Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Is "Killing" Genetically Programmed?



THE KILLING FIELDS

The judicial process of the Khmer Rouge regime, for minor or political crimes, began with a warning from the Angkar, the government of Cambodia under the regime. People receiving more than two warnings were sent for "re-education", which meant near-certain death. People were often encouraged to confess to Angkar their "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included some kind of free-market activity; having had contact with a foreign source, such as a U.S. missionary, international relief or government agency; or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all), being told that Angkar would forgive them and "wipe the slate clean." They were then taken away to a place such as Tuol Sleng or Choeung Ek for torture and/or execution.
The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using poison, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. In some cases the children and infants of adult victims were killed by having their heads bashed against the trunks of Chankiri trees, and then were thrown into the pits alongside their parents. The rationale was "to stop them growing up and taking revenge for their parents' deaths."
Some victims were required to dig their own graves; their weakness often meant that they were unable to dig very deep. The soldiers who carried out the executions were mostly young men or women from peasant families.

WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR THE VIOLENCE IN HUMAN SOCIETIES?
  • Violence is a By-Product of Urges ?
    • Daly and Wilson argued that "murderous actions are usually the by-product of urges towards some other goal." 
      • The purpose of the sometimes violent competition that goes with human urges for higher status and greater reproductive success is not to kill, any more than the purpose of its stylized quintessence boxing is. But sometimes people die.

  • Homicide is an Evolutionary Adaptation
    • David Buss, of the University of Texas at Austin, and Joshua Duntley, of the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey in Pomona, have developed a controversial "homicide adaptation theory". 
      • The theory proposes that, over evolutionary history, humans have repeatedly encountered a wide range of situations in which the benefits of killing another person outweighed the costs — particularly when the assessed costs of murder are low, success is likely and other non-lethal options have been closed off.
      •  "Homicide can be such a beneficial solution to adaptive problems in certain, specific contexts that it would be surprising if selection had not fashioned mechanisms to produce lethal aggression," 
    • Jose Maria Gomez, Homo sapiens are part of an especially violent lineage that goes back millions of years.
      • Across the mammal spectrum, the rate of lethal violence against a member of the same species is about 0.30 percent, or a 1 in 300 chance of being killed by one of your own kind. For the ancestor of great apes (including us), it was 1.8 percent. And for humans at the origin point of our species, the rate bumps up to 2 percent, or a 1 in 50 chance of being murdered.
      • Our species is, in other words, at the high point (such as it is) of a steady increase in intraspecies lethal violence that has been going on for about 100 million years.
    • Evolution of "society" 
      • the more social and territorial a species was, the more prevalent lethal member-against-member violence.
      •  if you’re living with other members in a social group, there are simply more opportunities to get in a bloody tiff. 
      • (and) if you’ve got limited resources, or you’re bent on protecting or expanding your neck of the woods, you’ve got more motive to enact violence on a competitor

The lighter the color, the less prevalent and lethal the intra-species violence
    • Is Violence Inevitable  
      • Humans got particularly bloody around 1,000 BC but, in the last 500 years or so, we have reduced the levels of violence
      • The spike in carnage, at the start of the Iron Age, corresponds to a period when a sizable chunk of our species quit the hunter-gatherer game or left small settlements for comparatively larger urban areas.
      • organizing states increased the competition for territory. 
      •  the decrease in lethal violence that started around 500 years ago has accelerated. 
        • In societies today with legal systems and law enforcement (“two separate yet equally important groups…”)
        • a culture that rejects violence, murder rates are less than 1 in 10,000.
    • Are we physically evolved for violence?
      • Physical indicators, such as those studied by Carrier, can be viewed as evidence that selection for violence-enabling features has taken place. 
        • Carrier sees “signs of design for aggression” everywhere on the human body: In a recent paper, co-authored with biologist Christopher Cunningham from Swansea University, he suggests that our foot posture is an adaptation for fighting performance. He has even proposed, as part of his fist-fighting hypothesis, that the more robust facial features of men (as opposed to women) evolved to withstand a punch.
        • (article link)
  • Gender: More MEN kill ?
    • Evolutionary psychologists say that this is because men have evolved to compete more intensively than women in the race for status, material wealth and sexual partners. 
      • In terms of the by-product theory, men are more likely to suffer the consequences when competition gets out of hand. This competitive kindling is at its most combustible in men of low socioeconomic status in regions of high social inequality, suffused with a sense of everything to gain and little to lose.
      •  for women, the costs of such escalation have historically been higher: a woman risking death is a greater impact to the fate of children according to evolutionary biology
    • men and women don't differ much in their experience of anger, the primary accelerator of aggression. 
      • Anne Campbell, an evolutionary psychologist at Durham University, UK, suggests that the differences in aggressive behavior thus reflect differences in the strength of the factors controlling the behavioral expression of that anger.
      • Developmental studies show that girls generally score higher on empathy measures, are more fearful and are better at controlling their behavior.(Campbell)

