Posted by: antihellenistic
« on: March 27, 2024, 11:39:40 pm »How Western Liberal Mentality which resulting Barbarism, got Formed
Source :
The Uniqueness of Western Civilization Ricardo Duchesne page 371 - 377
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In the realm of culture and history, where all differences are relative rather than absolute, differences of quantity, scale, or intensity may be substantially important. John Keegan, in his general study, A History of Warfare, is quite definitive in his assessment that the pastoral peoples of the steppes, Scythians, Huns, Mongols, were a “new sort of people” in being “warriors for war’s sake, for the loot it brought, the risks, the thrill, the animal satisfactions of triumph.” But Keegan is another historian who remains silent on the Indo-Europeans, and believes that the Scythians were the “first steppe people” (1994: 188– 89, 180). Still, if we agree that the Indo-European were a people of the steppes, the first horseback riders and inventors of chariots, we can make the inference that they were the first peoples from the steppes to engage in warfare for the sake of the joys, the risks, and the prestige it brought.
Yet, at the same time, we should avoid the converse error of delinking the martial temperament of the IE peoples from their pastoral way of life. Keegan is aware of this, and in response to the question “why should…pastoralists…have been more warlike than their hunting ancestors or agricultural neighbors,” he answers that young pastoralists had to “learn to kill, and to select for killing” their domesticated animals. “It was flock management, as much as slaughter and butchery, which made the pastoralists so cold-bloodedly adept at confronting the sedentary agriculturalists” (160–61). This answer, however, is limited. In the first instance, Keegan is viewing warfare for its own sake in downbeat terms, and, in the second, he is abstracting one datum – killing young, nimble animals – from a whole way of life. The Indo-European economic lifestyle included fierce competition for grazing rights for specific areas, constant alertness in the defense of one’s portable wealth, and an expansionist disposition in a world in which competing herdsmen were motivated to seek new pastures as well as tempted to take the movable wealth (cattle) of their neighbors. This life required not just the skills of a butcher but a life span of horsemanship and arms (conflict, raids, violence) which brought to the fore certain mental dispositions including aggressiveness and individualism, in the sense that each individual, in this male-oriented atmosphere, needed to become as much a warrior as a herds-man.
Indo-Europeans were also uniquely ruled by a class of free aristocrats. In very broad terms, I define as “aristocratic” a state in which the ruler, the king, or the commander-in-chief is not an autocrat who treats the upper classes as unequal servants but is a “peer” who exists in a spirit of equality as one more warrior of noble birth. This is not to say that leaders did not enjoy extra powers and advantages, or that leaders were not tempted to act in tyrannical ways. It is to say that in aristocratic cultures, for all the intense rivalries between families and individuals seeking their own renown, there was a strong ethos of aristocratic egalitarianism against despotic rule.
Let me pull together a number of traits I have found in the literature which, in their combination, point to a life of aristocratic equality, vigorous, free, and joyful activity. First, all Indo-European cultures from the “earliest” times in the 5th millennium have seen the presence of warriors who sought to demonstrate their standing and wealth, by dressing in “ostentatious” ways; for example, with long or multiple belts and necklaces of copper beads, copper rings, copper spiral bracelets, gold fittings in their spears and javelins – with variations of styles depending on place and time but all demonstrative of an “individualizing ideology” (Anthony: 160, 237, 251, 259–63).28 Second, the Indo-European warriors “were interred as personalities showing off the equipment of life and their personal position in a final coup de theatre, rather than joining a more anonymous community of ancestors” (Sherratt 2001a: 192). Kurgan burials commemorated the deaths of special males; the stone circles and mounds, and the emphasis on “prestige weapons and insignia,” were intended to isolate and self-aggrandize the achievements of warriors (Anthony: 245).29 Third, they developed a distinctive tradition of feasting and drinking, in which “individual hospitality rather than great communal ceremonies” dominated the occasions. These feasts – backed by a “prestige goods economy” – were “cheerful” events of gift-giving and gift-taking, performance of poetry praising individual deeds, and animal sacrifices (2001b: 253; Anthony: 343, 391). These feats served as a great opportunity for warriors with higher status and wealth, in this world of constant small-scale raids and persistent inter-tribal conflicts, to acquire the greatest number of clients. They were also an opportunity for the less powerful or younger warriors to attach themselves to patrons who offered opportunities for loot and glory. The more followers the patron could recruit, the greater the expectation of success to be gained