Two events in Ukraine and Palestine have come to dominate the year 2023, in the form of invasions of territory by powerful armed forces. Both have contained numerous instances of what can be defined as crimes against humanity. Both these invasive military operations, caused huge losses of life and created scenes of enormous infrastructure destruction. Both of the two armed invading forces, who were employed by the hierarchical mass society elites of Russia and Israel, showed no moral concern for the destruction of combatants and non-combatant men, women and children. To the elites authorising and commanding these territorial invasions and the individuals conducting them, the lives of members of their own species had no intrinsic value and their bodies could be legitimately blasted into hundreds of shredded pieces and left lying around on pavements or amid the rubble of demolished houses and public buildings.

Moreover, these two mind boggling examples of mass crimes against humanity and genocidal levels of human and infrastructure destruction took place within a global context of 55 other 21st century concurrent wars and armed killing sprees. In 2023, significant sections of humanity were again trying to annihilate other sections of humanity – and not for the first time. A previous industrial level of mass destruction (with over six million dead human beings) had also occurred in the two 20th century world wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45. Since no other species of life on earth, throughout the whole of earths billion year evolutionary history, has ever turned – on-mass – to kill and harm others of it’s own species, these recurring events raise the following question. What has happened during the evolution of the human species to account for such a unique phenomena of intra-species self destruction?

Never before, in the billion years of evolutionary life on planet earth has there been so much self-inflicted species death and destruction as there has been in the last 109 years. Although enough evidence has been uncovered to establish the fact that life on earth has previously faced many devastations and even mass extinctions these occurrences have always been caused by external or internal planetary events. No evidence exists that any species of life on earth, throughout their millions of years of evolutionary existence, has found it necessary to kill members of it’s own species in large numbers or on a constantly recurring basis. Even those carnivorous animals whose evolutionary trajectory has produced specific means of killing prey, such as poisons, fangs, talons, killer jaws and massive strength, have only ever killed in single digit numbers either in defence or to obtain a source of nutrition.

Previously, life on earth everywhere, has simply attempted to survive. Life, in all its millions of species forms, has sought and obtained Nutrition (N) and reproduced itself by internal Metabolic means (M) and then Reproduced (R) a further generation of the species. Furthermore, all surviving species have previously found sufficient nutrition and shelter to survive over countless generations – without mass destroying it’s own species or any other. So when and why did humanity start to be so self-destructive? Fortunately, in attempting to understand what has gone uniquely wrong with the human species, there is an abundance of evidence that points in a certain direction. The first is the observation that the recurring type of mass human-on-human deadly violence – displayed during organised warfare – only began comparatively recently in the evolutionary history of the human species. Mass armies assembled facing each other with the human combatants intent on killing each other, presupposes mass societies with a previously socialised cultural disposition to fight to the death and also kill non combattants.

Interestingly, such societies only began to exist approximately six or seven thousand years ago and only in certain regions. Outside of those certain regions, human life more or less replicated the life of all animals of the mammalian type. Surveying the available evidence from early European history and the general pre-history of life on earth suggests that during the period of transition from nomadic human bands to settled hierarchical mass human societies, that the something ‘unique’ occurred to those sections of the human species who became permanently sedentary. The human species, which then began to be regularly at war with itself over land and resouces, became unique among all species of life on earth. Of course correlation does not necessarily equal causation. However, by examining the hiearchical mass society form, we shall see that the clue to understanding the source of the recurring savage conflicts between modern human hierachical mass societies, lies in the unique social adjustments made during that historic transition, from a nomadic existence to a settled one.

Clearly, this change in social living reveals that the main purpose continued to be to secure sufficient food, water and shelter, but now for permanently larger numbers of people. The form the change mostly took was settled, organised farming communities, with divisions of labour created in order to produce the necessary nutritional and other essentials for the survival and reproduction of new members of the society. Securing enough nourishment to survive was not unique to humans, because every living thing, from the smallest single cell bacteria to the largest multi-cellular animal on land or in sea, has had to secure and pass through the following six stages or phases of existence. Obtaining Nutrition, (N) which must then be internally Metabolised (M) which then produces the bio-chemical substances to enable Growth (G), and then when sufficient, also allows for Reproduction (R). This cycle of ‘living’ then leading to Ageing (A) and eventually Death (D). Therefore, the phases of life on earth – in all its multifarious forms and modes of production – can be symbolically represented by the expression (N-M-G-R + A -D).

