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  • Race and Privilege: Embracing Discomfort

    Race and Privilege: Embracing Discomfort

    I’ve written before about race. I focused on how race, as biology, is not real. But the events of the past few days [minutes, hours, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia…] make it painfully clear that race has tremendous relevance as a cultural, social, political, and economic construct. In that sense, in the sense of how we use it to treat each other differently, whether we think we do so or not, it is real in a way that is much more powerful than biology.

    I could go into a long history lesson here, but others have done it before me, and done it better. There are discussions about how racism and inequality are a result of centuries of White colonial powers justifying the theft of indigenous lands, the pillaging and raping of Native cultures, and the brutal enslavement of Native peoples. These crimes required defining indigenous peoples as inferior, savage, and less than fully human. Skin color became the proxy marker for subhuman status, and thus a justification for dominance, subjugation, and ultimately, the inequalities that we still wrestle with, centuries removed from the origins of colonial capitalism. These are truths that I now accept without a second thought. Still, I was talking with a friend today, trying to ease the physical weight I was feeling in my head and chest, and I realized that I am one of the lucky ones. I have been exposed to ideas, critical theory, discussion, literature, and debate on structural inequality, systemic racism, political economy, identity, intersectionality, hegemony, ideology, and more. Even if I am not a specialist in all these areas, I know more than most; maybe that’s why I bear the weight of my privilege so heavily. I know all these things, and yet my privilege is still something I take for granted until something happens to make me take it out, gaze at it, grapple with it, and try to find ways to use it for good.

    “We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to overempower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one’s race or sex.” – Peggy McIntosh

    I don’t want to make this post about me; my struggle with these ideas is nothing compared to the struggle of those who live without the privilege I so often take for granted. This post is about how, maybe, others can recognize their privilege. This is a very difficult thing for a lot of White people to do. We naturally become defensive. We want to believe that we aren’t complicit in the structures that allow us to move through life taking things for granted that others can’t. We don’t like the word privilege; it smacks of something unearned and undeserved, the indulgence given to a spoiled child. But in the context of White privilege, that’s not what the word means. It means something that we are lucky to have, and we are privileged because not everybody has it. If you want a full account of the idea of White privilege, read this classic paper by Peggy McIntosh. McIntosh discusses the concept, then lists several examples. If you are White, it’s illuminating to go through the list and feel recognition slowly dawning. If you are a person of color, I suspect you feel the same recognition, but from the other side of the coin. Not all of these examples will apply to everybody, but here are a few directly from McIntosh’s piece:

    1. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
    2. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
    3. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
    4. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
    5. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.
    6. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more less match my skin.

    And one of my own: I can get stopped for a traffic violation and not fear for my life.

    “[White people] move through a wholly racialized world with an unracialized identity (e.g. white people can represent all of humanity, people of color can only represent their racial selves). Challenges to this identity become highly stressful and even intolerable.” – Robin DiAngelo, Huffington Post

    Maybe you read these and think, yeah, ok; that’s true for me, but that doesn’t make me a racist. Maybe not; but racism doesn’t just mean individual discrimination and stereotyping. And that leads us to another subject just as tricky as privilege, if not more. White people don’t want to acknowledge the privilege of their race, and they definitely don’t want to acknowledge complicity in structural racism. And I agree! It’s incredibly uncomfortable to feel like you have to defend yourself just because you happen to belong to a particular race… but there, again, is another example of White privilege; generally, White people don’t have to defend themselves based on race. I’m talking about structural racism – the kind of racist ideology that is ingrained in us from birth. It’s the hegemony that we internalize as the natural order of things: some people are just better than others because they work harder, they try harder, they want it more. It’s the dismissal of the idea that maybe the system itself is structured so that we don’t all start from the same place, and as White people, we don’t want to have to acknowledge that. It takes away from the narrative that the hard worker is the one who wins; if people of other races really wanted to, they could work harder and get a better education and a better job and get off the welfare treadmill. We make it a defect of personality or upbringing or, yes, biology, because it allows us to keep on ignoring the reality that the playing field is not level. Again, these notions are deeply ingrained and not explicit in our thoughts, so we can go about our lives feeling secure that we aren’t perpetuating a racist system. But that is the very epitome of racist hegemony – it makes implicit co-conspirators of us all. You don’t have to be classically racist to be part of a racist system.

