Thread: Industrial society destroys mind and envirionment...take 2

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

So taking a method of raising children out of its context and applying it to a totally different culture seems like a sound idea to you?

No. Accepting it as part of our heritage, figuring what role it played, and allowing something to play the same role in our culture does sound like a good idea to me.

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

We already have instances of young boys being forced to behave like men, being terrorised into thinking that if they don't behave in a certain way they will be made to learn.

examples?

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

The saviour of manhood in our societies' depends upon men understanding things such as physical strength and lack of emotion do not equate to manhood. Not even more force and terror. It may work for some hunter-gatherer societies, and good for them, but it won't work for more "advanced"/"developed" societies.

On the contrary "primitive" cultures developed myth cycles that display a rich understanding of emotional life. Joseph Cambell spent a good part of his career studying them.

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

Plus, are you purposefully neglecting the violence inherent in many hunter-gatherer societies? Many of them are incredibly peaceful, but there have also been hunter-gatherers who have been incredibly violent, and that violence has been intrinsically linked to manhood for them.

I suppose I was, It seems irrelevent to me given that the most savage of hunter-gatherer cultures have not participated in the kind of barbaric warfare that modern cultures do. Granted, it's a matter of technology available but violence is pretty useless for claiming that modern culture is more enlightened then ancient ones. Perhaps violence has been intrinsically linked to manhood for them because that's the way it is. In modern cultures, what gender goes to war more often then not? I see no difference other then that wars that rich countries fight tend to be small enough in size in relation to the population so that not all 'able-bodied men' are called upon to serve. The attitude in the united states during world war two was that any man that wasn't in uniform was a 'pussy'. Again, no difference.

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

I don't know if that's what you're suggesting, I'm getting mixed messages from your posts, but if it is it's misrepresentative.

I'm not trying to send mixed messages. It's a big, confusing and interesting topic that can support a variety of viewpoints.

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

I disagree entirely.

So you think that a component of manhood is having a weakly regulated and poorly directed fight/flight response? That sounds like an adolescent to me.

Originally Posted by Licity

That still didn't answer my question. What exactly do you mean when you say "being a man"?

It's a difficult question to answer and I did drop a key component of it. It begins with being an adult, that is, taking responsibility for your actions and choices. I do believe that most of the features that go beyond that are related to violence. I'm sure that that is 'politically incorrect' but as I mentioned above, it seems to be true. I hope you push me on this point. It should be a good and illuminating argument.

Originally Posted by Licity

Unfortunately, that's just misinformation on the part of the people unwilling. Natural does not always equal better. We just need to devise better tests for new modifications so we don't have a major disaster.

A genetically modified plant wouldn't be any less natural then a birds nest: an animal made both of them. In saying that we need to devise better tests, you admit that there is danger. The great thing about the banana is that it is sterile so that you wouldn't have cross pollination: any disaster would be limited. I say go for it in that case and follow with the rest when we have the better tests and more complete information. EDIT: Genetic engineering to restore the fatty acid ratio in our diets is a great idea, btw.

Originally Posted by Licity

I meant intelligence as in, accumulated knowledge. We still know the majority of plant, animal, tool, fire, etc. methods and have much, much more research at our disposal (medical biology, electricity, powered flight, etc.)

I was referring to individual knowledge, not accumulated cultural knowledge. I would be a fool to deny that. Most people in the states couldn't tell the difference between a maple tree and a sycamore tree, an abelian group or non-abelian group or tell you that an electron has a negative charge.

Even

Originally Posted by Licity

when discussing the sort of intelligence you were referring to, which seems closer to awareness than anything else, I contend that modern humans are more intelligent. Schooling, teaches a lot more than simply being handed a spear and told to kill something edible.

Most of what is learned in school is forgotten the minute the test is over. Furthermore, as I addressed above, in answering Ardent Lost, hunter-gatherer culture is much richer then "hunt hunt kill kill oooga boooga".

