http://www.healingmagic.org/articles/Setting.pdf

War is the result of unchecked aggression, and allowing bloodthirsty sociopaths to run the show. It's time for us to change not only regimes, but our whole way of looking at power and policy.

War used to happen every few hundred pages in a history book. Today war is part of our daily lives. This is thanks mainly to the political leadership of the world. War for them is profitable both politically and economically. They have a vested interest in promoting warfare and have become experts at it. If keeping people afraid is good for them politically, then they aren't about to rock the boat. War sells.
If anyone is serious about stopping war then they have to stop the world's oldest war. The war on women.
Hoa binh

Although this article implies that leaders' and citizens' psyches cause wars, the need for resource acquisition is what causes most wars. The corporations or other entities whose mission is to maximize acquisition of resources at somebody elses expense simply support leaders and citizens fitting the psychological profile that will ensure a successful war.
Many wars can be characterized as a public/private partnership where the taxpayers pay for the war and the corporations get the resources.

Maybe war is caused by ego.

War should be illegal.. conflict is inevitable but if a few guys have a brawl at a bar, okay so what. When it's nation against nation, that is the highest crime against humanity.

The most basic, fundamental lesson of all human history is the everlasting irrationality of human beings. War is the highest expression of that irrationality. Why this is so will be debated until the human race inevitably disappears from the face of this earth. Whatever progress humanity has made through the centuries has been the result of the labors of a mere handful of people. Those numbers are getting smaller and their voices fainter; while the sweaty and wild-eyed run amok.

Could be ego.

Imagining that my/our needs are more important than and/or superior to anyone else's and that I'm/we're justified in satisfying these needs in any way I/we choose, regardless of the effects on others. It sounds like something between ignorant and uncaring on the one hand and stupid and hateful on the other; what I mean is, it sounds familiar.

It isn't human instinct, though, as the article says.

It's talking ourselves into behaviors that are neither natural to nor worthy of human beings.

Erich Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, 1973, distinguishes what he calls malignant aggression from natural aggression, and identifies the sources of war (our unique contribution to zoology) as cultural, cognitive and linguistic rather than primarily biological. The advent of agriculture, seen from a Freudian perspective, suggests that hoarding (storage of grain, protection of capital) and sadism (conquests of acquisition, domination of vanquished groups by fear) have combined to produce a destructive neurosis indistinguishable from culture itself. Animals react with aggression (fight or flight) to clear and present dangers. Man's capacity for foresight allows him to respond equally to possible or imagined dangers as if they were real and present, making him vulnerable to the systematic manipulations of leaders who really just want to create a war posture and plunder some foreign market. Kantian ideas such as the one the author cites: commitment "to the democratic value that violence is never morally or politically acceptable except when used in defense against violence by others who have not accepted this principle, and who have in fact initiated acts of violence" have been around for 200 years, and every pretext for war in all of that time has successfully painted the enemy as just such a rogue nation. Fromm's book is remarkably current. It addresses the issues Mr. Wickersham raises, and goes far beyond them in its breadth of scholarship, though I can not say that a better understanding of this disturbing topic gives rise to much optimism.

Leave it to an academician to write something so criminally boring as to stir up my long dormant tendencies to commit violence.

Elimination of cash as means of deriving economic satisfaction. Replace with calorie measuring of production and reward of product based on contribution to production, such reward equal in exact to the members input.

No cash, no war, I guarantee.

Get this for your children by direct democracy.

http://ni4d.org

All comments invited at peace@iraqiagony.org

Thanks for your interest,
Dan

The war makers are the big money holders. Their game is dominance, by militance, finance, policy, disease, famine, whatever they can use to strengthen their position relative to other people.

Unlimited helping of whirled peas for everyone now!

War is not uniquely human, unfortunately. I recently watched a Nova special on ants, which included some segments by Harvard's E.O. Wilson. It turns out that they too wage actual war, and the US army has studied them. They are hive intelligences, communicate via chemical cues, have a few members among their colonies with genetic signals that turn them into much larger "guard" ants, etc.

Ultimately, we can debate the causes of war in humans until the end of time. Some academic problems aren't designed to yield a solution, so at some stage in the research process we need to quit -- and start focusing on solutions.

My own research suggests that warfare is rises when population densities relative to resource and land scarcity rise. For instance, I don't recall reading of ANY specialized military weaponry in Europe prior to the Bronze Age or so. We might assume that skirmishes were fought with a hunting toolkit, but this is important to consider -- humans didn't appear to set aside specialized human-killing technologies until perhaps the Bronze Age or so. (I'm not suggesting they didn't kill one another prior to that, of course, but it didn't warrant a specialized toolkit).