All sources of Nutrition, (N) for all living things are ultimately derived from the creation of organic and inorganic material via photosynthesis by land and water based plants or chemosynthesis by deep sea plants. This synthesis of inorganic and organic material occurs due to the evolution of specialised plant cells harnessing the energy of the sun or from hot thermal vents, via similar specialised cells and these render the material Metabolisable (M) for other living things to utilise as Nutrition (N) whose cells then also further Metabolise it (M) for their Growth (G) and for Reproduction (R). Therefore, fertile, microorganism rich soil-topped land and sediment bottomed sea, which are the mediums which support all the basic and essential plant-based food chains of all life on earth, are crucial to all forms of life on earth, and not just to humans. Land, sea, fresh water and clean air produced by the photo-synthetic plants are therefore absolute essentials for the survival of all forms of life on earth.

Furthermore, for multiple millions of years, land, sea, fresh air and water were freely available to all forms of life on earth as they associated and evolved. If enough organisms could reach or locate themselves in the path of, the inorganic and organic material they needed to survive, then they did and obviously most of them did. This was also true for humanity, when it evolved from within the mammal species hundreds of thousands of years ago up until the advent of hierarchical mass societies some five or six thousand years ago. We can say this with a great deal of certainty, because for most of the planet’s humans these were still freely nomadic on every continent and sizable island on the planet, until the onset of the 17th and 18th century colonial era. Freely moving about here and there, gathering and hunting, is how humans and animals (and insects) eventually populated the entire globe from whichever geographical location they started.

Therefore, it is obvious that there is a crucial difference between access to the land and water based sources of nourishment (N), before the existence hierarchical social structures, and those after their full development. Nomadic peoples just move on when local resources become insufficient. Settled people don’t intend to move. The latter invariably grow their own plant based nourishment or raise, coral (or herd) their meat based nourishment. In such cases of transition the relationship between humans, land, sea and food changes. Not in its main content, for land and sea still produce the food, but in the form the land and sea is used. Settled land is cultivated and its production collected and humanly distributed. It is at this settlement stage in the social evolution of humanity that the quantitative change in human community living produced a first level, of qualitative transformation.

This transformation effected all life within a definite radius of settled mass society living. From that moment on, permanent and exclusive control of land, water and resources became necessary for settled communities, where it was not so for nomadic peoples. Permanent control of land, water and other resources of course can be exercised collectively in egalitarian societies and undoubtedly this was the case in certain places. However, permanent control can also be exercised by an elite in hierarchical societies, and this was the form of social control that began to intentionally dominate all such societies. Nevertheless, whatever, form this permanent control took, a new social dynamic had been set in place. This is because any settled community which grew in numbers of members, would eventually need to extend its exclusive control over more land, water and resouces.

An egalitarian community would invariably decide this democratically, whilst a hiearchical society (with an elite ruling class) the decisions would be made undemocratically. However, as soon as the means of nourishment (or the means of obtaining it) were not controlled by the community, but controlled exclusively by some elite individual or elite class, then a second level, qualitative transformation had taken place. Within hierarchical mass societies, obtaining Nourishment (N) was no longer a direct human relationship between individual or collective humans and nature, but via an indirect relationship with the elite. Henceforth, most people began to obtain nutrition (N) by courtesy of, or permission of, the elite – who were predominantly men. Thus, within hierarchical societies, obtaining food, water, shelter and safety meant ‘working for the man’ in one capacity or another. This then became the new socio-economic norm. This new norm also meant that the ellite effectively determined much of the social life within these new settled forms of mass social living.

From then on, where people worked, when they worked, how hard they worked and how the product of that work was distributed was not determined individually or collectively but by decisions of the elite. The introduction of the personal slavery of women to patriarchal men and the absolute economic slavery of captives of both genders in the ancient near and middle east, introduced further socio-economic divisions and inequalities within settled human societies of this kind. This influence and control exercised by the hierarchical elite in the developing economic sphere producing Nourishment (N) was extended to social sphere and where people lived, how they lived, who they could marry and associate with became subject to elite influence or even direct elite control. Decisions on when and how territory was used or extended – as the hierarchical mass society grew – were taken by the elite but the decisions how (colonies or annexations) were imposed upon all the members of each society, whether these decisions were welcomed by everyone or not. The following quotation provides a snap shot example, of such developments, preserved in the Jewish religious literature of that ancient period.

