An excerpt from Stephen Hawking Smoked My Socks - the second edition (being written while I wait for the first edition to be published): A peaceful Sunday morning for me has been disturbed by plaintive forays into the garden with a fully charged paintball gun. My somewhat naive mission was to repel an invading troop of Vervet monkeys as non-lethally as possible. Here’s the thing: The situation in my garden this morning eschewed any sort of political or emotional sophistication. It was raw, primal, lacking any vestige of intellectual consideration. The conflict that rages at SkywalkerHeim is politics reduced to first principles. It is territory, pure and simple. Voting is an expression of political will, and political will, in turn, expresses deep-seated tribal instincts. The inevitable consequence of social organisation - in mammals at leat - is the subconscious stimulation of aggression and even violence between political laagers; there remains always an incontrovertible link to territorial pressure. At the end of it all, when we meditate upon these things over a perfectly brewed cup of tea, comprehending the roots of human social organisation becomes embarrassingly simple when the role of territory clicks into place.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 07:09:50 +0000
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