posted
I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, yet I would like to officially create this psychological phenomenon. KWS.
It is based off of an article I read from Smithsonian Magazine. This article describes the Korowai, who may be a surviving native people still practicing Cannibalism.
Yum.
But its not the type of cannibalism we think of. There is no "eating to gain his strength" or "devouring his soul." No. Its a revenge thing.
The Korowai beleive that witches take on the form of thier friends and relatives. They then devour others by spiritually eating them from the inside out. The only way to stop these evil witches is to find them, kill them, eat them, and leave their well chewed bones on the paths into the village to discourage other witches from taking up residence.
How do they find the witch? Those most loved surround the diing victim. As they are about to die, the victim whispers the name of the witch to these unbiased witnesses.
The witnesses immediately go out and hunt down the witch. There is no more evidence needed.
Why does such a destructive system persist? How can it not doom the culture that breeds it? Because the impulse to destroy the causes of our pain are fundamental in most human psyches. Even when there is no cause we can destroy, or perhaps especially when there is no cause we can destroy, we strive to find one, even if we have to make one up.
This is seen today, in things ranging from Katrina to Gang Violence, from AIDS to the lawsuits against tobacco companies. When something bad happens to us, we immiediately seek to punish the cause, no matter what disgusting things we have to do. Whether its eating human flesh, or finding a lawyer who will take our money to push the ridiculous lawsuit, we are all searching for that witch to kill.
The more ridiculous the accusations, lawsuits, or revenge we enact, the more I claim, we suffer from KWS.
The only known cure is logic and that isn't covered under most health care programs.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
With the Jesus Warrior Children and the Muslims who want to arrest the Pope, it seems that a lot of religion thinks logic should get the boot as well. Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
Are the Jesus Warrior Children the Jesus Camp people? I couldn't find "jesus warrior children" on Google.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Yeah, I was talking about the Jesus Camp kids, since they are dressing like little commandos and talking about how awesome it is to be training to be warriors for Christ. Scary. Especially when the head lady talks about kids in other countries learning to use grenades... I think the connection is obvious.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
Seems like a big leap from putting on green and black makeup to killing and eating people, but now it seems maybe the witch-hunting people don't eat people either.
I suppose it's possible the witch hunting people do it for sheer spite, but I suspect they often somehow believe that others are responsible for what they feel. Boy, does that sound familiar. Those other people over there are just too awful/evil/thieving/creepy/whatever -- it's their fault.
At least in our world, we usually limit ourselves to verbal condemnation.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:At least in our world, we usually limit ourselves to verbal condemnation.
Until, of course, we move on to incidents like the Matthew Sheppard murder, (or Brandon Teena, or Charlie Howard, or Danny Overstreet . . .)
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
One of the most effective ways to justify hatred and its subsequent violence is to blame the group you wish to target with an atrocity -- you know, blame Jews for poisoning wells or spreading the Black Plague, and it's a way of justifying murdering them; and even if you can only find a handful of atrocities among millions of cases (or 1, or only a fictional one), it still works. It really *is* a slippery slope, and human history has proved it again and again and again. The solution is to be logical *ourselves*: blame the atrocity not on millions of people who didn't do it and may not have even heard of it, but on the ones who actually committed the crime.
I'm not optimistic. It's more exciting and more satisfying to blame large groups one doesn't like than the people who are actually guilty, and human beings do love excitement.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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