  • Neuro-biology of Homicide?
    •  Richard Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, suggests that dysfunction in the brain circuits that normally inhibit emotional impulses — those associated with the prefrontal cortex — is a crucial prelude to violent outbursts
    • Research:
      • Among the brains of 41 murderers pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, they found lower activity (as measured by glucose metabolism) in the prefrontal cortex, and greater activity in structures in the limbic system, thought to drive aggression, than they found in non-murderous brains.
      • Raine: the difference in the average volume of the orbitofrontal cortex between men and women accounts for about half of the variation in antisocial behavior between the sexes.
    • Is there a link between homicidal behavior and the capacity to follow moral guidelines?
      • Parts of the prefrontal cortex and amygdala that are abnormal in violent individuals and murderers are activated when making moral judgments. Raine and Yang have proposed that these systems serve as the engine that translates moral feelings into behavioral inhibition — an engine that has blown a gasket in the antisocial, violent and murderous 

  • Is Violence at the Root of Social Organization?
    • The roots of chimpanzee warfare lie in the social organization and behavioral ecology of their societies. 
      • Although chimps live in communities of around 150, they are rarely all found together. Instead they typically travel around their territory in parties of up to 20 animals. From time to time, a roaming party from one group will cross paths with a roaming party of another. If they are of equal size, there will be a lot of screaming and charging. When there is an imbalance of power, the larger party will often try to isolate and attack an enemy chimpanzee, sometimes holding their victim down while the frantically excited attackers hail down lethal blows.(Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham)
      • By dominating or eliminating neighboring communities, aggressors can expand their range, which means a better food supply, healthier adults and faster reproduction
    • Raids on neighboring communities are also common in anthropologists' accounts of small-scale human societies
      • a small band of men leaves its home ground, sneaks up on the neighbors and tries to kill one or more of them. 
      • Data for inter-group human conflicts in numerous subsistence-farmer and hunter–gatherer societies assembled by anthropologist Lawrence Keeley of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Overall, humans and chimpanzees showed comparable levels of violent death from aggression between groups.
HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
  • 'War' is a broad term, "In major international wars people do what they do mainly because it is their duty in the role they occupy; combatants in institutionalized wars do not fight primarily because they are aggressive," says Hinde.
    • some of the normal machinery that inhibits violence — the moral engine — might become selectively disengaged in warring armies. 
    • Ideology, propaganda and denigration of the out-group can harden the barrier between 'us' and 'them', — As a result, killing comes to feel permissible. Even, sometimes, right.
  • What about comparisons of aggression and killing within groups? 
    • Chimps often turn on their own, particularly infants and young adults. 
      • in-group killing exceeds death from between-group conflict in at least some chimp communities. 
    • Humans in small societies, by contrast, die much less frequently from fights within their group than from group battles. 
      • Anthropologist Victoria Burbank of the University of Western Australia in Crawley has recorded rates of non-lethal acts of physical aggression in an aboriginal Australian population; chimps display such behavior 200 times more frequently, if not more.
  • Prosocial lack of violence looks like a fundamental aspect of human nature — the human ability to generate in-group amity often goes hand in hand with out-group enmity. 
    • altruism and war co-evolve, promoting conflict between groups and greater harmony within them
    • "Your group was more successful if you cooperated with its members but not with outsiders." (in human evolution)
    • And there is evidence that this risk is reducing further in studies of death rates from both inter-group homicide and intra-group warfare, both of which seem to have plummeted over the millennia. (if violence is decreasing...what other factors would make it increase?)
    • Criminologist Manuel Eisner at the University of Cambridge has documented a trend of declining homicide rates estimated from historical records left by coroners, royal courts and other official sources spanning Europe from the twelfth century to the modern day. 
      • After rising from an average of 32 homicides per 100,000 people per year in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to 41 in the fifteenth, the murder rate has steadily dropped in every subsequent century, to 19, 11, 3.2, 2.6 and finally 1.4 in the twentieth century.
      • Eisner rules out better policing and improved medical treatment as causes of the decline for the simple reason that it started before professional police forces appeared and techniques for dealing with wounds became more effective. 
      •  A part of the answer that is consistent with an evolutionary approach is a long-term reduction in inequalities of life circumstances and prospects — 
        • "In places such as Sweden where every cabbie drives a Mercedes," says Daly, "people don't bother to kill so often."
        •  When contested resources are made more plentiful, he says, conflict over resources decreases and homicide rates drop.(Duntley)
MORAL REARMAMENT
  • Societal specifics play a part as great as or greater than that of any evolutionary generalities.
    • countries with the highest homicide rates are typically plagued by familial feuding and blood revenge
    •  The death toll was frequently exacerbated by cultures laying weight on a male strength in arms and a willingness to demonstrate it. 
      • violence was particularly prevalent in élites, who would often use it with impunity against their social inferiors. 
      • violence as a phenomenon of lower-class youths — the sort of violence Daly and Wilson have studied in Chicago crime statistics — is a recent trend.
  • Deescalating Violence: 
    • Cultural/social institutions that determine who owns what, and access to civil law courts that help you resolve CONFLICTS, make resorts to violence much less likely — in a modern society, it's actually counterproductive
    • Evolution has also furnished us with a moral sense
      • A drop-off in war could also lead to reductions in other forms of violence. 
        • In cultures and societies with a recent history of warfare, children tend to be socialized to tolerate pain and to react aggressively, which prepares them for the possibility of becoming a soldier (arguably something that evolution would favor) or a potentially deadly brawler (probably something it wouldn't). 
        • "If we grow up without these experiences, which is the case for most people in modern democracies that could affect how aggressive we are and our moral views of our options," says Wilson.
  • Falacy of De-escalating Violence and Development
    • the notion that war is a vice of “backward” peoples is absurd. (John Gray)
      • Destroying some of the most refined civilizations that have ever existed, the wars that ravaged south-east Asia in the second world war and the decades that followed were the work of colonial powers. 
      • One of the causes of the genocide in Rwanda was the segregation of the population by German and Belgian imperialism. 
      • Unending war in the Congo has been fueled by western demand for the country’s natural resources. 
      • If violence has dwindled in advanced societies, one reason may be that they have exported it.
    • the idea that violence is declining in the most highly developed countries is questionable. 
      • The United States is the most advanced society in the world. 
        • According to many estimates the US also has the highest rate of incarceration, some way ahead of China and Russia, for example. 
          • Around a quarter of all the world’s prisoners are held in American jails, many for exceptionally long periods. Black people are disproportionately represented, many prisoners are mentally ill and growing numbers are aged and infirm. Imprisonment in America involves continuous risk of assault by other prisoners. There is the threat of long periods spent in solitary confinement, sometimes (as in “supermax” facilities, where something like Bentham’s Panopticon has been constructed) for indefinite periods – a type of treatment that has been reasonably classified as torture
        • Cruel and unusual punishments involving flogging and mutilation may have been abolished in many countries, but, along with unprecedented levels of mass incarceration, the practice of torture seems to be integral to the functioning of the US.

