Ranthropologist

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  • Finding Climate Hope in Alaska

    Finding Climate Hope in Alaska

    I have spent the last several years focusing on climate change as part of my job. I have worked with consultants, contractors, and colleagues on climate vulnerability assessments and adaptation plans, both for Pala and for other Tribes. I have presented, co-presented, and taught at conferences, workshops, and webinars. I have co-authored or edited articles and chapters in journals and reports. I have been interviewed for newspaper articles and podcasts. I have made work on climate change the centerpiece of the Pala Environmental Department’s mission and become very vocal as Pala’s Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO) about the impacts of climate change on Tribal cultural resources, including sacred sites, traditional plants and animals, ceremonies, and cultural practices. But this week in Anchorage, Alaska brought it all crashing home in a way I have never felt before.

    I was asked to be a co-trainer for “Elevating Ancestral Practices: Tribal Wellness in Climate Adaptation Planning” for the Alaska Tribal Resilience Learning Network so I could present and share about how Pala has integrated health and wellness strategies into its climate adaptation plan. I was nervous because I was the only non-Indigenous trainer and because the situation in Alaska is very different from southern California. I expected to learn just as much from the other trainers and the attendees as they might learn from me, but I was wrong: I learned much more.

    Here is what I learned: it is one thing to read about how climate effects are greater in Alaska, and northern parts of the globe in general; it is another to hear directly from those who are experiencing those effects. We started the workshop with an activity in which participants drew pictures of changes they have seen in their communities and then shared their pictures and their stories. My “which one of these things is not like the other” picture was of a mountain in California before and after a wildfire. My eyes were stinging with tears as I drew the picture – much as they are now as I remember it. But then I heard the other stories and saw the pictures. I kept it together as, one by one, participants shared about rivers, lakes, and shorelines that freeze later and later in the year or don’t freeze at all, making it impossible to hunt on the ice or use the frozen expanses for traveling on their snow machines. I shook my head in wonderment as it dawned on me that all the talk about rain in October and November – which we would celebrate in drought-stricken California – was a bad thing, because it was supposed to be snow. I felt grief and dismay deep in my bones as I heard one participant speak with eloquence about the community effort to build fish fences that are meant to be anchored in the ice… and how the ice wasn’t thick enough to hold them. Her picture showed two people bundled against the cold with their empty hands held out, faces grief-stricken, next to an empty tub that should have been full of fish. There were stories of empty fish-drying racks, and racks where the fish had rotted because the weather turned warm when it should have been freezing, and berry patches where the fruit rotted in the heat, and patches that couldn’t be reached because erosion had destroyed the paths. There were stories of fish camps destroyed by storm surges and tidal ice scraping higher and farther over the shore than it ever had before, and stories about fish dying and rotting in the too-warm rivers before they could spawn. There were stories of villages preparing to relocate and cemeteries eroding into the sea. And we heard about federal agencies refusing to deviate from the cages of their rules, which meant they would build a dike around public buildings to protect them but not around people’s homes, or that they wouldn’t sign off to reimburse the cost of a community-built sea wall without a structural engineer’s inspection. We heard about the loss of Native languages, disappearing cultural practices, community conflict, social problems, and disaffected youth. And we heard from a USGS climate scientist that it is going to get worse – a lot worse – and faster than anywhere else in the world.

    I felt outmatched by everything I heard, but I did my best and talked about what we’ve done in Pala to plan for climate effects. One of the things we’ve done for community outreach is develop a robust website and social media presence – something that seems like pretty low-hanging fruit, until a show of hands revealed that most of the communities represented at the workshop have little to no reliable internet access in their villages. My role at the training was meant to show Pala’s work as an example of what could be done, and I did succeed at that, but none of the participants have completed a vulnerability assessment, much less an adaptation plan, so there is a long way to go.

