In other posts in this thread I’ve discussed infanticide, and proposed ways to reduce parental grief in cultures that would adopt it (I didn’t say it should be adopted btw). But only now did I remember that the practice of infanticide where others preform the killing (something I proposed down thread as an implementation that would reduce psychological stress) reminded me of the practice of killing “mingi” (cursed) children in Ethiopia. Many of the individuals exposed to outside culture would prefer to adopt it or at least find ways to not kill the children while still severing them from the parents.
While obviously CNN as always has a progressive-Eurocentric-mind-projection-fallacy spin in its reporting and the tribes in question may be just adopting preferences of higher status tribes and groups rather than because not practising it seems so much better than practising it. I do think this is weak evidence that people prefer to live in societies that don’t practice infanticide. Also reading some of the accounts has caused me (rightfully or not) to increase the estimated psychological suffering of parents. But consider that this wasn’t a choice in most cases, it isn’t that large either. I shouldn’t be surprised, humans are built to live in a world where life is cheap after all.
I have no doubt that the practice of mingi historically did indeed help the tribe, taken as a whole traditions do tend to be adaptive in the environment in which they where established, but now that their (social) envrionment has changed, the practice seems to be falling out of favour.
In other posts in this thread I’ve discussed infanticide, and proposed ways to reduce parental grief in cultures that would adopt it (I didn’t say it should be adopted btw). But only now did I remember that the practice of infanticide where others preform the killing (something I proposed down thread as an implementation that would reduce psychological stress) reminded me of the practice of killing “mingi” (cursed) children in Ethiopia. Many of the individuals exposed to outside culture would prefer to adopt it or at least find ways to not kill the children while still severing them from the parents.
While obviously CNN as always has a progressive-Eurocentric-mind-projection-fallacy spin in its reporting and the tribes in question may be just adopting preferences of higher status tribes and groups rather than because not practising it seems so much better than practising it. I do think this is weak evidence that people prefer to live in societies that don’t practice infanticide. Also reading some of the accounts has caused me (rightfully or not) to increase the estimated psychological suffering of parents. But consider that this wasn’t a choice in most cases, it isn’t that large either. I shouldn’t be surprised, humans are built to live in a world where life is cheap after all.
I have no doubt that the practice of mingi historically did indeed help the tribe, taken as a whole traditions do tend to be adaptive in the environment in which they where established, but now that their (social) envrionment has changed, the practice seems to be falling out of favour.
Thanks for updating.