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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2303235" data-attributes="member: 4937">Hey, if you want, try to start an argument.  This is exactly what the author says:No, pardon me for be so simplistic and all, but that to me looks exactly like that arthur saying that the practice is in some way acceptible.  I mean, after all, I may not be reading into it what complex idea that the author intended to say, but what he literally says is that the practices are rendered acceptable, natural, and rational if only one adopts a 'ecological perspective' and understands 'population pressure theory'.  I didn't exactly invent the word.  It's right there in the conclusion.  Moreover, he says that these practices seem gruesome, as if somehow it is a failing on the part of the reader to adopt a value neutral stance toward mass human sacrifice, torture, and cannibalism.I just think that is taking intellectual distance from your subject just a wee bit too far.Because it is a much more limited statement, that statement is much easier to defend, but you wanting him to have said that in order to make it easier for you to defend the author doesn't mean that that is what he said.  He says that, but he doesn't merely say that.  Besides which, it is not at all clear to me that twisted rationale and maniacal bloodlust are mutually exclusive.  The argument that the author applies to the Aztecs is not one which the author would apply to an individual.  I seriously doubt anyone here would defend a serial killer by saying that abusing murdering and eating people was a rational, natural, and acceptable response to sexual repression and social alienation bought about by a failure to create meaningful social contact with ones peers.  But those are the author's words and his judgment of a society of serial killers, and the need for appropriate intellectual distance from the object of your study does not validate that sort of judgment.  Societies can go collectively crazy.  We saw that occur all through 20th century.  I seriously doubt that people would defend any of the 20th centuries great massacres as being 'natural', 'rational', and 'acceptable' responces to whatever vague academic theories one might have.  Let's put it into concrete terms.  There are alot of areas of the world today that are suffering from population pressure on a scale beyond what the Aztecs could have possibly imagined, and suffer from widespread malnutrition.  If those societies began murdering and eating 1% of thier population annually, would you say that, "Gruesome as these practices may seem, an ecological perspective and population pressure theory render [those activities] acceptable as a natural and rational response to the material conditions of their existence?"</blockquote>

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