MARGARET MEAD AND THE NON-EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH

Do Scarce Resources, High Population Density and Economic Division  Make Warfare and Violence Inevitable?
  •  "This has always led to competition as a means of survival, and warfare has been the inevitable consequence of our ecological-demographic propensities." Stephen LeBlanc (Why We Fight)
  •  "No matter where we happen to live on Earth, we eventually outstrip the environment," (Malthus)
    • The HARF show no clear correlation between scarce resources and degree of warfare and violence
    • " the correlation between population pressure and warfare "is either very complex or very weak or both." (Keeley: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage)
    • the Semai population is 60 times denser than the Waorani, and they have much less food, because their soil less fertile and game less plentiful. And yet the Semai, the Robarcheks pointed out, "are among the most peaceful people" known to anthropology (even though some Semai helped British colonialists fight communist insurgents in the 1950s). The Waorani, however, are one of the most violent known societies, with casualties from warfare claiming as much as 60 percent of the population. (Robarcheck (s))
  • MEAD
    • Mead dismissed the notion that war is the inevitable consequence of our "basic, competitive, aggressive, warring human nature." Not all societies wage war. 
      • War has never been observed among a Himalayan people called the Lepchas or among the Eskimos. In fact, neither of these groups, when questioned by early ethnographers, was even aware of the concept of war.
    • Mead distinguished between individual and group violence. 
      • Eskimos were "not a mild and meek people," she noted. They engaged in "fights, theft of wives, murder, cannibalism," often provoked by fear of starvation. "The personality necessary for war, the circumstances necessary to goad men to desperation are present, but there is no war."
    • Mead refuted the claim that war springs from "the development of the state, the struggle for land and natural resources of class societies springing, not from the nature of man, but from the nature of history." 
      • the theory of "sociological inevitability" is contradicted by simple societies that do fight. Hunter–gatherers on the Andaman Islands "represent an exceedingly low level of society," but they have been observed waging wars, in which "tiny army met tiny army in open battle."
      • Australian aborigines, similarly, occasionally interrupted their wanderings "from water hole to water hole over their almost desert country" to battle each other. They seemed to fight not for any of the usual reasons—the "the struggle for lands, struggle for power of one group over another, expansion of population"—but because war was part of their tradition.
      • The DANI in dead birds as well! (Cosmological reasons?)
  • Warfare is "an invention" 
    • Once a society becomes exposed to the "idea" of war, it "will sometimes go to war" under certain circumstances. 
      • the Pueblo Indians, fight reluctantly to defend themselves against aggressors; others, such as the Plains Indians, sally forth with enthusiasm, because they have elevated martial skills to the highest of manly virtues; fighting bravely is the best way for a young man to achieve prestige and "win his sweetheart's smile of approval."
    • why?
      • Robarcheks pointed out that war is in a sense "contagious," because when one group in a region resorts to war, "others must either take it up or be destroyed." 
      • Keeley, similarly, noted that war among North American Indians often stemmed from the aggression of just a few extremely warlike tribes, "rotten apples that spoiled their regional barrels." He added, "Less aggressive societies, stimulated by more warlike groups in their vicinity, become more bellicose themselves."
      • Societies in a violent region, the political scientist Azar Gat have a strong incentive to carry out preemptive attacks. 
        • Societies may "attack the other side in order to eliminate or severely weaken them as a potential enemy. War can thus become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fear of war breeds war."
  • How do we end war? (Mead)
    • For an invention to become obsolete, "people must recognize the defects of the old invention, and someone must make a new one...to invent new forms of behavior which will make war obsolete, it is a first requirement to believe that such an invention is possible."
    • Militarism is deeply embedded in modern culture



