Saturday, March 21, 2015

All Humanity Marry



Here is an inspiring passage describing some of the surprising things all of humanity share. It is from The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language by John H. McWhorter (2014, pp. 160-1).
Anthropologist Donald Brown's catalog of human universals is invaluable here. It will surprise few that all humans have art or use tools. However, many of the things that have been found in all human groups worldwide are not what one would expect, and make one feel part of a species defined by much more than physiognomy and the infant's instinct to cry. For example, in all groups there is an equivalent to marriage; nowhere do people engage solely in informal sexual arrangements. All humans have a particular fear of snakes. All groups have a kind of music associated with children and child care. There is no human group that does not indulge occasionally in some kind of stimulant or intoxicant. The facial expressions a woman makes when flirting are the same the world over. To consider excretion and sex private acts is not solely a Western "hangup," but is found among all human beings everywhere. Linguistically, some languages say "not good" for bad, "not wide" for narrow, and so on, but none have negative terms as the default for basic concepts like these: no language has "not bad" for good, "not narrow" for wide.
The study cited is Human Universals by Donald E. Brown (1991).

Considering that all of humanity "have a kind of music associated with children and child care" how dare demagogues like Gerald Flurry and Joel Hilliker vilify children as may be seen in the following words. PCG's leaders often express very negative views of Muslims (see here, here and here), even vilifying their children as is seen below.
They woefully ignore several pressing realities: that the Palestinian children of which the president speaks are being raised on virulent Jew hatred... (Joel Hilliker, "Obama in Israel", March 23, 2013.)

Think for a moment about the people within Islamist culture today. They are raising their children—from the time they are little babies—to hate, even to murder. Those young people constantly hear that message of hatred, and they become more evil as they grow older. They say they want to wipe Israel (biblical Judah) off the face of the Earth! (Gerald Flurry, The Former Prophets: How to Become a King, Chapter 2, 2014, p. 30.)
Considering that "in all groups there is an equivalent to marriage; nowhere do people engage solely in informal sexual arrangements" why do Armstrongite demagogues fear monger about sexual relations they disapprove of as though things were getting worse (here is one example courtesy of the late John Ogwyn from LCG) when marriage or its equivalents are so universal and thus will never go away?

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