Vengeance is Ours -- Jared Diamond

I suspect you don't know who Jared Diamond is. He is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse.

It is certainly not weird at all to include the author's name if the author is a famous writer.

The tribes of Papua New Guinea are stuck in a local maximum of violent rivalry that precludes the cooperation necessary to form a new state. This is normal: new states were almost always imposed by existing states. Modern justice systems are better overall, but tribal warfare offers people a way to satisfy the primal desire for vengeance, which in our societies can go forever unsatisfied.

Jared Diamond talks about a few tribes in Papua New Guinea and how vengeance is nothing out of the ordinary to them; it's more of a responsibility.

He also briefly mentions the role of government in all this and how the tribes seemed to have approved of a government when it was put in place since in reality, they don't want to do any of the killing.

At the very end he relates this to the human desire for vengeance and how the tribes may be on to something.

I recommend it - he writes well and it's a good read - definitely feels shorter than the 8 pages.