Imagine you were set down in a region of the world where you had no idea where you were, no idea of which country or indeed even which continent. As you wander about you notice that there are many castles, forts, and walled cities dotted throughout the countryside.
What
would you deduce from this about the occupants of this region?
One
thing that you might infer is that warfare is a recurrent activity.
Such
a situation is the reality for one specific part of the world.
A
plot of the world’s castles, forts, and walled cities is a graphic illustration.
Around 98% of all the castles, forts, and walled cities of the world are
located in the region of the world to the west of the two big rivers of the
Tigris and Euphrates, and to the north of the Mediterranean Sea. Many of the
remaining 2%, although located in other parts of the world, were built
following European/western colonisation of these areas. For example, USA has
more than 300 castles, all of them built since the first European colonisers
arrived.
This
is the region of the world in which warfare took hold in a significant and
meaningful manner.
It
is often claimed that warfare is an innate human trait. Humanity has been
engaged in warfare since time began it is said. If not that long ago, then at
least over the past 15,000 to 20,000 years.
Yet,
such an assertion is a Eurocentric one. There remains an assumption that
because something has been experienced by, and applied by, those of European
descent then it must relate to the whole of humanity.
But,
as the example above shows, this is clearly not the case. Indeed, Europe is
atypical in the building of castles, forts, and walled cities. Europe is also
atypically warlike.
So,
what was going on in the hearts and minds of Europeans – especially the males
of that region?
Native
Americans have an answer. They call it wetiko1 which Jack
Forbes2 defines as the disease of cannibalism without any sacredness
and no respect for the cycle of life and death.
Paul
Levy, in his book simply titled Wetiko3, describes wetiko as,
‘A contagious psycho-spiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind… (that)
covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche,
rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act
against their own best interests.’
Locating
the emergence of warfare within western culture does not mean that violence did
not occur in other parts of the world. However, as Jack Forbes points out, ‘Non-wetikos
may, at times, be cruel, but their cruelty is individual and sporadic, not part
of a system of cruelty.’4 Furthermore, Jack Forbes
recognises that not all Europeans show wetiko tendencies, but that
European culture is the major carrier of the wetiko disease.
That
wetiko is a systematic psycho-spiritual disease and is unconsciously
carried by one identifiable culture is what makes it so pernicious. It seeps
and creeps into the psyche and belief systems of individuals and societies
within that culture. Wetiko manifests, as Paul Levy notes, ‘as a
cannibalising force driven by insatiable greed, appetite without satisfaction,
consumption as an end in itself, and war for its own sake, against other
tribes, species, and nature, and even against the individual’s own humanity.’
Wetiko,
as
Forbes and Levy describe it, is a major contributor to warfare.
And, castles, forts, and walled cities illustrate graphically where it originated.
Notes:
1. The word appears
in many native North American languages, for example: wendigo, windego,
windago, windiga, wentiko, wijigo, windagoo, and many others, indicating that
the concept was widely known throughout the continent.
2. Jack Forbes was a
prominent author, activist, and historian. Although identifying as of Powhatan-Renapé and Lenape descent he did
not enrol in any native American nation.
3. Paul Levy, Wetiko:
Healing the Mind-Virus that Plagues Our World, Inner Traditions, Rochester,
Vermont, 2021
4. Jack D. Forbes, Columbus
and other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and
Terrorism, Seven Stories Press, New York, London, Melbourne, Toronto,
Revised Edition, 2008. First published 1992.
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