An interesting read
When nations go willingly into that dark night, what should we conclude about human nature? Unlike extinctions of the past, today's cultures are dying of their own apathy rather than by the swords of their enemies. People of dying cultures kill themselves at a frightful rate, as in the case of Brazil's Guarani Indians, who after their displacement from traditional life have the world's highest suicide rate. I long have argued, for that matter, that the Arab suicide bomber is the spiritual cousin of the despondent aboriginal of the Amazon rain forest (Live and let die, Asia Times Online, April 13, 2002).
In the ancient world of perpetual war, nations perished by violence, and it was assumed that they would have preferred to survive. The modern world, with few exceptions, removes the violent threat to the national existence of small peoples, yet the rate of their extinction by strictly voluntary means is faster than ever before in history.
We find it hard to come to terms with the suicide of an acquaintance; how do we come to terms with the suicide of a nation? In the aftermath of World War I, Sigmund Freud claimed that human beings possessed a death-drive as much as an instinct for self-preservation. If we judged by the numbers alone, we would have to agree with Freud, given that most of the world's cultures, advanced as well as aboriginal, seem likely to annihilate themselves.
An excerpt. More at the link |