Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient
Egyptians, with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of
Reeds, project onto the next world the journeys they failed to make in this
one.
As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less aggressive than sedentary ones. There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like
the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a "leveller" on which the "fit" survive
and stragglers fall by the wayside. The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The "dictators" of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty.
The anarchists, as always, are the "gentlemen of the road."
Bruce Chatwin
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