Sunday, February 25, 2018

Royal Burials and the Death of the King


ROYAL FUNERALS IN THAILAND AND BALI

The funeral and then cremation a year later.  (The latest Thai Monarch dies...funeral)

  • THAILAND and the enshrinement of royal relics
    • "spiritual coronation" similar to the coronation the the throne, but the scale of the mortuary rites for a king are greater.
    • clothing, jewelry and crown are more adorned on the corpse as he is placed in the burial urn, than when he was alive. 
    • cremation in a large cremation temple is seen as a time of celebration for royalty and commoners alike
    • POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE
      • focus attention on the royal court (and its prestige)
      • Format of death rites is able to combat claims to the succession of the throne during this vulnerable time (new king is crowned immediately and attends the final cremation later)
      • secondary treatment of the corpse creates ROYAL RELICS (symbolically continue toocchupy and give power to the palace and its heirs).

  • BALI and Royal cremations as public theater
    • The cremation of an important man attracts people from all over the island. 


    • tower is representation of the cosmos and only important people are cremated.
    • preceding the tower in the parade are orchestras, dancers and the bearers of the animal shaped coffin in which the bones are to be burned, carriers of sandalwood, weapons, and trays of offerings and the priest on his lotus chair among others.
    • women carry holy water, doll-like effigies of the dead, and offerings to the lords of hell.
    • the height of the tower, the number of "heavens" on the top, the number of people required to carry it, the number of commoners to be cremated which follow (not seen here), all express the status of the deceased. (many commoners may be in a single tower or many towers that follow).
    • cremation is the largest and the most expensive of the royal rituals.
    • LIKE POTLATCHES where rival kings asserted their power and their allegiances
PYRAMIDS and the PHARAONIC STATE

  • Like the Berewan, many cultures engage in building DEATH EDIFICES which express the dynamics of power and legitimacy
  • PYRAMIDS OF GIZA
    • Research has focused on what is behind the rituals which constructed these "corpseless tombs" with empty sarcophagus? Heavily guarded and massive (all nine that were completed in construction) during the pyramid construction era.
    • pyramids seen as a long climax of increasing escalation of monumentalism of tomb design.
    • the important design feature of the pyramids was visibility (no need for a corpse)-provides an index of the power of the central government in the Egyptian dynasties.
    • Largest are from the early Pharaohs in their attempts to consolidate the unification of upper and lower Egypt. ---proof of royal authority
THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE SHILLUK OF THE SUDAN
  • king (reth) SYMBOLIZES the fertility and well-being of the nation, therefore, no decay of the body can be tolerated
  • illness, sicknesss, age, impotency and death are all intolerable conditions for the king
  • At first signs of any of these, the king is secretly suffocated and his body walled up in a mud hut. (regicide????). This, even though the king has only SYMBOLIC, but no political authority
  • Reth is the King, but Nyikang, the immortal culture hero of then Shilluk. He reigns through the successors, who are receptacles of the kingship. - binds generations
  • after death, wallet up bones of dead kings are returned home and buried in a private almost secret affair-no longer symbol of national unity, Nyikang reigns from an EFFIGY in which his spirit resides which is kept in s shrine during each king's reign.
  • when a new king is chosen, a ceremony allows the spirit to possess the new king, as it leaves the effigy. (difficult problem of the royal corpse is to replace it with a effigy).
BODY POLITIC AND NATURAL BODY (Europe)
  • The use of the EFFIGY in the history of the English monarchy is a symbol of the separation of the "body politic" from the "body physical". Allowed for a display of "both" at a funeral as a symbol of the ongoing "kingship" even as the kings change
  • French Royal funerals use the EFFIGY as a symbol of the allegory of the STATE (borrowed from British practice)
DINKA BURIAL ALIVE
  • chiefs were traditionally buried alive when on the brink of death, unlike other men. It was a symbol of the enduring nature of Dinka culture. IMMORTALITY
  • this was disrupted during colonialism through assassinations of Dinka chiefs which led to the disruption of Dinka culture and political stability (in their minds). The death of a king should be a smooth affair).




Saturday, February 24, 2018

Death Rituals and Life Values

Death is the last in a long line of LIFE STAGE rituals. As such, this CONTINUITY is emphasized in many death rituals.

  • since the continuity of the living and the generations which precede and follow each other is tangible, it is often the focus of death rituals
  • This is often expressed in the symbols of SEXUALITY an FERTILITY
Example: Madagascar and the diverse Malagasy people.