    I was overwhelmed and feeling useless… and yet. And yet. These folks were there for a reason. They were there to do something. They were there for hope. And it’s not hopeless. The other trainers, all Indigenous Alaska women, presented on how to use traditional knowledge and practices for strength and healing and on how to identify and use strategies for maintaining community connection through ceremony, compassion, and curiosity. We talked about how the brain can “flip its lid” as a response to stress and how to manage those reactions. We talked about listening to the elders and remembering traditional stories about meeting change with bravery and strength. We participated in prayer, intentional breathing, and blessings. We talked about resilience, even when resilience means leaving one place so you can survive in another. And I heard that my stories about fire and drought in California, and the possibility that we, too, may have to relocate because there is no water, actually helped because it made people feel like they aren’t the only ones. In the end, we left with new friends, new ideas, and new hope.

    We are in deep, deep trouble. This is a topic for another time, but the idea that we can mitigate and manage climate change while maintaining our colonial capitalist way of life is not just wrong, it is deadly. It’s about so much more than reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It’s about what right we have to continue our “grow the economy at any cost” ideology at the expense of the life and dignity of not just people, but what I was taught this week to call the plant nations, the animal nations, the fish nations, the insect nations – all the life on earth. Still, where there is life there is hope, and I hope we are able to acknowledge the magnitude of the changes we must make before it is too late.

  • Nature, Nurture, and Sexual Assault

    When I was six years old, a neighborhood boy promised me that he would “show me his” if I “showed him mine.” That seemed like a fair deal to me. He told me to wait in his closet, which my six-year-old mind didn’t question, and when the door opened a few minutes later, several boys from the neighborhood had gathered in his room. I was scared, but I “showed them mine.” I didn’t get to see theirs. When I was in junior high, a fellow student threatened to rape me during a sleepover, and chased me into a bathroom where I locked myself in while he pounded on the door. When I was in college, a car full of men at a stoplight motioned to me to roll down my window, and when I did, they asked me if I gave good head. Also in college, I experienced two separate incidents with two different men where I engaged in a consensual kiss, and a few minutes later had a penis being forced into my mouth. In both incidents, I was alarmed, but followed through with the sexual activity because it seemed more dangerous to stop… and because I was embarrassed. As a woman in my late twenties, I had sex with a man I didn’t want to have sex with, again because it seemed more dangerous – and embarrassing – to tell him no. As a working adult, I endured a supervisor who peppered nearly every interaction with deeply sexual remarks and innuendoes. I told myself I was ok with it because he didn’t really mean it, he did it to a lot of women, not just me… and because I needed my job and had no confidence that anything would be done about his behavior if I reported it.

    The torrent of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault allegations that is currently sweeping through the nation is making me simultaneously angry (on behalf of the women), sad (same), and uneasy. Why uneasy? Because we seem to be experiencing a pendulum swing during which any behavior by a man that can possibly be interpreted as inappropriate is being called assault;* and more so because behavior that actually IS assault is being denied, brushed off, or treated as a deliberate lie or conspiracy. This is a dangerous dichotomy. The pendulum will eventually return to center, but when it does, I hope it is with a new calibration. To be perfectly clear: I believe the women (and men, in some cases) who have come forward. I also believe that any unwanted touching, words, innuendoes, actions, etc. is inappropriate at best, and truly constitutes assault at worst. Luckily, I don’t feel permanently scarred or damaged by any of the incidents I went through, but I understand why some victims carry lifelong feelings of fear and shame.

    This moment of reckoning had gotten me thinking again about something I have often wondered: why do human males engage in this sort of behavior? How much is nature, and how much is nurture? Broadly, it is easy to answer this question very quickly: it is both. But again, I need to make myself completely clear: the nature/biological component of this behavior does not excuse it. And, at the same time, the nurture/cultural component of this behavior shares much of the blame.

