“Not at all, Julie. You should know by now that I don’t pretend to know what people ‘should’ do. Erratic retaliation isn’t ‘good’ and the suppression of it ‘evil.’ What’s happening in that part of the world is merely the latest calamity in a calamitous history that can’t be made right by any means whatever.”
“Yeah, that’s the way it seems,” I said.
“While we’re momentarily off the track, I’d like to point out that we’re in a position to observe something new here. I’ve shown you that competition among members of the same species is necessarily more comprehensive than competition among members of different species. Cardinals compete more comprehensively with other cardinals than they do with blue jays or sparrows, and humans compete more comprehensively with other humans than they do with bears or badgers.”
“Yes.”
“Now you’re in a position to see that competition among peoples with the same lifestyle is necessarily more comprehensive than competition among peoples with different life-styles. Farmers compete more comprehensively with other farmers than they do with hunter-gatherers.”
“Wow, that’s true,” I said. “So that by creating a world full of farmers, we’ve heightened the level of competition to the max.”
“This is indeed the situation among the Hullas, the Puala, the Cario, and the Albas, Julie. There was plenty of competition among them even when they were living in different ways. Now they’re all living the same way, and so (far from having eliminated competition) they must compete even more intensely.”
“Yes, I see that.”
“In our examination of competitive strategies, we’ve seen that their effect is to make it possible for competitors to live side by side without having to engage in mortal combat over every little thing. The Hullas, the Puala, the Cario, and the Albas can no longer live side by side by playing Erratic Retaliator. That strategy has been thrown out. Without it, in the matter of the dammed stream, your only idea so far is: ‘Let’s go to war.’ In other words, let’s go straight to mortal combat. But I’m sure you can see that it’s not going to work for the Hullas, the Puala, the Cario, and the Albas to go to war over every little thing.”
“Right.”
“The peacekeeping strategy of the past was ‘Give as good as you get, but don’t be too predictable.’ The Takers discarded that. What did they come up with to replace it?”
I struggled with it for a few minutes and finally said, “I guess I have to say that what the Takers came up with was themselves. They made themselves the peacekeepers.”
“They did indeed, Julie. They appointed themselves the administrators of chaos, and they’ve been at it ever since, improvising generation after generation with varying degrees of success. They took the keeping of the peace into their hands at the beginning of their revolution, and it’s been there ever since. When they arrived in the New World, no one was keeping the peace here, as you know. Rather, the peace was being kept in the traditional way, by people giving as good as they got and remaining unpredictable. The Takers put a stop to all that, and now the keeping of the peace is in their capable hands. Crime is a multibillion-dollar industry, children deal drugs on street corners, and maddened citizens vent their rage on each other with assault weapons.”
The Crescent, Part II
Before the Hullas, the Puala, the Albas, and the Cario were overrun by the Takers, each tribe had its own way of dealing with things, the gift of tens of thousands of years of cultural experience. The Hulla way was not the Puala way, the Puala way was not the Alba way, and the Alba way was not the Cario way. The only thing these ways had in common was that they worked—the Hulla way for the Hullas, the Puala way for the Puala, the Alba way for the Albas, and the Cario way for the Cario.
“What was vitally important for all these peoples was to have ways of dealing with humans as they are. They didn’t think of humans as flawed beings, but this doesn’t mean that they thought of them as angels. They knew very well that humans are capable of being troublesome, disruptive, selfish, mean, cruel, greedy, violent, and so on. Humans are nothing if not passionate and inconsistent, and it doesn’t take a giant intellect to figure this out. A system that works for tens of thousands of years is not going to be a system that works only for people who are invariably agreeable, helpful, selfless, generous, kind, and gentle. A system that works for tens of thousands of years is going to be a system that works for people who are always capable of being troublesome, disruptive, selfish, greedy, cruel, and violent. Does this make sense to you?”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“Among tribal peoples, you don’t find laws that forbid disruptive behavior. To the tribal mind, this would be supremely inane. Instead, you find laws that serve to minimize the damage of disruptive behavior. For example, no tribal people would ever frame a law forbidding adultery. Instead, what you find are laws that set forth what must happen when adultery occurs. The law prescribes steps that minimize the damage done by this act of infidelity, which has injured not only the spouse but the community itself by cheapening marriage in the eyes of the children. Again, the objective is not to punish but to make right, to promote healing, so that as far as possible, everything can return to normal. The same would be true of assault. To the tribal mind, it’s futile to say to people, ‘You must never fight.’ What is not futile is to know exactly what must be done for the best when there’s been a fight, so that everyone sustains the least damage possible. I want you to see how very different this is from the effect of your own laws, which, instead of reducing damage, actually magnify and multiply damage all across the social landscape, destroying families, ruining lives, and leaving victims to heal their own wounds.”
“I do see it,” I told him.
“As I think is clear from what I’ve said so far, there was one imperative that was common to all tribes: Attack other tribes, defend each other. In other words, despite all internal squabbles and vendettas, it was the tribe against the world. If you’re a Hulla, it’s fine to attack Cario or Puala, but attacking other Hullas is not the idea. If you’re a Cario, it’s fine to attack Hullas or Puala, but attacking other Cario is not the idea. Do you see why this must be so?”
“I think so. If Cario law encouraged the Cario to attack each other, then the Cario would eventually disappear as a tribe. And if Cario law prohibited Cario from attacking Hullas or Puala, then the Err
atic Retaliator strategy would be out the window, and the Cario would also eventually disappear as a tribe.”
“Exactly. At the beginning of your revolution, your own tribe, which I’ve called the Takers, was exactly like the Hullas, the Puala, the Albas, and the Cario—and indeed all the tens of thousands of others that were extant in the world at that time. I mean that they had a way of living that worked well for them and a set of laws that enabled them to deal effectively with disruptive behavior in their midst. What do you suppose happened to that original way of living that worked well for the Takers?”
“I can’t imagine,” I said.
“We’ll have to see if we can imagine it together, Julie. Here’s one thing we can be sure of: Nothing in the tribal way of the Takers prepared them for the responsibility they undertook when they overran their neighbors at the beginning of the revolution.”
“How can you know that?”
“Tribal culture showed people how to cope with things that had been happening from the beginning of time. It didn’t show people how to cope with things that had never happened before in the entire history of the world—and your revolution was just such a thing. People had been competing and conflicting from the beginning of time. They knew how to hold their own by playing the Erratic Retali ator strategy. But now one tribe, under an impetus never felt before among humans, was ready to wield a kind of power that had never been wielded before. Their population expanding in front of an abundance of food, the Takers were no longer interested in merely holding their own against their neighbors. They had more people to feed, needed more land, and had the power to overrun their neighbors—assimilating them, running them off, or exterminating them (it didn’t matter which). But once they’d overrun their neighbors, they were in uncharted territory. What were they to do with them? They were certainly not going to go back to playing Erratic Retaliator with them. That would have made no sense at all. And they were also not going to allow them to go on playing Erratic Retaliator among themselves. That too would make no sense. Do you see why?”
“Yes, I think so. Erratic retaliation is a way of maintaining your independence on an equal footing with your neighbors. The Takers were against that. They didn’t want the Hullas and the Puala and the Cario to be independent entities, constantly fighting among themselves.”
“What was the old Taker law about fighting? I mean the law they followed before the revolution.” Seeing my blank look, he added, “This is the law all tribal people follow in common about fighting.”
“Oh. You mean ‘Fight your neighbors, not yourselves.’ ”