I'm not so much interested in the particulars of Lawson's comments. I suppose I'm surprised that anyone in a position of authority or public scrutiny in 2015 utters anything except empty platitudes and boiler-plate responses in public interviews. It should be clear by now that whatever vestige of an appetite the Canadian public has for substantial discussion of issues, it's dwarfed by the appetite for public shaming and vilification. In today's climate, there's nothing whatsoever to gain and everything to lose by expressing an opinion that differs in any way from the orthodox line on a host of issues.
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Originally Posted by vanisleflamesfan
This is such a ridiculously erroneous statement that I can't quite decide if you meant it as a joke or if you are just that flat out stupid.
There are literally, thousands, of anthropological ethnographies that refute that statement. There is absolutely, unequivocally, NO anthropological consensus on the 'innate violence' of the human species.
This is so utterly laughable that I sincerely hope that you are joking.
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Okay, I overstated by case. And yes, I'm aware that the romantic notion of the peaceful savage held sway in anthropology for much of the 20th century. However, it does seem that the consensus has given way under a growing weight of evidence capturing the true rates of violence among primitive peoples. As Pinker puts in The Better Angels of Our Nature:
"Only in the past fifteen years have scholars with no political ax to grind, such as Lawrence Keeley, Steven LeBlanc, Azar Gat, and Johan van der Dennen, begun to compile systematic reviews of the frequency and damage of fighting in large samples of non-state peoples."
Pinker then goes on to show the rate of violent death in pre-state societies identified from skeletons dug out of archaeological sites. They range from 0 per cent death rate from warfare to 60 per cent, with an average of 15 per cent. Studies of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies show an average rate of death by warfare of 14 per cent. The rate in Europe in the 20th century (including WW1 and WW2) was under 3 per cent.
And recent studies of chimpanzees (not the dubious observations of Goodall) show predations and lethal raiding by most groups, including those where commodities were not introduced by observers.
I'll ask you this, vanisleflamesfan: Are you comfortable with the taboo in Canada today against offering any explanation for violence besides socialization? Are you comfortable with the unshakeable dogma of the blank slate that has choked off all public discourse on the role of nature in violence - and in behaviour altogether?