    Humans are primates – specifically, we are one of the great apes (along with orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos) . Our closest living relative is the chimpanzee. Chimps have active sex lives that are also linked to their social lives and to the status of individuals within the group. Now, our close genetic relationship with chimps does not destine us to behave in the same ways, but it gives us some insight into the biological underpinnings of some aspects of our behavior. Broadly, the point of sex is reproduction; and when you look at reproduction through a biological, evolutionary lens, it provides a set of explanatory principles for mating behaviors. Does this apply to humans too? Of course. Another caution about making myself perfectly clear: sexual behavior as an evolutionary strategy does not excuse sexual harassment, abuse, or assault. Nor does it provide a full explanatory mechanism for the ways in which humans engage in reproductive behavior. We are unique among animals in that we have learned how to have intercourse purely for pleasure – we invented birth control, and have found ways to have sex without reproducing. That means sex, for humans, is as much social as it is biological. But that doesn’t remove the biological underpinnings. The sex drive is still about the possibility of reproduction, but in humans, as in chimps, it is also linked to status; and in humans, status is the same thing as power. Here’s where we get the terrible overlap between sex as biology and sex as culture: men who engage in sexually abusive behavior are motivated by lust for power just as much as lust for physical gratification. 

    During episodes of war or conflict, men are often reported to rape captive enemy women. Again, very broadly, this is about power, status, and the dehumanization of the enemy. Nature or nurture? Powerful men are now being accused of treating women (or in the case of Kevin Spacey, men) as objects of sexual gratification, rather than as human beings – similar to the men who rape captive enemy women, even if their behavior does not (always) rise to the level of rape. Nature or nurture?

    I am not a sociobiologist, but I believe it is a mistake to dismiss or ignore the biological underpinnings of human behavior. BUT, and this is a hugely important but: unlike other animals, humans have culture. We have nurture. We have the ability to teach people right from wrong. So why are men still assaulting, abusing, and harassing women? Because they’ve learned they can get away with it. It’s nurture, not nature, that lets down the victims. It’s nurture, not nature, that says “Boys will be boys.” It’s nurture, not nature, that says “It’s just locker-room talk.” It’s nurture, not nature, that says “Who will believe the intern over the Congressman?” It’s nurture, not nature, that says “men can’t control themselves” and that women should “take it as a compliment.” And now it’s nurture, not nature, that is saying WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH. It’s nurture, not nature, that has to teach our boys and girls about respect, equality, and consent. It’s nurture, not nature, that has to battle the perpetuation of toxic masculinity. It’s nurture, not nature, that has to point to the past and say it was wrong then and it’s wrong now. Let the pendulum continue to swing, and when it comes to rest, maybe, finally, this time, nurture will have taught men that they’ve gotten away with it for the last time.

     

    *This is a topic to cover at another time, but briefly, I do think that we need to have a discussion about how to define and approach actions that are inappropriate but do not rise to the level of harassment, abuse, or assault. And that said, we need to work on reducing inappropriate behavior too, but in a way that is educational rather than accusatory. I believe that elevating the merely inappropriate to the realm of assault can serve to minimize actions that truly rise to that definition.

  • Thoughts on Charlottesville

    Here, in no particular order, are some of my thoughts as I follow the news on the white supremacist rally, protests, counter-protests, and violence that happened last night and today in Charlottesville, Virginia.

