Actually Ed, the reality shows follow the 1970-80s
alliatory art projects from Soho in NYCity that heralded in the Minimalist
music school, Environmental music and eventually hip-hop and rap.
Its ancient roots are in the rituals of Greek theater. As for
Hunter/Gatherers I believe Survivor does represent the real
Hunter/gatherers who went around the world conquering peoples, raping and
pillaging and destroying singular individuals for personal gain including their
own kin. You might read Jimmy Carter's new book on the American
Revolution for some of the same impulses as even families were devoured by such
hunting and gathering for personal gain. That person so beloved in
Westerns and Barbarian movies is really just a mirror of the soul of the
West. As you point out it bears little resemblance to the foresters
and experts in wild animal development that have existed in American cultivated
forests for thousands of years. English speaking Europeans
love this stereotype. It goes along with the beloved cross-dressing
that is not supposed to represent any latent homosexual desires in their
men.
Coyotl,
Ed, I would be interested in how the list read what I
wrote above. I reversed the kind of stereotypical stories with a
modicum of truth, but not much, and came up with the reverse, all with a
description about art that is true but irrelevant. Of
course the Hunter/Gatherer metaphor is no more true of Europeans than of
Native Americans. I believe to use it as such is a part of the
problem. I did the above simply to give a taste of the type of
chauvinism that is often said as fact but in fact is far too simple to make
sense.
I believe we should find another more accurate term
and one with a less derogatory "monkey like" history. One
might start with the simple word "forester" and what does one call one who
actually cultivates wild animals through the manipulation of the
environment? Hunter/Gatherer reminds one of cattle
grazing on what just happens to be there. You Ed, know that is
not an accurate presentation of the facts. If it was, those
folks wouldn't be as well equipped to develop something new and unique as
they have done whenever they have been given the chance.
Veblin was interesting. His studies of American Indian and Ainu societies
came up with a unique description of societies where work, leisure and
status were wildly different from the acquisitive society he came
from. His descriptions of predator societies seems to herald the
current fashion in Capitalism. As was mentioned earlier on the
list. He probably couldn't have taught modern economics.
They wouldn't have understood his relevance. There are people,
however, like Veblin still teaching in certain schools of music. I
had one. His name was Bela Rozsa and he was one wild Hungarian
scholar and composer. I too got caught in the relevance trap
and left his class too soon. But he did give me wonderful gifts
anyway. Many years later I had gotten past the "logical
rhetoric" and "mathematicians" and their simplicities and took another look at
Dr. Rozsa. I got a lot but I missed more. By that
time he had died.
Anyone watching Angels in America the Mike Nichols version
of the Kushner play? Its quite a show.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 11:11
PM
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re:
[Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
Harry, don't even mention the show 'Survivor' to
me. I see it as absolute American crap, like the "Stench of
America". There's nothing in it that even remotely bears any resemblance
of the reality of hunters and gatherers.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 5:15
PM
Subject: RE: Slightly extended (was Re:
[Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
Ed,
Another good discussion.
I see little network television, but one I try to
see is Survivor. In it, people are voted out of the tribe. Those that remain
try to "survive" until the final episode when the winner gets $1
million. (Remember the $64,000 question?)
One member was a good catcher of fish and they
enjoyed the food he supplied. Yet, he was also so good generally
that the others felt they would never win if he remained in the
tribe.
So he was voted off. Yet, the worries of the others
centered on the lack of fish that would follow his dismissal. The crucial
factor was that there was only a week or two
remaining.
If the tribe had looked to a longer life, I'm sure
they would never have let him go. His "hunter/gatherer" abilities were too
good.
Interesting.
