Damek.

Human nature is not good or bad. It’s plastic; it’s nature is to stay alive. Violence is rooted in the realities of evolution and population/resource dynamics. However, if we are aware of this and aware of human capabilities and tendencies, we can make choices based on our values to manage them however we like. Different societies have different values that guide their choices, and mythologies and stories that perpetuate their values.

(A side note – Yes, altruism is part of human nature as much as self-interest is. And I do think that, in general, people want to do good, for their self, family, friends and social group. But it’s somewhat useless in the face of other values. Culture guides, culture always guides. If culture says that authority often knows better than you, you lean on authority. You can do terrible things if you’ve been guided to think less of your own opinions, and to think you’re doing what’s best for your social group. If culture values self-interest, competition, force, authority… you can see where this is going, I hope. These values can coexist with latent values of equality and fraternity; what matters is which values are given the most weight in our myths & stories about ourselves and our past.)

At one point, a few groups of people decided they valued liberty, equality and fraternity, and tried to set up rules and institutions to nurture these qualities in their societies. They didn’t do enough, they weren’t aware of enough that needed to be done. But it was a good go. As it is, we say we value these things, and will force them on the rest of the world at gunpoint. And quietly, we really value competition and acquisition, and spectacle rather than substance.

(A side note – I think it’s sad that dominant narratives of power and force latched on to Darwin’s theory of evolution to validate themselves. The correct lessons of evolution are not of progress towards perfection, cream rising to the crop, might makes right, or survival of the fittest (my how we have adopted these violent values in our culture!). The correct lessons are that there is no one right way to be, that diversity brings strength and resilience to life in general and to species. If we valued diversity and the input of others for how they enrich and strengthen our shared society, how differently might we approach decision-making and organizing? One begins to understand even more how the logic of autocratic, totalitarian corporations is insanely inhuman.)

We also need to value diversity with a pluralistic (not merely tolerant) attitude, the creative potential of conflict and non-violent conflict resolution. Creative collaboration and problem-solving. These values are inter-related, and ignored in daily life as much as those other three have become. There will always be conflicts between individual needs and group needs, but how we choose to manage them is up to us.

We also need to value, for lack of a better shorthand, “the people’s history.” Properly formulated, it can remind us of the dark side of human nature, the potentialities of bosses and despots, tycoons and autocratic moralists. It can inform new myths and fairytales to do the same. Awareness of these potentials inform our values and how we prioritize them in the institutions we build and maintain. We should frighten our children in myths, histories and fairytales so they know how to protect themselves and stand on their own. (I’m thinking here, too, Graeber’s ideas of “imaginary counterpower” and the violent cosmologies of egalitarian cultures – the idea of the moral values of a culture not just being embodied in institutions pitted against, for example, the power of lords and kings, but in institutions ensuring such people never come about in the first place. (pp. 22-30, roughly, in his Fragments).

(A side note – I have a feeling that, in the days of lords and kings, people hated them as much as we hate our CEOs and politicians and misleading media and advertising. Yet I also suspect they secretly desired that power for themselves as much as many Americans openly desire to be their own bosses, run their own companies, control the minds of others… the autocratic, totalitarian instinct is similar to the old desire to “be the king.” If tempered with different values of pluralism, fraternity, collaboration, could it be a kinder, autonomous instinct? I think I never want to run a business, I want to create solutions collaboratively.)

What if, as much as Americans have disdain for envy or sloth, we had disdain for greed or vainglory? We can build this culture if we want. It’s hard, though, I’m 32 and I’m still having to familiarize myself with the people’s histories and radical movements and freethinking essayists and artists. There’s a whole lost culture of hidden values to discover and try to keep alive and give more voice.

(A side note – We have a whole culture of insulation and protection, of comprehensive infantilization, also reflected in how femininity is increasingly girlish, and masculinity increasingly boyish, although sometimes critics tilt at shaved windmills, but I digress. An infantilized, protected people cannot grow up to maintain the systems that enabled their infantilization. The route we’re on depends on some adults somewhere to take care of things – and what values do they have? Whose interests do they have in mind? Our culture is perpetually impoverished, and blissfully so.)

What little democracy we have, warts and all, was itself created by people trying to protect themselves from monsters. We need to be more aware of the monsters in our midst, our potential to be monsters, in order to protect against them. What if we maintained awareness of what it meant for some people to collect all the resources, to give orders to others, and were determined to ensure such things never came about? (see Pierre Clastres as well.)

(A side note – We should also value individual autonomy more. Why, instead of placing our children in contact with a variety of people in the community, and the realities of what people do daily as adults to be productive and happy, why do we instead place our children in institutionalized centers of desks all the same, few adults, all the same, and teach them generalized packages of information about history and the wonders of the state and commerce? This also creates a battle in society over what values with which to indoctrinate our children. Do we teach them about unions? Or do we teach them about free markets? If we let the parents and children decide, what would happen? Unschooling is pretty neat.)

Those of us who believe in the values of a different possible world need to start fleshing them out more and creating the myths and histories that will sustain the future. We need to imagine a different society, and start building its culture on our own, and repeating the myths and stories that sustain us to anyone who will listen. It’s impossible to make even minute policy changes in existing government, not just because of problems inherent in the system, but because there’s quite literally a culture war going on, and the competitive, violent values have been winning for decades. The ultra-progressive critique is to point out that they were always the dominant values of those in power to begin with.