Originally Posted by aaronasterling

No. Accepting it as part of our heritage, figuring what role it played, and allowing something to play the same role in our culture does sound like a good idea to me.

It's still being taken out of context. When you examine any cultural trait you need to examine it holistically, looking at all of the other aspects of life that it ties into.

For example, can you give examples of how the boys in those societies have successfully become men, and what being a man in those societies entails? How that relates to support from other men, mythology, and being taken away from women? How that in turn effects the relationship between men and women? Because all of that is relevant to manhood, and by isolating the ritual in this discussion, we aren't getting a fair picture of what manhood really is in whatever culture you're talking about. Therefore it's impossible to say that their model of growth into manhood is applicable in any way to our society.

In other words, you need to clarify what the role is that you're arguing our society should base our practises off of before you decide whether or not it should or shouldn't play the same role in our society.

examples?

Honestly? You need an example to believe that fathers treat their kids like shit because they don't think they are tough enough? I don't have any specific examples I'm sorry, but I kind of assumed it was common knowledge that this kind of abuse exists.

On the contrary "primitive" cultures developed myth cycles that display a rich understanding of emotional life. Joseph Cambell spent a good part of his career studying them.

I'm not arguing against these societies having anything but rich understandings of emotional life.

I suppose I was, It seems irrelevent to me given that the most savage of hunter-gatherer cultures have not participated in the kind of barbaric warfare that modern cultures do. Granted, it's a matter of technology available but violence is pretty useless for claiming that modern culture is more enlightened then ancient ones. Perhaps violence has been intrinsically linked to manhood for them because that's the way it is. In modern cultures, what gender goes to war more often then not? I see no difference other then that wars that rich countries fight tend to be small enough in size in relation to the population so that not all 'able-bodied men' are called upon to serve. The attitude in the united states during world war two was that any man that wasn't in uniform was a 'pussy'. Again, no difference.

The point I was trying to make is that violence (your example being wife-beating) is not just some big bad aspect of manhood in modern western societies. Are you familiar with the head hunting practises of the Malaysian aborigines? Becoming a man in those societies was all about violence. I'm not necessarily condemning this, and I'm certainly not suggesting that modern cultures are more enlightened than hunter-gatherer cultures, I'm just highlighting it. And since you mentioned wife-beating: in one of my anthropology units at university this year we watched a short film that mentioned an egalitarian tribal society where the men beat the women and the women wear their bruises with pride. I can't remember the name though, sorry - it wasn't a focus of the film or the unit. I'll try and find it online though. I may very well be taking that out of context myself, to be fair, so take it with a grain of salt for now.

The point is that you can't claim that wife-beating or violence in general are products of manhood in modern western cultures without examining other known cultural practises in relation to the issue. This is its relevance.

So you think that a component of manhood is having a weakly regulated and poorly directed fight/flight response? That sounds like an adolescent to me.

No, that's not what I meant, and I do apologise for being so brief in my response. It was misleading and poorly worded. What I meant is that I don't think having a keenly tuned sense of fight/flight response is a necessary aspect of manhood. I think having a healthy sense of fight/flight is ideal for any person, male or female. I do not believe it is a distinct characteristic of being a man, nor a necessary one.

If a keen sense of fight/flight is an aspect of manhood, is it also an aspect of womanhood? If not, does that make women adolescent? What about men with mental disabilities that inhibit their sense of fight/flight? Are they any less of a man than a healthy grown male just because they are unable to identify a threat?

Furthermore, is your idea of those rituals being related to fight or flight response backed up by any valid ethnographic studies? Have the people themselves said that that is the reason they do it? Or is it a case of your own interpretation? I'm not saying you don't present an interesting perspective for consideration, I'm just interested how exactly you concluded that fight or flight is so intensely linked to manhood, particularly in relation to hunter-gatherer societies and their rituals.

