Christina
Hansol
Janis
Martin
Jason
Caren
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
What reflections and connections can you make with this novel?
When I read this book, the concept of the Peace Child puzzled me. How can a culture so incredibly dedicated to evil have a concept that seems to transcend anything I have ever heard before? For those who don’t know, the Peace Child is when a newborn is given to another tribe and for as long as that child is alive, there will be peace between the two tribes. In our day and age, people hardly trust one another for pedestrian things, much less something as precious as a newborn child. This really got me thinking about what trust is based on.
With the Sawi, trusting one another was a gamble. They might actually be trying to make peace or they are executing some dastardly plan. Rejecting peace could start a war but accepting peace has its dangers too because one waness bind later, you could be the tribe’s dinner. It is a textbook case of a catch-22 situation. A peace child, by comparison, seems to be an anomaly. Nobody in their right mind would entrust their child to a stranger, an enemy, no less. The only explanation for this was that peace for these people is so sacred that it can only be obtained through the most valuable thing anyone can give: a human life. Looking at it from that perspective, I started to wonder how our society’s value of trust measured up to the Sawi’s.
In modern society, trust is dictated by convenience. Though we do not lie in order to kill others (at least, not regular people), small scale deceptions are such a big part of everyday life that being able to tell lies from the truth is a common skill. Anyone to trust others is often called gullible. This isn’t any different from the Sawi. Though no lives are at stake, everyone lives their lives in a certain degree of suspicion of others. In fact, I cannot think of times when someone in modern society is guaranteed to tell the truth. This novel made me think: what is our Peace Child?
How did Christianity change this culture?
Christianity changed this culture by turning it from a culture of evil with slight breaks in between into a culture of good inevitably tinged with a slight bit of evil. While there were certain boundaries (such as family members), in the Sawi culture before Don Richardson went to them, murder wasn’t seen as something bad. Deception, polygamy, and cannibalism weren’t seen as bad either. Worse yet is the fact that those things, beyond being seen as not bad, are actually seen as good, commendable things. This indicates something fundamentally wrong with this culture.
The Sawi were one of the very few cultures still isolated from the rest of the world in the 21st century. Not only that but they didn’t even know that there was an outside world; for all they were concerned, the ocean represented the end of the world. This gave this culture a couple more centuries for its people to become more deeply entrenched in their customs untarnished by other countries’ customs. This would have been okay if their culture was not so (to be perfectly frank) barbarically evil. What Christianity did to this culture was that it presented a fresh perspective of life in a correct manner. Whether one is a Christian or not, the fact that the Christian values of love, charity, and community are virtuous cannot be disputed. These Christian values became the new standard of living. Instead of the constant cycle of distrust and betrayal, the Sawi now collaborated with one another as a cohesive community. Ultimately, the Sawi regained their humanity through Christianity.
How different is your modern culture from the Sawi tenants?
The main difference between the Sawi and me is that the Sawi people are still stuck in the hunter-gatherer system while in my society, technology allows us to bypass that. In a hunter-gatherer society, people have to constantly forage in order to survive. They can’t mass produce food or stockpile them effectively enough to focus on anything else. Because of this, every Sawi male becomes a hunter and every Sawi female becomes a gatherer. They live off the bare necessities and their lives are simple, almost one-dimentional. In my society, however, because of farmers mass-producing crops and animals, only a few people have to work to provide food and the rest can focus on other things. Because of this, individuals can pursue their goals and have some leisure time as all the necessities are made available by other members of society. This gives us a huge advantage over the Sawi: we have time to think. We can develop our own code of ethics by pondering over the conventional ideas of the time. Despite the huge number of problems in society (of which there are many) through this way of individuality, everyone is mentally free (at least, those of the middle class or higher).
The Sawi have no such leisure for such deep thought. That time is better spent killing another boar or plotting another elaborate method to kill their enemies. This is the reason why the Sawi have never broken away from their primitive ideologies about vengeance, demons, and spirits. It never crossed their minds to doubt these beliefs because they were relatively well established and they had no time for serious doubts. The main difference between my culture and the Sawi is the amount of time we can invest into developing intangible concepts instead of practical needs.
What concepts in the Sawi culture intrigued you?
Beyond the presence of fighting is how their lifestyles are based around fighting. Children stories and legends all celebrate someone’s elaborate treachery and huge rituals surround the killing of an enemy while they are being cooked right in front of their eyes. Probably the most interesting thing is the waness bind. How could something so sick and twisted both in idea and execution become a part of a society? Many customs and such stem from some practical origin; people do not have the leisure of coming up with crazy ideas and useless practices. However, I cannot possibly imagine some sort of origin for the waness bind idea. Instead of trying to crush these customs as any normal society would do, these people use this loophole for their own nefarious deeds.
