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Vengeance is Ours -- Jared Diamond
- dangoldin 18y agoA printable version: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_diamond?printable=true http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_... Still reading otherwise I'd have something else to add.
- mynameishere 18y agoWinds up as a sort-of shaggy dog story. "...and here's how this ties into my family's persecution by the Nazis."
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- icey 18y agoIt's a little weird to include the author's name like that. It's no fault of the submitter, I just thought the story was about Jared (the jewelers) getting revenge for some past wrong.
- Darmani 18y agoI suspect you don't know who Jared Diamond is. He is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse. It is certainly not weird at all to include the author's name if the author is a famous writer.
- cstejerean 18y agoI have to admit that when I first saw the title my first thought was also about the jewelry business. I guess I can blame it on brain washing from TV commercials.
- bluishgreen 18y agoI for one, wouldn't have clicked if I didn't see the authors name on the title.
- icey 18y agoOh, I don't disagree. It's just that in this specific instance it was confusing. My comment was just because I'm sure other people might be confused as well. There's a Jared Diamond like half a mile from my house, so it just popped into my head first.
- cstejerean 18y agoAnyone care to provide a really brief summary of this article?
- dangoldin 18y agoJared Diamond talks about a few tribes in Papua New Guinea and how vengeance is nothing out of the ordinary to them; it's more of a responsibility. He also briefly mentions the role of government in all this and how the tribes seemed to have approved of a government when it was put in place since in reality, they don't want to do any of the killing. At the very end he relates this to the human desire for vengeance and how the tribes may be on to something. I recommend it - he writes well and it's a good read - definitely feels shorter than the 8 pages.
- bdr 18y agoThe tribes of Papua New Guinea are stuck in a local maximum of violent rivalry that precludes the cooperation necessary to form a new state. This is normal: new states were almost always imposed by existing states. Modern justice systems are better overall, but tribal warfare offers people a way to satisfy the primal desire for vengeance, which in our societies can go forever unsatisfied.