  • Merina (dominant)
  • Sakalava (western)-only royalty receive this treatment/not commoners
  • Bara (focus of chapter)

Malagasy Tomb/Family Gathering for REBURIAL (Merina)

REMOVAL OF THE CORPSES (Merina)

"SEXUALLY" CHARGED CELEBRATIONS OF WOMEN -out side the house of tears (men watch)(Bara)

Dancing and singing with the corpses in new shrouds (Merina)

Procession back to tombs (Merina)

Holding of disinterred corpses in burial mats (Merina)

celebration of corpses (Merina)

celebration of corpses (Merina)

disinterment of important ancestor (Sakalava)

Dressing up of important ancestor for community celebration (Sakalava)


decorated ancestors (Sakalava)



MERINO PEOPLE : FAMADIHANA (semi-annual reburial of family remains)


*secondary burial functions to give expression to social and political values of the living.
--Burial is a very important practice among all ethnic groups is Madagascar, where the care given to elaborate tombs far exceeds most homes and many lead a marginal economic existence. Tombs are never neglected by kin groups or communities. 
--during the cool season one sees "burial migrants"along all the roads, traveling to family exhumation events
--taxicabs have listed as one of their fees "exhumation fares-negotiable"

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT OF FUNERALS
  • death rituals (reburials) are as normal and pervasive as Christmas or July 4th celebrations.
  • great expense to individual families and impetus to the economy
  • closely associated with POSITIVE FAMILIAL, SOCIAL and POLITICAL STRUCTURES
  • not abnormal, morbid or indecent (as in Western societies)
  • EMPHASIS ON LIFE AND VITALITY: funeral customs pertain to the ancestral order that is at the heart of normative social systems-ancestor are important in that they encourage virility and fertility. (Unlike in our culture where themes of sex and death lie outside of the public values pertaining to family and community)
Hertz and Van Gennep: Limitations in Analysis
  • even though secondary burials are central and elaborate, the Malagasy fail to have a strong sense of the afterworld nor does it provide a motivation for elaborate burial rituals like in Indonesia. 
  • Ancestors are believed to LIVE IN the TOMBS
  • There is no real "transition" to the world of the dead
  • Most striking aspect: bawdy and drunken revelry shared  by guests at reburials
    • he or she is isolated and needs to be amused and entertained
    • not principally about "transition"
    • why? drunkenness, sexual liaisons, bawdy songs? (explanations are away from ghosts and the hereafter and within the basic values of the nature and meaning of life).
CASE STUDY: The Bara 
(interplay between expression of emotion, ritual action, spiritual beliefs, rites of passage schema, and the pinnacle of rebirth-How the Bara squarely face the fact of death)
  • Life Values: Order and Vitality
    • life is what is TRANSITORY, dying is unambiguous
    • life is maintained by a tenuously balanced combination of ORDER and VITALITY
      • fertile blood in the womb is ordered and arranged by the sperm during sexual intercourse
      • balance between mother's and father's families must likewise be maintained to be socially and economically successful
      • life is a journey from MOTHER'S WOMB to FATHER'S TOMB
      • Death is an EXCESS of ORDER, upsetting the life-sustaining balance- funeral attempts to redress this imbalance through a symbolic increase in vitality.
ORDER                                          VITALITY
male                                                female
father('s family)                             mother('s family)
semen                                             blood
bone                                                flesh
sterility                                           fecundity
dying                                              birth
tomb                                               womb


*Illustration of the change in nature the accompanies DYING (how death can be seen as a transition in relation to the whole experience of life)


  • The corpse in LIMINAL in that it occupies that space of bone and flesh (life) and death
  • SEXUAL ASPECTS relate to the mortal consequences of liminality: the dead, sterile order of bone takes over the living, so they must be countered with the most extreme aspects of vitality.
BARA FUNERAL SEQUENCE: three parts for the dead

  1. burial: first few days after death
  2. gathering: great feast celebrated after the harvest following the death
  3. exhumation and reburial: after corpse has completely dried and the flesh has rotted away
Experience for the LIVING:

