Thursday, September 20, 2018
Friday, September 14, 2018
Why ANTHROPOLOGICAL Psychology ?
BY CHARLES BROWN
I founded Anthropological Psychology specifically in critique of "evolutionary psychology " , because the biological , Darwinian evolutionary science of Homo sapiens psychology has long been anthropology. Culture , language , symbolic inheritance and creativity are the _differentia specifica_ of human psychology in contrast with the psychology of all other animal species, primate, mammal,
Chordata ...
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/01/founding-anthropological-psychology-im.html?m=1
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/07/tell-em-that-its-original-human-nature.html?m=1
Chordata ...
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/01/founding-anthropological-psychology-im.html?m=1
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/07/tell-em-that-its-original-human-nature.html?m=1
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Until the 1970s, US capitalism shared its spoils with American workers.
http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/102-102/4659-the-myth-of-american-exceptionalism-implod
The myth of 'American exceptionalism' implodes Until the 1970s, US capitalism shared its spoils with American workers. But since 2008, it has made them pay for its failures A homeless encampment known as Tent City in Sacramento, California A homeless encampment known as Tent City, in Sacramento, California, in 2009. Since the 1970s, real wages stopped growing and the gap between rich and poor expanded as the US economy slowed down after decades of growth. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP One aspect of "American exceptionalism" was always economic. US workers, so the story went, enjoyed a rising level of real wages that afforded their families a rising standard of living. Ever harder work paid off in rising consumption. The rich got richer faster than the middle and poor, but almost no one got poorer. Nearly all citizens felt "middle class". A profitable US capitalism kept running ahead of labour supply. So, it kept raising wages to attract waves of immigration and to retain employees, across the 19th century until the 1970s. Then everything changed. Real wages stopped rising, as US capitalists redirected their investments to produce and employ abroad, while replacing millions of workers in the US with computers. The US women's liberation moved millions of US adult women to seek paid employment. US capitalism no longer faced a shortage of labour. US employers took advantage of the changed situation: they stopped raising wages. When basic labour scarcity became labour excess, not only real wages, but eventually benefits, too, would stop rising. Over the last 30 years, the vast majority of US workers have, in fact, gotten poorer, when you sum up flat real wages, reduced benefits (pensions, medical insurance, etc), reduced public services and raised tax burdens. In economic terms, American "exceptionalism" began to die in the 1970s. The rich, however, have got much richer since the 1970s, as every measure of US income and wealth inequality attests. The explanation is simple: while workers' average real wages stayed flat, their productivity rose (the goods and services that an average hour's labour provided to employers). More and better machines (including computers), better education, and harder and faster labour effort raised productivity since the 1970s. While workers delivered more and more value to employers, those employers paid workers no more. The employers reaped all the benefits of rising productivity: rising profits, rising salaries and bonuses to managers, rising dividends to shareholders, and rising payments to the professionals who serve employers (lawyers, architects, consultants, etc). Since the 1970s, most US workers postponed facing up to what capitalism had come to mean for them. They sent more family members to do more hours of paid labour, and they borrowed huge amounts. By exhausting themselves, stressing family life to the breaking point in many households, and by taking on unsustainable levels of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism – until the global crisis hit in 2007. By then, their buying power could no longer grow: rising unemployment kept wages flat, no more hours of work, nor more borrowing, were possible. Reckoning time had arrived. A US capitalism built on expanding mass consumption lost its foundation. The richest 10-15% – those cashing in on employers' good fortune from no longer-rising wages – helped bring on the crisis by speculating wildly and unsuccessfully in all sorts of new financial instruments (asset-backed securities, credit default swaps, etc). The richest also contributed to the crisis by using their money to shift US politics to the right, rendering government regulation and oversight inadequate to anticipate or moderate the crisis or even to react properly once it hit. Indeed, the rich have so far been able to use the crisis to widen still further the gulf separating themselves from the rest, to finally bury American exceptionalism. First, they utilised both parties' dependence on their financial support to make sure there would be no mass federal hiring programme for the unemployed (as FDR used between 1934 and 1940). The absence of such a programme guaranteed that real wages would not rise and, with job benefits, would likely fall – as they indeed have done. Second, the rich made sure that the prime focus of government response to the crisis would benefit banks, large corporations and the stock markets. These have more or less "recovered". Third, the current drive for government budget austerity – especially focused on the 