Category: Global Conflict

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Action Global Conflict

Repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery

Our friend has spoken of the barbarities [extreme cruelties] which have been practiced towards the Indians, and of their present condition of degradation in contrast with their condition when William Penn landed on this continent.

Lucretia Mott, 1869

 

After showing the film “Two Who Dared” about the Sharps, a Unitarian couple who saved thousands of children from the Nazis, Charlie Clements asked for questions. I stood and asked what current conditions are analogous to German fascism that should spur us to action.

Charlie cited Darfur. This region of Sudan has been at war for a decade now, with three hundred thousand people slaughtered. It is not the usual genocide, however, where the conflict is based on religion or race. The two warring parties are both Muslims and of similar ethnicity, but one group is semi-nomadic and the other sedentary agriculturalists. Theoretically these two groups should coexist peacefully, but that is far from the case in Darfur! It seems that this conflict is over resources in that sparse land.

Right after asking Charlie my question, I thought of another situation analogous to Nazi Germany. This human tragedy is closer to home, however.

Our European forbearers invaded a prosperous land that supported its indigenous population very well. Native Americans helped some of the European settlers when they first arrived. How did we thank them? by uprooting them, waging devastating wars and introducing fatal diseases.

Using both bullets and disease, the European invaders killed off 80 or 90% of Native Americans. We came close to wiping out the people who had first rights to North and South America.

How could the medieval Europeans justify this massacre? The roots of this tragedy go back to the first half of the second millennium of Christianity. The Roman Catholic Church’s policy at that time was forced conversion of infidels (and of other enemies). Sometimes conversion was bypassed and the poor souls were killed directly. The Church ruled with fear and an iron fist.

Intolerance of diversity affected many groups. Fanaticism inspired the Crusades, resulting in the massacre of millions of Muslims. The last, Albigensian

Crusade was in Europe, against the Cathars, a Christian sect who protested the power of the Church. Cathars were obliterated in 1244 with the burning of the last 200+ of these protestants.

A single religious policy, the Doctrine of Discovery, made the conquering and massacre of Native Americans possible. Indeed, this Doctrine made it imperative that Christian Europeans conquer and convert in the name of Jesus. To quote Pope Nicholas V’s Papal Bull Romanus Pontifex of 1455, European monarchs were “…to invade, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans and other enemies of Christ… to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery [and] to take away all their possessions and property….”

In 1823 the US Supreme Court upheld the continued right of Europeans to own and control property that once belonged to Indians in the case of Johnson v. M’Intosh. The Court maintained that the US Government, as the discovering sovereign’s successor, does have the right to nullify Indians’ interest in their lands. Thus indigenous people had no right to their own lands! This Doctrine became the cornerstone of USA Indian policy and was the basis for a Court decision as recently as 2005.

The world has changed vastly since 1455. Both the Church and secular laws have changed immeasurably. Our society is much more egalitarian; now every person has value. By today’s standards many of the dirty deeds that the Europeans did would be unconscionable. We should be careful not to judge the past by today’s values, but also must be sure that today’s laws and practices don’t perpetuate the dark past.

What should we of European descent do to make it right with Native Americans? It is impossible for us to provide complete recompense; too much has happened since 1492. For instance, many of European descent live on land formerly used by the Utes, and we are unwilling and unable to move.

            A first step is to become aware of past history. I don’t remember learning about the Doctrine of Discovery in school, yet it is a vital part of history. A public apology is in order; this essay is my personal apology. I understand that there are treaties between the Federal Government and Native Americans that the government has consistently broken. We should ask Washington to live up to its promises to our indigenous hosts. Finally, we must work to prevent similar unethical policies that lead to genocide.

                                           © Richard Grossman MD, 2013

Categories
Carrying Capacity Global Conflict Population

Population Paradox—Small wars may prevent apocalyptic conflict

Population Paradox—Small wars may prevent apocalyptic conflict—6-2012

            The reason that I became concerned about human population is that I wanted to work for peace. Long ago I believed (and still do) that overpopulation is likely to lead to armed conflict.

Scarce resources are the most common cause of armed conflict. People are hungry and their neighbors have food, so a raid is initiated to steal their sustenance. Another scenario involves a growing group whose land area is limited. They look envyingly to the other side of their border with rich land and few people; invading a neighboring territory is a common cause of war. The Nazis used Lebensraum (living space) as an excuse to invade adjacent lands, thus catalyzing World War II. Recently we fought the Iraqi war over another valuable resource—petroleum.

Religion is also a common cause of war—even though most religions claim that they want peace. We are afraid of Muslims overrunning our beliefs. We have forgotten, however, what many followers of Mohammed still remember—how the Christians tried to exterminate Islam during the Crusades.

We know that a graph of the human population was almost flat for many centuries before the past couple hundred years. Why was there so little growth for so long, followed by such an amazing acceleration?

Many reasons are given for the past slow increase in our population. High infant mortality, poor hygiene, infectious diseases, and meager food supply all contributed. These factors all changed with the industrial revolution.

There is another cause, however, that we don’t usually consider as a reason for slow population growth. Several books give us a clue. The Great Big Book of Horrible Things (Matthew White) lists the world’s largest mass killings. The Roman gladiators (responsible for over three million deaths) and the Crusades (another three million) are listed. The imperialism of Genghis Kahn destroyed 40 million people, the Atlantic slave trade 16 million and the conquest of the Americas 15 million. Overall, about a half billion people died from the hundred cruel calamities described in this book.

Two books put forth a theory that may be a more significant past cause of mortality. War Before Civilization: The myth of the peaceful savage (Lawrence Keeley) and Constant Battles: Why we fight (Steven Le Blanc and Katherine Register) both posit that our ancestors killed each other in very significant numbers. They look at archeological evidence from around the world, especially right here in the Southwest.

In the past there were small bands of people living all over the world. Recent evidence suggests that these societies were more violent than prior archeologists ever acknowledged. Overall, these authors estimate that 10 to 15 percent of people in prehistoric societies died from conflict.

Disease and starvation weren’t bad enough! It seems that homicide and warfare are important reasons human population grew slowly for millennia. Past people destroyed their neighbors to steal their resources. In some cultures there is even evidence of cannibalism; not only did they kill, but also ate their neighbors’ flesh.

War is a terrible way to limit population growth. Unfortunately, battles and cruelty with extensive loss of life seem to have been the way of life in our dark past.

We are living in a period of relative peace according to Better Angels of Our Nature. A reviewer of this book summarizes its thesis: “…our era is less violent, less cruel and more peaceful than any previous period of human existence.” What may not be self-evident (few of us have the long view of history needed) is that the world has actually become less violent.

This book goes further than just to claim that we are living in an era with decreased armed combat. The author, Steven Pinker, is a Harvard psychologist who believes that we have slowly changed our mores to accept less violence in our personal lives—less spanking of children and less persecution of people for their beliefs, ethnicity, color or sexual orientation. With this current “Long Peace” has come longevity—and more people.

Apparently small raids and “horrible things” kept our population small, and the “long peace” is one cause our numbers have increased so rapidly. Relative peace has allowed our population to outgrow the carrying capacity of our planet by fifty percent! I share a concern with a Pentagon document from 2003. “As famine, disease, and weather-related disasters strike due to … climate change, many countries’ needs will exceed their carrying capacity… which is likely to lead to offensive aggression in order to reclaim balance.”

© Richard Grossman MD, 2012