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Old 01-21-2010, 03:42 PM   #47
Erick Mead
 
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Re: Hormonal & Psychological Responses to Combat

Quote:
Charles David Henderson wrote: View Post
Hi Erick,

That is quite interesting; thanks. It reminds me of the berzeker's alleged use of the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria (fly agaric).
The Zulu version is also a type of Amanita.

Quote:
Charles David Henderson wrote: View Post
[indent]1. I don't believe hunting and gathering or horticultural societies are necessarily "primitive," even though these subsistence strategies have been around the longest.
I agree with you -- the term was meant only in the technological sense -- "primitives" can be as amazingly subtle human beings as "civilized" ones can be brutal -- case in point -- Shaka Zulu (Sorry, pet obsession -- "Zulu" is one of the best war films ever made... and Cetshwayo was not as revolutionary, but nearly a capable as, his great uncle Shaka).

Quote:
Charles David Henderson wrote: View Post
But Kamehameha I succeeded in "unifying" Hawaii where others failed, in significant part because he exploited advantages introduced by the Europeans including firearms. The point being, for me, that the Zulu may have, like the Hawaiians, been on the cusp of historical developments that were pushing their societies to be more expansive. European interference may simply have catalyzed the reaction, as it were.
My son was born there. Actually the whole Bantu (mixed pastoralist/ agriculturalist) expansion into southern Africa saw several iterations of this process of expansion and centralization and then societal fracture -- Great Zimbabwe, and others are literal monuments to that -- Europeans had little impact in the genesis of the process that Shaka generally followed -- he just upped the ante technically -- though the Boers and Brits had much influence in its result after Blood River. The black Africans were seriously oppressed and exploited by the Europeans, it is true, but nothing really much out of keeping with the native practices toward one another before the Europeans arrived -- a point that is often lost in the undue Rousseauian martyrology of the "noble savage" meme.

I hate that. People is people, good, bad and indifferent -- pretty much everywhere, and for a long, long time. .., IMO.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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