Harry
******************************************** Henry George School of Social
Science of Los
Angeles Box
655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818
352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net
********************************************
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed
Weick Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 3:27 PM To:
Keith Hudson Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:
Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade
vs. Modern Trade
Keith, I don't think we can go much further on
this. You are the product of a stratified society full of Alpha
males. I don't agree that this is necessarily the way societies and
males have to be. I would however like to add a few more comments
before I respectfully withdraw from the field. You say:
Once again, your Indian tribes would certainly have had hierarchies,
all sorts of heirarchies depending on the skills that was the current
context. But they wouldn't have been obvious and, I suggest, they would
have been invisible to you as an outsider unless you got to know them very
well indeed. Listen to what ethologists, anthropologists, animal
behavioural researchers say -- they all say that they have to live with
the group (animal or human) they're studying all day long, month after
month and sometimes for several years until they understand the dynamics
of a group and the hierarchy.
Actually, I spent some five years working
for the Council for Yukon Indians (CYI) in the late 1980s and early 1990s
and also spent four years with the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry during
the 1970s. While doing that I spent a great deal of time in the Yukon
and the Mackenzie Valley and got to know Native people quite well. Yes
indeed I was an outsider, but also a participant in what was going on.
I have to repeat that in their dealings with each other the people I worked
with were extremely egalitarian. In the case of the CYI, jobs were
filled on the basis of what people could do, and not on the basis of who
they were. Many important jobs were filled by women, including the
leadership of the organization. My boss was an extremely
competent woman. She has now passed on, but her daughter has
become active in the Yukon Indian movement.
You mention that ethnologists and
anthropologists have to live with the people they are studying. I have
a couple of friends that did just that. Hugh Brody, a British
anthropologist and film maker, learned to speak fluent Inuktitut and lived
with the Inuit of North Baffin for many months. One of his books,
which I would highly recommend, The Peoples' Land, came out of
that. He also spent time in Indian communities in northern
British Columbia, and Maps and Dreams came out of that. Another
friend, a geographer, lived with the people of Banks Island while he was
doing his doctorate. I'm having lunch with him on Monday, and will ask
him what he thinks about stratification and Alpha males among the Inuvialuit
he lived with. In the course of my career, I have met and worked
with many other social scientists that have spent time in Native
communities. Quite frankly, I don't think many of them would agree
with your views on status, stratification and Alpha maleness.
I'll try to repeat something I argued
earlier. Hunting and gathering societies are concerned with
survival. Skills in hunting and gathering are important to that.
The best hunters, usually men, and the best gatherers, usually women, are
recognized and emulated, but they are not put on pedestals, nor do they seek
special status. They just do what they have to do for the sake of
survival. Each small group of hunters and gatherers has a leader, but,
typically, he or she does not seek to be a leader. They
are followed because they are recognized as having special qualities
important to survival. They need not be Alpha types. They can be
very humble people who don't say very much but usually do the right
thing. And, of course, there are also others who are recognized as
being important to survival, especially healers who have special
powers.
One person who I got to know quite well in
the Yukon was a good example of what I'm talking about. He was a
little guy. If you passed him on the street, you wouldn't notice
him. He had to earn a living, so in the White world he was an aircraft
mechanic. But in the Native world he was a combination of unusual
talents and skills. He had been raised by his grandfather, a
medicine man, and while he was not a healer, he had a very special
understanding of people. I don't know how many meetings I attended in
the Yukon that got absolutely stuck. They simply could not move
forward. But when that happened, my friend, having said nothing till
then, would walk up to the blackboard, pick up a piece of chalk, draw a
little diagram, tell us where we were now, tell us where we had to get to,
show us the obstacles we had to cross, and tell us how we might get across
them. I don't recall a time when it didn't work. I know why he
wasn't teaching at the Harvard Business School; he didn't have the
credentials and he probably wouldn't have wanted to. However, he did
travel to Ottawa and Washington on matters important to the management of
caribou on the Yukon/Alaska North Slope and, from what I heard through the
grapevine, was treated with a lot of respect.
I have to end it here. We have to
remain quite far apart on the matter of human behaviour. On the other
matter we've broached, the basic income, I'll do a little more thinking and
get back to you. I think it's possible. If Bush did it for the
rich with his recent tax cuts, why can't it be done for the
poor?