The Bronze Age was indeed THE turning point in Western and, by consequence, world history. For nearly 10,000 years Neolithic and copper-using peoples had lived in both Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Some of the great megaliths such as Stonehenge and Malta belong to those times: full of evidence of different AND "densely interwoven" peoples working together at what we can only call from here "sacred tasks" or building things that expressed their being alive in nature's midst. The high point of all this was in Minoan Crete from about 4000-1450 BCE: NOT a utopia, and yet the longest continuous period of peace and progress that anybody can yet demonstrate. (The "world of The Bible," by contrast, has yet to be demonstrated by a single artifact "worthy" of its claim). A "high-tech," cosmopolitan, international trading culture with women very clearly at the organizational and spiritual heart of it all and the men quite intrepid and "masculine" but--most importantly---socialized to understand that, like all other things in nature, ego and self have limits. Their solar/lunar calendar, just discovered, demonstrates that their understandings of rhythms in nature were virtually always about complete "gender balances." So, where we can remember that for the first/longest period, WE WERE GETTING IT RIGHT, we can gain the confidence (and even concepts) to help us get "back" to that kind of planet. When Homer's Mycenean Greeks took advantage of the Thera volcano catastrophe and invaded, "killing the Minotaur in the Labyrinth," they didn't kill the monster: they set it free, meaning war-centered elite-male culture without human context---my power and profit, now, regardless of context and consequence. We can see in the demonstrable facts and evidences that when the Minoan world---later known as "Philistines"---came into contact with the emergent Hebrews/Israelites in the Middle East, the same pattern emerged: "Kingship" as a life-long male right to plunder everything in reach until killed off my other contenders. Now they have nukes---same shit, different weapons, and they're telling us still that only warriors have the real answers to what's wrong. THEY ARE THE PROBLEM--every unconscious son so foolish as to sign up to kill people without examining either himself of the "cause" has to take responsibility for what happens. Directly. As the Cretans still say today, the Germans who come back there "to visit" nowadays "were not veterans---they were criminals." This is still, then, a social code that understands war as the most stupid, futile, childish action one can take in the human world...."War as part of our ancient heritage" is the imperial theme legitimizing itself across all old anthropology and history.... http://ancientgreece-earlyamerica.com

Wow, everyone statement above is entirely Wrong! Listen people..just don't do it, or tolerate it. It is that simple.

All to Relevant Quote:

How is the World Ruled & how do wars start?
Diplomats tell lies to journalists & then believe what they read.
(Karl Kraus, Austrian Press,1874-1936)

General Eisenhower's warnings concerning the dangers of the military industrial complex were preceded by Albert Einstein in 1932 when he cited munition makers as the main thrust for war machines. Warnings concerning the need to scrutinize such misadventures by the executive branch had earlier been made by John Adams and other constitutional framers.

Unfortunately this war is an example of the neglect and/or ignorance of pertinent history, along with the profiteering motives. Such misguided disasters can occur only when a compliant & apathetic populace allows their legislators to tolerate these types of abuses from arrogant and unlearned administrations guided by special interests.

War is complicated case of the social organization programming, and hence of those largely in charge of the organization and content of that programming. War is intertwined with all of our cultural and physical outlook since the beginning of evolution. It takes a lot of long term coordination, obedience, resources and planning to be an instigator of warfare. Hence most of richer nations are in a state of heightened defense, or "war readiness", to avoid being handicapped by long lead times for preparation.

The defense industry is inter-generational and nationally and ethnically oriented. The price of permanent readiness is arms technology and capacity escalation, which must reach a limit of the nations total resource budget. The biggest producers cannot maintain R & D and production without continuous deployment and testing in selected remote wars. The military cannot maintain skill without practice.

Wars can be maintained so long as they are suitably remote from parent culture, and fit in with geopolitical ambitions, and are necessarily at low risk of serious retaliation for the instigators, for instance Afghanistan and Iraq , being razed to ruin, will be lucky if they can ever get their country back again from the invasion of the NATO and US war machines.

Weapons and warfare are the technology of choice for ambitious nations. Ultimately local conflicts may escalate into big power confrontations, given time and the propensity for mission creep and error. War helps to destroy societies and Gaia. It may help us become extinct, as we choose war readiness over climate change control measures.

The lighter side of social programming is that perhaps all nations can collectively (that taboo word) learn to do without major warfare. Perhaps Afghanistan could become a permanent battleground warfare zone, like the world soccer championships. The local sides have already been thoroughly militarized and fragmented into permanent guerrilla warfare societies.

If every nation keeps sending in armies to battle for one party or another, they can all consume themselves in death, naturally selecting the survivors who will not take any direct part. To do away with war, we must punish its controlling and active participants with non-reproduction, and reward non-participants.

Arthur C Clarke made a suggestion in a Science Fiction Novel that the families of generals and politicians who fail to prevent war, even belonging to the winning party, should be sterilized, to prevent their success in future generations. Whatever it is in our dynamic genetic and cultural makeup that leads us to destructive folly, war is about long term cultural and biological survival at the expense of others.

