PRACTICE
PRACTICE
Origins of our social conflict BY PAUL SILLS
This series of articles will look at the issue of social conflict and the role of lawyers as peacemakers. By necessity, much of the conversation will be generalised and won’t apply to every pocket of society. The intention is to highlight the key areas or issues that, in my view, lead to social conflict so that we can debate them in a more open and less politically charged way. The arguments-as-war metaphor we see applied to most conflict runs parallel with the long-held theory that war is embedded in our very nature. This is a commonly held belief of socio-biologists, anthropologists and other students of human behaviour based, not only on the propensity of modern man to go to war with his neighbours, but also on theories about the way pre-agricultural ‘hunter-gatherers’ behaved. That theory is now under threat. A recent study of tribal societies that live by hunting and foraging has found that war is an alien concept, and not, as some academics have suggested, an innate feature of so-called “primitive” people (Douglas Fry & Patrick Soderberg of Abo Akademi University, Finland). The study discovered that although such hunter-gatherers are far from peaceful, they are also far from warlike. Most who die violent deaths in these societies did so at the hands of other tribesman, not ‘foreigners’. Ironically, the study found that most of the ‘primitive’ people on earth are actually quite peaceful compared to modern, developed nations. The conclusion is that warfare was probably not common before the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago. So, warfare, despite its often malignant hold on modern life, has not always been part of the human condition. Five pre-conditions have been suggested for turning peaceful tribal peoples of the distant past into the war-prone societies of recent centuries (The Birth of War, National History Journal – July/ August 2003): • A shift from a nomadic existence to a sedentary one, commonly though not necessarily tied to agriculture; • A growing regional population and possibly increased competition for resources; • The development of social hierarchy; • Increasing long-distance trade, particularly in prestigious goods; and • A severe climatic change that breaks down the subsistence base. It seems that when we start gathering in large numbers we cause ourselves trouble. In the few known cases of warless societies of hunter-gatherers, social organisations do not extend beyond family 34
in a loose, flexible network of kin. On the other hand, hunter-gatherer societies that make war have larger and more defined groupings such as clans. It seems that the existence of bounded groups make for a sense of collective injury and desire for unified retaliation. Put another way – the more we identify with a tribe, the more likely we are to take whatever steps are necessary to defend that tribe. Some concerning themes come out of this research that were factors 10,000 years ago and are in fact amplified by modern living: 1. A sedentary existence. Most of us are deskbound for our occupation. Our physiology and the way our bodies are optimised for results requires us to be upright, moving and outdoors. And yet very few of us achieve this – in fact the complete opposite. The advent of agriculture and societies forming around farming communities have meant we have largely stopped moving. If we still spent our days foraging for food and shelter, we might not have any energy for conflict. 2. Population growth and increased competition for resources. Some say that it is not climate control that is our biggest issue but our consumption rates and