    • No matter what they may argue to the contrary, “white nationalists” are white supremacists. We need to call them what they are. No group that chants “Jew will not get rid of us” and carries Nazi flags can deny that they are a supremacist group.
    • Donald Trump (his election, and the man himself) has given these people the sense that it is safe for them to air their views publicly, but bear in mind that it is not just Trump that is to blame. These horrific racist and nationalist ideas have existed for centuries, as we all well know. What is the most horrifying about the current moment is that the white supremacists feel empowered to take their ideas public, and THAT can be placed squarely at the feet of Trump and his allies (Bannon, Miller, Fox News, Breitbart, et al).
    • That Trump, as of this writing (August 12, 2017, 6:00 PM PDT) has yet to specifically condemn white supremacy, and has only vaguely condemned violence “on all sides” tells you that he cares more about not alienating his base than he does about the rights, dignity, safety, and existence of millions of Americans. White supremacists, online and in the media, are interpreting his vague statements as tacit support for what they are doing. In response to one of Trump’s tweets (aside: I still can’t believe that THIS is how the US president is making public statements), white supremacist David Duke tweeted this: ““I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”
    • White supremacists are still a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the entire US population. They were outnumbered at least two to one by counter-protesters. This is a good thing – but not good enough. That these people feel comfortable showing their faces in public in support of their racist views is frightening. And being few in number does not mean that we should ignore the problem. Plane crashes are also infrequent, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do everything we can to prevent them.
    • Sadly, condemnations of white supremacists are interpreted by members of the group as shutting down their right to free speech and assembly, and a justification of why they need to fight for their views. These people literally believe that they are being oppressed, repressed, and discriminated against because they are white. As absurd and abhorrent as this view is, they truly believe it, and the more we condemn it, the more justified they feel. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to condemn – we definitely should! But it also means that this problem is much more difficult to solve than simple condemnation.
    • I’m not going to get into the reasons that white supremacists feel the way they do. My normal approach, as any reader of this blog knows, is to look at things anthropologically – which means using cultural relativity to try to see things from the insider’s point of view. Although I do think one of the keys to changing these hateful ideas is to try to understand them, the idea of doing that here makes my whole body ache. Still, I firmly believe, as in my point above, that simply telling people who think this way that they are wrong is not going to work, and may be actively harmful. I’ve never seen someone change their mind because someone else told them that they are an asshole.
    • White people need to actively acknowledge what is going on here. I know many people get defensive at the mention of white privilege, but we have to talk about it and acknowledge it. White privilege is what has made this protest and violence possible. As many elsewhere have already said, just try to imagine if this protest had been organized by any group of color.
    • Talking to our friends on social media is not going to help change this situation in the slightest. Studies have shown that most people live in silos with like-minded people. We can’t pat ourselves on the back for our horror and for posting something about it online. At the same time, sharing with like-minded friends helps us cope with our dismay, so I also don’t think we should feel bad about it. BUT: that shouldn’t be the stopping point. We need to find other ways to engage with this sort of thinking, even if it takes us out of our comfort zones. I already mentioned that just arguing with someone about it is more likely to reinforce what they already believe than it is to change their mind, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other actions we can take. At the moment, though, I’m not sure what they are. Minimally:
      • engage with your elected officials and urge them to support legislation that guarantees the rights of historically marginalized groups.
      • vote for people who do the same, especially if your elected officials are not already doing more than offering platitudes.
      • get to know people outside your silo, and practice engaging with them civilly if you find that you have disagreements. Some interesting preliminary research has shown that people are more likely to change their views when they talk to someone who is directly affected by a particular issue (e.g. someone who opposes gay marriage is more likely to change their mind after having a conversation with someone who is gay. Note that this must be CIVIL.).
      • show up for counter-protests if events like the one in Charlottesville are organized in your area.
      • work on acknowledging your privilege, if you have it – and then USE it in positive ways, since it will give you access that others don’t have (e.g. speak up if you witness abuse).

    I haven’t followed my usual rule of including links that support some of the things I’ve mentioned because I want to get this out there. I may update it later. There’s a lot more I could say, too – so there may be other posts to follow.

  • Forward March

    Forward March

    This is the first time I’ve posted since the election, but the final night of Barack Obama’s presidency seemed like a good time to write. Tomorrow morning, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will take the oath of office and be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. For me and for many others, this will be a dark day. Nothing about Trump’s behavior since election day, or the people he has chosen to surround himself with as Cabinet members and advisors, gives me any comfort about the next four years. That’s why on Saturday morning, I’ll be in San Diego participating in my local Women’s March on Washington. It’s also why I am doing something that many of my friends refuse to do, and watching tomorrow as Trump takes the oath of office.

    The most common reaction I’ve received regarding my intention to watch the inauguration is one of disbelief. Why, people are asking, would you want to watch? I have yet to find another person opposed to Trump who says they will be watching. I understand. But I feel compelled to watch. I wouldn’t put this same burden on others, but for me it feels like a moral obligation. I love my country, and I think Trump is going to do things that will harm many people not just here, but around the world. I’ve always been the kind of person who has hoped for the best but prepared for the worst, and by watching Trump take the oath, I am preparing for the worst. I need to see him make a sacred promise to our nation that I don’t expect him to keep. I need to be clear eyed in the face of the threat I believe he represents. I am prepared to keep watch on him from the very beginning, as hard as it may be, so I can be ready to act when he does harm. Bearing witness to a moment that will be so very difficult will help galvanize me to take action for justice, equality, and truth. I will be standing strong in the face of fear and looking the embodiment of that fear in the eyes. I will not cower or turn away or try to ignore it or pretend it isn’t happening. I will watch.

