Pygmies: In a small and tightly knit hunting band, survival can be achieved only but the closest co-operation and by an elaborate system of reciprocal obligations which insures that everyone has some share in the day’s catch. Some days one gets more than others, but nobody ever goes without. There is, as often as not, a great deal of squabbling over the division of the game, but that is expected and nobody tries to take what is not his due [Turnbull, C. M. 1961. The Forest People: A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo, New York: Simon and Schuster. p.107] We thought that the sin of Ananias and Sapphira of not giving up everything for common use was incidental only during their time and that sharing everything for common use of the early believers was only for “early Christians”. Now, we realized that long time ago we back in prehistoric people [hunting-gathering societies, for 5 million years or more of hominid history, our ancestors lived in hunting and gathering societies] such common ownership was already practiced and failure to share for common use was already an anti-social deviant we back million years ago. The attitude of prehistoric people [hunting-gathering societies] seems to be that it is more immoral to withhold food from those who need it than to take it without permission. Thus, for the !Kung, not sharing is an inhuman behavior – one which puts you in the category of the animals. Only in the last 10,000-12,000 years ago that societies started to divide into social classes between the haves and have not.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 01:46:29 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015