50 states and the thousands of municipalities – forces the mass of people to pick up the costs for the government's unjustly imbalanced response to the crisis. The trillions spent to save the banks and selected other corporations (AIG, GM, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc) were mostly borrowed because the government dared not tax the corporations and the richest citizens to raise the needed rescue funds. Indeed, a good part of what the government borrowed came precisely from those funds left in the hands of corporations and the rich, because they had not been taxed to overcome the crisis. With sharply enlarged debts, all levels of government face the pressure of needing to take too much from current tax revenues to pay interest on debts, leaving too little to sustain public services. So, they demand the people pay more taxes and suffer reduced public services, so that government can reduce its debt burden. For example, California's new governor proposes to continue for five more years the massive, broad-based tax increases begun during the crisis and also to cut state services for the poor (reduced Medicaid funding) and the middle class(reduced budgets for community colleges, state colleges, and the university system). The governor admits that California's budget faces sky-high interest costs and reduced federal government assistance just when the crisis increases demands for public services. The governor does not admit his fear to tax the state's huge corporate and private individual wealth. So, he announces an "austerity programme", as if no alternative existed. Indeed, a major support for austerity comes from the large corporations and wealthiest Californians, who hold the state's bonds and want reassurances that the interest on those bonds will be paid. California's austerity programme parallels similar programmes in many other states, in thousands of municipalities, and at the federal level (for example, social security). Together, they reinforce falling real wages, falling benefits, falling government services and rising taxes. In the US, capitalism has stopped "delivering the goods", as it so long boasted. The reality of ever-deeper economic division clashes with expectations built up when wages rose over the century before the 1970s. US capitalism now brings long-term painful decline for its working class, the end of "American exceptionalism" and rising social, cultural and political tensions. • Richard Wolff gives his monthly talk on global capitalism at the Brecht Forum in New York on 18 January; for more information about Professor Wolff's lectures, podcasts and media appearance, visit his website _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
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Thursday, August 16, 2018
OVERVIEW OF ANTHROPOLOGY ; WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY ABOUT ?
OVERVIEW OF ANTHROPOLOGY ; WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY ABOUT ?
By Professor Charles D. Brown , Esq.
Wayne County Community College Distruct's Ant 152 introduces students to the four classical branches of anthropology.
Physical anthropology discovers the truth of the biological theory and facts of human
evolutionary origins and human physical diversity. Archaeology and
ethnology explore the development of culture through the Truly Civilized Stone Age
and so-called Civilization, examining artifacts, material culture,
fossil remains , etc. and examining theories about modes of production
from cooperative/egalitarian foraging and horticulture to
large scale domestication of plants and animals with private property, greed, economic
classes , the state male supremacy . Ethnology or Socio-cultural anthropology
, also gives an understanding of diverse customs , traditions; and
religions , economic classes, nations and race in the present historical
era of capitalism and globalism. Linguistic anthropology investigates
language or symbolic communication , like culture, an exclusive human capacity enabling us to
share knowledge and experience with people remote from us in time and space;
and like culture , shaping our worldviews and perception and
interpretation of events.
Anthropology is the study of human beings in all times and place;
study that is historical , systematic and objective, that is to say scientific,
based on logical consideration and testing of material evidence, and natural theories ;
from 100's of thousands of years ago to the present; from Detroit to
the other ends of the Earth. This is in contrast with understanding humans
based on whims, superstition, untested intuition , uncritical faith
or unquestioned authority or supernatural beings. It is an understanding of human societies
and individuals biologically and historically, that is as they have
changed and developed ,evolved ,over time and many generations of individual selves. It seeks to be truly holistic in
approach and scope , looking for the _whole_ truth, nothing but the truth. It welcomes contributions to its understanding of
people from all the other academic disciplines, natural sciences,
social sciences and humanities. It even considers respectfully and
sympathetically systems of thought and belief from cultures very
different than our own. In fact , learning the culture or customs,
beliefs , ideas, religions of foreign and other peoples is the
original focus of anthropology in contrast to sociology, psychology
and history , the other social sciences , and literature and the arts, which focus on Western and European
society's ways of being. In this regard , it is important to be honest
and confess that anthropology and ethnology was often a "handmaiden"
of European colonialism and imperialism, especially in its beginning.
