Like a fish living its whole life in water and therefore not knowing there is such a thing as water, we moderns live in a thing called nationalism and therefore do not know that nationalism once did not exist.
When looking at these ancient battles, we moderns have a tendency to project our nationalism onto their motives. When ancient soldiers went to war, they did not do so thinking of themselves primarily as Babylonians, Assyrians, and Sumerians. They thought of themselves first as members of a family, then as members of a tribe. And then as one tribe among tribes who were like them or related to them in some way.
The story of the children of Israel as recorded in the Old Testament of the Bible is probably the best way to view these ancient societies. In the beginning, you start out with Abraham and his family. Then you have Jacob and his twelve sons. Then you have the twelve tribes of Israel (the other name for Jacob) that was generated by those twelve sons. Then you have Saul becoming king of all Israel, followed by David and his son, Solomon. And then you have the kingdom splitting into the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel because Solomon's wisdom skipped a generation.
These ancient societies had to stretch their minds a great deal to get much farther than their own tribes, so their loyalties were to particular rulers than to the nation as a whole. Nationalism came into being with the advent of the Enlightenment in the 1700's. This is why you will read of Greeks who fought on the Persian side of the Greco-Persian wars. They were not traitors. At that time, there was nothing for them to be a traitor to.
As with ancient Israel, sometimes an ethnic group never gets very much farther than being a collection of tribes under shaky kingdoms. And sometimes a kingdom (or republic) is attacked so much by its neighbors that it learns to have peace by constantly preparing for war - and becoming an empire.
2.) Butchery of innocents.
In 2nd Kings chapter 8 of the Bible, we read of the prophet Elisha being reluctant to give Hazael, son of the king of Aram a prophecy that Hazael will soon succeed his father and be king of Aram.
"Why is my lord [Elisha] weeping?" asked Hazael.
"Because I know the harm you will do to the Israelites," he answered. "You will set fire to their fortified places, kill their young men with the sword, dash their little children to the ground, and rip open their pregnant women." 2 Kings 8:12.
Yet, we do not read of Israelite prophets being concerned about the fortified places, young men, little children, and pregnant women of Aram or any other nation. Also, up until our more recent eras, horrific forms of capital punishment and slaughter were dealt out regularly and usually as a spectator sport.
To me, this all indicates that the consciousness of ancient human beings was quite different from what it is today (at least most of time!) I've come to believe that at least one thing the bloody pageant of history has been about has been the struggle to introduce and promote the commandment to "love thy neighbor as thyself."
The problem has always been that we keep asking "who is my neighbor?" In the ancient world, your neighbor was your immediate family, your extended family, and your tribe. It was really stretching things to include your actual neighbor or anyone else in that definition. And that was so even for people who promoted the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself.
Part of what the bloody pageant of history has been about is expanding the circle of who we consider to be our neighbor. To move from sociopathic consciousness to empathic consciousness. In our modern world, a sociopath is said to be a person who does not have a conscience an does not consider other people to be "real" in the same way he or she is. We consider the sociopath to be the exception rather than the rule in human behavior. I think it is helpful to consider that in the ancient world, the sociopath may have been the rule rather than the exception.
Genetics have shown and proven that we are all family. If the world is to move towards peace and equality, we must evolve to a point of possessing love for all people and things.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately evolution's primary drive is the inherently sociopathic impulse of procreation. The empathetic are often left to suffer in their sorrow, often brought about by the insensitive exploitation of others at the hands of the greedy and sociopathic. Evil men like Rupert Murdoch create establishments like Fox News (as well as his hundreds of other massive media organizations) which play upon the fear present in everyone, even the empathetic. This invariably leads the masses (aka the lowest common denominator) to trust these most sociopathic people of all: the ones whose sole drive is the narcissistic drive for the aquisition of material wealth.
With one of the most openly empathetic and moderate presidents we have ever had in the United States currently at the helm, we can actively see how the sociopaths manipulate the emotions of the masses in order to further their selfish goals.