Some means should be just too expensive in the long run to pay for now. Other means of political and inter ethnic settlement need to be implemented. The best regulation to select which humans can breed and flourish is the ultimate question, and its a lifetime competitive one. What rules can limit the human competition damage for better long term outcomes? There has to be something better than what is happening now. Some ultimate limits, such as the long term carrying capacity og Gaia have to be recognized, and we should be allowed to kill each other with minimal damage to Gaia and the long term prospects of the survivors. Better still would be local and global agreements on how to select the right to reproduce, and to reward those who chose not to do so. Have we yet evolved enough wisdom, to wisely choose what we should evolve into?

the fromm 1973 book is good. isn't the primate research ambiguous on war though? finally, my personal view is that war comes from the original prehistoric tribal experience of the need for survival of the tribal group due to the fragility of existence and the identification of non-tribal-group people as "other" and as something to be feared, enslaved or killed because of the potential competition for food, water, land/space, mates. sadly, tens of thousands of years later, not only have we not transcended that, we have just gotten better @ killing and inventing reasons for killing. i remember being angry when i realized that we had come up with ways to continue having wars w/o having nuclear wars even though it seemed like a sensible step to stop having wars given that nuclear weapons gave us the ability to wipe ourselves off the planet in a war. ah well, yet another lifetime of the craziness of being human. when this one is over, that's it, i'm done with this place & not coming back. i'm going on.

allyourbase - I've read conflicting primate studies with respect to their level of aggressiveness and whether it amounts to warlike behavior. I think ant behavior, per Paul's post, is difficult to compare with mankind's methodical pursuit of conquest, although aggression and territoriality do appear to be the biological norm. Fromm sees a pathological change from the point at which we stepped out of nature, so to speak, and into culture - when we stopped being hunter gatherers and became farmers (the bronze age). The cosmologies of nomadic matriarchies (small cooperative societies which worshipped female creativity and in which the accumulation and hoarding of personal belongings was antithetical to survival) gave way to domineering masculine societies, walled granaries and soldiers to protect them, and male gods (such as Marduk, who slew his mother Tiamat) who created by thinking and yelling. What occurred to the human psyche at that time is hopelessly conjectural, but it is a compelling idea that the development of technologies (the wheel, bronze tools, early cities, early armies) came rapidly on the heels of the material surplus made possible by agriculture. Civilization quickly equated survival with conquest under these new circumstances, so that the first global human enterprises were the expansion of empires through methodical warfare and the maintaining of these by occupation and slavery. Natural aggression took a precocious leap into the malignancy which still bedevils us.

Paul - Solutions, I think, should be informed by studying the nature of the beast. We seem to think that we can simply agree among ourselves, at the level of nations, that war is in general a kind of madness, and make treaties to stop doing it. But we don't stop doing it. The solution proposed by Marx, the abolition of property, was guided by some deeper insight, even if getting people to give up their stuff is as difficult as getting them to drop their guns. The Bush era has made a pessimist of me. Just when you think mankind has begun to figure it out, back comes the wolf man. Homo homine lupus.

That single modest change would be the development of a commitment in the great majority of the world's public "to the democratic value that violence is never morally or politically acceptable

A mass commitment to non-violence is opposed by capitalists, particularly in the United States, who find violence highly lucrative. In order to maintain economic growth, media violence must grow, and real-world violence must grow also, to supply demand growth to the military and security industries. Don't stop growth. People will starve.

Harming other human beings, other than in self defense, is repugnant to the human conscience; it was 250,000 years ago and it is today.

Strip away the confusion and this is what remains.

Watching human beings at their worst can confuse you as to how they act at their best. No twisting of facts or tangling of explanations with justifications alters the fact that human beings act out of choice. Having done so, they then choose whether to lie about it or tell the truth, to take responsibility for their actions or blame them on someone or something else. No amount of confusion alters the truth; no lie erases it.

Those who trick or coerce other human beings into acting unconscionably are responsible for the consequences. Those who lie to themselves or others are responsible for the consequences of those lies. Their victims are responsible, over time, for seeing through their lies and for finding ways to deal with their coercions. Every human being is responsible for acting honestly and thoughtfully, with concern and care for others, regardless of what they have been taught or told.

War on Women: A couple of posters have mentioned the war on women, which appears to have begun with the advent of Christianity. Perhaps when we really see the light, this poor rendition of myth will be replaced by a belief set that is not crippled by politics. The fraud most Americans follow so blindly was commissioned by a Roman Emperor, rather like George W Bush telling a guy like Pat Robertson to make up something he can push down our throats so he has an easier time fooling everyone. Read "The Jesus Mysteries" if you want to know more about what seems to be the biggest fraud every put over on humankind. George Bush is a piker, comparitively.

veteran 66-68

Since our earliest ancesors picked up a piece of wood and a rock and attacked the people in the next cave over and took their fire and food, war has been fought with greed being its only motivating factor.

DREAMER TOO -- excellent insights into our individual and collective responsibilities to the choices that we make, and the results that grow from that. Thank you.

Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »

If everybody who ever participated in a war larger than two individuals slugging it out had also been privileged to participate first in a democratic secret-ballot election to decide whether or not such war would be waged, there wouldn't have ever been any.

Of course most of us are not genetically programmed to start unprovoked fights. We are, however, programmed to do whatever appears to impress others, take a dare, follow the leader, appear brave, seek vengeance and protect our friends.

Some folks do manage to intimidate others into doing real fighting, and for all kinds of reasons. On this, history is certain, and certain to repeat.