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

And since you mentioned wife-beating: in one of my anthropology units at university this year we watched a short film that mentioned an egalitarian tribal society where the men beat the women and the women wear their bruises with pride. I can't remember the name though, sorry - it wasn't a focus of the film or the unit. I'll try and find it online though. I may very well be taking that out of context myself, to be fair, so take it with a grain of salt for now.

I can't find the name of this society, but I found a different example in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, which states that "For the Mbuti 'a certain amount of wife-beating is considered good, and the wife is expected to fight back'..." - on this page. It goes also mentions Australian aborigines' occasional threats and pracitse of violence.

Once again, I'm not condemning this, I just wanted to point out that violence of any kind is not isolated to modern cultures, and that it is part of manhood (as well as womanhood) in other societies. It's not part of all societies by any means, but it is not merely a product of modern culture.

Originally Posted by aaronasterling

I suppose I was, It seems irrelevent to me given that the most savage of hunter-gatherer cultures have not participated in the kind of barbaric warfare that modern cultures do. Granted, it's a matter of technology available but violence is pretty useless for claiming that modern culture is more enlightened then ancient ones. Perhaps violence has been intrinsically linked to manhood for them because that's the way it is. In modern cultures, what gender goes to war more often then not? I see no difference other then that wars that rich countries fight tend to be small enough in size in relation to the population so that not all 'able-bodied men' are called upon to serve. The attitude in the united states during world war two was that any man that wasn't in uniform was a 'pussy'. Again, no difference.

I wouldn't say manhood = violence. I would say manhood = bravery.

The news comes on, and I see a story about a serial rapist that brutally beats his victims to death. He was violent. I wouldn't call him a man, I would barely consider him a fellow human!

Next story: Geese fly into a jet engine, disabling a plane, causing the pilot to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River. That was a man there. No violence involved.

Originally Posted by aaronasterling

It's a difficult question to answer and I did drop a key component of it. It begins with being an adult, that is, taking responsibility for your actions and choices. I do believe that most of the features that go beyond that are related to violence. I'm sure that that is 'politically incorrect' but as I mentioned above, it seems to be true. I hope you push me on this point. It should be a good and illuminating argument.

You seem to be emphasizing the fight/flight response as a key factor in this. I would have to say that a man is perfectly balanced - he knows exactly when he should fight, and exactly when to take flight. A younger male is usually viewed as being cowardly - that is, choosing flight over fight in situations where fight is a viable option.

Bravery isn't rushing into something you can't handle. Bravery is rushing into something that's close to it.

Originally Posted by aaronasterling

A genetically modified plant wouldn't be any less natural then a birds nest: an animal made both of them. In saying that we need to devise better tests, you admit that there is danger. The great thing about the banana is that it is sterile so that you wouldn't have cross pollination: any disaster would be limited. I say go for it in that case and follow with the rest when we have the better tests and more complete information. EDIT: Genetic engineering to restore the fatty acid ratio in our diets is a great idea, btw.

There is danger involved. Anyone who denies that is just as bad as those that would condemn ALL genetic modifications. We don't yet know every single effect of every allele, so a change could be disastrous if we don't do enough homework, or so to speak.

Originally Posted by aaronasterling

I was referring to individual knowledge, not accumulated cultural knowledge. I would be a fool to deny that. Most people in the states couldn't tell the difference between a maple tree and a sycamore tree, an abelian group or non-abelian group or tell you that an electron has a negative charge. Most of what is learned in school is forgotten the minute the test is over. Furthermore, as I addressed above, in answering Ardent Lost, hunter-gatherer culture is much richer then "hunt hunt kill kill oooga boooga".

Ah, but hunter-gatherer societies didn't have the written word. I think entire languages count as individual knowledge, no?

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

In other words, you need to clarify what the role is that you're arguing our society should base our practises off of before you decide whether or not it should or shouldn't play the same role in our society.

Sorry, I suppose that I wasn't clear. I believe that the purpose of these ceremonies (and they are pretty universal throughout different hunter-gatherer cultures as I'm sure you know) is that they strongly exercise the fight-flight response in a controlled and uniform manner.