    I don’t expect others to feel the same way. And I definitely don’t think you have to watch the inauguration to take action against the injustices that I am sure are coming. But for me it will be a moment for steeling myself for what is to come. It will be the first step of my forward march.

  • Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

    Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

    Well, the worst has happened, and the United States has elected a xenophobic, misogynistic, bigoted, bullying, narcissistic, thin-skinned, ignorant and unqualified demagogue to the highest office in the land and the most powerful position in the world. As the title of this post implies, I feel like the guys at the end of Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, singing about the bright side of life while being crucified. If I weren’t so shocked and frightened about Donald Trump being President (a phrase I am still having a hard time saying), I would appreciate the Python-esque absurdity of it all. I have spent the last few days feeling a whirlwind of emotions, dominated by disbelief, fear, and anger. I have devoured dozens of articles, analyses, and think pieces. I have made multiple social media posts and left countless comments. I have talked and texted and commiserated and comforted with friends and family, all of us dizzy with the implications of Trump’s ascendancy. I have cried – hard. BUT: I have also felt my spine straighten, my eyes open, and my shock and fear harden into strength, action, and resolve. And as I always do, I have begun to apply all my training and studying of human cultural behavior into an analysis of how we got here and what I think we should do about it.

    I struggled with what I wanted to write for my first post in this new reality because my head was spinning with too many thoughts and ideas, all intertwined and fighting for my attention. But tonight, as I found some time to relax and attempt to quiet my thoughts, it came to me that maybe I should try to look on the bright side of life. Don’t get me wrong: I have no illusions about how fraught the next four years are going to be. But I do think that in amongst all the awful, it is smart to look at a few positives, no matter how small they might seem. So here, in no particular order, are a few things that give me some hope.

    1. Hillary won the popular vote by a margin of around two million, or about 1.5%. Of course, she lost the electoral vote, which is why Trump will be President. And sadly, the voter turnout was not very high. But I think the results of this election will galvanize progressives to turn out for the midterms in 2018, and change Democrats’ tendency to not show up at the polls in non-presidential election years. And, although the map showing Millennials alone would have elected Hillary turned out to be not quite true (it actually showed the results of a poll that was taken in October, and as we all know too well now, polls can be wrong!), in general, young folks vote progressive, and there are a lot of them. So, in both two and four years, I think we have reason to be optimistic.
    2. The election has awakened people to the huge political divisions that exist in this country. Now, if you weren’t already aware of this, you weren’t paying attention – but at the same time, the level of shock that many people are registering with Trump’s win tells me that many people have underestimated how deep the divide truly is. No one should have thought a Clinton victory was a sure thing. While I don’t blame anybody who feels shock and dismay, I am heartened by the immediate calls for activism that I see springing up. I’m not talking about protests (although as long as they remain peaceful, I find the protest to be a useful tool), but about people actually taking civic action to protect those things they hold dear that are threatened by Trump’s presidency. I don’t necessarily think that progressives were complacent, but maybe we were a little too confident. So if anything positive has come out of our shock, it’s that we are now awake, and we will fight.
    3. Gun company stocks have tanked. It’s true. Gun merchants were doing huge business during the Obama administration, since many people feared that gun rights were going to be restricted or taken away completely. As a result, people were buying guns like never before. Now, I’m not completely anti-gun (that is, I don’t think gun ownership should be illegal), but I do think we need more regulations on the gun market, and the idea of people stockpiling guns makes me VERY uneasy. With Trump in office, I suspect that fewer people will be buying guns, which is obviously what the stock market thought today. Whether this trend persists remains to be seen, but if it does, I think that’s a good thing.
    4. The alt-right is probably going to fail. The alt-right’s whole raison d’etre is fighting against what they perceive to be a globalist establishment. Well, now their anti-establishment, anti-globalist champion has been elected. Who are the misogynists and bigots and racists of Reddit going to rail against now that they can’t point fingers at the holder of the most powerful office in the world? This is likely to be bad news for Breitbart, Drudge, Infowars, and World Net Daily (I won’t link to them – they don’t need help from me). Sure, they’ll revel in their victory for a while, but if they can’t wax conspiratorial about Barack Hussein Obama, Killary Clinton, FEMA concentration camps, and the United States’ role in the globalist cabal to bring on the New World Order, then what will their purpose be? To be honest, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Steve Bannon, who was executive chairman of Breitbart before he became Trump’s campaign chairman (and potential Chief of Staff – sorry, I know this post is supposed to be about the positives, but shudder) is actually disappointed that Trump won and they won’t be able to launch Trump TV, Trump’s planned media company to compete with Fox News. In any case, without a secret gay Muslim Kenyan terrorist demon-possessed black man in the White House, who will the alt-right have to blame for their grievances?
    5. This one might be a little controversial, but out of all the alarming pledges Trump made in his plan for his first 100 days in office, there are actually a few that I’m okay with. First is his plan for infrastructure spending. He wants Congress to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure spending package. Interestingly, when Obama attempted to pass an infrastructure plan, Congress blocked him, and they’ve signaled that they may not be happy with Trump’s plan either. In general, though, the country needs to repair and boost its vital infrastructure such as roads and bridges, and depending on the specifics of Trump’s plan, I think this is a good thing. Trump may not have political experience, and his construction projects have not always gone as planned, but at least this is something he has experience with. Another thing I like in the 100-day plan is the call for a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service, as well as changes to foreign lobbying rules. Apparently lobbyists themselves think this is unlikely to happen as it would require Congressional action, but many lobbying and political reform groups support the idea. It’s not a perfect plan – or really, a plan at all since he hasn’t fleshed out how his bans would actually get passed – but if it actually happened it would be a good thing.