Perhaps more attention might be due the classic treatment of aggression as related to frustration, by Dollard et al. I'm not sure all its implications have been explored fully.
It's a standard textbook.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the role of leadership in whether or not violence results in a time of crisis. We need look no further than a comparison of what happened in a time of wrenching change is Yugoslavia vs. South Africa. What happened in the Balkins wouldn't have happened absent warmongering leaders ready to exploit an explosive situation. Anarchy and civil war didn't happen in South Africa as a result of leaders willing to, on the part of the whites, give up a monopoly on power, and on the part of the blacks, swear off revenge. Either situation could have easily gone the other way. The best way to prevent war is to keep warmongers out of power and to curb the power of the war profiteers that enable them.

vox,

If Marx is correct, then it becomes an issue of timing. The rollback of private property must begin at the top, rather than as is happening today (demise of the family farm, foreclosures, rampant debt, declining earnings, etc.): the demise of real equity/ownership at the bottom, Big Boxification and distant economics. Private property was for the most part abolished during the Middle Ages, in terms of sheer numbers of people. Probably most were landless/propertyless subjugated people desperate enough to sell themselves into servitude.

But there remained a controlling/caste class whose job was to deny property to the majority. The Royal Forest, unlike the Commons, was not abolished. But it became the modern economic grid itself, the place where the serf can pay tribute in order to squat -- but the system is such that the majority are forbidden from ever gaining much in the way of real equity.

So to reiterate, the dismantling of ownership -- assuming this is a good idea, I'm not entirely convinced -- must occur first at the top lest we return to full-blown serfdom. I believe we are 75% of the way there now.

Understanding Violence

(this essay appears on allinharmony.com)

Since meat-eating was introduced thousands of years ago, the connection between consuming flesh and human violence has been understood by many including the original vegetarian cultures.

Down through the ages, numerous philosophers, writers, artists and scientists have pointed out this connection including; Plutarch, Porphyry, Tolstoy, Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci.

But, in today's international corporate/military society (modeled upon early empires), misdirecting the human capacity for understanding its ecological nature is begun early in childhood.

And, it is misdirected primarily through denial which is then energetically augmented by multitudinous layers of deception. Together, denial and disinformation (and a validating cultural context for these methods of thinking and behavior) create the response-insulated personas that enable human violence to propagate; and determine that...

...most individual and institutional behavior will be based upon deception, violence (or the threat of violence) and denial.

War itself is an exact parallel to our culturally mandated war upon our own nature, other creatures and the planet's biospheres.

And just like our culturally induced misunderstanding of anatomy and human ecology contribute to dietary behaviors that are unnatural, unhealthy and violence producing;…

…so too, wars can only be fomented by ancient deception scripts for demonizing target populations (those slated for genocide), inducing fear of those demonized by false flag terrorist acts (9/11 style) and bolstering separatist/elitist beliefs in the superiority of one's own group, class, etc.

Anti-war demonstrators rarely understand the fundamental deceptions and violence upon which all meat-eating societies (past and present) depend. And it is this defining violent and widespread root of our militaristic society that must be understood if we are to rid ourselves of culturally induced violence in all its forms including war.
---------------------

When meat-eating was first introduced, it most logically would have been introduced to captive children. And this specialized socialization experiment/'procedure' would have been done in the attempt to create controllable 'violence enabled' humans for the protection of elite temple members/rulers and their treasures. (Even today, similar trauma-based programming methods utilizing animal cruelty to repeatedly shock and desensitize children into becoming programmable child soldiers or controllable child and adult assasins are in widespread use as is reported in the child war in Uganda and in the CIA's MK-Ultra mind control experiments on children.)

------------------------------------------

1) Human consumption of animal flesh is a radical denial of and departure from human ecological design and can only be reliably programmed as a regularly expressed behavioral norm if begun early in childhood in the context of a validating social structure.

2) The proliferation and continuation of this unnatural behavior relies upon an ancient script of deception and a codified system for insuring that the deception continues undiscovered (the state in which we are largely engulfed worldwide today).

-------------------------------------------------

Humans, like all creatures, exhibit a particular ecologically based anatomy and physiology. And ours is decidedly herbivorous, meaning; we are intended to eat plant matter exclusively. (proof in previous comment)

We either understand our place as part and parcel of the planetary biosphere or we do not. And if we are a part of the web of life, then we must express our most natural design to fit harmoniously into the whole. Otherwise, we are positioned at odds with the ecological whole and with our own nature.

Being out of natural synch gives rise to a general state of alienation, disconnection, and insecurity which leads to frustration and a latent discontent enabling violent expressions to be triggered.

The resultant social and individual anxiety contributes to an individual-level fear/sense that we must either 'take control' or be vulnerable or victimized.

Thus, we learn to 'take control'/dominate (generally by means of deception) or be dominated/ 'be vulnerable'.

And yet, no matter how dominant we may become, we remain ensconced in (subordinated to) a culture of unnatural cruelty and thus ecologically eclipsed/defeated and emotionally and intellectually deadened.

"As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love."

Pythagoras

"Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test, consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect, human kind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it."

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

---------------------

Human: Isn't evolution 'survival of the fittest'?

Dr Beetle: No, evolution is 'survival of the wildest'...
... Therefore, the doom and gloom being reasoned out of evolution by biologists today is wrong. In truth, evolution produces harmony, diversity and beauty in nature, not a few selfish victors. Survival of the fittest implies it is strong to be a fit competitor to the exclusion of others. But to be wild, it is more important to have good instincts, and to be open enough to sense the information coursing through your world.