(A side note – Conservative anti-intellectualism is, I think, too often mistaken by progressives for anti-learning. Well, it is anti-learning, but it’s wrong for us to devalue the power critique that speaks to people. There are ivory-tower intellectuals telling everyone else who and how they should be. Of course people resent this. The best response is perhaps not to ridicule people who don’t want to learn, but to do our best to champion self-learning and nurture curiosity as much as possible. Another value to put in our future-myths: curiosity.)

…on a feminist website. (Well, sort of, it’s more just etymology with a cultural dimension, but anyway.) I love her run-through of trying to explain “Damn” and “pardon my french” to a non-native speaker. And the concluding paragraphs:

…if there are words and phrases that I use, but haven’t actually thought about — idioms that may be so common that I don’t have a clue about their etymology, but which I find are undeniably rooted in discrimination and oppression when I use the “explain it to a non-native speaker” exercise above (such as the phrase: “I got gypped” — a slur against Romani people that I’m often surprised people don’t know about) — if I continue to use these words and people are offended by them and I say: “Hey, it’s common usage! I didn’t mean it like that” . . .

Well, if I do that, I think that what I’m really saying is:

“I want to use these phrases because they are an easy short-hand for me, and/or they make me sound hep, or edgy, or current — and I want that more than I want to effectively communicate and connect with you.”

Which, when I put it like that, sounds really shitty of me.

Unrelated, this post on “mansplaining” is also good – I’ve definitely been guilty of it.

“…we cannot study languages effectively apart from their cultural context… …linguistics is not so much a part of psychology, as most contemporary linguists believe, as part of anthropology, as Sapir believed (in fact, this could mean that psychology itself is part of anthropology…) Linguistics apart from anthropology and field research is like chemistry apart from chemicals and the laboratory.” — Daniel L. Everett, _Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes_

“…collaborative, culturally-informed aid must replace the age-old top-down kind of aid.”

From this anthro blog post on understanding the people you’re trying to help and helping them in ways that are best for them instead of imposing your own assumptions.

Here is what poor Haitians define as elements of a good society:

1. relative economic parity
2. strong political leaders with a sense of service who “care for” and “stand for” the poor
3. respe (respect)
4. religious pluralism to allow room for ancestral and spiritual beliefs
5. cooperative work
6. access of citizens to basic social services
7. personal and collective security

[...] aid organizations have contested the first two of these: the first is seen as counter-productive to economic progress and the second as counter-productive to democratic principles.

[...] [RE: point 5:] Working in groups is part of rural life. It is accompanied by laughter, songs, jokes, games, and sometimes drinking. Collective play and performance “heat up” labor. Aid agencies often look down on what they perceive as rowdy and undisciplined behavior.

These sound like pretty good principles to me. I’d modify #2 a bit, I don’t think people need strong political leaders, but when such people assert themselves, they should definitely carry a sense of service and humility and be aware of power and consent. And the bit about play & cooperation is just priceless.

I’m increasingly interested in feminism and cultural definitions of masculinity, and how prevailing ideas of masculinity (in American society in particular) serve to impoverish the experience of so many men. I didn’t have any good male role models growing up, and I have been realizing this and thinking about it for the past year or so. But what I’ve realized is that it shouldn’t matter. The whole idea that I’m somehow missing something as a “man” because I didn’t have certain types of role models growing up to teach one or more of the common ways of being male in society – that idea is impoverished. I am who I am and there’s nothing wrong with it at all.

It’s true that, being who I was with mainly female role models, I thus was a bit different from the cultural norm, and my experience was one on the margins. And one can say, “oh if only I’d had male role models, I’d have been different and had a more normal childhood, and fit more easily into standard adult behavior patterns.”

Or one can say, I could have just been accepted for who I was, growing up, and interact with people as a human being as an adult.

What’s most important is not gender attachment, but attaining good human traits, rather than “masculine traits,” from role models. And our culture is broken in the ways it directs young girls to pay more attention to female role models, and young boys to male role models. If anything about me was impoverished in my youth, it was not being enculturated to see female role models as valid models to pay attention to in how to be a good, happy human being.

But I digress. The point is, I’m thinking about these things, and masculinity, and feminism, and contemplating anthropological study, and came across this post on men in the feminist movement.

I find I can relate to it not just as an apprehensive growing supporter of feminist issues, but as a supporter of race issues, colinial/imperialism issues, and pretty much anything I care about. I embody just about all the privileges I can think of that I would prefer to see demolished. Within movements composed of “others,” I am an other.

Which then strikes me as also the peculiar domain of anthropologists, which may be one of the appeals of the discipline for me. Traditionally, anthropologists set out to study some “other,” a group or marginalized set within their society. However, upon entering this “other” group, the anthropologist assumes the role of “other” within that group, relative to it.

I don’t have much else to say about this, it’s just an observation, and a recognition that I may be putting myself in this position more and more – and also that perhaps I seem to have purposely avoided it a lot in my life previously as part of my shyness and introverted personality. Learning to be “other,” manage it, feel ok about it… this is a useful skill for me to practice.