    In case you are having a defensive reaction reading this and thinking but I’m not a racist! (and I wouldn’t blame you), try to honestly answer these questions to see if just maybe you’ve internalized some structural racist hegemony (and bear in mind that your reaction might be deeply buried and not explicit, so think hard about your unconscious gut reactions and assumptions before assuming your answer to these questions is no):

    1. Have you ever crossed the street when a person of color is approaching from the other direction? If you didn’t cross the street, did you consider it? Were you nervous as you passed the person?
    2. Do you assume that Black mothers are raising their children alone and are on public assistance?
    3. Have you ever laughed over Black names, or said things like “It’s like they name their kids by grabbing a handful of Scrabble tiles!”?
    4. When you read about a random shooting or hear about it on the news, do you automatically picture a person of color?
    5. When someone talks about their doctor or their lawyer, do you automatically picture a White person?
    6. Have you ever seen a woman in a hijab or a man in a turban, and had the word “terrorist” pop into your head, even involuntarily?
    7. Do you get annoyed when a phone system asks you, “para Espanol, oprima numero dos”?
    8. Are you interested or concerned when you hear about the murder of a white person in  your community, but when you hear about the death of a person of color, you aren’t surprised? If you aren’t surprised, do you assume that the death involved gang violence or criminal activity by the dead person?
    9. Do you dismiss the ideas of Black people who use Black Vernacular English (what some people call Ebonics) and assume they speak that way because they aren’t educated?
    10. Do you feel relieved or justified when a Black person speaks out about trouble in their own community, because it makes you feel like you were right all along?

    Again, let me be clear: answering yes to any of the above does not make you a racist in the KKK fashion, or even in the fashion of your bigoted great uncle. And you may well have that initial reaction but then catch it and feel uneasy or bad about having it in the first place. And it’s not your fault. This is what hegemonic structural racism does to us – it implants these ideas and naturalizes them. Stopping those reactions is hard, and sometimes they come from a place so deep within that we barely register them. But recognizing and grappling with them is the only way to dismantle them.

    “…saying “all lives matter” as a direct response to “black lives matter” is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.” – Kevin Roose, Fusion

    I am writing this because I think it’s important for White people to do the difficult work of recognizing the system we are a part of, recognizing that we occupy a privileged position within it, and recognizing that we have implicit racial biases that make us complicit in the system. One more example of White privilege and structural racism: responding to #blacklivesmatter with #alllivesmatter. OF COURSE ALL LIVES MATTER. Black Lives Matter is not trying to say they don’t – they are saying Black lives matter ALSO. And until Black lives matter, it won’t be true that all lives matter. It’s the same as saying “But I’m not a racist!” Maybe so, but that doesn’t solve the problem of racism, does it? It’s a defensive reaction of privilege to push back at a community by saying “But what about MY life” when you don’t have to live in a world where your life seems to matter less.

    If you are White and this post makes you uncomfortable… I’m sorry for that, but I’m also glad. Since the horrific events of the past few days in Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas, I’ve seen more pieces than I ever have before about how White people, if they really want to help, need to feel uncomfortable. As some of these articles point out, it is not the responsibility of people or communities of color to tell White people how to help or be allies. It’s up to us to do the hard work. I’m just as uncomfortable as anybody else, even with my years of exposure to ideas that are going to be new, foreign, and even frightening to others. That discomfort – it’s growing pains. It’s the necessary strain of working to be a better person who is helping to build a better world.

  • Poli-critical Thinking

    Poli-critical Thinking

    I’ve been off the blogging radar for a while. It’s not that I haven’t been inspired to write – I have ideas all the time. But I’ve been spending too much time in the noise. There are so many things to read, so many voices clamoring to be heard over the din, and sometimes I got lost and overwhelmed with it all and I despair that there will ever be any understanding. I know I have friends who read my posts, and I appreciate it, but when I started this blog I nurtured secret hopes that others might read it, too. I have no desire to be well-known for what I write; my goal is to simply to share ideas in the hopes that others might find them useful. And in spite of my calling these posts “rants,” I also had (have?) hopes that I can hear other people’s ideas, even if they disagree with me. I feel strongly about many things but I have never expected other people to automatically agree with everything I say, or worse, be afraid that if they challenge me I’ll respond with rudeness or condescension. I have been guilty of arrogance and pretension, but I’ve gotten better at recognizing those traits in myself, partly through writing this blog. I don’t want to be a smug liberal, the type of ideologue who assumes that because of education and experience I’m somehow better qualified than other people to offer my ideas. And I don’t want to make broad generalizations about people I disagree with, either. It is too easy to believe that people who are anti-vaccine, for example, are crazy or stupid or brainwashed rather than sincere people with sincerely held, even if mistaken, beliefs. I am strongly pro-vaccine, and the science is on my side – but has anybody ever won an argument where they started out by saying “You’re a terrible parent because you won’t vaccinate your kids”? This is why I am such a fierce advocate of critical thinking skills. And yes, duh, everybody thinks critical thinking is important, and most people probably consider themselves to be good critical thinkers already. But in reality, it takes constant practice to keep from getting tangled in the thorns of fallacious thinking.

