Introduction

Saadi, the Persian poet of the 13th century, sang:

The human family is one body with many parts
Creations arising from one unseen essence
Any harm to any part summons an awakening
a dis-ease and a healing response from all parts
You who fail to feel the pain of others cannot be called truly human.

On the Casuarian Coast in the flat mangrove swampland of Indonesian New Guinea, where water and land intermingle with a rhythmic ebb and flow, a tribe of a bout 20,000 people live in harmony with the environment. They call themselves the Asmat, "the people -- the human beings." Everyone else is called Manowe, "the edible ones." They are cannibals.

The Asmat do not organize for total war. Their killing practice is ritualized, limited and controlled. We ignore at our peril the fact that the civilized nations of the world since World War II have spent astronomical fortunes, in excess of ten trillion since the end of the Cold War alone, organizing killing apparatus capable of destroying all life on the planet many times over. Today, conflicts rage in over twenty killing fields driven by religious, ethnic and racial bigotry. In good conscience religions permits these horrors where the vast majority of victims are innocent women and children -- noncombatants.

Coupled with weapons of mass destruction, this modern capacity for organized carnage, if guided by religious bigotry, could easily lead to the unspeakable. This makes us all "edible ones".

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