We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be—Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night, 1961.| traditionsofconflict.substack.com
For the Yolngu of Central Australia, illness was often thought to be caused by a harmful object lodged within the body.| traditionsofconflict.substack.com
During the annual Okipa ceremony among the Mandan of the Great Plains of North America, in a display of his devotion to the Great Spirit, a young man would submit himself to tortures few human beings have ever experienced.| traditionsofconflict.substack.com
Should any man, Halimink warned me gravely, confide to a woman or an uninitiated lad anything of what went on in the Hain [men’s lodge], both he and the person to whom he had spoken would be killed—E.| traditionsofconflict.substack.com
There is an event recounted in the book Naven (1936) by Gregory Bateson, on the Iatmul fisher-foragers of New Guinea, that I have not been able to get out of my head since I first read it a few years back.| traditionsofconflict.substack.com
Research over the last few years has demonstrated some important patterns of music use across societies.| traditionsofconflict.substack.com
One of the most important insights about people is that they can form social relationships with almost anything.| traditionsofconflict.substack.com
"The doom reserved for enemies marches on the ones we love most." - Sophocles, Antigone, 441 BC.| traditionsofconflict.substack.com
I’ve been digging into the ethnographic evidence for cannibalism over the last few years.| traditionsofconflict.substack.com