  • death and burial are shocking events that disturb the normal flow of daily life
  • gathering is part of the annual season of FESTIVITIES, going from one reburial to another, it is a highly sociable and festive season (but also very serious).
BURIAL
  • death signifies the radical separation of the male and female components of a person.
  • male and female house are selected and 
    • the corpse will reside in the FEMALE HOUSE for 3 days, punctuated by ritual weeping of women in attendance
    • sometimes called "the house of many tears"
    • MALE house will receive men in an orderly and stylized fashion (formal)
    • Men and women are separated by day, but at night the women come into the courtyard to dance, and as the men slowly join in, this evolves into an orgiastic gathering unlike that seen in normal interactions between the sexes
    • EXTREMES: also in sound, total silence at the time of death (not even announced)-loud wailing, singing, shouting and gun shooting
    • Cattle wresting-
    • body in straightened out and laid out and jaw and eyes are closed. After 3 days men come and put it in a coffin, over tearful protests of women
    • coffin is covered with a new unfinished cloth, and carry it around the house of tears while unhusked fertile rice is sprinkled behind it. 
    • Youths who have had sexual experience run ahead to the burial ground with the coffin chased by young girls and other youth followed by adults, relatives and cattle (whole town). Sexual contest between youths for the corpse.
    • Corpse is put in the cave/crypt head first and relatives enter feet first, recluse the tomb and rap it with a green branch. after pouring rum as an offering.
GATHERING
  • most elaborate and important aspect of social life
  • 100 liters of rum, 10 cattle, conspicuous display of wealth 
  • Celebration and danger: Rum is particularly dangerous
    • witches can contaminate it
    • intoxication: danger of unrestrained vigor: illicit sex, hatchet attack, inappropriate kin relations
REBURIAL
  • signals a return to normalcy as the bones are "redressed" with their favorite items and placed in the final caskets male with male and female with female
  • no drinking, bawdy songs, wrestling, sex
  • deceased spouse is free to remarry
SYMBOLIC GENERATION OF VITALITY
  • Dying: involves an imbalance in the components of human life. To combat the male fatal "order" one must counter this with the female "vitality":
    • SONGS: playful sexual scenes in the songs from the girls.Dominates the funeral cycle.
      • also songs about childbirth dominate the funeralctcle
    • ENERGY: faha
      • potential stored up vitality/energy
      • displays of exuberance are common and the corpse or sleepy or old people are fair game for practical jokes
    • DANCE: most evident activity of stored up vitality
      • special dance which imitates the winding of a clock and concentric circles
    • CATTLE: 
      • cattle wresting at the burial and gathering ceremonies (stampede the herd around and around)-snorting, bucking and panting are illustrative of vitality.
      • association of cattle with fertility
      • provide food for feasting (slaughtered en masse, unlike on other occasions). 
    • CHAOS: incest and war
      • rum is served not only because intoxication is present, but because disorderly conduct is essential
      • tolerance of INCEST (in word and deed) are tolerated and violate the basic principles of moral and social order
      • dance troupes possess dangerous antisocial qualities. far too dangerous for them to sing after dark.
        • dancers troupes are hired -are dressed as warriors and dance with spears, dancing is wild and sexual and they try to entice money from the audience
        • considered low status and outside the social order
RESOLUTION: INTERCOURSE AND REBIRTH
  • vitality is generated through various activities and EXCESSES during the funeral celebration in an effort to counterbalance the excessive order of death
  • symbolism of the funeral is sexual: 
    • corpse captured by boys from girls and run to the burial ground
    • enters tomb head-first (birth) -born into the world of the dead
    • sexual intercourse and birth are seen as the metaphor of transition for the dead
    • survivors must bring about the REBIRTH through secondary burial (assures continued fertility of the living-children, crops, livestock, etc.)






Wednesday, February 21, 2018

School Shootings: Mourning Responses to Violence

(1) Article 1: 5 stages of mourning: Click Here (full article)

Stages Outlined:
The first stage is group preservation. This is when those affected seek shelter and information to protect themselves while they are still under threat. In Parkland, we witnessed this in real time in the heartbreaking messages students who were trapped in the school posted to social media. In these messages and videos, we saw the students seek shelter in place, and ask about the safety of others, as they waited for rescue.
The second stage is population preservation. This begins when word of an in-progress traumatic event spreads to the broader community, and the community responds. Parents seek the whereabouts of their children, first responders rush toward the danger to mitigate further harm, and public figures in politics and media make their initial comments on the unfolding events.
Once the immediate physical danger has passed—the shooter subdued, the crime scene secured—the third stage, internalization, begins. Internalization is the long work of collectively processing our emotional response to the event. This stage touches not just the community directly affected by the trauma, but the observers around the country and the world who mourn with each new massacre. We grieve for the loss of life, for the pain endured by the injured and the families of the victims, and for our own shattered sense of normalcy. This process often involves creating memorials for the dead, and working through the narrative of what happened, to trace the magnitude of our loss, and understand how it came to be.
This leads to stage four, the externalizing stage, where we assign blame for the tragedy, and identify the outside causes that have enabled a pattern of mass shootings in the U.S. As we process the aftermath of a mass shooting, we begin to see the institutional failures that made it possible. When it comes to gun violence, this means our country’s lack of commonsense gun safety laws, and the entrenched opposition of the National Rifle Association and Republican lawmakers to even incremental reform.
This awareness should lead to stage five, renormalization, where we correct the underlying issues that lay the groundwork for shootings. This is, after all, what we do after nearly every other mass trauma, aiming to make a healthier world. After the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, for example, the U.S. embraced fire prevention, which has significantly reduced the number of fire deaths over the last century. However, fire never had a powerful organization like the NRA to lobby Congress on its behalf. Guns do.
So, unlike tragedies of the past, the gun violence epidemic has not led to reforms that create a healthier, safer world—we are not at stage five. Instead, we face a world where we accept the regular slaughter of innocents as the price we pay for the right to own assault rifles and bring them wherever we want, no matter how troubled we may be. We remain frozen at stage four, able to see clearly the cause of this sordid status quo—the proliferation of guns in our society. As long as we are unable to muster an effective, humane response at the legislative level, we will never get to stage five. And the killing will continue.

