The Root of the Problem:
Our Hero, I think the problem with your Hero philosophy is that it ignores Mead's Axiom:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world... INDEED, IT IS THE ONLY THING THAT EVER HAS!
I guess if you define "small group" to be "group of one," then your Hero philosophy can skirt unscathed by her battle axe of logic and scimitar of wit. Lucky for you!
I'd love to make a shirt that begins with Mead's quote and then continues with "But only in the most literal sense. You could just as well say that tiny motions of atoms is the only thing that has changed the world. Furthermore, the failure rate of 'thoughtful, committed citizens' is through the roof. If you're really want to change the world, you're better off dollar-for-dollar buying as many lobbyists as you can. Finally, Margaret Mead was probably a phony and definitely comes from the same school of hucksterism and revisionist historians that have cursed us with all the muddle-headed luddite sociologists we see running around today. So there!" That would be on the front.
On the back would be an incisive political cartoon. It would be Mead, dressed as a licentious flapper hand-feeding maggot-infested meat labelled "LIES" to a bunch of Samoans. The Samoans would be roaming America, shitting the lies back onto our soil. Wherever they were shitting, saloons and whorehouses would be springing up. This would be symbolic of how Mead was actually a moralless woman; determined to justify her own immorality, she fed lies to the Samoans, who unwittingly parroted them back to her. She could then return to America to trot out lies about the rights of women in other countries.
Really, though, from skimming her Wikipedia article: she went to Samoa, studied women, came back and wrote some books about it. Everybody got up in arms because Samoan women were supposedly down with casual sex, etc. But now, some people are saying she made most of it up. It's not clear. Regardless, it's not fair to get down on her for bringing up the idea of women's rights. It is fair to get down on her for making horrible quotations and for possibly fabricating all her evidence. I guess. We should probably all lay off her, what with her being dead and all. Would you make fun of the dead on a spaceship crashing into the Sun? I JUST DON'T KNOW!
posted by Nate at 12:01 PM
5 Comments:
Is your description of Margaret Mead based solely on information from the Wikipedia article, or do you have additional background material you're drawing on? (I honestly don't know much about her)If the former, on what grounds do you conclude that she was "probably a phony" etc.
What about this paragraph from the Wikipedia entry?: "Many, however, find Freeman's critique highly questionable. First, these critics have speculated that he waited until Mead died before publishing his critique so that she would not be able to respond. Second, they pointed out that Mead's original informants were now old women, grandmothers, and had converted to Christianity. They further pointed out that Samoan culture had changed considerably in the decades following Mead's original research, that after intense missionary activity many Samoans had come to adopt the same puritanical sexual standards as the Americans who were once so shocked by Mead's book. They suggested that such women, in this new context, were unlikely to speak frankly about their adolescent behavior. (Note also that one of Freeman's interviewees gave her born-again faith as her reason for admitting to the past deception.) Finally, they suggested that these women would not be as forthright and honest about their sexuality when speaking to an elderly man, as they would have been speaking to a young woman. Many anthropologists also accuse Freeman of having the same ethnocentric sexual puritanism as the people Boas and Mead once shocked. In 1983, the American Anthropological Association passed a motion declaring Freeman's Margaret Mead and Samoa "poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading." (Freeman 1999, cited by Pinker 2002, p. 115.)"
At face value, these responses seem just as plausible to me, if not more so, than Freeman's criticisms of Mead. Is there more to the story than what's in the article, or are you simply manifesting a generalized skepticism of anthropology (or of social science generally)?
By the way, who are these "luddite sociologists?" What kinds of wacky ideas are they putting forth? I'm genuinely interested.
CT
2:33 PM
Yeah, probably may have been a bit too strong. I skimmed the article, and it seemed to go down to a he-said she-said, with she being a sociologist/anthropologist, and him being an I-don't-know-what. In my twisted world view, the fact that the AAA backs her up makes me less likely to believe her.
The luddie sociologists is me still harping about the stuff I read for BEARHuGS. A lot of those writers weren't luddites, I guess, so much as implicity anti-scientific. Some of them tend to reject science when it disagrees with what they think. Which we all do sometimes, I guess.
So, it was basically me bitching and not wanting to do real work. :-)
2:43 PM
Gotcha.
CT
3:53 PM
I would think her axiom supports my theory. The fact of the matter is Hobbes was right about the majority of humanity. The majority of people you deal with on a day to day basis are shortsighted appetitive sheep that lack both the intelligence and initiative to bring about real change. This is easy enough to observe in a work setting, be it in a job or at school. Whenever you sit on a committee or work in a group, even if its honors students, I’ve noticed a tendency among people to just flow like osmosis… people suggest solutions to any given problem but really would be satisfied to do the minimum required to get a good grade or get paid. This is usually enough to keep society’s gears rumbling loudly. Eventually the system would break down were it not for Hero Leaders who stepped in occasionally to change the direction of things or at least grease the wheels.
Keep in mind, when I define Hero Leaders I do not just mean the Che Guevara’s and Winston Churchill’s of the world. These are just individuals whose vision and virtue have been so great, that when coupled with the blessings of good fate, they stood at the helm of history and steered humanity towards their own horizons, away from where the invisible sociological processes would have otherwise blown things. There are other exceptional individuals who for circumstance or inferior natures (they are still better than the rabble just not as good as the Captains of History) have their dominion at a lesser more local or institutional level. I’m not sure if this makes them dingy captains or just officers on the great humanity ship.
In this way I am not saying that there wouldn’t be a civil rights movement without Martin Luther King Jr. or that India wouldn’t have become free without Gandhi… but their singular personages are outstandingly essential to how things turned out and it is good to recognize that. When these National Heroic Leaders were murdered no one existed able to take up the helm and their national movement floundered. Ask yourself, just how much progress has the Civil Rights movement made since its champion’s death. What major victories or changes have there been? None. No one has been able to take the helm. On lower levels of society assuredly there have been small victories led by Local Heroic Leaders but the great ship of the National Civil Rights Movement sails on slowly, more or less in the direction where MLK Jr. left it.
I think those same luddite sociologists who thumb their nose at science would also downplay the role of singular exceptional individuals and chalk most change up to power structures, gender relations and all sorts of other silly post modern tripe. That stuff is assuredly there, and I suppose worth knowing about inasmuch as it’s nice to know where the herd might stampede if no one was there to drive it. Still, were it not for the drivers the cattle would be living in shit or in a bloody pile at the bottom of a cliff by now, so for me the most worthy subject of study and notice remains the Leaders.
OH
8:03 AM
By the way, that Margarete Mead quote headlines the NAMBLA website.
Google NAMBLA if you ever feel like reading about true evil.
8:09 AM
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