The role of it happening seperately from the women is that it lays the groundwork for the "secret men knowledge" which is also pretty universal. The bullroarer is a pretty good example.

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

Honestly? You need an example to believe that fathers treat their kids like shit because they don't think they are tough enough? I don't have any specific examples I'm sorry, but I kind of assumed it was common knowledge that this kind of abuse exists.

Right: I wasn't sure that it was this kind of abuse you were referring too. This is just the urges of the father's to 'toughen' up their kids coming out in an unregulated manner. It's a perfectly sound instinctual response to having what you percieve as a kid that isn't strong enough. The beauty of so many of these 'primitive' cultures, is that they recognize instincts and provide an outlet for them, as opposed to repressing them.

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

The point I was trying to make is that violence (your example being wife-beating) is not just some big bad aspect of manhood in modern western societies. Are you familiar with the head hunting practises of the Malaysian aborigines? Becoming a man in those societies was all about violence. I'm not necessarily condemning this, and I'm certainly not suggesting that modern cultures are more enlightened than hunter-gatherer cultures, I'm just highlighting it. And since you mentioned wife-beating: in one of my anthropology units at university this year we watched a short film that mentioned an egalitarian tribal society where the men beat the women and the women wear their bruises with pride. I can't remember the name though, sorry - it wasn't a focus of the film or the unit. I'll try and find it online though. I may very well be taking that out of context myself, to be fair, so take it with a grain of salt for now.

The point is that you can't claim that wife-beating or violence in general are products of manhood in modern western cultures without examining other known cultural practises in relation to the issue. This is its relevance.

And that is relevent. My hypothesis is this: Were one to do an overarching study, one would find that in hunter-gather cultures, violence will have a culturaly sanctioned outlet. Violence outside of those culturaly sanctioned outlets, will occur

1) rarely
2) mildly
3) result in a loss of status proportional to it's deviation from condition 2

The same could probably be said of modern cultures but these outlets are defined much more hazily, not clearly viewed as such and the general attitude is that violence is 'bad' and should be repressed. The healthy individuals within these cultures will find outlets, the unhealthy ones will repress it.

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

No, that's not what I meant, and I do apologise for being so brief in my response. It was misleading and poorly worded. What I meant is that I don't think having a keenly tuned sense of fight/flight response is a necessary aspect of manhood. I think having a healthy sense of fight/flight is ideal for any person, male or female. I do not believe it is a distinct characteristic of being a man, nor a necessary one.

If a keen sense of fight/flight is an aspect of manhood, is it also an aspect of womanhood? If not, does that make women adolescent? What about men with mental disabilities that inhibit their sense of fight/flight? Are they any less of a man than a healthy grown male just because they are unable to identify a threat?

These are good points. Our own cultures seem to say that a woman is not expected to be able to fight, that men with a 'loose' fight/flight response are not as desirable to women and that the 'alpha males' are the ones that are 'chillin like a villian' when presented with a potential danger. So yes, unfortuanately, a man with a 'loose' fight/flight response is less of a man then one with a healthy fight/flight resonse. I'm not saying that that's what I think. I'm just saying that that is how modern cultures percieve it. I would like to get a womans perspective on the question of how/if it relates to womanhood.

Originally Posted by Ardent Lost

Furthermore, is your idea of those rituals being related to fight or flight response backed up by any valid ethnographic studies? Have the people themselves said that that is the reason they do it? Or is it a case of your own interpretation? I'm not saying you don't present an interesting perspective for consideration, I'm just interested how exactly you concluded that fight or flight is so intensely linked to manhood, particularly in relation to hunter-gatherer societies and their rituals.

This is my own interpretation. I stand by it. It seems to me that almost all interpretations of manhood boil down to the functioning of the amygdala. The amygdala are key regulators of the fight/flight response and are themselves regulated by testosterone.