    So why have I decided to write a post now, after being silent since January? Because I want to talk about critical thinking in online commentary about politics. I’ve considered writing posts about specific political topics, but I made a sort of informal decision to just stay away from politics during this election cycle. I don’t expect to change anybody’s mind about who to vote for. The few things I’ve posted on Facebook have mostly been my dismayed reactions to Donald Trump, or shared articles that address misconceptions about certain candidates or their ideas. And full disclosure, for the sake of this post: I voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary, though ideologically I agree with much of what Bernie Sanders represents (and I have no space here to talk about why I decided not to vote for him in spite of that agreement). But as far as I remember I have not posted anything online exhorting friends to vote for Hillary or Bernie. Even the things I’ve posted about Trump have been mostly preaching to the choir, and the few online friends I have who are pro-Trump are certainly not going to change their minds based on anything I have to say. But if you are going to post about politics, the more you avoid logical fallacies, the stronger your argument will be. So here, in no particular order, are some of my observations and suggestions about how to think poli-critically.

    Facts. I’ve ranted about facts before, so I won’t get too detailed here, but people tend to confuse facts and opinions. Here’s the deal: a fact is a verifiable truth. An opinion is a judgement about a fact. So, politically, it is a fact that Hillary Clinton (whether through her campaign or the Clinton Foundation) has taken donations from Monsanto. It is an opinion that this makes her an unfit candidate for president. It is a fact that Monsanto manufactures the herbicide glyphosate; it is an opinion that this makes Monsanto an “evil” corporation. Don’t confuse the two. You can develop your own opinions, but you do not get to make up your own facts. (On a related note, I hope to soon write a post that’s been percolating in my brain for quite some time about Monsanto, glyphosate, the organics industry, and genetically modified crops. I have my issues with Monsanto, but glyphosate and GM technology are not among them).

    Ad hominem. Explained at length in this post, in politics ad hominem manifests itself almost exclusively as name-calling and insults. As I asked above, has anybody ever changed your mind by calling you an idiot? And even if you aren’t strictly trying to change somebody’s mind, have you had any interest in continuing a dialogue that involves name-calling and insults? Differences of opinion can be illuminating and constructive – and sometimes you actually do change your – or somebody else’s! – mind. That won’t happen if you engage in ad hominem.

    Fundamental attribution error. You can read about this fallacy in more detail here. In politics, this tends to manifest itself as a sort of ideological tribalism: me and my group are right because we are more knowledgeable or ethical or clear-headed or realistic. The other side is wrong because they are uninformed or ignorant or brainwashed or bigoted. You make right choices because you are smart and ethical; they make wrong choices because they don’t know any better or because they are morally flawed (this is also ad hominem). To avoid this error, it is wise to bear in mind that people with different political ideas think YOU are the one who is uninformed, etc. Consider that they may actually have a logical, rational, and well-thought-out basis for their beliefs, even if you don’t agree (see fact vs. opinion above). Obviously this isn’t always going to be true of another’s opinion – but it may also not be true of  YOUR opinion.

    Confirmation bias (aka the echo chamber). This is one of the biggies, which is why it has made multiple appearances in my writing. This is the classic human tendency to only remember the things that support our points of view, and to forget or reject everything else. It is what causes people to stop looking as soon as they find what confirms what they already think. People also have a tendency to surround themselves with like-minded people and sources of information, which is why confirmation bias creates an echo chamber of self-fulfilling opinions. It happens to all of us, all the time. Do you believe that Hillary Clinton is innocent of anything other than poor decision-making regarding her email server? You can find all the articles you want to support that opinion. Do you believe that the Democratic party’s elite stole the primary from Bernie Sanders? You can find all the articles you want to support that idea, too. And when someone points out an article or a set of ideas that refutes your opinion, you can reject it for any number of reasons to resolve the cognitive dissonance and continue confirming your bias.

