The Strange War Read online

multiplied tremendously and spread all over the planet: the so-called Nin, Orang or Humans. This species, which originally descends from tree dwellers, does in fact consider itself intelligent, but the currently six billion Nin are incapable of coordinating their actions with each other in any sensible way. Often some of them destroy what others have created. They also take food and clothing away from each other. They do produce things that are supposed to make life easier and more pleasant for them, but in the process of producing these things, they destroy and poison their planet's atmosphere, water, and soil, and in this way they make their life infinitely more difficult. One of the worst afflictions they suffer from is a custom (or should we call it a disease?) that they call wojna, war, krieg or guerra. When a wojna breaks out, large groups of Nin set upon one another and destroy each other. They destroy the dwellings and food supplies of their “enemies,” and they inflict the most terrible torture on one another. Our research team attempted to find out why they do that. In fact the Nin are themselves in complete disagreement on this matter. There are, and that is the strange thing, very many among them who reject this cruel custom and regard it as the worst misfortune that can befall Ninkind. Others to be sure love wojna. They tell stories about it or watch moving pictures about it. The Nin who reject wojna have different views on why it can come to it. Some of them consider it simply an eruption of insanity on the part of a larger group of Nin. Others believe that the Nin bear sort of two different kinds of soul within themselves, one a good one that loves the other Nin, and a bad one that hates the other Nin. Still others believe wojna is not really nice but is unfortunately necessary now and then. It often happens that two groups of Nin start a wojna with each other and each group says, “Well, we don't want this wojna, but regrettably the others are forcing us into it.”

  Our research team tends towards the view that the Nin's basic problem is that they are not capable of harmonizing the actions of large groups with each other. They do not yet seem to have understood at all that they are not separate individuals but are connected to each other and with all other inhabitants of the planet. To make what is meant understandable to the Nin, one could take the example of two Yer inhabitants that are called oxen by some Nin. If two of these oxen are hitched up in front of a means of transportation (referred to as wagons by some Nin) and one ox pulls towards the north but the other ox towards the west, both of them will end up in the northwest, even though neither of them actually wanted to go there. The Nin have yet not understood that they are tied to all the other six billion Nin just like the two oxen in front of the wagon. It's just that their actions are much more complicated than the pulling of a wagon, and the results of the actions of six billion Nin are of course more difficult to calculate than the path of the two oxen. It appears that so far the intelligence of the Nin has not been up to the task.

  What now follows is a report made by our research team on the origin of wojna on the planet Yer. Many, many thousands of planet revolutions ago, when the Nin were still living from hunting and gathering in the forests, they had not yet come to know what wojna is. At that time, the Nin lived together in small groups and roamed through the forests. Such a group consisted of only sixty to eighty Nin, maybe ten to fifteen so-called families.

  Every group had a particular hunting ground that they wandered through during the course of a year, looking for berries and fruit, mushrooms and roots, for snails and frogs, and naturally for game that they could hunt. In one area, let's say in a mountain valley, there lived only very few of these groups, maybe three or four at most. A forest cannot feed a large number of people. These Nin knew nothing of kings or chieftains, of courts of law, police, or prisons, and they also had no laws. Why should they? When someone did something that the others did not approve of, they could sit down together at the fire in the evening and talk about it. When they wanted to hunt gazelles, they followed their best hunter. But when the time came when the honey of the wild bees could be found, they followed the woman who knew the bees best. And when there was a quarrel, they followed the advice of the oldest women and men because they had the most experience. The Nin stuck together and shared everything with each other, since they could not have survived otherwise.

  When a group became too large, it had to split up, and one half had to find a new hunting ground somewhere else. In those cases, it was possible for this group to enter another group's area. And then, yes, then there could be a fight. But such a fight was quickly over. Maybe it was just a big brawl. And as soon as one group ran away, the fight was over.

  These fights were the exception and only happened when one group had to leave its territory. That did not happen very often because the women nursed their babies for four years or more and that kept them from having children during that time. In this way the women unknowingly prevented the group from becoming too large and maybe having to split up. Otherwise there was no reason for a fight. These Nin groups had no wish to make their hunting grounds larger and larger. They would not even be able to take advantage of a bigger hunting ground. There was also no reason to attack the neighboring group and to loot them because there was nothing to loot. The Nin of those days only kept a small stock of supplies. They lived from hand to mouth and gathered and hunted only as much as they could eat in a short amount of time. They lived in this way for hundreds of thousands of planet revolutions.

  About 6,000 planet revolutions ago the climate changed in certain areas where the Nin lived. The differences between the dry and the rainy seasons became greater, and certain plants did not grow any more. And so certain animals that had lived on these plants disappeared. But certain plants, whose seed consisted of hard kernels, were able to thrive especially well in this climate. And the Nin discovered how to lavish care and attention on these plants and that in this way they could harvest much more food in a small area than if they wandered around and took what they could find. These Nin no longer wanted to wander. They set up the first villages and became farmers. But they maintained many of their hunting customs. So just as they used to hunt together, they now worked in the fields together. The land belonged to no one - or to everyone. When there were communal issues to decide the villagers got together and discussed the problem. They did not elect leaders, but when there was a certain activity that had to be organized, to clear a new section of the forest, for example, or to build a new community center, or to go on a hunt, then they asked a man or a woman who knew something about it to take the leadership. That was also the way it used to be. The men still went on the hunt for the increasingly meager game, and a large part of the work in the fields was done by the women. But since the most important food came from the fields, the women often had more say so than the men had.

  Life on a farm had advantages and disadvantages. People had become dependent on grain. When they were still hunters and gatherers, it was no big deal if one kind of plant did not do well one year. There were hundreds of others in the woods. Now when a drought came they had to go hungry. Their food was also more one-sided, not much variety, so that they got bad teeth and their children stayed smaller. And the work was hard and monotonous. Life was not as varied and exciting as before. But there was no going back, if for no other reason than that hunters and gatherers need much more land than farmers do.

  The new thing was that they did not live from hand to mouth anymore. They could produce more than they consumed. They could store food. Then they had something for when times were bad, a safety net for when there might be a drought or a flood. And when their stockpile was big enough they could also invest some of it in the future. That is, when they had stored enough grain, they could, for example, afford to cultivate fewer fields. Some of the people could instead dig an irrigation ditch so that in the year after the next the harvest was even more bountiful and the surplus became even larger. Then they could either make their lives more comfortable or again invest the surplus in something else. If not everyone was needed in the fields, one of them could start specializing in blacksmithi
ng and another in pottery, and so forth and further develop these crafts that in turn made everyone's work easier later on.

  They could just as well permit some of them to specialize in healing, in praying, or in writing songs. It is true that these things did not increase the surplus, but it made life for everyone more pleasant and richer. In this way, progress slowly and leisurely made its entrance. Jewelry was made; pictures were painted; and statues were carved. Songs and stories were composed; clothes became more beautiful and the dances more complicated. It was a peaceful life.

  In other regions the hunters followed the herds of hoofed animals. Gazelles, deer, sheep, and goats grazed on the plains in the winter, in the highlands in the summer. The hunters followed them during their migrations. On the plains they found dates, on the slopes acorns, almonds, and pistachios. In the hills they found apples and pears. Wild grains ripened at different elevations in different seasons. The better the people became at hunting, the more selective they could be about the animals that