The Nomadic Alternative – Page 162

theory, I maintained earlier that the brain, through its capacity

for language, sublimates instincts onto the plane of symbolic

thought. And whereas a territorial animal instinctively carves out

and defends his home ground with his own physical strength, the

hunters delineate their territorial frontiers with their neighbours

through their exchanges of seemingly worthless but symbolically

meaningful things. The true function of trade is to act as a

mediator, which supplants territorial aggression and defence. Barter

on the one to one basis irons out social and ethnic differences

and dissipates the deprivation complexes which are the essence and

origin of war. Mutual generosity supplants brute force, and when

the opportunity to exhibit this generosity is suppressed, force

has a way of taking over.

In a gift exchange cycle, a thing bearing the stamp of Group A

symbolically invades the territory of Group B. The latter then

makes a counter-attack and returns another thing of equivalent

value to the former. This stalemate cements diplomatic relations

between the two parties in a state of equipoise, and the frontier

between them endures stable, providing the two parties continue

to reaffirm their trading ties.

Many Australian tribes engrave rounded or elliptical stone

plaques called tjuringas with geometric patterns that symbolize the

doings of legendary tribal ancestors. A tjuringa, Levi-Strauss

wrote in his Pensée Sauvage, serves the same function as the State

Archive of a modern nation. Both are concrete embodiments of their

legitimacy or sovereignty. When tribes exchange their tjuringas

with each other, hostilities between the two become impossible. An

Aboriginal said to T.G.H. Strehlow, "... we are living at peace

with our neighbours: we cannot engage in strife or fight with men

who are guarding our tjuringa, and who have entrusted their tjuringa

to our safe keeping."

"Give as you would be given." By giving you will attract more

to give away. Many Utopian thinkers have assumed that the problems

of the world would be solved without "the dreadful device of buying