The Nomadic Alternative – Page 265

XI

When a stranger arrives from the Great Unknown, he is automatically a danger to the people. He is an emissary of the Devil himself. In other words, the stranger is presumed ANIMAL and dangerous. He is not human, not one of our species. He deserves and often gets treatment as an animal. In Middle Latin the word for 'stranger' (vargus) also meant 'wolf'. Men might set wolf-hounds on either. Once the stranger identifies or names himself, he becomes human and the laws of hospitality come into play, his life sacrosanct. So when a human stranger enters a foreign territory, the reaction of the defenders is at all points the exact opposite of the robin.

XI

I now return to the myth of the young man's journey to fight the Beast. Human society, I have claimed, is a unit of defence against a non-human menace. But, just as an infant cannot distinguish a stranger from a dangerous animal, it seems that many grown-up men fail to make the same distinction, as and when it suits them.

Why? Again I believe it's a question of mistiming and bad education or brainwashing. Each individual contains a reserve of sophisticated military equipment, electronic and explosive. And, like all such equipment, the owner must test it first, before he can use it in times of sudden emergency. But as Evolution retired its real targets, the Early Warning System of the Brain faced an information gap. Like a modern military machine, the individual feels obliged to use his equipment, or at least practise with it. Deprived of a target, the brain invents one.

The accession of manhood is the obvious time for testing the equipment. We will recall its biological function in a man - to prove to himself and his companions that he is now a fit member of society.

At the third initiation he joins himself on the side of MEN. He makes his choice and his attack on the Beast or Devil is a declaration of war on the forces of Hell - a commitment to life and a defiance