March 21, 2024

    When studying history one approach is to look at the culture, group, tribe, city, and state to see if they endorse basic freedoms. Firstly the freedom of an individual to move from one location to another. Secondly, the freedom to disobey some person, group, or authority, and the third is the freedom to create or transform social relationships. Included in these freedoms is the ability to make promises in these relationships (the third freedom) and the the freedom to run away from a difficult situation is related to the first freedom. A slave cannot make promises since they have no rights. According to Roman law during the classical period, slaves could be mutilated and killed by the owner without repercussions. The family members under the patriarchal system were subject to the head of the households direction and could be abused, restrained, and beaten without repercussions to the perpetrator. In certain cultures throughout history monarchs became vessels from the gods and could kill, abuse, take property and command almost any action no matter how horrific. On the other hand, some cultures had heads and assemblies of people who worked together to solve problems respecting the integrity and independence of each other. In these groups, often women were included as equals. Those who were in need were given attention and assistance, and the chief's interests and directions in peacetime were often ignored. Some groups were close enough to each other to see the differences in the patriarchal, oligarchical, and monarchal and their own culture which was more egalitarian and had more of the three basic freedom I started this blog with. This almost opposite ways of dealing with property, humans freedoms, and respect may have reinforced the cultures need to oppose and disparage each other. In David Graeber and David Wengrow book The Dawn of Everything they present an sometimes overwhelming amount of specific data from archeological research and more modern records of the various ways groups of humans organized themselves. The basic freedoms they suggest can sometimes be seen in stark contrast to other nearby groups. Data is presented on the evidence that some of the the more brutal monarchal cultures changed to much more egalitarian caring and consideration for each other and visa versa. 

    Gregory Bateson Ph.D. in his studies in New Guinea presented the concept that groups within a culture may gravitate to extreme differences so that, for example, the females and males differences became more exaggerated. In his study, as I recall reading it many years ago (I had Bateson in a seminar while participating in a seminar at University of Hawaii Department of Psychiatry) he described the initiation rights of the males as horrific abuse and scarring of the skin with the more suffering causing more abuse except there was a point in which this abated. He developed his concept of schismogenesis to explain this phenomenon. The authors of The Dawn of Everything used this to explain how such opposite ways of treating their members of groups may have been generated by this process. In an example, the Kwakiutl Inuits in the Canadian northwest had different social customs and hierarchical aspects depending on the season. In the winter hereditary nobles held court over the commoners and slaves hosting great banquets called potlatch. The nobles used their material wealth to have great parties with much food, dancing, and festivities made possible by their status and ability to control others to gather their wealth. The commoner was often given assistance when asking the nobleman though the slaves were treated as property without any rights. In the summer the groups dispersed into smaller groups, people changed their names and authority was much less respected. To the south another group practiced individual fortitude and altruism with sweat lodges used to cleanse and improve one's inner strength.  Though salmon was also pletitul to this group as the Kwakiutl they ate more off the land with hunting and small farming. Repeatedly the authors of the book gave more examples including cultures that did not have written records of groupings that forfeited their egalitarian ways to devolve into hierarchical domination and castes or change into more egalitarian grouping abandoning their more townlike structures. They describe some native American observations of the French culture that the chief Kandiarock of the Wendat native American group observed and commented about. To him the aggrandizement of property was an evil and led to inequality and suffering of their subjects. Rousseau wrote that when our ancestors decided to divide the earth into individually owned plots they also created legal structures to protect their property, then governments to enforce these laws rationalizing that they were protecting liberty. In fact they "ran headlong into their chains". The opposite viewpoint can s be understood in Thomas Hobbes Leviathan in which human beings are described as having a life "solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short" best governed by a dictator to help contain humanities tendency for competition, distrust and glory. In another example as reported in 1608 by Father Pierre Biard the Algonkian speaking Mi'kmaq "they consider themselves better than the French ...you are always quarrelling among yourselves; we live peacefully. You are envious  and all the time slandering each other, you are thieves and deceivers; you are covetous, and are neither generous nor kind; as for us, if we have a morsel of bread we share it with our neighbor" (p.38 The Dawn of Everything).  Christopher Boehm an evolutionary anthropologist specializing in primate studies reasoned that the difference between our simian relatives is that they act on their instinctual tendency of dominance and submission while human make societies that make a conscious decision not to act that way. The tactics these societies use to contain dominance are ridicule, shame, shunning even assassination.  

    Of course, Rousseau and others were discussed with my take away that humans are political animals (Plato) unlike other primates and animals and our current world configuration of nations, states, and cities is now unusual and may not be the apex of civilization some of us would like to believe. Our history does not reveal a progression from primitive to civilized. Paul Radin in 1927 wrote Primitive Man as Philosopher making the point that these so called primitive cultures had a greater tolerance for eccentricity and a rejection of coercion. Are we so wise? 

    "We understand the encoding of genetic sequences, the folding of proteins to construct the cells of the body, and even a good deal about how epigenetic switches control these processes. And yet we still do not understand what happens when we read a sentence. Meaning is not neuronal; calculus in the brain, or the careful smudges of ink on a page, or the areas of light and dark on a screen. Meaning has no mass or charge, it occupies no space-and yet meaning make all the difference in the world. Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think" page 23 Ray Nayler The Mountain in the Sea 2023 ISBN:978-1-250-87227-2. 

    This book imagines a dystopian future not far distant from now in which we use machines with AI capabilities to enslave others to harvest the sea. The cephalopod octopus under stress has evolved into having a social order and learning to forage and defend their territory. They have a way of communicating through their chromophores and problem solve. There is rudimentary contact with communication on an island with humans, an android, and octopus. There is a book within a book which I gave a small snippet. The author is imagining a future full of excitement and promise as well as a future full of dystopian slavery and environmental destruction related to over harvesting pollution and corporation greed. 

    From the country of Hawaii, I'm now thinking that our dysunion as a nation is very troubling. Maybe we're too big. My historical guide which I just completed suggests that change is ever present, no culture has lasted without changes sometimes ugly sometimes uplifting. 

    I just got home from my Urolift procedure to relieve the struggles my bladder was having draining through a narrowed urethra due to pressure from my enlarged prostate. A forty five minute procedure, then in recovery for ten hours until I finally was able to have my first urination ugly, full of blood and clots. Now the second day post surgery I go with urgency and little evidence of clots. Next week I'm visiting my cardiologist to have further study and probably more angiography and coronary artery repair. After this, my left eye macular hole needs some gas to flatten the retina so I can regain some more vision in this eye. I've been through this two other times but this time I am told I only need to lie face down for 50' stretches of time for four days. Once repaired, I expect to continue to hike and travel. 

      Before my surgery, we went to San Diego to La Jolla Cove, Safari Park, Anza Borrego State Park, Temecula to visit my sister, nephew and his wife, then 29 Palms and Joshua Tree National Park. Here's the link for this trip.

Leonard

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