    So there you have it. I still think there is much, much, much, much more to be worried about than positive about. And trust me, this will not be my last word on the subject. But if this is our new reality, we might as well take a brief moment to give a whistle, and look on the bright side.

  • (R)anthropology Class: Revitalization Movements

    (R)anthropology Class: Revitalization Movements

    Around 1870, when colonization of the western United States by Europeans and their descendants was reaching its zenith, a movement that came to be known as the Ghost Dance began appearing in Native American communities. Taught by a Paiute spiritual leader named Wokova, the Ghost Dance was a ritual meant to cleanse the spirit, promote clean living, and reunite the living with the spirits of the dead. With the help of these spirits, the living would ultimately drive the white usurpers from the land; bring back the buffalo; usher in a time of peace, prosperity, happiness, and unity; and restore the ways of life that had been crushed by colonialism. As the Ghost Dance spread, it changed somewhat in form depending on the culture that adopted it; amongst the Lakota, it invoked the promise of a total transformation of society. Perceiving the Lakota’s wish for a new and better world as a threat, in 1890 the United States Army slaughtered at least 153 Lakota at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. Over time, the Ghost Dance slowly petered out, and although it is still practiced by a few tribes today, it is no longer with the expectation that adherence to the dance and its teachings will usher in a new era.

    Phenomena like the Ghost Dance are a part of what anthropologists call revitalization movements. Similar to millenarianism, revitalization movements generally spring up in times of extreme social unrest, such as colonialism, war, or government oppression of citizens or social groups. The purpose of the movement is to usher in a new type of society; restore social values that have been repressed or denied; or return life to the way it “used to be.” They generally involve a ritual component and special rules that are adhered to by the followers, and can sometimes manifest as cults. A modern example is the Heaven’s Gate cult, in which the followers believed that a spaceship was concealed in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet and was coming to pick them up to take them to a better life away from Earth on a heaven-like planet. Unfortunately, validating your ticket to board this heavenly ship meant forsaking your life on Earth – via suicide. In 1997, 38 cult members dosed themselves with phenobarbitol, applesauce, and vodka, and left this earthly plane. I’m going to go ahead and assume that they did NOT make it to heaven’s gate.

