The Science of Discworld II

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    The problem is that lot up on the hillside, the young men who havebeen expelled from the tribe because they failed the rituals, or went of their own accord (and so failed the test anyway). ‘Couple of my brothers up there with ’em, and Joel’s boy, and of course the four kids that were left when Gertie died. Oh, they’re all right on their own; it’s when they’re in that gang together, all doing their hair in that same funny way to be different, that you lock up the sheep and let the dogs loose. They’ve got these funny words like “honour” and “bravery” and “pillage” and “hero” and “our gang”. When my brothers come down the valley to my farm – by themselves – I give ’em some food. But some gang of young men, I’m not saying it was that lot and I’m not saying it wasn’t, set the Brown’s farm alight, just for the hell of it …’
    In any cowboy film we find the message that barbarism is opposed to tribalism, that honour and tradition are not good bedfellows. And that, having selected himself or herself for imagination and the ability to endure pain for future pleasure, Homo sapiens is now prepared to die for his or her beliefs, for his or her gang, for honour, for hatred, or for love.
    Civilisation, as we know it, seems to combine elements of both ways of human culture, tribal by tradition and barbaric for honour, for pride. Nations are internally tribal, but present a barbarian face to other nations. Our extelligence tells us stories, and we tell our children stories, and the stories guide us about what to be or do in what circumstances. Shakespeare is the ultimate civiliser, in this view. His plays were composed against the barbarian background, in a city where you could see heads on spikes and ritually dismembered bodies; all of them were set on the tribal, traditional base that is most of human life, most of the time. He tells us very persuasively that evil fails in the end, that love conquers, and that laughter – the greatest gift that barbarism brought to tribalism – is one of the sharpest weapons, because it civilises.
    Cohens are the hereditary High Priest lineage of the Jews. Jack was once asked, in Jerusalem, whether he was not proud to be a Cohen, in view of the noble Jewish history that the High Priests had promoted. Jack sees this nobility as based in about six inches of blood in the streets, nearly all of it other people’s, so he is not proud. Instead, tothe extent that any of us is responsible for what their ancestors did, he is ashamed. He loves Small Gods , in much the way he enjoys the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur: it engenders a feeling of repentance, and he can always find plenty to repent. He is sure that this emotion – guilt – is a legacy of the Morgan/Campbell selection of his ancestors through tribal rituals.
    Tribesmen aren’t ‘proud’; for them, everything that isn’t mandatory is forbidden, so what is there to be proud about? You can praise your children for doing things right, or admonish or punish them for doing things wrong, but you can’t take pride in what you – a fully fledged member of the tribe – do. That comes with the territory. However, you can be guilty about not having done the things that you should have done. Having said that, High Priests waging war on dissenters or neighbouring tribes, leading to atrocities like heads on spikes, is straight barbarism.
    The distinction between tribalism and barbarism is illuminated by the story of Dinah in chapter 34 of Genesis. Dinah, an Israelite, was the daughter of Leah and Jacob, and ‘when Schechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her’. Then Schechem fell in love with her, and wanted to make her his wife. But the sons of Jacob felt that maybe Schechem had gone about things in the wrong order: ‘… the men were grieved, and they were very wroth, because he had wrought folly in Israel in lying with Jacob’s daughter, which thing ought not to be done’. So when Hamor, the father of Schechem, asked for approval of the marriage, and for an intermingling of his tribe with the Israelites, the sons of Jacob came up with a cunning plan.
    They told the Hivites that they would agree to the proposal, but only after the Hivites had circumcised themselves, so that they