Rants & Rambles
rant (v): to declaim in a wild or vehement way. (n): a ranting, extravagant declamation.
ramble (v): to take an irregular course; to wander from subject to subject. (n): a walk without a definite route, taken merely for pleasure.
I stumbled upon an interesting discussion on an online forum the other day. People were responding to a news article about an archaeological event: the discovery of a rare 17th-centry pistol in an abandoned well at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia. The well had contained several other interesting artifacts, but the pistol had gotten most of the attention. One of the forum members commented with words to this effect: It is sad that the oldest European artifact found in the New World is a gun.
As you might expect, that sparked a barrage of impassioned posts from right and left that touched on war, slavery, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (by Jared Diamond), the violent subjugation of Native Americans, the violent culture of Native Americans, the differences between hunter-gatherers and agricultural cultures, and human nature in general.
Many people pointed out that guns were common and necessary in those times. One of the posts scoffed at the "whingeing" liberal sentiments expressed in the initial comment about the sadness of finding a gun. Another member of similar philosophy pointed out that it took guns to put an end to slavery. Another wrote that violence was human nature, and a person needed guns to protect himself and his family, not only back in 17th-century colonial America but even today.
The Case of Slavery
It's true that guns were common and necessary in those times. But it's also true that times have changed; witness the abolishment of slavery mentioned in one of the posts.
Almost all cultures have practiced slavery in one form or another since times BC. In the European countries during the Middle Ages, people who had fallen on hard times (the death of a husband or a series of bad harvests, for example) might offer themselves as slaves to the local lord. They provided work in return for food, shelter, and protection. Sometimes they were freed when the lord died, but often not. They and their children were slaves of the lord's family from then on.
This type of slavery fell out of practice by the end of the Middle Ages, but Europeans continued to buy or capture slaves into the 18th century. In the U.S., slavery lasted until the middle of the 19th century, and required a civil war to finally be abolished.
But slavery was abolished here and, in the 21st century, has been abolished in most of the world. Not everywhere; some countries still haven't signed the proclamation, and there are forms of slavery that take place even in the U.S. (sex slavery and economic enslavement of illegal immigrants, to mention two). The change didn't catch on right away, took a long time to spread, and still isn't final. The point is that the change did begin and is still happening. Slavery, it turns out, is not an intrinsic part of human nature. Or perhaps human nature can change.
A Moral Evolution
What happened to slavery represents a moral evolution in humanity. In Europe, the change began in small groups of radicals among the protestant religions (the whingeing liberals of their day, despite their being religious fundamentalists). It spread to free-thinkers in other groups, helped along by revolutions against various established monarchies. Eventually, it became accepted philosophy.
Abolishing slavery was a profound social change, but it was not an isolated event. Consider also torture. A quick scan through any history book will turn up dozens of gristly practices used to punish miscreants or to extract information and confessions. Torture was as universal as slavery.
As with slavery, the attitude toward torture has been changing, though not for as long a time, nor – as the events at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graib painfully illustrate – is it as widely spread, even among the Western Democracies. Based on the outrage expressed in the U.S., however, I predict we won't need another civil war to eventually abolish this particular evil.
It is changes like these that give us whingeing liberals some hope for humanity. I don't believe that we will get rid of every violent impulse in every person, but I do believe that societies as a whole will continue to evolve, however slowly, toward more peaceful ways of dealing with each other. There will be less and less unconsidered leaps to war, less and less need for guns to protect ourselves and our families. We will look back and say, "We needed war in those days." But we won't call war human nature. Human nature and humanism will have come to mean the same thing.
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