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003
3:10 PM
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was
Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
Ed,
At 10:29 06/12/2003 -0500, you
wrote:
Hi
Keith, I just consulted my dictionary to see what it says about
"status". It says two things that seem to fit what we are talking
about. One is position or rank [of a person] in the eyes of
others. The second is the position or rank [of a person] in a
hierarchy of prestige. I would agree that the first definition is
universal. Among hunters and gatherers, the most effective hunters
or gatherers are recognized and emulated by others. Among
agricultural people, good farmers are given similar recognition.
No hierarchy is required. Good is good, and that's about
it. Here's a thought experiment. If, say a
government project were announced and, in a particular district, it was
necessary for the agricultural scientists to meet the best half dozen
farmers in a particular district and then you asked all the farmers
individually to list the farmers in order of excellence, I think you would
agree that the lists would be very similar indeed. I have never said that
we walk around with invisible rank labels pinned to us. But ask any
psychologist what strangers (within the same culture) do when they meet
for the first time -- they are looking for every possible clue (clothing,
bearing, tone of voice, etc) in order to "place" them relative to
themselves. That is absolutely the first thing that people do. It was
absolutely imperative in hunter-gatherer times when meeting a member of
another group. You had to sum him up as accurately as you could, and as
quickly as you could, just in case you had to fight him. The higher the
status of the person you meet the more dangerous he would be -- not only
because being clever and agressive would have brought him high status, but
also because having high status his hormone levels would be very high. The
Matthew concept -- "To those that hath shall be given ....". This
happens in every single social mammal species also. It happens with sheep,
cows, dogs, primates, etc. When my dog sees a dog in the distance she's
never met before she will decide (they will both decide) from small clues
from 100 yards' distance whether they are going to be friendly or whether
they're going to fight. Even when a sheep meets its own shepherd it will
examine the face of the shepherd very carefully to see what mood he's in.
I really think you are very much neglecting the whole area of rank
ordering and status -- it is all around us all the time. This is not to
say that it impinges on everything we do. For most social purposes it is
not important. The most ferocious alpha male baboon will groom a lowly
member of the pack when they are all relaxed but once that alpha baboon
stands up and walks around then every other member of the pack is watching
carefully in varying degrees of fear. We are absolutely no different in
principle, except that it doesn't impinge most of the time.
The second definition requires a hierarchy and a ranking
system. Whether they have done something well or not, some people
are placed on prestigious pedestals while others march around
them. Perhaps there is a universal tendency toward such behaviour
once a society reaches a certain level of complexity, but there may be
an almost equal tendency to do away with rankings and hierarchies of the
pedestal kind. The discussion about Hobbes seems relevant
here. People merge their interests into societies of their own
free will because it is rational to do so.
When an individual reaches mature adulthood -- say
at about 25-30 -- most individuals know their approximate rank ordering in
society and will accept it. More importantly for them they know that they
are accepted -- they're part of the group and can bed protected if
necessary. But some are far more ambitious than the norm -- fortunately,
not very many or else society would be anarchic -- and they are
particularly to be found in large organisations and political parties,
etc, etc. And there you will see rank ordering still going on, sometime
brutally and nakedly, sometimes craftily. Indeed, this is one of the most
dangerous features of our highly centralised societies that it is these
rank ordering fights -- yes, even with males in their 50s and 60s and 70s
-- which can cause bad decisions that affect us all. It's happening all
the time in politics!
They appoint or elect people to govern because that is necessary
if society is to function. Yet the people that are appointed or
elected have no special rights under the law and can be removed if need
be. Some people may still want to put them on pedestals, but that
is not the intent of the society as a
whole. Generally, people do want to put
their leaders on pedestals because, evolutionarily, leaders are supposed
to keep the peace and they want them to be strong. Look at the adultation
given to Bush -- why does he wear war gear sometimes? -- look a t the role
of Putin (every single coimmentator from Russia says that it's because he
strong that he's going to be elected. I think you're quite wrong in your
last sentence and I wonder (I'm not being sarcastic nor cfritical) whether
it's your lifetime immersion in the civil service that causes your
viewpoint. Most people are credulous and deferential for most of the
time.