    The Genetic Fallacy. One of the most common reasons to reject an alternative point of view is to impugn the source. This is an example of the genetic fallacy, wherein you reject or accept an argument based on its origins rather than on its merits. So in the case of politics, if an article in The New York Times points out Donald Trump’s many lies and inconsistent statements, a Trump supporter can reject it because it comes from a paper that is generally considered to be liberal. I have to say I find it highly amusing that people of all political stripes will use the epithet “lamestream media” to lambaste and reject any article with which they disagree. And the genetic fallacy works the other way when you use it to lend credibility to a source. This has echoes – pun intended! – of the echo chamber, because we tend to seek out the sources we already agree with. So to avoid this thinking error, rather than accept or reject a source because of where or who it comes from, weigh the argument on its actual merits. Sometimes even the sources we trust are wrong, and the ones we usually reject are right! I admit that this is one of the hard ones for me – I want to believe in the credibility of my go-to sources, but I have made it a habit to fact-check against multiple sources before forming a solid opinion.

    I’m going to stop here for now, but I may add to this list in a later post. I have no illusions about this little post making any difference to anybody, but it feels good getting it off my chest. And I make no claim whatsoever to being immune from these same mistakes, but I have made a conscious and continuing effort to be aware of them in my thinking and my writing. It’s why I continue to engage, civilly and respectfully, with the people with whom I disagree (although I generally won’t tolerate name-calling). It’s why I can debate somebody on politics or culture in one post, and post a happy face on a picture of that same person’s kids in another one. It’s why I teach anthropology. And it’s why, after being careful to avoid errors in my thinking as much as possible, I will ultimately reject certain ideas and embrace others, and defend my point of view logically but passionately. If I do come across as smug or condescending at times, well – that’s just something else to work on, and I have no doubt that this political season will give me plenty of opportunities.

  • Conspiracism

    Conspiracism

    As we begin a new year and approach a presidential election, I find myself wondering if the polarizing ideological conflicts that convulse our nation are going to become more extreme. I have read articles talking about how people used to be able to differ politically without also, apparently, hating each other. Yet today’s ideological differences are expressing themselves much less as reasoned disagreements than they are as vitriolic and insult-laden shouting matches, whether between televised talking heads or anonymous keyboard warriors. Rather than engaging in civil and open-minded debate, people align themselves with one position and cling to it ferociously, even in the face of rational arguments and clear facts to the contrary. I believe much of this has to do with the double-edged ease with which information now flows to people from so many different sources. I say double-edged because for every factual piece of information, there is a converse piece of utter nonsense, and because people are so easily swayed by their own confirmation bias (and I am not immune!) they find what they seek and then guard their bit of “proof” as tenaciously as a mother bear guarding her cubs.

    One of the reasons I keep this blog is because I am practicing being a better critical thinker. No one is immune from logical fallacies, but by writing about them (and, I hope, making them familiar to others), I hope to keep them at the forefront of my mind when I am confronted by new information and, especially, differences of opinion. I am just as likely as anybody else to scoff at a headline or article that does not align with what I already (want to) believe; but with practice, I am learning to recognize these errors and try to overcome them. So, I try to remember to fact-check ideas even if they support my point of view. I explore further when I am confronted with information that refutes what I already believe. I am especially cautious about sources that I know to be ideologically aligned with what I already think – in other words, just because an article comes from Mother Jones or Think Progress or Vox, I am still responsible for approaching it critically. There are certain sources I have stopped consulting, even though they purport to be progressive or liberal, because I have found with investigation that they are exaggerating, distorting, or omitting the facts. No side is blameless when it comes to this practice, so you always have to be cautious. Of course, when a preponderance of the evidence supports a point of view, like any good scientist I am going to be supportive of that view. This is simple enough when dealing with factual information, but less so when it comes to opinions and interpretations. Still, if you have the facts to support the opinion, the ground becomes pretty solid. And, I am more than happy to debate with people who can logically and rationally employ (sometimes the same) facts and come up with a different conclusion. That is what good civil discourse is all about.

