Ever since the beginning of civilization mankind had to struggle for existence. His main enemy was nature and in order to contain it man had to commit violent acts. So, in the early period it was man vs nature, in order to establish man's will on nature as this struggle for dominance gradually shifted its focus, man became man's enemy. So, violence is nothing new in the history of mankind, only its character has changed, method has changed. The prehistoric weapons has been replaced with modern weapons, technology, also a creation of man has given enough ammunition for man to fight his own species. From primitive to modern warfare, from single barrel rifle to ak47, from a sharp edged stone to nuclear warfare, what transformation! But that's only one kind of violence, between nation to nation; between civilization to civilization. The history of violence has other groundings. The more our world has got complicated the more the various facets of violence. War, terrorism, religious violence, gender violence, ecological violence, whatever comes in man's way of progress, (or regress) it causes violence. In fact, German philosopher Jurgen Habermas says that all nations, all societies have violence. But a democratic nation will have lesser dose of it than any other society. One can disagree with his position. One may ask why a large democratic country like India is witnessing so much violence? The problem is globalisation has brought us closer to each other in an unprecedented way. No nation, no region lives in isolation today. So if something goes wrong in one corner of the earth, the ramification is felt in other parts also. In fact, Habermas and Jaques Derrida, the French philosopher agree that its globalisation which has created so much tensions, economic disparities, that it leads to all kinds of violence. The question for us, the artists are not why this happens but how do we respond to such situations where lives of millions of people are at stake? Do the artists have any responsibility in combating, encountering violence?
D id the ancient savages have an ideology The ideology of the savages seems to be expressed in words and initiative actions, rites that symbolic changes in the real world that society wished to bring about But lets not forget that within the limits of savagery progress was very slow simply because the savage confused symbols with results and thought he could control nature with words and rites. This can be termed as magic, but it was not enough to progress. The escape from savagery was an economic and scientific revolution that made savages active partners instead of parasites of nature. It can be safely said that 'Neolithic revolution took place in the grey night of remote prehistory'. The paradox of the transformation of Neolithic economy rested on two issues: one there was a demand of excess/surplus food for the benefit of those people who belonged to the new economic class but who were not directly related to production; secondly, relieving women from a lot of heavy but essential tasks like carrying burdens, making pots etc. Thus depriving the economic foundation of mother right and establishing a patriarchal society. So, it is clear that the men hunted, women collected the seeds of wild grasses ancestral to our wheat and barley. The intention was clear to sow seeds and cultivate for the purpose of actively producing food to meet the needs of a growing population. Gordon Childe said.
This was the first step in the Neolithic revolution, and suffices to distinguish barbarism from savagery.
Gordon Childe What happened in History In this way old kinship organization gave way to a new introduction of strangers/ settlers who formed a new society based on 'residence and function' much like todays ever increasing migrating population but without the substance and security of 'residence. The transfer of labour had another implication: generally women shoulders were the oldest means of transport but when animal motif power came into use the burden of carrying was passed on to some dumb beast, the ass, a native of east Africa, even a wild ass, the Onager was domesticated for the purpose.
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