In
any event, complexity seems to be the important thing. The people
I dealt with in northern Canada followed the first definition, and did
not have rankings and hierarchies until we imposed them by making them
follow our system of governance. Once again, your
Indian tribes would certainly have had hierarchies, all sorts of
heirarchies depending on the skills that was the current context. But they
wouldn't have been obvious and, I suggest, they would have been invisible
to you as an outsider unless you got to know them very well indeed. Listen
to what ethologists, anthropologists, animal behavioural researchers say
-- they all say that they have to live with the group (animal or human)
they're studying all day long, month after month and sometimes for several
years until they understand the dynamics of a group and the heirarchy.
(This is where some of the early sociologist and anthropologists went
badly wrong. Mostly, they got totally the wrong impression. Very often the
group being studied would adopt the social traits that the observer was
expecting.)
What we did was complicate their lives and their societies
to the point that rankings and hierarchies became a necessity.
Once they were in place, status in the sense of pedestals gradually
crept in. No! No! Civilised society only
exaggerates (and often enhances with badges and hats and uniforms, etc)
rankings that are already instinctive.
On the matter of a basic income, I don’t think a
government could proceed without giving a lot of thought to why it was
doing it. Would it be a mechanism to facilitate adjustment to economic
change, or would it be a universal anti-poverty measure? It would also
have to take a thorough look at the costs and benefits. On the cost
side, a basic income would put an additional strain on government
finances you bet it would!
and might require a more progressive tax
system or some reallocation of existing expenditures. The benefits could
include matters such as a healthier population, kids who are more able
to cope with school, and probably a significant reduction of the social
costs associated with crime and the need to incarcerate people. There
would be problems, a major one being that the financial costs would be
perceived as being immediate while the benefits would only accrue in the
longer run. Equity would be another problem - how to design a system
that is basically fair to both those who pay and those who receive
payments. And we all know people cheat, so a policing system would have
to be devised.
Personally, I think a basic income
program is feasible in a rich country and may even be possible to
initiate by reallocating existing expenditures. In Canada we already
have a variety of programs, such as employment insurance, the Canada
Pension Plan, the Child Tax Benefit, and various Provincial
welfare/workfare programs, that might be rolled into a basic income. If
the object were the facilitation of adjustment to economic change rather
than universal anti-poverty, a system of premiums scaled to salary might
be utilized. It would take a lot of work and planning, but I believe it
could be done.
I doubt it very much. For a start (if we are to talk about
Canada) you have a budget debt of 45% of your GDP. This would take strict
financial policies for at least 5 years to recover from. Then, on top of
that, your long term commitments (pensions, health, etc, etc)
already amount to 420% of your GDP. With the strictest of taxation,
planning, budgetary control and whatnot if you were able to reduce thse
implict debts by, say, 3% per year compound without fail yearf after year,
this would take a whole generation (at least) to achieve. If you were to
have a BI, I don't think you'd have the slightest chance without loading
up your implicit future debt even more than now -- and the ultimate
neglect of most of your old and poor (which is surely coming anyway in all
developed countries) (in fact, it's already happening in England -- the
degree of neglect and cruelty in government approved nursing homes in this
country is severe and sometimes it makes your heart break when some cases
are exposed -- it's getting worse and worse from year to year because
there are insufficient staff and they are insufficiently trained -- we
can't afford decent nursing for a sizeable proportion of our old folk
already!!).
Sorry! I think you are being far too optimistic. Almost
all developed countries are already at the limit of their achievable tax
rates. It wouldn't take much more before there would be demonstrations
equal to those that faced Bush's visit, or the Chartist riots of 150 years
ago, or the collapse of Soviet Russia or, only a few days ago, the
collapse of the Georgian government. I'm not suggesting this will happen
because a developed country has enough channels of communication by which
the middle class will make their anger about further taxation known long
beforehand. Two of the major developed countries in the world, France and
Germany, have virtually stopped growing economically because employers
don't want to take on any more workers because they have to pay too high
insurance costs. These countries have absolutely no chance of recovery
unless taxation and insurance payments are reduced significantly. Germany
is already trying to do so but with nothing much to show yet because of
fierce resistance from the unions..
Keith
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