Coming back to the idea of modern warfare vs Sawi warfare, we have technology and WMD’s and so war is defined by explosions and number of cities leveled. The Sawi, on the other hand, has no such technology and so has to resort to strategy. Not in guerilla warfare as most tribal people are thought to do but rather in psychological warfare. They would pretend to make friendships before killing their enemies to emphasize just how frightening they are. The elaborate rituals and dinner that follows such a killing serves to rub salt on the wounds of the victim’s loved ones. At least in our society, relatively civil conduct was agreed upon and is expected even during wartime. What intrigues me most about the Sawi is how they are the embodiment of the term bloodlust. What could have possibly happened in the past to make these people who they are?
What does Jesus want us to do with the Sawi?
Jesus’ policy was to always show love and kindness no matter what type of person they were and make sure that they in turn show love and kindness to others. In a culture such as the Sawi’s in which elaborate deception and flair with which they eliminate their enemies is the source of honor and entertainment, Jesus would want us to make them look at the error of their ways and set them straight; adamantly, for sure, but never through violence or coercion.
The Sawi had a firm belief in demons and witchcraft. It is interesting to note how an entire society could be so devoted towards evil. Many tribal societies believed in gods who would protect, help, and govern them but very few believed in demons only. As for witchcraft, though many societies had them or something like them, they are almost always looked down upon in society. In the Sawi culture, however, witchcraft and sorcery is a valued trait and Aham, the village sorceress in the book, is looked upon as an authority. The third and biggest evil in this culture is the whole “fattening with friendship for the slaughter idea”. Even cannibalism can be justified to a degree in that if no other food sources exist or even if they do, it is scarce and dangerous to get them. However, to enjoy trickery and treachery is another story. By human nature, we should be repulsed at least a little bit by evil but the Sawi culture had become twisted to such an extent that this instinct has been crushed out of them.
Jesus would have wanted us to stop these evil deeds from going on and implement humanity back into them. Humans aren’t born without humanity and the only reason why the new generation was following these customs are because of their forefathers. Jesus would want us to break this vicious circle. Don Richardson did this exact thing when he converted the Sawi into Christians, a slightly edited version of Christianity, but Christians nonetheless. The Sawi were known to be the most vicious tribe and had quite a reputation for it with the neighboring tribes. Turning the most violent into the most benevolent would have a profound influence over the entire region.What should Society do for “uncivilized cultures” like the Sawi?
The first thing that the “civilized” society should do is to realize that “uncivilized cultures” such as the Sawi are not uncivilized. Technology-wise, modern society is indeed superior to such societies but the status of “civilized” is not wrought through technological breakthroughs bur rather sociological and political ones. The Sawi culture, although it does not have a central government as does most countries, has the equivalence of a municipal government in the form of the manhouse. Though this is not elaborated on in the book as no problems are mentioned that are directly related to the said government, we can construe that the government is at least not the source of all the conflict which is more than can be said of many other governments in the supposed “civilized” nations.
As for what course of action modern society should take, we should first send “diplomats” to these societies along with provisions, gifts, and most importantly, ideas in the written form. One key mistake that many people made in the past when explorers found foreign land was that ideas and philosophies were told, not taught. To tell someone of a way of thinking is the same thing as telling someone of your way of thinking. To teach is to present the same materials that are presented to everyone and let the people of that society interpret the information for themselves. Any society worth its own salt should be open minded towards new ideas. At the same time, we should also dispel some of their beliefs that they have but only if it concerns concrete subjects such as science or medicine. Especially when you are introducing something new to the society such as electricity, it is best to tell them exactly how it works instead of letting them believing in something completely incorrect which leads to complications later. If we do not correct their flawed ideas, they think that their ways are correct because a foreigner at least did not show disapproval. Ideas are the fundamental basis on which society thrives and so a correct set of ideals and philosophy is the first step in the right direction.
The final step is then to take someone from their society and invite them to our society. A word from a foreigner, no matter how revered, is still nothing but an outsider’s perspective. Hearing from one’s own people is far more effective. This will help solidify the relation between this society and the rest of the world; instead of bringing the world to them, we bring them out to the world. Ultimately, it is the duty of modernized societies to help developing societies catch up and connect with the rest of the world.
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