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Mark wrote: >I'm very wary of single answers. Campbell, in reducing all cultures to the >One Culture, seems to be describing our deepest souls as "man gotta eat, >man gotta fuck." True enough, if one includes women. But not very useful >for understanding the varieties of behaviors and cultures. > Agreed, completely. >So the question becomes, is fear the only factor? And if, ultimately, it is >the generative factor (and I doubt we can posit only one such), does >knowing this explain enough to be adequat for understanding the details of >behavior and perhaps even present a way of changing them? I don't think so. > No, probably not - but the fact remains that taking fear out of human interactions tends to have a remarkably positive effect on behaviour. Only it's a bit difficult if the fear is, say, fear of death... Christopher mentioned mysticism earlier, and surely that's a factor in this question - and mysticism is one of the things that happens when fear, sex and death get into the same crucible (cf Bataille, or St John of the Cross, or St Therese) - which leads us back to the gender question... But I'll shut up now, because anything I say here is going to be inadequate. Just to clarify that I'm far from thinking it's the _only_ thing at play in what's happening worldwide now - but it's there, it's there... Best A Alison Croggon Home page http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/ Masthead http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/