    But now for the crux of this post: people whose beliefs in support of their ideologies have become so irrational and paranoid that no amount of countering factual information will possibly sway them. This way of thinking is called conspiracism, in contrast with rationalism. Do I mean to imply that conspiracism is irrational? Absolutely – but don’t try telling a conspiracist that. Just like belief in the supernatural, conspiracism is not subject to logical testing because there is always an answer to your rational counter-argument. As I noted above, every person is prone to using logical fallacies, but conpiracism elevates it to an art form. No lapse of logic is off-limits in defense of the conspiracy. You have a news account or article that refutes the conspiracist’s argument? That’s from the lame-stream media – you can’t trust them! Ask the conspiracist for factual proof in support of their hypothesis? I can’t show you – THEY are powerful and THEY don’t want us to know! Question the validity and objectivity of the conspiracist’s source? Of course s/he isn’t affiliated with a university or research institution or respected media outlet – OTHER people got rid of them because they were threatened by the truth s/he discovered! Just like people defending their belief in God, conspiracists have an answer for everything. Here are a few other characteristics of your typical conspiracist, courtesy of Michael Shermer’s wonderful book Why People Believe Weird Things (1997, p. 206):

    1. Absolute certainty they have the truth.
    2. America is controlled to a greater or lesser extent by a conspiratorial group. In fact, they believe this evil group is very powerful and controls most nations. (My addition: or, the conspiratorial group may be the government itself).
    3. Open hatred of opponents. Because these opponents (actually “enemies” in the extremists’ eyes) are seen as a part of or sympathizers with “The Conspiracy,” they deserve hatred and contempt. (My addition: the contempt often takes the form of the epithet “sheeple,” to describe people who aren’t “smart enough” to recognize the conspiracy – they are sheep).
    4. Little faith in the democratic process. Mainly because most believe “The Conspiracy” has such influence in the U.S. government, and therefore extremists usually spurn compromise.
    5. Willingness to deny basic civil liberties to certain fellow citizens, because enemies deserve no liberties.
    6. Consistent indulgence in irresponsible accusations and character assassination.

    It’s no coincidence that at least five of these characteristics seem to apply to that idol of the far right, Donald Trump! (The only one I’m not sure of is number 2.) But at the same time, I want to be clear that conspiracism is not limited to those on the political right. Whether you are anti-vaccine, anti-GMO, or anti-fur, or a Birther, a Truther, or a Holocaust denier, there is enough conspiracism to cover the entire spectrum of ideologies. We can even include non-political conspiracists like flat-Earthers! Not every conspiracist has all the characteristics listed above, but it only takes adherence to a few. And these aren’t the only typical characteristics. Conspiracists believe that they are special. They, in amongst all the sheeple, have been able to resist the lies. Only they have the mental toughness and intelligence to recognize the truth. They are immune to the conspiracy, and they may even be in danger because of their special knowledge – which is why they really can’t tell you how they know what they know. They are members of an exclusive club of the super-smart, the super-aware, and the super-prepared. They can’t be fooled. Just imagine what a powerful feeling this must be, and maybe it starts to make sense why some people become adherents of conspiracism.

    I don’t really have a point to end on here. Mostly, I’m dismayed at how widespread at least some degree of conspiracism has become. And let me stress that I’m not saying that I think every person who disagrees with me is a conspiracist! In fact, most of the people with whom I discuss opposing ideas do not fall into this category; or at least, they only exhibit one or two of the characteristics from the list. And I do have reason for hope. I frequently change my stance in light of new information, and I know other people do, too. Just this morning, I read this wonderful quote from one of my science heroes, Alfred Russel Wallace:

    Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly. To expect the world to receive a new truth, or even an old truth, without challenging it, is to look for one of those miracles that do not occur.

    A few days ago, a friend of mine and I civilly debated someone on her Facebook feed about an issue we feel passionately about (appropriation of Native American culture). He wasn’t buying our arguments, but the next day he posted on the original thread to say he’d done some reading and research of his own, and he had changed his mind. Moments like this give me hope – and I think when people are approached with civility and friendliness, when they aren’t insulted or bullied or accused but are instead invited to spell out their differences – well, when that happens, miracles CAN occur.

  • Us/Not Us

    Us/Not Us

    As I write this, over 100 people have been reported killed in Paris in multiple terrorist attacks. The news is jamming my social media feed and my RSS feed. It’s on every major television station. It’s being continuously updated on news websites. It’s a terrible tragedy. I’m not writing this to minimize it. I am upset and dismayed and disheartened and grieved by it – but I have a few observations to make.