by all. Fourth, as Gimbutas clearly articulated, and as Anthony (93) has further noted, this was a culture in which “all [the] most important deities lived in the sky.” While Gimbutas described these sky gods in negative terms as the gods of a belligerent people, one may see them as the gods of an energetic, life-affirming people whose gods were personified as celestial heroes and chieftains. The sky-gods of the Indo-Europeans reflected – to use the words of Dawson (2002) – their “intensely masculine and warlike ethics, their mobility.” If the gods of Egypt and Mesopotamia demanded unquestioned submission to their will, passive acceptance; and if the female deities of Old Europe – to borrow the language of Camille Paglia (1991) – represented the “earth’s bowels,” and embodied the “chthonian drama of an endless round, cycle upon cycle,” the sky-gods of Indo-Europeans furnished a vital, action-oriented, and linear picture of the world.30 Finally, I would highlight the purely aristocratic manner by which Indo-Europeans organized themselves into war-bands (koiros, brotherhood). The nature of this association might be better understood if we were to start by describing Indo-European society as different levels of social organization. The lowest level, and the smallest unit of society, consisted of families residing in farmsteads and small hamlets, practicing mixed farming with livestock representing the predominant form of wealth. The next tier consisted of a clan of about five families with a common ancestor. The third level consisted of several clans – or a tribe – sharing the same.31 Those members of the tribe who owned livestock were considered to be free in the eyes of the tribe, with the right to bear arms and participate in the tribal assembly. Although the scale of complexity of Indo-European societies changed considerably with the passage of time, and the Celtic tribal confederations that were in close contact with Caesar’s Rome during the 1st century BC, for example, were characterized by a high concentration of both economic and political power, these confederations were still ruled by a class of free aristocrats. In classic Celtic society, real power within and outside the tribal assembly was wielded by the most powerful members of the nobility, as measured by the size of their clientage and their ability to bestow patronage. Patronage could be extended to members of other tribes as well as to free individuals who were lower in status and were thus tempted to surrender some of their independence in favor of protection and patronage.
Now, in addition to these relations of clientage, Indo-European nobles were grouped into war-bands. These bands were freely constituted associations of men operating independently from tribal or kinship ties. They could be initiated by any powerful individual on the merits of his martial abilities. The relation between the chief and his followers was personal and contractual: the followers would volunteer to be bound to the leader by oaths of loyalty wherein they would promise to assist him while the leader would promise to reward them from successful raids. The sovereignty of each member was thus recognized even though there was a recognized leader, “the first among equals.” These “groups of comrades,” to use Indo-European vocabulary, were singularly dedicated to predatory behavior and to “wolf-like” living by hunting and raiding, and to the performance of superior, even superhuman deeds.32 The members were generally young, unmarried men, thirsting for adventure. The followers were sworn not to survive a war-leader who was slain in battle, just as the leader was expected to show in all circumstances a personal example of courage and warskills.
It is worth adding in this context Heiko Steuer’s observation that the so-called “folk [mass] movements” of Celts, Germans, and Scandinavians (during the 1st millennium AD) were actually initiated by warbands – which could number up to 2000 to 3000 men. These movements, he writes, were “not the migrations of tribes with the whole family… but rather campaigns of warrior bands whose wars only much later led to the occupation of land” (2006: 228). This is the way he describes, for example, the movements of Alamans, Franks and Saxons into the Roman Empire – as raids led by bands, followed by “folk” movements.
However, in contrast to Steuer, who emphasizes the need on the part of warlords to ensure a steady supply of resources for their entourage, I would accentuate the search for prestige and immortality. Young men born into noble families were not only driven by economic needs and the spirit of adventure, but also by a deep-seated psychological need for honor and recognition – a need nurtured not by nature as such but by a cultural setting in which one’s noble status was maintained in and through the risking of one’s life (berserker style) in a battle to the death for pure prestige. This competition for fame amongst war-band members (partially outside the ties of kinship) could not but have had an individualizing effect upon the warriors. Hence, although band members (“friend-companions”, or “partners”33) belonged to a cohesive and loyal group of like-minded individuals, they were not swallowed up anonymously within the group.34
Source :
The Uniqueness of Western Civilization Ricardo Duchesne page 371 - 377