The Socialist Dream Crumbles in Venezuela

[The Dharma Bum]

You seem to have an idea that indigenous societies are/were simply a more simplistic analog of our own society but the reality is that it is in entirely different and equally complex social structure.

Many Mesoamerican cultures were egalitarian as well, a tradition that lives on today in the Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities.

Trying to characterize indigenous people as "cannibals" or "savages" is merely a failure to understand the profound nature of these cultural difference. Ritual cannibalism or human sacrifice are not analogous to oppressive structures in modern industrial society.

[The Comrade]

how do i even respond to something like this, dharma? it's so far removed from what i actually said it might as well not even be directed at me.

[Spider]

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

[Spider]

...I must have missed that. Probably posted by someone I've got on ignore. My mistake.

Its not even close the first time I'd seen you throw down with the "cannibals and savages" line, so I leapt to a conclusion.

[The Comrade]

[The Dharma Bum]

Don't get me wrong, Comrade, I'm not disputing that this part of their culture existed. They did occasionally practice ritual cannibalism and their mythology provides a basis for it. It's just not a defining characteristic of their system of social organization, as their dropping of the practice for political expediency shows.

In other words they were eating parts of slain enemies because they believed in sympathetic magic or to intimidate enemies. Kind of like how a guy on a battlefield today might drink blood, or perhaps eat the heart of an enemy. This is referred to as exocannibalism. You wouldn't say Syrians are cannibals, for example, even though an act of exocannibalism apparently occurred there recently. Another local form of cannibalism was endocannibalism, which is the ritual eating of body parts of dead relatives or respected members of the community.

Definitely not something that would fly in our society lol

I just don't like to see these interesting peoples being dismissed as primitive savages and think there is a lot to be learned by studying them

[The Comrade]

and i never said it was a defining characteristic of their social organization, nor that they were primitive savages, nor was i dismissing them. that's three wild assumptions.

[The Dharma Bum]

OK I will concede that.

However not to get distracted from the point...

I can think of at least one form of coercion that has occurred throughout human history and isn't likely to be eradicated anytime soon, yet is forbidden in our culture and many others.

If this can be true of sexual coercion why can't it be true of other forms of coercion, such as political coercion or economic coercion?

If someone said they thought rape was inherent to human behavior and is inevitable, therefore should be socially acceptable would that be a valid argument? If not , why not?