Excerpted from the 'Wildness FAQ': http://www.animalconcerns.org/external.html?www=http%3A//drbeetle.homestead.com&itemid=20010722232014764741

Check out http://www.allinharmony.com.

War is revealed for what it truly is, a contrived reality based upon deception and institutionalized by a ruling elite to insure their continued dominance by rendering all others downtrodden (the broad definition of genocide).

All war is basically genocide. All wars are fomented to increase the powerlessness of the majority and consolidate power in the ruling minority.

And the root of this dynamic of modern society as well as the elite who are raised to believe it is in their interest to foment wars, is anything but natural.

Here's an essay placing the emergence of wars and institutionalized violence in its historical and logical context:

The Temple and the Precipice

Man is by design a frugivore.*

Is there any other creature that has violated its natural design so absolutely as man? We do have examples but these appear to have been done in the face of powerfully altered environmental determinants. Whales and dolphins are a good example as some of the ancestors of wolves were forced to learn to fish in a locale that became more water than land.

Did such an environmental change force man to choose to eat meat instead of fruits, seeds, leafy greens and nuts? We think not and we think that possibly we must ask ourselves why and how and when from an attempted identity with earliest man. Who would he have been?

And we find that he must have possesed an intelligence and understanding far greater than our own. How can we assert this? It is in those times of great and revelatory communion with nature that we have pierced the web of deceit and found ourselves in the very honest and honestly compassionate company of other animals and their partners, the trees, rocks and yes, the earth herself.

So, early man would not have been an intellectual midget, an inferior but rather a being capable of a very rich earthly experience, a heightened spiritual being of profound and beneficent understanding. Early man would have enjoyed the grace of partnership with nature, its natural abundance and the understanding of being loved.

Would such a person decide to kill and ingest that which would render him stupid, constipated, lethargic, repulsed? Not likely. So what has produced this result that today all but a very few can even guess at what their natural diet is?

We explain this process in the Temple and the Precipice and we divulge for the first time the most ancient roots of the Temple in human society and the role it played in introducing meat eating in order to form a unique group of individuals, a group behaviorally modified so radically that they could be counted upon to behave violently at the behest of the Temple.

And we explain how an institution (the Temple) formed for the purpose of archiving and sharing and learning could become convinced that such an unnatural departure from its most basic charter was warranted.

We go on to explain that the Temple was, at its inception, a distributed system. The Temple was built on every continent and communications between the various temple communities were considered of the utmost importance for sharing, developing and preserving knowledge, insight and wisdom.

In The Temple and the Precipice we explore the pathway to social exclusions, distinctions, elitism, separation from non-temple groups and we discover the reasonings that eventually would lead to justification for the experiments to create a class of protectors (the warrior class) that would be fundamentally and culturally isolated from other temple members but controlled by them and would serve their perceived need for protection.

And then, we explore those ancient and long term trends that predict the overthrow of the original temple culture and its ultimate replacement by members trained in the artificially contrived culture of the warrior class... and we demonstrate that it is this culture, the culture of the warrior class, artificially scripted to engender violence, begun early in man's history by those most interested in the preservation of wisdom (the Temple) that has succeeded in dominating all other cultural impulses to the extent that they only survive by its (the warrior class's) acquiescence.

In the Temple and the Precipice, we propose a new historical theory based upon the reason developed over a lifetime searching for the roots of violence in human society. We think this introduction is the first logical historical formulation capable of explaining the birth, emergence, growth and spread of unnatural behaviors and their violence-based societies. In its grand design, we expect this theory to be proven correct.

So we begin now, a history and historical theories that are sensical, are plausible and can help guide us into a reality more like we were designed to experience and share.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* From "The Comparative Anatomy of Eating", by Milton R. Mills, M.D.

Facial Muscles
CARNIVORE: Reduced to allow wide mouth gape
HERBIVORE: Well-developed
OMNIVORE: Reduced
HUMAN: Well-developed

Jaw Type
CARNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HERBIVORE: Expanded angle
OMNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HUMAN: Expanded angle

Jaw Joint Location
CARNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HERBIVORE: Above the plane of the molars
OMNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HUMAN: Above the plane of the molars

Jaw Motion
CARNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
HERBIVORE: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
OMNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side
HUMAN: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back

Major Jaw Muscles
CARNIVORE: Temporalis
HERBIVORE: Masseter and pterygoids
OMNIVORE: Temporalis
HUMAN: Masseter and pterygoids

Mouth Opening vs. Head Size
CARNIVORE: Large
HERBIVORE: Small
OMNIVORE: Large
HUMAN: Small

Teeth: Incisors
CARNIVORE: Short and pointed
HERBIVORE: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
OMNIVORE: Short and pointed
HUMAN: Broad, flattened and spade shaped

Teeth: Canines
CARNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HERBIVORE: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
OMNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HUMAN: Short and blunted

Teeth: Molars
CARNIVORE: Sharp, jagged and blade shaped
HERBIVORE: Flattened with cusps vs complex surface
OMNIVORE: Sharp blades and/or flattened
HUMAN: Flattened with nodular cusps