    Sometimes revitalization movements are successful. There’s an excellent argument that Christianity began as a revitalization movement. Unhappy with Roman rule, many citizens throughout the Roman empire looked to prophets who promised a better life; Jesus of Nazareth was just one of those prophets, but he turned out to be one of the few with tremendous staying power. He promised that by following his teachings, a better life could be had – both in this life AND in the next one. In fact, that is the trick of Christianity’s longevity: unlike the Ghost Dance, which promised change in this life, Jesus promised the ultimate reward in the heavenly afterlife. Why is that important? Because unlike the Ghost Dance, where people eventually began to realize that the change they sought was not coming, no one has returned from heaven to either refute or verify Jesus’ teachings – therefore, people can keep believing because there’s no one around to say otherwise. (I realize this is a gross oversimplification of Christianity overall, but I believe it is key to why it is still around after 2,000+ years; and the same is true for all religions that promise rewards after this life or in the next one.) What of more recent religions like Mormonism and Scientology, or even New Age spiritualism? I think there are at least some aspects of revitalization movements in all of them.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about revitalization movements recently, because I think it provides a basis for analyzing not just recent religious movements and cults but the sometimes hysterical and irrational adherence of people to their particular political ideologies. We are living in a time, believe it or not, that is actually safer and more peaceful than any other time in history (an idea explained in great detail by many authors, but to great effect by both Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature and Michael Shermer’s bookThe Moral Arc). BUT (and it’s a big but): people feel less safe. We feel threatened by conflict and violence. We fear the loss of our most cherished values. We see economic inequality, a loss of stability, a lack of trust, an increase in terrorism, a deepening of racial and cultural divides, greater political differences, more apathy, more protesting, more rioting, more destruction, more fear… In short, we see the things that the Indians saw during colonialism and that the Jews saw under the Romans. So it comes as no surprise to me that, in this election season, some people’s adherence to their candidate’s values has taken on the quality of a revitalization movement. And I admit that I’m a partisan, but I feel that this is more evident amongst conservatives – and particularly among Donald Trump’s supporters. Without doubt, it also exists amongst the die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters, or the third-party supporters of Jill Stein (Green) and Gary Johnson (Libertarian), but it seems to have reached a fever pitch on the far right of the Republican party. And it makes sense: the very dictionary definition of conservative is “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.” And is that not exactly what Trump is proposing with his slogan, “Make America Great Again“? The Ghost Dance movement sought the same thing: a return to previous conditions.

    I believe the revitalization movement concept also applies to terrorist groups such as ISIS (see here for other names for the group; some have started using the term Da’esh or Daesh specifically because ISIS doesn’t like it). Clearly, ISIS wants to see a different kind of world and intends to usher it in not through a dance or by committing suicide and boarding a spacecraft, but by terrorizing the world into accepting their extreme interpretation of Islam (one which, I am compelled to note, is not shared by the vast majority of Muslims). ISIS adherents tend to be disillusioned young men who feel ignored or unappreciated by their families, friends, and/or cultures, so they are easily drawn in to ISIS’ promise of a new and better life. I can’t think of a much better description of a revitalization movement.

    So why all these revitalization movements now? Some of these ideas deserve posts of their own, but in general, I think there are a few things at play. For one, human groups tend to operate at maximum efficiency with maximum communal cooperation at the hunter-gatherer level, when everybody knows everybody else, and the survival of the group and the individual are inextricably intertwined (I wrote more about this idea, and the overall concept of cultural collapse, here). With global population fast approaching 7.5 billion people, the hunter-gatherer model is all but extinct (there are still foraging groups, but they are heavily influenced by the modernized world in which they live). Plus, as noted above, people are living in fear, and it’s a fear that I think is massively exacerbated by the internet and social media and the ease of global information exchange we now have. We hear about everything that happens now, good and bad, which leads to the mistaken assumption that bad things happen more than they actually do. Finally (and trust me, this paragraph is not meant to be exhaustive of all the potential causes of revitalization-movement-like behavior), we are living at a time of economic and social inequality that has not been seen for generations. Many, if not most, historical revitalization movements have arisen in similar times. Put all this together, and we have no reason to be surprised that it’s happening again.