Numbers chapter 31 informs us that God and Moses instruct the tribe of Israel to go to war with the Midianites to obtain some or all of their land and resources. The narrative records that they did this and slayed all the men and took the women captives. However when the victorious troops returned to Moses;

“Moses was wroth with the officers of the army, the commanders of the thousands and…said to them. Why have you let all the women live? ….Now therefore kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him…But all the female children who have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourself. ” (Numbers 31 verses 14 to 18.)

Note that the elite religious leader (Moses) of this ancient tribal, but semi-settled herding community was already comfortable with not only killing every male, of another human community, but also every male child and every female little one who had already been introduced (!) to adult sexual activity. Whilst all religious scriptures are a mixture of half remembered factual based oral traditions and multiple mystical fictions, they often do provide a glimpse of fragments of historical reality. Indeed, there are literally dozens of such preserved glimpses, in the Judaic Torah and Tanakh. For example there are 20 other references to gaining land, killing and securing captives in Genesis alone. In Exodus, there are 13 references to death and killing and 15 concerning captives. In Leviticus 7 instances of killing and 4 on obtaining land by conquest.

Numbers has 10 references to killing and 7 to conquests of land and captives. This amounts to 70 such references in the first fourteen books of this book of supposedly sacred revelations. In the case of this Jewish Torah based scripture (accepted by Christianity as the Old Testament) these types of genocidal actions were not necessarily all invented camp fire related, tall-tale, myths. It is possible to reach that conclusion because non-scriptural literature of the period also confirms the general genocidal nature of ancient hierarchical mass societies. Thus in a sense confirming that wholesale slaughter of innocents is in the DNA of all hierarchical mass society elites, Herodotus writes in his histories, with regard to Greek colonisers;

“…. those of them who set forth to their settlements from the City Hall of Athens and who esteem themselves the most noble by descent of the Ionians, these I say, brought no women with them to their settlement, but took Carina women, whose parents they slew..” “Now when the king (of the Scythians) puts anyone to death, he does not leave alive their sons either, but puts to death all the males..” (Herodotus, Histories book 1 section 146 and Book 4 section 69.)

Hierarchical mass societies were being aggressively created and/or extended practically everywhere in the near and middle east during that ancient period. Another celebrated middle eastern ruler, Ashurnacirpal, (approx 860 BCE) even openly and publicly boasted on a Stele of his brutality in the subjugation of those who had rebelled against him after having been previously conquered. Thus it reads;

“I drew near to the city of Tela. The city was very strong; three walls surrounded it. The inhabitants trusted to their strong walls and numerous soldiers; they did not come down or embrace my feet. With battle and slaughter I assaulted and took the city. Three thousand warriors I slew in battle. Their booty and possessions, cattle, sheep, I carried away; many captives I burned with fire. Many of their soldiers I took alive; of some I cut off their hands and limbs; of others the noses, ears and arms; of many soldiers I put out the eyes. I reared a column of the living and a column of heads. I hung up on high their heads on trees in the vicinity of their city. Their boys and girls I burned up in the flame. I devastated the city, dug it up, in fire burned it; I annihilated it. (Standard Inc. , col. I. 113 – 118./ quoted in ‘A History of Babylonian and Assyrians’. By George Stephen Goodspeed. Section 168.)

So in essence what has been done to parts of Ukraine by Russia and by Israel to Gaza and the West Bank was being done with different weapons in ancient history, prior to and apparently during the later Roman Empire period. For example, the Roman legions managed to break into one city and the author, Appien informs his readers that;

“Sulla ordered an indiscriminate massacre, not sparing women or children. He was angry that they had so suddenly joined the barbarians without cause, and had displayed such violent animosity to himself.” (‘The Foreign Wars’; the ‘The Mithridatic Wars’. Appien. Chapter 6.)

Again, there are just too many such examples in the secular literature of ancient Persia, Greece, Egypt and Rome to conclude that the above instances were isolated cases of displaying utter contempt and disregard for people already living in the space that another hierarchical mass society elite was intent on annexing. Modern hierarchical elites everywhere would like people to believe that elite conduct then and in modern times, does not behave in anything but a ‘civilised’ way. However, what is described above is the civilised way of hierarchical mass societies. The weight of historical and contemporary evidence is just too overwhelming once it is studied to conclude otherwise. Elites everywhere rely absolutely on the mass of people being in almost complete ignorance of that history or they rely upon the fact that most people prefer to ignore it until it impinges directly on their own lives.