Chewing
CARNIVORE: None; swallows food whole
HERBIVORE: Extensive chewing necessary
OMNIVORE: Swallows food whole and/or simple crushing
HUMAN: Extensive chewing necessary

Saliva
CARNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HERBIVORE: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
OMNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HUMAN: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes

Stomach Type
CARNIVORE: Simple
HERBIVORE: Simple or multiple chambers
OMNIVORE: Simple
HUMAN: Simple

Stomach Acidity
CARNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HERBIVORE: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
OMNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HUMAN: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach

Stomach Capacity
CARNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HERBIVORE: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
OMNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HUMAN: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract

Length of Small Intestine
CARNIVORE: 3 to 6 times body length
HERBIVORE: 10 to more than 12 times body length
OMNIVORE: 4 to 6 times body length
HUMAN: 10 to 11 times body length

Colon
CARNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HERBIVORE: Long, complex; may be sacculated
OMNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HUMAN: Long, sacculated

Liver
CARNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HERBIVORE: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
OMNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HUMAN: Cannot detoxify vitamin A

Kidney
CARNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HERBIVORE: Moderately concentrated urine
OMNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HUMAN: Moderately concentrated urine

Nails
CARNIVORE: Sharp claws
HERBIVORE: Flattened nails or blunt hooves
OMNIVORE: Sharp claws
HUMAN: Flattened nails

MUNCH1 -- Although a vegetarian and agreeable to much of your comments, your history of man avoids the likely and very possibly true evolutionary expedient that w/o meat eating, all hominids would likely have ended as Neanderthals (whose brains never grew larger while eating just vegies) = extinct.

This history hardly denies the need for ecologically sound practices today, which many would agree means that less meat eaters is better for the planet (overall). Our brains are big enough as they are.

Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »

"...your history of man avoids the likely and very possibly true evolutionary expedient that w/o meat eating, all hominids would likely have ended as Neanderthals (whose brains never grew larger while eating just vegies) = extinct."

I call this statement one of the juicier examples of "more fun with the psuedo sciences where logic and facts are useless".

But ouside the world of the pseudo scientist (where everything can be rescripted to support whatever the pleasure of the corporate world may be), this statement is simply ludicrous.

Very few people ate meat until last century. According to Scientific American, not only did few cultures support eating meat, only those that did evidenced diseases such as cancer.

Even in the corporate/military societies of Europe, few people ate much meat at all except the elite. And, given their insanely disconnected mindsets and violent behaviors, I am not sure I would claim that meat consumption contributed to enlarging anything but ecological blindness, social arrogance and general insensitivity.

So, if meat was necessary to overcoming our 'genetic' predisposition to 'Neanderthalism', were most people two hundred years ago Neanderthals?

This is one of the MOST absurd statements of the pseudo- scientists.

Now, I know we are not supposed to use logic but what the hey...

If I feed a cow, cow, will his brain develop?

If I feed a cat nothing but rice, will its brain develop?

If I feed any creature a food that it is not designed to digest and derive sustenance from, will it be therefore optimized?!

Can anyone think anymore????!!!

Have some pity on those of us who still hope for intelligent company. Thanks.

MUNCH1 -- There is little to discuss, as I hardly qualify as a scientist in the area I mentioned abvoe, but do feel qualified to summarize that the results of homo sapiens vs Neanderthal battle - for brain superiority - was over some 200 thousand yrs more distant in our past than your comment of ~200 years ago.

Extinction of the vegie consuming Neanderthal species (an entirely separate one, BTW) is the current reigning theory, and it's brain size and thereby functioning for survival was thought to be limited in part from a low protein diet.

I guess that indicates I adhere to a scientific basis in evolution, and that I completely repudiate all who believe this occurred since ~6,500 yr ago. Perhaps your idea of Neanderthal is of a more recent time frame?

You do have some nerve accusing me of being a ludicrous pseudo scientist (in the path of corporate masters), for questioning the basis of your ramblings.

Although currently unemployed, I sincerely doubt you would be very successful in selling your ideas, particularly in the rather rabid manner that a discussion goes with you.

I wonder why I even bother to hit the submit button, but you've so to say called me out, for not thinking - and that is not very likely. It is far more likely that I simply have no desire to think about you (again).

I think that human beings by themselves are basically good, but when in a pack all that goes out the window. All of us like to be part of a group, to feel wanted, to belong, and almost any individual, no matter how intrinsically good, can be manipulated by his or her desire to belong to the group.

The above makes it easy for those who are intrinsically greedy, and greed is what war is really all about, to manipulate the intrinsically good into doing things that they would never do were they not conned into it.

One of the easiest ways to get individuals to go along with war is to instill in them a state of depression (or take advantage of one that already exists) before trying to enlist them in a war effort, whether the war is to be against another country or another ideology or whatever. And the best way to instill a state of depression in a large enough group of people is to increase their sense of poverty and hopelessness. So it seems to me that the best way to fight war is to fight poverty, because no one with a sense of hope for the future really wants to risk losing that in war.

So the US war machine keeps on promoting poverty around the world and in the US, causing depression and hopelessness, thereby profiting handsomely from the pain of others.

Poverty is not the root of war. But war-makers, those interested in control, are the root cause of poverty.