    Who noticed the story from yesterday, November 12, about the suicide attacks that killed 41 and injured over 200 in Beirut, Lebanon? Did any of you change your profile picture on Facebook to a Lebanese flag, or post a photo of a Beirut landmark in tribute to the victims? Did you know that on October 27 in Syria, 115 people were killed? On October 25, it was 161 people. On September 18, it was 255. These are typical days for Syria. The death toll in the Syrian civil war so far is over 250,000. Anyone posting those status updates in their feed? And how about the rash of stabbings in Israel? On October 13, three people were killed and over 20 were wounded. Other attacks have occurred since then. So, where are the Israeli flags on social media?

    I’m not stupid. I know there’s a war in Syria and daily casualties are to be expected. I know that Lebanon experiences frequent unrest, and bombings and attacks there are sadly common. I know that the Palestinians and the Israelis are acting out generations’ worth of struggle and conflict, and attacks and violence are frequent there, too. I’m not trying to say that because bad things happen everywhere, every day, that we should just shrug our shoulders at what has happened today in France. Not at all. But I do want to observe that when it happens to people who we regard as being more like us – well, then we sit up and take notice. When political violence happens in places we don’t expect it to – places we think of as safe – then we react with shock. When terror happens in western or northern Europe (not so much in eastern Europe, though) we feel more connected to it. I’ve done it too – I made a drawing in tribute after the Charlie Hebdo attack last January. I posted it to Twitter and Facebook. I felt connected to France in their shock and grief because I felt an empathy that stretched back to September 11, 2001. So why don’t we react in the same way to the daily stream of violence in other places?

    I have some tentative answers. We become accustomed to violence happening to the Other. We don’t empathize, generally, with people whose countries and cultures – and, let’s face it, oftentimes colors – don’t match our own. It doesn’t mean we don’t sympathize, but we’ve become inured to violence and unrest in the non-Western world. We think of it as happening to “those people” – again, not in an unkind or dismissive way, but in a way that speaks to the differences we perceive between us. It’s a classic, unconscious us/not us mentality – an artifact of Western, and particularly US, hegemony.

    Is it any different when we shrug or tsk at reports of a drive-by shooting of a young person of color in a gang-heavy neighborhood, yet hold candlelight vigils for a white victim of violence? Is it any different when a sex worker or a homeless person is found dead in an alley and gets a few lines, if that, in the local paper, vs. when a person with a job and family is murdered and gets front page headlines? Is it any different when a working class mom reports her daughter missing and is told she’s probably a runaway, vs. an upper class family’s missing child who gets immediate media coverage and police attention?

    It is hard for us to feel empathy for the so-called Other, but the Others are human, too. We’d be exhausted by grief and shock if we reacted to every act of violence the way we react to what happens to people like us – the way we are reacting to the attacks in France now. But we have to remember to feel something. We have to remember that the suffering of the outcast, the minority, the underprivileged, the uneducated, the tossed away – is of equal import to the suffering of the powerful, the privileged, the lucky, the elite, and everyone in between. And the suffering and death and terror experienced by the Other – the people not like us – is no different than the suffering and the terror experienced by those like us. I grieve for France. I grieve for Lebanon. I grieve for Syria. I grieve for Israel and Palestine. I grieve for us all.

  • (R)anthropology Class: Cultural (Mal)adaptation

    (R)anthropology Class: Cultural (Mal)adaptation

    There are about as many different definitions of culture as there are cultural anthropologists. Much ink has been spilled by people attempting to refine the concept to make it account for all the detail and nuance of the human experience. In my classes, though, I don’t have that kind of time, so we keep things simple: culture is the ideals, values, and standards of behavior shared by a group of people. I spend most of the semester explaining and illustrating how this simple definition can encompass everything from the most extraordinarily complex group behaviors at the macro level to the smallest, most (seemingly) insignificant behaviors at the individual level. There is a reason that cultural anthropologists choose a specialty; it is impossible to be an expert in the culture of everything.

    I could write pages and pages on this, but the point of this post is not to exhaustively analyze the concept of culture. Instead, I want to discuss the broad strokes of what defines a successful culture, and then talk about what happens when cultures start to break down – that is, when they become maladaptive. First, a few main points about the general defining characteristics of culture:

    • Culture is shared. This means that everybody within a particular cultural group has internalized the same ideals, values, and standards of behavior  The shared nature of culture also means, vitally, that we are able to predict what other members of our cultural group are likely to do in a given situation. It’s like driving – imagine how terrifying it would be if we had no idea what the person in the next lane was about to do as we whizzed past each other at 70+ miles per hour in our 3,000 pound glass, metal, plastic, and hot fluid-filled machines! But we drive with no fear most of the time because we can (usually) safely predict that the other drivers are going to follow the same rules that we follow. The rules of culture operate in much the same way.
    • Culture is learned. Through the process of enculturation, we are taught what the shared rules of our culture are by our parents, family members, teachers, peers – basically, by every person we encounter, whether intimately as a parent or fleetingly as a stranger. Obviously, as children, we don’t know all of the rules yet – which is why we chuckle with amusement when a toddler runs naked across a public beach, but gasp in shock when an adult does it. By the time we are young teens we have learned all the basic rules.
    • Culture is symbolic. This is best illustrated through the example of language, although almost every aspect of culture is symbolic. Language is a system of arbitrary sounds that, through learning and sharing, we all agree serve as stand-ins for particular concepts. There is nothing necessary or natural about the fact that the set of shared sounds we call English have to symbolize the things that they do; but English speakers have learned, collectively, what those sounds symbolize and can thus use them to communicate ideas about our world. Many other symbolic cultural systems – economic, religious, political, artistic – operate in the same way.
    • Culture is integrated. This means that all the parts of culture work together, like gears in a machine. No part is independent of the other parts. And if something changes in one of the parts, it can affect the rest of the machine. Sometimes these changes are small and have limited effect; sometimes they are enormous and have a tremendous effect throughout the machinery of culture. The recent recognition that gay marriage is legal is an example of a cultural change with far-reaching reverberations.
    • Culture is all-encompassing. This one is simple. It means that no aspect of human behavior is insignificant enough to not be a part of culture. Everything from the food we eat to the complexities of our economic system are a part of culture.
    • Finally, culture changes. This can happen through new inventions (how to use fire; agriculture; television; the internet) and it can happen through disagreements between members of the culture (again, gay marriage makes a good example). A lot of cultural change can be easily illustrated if you think in terms of generations. What kinds of things did you do as a teen or young adult that you thought were okay but that horrified your parents? I vividly remember my grandpa, who was born in 1920, bashing me on the head with an empty plastic soda bottle when he spied my first tattoo as I sat lounging by the pool. He was furious because to him, a woman with tattoos was a woman of loose morals. Today, tattoos are everywhere and are generally accepted. Remember, back in the Victorian era, a woman who showed her ankles (GASP!) was a woman of ill repute – a concept my grandpa would have laughed off but that his grandparents may well have taken seriously!

    These are the main characteristics of culture, but they don’t define whether or not a culture can be deemed successful. Fortunately, that definition is simple: a successful culture is one that meets the needs of most of its members in a satisfying way most of the time. Successful cultures meet every member’s need for water, food, shelter, and material resources. They develop strategies for the production, distribution, and consumption of resources. They provide guidelines for appropriate social interaction. They make sure that the members of the group are protected from threats and harm, from within and without. They have a system for making sure every person has a role to fill in the group’s maintenance, and for sanctioning members when they do not adequately fill their role. They are flexible in adapting to individual needs and find ways to accommodate difference. They find ways to comfort and soothe their members in the face of difficulty, tragedy, and doubt. They provide a story for how the culture came to be and where its members will go. They provide cohesion, organization, stability, and purpose. They ensure survival.

    A culture that is unable to secure these things for its members in a satisfying way most of the time is in danger. The danger of a maladapted culture can be acute; maladaptation can result in the extinction of the culture and its members. And that leads us to the problems of today. The adaptive strategies of culture have worked extraordinarily well for over 100,000 years – but they are strategies designed for small groups of people who know and depend upon one another. Cultures have certainly adapted to changes – bigger groups of people find ways to manage the larger population in a satisfactory way; hunter-gatherers who began to grow food and domesticate animals adapted to the new lifestyles of horticulture and pastoralism; even the larger populations that developed as intensive agriculture began to take hold still, mostly, managed to find ways to accommodate to change. But as history shows us, the larger and more technologically advanced human cultures have a frightening tendency to collapse as they become increasingly maladapted to the needs of the majority of the members.

    So the question is: is culture today – and now by culture I mean not just specific small groups or even countries, but global culture – adapting? Consider these symptoms of a maladapted culture:

    • crime and violence
    • mental illness
    • substance abuse
    • suicide
    • alienation
    • warfare
    • revolution

    Any of this sound familiar?

