Hello, in this video we are going to talk about the enigma of the sacred cows, first part of the book called cows, pigs, wars and witches by the anthropologist Marvin Harris, published in 1975. this book deals with the causes of apparently irrational and inexplicable lifestyles. although foreign customs sometimes seem strange to us westerners, there is a logic to them, and what prevents us from seeing it is what is known as ethnocentrism, which is the tendency we have to judge other people by our own sociocultural standards as if they were the only rational, natural or true ones. If you subscribe and hit the bell, we will address this issue in a future video. Harris argues that all cultural customs are logical, and have their origin in a practical and material question. to understand them it is necessary to see the system in a global way, dividing and relating the phenomena according to an analytical scheme. let's summarize it in a very generic way. let's imagine a tree, where the roots are the material and energetic base of a society. in it we include technology, the ecological environment and demographic factors. we call this infrastructure. the trunk would correspond to the social organization, such as roles, hierarchy, property or politics. we call this the structure. finally, the leaves and branches would be mental aspects such as beliefs and ways of thinking, taboos, arts or rituals. the latter would be the superstructure. according to Harris, the infrastructure would have explanatory primacy over everything else. to understand this we will focus only on the enigma of the sacred cows in India. Harris wondered what reason there could be for a Hindu farmer, even in bad economic times, to prefer not to eat his cow, especially when there are so many of them roaming around. It seems logical, he said, that such a poor country would solve its nutritional problems if it simply changed its mentality. According to the experts who went there to design development plans, the cows that were not eaten were useless and expensive animals, and the veneration they were held in, together with the prohibition to eat them, was only a cause of misery. Thus, by the standards of Western culture, keeping useless animals was the problem that stood between the Hindu people and improvements in their living conditions. In other words, they thought that the Hindus were acting superstitiously, unconsciously and uneconomically. Indeed, the cow is considered the mother of life, and it is a fact that its protection generates great headaches. It often leads to violent clashes against Muslim minorities, as well as political or simply traffic conflicts. Harris set out to analyze this mystery. The stranger the phenomenon to be explained, he thought, the more demanding the research would be and the stronger the explanation would become. So he began by making a series of observations that put him on the track. firstly, he noted that even if they do not eat them, nothing goes to waste, and that cows play an important role from the point of view of energy efficiency. They are an optimal source of resources for the social and ecological system. When we hear about sacred cows, we imagine that they get the best treatment in the world. In reality, these cows often feed on waste and food that is not fit for humans, and in this sense, they are not in direct competition. On the contrary, they serve to recycle and transform part of the energy that would otherwise be lost. All this in an ecological environment that cannot afford energy excesses. They are also forced as much as possible to produce milk, sometimes using a fake calf to trick them. In addition, the cow's excrement is extremely important, as it can provide fuel, fertilizer, and materials for the housing. And there are people who collect and sell it. In addition, there are lower castes and minorities who are allowed to dispose of cows that have already died to make leather. And these people get to eat their meat. A whole trophic chain that can be traced. But all this is only part of it. There is a much more central issue. Let's go to infrastructure. Harris realized that despite the large number of cows roaming around there were not enough oxen to support 60,000,000 farms in India, since a full-fledged farm would need at least two oxen. Recall that an ox is a bull castrated to serve in agricultural work. In other words, in terms of utility, there was an abundance of cows and a shortage of oxen. And the most important animal for work is the ox. It is very important to point out that we are talking about a climate with long periods of drought and scarcity, to which these animals are perfectly adapted and resistant, and therefore difficult to replace. They must be kept until the rainy season in order to be able to plow the fields. But these rains do not always come, and it is therefore difficult to guarantee their numbers. To have enough cows, therefore, is to have an army to produce oxen for the future. Even so, according to the calculations of first world economists, there are still many more cows than necessary to guarantee the supply of oxen, excrement and milk, since all these advantages could be achieved with fewer cows. So what is the point? Let us now turn to the structure. According to Harris, 43% of the cattle belonged to 62% of the poorest farms, which in turn, because of their small size, had only 5% of the pasture. And in general, these families had only one cow. Eliminating the excess of cows would essentially affect poor families, who would have to migrate massively to the cities, unable to sustain the entire population and increasing social tension. In this sense, the excess of cows is a necessary price to maintain a certain harmony. Now let's get into understanding how beliefs act to make the whole system work. Let's go then to the superstructure. Harris realized something essential: the cow taboo is to protect the animal against short-term survival strategies by discouraging the temptation to eat them or sell them to the slaughterhouse in times of scarcity. Respecting the ban is a long-term strategy, since eating the cow fills the individual's stomach for a few days, with no guarantee that better times will come soon. But respecting cows is the most efficient at the collective and global level and allows the continuity of society as a whole. This requires strict beliefs, which carry this respect to its ultimate consequences. Cows are more useful alive than dead. And to ensure that this remains so, absolute values are required that leave little room for calculation. Behind this explanation lies a well-known hypothesis of anthropology according to which food prohibitions originate when consuming the meat of certain animals becomes too costly. And we are not talking about money, but in terms of energy. So, we can conclude, what Harris is telling us is that those populations that at some point stopped eating cows in times of scarcity, prospered more than those that did not, and therefore the protection of cows is a mechanism resulting from selection and adaptation, triumphing over other strategies. In fact, formerly this prohibition did not exist in Hinduism, but as the human population increased, it became more difficult to survive times of drought, and the populations that promoted agricultural tasks, gave up the consumption of meat and gave cows a protected status, reassigning its place in the ecosystem, they managed to get out of a situation that was becoming very irregular and conflictive. Human beings are like other animals, we live in an ecological environment, and through cultural guidelines we have devised ways to survive in the long term, although at first these guidelines may seem irrational. Whatever people say, environmental limits decide whether a society will endure over time or collapse, and short-term ways of life are doomed to the latter. Now that the human environmental impact is planetary, it is only a matter of time before a catastrophe occurs. For that there are two survival mechanisms. Either reform the value system towards one that rewards energy efficiency and guides innovations towards that, or migrate. Obviously, Marvin Harris' system for explaining human reality does not explain everything that exists and does not serve to account for all cultural names. We will enter to assess this on another occasion. Let's stay with what is important. Anthropology teaches us how prejudices work, and shows us that many times, when we look at others as ignorant, in reality the only ignorant is oneself. Feelings of cultural superiority only make matters worse, because they provide an easy, quick, and self-indulgent alibi that keeps us from asking pertinent questions about ourselves and the viability of our way of life. If you liked this video, subscribe and do not miss the second part, where we will talk about the relationship between pigs and war in a town in New Guinea. For those who want more information, in the description I leave a link to the full text. Also on the screen I leave some videos that are sure to interest you. See you soon.