Please consider this:

First, the non-sense:

"There are too many people and not enough resources."

Second, making sense of it:

1) Remove indigenous peoples from ancestral lands, resources and lifestyles.

2) Put fences around them so that overcrowding occurs. Deny them access to anything outside the fenced area including food, water & shelter. Bring limited quantities of basic necessities to the fenced area. And then tell them:

a) This is a situation of overcrowding.
b) We do not have sufficient resources.
c) We must create some order (police state) to insure fair rationing.
d) And… a system to reward those most deserving (competition for 'limited resources' with valuations decided by elite self-interests).

There are many proofs that can amply demonstrate that this is the most basic two-step principle of elitist domination as well as how those dominated come to 'understand' their chances for personal 'success.'

______________ Example _____________

The 12 Myths of Hunger

Why so much hunger? What can we do about it?
To answer these questions we must unlearn much of what we have been taught.
Only by freeing ourselves from the grip of widely held myths can we grasp the roots of hunger and see what we can do to end it.

Myth 1
Not Enough Food to Go Around
Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories a day. That doesn't even count many other commonly eaten foods - vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs-enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most "hungry countries" have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.
Myth 2
Nature's to Blame for Famine
Reality: It's too easy to blame nature. Human-made forces are making people increasingly vulnerable to nature's vagaries. Food is always available for those who can afford it—starvation during hard times hits only the poorest. Millions live on the brink of disaster in south Asia, Africa and elsewhere, because they are deprived of land by a powerful few, trapped in the unremitting grip of debt, or miserably paid. Natural events rarely explain deaths; they are simply the final push over the brink. Human institutions and policies determine who eats and who starves during hard times. Likewise, in America many homeless die from the cold every winter, yet ultimate responsibility doesn't lie with the weather. The real culprits are an economy that fails to offer everyone opportunities, and a society that places economic efficiency over compassion.
Myth 3
Too Many People
Reality: Birth rates are falling rapidly worldwide as remaining regions of the Third World begin the demographic transition—when birth rates drop in response to an earlier decline in death rates. Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries, nowhere does population density explain hunger. For every Bangladesh, a densely populated and hungry country, we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia, where abundant food resources coexist with hunger. Costa Rica, with only half of Honduras' cropped acres per person, boasts a life expectancy—one indicator of nutrition —11 years longer than that of Honduras and close to that of developed countries. Rapid population growth is not the root cause of hunger. Like hunger itself, it results from underlying inequities that deprive people, especially poor women, of economic opportunity and security. Rapid population growth and hunger are endemic to societies where land ownership, jobs, education, health care, and old age security are beyond the reach of most people. Those Third World societies with dramatically successful early and rapid reductions of population growth rates-China, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Cuba and the Indian state of Kerala-prove that the lives of the poor, especially poor women, must improve before they can choose to have fewer children.
Myth 4
The Environment vs. More Food?
Reality: We should be alarmed that an environmental crisis is undercutting our food-production resources, but a tradeoff between our environment and the world's need for food is not inevitable. Efforts to feed the hungry are not causing the environmental crisis. Large corporations are mainly responsible for deforestation-creating and profiting from developed-country consumer demand for tropical hardwoods and exotic or out-of-season food items. Most pesticides used in the Third World are applied to export crops, playing little role in feeding the hungry, while in the U.S. they are used to give a blemish-free cosmetic appearance to produce, with no improvement in nutritional value.
Alternatives exist now and many more are possible. The success of organic farmers in the U.S. gives a glimpse of the possibilities. Cuba's recent success in overcoming a food crisis through self-reliance and sustainable, virtually pesticide-free agriculture is another good example. Indeed, environmentally sound agricultural alternatives can be more productive than environmentally destructive ones.
Myth 5
The Green Revolution is the Answer
Reality: The production advances of the Green Revolution are no myth. Thanks to the new seeds, million of tons more grain a year are being harvested. But focusing narrowly on increasing production cannot alleviate hunger because it fails to alter the tightly concentrated distribution of economic power that determines who can buy the additional food. That's why in several of the biggest Green Revolution successes—India, Mexico, and the Philippines—grain production and in some cases, exports, have climbed, while hunger has persisted and the long-term productive capacity of the soil is degraded. Now we must fight the prospect of a 'New Green Revolution' based on biotechnology, which threatens to further accentuate inequality.
Myth 6
We Need Large Farms
Reality: Large landowners who control most of the best land often leave much of it idle. Unjust farming systems leave farmland in the hands of the most inefficient producers. By contrast, small farmers typically achieve at least four to five times greater output per acre, in part because they work their land more intensively and use integrated, and often more sustainable, production systems. Without secure tenure, the many millions of tenant farmers in the Third World have little incentive to invest in land improvements, to rotate crops, or to leave land fallow for the sake of long-term soil fertility. Future food production is undermined. On the other hand, redistribution of land can favor production. Comprehensive land reform has markedly increased production in countries as diverse as Japan, Zimbabwe, and Taiwan. A World Bank study of northeast Brazil estimates that redistributing farmland into smaller holdings would raise output an astonishing 80 percent.
