The Nomadic Alternative – Page 33

not vitalize themselves with living unstereotyped metaphor become

withered stems. A substratum of syntax may be common for all lan-

guages, but no grounds exist for the creation of a universal

language, shorn of past associations. A language without past

associations is meaningless gibberish. For the raw materials needed

to build language vary from place to place and have different

associations for different peoples. Hence the Babel of tongues. The

world faces greater dangers from people thinking they speak the same

language than knowing they do not.

It is also an illusion to suppose that language freed man from

biological imperatives and allowed him to do exactly as he pleased.

Language did not suppress instinct; for both are innate and share

an identical aim, the preservation of life. Instead the human brain

filters the commands of instinct and metamorphoses them into ideas.

Each set of instructions or attitudes synchronizes – or should do –

with the biologically timed events of the life-cycle. We do not,

like other animals, face positive commands which, with one tracked

minds, we slavishly obey. At least we have a choice of two antithe-

tical alternatives – the hard and easy ways. The intellect proposes

paradigms of desirable behaviour for the whole of the life cycle

and delineates the consequences of failing to enact them. The latter

surface as ideas of guilt and retribution. The formation of the

intellect was determined by certain selection pressures at the dawn

of humanity. Since that time cultural variations have altered our

circumstances out of all recognition, but our basic ideas have not

changed. The variations do not obliterate the theme.

Any discussion of our social behaviour or ethics, any economic

theory even, which fails to take our primaeval environment into

account, is, to my mind, invalid from the start. Direct evidence

from these most early times is sparse. And comparison of our

behaviour with other beasts is, as I have said, either misleading

or malign. The proper basis for an understanding of man is a study

of hunting man. This, happily, is not a fettering, but a liberating

concept, since the killers of animals are least likely to be killers