In addition, the social bonds that led to extreme sharing among the Aché had some horrific consequences. When you engaged in extreme sharing, it was based on the idea that in the not-too-distant future you would also be the recipient of extreme sharing by others. But what about those who seemed unlikely to be contributors to future sharing? In Aché society, widows, the sick or disabled, and orphans were likely to be killed: “The Aché had among the highest infanticide and child homicide rates ever reported. Of children born in the forest, 14 per cent of boys and 23 per cent of girls were killed before the age of 10, nearly all of them orphans. An infant who lost their mother during the first year of life was always killed.”
I suppose they killed the orphans because they had no practical way of enslaving them.
I’m dubious that extreme sharing is the cause of so much infanticide. A Malthusian existence on very marginal land would explain equally well.
Don’t forget club footed Oedipus. Ancient Greeks were pretty ruthless too, and they had cities.
Long time since I read it, but doesn’t More’s Utopia have enforced euthanasia for the old and lame ?
Otto
Well, it was a satire…
A lame man doesn’t worry the sheep (old Zummerset saying) so that could account for the rescue of Oedipus.
Jordan Peterson would shake his head knowingly at this kind of thing. It’s a classic example of the evils that occur when people are valued for their group characteristics rather than as individual.
Having said that, the article isn’t really about how good or bad the ‘primitive communist’ Ache people are. The main point is that communal sharing was not some kind of default edenic norm we have alienated ourselves from.
Our infanticide and child homicide rates are at least as high. We just do it in the womb.
Certainly validates what I believe. People act in what they perceive to be their own personal advantage. I’ve never found anything contradicts that view.
“an image of a primitive time when small groups of people lived together and shared equally.”
There is no reason, nor any form of archeologic evidence, to suggest we did any better in setup than our primate brethren.
In fact, even our earliest written sources suggest we very much didn’t.
So that “sharing equally” bit….. ummm… yeah….
I love the thing in the article that isn’t Mentioned…
“To Own” in the context of the tribes mentioned means “to kick out/fuck over anyone threatening your rare stable source of supplies”.
There aren’t/weren’t any Rules about this ownership, other than the capability to kick out/fuck over with Prejudice anyone trying to take it from you.
Which is a Good Thing, in my not so humble opinion.
But WhAt AbOuT tHe HiGh LiTeRaCy RaTe?
I think Rimmers monologue about Scott of the Antarctic and Captain Oates in the Red Dwarf episode “White Hole” sums up humanity