Story One

'Ktong was certainly an outsider of his tribe although still allowed in because of his youth. He knew it himself, but the other members began to suspect it. In this part of the wild forest, it was known that somehow, there managed to be other tribes in their world, a world of which no one had ever found an end. One could walk for days and days without leaving familiar ground, and days and days after that and still be able to return to tell the story. When one went farther, one usually did not come back. Sometimes, young women would disappear and return not, without leaving the usual traces of bones, cloth, utensils, trinkets as would be in the case of a wild beast attack. Occasionally, in their verbal history, they had encountered a 'foreign' man, a man not of their tribe although, except for speech, almost entirely identical to themselves. These made excellent impalemental sacrifices for the god Xenok, the cruel god that ruled their simple lives with iron hand. As is normal in such circumstances, they would attack immediately, grab him, bind him. There was absolutely no thought of a friendly approach, trying to exchange knowledge, learn things 'new' from him. Very seldom too, one of them would go almost up to the point of no return, and then either disappear, or return with some booty, a strange woman even. (When she was very young or beautiful, the Chief would confiscate her, which might be an incentive for not returning). Existence in the tribe was very simple. That is to say, so long as one existed at all. In the same era, a hundred years before Hiroshima, in a different jungle on the globe, a certain mr. Spencer had asked the rhetorical question: 'what if the majority-rule decides that no one should live beyond 60?'. It was a preposterous question for his fellow Europeans, yet, in 'Ktong's tribe, it had been in practice for immemorable ages. True, their 'politik' might be called a tyranny (of the god), or a dictatorship (of the Chief), but, this was only made possible, and kept in being by common consent, majority-rule, like the later Nazis would demonstrate somewhere else. The elderly, therefore, the unfortunate, like in Nazi-Germany, were impaled as a sacrifice to the god, on orders of the Chief, applauded by the whole tribe, unless ... he disappeared in time (Herodotus). 'Thou shalt not live beyond two score and five'. But the overall daily existence was nevertheless quite simple. One awoke in the morning and automatically went to the god. It was necessary for the well-being of the tribe that immediately after awaking, one went out of the hut, towards the village center, where there was the god, the pole, around which one had to walk in one lefthanded circle, while keeping touch with the pole by the left hand. Even the smallest of kids did it. When one was capable to walk, one could appease the god. (However wounded or ill they were, the tribe members saw to it that they 'could' walk, in order to escape sacrifice). Because of the kids, it was why the pole was evenly polished by the gentle friction of hands, from one foot upwards. Everybody 'knew' (!?!?) that this ritual was necessary, but, simpleminded people as they were, nobody gave it another thought, except ... 'Ktong (87). It was well known of course, that everybody in the tribe was the same, although even in the case of brothers, all members were different. First of all there was the class of 'chosen ones', the almost godlike Chief and his sons, the only ones that were allowed to live into old age and die of natural (!) causes, but there were also natural talents for charcoal making, cooking, fishing (in the meter wide brook that was all the water they knew), in hunting, in weapon-making, nay, in the sub-human class of womanry, there were good weavers, good skinners and good dancers. (As in the days of Homer, the female egg-cell being unknown, it was thought that woman only took part in the reproduction as breeding soil for the male semen, they therefore were not 'really' man, had no inheritance rights, in fact hardly any rights at all). But 'Ktong was more fundamentally different from the other boys of his age, from grown ups even. He 'wondered' about things, he always wanted to know, he pondered over, even a seed from a tree, a pebble, a tree struck by a bolt from Xenok, about sun and moon, in fact he was almost an alien to his fellow youths. Seeing the lack of organization in the daily ritual of rounding the pole, of appeasing the god, he once had deliberately shirked the actual going round (after a trial without touching first). He had merely gone towards it, let himself be distracted by some other boys, and had returned home. And then, guess what happened ... absolutely nothing! Not to him, not to the tribe, (the season was the rich season). No, indeed, it was that very day that he found a beautiful glassy pebble (diamond) in which one could see the shine of the sun, a marvel for the whole tribe, and confiscated by the chief. After this, he had done it again and again, although not with the same happy results of finding something, but certainly with no harm to anybody. His mother came to know. She had noticed it once, had made a remark a-whispering, (one never 'spoke' of these things), but when he objected that all that was stuff and nonsense, she had conspiratorily whispered something like 'these men', worried all the same. 'Ktong now, getting observant in the question of gods and the ritual in particular, had seen that two very, very important members of the tribe, had skipped the ritual totally unknowing. They had come upon each other on their way to the pole, started marvelling about the hunt of yesterday, were joined by others who had returned, forgot all rituals and returned to their daily busines without knowing of the sacrilege committed. Again, nothing happened. It was on the day that 'Ktong just did not feel like it, that his father observed his omission. Raving mad he was, the boy had started to eat without the ritual. With the aid of his club, he had forced to boy to do 'it', although unwillingly and stubborn, blaspheming about the nonsense. On that day too, during a thunderstorm, G'ta was struck near a tree and was horribly burned. He was an important figure too, very pious (88), had three wives whom he loved dearly because he beat them almost every day. This was enough proof for the father to take preventive action for the wrath of Xenok. Indeed, it was some time ago that there had been a sacrifice. The sharpened end of the pole had not been in use for a month if not more. It was thus, that the cleverest thinker of the tribe, was impaled in his youth, his anus spiked on a pole, with every ounce of his small weight being pure agony, that his still beating heart was torn out after an hour of unbearable suffering (89). Common consent, common cause, majority-rule, democrazy defies all decriptions in this, the bestiality (my apologies to the real beasts). So it is, that superstition and majority-rule can give people rights and duties that maim every aspect of human dignity till its very core (90). Rights and duties that kill, that satisfy insane sadism. The inquisition is still rife in all parts of our (1985) world (Lebanon, Pakistan, Punjab, Ireland, etc.). Hands are amputated, people stoned to death, torn apart by explosives while shopping, all that through the theo-sademania, the insanity that has converted the rules of a Xenok, to legal (!!) laws of the state.