Myth 7
The Free Market Can End Hunger
Reality: Unfortunately, such a "market-is-good, government-is-bad" formula can never help address the causes of hunger. Such a dogmatic stance misleads us that a society can opt for one or the other, when in fact every economy on earth combines the market and government in allocating resources and distributing goods. The market's marvelous efficiencies can only work to eliminate hunger, however, when purchasing power is widely dispersed.
So all those who believe in the usefulness of the market and the necessity of ending hunger must concentrate on promoting not the market, but the consumers! In this task, government has a vital role to play in countering the tendency toward economic concentration, through genuine tax, credit, and land reforms to disperse buying power toward the poor. Recent trends toward privatization and de-regulation are most definitely not the answer.
Myth 8
Free Trade is the Answer
Reality: The trade promotion formula has proven an abject failure at alleviating hunger. In most Third World countries exports have boomed while hunger has continued unabated or actually worsened. While soybean exports boomed in Brazil-to feed Japanese and European livestock-hunger spread from one-third to two-thirds of the population. Where the majority of people have been made too poor to buy the food grown on their own country's soil, those who control productive resources will, not surprisingly, orient their production to more lucrative markets abroad. Export crop production squeezes out basic food production. Pro-trade policies like NAFTA and GATT pit working people in different countries against each other in a 'race to the bottom,' where the basis of competition is who will work for less, without adequate health coverage or minimum environmental standards. Mexico and the U.S. are a case in point: since NAFTA we have had a net loss of 250,000 jobs here, while Mexico has lost 2 million, and hunger is on the rise in both countries.
Myth 9
Too Hungry to Fight for Their Rights
Reality: Bombarded with images of poor people as weak and hungry, we lose sight of the obvious: for those with few resources, mere survival requires tremendous effort. If the poor were truly passive, few of them could even survive. Around the world, from the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, to the farmers' movement in India, wherever people are suffering needlessly, movements for change are underway. People will feed themselves, if allowed to do so. It's not our job to 'set things right' for others. Our responsibility is to remove the obstacles in their paths, obstacles often created by large corporations and U.S. government, World Bank and IMF policies.
Myth 10
More U.S. Aid Will Help the Hungry
Reality: Most U.S. aid works directly against the hungry. Foreign aid can only reinforce, not change, the status quo. Where governments answer only to elites, our aid not only fails to reach hungry people, it shores up the very forces working against them. Our aid is used to impose free trade and free market policies, to promote exports at the expense of food production, and to provide the armaments that repressive governments use to stay in power. Even emergency, or humanitarian aid, which makes up only five percent of the total, often ends up enriching American grain companies while failing to reach the hungry, and it can dangerously undercut local food production in the recipient country. It would be better to use our foreign aid budget for unconditional debt relief, as it is the foreign debt burden that forces most Third World countries to cut back on basic health, education and anti-poverty programs.
Myth 11
We Benefit From Their Poverty
Reality: The biggest threat to the well-being of the vast majority of Americans is not the advancement but the continued deprivation of the hungry. Low wages-both abroad and in inner cities at home-may mean cheaper bananas, shirts, computers and fast food for most Americans, but in other ways we pay heavily for hunger and poverty. Enforced poverty in the Third World jeopardizes U.S. jobs, wages and working conditions as corporations seek cheaper labor abroad. In a global economy, what American workers have achieved in employment, wage levels, and working conditions can be protected only when working people in every country are freed from economic desperation.
Here at home, policies like welfare reform throw more people into the job market than can be absorbed-at below minimum wage levels in the case of 'workfare'-which puts downward pressure on the wages of those on higher rungs of the employment ladder. The growing numbers of 'working poor' are those who have part- or full-time low wage jobs yet cannot afford adequate nutrition or housing for their families. Educating ourselves about the common interests most Americans share with the poor in the Third World and at home allows us to be compassionate without sliding into pity. In working to clear the way for the poor to free themselves from economic oppression, we free ourselves as well.
Myth 12
Curtail Freedom to End Hunger?
Reality: There is no theoretical or practical reason why freedom, taken to mean civil liberties, should be incompatible with ending hunger. Surveying the globe, we see no correlation between hunger and civil liberties. However, one narrow definition of freedom-the right to unlimited accumulation of wealth-producing property and the right to use that property however one sees fit-is in fundamental conflict with ending hunger. By contrast, a definition of freedom more consistent with our nation's dominant founding vision holds that economic security for all is the guarantor of our liberty. Such an understanding of freedom is essential to ending hunger.

12 Myths About Hunger based on World Hunger: 12 Myths, 2nd Edition, by Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins and Peter Rosset, with Luis Esparza (fully revised and updated, Grove/Atlantic and Food First Books, Oct. 1998)
Institute for Food and Development Policy Backgrounder
Summer 1998, Vol.5, No. 3
12 Myths discussion copied from (http://www.foodfirst.org/12myths)
And... The Greatest MYTH of ALL!

Original Food Myth: Humans are omnivore.

The reality is that humans are herbivore. Human herbivores require approximately 1/16 of an acre to acquire their dietary needs. Current western style meatarian diets require over 50 TIMES that amount of land!

http://www.allinharmony.com

" b)" should read: (sorry for the mistake)

b) We do NOT have sufficient resources.

The above essay is called, "Making Sense of Nonsense"