Ritual Human Sacrifice: Keeping the 99% in their place?

[Kelvin Mace]

I would argue that eternal warfare, waged by the poor for the profit of the rich, is the new ritual human sacrifice:

Thanks to math, we can calculate the benefits of human sacrifice
Ars Technica

Most of us would agree that human sacrifice is a bad idea. Yet many ancient civilizations (and some more modern ones) engaged in religious rituals that involved sacrificing people. Why do so many societies evolve a system of human sacrifice, despite the obvious moral drawbacks? A group of social scientists has just published a statistical analysis in Nature that reveals how this grisly practice has fairly predictable results, which benefit elites in socially stratified cultures.

The group examined 93 Austronesian cultures in the Pacific Islands, drawing information from the Pulotu Database of Pacific Religions to determine which groups had human sacrifice and when. Previous analysts have suggested that human sacrifice helps to maintain social stratification. In this new study, the researchers wanted to understand the relationship between human sacrifice and social stratification over time.

To do that, they created statistical models using Bayesian methods, testing to see how human sacrifice affected societies that fit into three buckets: egalitarian, moderately stratified, and highly stratified. They write:

Evidence of human sacrifice was observed in 40 of the 93 cultures sampled (43%). Human sacrifice was practiced in 5 of the 20 egalitarian societies (25%), 17 of the 46 moderately stratified societies (37%), and 18 of the 27 highly stratified societies (67%) sampled.

The researchers ran these societies through several different probabilistic models, exploring how the cultures had changed over time and what role (if any) human sacrifice played in those changes.

What they found is probably not too surprising, though it is revealing. Human sacrifice has the effect of maintaining stability in highly stratified cultures, and it can also turn a moderately stratified society into a highly stratified one. Interestingly, egalitarian societies that introduced human sacrifice did not become stratified.

Human sacrifice, in other words, is a useful tool for elites who want to maintain their power in a stratified society. This is especially true in the Austronesian context, where religious and political leaders were often the ones doing the sacrificing, and the sacrificial humans were generally slaves or people with low social standing

[Mudcat]

1. Aha, so now we know why the 1% resists Universal Haelthcare

[Tsiyu]

2. Esoteric discussions on human nature are hilarious

to me.

We each harbor a healer and a murderer inside. Humans make the choice which of the two natures to feed--no matter how complicated their arrangements.

Today?

Lack of access to water, healthcare, living wages.

Endless warfare from all sides.

Pharmco spewing out addictive pills.

People in pain being denied the same pills.

Veterans and young people shut out of assistance and housing.

Treating mental illness and addiction among the working class and poor as if they were crimes.

Inner-city apathy and violence.

Lead in the water.

Gas in the air.

Prisons for someone's profit.

There are many people feeding the murderer inside.


The 1% just make it look like they're doing you a favor while they slowly kill you.

[Kelvin Mace]

5. Well, we have to look out for each other, we're all we got

And that's why the powers that be love to stoke up fear. If makes us suspicious of, and hateful to, each other.

[nichomachus]

3. Let's not forget capital punishment -- the ultimate state ritual killing nt

[Zorra]

4. The "economically disadvantaged" can join the military and get

good healthcare, education, and other benefits and opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach for them when working one of the $10/hr or less jobs that are the only logistically possible sources of employment that is available to them.

In this way, the 1% gets the poor to join the military roulette game, and fight and die in their wars for conquest and profit for them, protect their interests around the world, and ensure the status quo. With luck, a vet survives her or his stint in the military without significant damage to their body and/or psyche, and subsequently has greater opportunity for a more lucrative future. The 1% would greatly prefer to cut, or completely eliminate, veteran's benefits, but reluctantly view them as a necessary, but annoying, expense for protecting their interests.

If it wasn't for good people of conscience constantly struggling to maintain, and increase, veteran's benefits, the 1% would use the Republican party and Third Way to cut these benefits.

Those significantly harmed or killed during their military service, in wars begun solely for the interests of the 1%, are of no consequence to the 1%, except to serve as human sacrifices for 1% profit interests and the maintenance of the status quo. The lifelong suffering and grief of the families, friends, and neighbors of the maimed or killed being mere "collateral damage" to the 1%, just another necessary part of their "Business as Usual" program.

Just say "No" to the wars for profit and human sacrifice initiated by the 1%, whose only goal is to maintain their wealth, power, and place in our extremely stratified nation and world.

[Octafish]

6. Worked for the Schickelgrueber.

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."