IncidentYearDeathsType of weapon(s) usedReference(s)
1Las Vegas shooting201759 (including the perpetrator)Semi-automatic rifles[42][43]
2Orlando nightclub shooting201650 (including the perpetrator)Semi-automatic rifle[42][43]
3Virginia Tech shooting200733 (including the perpetrator)Handguns[42]
4Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting201228 (including the perpetrator)Semi-automatic rifle and bolt-action rifle[42]
5Sutherland Springs church shooting201727 (including the perpetrator)Semi-automatic rifle[44][43]
6Luby's shooting199124 (including the perpetrator)Handguns[42]
7San Ysidro McDonald's massacre198422 (including the perpetrator)Multiple weapons[42]
8University of Texas tower shooting196618 (including the perpetrator)Multiple weapons[42]
9Stoneman Douglas High School shooting201817Semi-automatic rifle[45]
10San Bernardino attack201516 (including both perpetrators)Semi-automatic rifles[42][43]
11Edmond post office shooting198615 (including the perpetrator)Handguns[42]
Columbine High School massacre199915 (including both perpetrators)Multiple weapons[46]
13Binghamton shootings200914 (including the perpetrator)Handguns[46]
14Camden shootings194913Handgun[46]
Wilkes-Barre shootings198213Semi-automatic rifle[46]
Fort Hood shooting200913Handguns[46]
Washington Navy Yard shooting201313 (including the perpetrator)Shotgun and handgun[46]
18Aurora shooting201212Multiple weapons[46][43]
19Geneva County massacre200911 (including the perpetrator)Multiple weapons[46]
20GMAC shootings199010 (including the perpetrator)Semi-automatic rifle[42]
Atlanta shootings199910 (including the perpetrator)Handguns[42]
Red Lake shootings200510 (including the perpetrator)Multiple weapons[46]
Umpqua Community College shooting201510 (including the perpetrator)Handguns[46]
NameDateLocationStateDeathsNotes
Guadalupe Canyon massacre1881 Aug 13Guadalupe MountainsArizona TerritoryArizona51 wounded; cowboys ambushed while sleeping. Perpetrators disputed.[1]
Chinese massacre1871 Oct 24Los Angeles, CaliforniaCalifornia>18Killed by hanging and unknown injured in ethnic white mob violence against people and property in Chinatown.[2][3]
Golden Dragon massacre1977 Sep 4San FranciscoCalifornia511 injured.[4]
Bloody Island massacre1850 May 15Clear LakeCalifornia60–100Retaliation by a Cavalry Regiment of the US Army for the murder of Frontiersman Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone.
Ludlow Massacre1914 Apr 20LudlowColorado19Killed by Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families, many of whom were immigrants or minorities.[5]
Columbine Mine massacre1927 Nov 21SereneColorado6Miners killed with machine guns during coal mine strike.[6]
Ocoee massacre1920 Nov 2OcoeeFlorida56~Black population of Ocoee, a town near Orlando, was nearly obliterated during the 1920 election season.[7]
Rosewood massacre1923 JanRosewoodFlorida8The entire population of African-Americans in and near Rosewood, about 350, were forced from their homes and never returned.[8]
Hanapepe massacre1924 Sep 9HanapepeHawaii20101 arrested.[9]
Haymarket affair1886 May 4ChicagoIllinois11More than 130 injured by dynamite bomb and crossfire of bullets.[10]
Herrin massacre1922 Jun 21HerrinIllinois23Strikebreakers and union guards at coal mine.[11]
Saint Valentine's Day Massacre1929 Feb 14ChicagoIllinois7Prohibition gang killing.[12]
Brown's Chicken massacre1993 Jan 8PalatineIllinois7Store robbery with murder.
Spirit Lake Massacre1857 March 5–12West OkobojiIowa35–40A band of Dakota people led by Inkpaduta conducted a series of raids on white settlers.
Villisca massacre1912 Jun 10VilliscaIowa8Unsolved axe murders of members of 2 families.[13][14][15]
Pottawatomie massacre1856 May 24–25Franklin CountyKansas5John Brown and followers killed 5 pro-slavery Kansans.[16][17]
Marais des Cygnes massacre1858 May 19Linn CountyKansas5Last major outbreak of violence in Bleeding Kansas.[18]
Lawrence massacre1863 Aug 21Douglas CountyKansas185–200Pro-Confederate Guerrillas killed civilians and burned a quarter of the town.[19]
Wichita Massacre2000 Dec 8–14WichitaKansas5Two black males, brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr, committed multiple acts of assault, robbery, rape and murder of several people, all white, over the course of a week.[20]
Bloody Monday1855 Aug 6LouisvilleKentucky>22Scores injured in religious mob violence and arson.[21]
Colfax massacre1873 Apr 13ColfaxLouisiana83–153Blacks killed at courthouse and as prisoners afterwards.[22]
Coushatta massacre1874 AugCoushattaLouisiana11–26Six whites, remainder black killed as political intimidation.[23][24]
Thibodaux massacre1887 Nov 22ThibodauxLouisiana>35Perhaps as many as 300 killed, 5+ injuries to striking black sugar-cane workers.[25][26]