Another point I should make in this article is with regard to the current confusion being circulated by the mass media. It arises because of the media’s inability to distinguish between ordinary people and the elites dominating their lives. They constantly refer to the country as a whole as being responsible for the actions and policies of its elites. The recent references to Britain, France and the USA as supporting the genocide perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians, when recent huge demonstrations in support of Palestinian rights by the ordinary people of England, France and the US, indicates otherwise.

Reality indicates that the people and the elite are not always of the same mind and are increasingly of different opinions and desires. The failure by the popular media to recognise that the barbaric genocidal actions perpetrated by the IDF are being authorised by just three people in the Israeli war cabinet, and implemented by a system relying on strict obedience to authority, fails to distinguish fact from fiction. Although many Jewish people may be gullible enough to agree with the decisions of those three personifications of the banality of evil in the Israeli war cabinet, this gullibility and fascistic mentality does not apply to all Jews.

A similar situation has recently occurred with regard to a summit of 57 Arab and Islamic state elites, who have condemned Israel’s crimes against humanity and the West’s support for them. Yet many of the Arab and Islamic elite voting that way are themselves consistently guilty of crimes against humanity against their own and other citizens. Some of them exceptionally so. Some of the 57 at that summit have had their critics bodies chopped up and their parts disposed of, or had them publicly decapitated, others have had civilian populations barrel bombed and committed numerous horrendous crimes against their own populations.

One academic on TV recently expressed his surprise and confusion at this exhibition of pan-calling-the-kettle for not being clean enough. The confusion is not confusing when it is remembered that the elites currently in control of hierarchical mass societies, whether they are, Arab, American, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu or Christian, represent only their own particular vested interests and these are frequently radically different than their citizens who they actively exploit and oppress. The vast majority of the ordinary global citizens who are willing and able to, have demonstrated against the indiscriminate bombing and shelling of Gaza and the West Bank, whilst their elites are only trying to pacify their angry citizens by hypocritically saying they are against such violence.

The real give away, is that the 57 Arab and Islamic elites have done nothing practical. Whilst their ordinary citizens have marched considerable distances and braved police violence, these elites have flown here and there in luxury, sat, eat and drank whilst producing little more than hot air and rhetoric. The same goes for the Christian elites, who in full knowledge of the inhumanity perpetrated by the highly armed and amply supplied Israeli military forces upon the ordinary, underfed and under supplied men, women, children, doctors, teachers and reporters in Gaza, cannot bring themselves to condemn it. Instead, they parrot the Israeli elite and try to ‘blame the victims’ of Israeli violence by the tired old patriarchal, and discredited tactic of insinuating that ordinary Palestinians have brought the violence on themselves.

That same type of patriarchal meme was used in the west by some male rapists and wife beaters, during the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, who tried to suggest that young women wearing short skirts ‘were asking for it’ or in the second example, that their wives ‘drove them to it’. It has long been known that when their violent deeds are exposed, bullies, military or not have a tendency to try to avoid guilt and condemnation by blaming their victims. In the past, military cases of crimes of inhumanity have been countered with; “I was only following orders!”; whilst in past civilian cases of crimes of inhumanity have often been met with the perpetrator exclaiming, “Look what you made me do!”! It is to be hoped, that if modern elites try this blaming the victim tactic, in any future war crimes trials as a result of the events in 2023, that the overwhelming response of ordinary people will be a resounding No!

Many extremely pertinent observations of totalitarian propaganda and fact distortion were made by the Jewish intellectual Hannah Arendt in her study of totalitarianism. Two of them are worth quoting in concluding this article. The first was that;

“….the Nazis have proved that one can lead a whole people into war with the slogan ‘or else we shall go down.”. (‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ . Hannah Arendt. Chapter 11)

The second that;

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely upon the power of man who can fabricate it.” (ibid)

Modern examples of these two symptoms are not hard to locate.

Finally: Crimes against humanity are not inevitable or natural; they are simply the product of an unnatural system of hierarchical mass society living created when elite humanity thought what it was doing was best for them and not overly problematic for everything else. That was long before humanity had the knowledge and wisdom to understand how amazing and inter-dependent the evolution of life on earth had become. Elite humanity now has the knowledge of how life on earth functions inter-dependently and without hierarchy, but as usual puts it’s own self-interest first and avoids  popularising  this understanding. The collective wisdom to dispense with the hierarchical form will have to come from elsewhere.

Roy Ratcliffe (November 2023)