Ranthropologist

Tag: social control

  • Is It Okay to Laugh at People on the Interwebs?

    Is It Okay to Laugh at People on the Interwebs?

    There is a lot of funny stuff out there on the interwebs. Lots of the funny seems totally harmless, like ICanHazCheezburger, for example. How can anybody possibly be offended by funny pictures of cats? No one, I say. There is plenty more G-rated, totally inoffensive humor on the web where that came from. But then, there are sites like People of Walmart. This site dedicates itself to posting pictures of people taken in Walmart. Why is that funny? Well, because on any given day you can see pictures of people who look as if they have never had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of a mirror, or a shower, or any sense of propriety or self-awareness whatsoever. Bad clothes, bad hair, bad attitudes – People of Walmart has it all. The photos are accompanied by scathingly witty captions that have not even the slightest hint of empathy for the subjects. I find this website to be frequently laugh-out-loud funny.

    So here’s the question: is it okay for me to be amused by these pictures of folks who probably have no idea they are being posted and laughed about on a website? In spite of how jaw-droppingly awful or absurd some of these people look, they are still human beings. Is this the internet equivalent of pointing and laughing, just with the patina of anonymity to make it seem acceptable? Maybe I’m taking it too seriously, but I do wonder.

    Informal social control often takes the form of gossip, shame, or scorn. Within a tight-knit group, if an individual seems to deviate from what is socially acceptable, the other members of the group will let him or her know through their reactions. The reactions may be similar to what happens now when we look at people on the internet, and laugh, or gasp, or ridicule… but those reactions do not reach the intended targets. Gossip, in particular, has likely been around since human social groups first formed, but nowadays the gossip we share about those we see on a regular basis is supplemented by gossip about those we will never meet, e.g. celebrities. Yet the urge to gossip is the same with celebrities as it is with our regular group, because communication has changed to make it seem as if we have actual contact with the people we see on TV, in movies, and in magazines. It’s an ancient and long-adapted mechanism for helping people behave in ways that are the least disruptive to the group.

    So how does this all translate to me anonymously laughing at pictures of people on the internet? I have decided to conclude that my electronically-anonymized reaction is okay, because if I saw these people in real life, I would still laugh.

  • Culling the Herd

    Culling the Herd

    In simple societies with small, easily manageable populations (like hunter-gatherer groups or those that practice simple horticulture and animal husbandry), social control is a relatively simple thing to maintain. There are no written laws, no formal judiciary, and no law enforcement bureaucracy. Instead, there is gossip, shame, fear of the supernatural (e.g. gods, spirits, dead ancestors, witchcraft, or magic), and finally, ostracism, banishment, or death. The ways in which these social controls are applied varies from culture to culture, but the basic idea is the same: motivate people to follow the rules of the group. This is for the good of the individual as well as the good of the group, because when you are dealing with small populations, individual survival depends on group survival and vice versa. As populations get larger (as occurred inexorably with the advent and spread of intensive agriculture) social control becomes much more difficult. The same simple methods that work in small populations will often still work on a limited scale, e.g. within a family, neighborhood, church, or other small sub-group. But when it comes to the really big issues, bureaucracy becomes necessary. Rules must be codified into laws. Punishments must be defined, as well as the ways in which they are carried out. This is the system we are dealing with today.

    This system is not as well adapted to meeting our society’s needs, I think, as the ways of the hunters and gatherers were adapted to meeting their society’s needs. It is the best we can do when dealing with enormous groups of people and the myriad laws we are all tasked with obeying, but sometimes I think it would be simpler if we could just cull the herd. What I mean by this is, when a person’s guilt is without question, and the crime committed is one of violence against the group (and violence against an individual is also violence against the group), then we cull that person from the herd for everybody’s protection – not by locking them away, but by taking their life. The problem, morally, is that culling the herd requires absolute certainty of guilt. This was not a big problem in small groups – there was no need to convince a jury of peers, there was simply the evidence of that person’s behavior as witnessed by other members of the group, or even just the victim. The needs of the group outweighed the needs of the individual, and dangerous people were banished or killed outright.

    We are so disconnected from the lives of those around us, even though we are surrounded by other members of our group every day. They are in the cars on the freeway, in the checkout line, in the other houses on our block, but we have no idea what they are doing. This is not the way human beings have evolved to live, and so far we are not adapting very well to the needs of being members of enormous groups. Yet, we still feel the shock and outrage when a stranger in our community – someone we would never otherwise have met or even heard of – becomes a victim of one of those who should be culled from the herd. This, I think, is because we are still adapted to the belief that individual survival and group survival are linked. We still feel threatened in the same way that the members of a small group feel threatened when one of their own becomes dangerous. We feel the need to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and even other strangers from suffering the same horrible fate. How can we take that instinct, that adaptation, and use it to devise a better way of protecting the members of the group? How can we find better ways to recognize the individuals who must be culled? I’m not sure there is a way, but in the meantime, when we know with certainty that someone is dangerous, then I am all for culling the herd.

  • Questions for the Lilac Road Runner

    Questions for the Lilac Road Runner

    For the last three years or so, I have been driving to work through Valley Center, down Lilac Road and into Pala. Every day, almost without fail, when I turn onto the last leg of Lilac, I see an older man running along the road. Sometimes he is heading in my direction, and sometimes he is heading away, but he is always there. Regardless of the weather, he wears old-school running shorts (think Bill Clinton, only not so frighteningly tight and short), a loose-fitting cotton tank (the kind with the arm holes that gape almost to the waist), a baseball cap, and a pair of leather work gloves. Sometimes he is carrying the work gloves in one hand, but he is usually wearing them, whether the season is warm or cold. Sometimes, during the winter, he has a thick walrus-style mustache, but usually he is clean-shaven.

    This man fascinates me. I have never spoken to him, or even made eye-contact with him as I drive past, but I suspect he is as used to seeing me every morning as I am seeing him. I want to ask him some questions, like does he get bored running the same route every day? What’s up with the leather work gloves? Does he think I drive too fast down Lilac (it is a very curvy road, but I know it so well by now that I can navigate the curves at a high rate of speed)? Has he even noticed me at all?

    It may seem like a tangent, but this man gets me thinking about what we have any expectation to know about other people. For all I know this guy has a blog where he talks about his daily run, or his daily life, or conspiracy theories, or fruit salad recipes, or who knows? The real question is, how are our expectations of knowledge about other people’s lives being shaped by the new communicative strategies now at our fingertips? I suspect that I would be curious about the Lilac Road Runner regardless of the existence of the internet and its myriad possibilities for sharing information. But again, what are the limits? How much of this new ability to share and receive information about others is predicated on pre-existing cultural behaviors? In other words, did we already have this thirst for knowledge about others? I think the answer is an unequivocal yes. Gossip and information sharing about others is one of the most basic and key human adaptations for managing social relationships and ensuring group stability. But again, this raises even more questions, such as what responsibility do we have to manage social relationships with people we have never met, and probably never will? At what point will the benefits of information sharing become maladaptive (if ever)?

    I have no right to know anything about the life of the Lilac Road Runner, but I am curious nonetheless. I just fear that in this rapidly evolving new culture of instant information sharing, people will begin to believe that they do have the right to know. Blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, with their capability for instant updates, have the potential to create enormous changes in our social lives and in the social landscape in general. Will this ultimately be a good or a bad thing, or a combination of both? Maybe I should ask the Lilac Road Runner what he thinks.