Opelousas Massacre1868 Sept 28Opelousas, LouisianaLouisiana300+Democrats resisted the joining of Opelousas African Americans into the political party and went on a hunt for African Americans, killing at least 200-300 African Americans and 30-50 Democrats.[27]
Boston Massacre1770 Mar 5BostonMassachusetts511 civilians injured by British Army soldiers.[28]
Haun's Mill massacre1838 Oct 30Fairview TownshipMissouri19Mob/militia attacked Mormons.[29]
Kansas City massacre1933 Jun 17Kansas CityMissouri5The dead include law enforcement officers and a criminal fugitive shot by members of a gang.[30]
Sacking of Osceola1861 Sep 23OsceolaMissouri9Tried by drumhead court martial and executed, town of 3,000 sacked and burned in a raid by Jim Lane's Kansas Brigade.[31][better source needed]
Centralia massacre1864 Sep 27CentraliaMissouri24Unarmed U.S. soldiers murdered by their Confederate captors including Jesse James. 123 killed in ensuing Battle of Centralia.[32]
Baylor Massacre1778 Sep 27River ValeNew Jersey1554 captured or wounded by British.[33]
Greensboro massacre1979 Nov 3Greensboro, North CarolinaNorth Carolina5Violent clash between Ku Klux Klan and Communist Workers' Party demonstration.
Shelton Laurel massacre1863 Jan 18Madison CountyNorth Carolina13Unarmed Unionists, including three boys, were shot by Confederates after capture.[34]
Greenwood massacre1921 May 31 and Jun 1City of Tulsa,Oklahoma39–300≥ 800 wounded. One of the nation's worst incidents of racial violence.
Goingsnake massacre1872 Apr 15Tahlequah, Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma)Oklahoma11Died in a shoot out in a crowded courtroom, the dead included 8 Deputy US Marshals and 3 Cherokee citizens. Six Cherokee were wounded including the defendant and the judge.[35]
Chinese Massacre Cove1887 MayWallowa CountyOregon10–34Chinese gold miners ambushed and murdered by a gang of horse thieves.
Paoli massacre1777 Sep 20near PaoliPennsylvania61Patriots under command of General Anthony Wayne killed by British Soldiers under command of General Charles Grey.
Lattimer massacre1897 Sep 10near HazletonPennsylvania19Coal miners killed by sheriff's posse.
Ponce massacre1937 Mar 21PoncePuerto Rico19protestors killed by police
Hamburg massacre1876 Jul 4HamburgSouth Carolina7Town looted in a racially motivated incident during Reconstruction.
Waxhaw massacre1780 May 29LancasterSouth Carolina118150 wounded, 53 captured by British against American Revolutionary soldiers.
Fort Pillow massacre1864 Apr 12HenningTennessee277-297Federal (and mostly black) troops were killed by Confederate soldiers while trying to surrender.
Nueces massacre1862 Aug 10Kinney CountyTexas34German Texans killed by Confederate soldiers.
Mountain Meadows Massacre1857 Sep 7–11Mountain MeadowsUtah TerritoryUtah100–140Emigrant wagon train annihilated by the Mormon Utah Territorial Militia.
Pinhook massacre1881 June 1Southeastern UtahUtah13Started when Ute Indians allegedly killed ranchers and stole horses in Colorado. As the Ute moved into the southeastern Utah, a battle between the Indians and a band of ranchers and cowboys who blamed Utes for the loss of their livestock was fought, resulting in the death of 13 cowboys in the gunfight.[36]
Midnight Massacre1945 Jul 7–8SalinaUtahUtah9German POWs killed by an American guard
Saltville massacre1864 Oct 2–3SaltvilleVirginia45–50Wounded/captured Federal black troops by Confederate soldiers and guerrillas.[37]
Everett massacre1916 Nov 5EverettWashington527 injured and scores of labor unionists arrested by police and vigilantes.
Centralia massacre1919 Nov 11CentraliaWashington6Many injured in a street conflict between American Legion and Industrial Workers of the World members.
Wah Mee massacre1983 Feb 18SeattleWashington131 injured by 3 perpetrators during an armed robbery.
Bay View massacre1886 May 5Bay ViewWisconsin7Labor protesters killed by National Guardsmen.
Matewan massacre1920 May 19MatewanWest Virginia11The confrontation resulted in the deaths of Matewan Mayor Cabell Testerman, two striking coal miners, seven men from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, and an unarmed bystander.
Rock Springs massacre1885 Sep 2Rock SpringsWyoming2815 injured in a racial dispute between white and Chinese miners.

THE VICTIMS:
How Should a victim behave? 
What does too early to talk about it mean?
What does it mean to politicize death?
How do we understand mass killings in American Culture?

  • causes (cultural) ?
  • causes (psychological)?
  • causes (social)?
  • causes (supernatural)?
  • causes (Biological)?
How does this MARK these deaths?



Mourning: The Kaddish

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