Although the hunt figures magically in the life of the tribe, because it's fraught with danger and excitement as berry-picking is not, the women's foraging is regarded as equally important because it provides most of the daily food. Cooperation is vital for all, both in hunting and foraging. Depending as they do on the land for sustenance, such tribes usually have a deep mystical relationship with their environment. They display the sorts of qualities we treasure most in ourselves; hospitality, generosity, affection, honesty, and charity. In fact, these mean so much to us that we call them 'virtues,' and if asked to define the highest hallmarks of being human, we would refer to them, perhaps adding compassion, kindness, and reason.
To the hunter-gatherers, these 'virtues' are not carefully appraised ethics or options, oreven preferences, but instinctive strategies for survival. They make it possible to coexist in a small closed society that would crumble without them. Even though we have evelved from bands of hunter-gatherers, and retain their instincts and traits, those virtues don't help us as much now in the sprawling societies we've invented. But we still cherish them. Living among the Lk, contrary to everything he expected to find, Turnbull was first sadden, then angered and horrified to conclude that love of one's children, parents, and spouse, "far from being basic human qualities" are merely "superficial luxuries we can afford in times of plenty." For the Ik had become truly monstrous. They had lost their ability to love.
Once up on a time, the Ik had been prosperous hunters. But when the Ugandan government forbade them to hunt in the Kidepo National Park, which was part of their homeland, the Ik had no choice but to frantically attempt to forage and farm in the neighbouring mountains, which were parched and lunarlike. The mountains were so fissured and barren that one couldn't walk more than a hundred yards without stumbling into a ravine several hundred feet deep. But there was nowhere else to go. After only three generations of drought and starvation, the Ik became hostile, selfish, mean. They had abandoned love along with other so-called virtues because they could not afford them. It was simple economics. Every waking second - squatting at their toilet, performing sex (a rare act), eating - was spent scanning the horizon for possible meals:
On one occasion I saw two youths on ridge high up on Kalimon masturbating each other. It showed some degree of conviviality, but not much, for there was no affection in their mutuality; each was gazing in a different direction, looking for signs of food.....
Competition for scraps of food was constant, sadistic, conniving, and cruel. The most basic social currency became worthless. People greeted family, tribe members, or strangers alike with the imperative "Give me food" or "Give me tobacco." Schadenfreude became the highest form of humor; the Ik would hurt, deprive, or in some way cause misfortune to others - even their own child - then roll around laughing about it. One of their favorite pastimes was to lie convincingly to or successfully exploit another. Pulling off that con was a rich delight, but even more pleasure came from then telling the victim he or she had been duped and watching the pain it caused...
...People felt no loyalty or emotion toward relatives, even immediate family. If children died, the parents were thought to be lucky. Turnbull tells of the time he saw a new mother set her baby down on the ground and go about her business, only to discover later that a leopard had carried it off. This thrilled everyone, including the mother, because it meant that she didn't have to continue nursing, but it also suggested that an animal was nearby that they might be able to kill more easily, since it was bound to be sleepy and sedated from eating the baby. This indeed turned out to be the case, and they tracked the leopard, killed, and cooked it, "child and all."
Psychophysiologiest Gary Lynch has found that deeply emotional events stimulate the brain cells more than usual. Those neurons then become sensitized to similar events. Whenever the experience is repeated, the neurons become more and more responsive. This happens because with each repetition of the experience and enzyme signals more receptors to become available at the synapse, which in turn allows in more and more information. This would explain why "practice makes perfect," and why one can learn a foreign language, or how to perform dentistry, if one applies oneself long enough. Children learn languages fast and easily when they're very young, while adults find the same task nearly impossible. This is also true of emotional vocabulary and grammar. As Anthony Walsh wisely remarks,
The information communicated to children during the critical early years of life regarding their self-worth and lovableness contributes strongly to their later evaluations of their own worthiness or unworthiness. One study of self-esteem showed that early parental nurturance completely overshadowed all other factors examined in explaining levels of self-esteem among college students. If love is so tremendously important to us throughout the lifespan, it is imperative that the brain's "love trails" be well and truly trodden during these period. Deeply etched love trails in the brain will strongly predispose the infant in later life to respond to the world with caring, compassion, and confidence.
Why is this so important? Because "later communications, even if they are positive, will tend to be relayed along the same negative track as though some mischievous switchman were stationed at a crucial neurological junction ready to derail any train of pleasurable thought or feeling." To love, one needs to have been loved. Unloved children often grow into adults for whom love is a foreign land, and sometimes their fate can be even more calamitous than that.
For us, the drug of closeness is a powerful hypnotic and sedative. we are touchoholics, we are attachment junkies, we are affectopaths.
Tribespeople in New Guinea who had never seen an airplane (or even wheels) before, ran up to a bush plane just after it landed, and asked its pilot two critical questions: What does it eat? Is it male or female?
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