On the whole, I'm much less interested in understand the individual cultures then the neurology of 'wild humans'. The cultural aspects that I am interested are the ones that occur both in the new world and in australia: those are the ones that go back the furthest and that we can reasonably postulate as having had an effect on the 'expected stresses' that our genes are 'designed' to cope with.

Originally Posted by Licity

I wouldn't say manhood = violence. I would say manhood = bravery.

I wouldn't think of equating manhood and violence. I acknowledge that, due to evolved circumstances, they are pretty intimately related.

Originally Posted by Licity

The news comes on, and I see a story about a serial rapist that brutally beats his victims to death. He was violent. I wouldn't call him a man, I would barely consider him a fellow human!

There is no doubt that he is a fellow human. He was left on the side of the road of life by a culture that has grown too large to care for it's members.

Originally Posted by Licity

Next story: Geese fly into a jet engine, disabling a plane, causing the pilot to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River. That was a man there. No violence involved.

That was a skilled human put in a tough situation. I would have expected the same of a female pilot. Here's one. Terrorists with box-cutters take over a plane. Is it the females or the males that you would expect to put them down.

Originally Posted by Licity

You seem to be emphasizing the fight/flight response as a key factor in this. I would have to say that a man is perfectly balanced - he knows exactly when he should fight, and exactly when to take flight. A younger male is usually viewed as being cowardly - that is, choosing flight over fight in situations where fight is a viable option.

Or choosing fight where flight is the responsible option.

Originally Posted by Licity

Ah, but hunter-gatherer societies didn't have the written word. I think entire languages count as individual knowledge, no?

Language existed well before the written word. I would say that written language decreases the demand for individual knowledge because stuff can always be looked up. It does increase the potential of knowledge that can be brought to bear on a situation given enough time however. There are not many hunter-gathers that could write there language. On the other hand, there are not many modern people that could click or whistle theirs. Language exists across all cultures though.

Thank you for the clarification aaronasterling. I feel I have a much better understanding of your position now. I certainly think you have some good points, and it's something for me to think about. I don't really know anything about the amygdala or any of that kind of stuff, so I can't really go any further with that specific point.

I will just say that I currently think of manhood in a more... spiritual, I guess, light. I think manhood being not about a man's physical presence, or abilities, but about his emotional strength. I said that I think there's a lot we can learn from hunter-gatherer societies, but I don't believe they necessarily did everything categorically 'right' even if it is for them, and I'm not sure I would favour any hunter-gatherer notions of manhood over mine. I could definitely synthesise opposing ideas though, and I'm not about to claim my idea of manhood is the right one.

I think men developed that sense of fight/flight in those societies because of their hunting role. However, women also sometimes hunted, and men often gathered. And furthermore, I don't think fight/flight is as relevant in modern cultures as it is in hunter-gatherer cultures. I mean sure, it's there, but I think a lot of men would freeze and go into shock if a serious threat identified itself to them in modern cultures. Men don't hunt anymore, and their fight/flight hasn't been as necessary. I'm not sure this equates to being less of a man; I think being a man means different things to different cultures, and I don't think any definition need be wrong. I don't think there's one universal law of manhood. If I were to go live with a hunter-gatherer society starting tomorrow, I would expect my notion of manhood to develop into something much closer to theirs after a while, but then when I returned to South-Eastern Australia that would change once again. "Man" is not a stagnant, unchanging animal.

This is what I was trying to unearth with my context argument. Manhood and fight/flight might be essential characteristics of manhood for hunter-gatherer societies, but when you take that out of its holistic setting and start inserting it into a culture with different values; different practises; high degrees of specialisation; and no real hunting or gathering structures, it becomes very abstract and out-of-place. I'm not convinced that we need to adopt the fight/flight notion of manhood over any other notion. Men are increasingly at a loss as to where they fit in society, and it is important to address that, but I'm not sure the answer lies in hunter-gatherer societies in this case.

That's my opinion anyhow. I respect yours, and have genuinely found the discussion stimulating and quite helpful.