    I am convinced that our current culture is maladapted to the modern world. I am also convinced that this maladaptation is a driving force behind so much of the trouble we see today. Individuals are alienated. They don’t feel recognized or important. They see themselves as tiny gears in a vast, impersonal machine controlled by people who don’t care about them. Unlike in the small groups of prehistory or the close-knit small towns and villages of recent centuries, we have no possible way to know and recognize every single member of our group; it’s not uncommon for people to not even know their neighbors – I don’t know mine. We don’t have to depend upon each other as individuals any more, but we do have to depend on this enormous, teetering edifice that is struggling to fulfill the needs of nearly 7,500,000,000 – that’s 7.5 billion – people, and growing, with adaptations designed for populations that number in the hundreds. Is it any wonder that we have ISIS? Is it any wonder that we have global terrorism? Is it any wonder that we have refugees swarming all over the globe in the terrified hope that somewhere, they will find welcome and respite from hunger, hardship, and violence? It is any wonder that disaffected young men have formed online groups where they fantasize about exacting revenge on the women who ignore them? Is it any wonder that some people turn to guns and spray bullets at innocent people in public places? Is it any wonder that there are protests in our cities over systemic inequality, violence, oppression, and racism? Is it any wonder that there is a whole subculture of people who are preparing themselves for Armageddon? Is it any wonder that people turn to magical thinking and conspiracy theories? Is it any wonder that so many people are living in fear? I still believe most people are good. I still believe we can turn back from maladaptation and find a way. But it’s still not a wonder to me.

  • Daily Read: Tolerating the Intolerant

    Daily Read: Tolerating the Intolerant

    I struggle with deciding what to post as a Daily Read sometimes because I want the articles I highlight to have relevance beyond what may be in the news at the moment I post them; at the same time, current events are good opportunities for talking about more generally applicable issues.* To wit: I have written before about intolerance in a broad sense, and today I have an article to post about it that is specific. It relates to Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis and her refusal, even after a court order, to issue marriage licenses to anybody so she can avoid issuing them to gay couples. Davis claims she is acting under “God’s authority,” as gay marriage conflicts with her religious beliefs. I have zero sympathy for that argument for obvious reasons: religious convictions are not grounds for violating the law or refusing to serve the public in your capacity as a public official; we have a separation of church and state; and she is issuing a civil, not a religious, license, so issuing that license creates absolutely no personal religious conflict (I continue to be baffled about why people find it so hard to distinguish between civil marriage as recognized by the government and religious marriage as performed and sanctified by clergy; the government does not give a rat’s ass about how or where your ceremony is performed, but they still require a civil license if you want  your marriage to be recognized for the purpose of the legal rights and responsibilities it confers. No religious ceremony is necessary for that). So make no mistake: I think Kim Davis is legally wrong. I also think she is ethically wrong, but that’s really not the issue. I disagree with her religious beliefs, but I respect her right to hold them as an individual; however, she has crossed the line by illegally imposing her religious beliefs on others in her function as a public official.

    I could go on about why I disagree with Davis but that is not the point of today’s Daily Read. Although the article does not use the word tolerance, I think it is relevant, because it pinpoints an insidious and shameful side effect of Davis’ new-found notoriety: the punishment and intolerance of the internet. Many people who disagree with Davis, rather than making rational and legal arguments about why she is wrong to deny the marriage licenses, are instead making fun of her appearance. She is being mocked for her plain, old-fashioned clothing. She has been urged to learn to use and wear makeup. She has been called horrible names. She has been taken to task for her hypocrisy, given that she has been married multiple times and had a child out of wedlock (I agree that this is indeed hypocritical; however, Davis claims that her religious conversion occurred after her multiple marriages. Be this as it may, her history is still irrelevant to the legality or lack thereof of her actions. In other words, even if she had only been married once, was still married, and had her child within that marriage, it would still have no relevance to the legal question at hand).

    This has gotten long for an introduction to a Daily Read, so let me get to it: this article from Julie Compton in The Advocate points out the hypocrisy (and, not incidentally, the misogyny) of those who support gay marriage and likely see themselves as tolerant turning on Davis with ad hominem attacks and luxuriating in schadenfreude over her plain looks and checkered past. Again, I disagree strenuously with Davis and find her position to be legally, ethically, and logically untenable, but attacking her looks and personal life is just as intolerant and hypocritical as people are claiming Davis is – and I wish, fruitlessly, that we could be better than this.

    Op-Ed: Kim Davis Deserves Criticism But Not For Her Looks

    *Related: I am pondering a name change for this feature since it is rarely daily any more. I’m open to suggestions!