It's a philosophy of "I'll take all I can get for myself..."
Which is the philosophy Tim, and Libertarianism supports wholeheartedly! It's the BASIS of Libertarianism!
It's the philosophy followed by the original people of Easter Island, and why there are no trees there..
en.wikipedia.org
"Jared Diamond has suggested in his Collapse that cannibalism took place on Easter Island after the construction of the Moai contributed to environmental degradation when extreme deforestation destabilized an already precarious ecosystem.[19] According to Barbara A. West, "Sometime before the arrival of Europeans on Easter Island, the Rapanui experienced a tremendous upheaval in their social system brought about by a change in their island's ecology... By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population had dropped to 2,000–3,000 from a high of approximately 15,000 just a century earlier."[20]
As the island became increasingly overpopulated and resources diminished, warriors known as matatoa gained more power and the Ancestor Cult ended, making way for the Bird Man Cult. According to Beverly Haun, "The concept of mana (power) invested in hereditary leaders was recast into the person of the birdman, apparently beginning circa 1540, and coinciding with the final vestiges of the moai period."[21] This cult maintained that, although the ancestors still provided for their descendants, the medium through which the living could contact the dead was no longer statues, but human beings chosen through a competition. The god responsible for creating humans, Makemake, played an important role in this process. Katherine Routledge, who systematically collected the island's traditions in her 1919 expedition,[22] showed that the competitions for Bird Man (Rapanui: tangata manu) started around 1760, after the arrival of the first Europeans, and ended in 1878, with the construction of the first church by Roman Catholic missionaries who formally arrived in 1864. Petroglyphs representing Bird Men on Easter Island are exactly the same as some in Hawaii, indicating that this concept was probably brought by the original settlers: only the competition itself was unique to Easter Island.
European accounts from 1722 and 1770 mention standing statues, but Cook's expedition, which visited the island in 1774, noted that several moai were lying face down, having been toppled in war.
Motu Nui islet, part of the Birdman Cult ceremony
According to Diamond and Heyerdahl's version of the island's history, the huri mo'ai—"statue–toppling"—continued into the 1830s as a part of fierce internal wars. By 1838 the only standing moai were on the slopes of Rano Raraku, in Hoa Hakananai'a in Orongo, and Ariki Paro in Ahu Te Pito Kura. There is little archaeological evidence of pre–European societal collapse. Bone pathology and osteometric data from islanders of that period clearly suggest few fatalities can be attributed directly to violence.[23][citation needed]" |
