9781422284148

Nice as it might be to do without it, punishment is a necessary evil that has enabled society to realize its “better self.” Like all things human, it is flawed: states, like parents, may make mistakes, and the punishments of one society are often regarded with disapproval—even outright horror—by another. Stone-age Scruples

There was once a golden age: the ear- liest-knownhuman societies appear to have gotten along quite well without any need of laws or punishment at all. “Hunter-gatherer” groups lived nomadically—moving from place to place across vast territories—hunting wild animals for meat and gathering fruit, roots, and other plant foods. Their lives certainly included a re- ligious dimension, with offerings to totemic beasts and ancestral spirits, but the rules of social behavior would have been accepted without question by all members of the group. Studies of surviving communi- ties of this kind, such as the Ama- zon Indians or !Kung Bushmen of southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert, suggest a lifestyle basedon sharing and cooperation. Authority in the tribal group is shared equally according to a system of what anthropologists call “dispersed leadership.” Given their nomadic lifestyle, hunter-gatherers have always traveled extremely light, with few possessions, and consequently little motive for theft or even covetousness . Thrown together as closely as they are by the difficulties of getting by in the wilder- ness, such communities live right on

The life of the Kalahari !Kung has strong religious and ethical dimensions, yet the very simplicity of their circumstances has made unnecessary the need for any explicit code of what we would call law.

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The Wages of Sin