Anthropology and ethnology has significantly , though not completely, overthrown that legacy today
and, predominantly champions the interests of the foreign peoples who
are the main subjects of its study. Also, many anthropologists today
study American and European culture, with applied anthropology to
practical problems "at home" a major section of the discipline today.
There is a sense in which sociology is the anthropology of capitalist societies .
Anthropology's special contribution to scientific understanding
of humanity is the concept of _culture_, or the symbolic nature of human communication and social organization v. Culture is behavior ruled by a mental system of
shared customs, traditions, values, ideas and material products of a
particular group of people. Culture and language , or symbolic communication , are unique and
exclusive characteristics of human beings, the species Homo sapiens . No other animal species has
them, despite the exaggerated claims of some primatologists for chimps and gorillas. Culture and language provided the human species with an
enormous adaptive and Darwinian selective advantage in the tens of
thousands of years that the human species came to be and inhabit the
whole globe, again to a greater extent than any other phylum Chordata species. This
is because it made humans extremely socially interconnected both with
living other humans so that human labor and methods of physical
survival are very _social_, not individualistic; and perhaps more
importantly, socially connected to dead generations of the species
through , again, language and culture, as in ancestor "worship" ,
myths, legends, stories, customs, historical accounts of past generations'
experiences. Two heads are better than one in the struggles for
survival and snuggles for reproduction By sharing the experiences , discoveries, knowledge of many
generations past and those of fellow living people, humans had and
have a big Darwinian or natural selective advantage especially in the
stone age in prehistoric times over the course of 100's of thousands of
years and starting going back 2.5 million of years with the species Homo habilis . Again , this
enormous social networking within living generations and between
living and dead generations is encapsulated in the concepts of culture
and language and symbolic communication , the _differentia specifica_ of the human species.
Another special contribution of anthropology to our wisdom is the idea
of ethnocentrism or anti-ethnocentrism; and the concept of
culture-bound. Ethnocentrism is the belief that the ways of one's own
culture are the only proper and moral ones. It is a form of racism and
xenophobia. Culture-bound ideas are theories about the world and
reality based on the assumptions and values of one's own culture. A
big part of the study of anthropology is to broaden one's scope , make
one less parochial , open one's mind to a wider world of people. In a
way, anthropology is theoretical world travel, that is going other
places without having to actually go there physically; and trying on
different ways of thinking about the world; with the effect that when
one looks back at oneself, one gains a more objective and full
understanding one's own culture, philosophy, beliefs, society, etc.
It can give us a gift of seeing ourselves as others see us, as the
poet once wished for. The growth of "applied anthropology" ( "applied"
to domestic or Western society) is an institutional development within
the discipline expressing this metaphor of looking at ourselves
through the eyes of others.
Thus, if some of the ways of anthropology are a bit foreign to you , I hope
you will use this course as an opportunity to step out of your
intellectual comfort zone and think a little differently than you
usually do; a chance to "travel" and broaden your scope without having
to go through all the physical discomforts and annoyances of an actual
trip abroad. Travel in a "theoretical time machine "through evolution. Hopefully it will give you some new knowledge about your
humanity and fundamental commonality with all humans from all times
and places; and encourage you to respect some of the differences you
might have with others; you might even decide to adopt some of other
people's culture a bit. On the other hand, you might understand
yourself and your history and culture better and be happier with whom
you are.
Finally , I add a fifth and sixth sub fields to the conventional 4 : philosophical anthropology raising questions like "What is life ? " , "What is human life and human nature ?", etc.
5: Anthropological psychology Anthropological psychology because psychology is study of the Individual , the Self, that idol of American culture and symbolic inheritance . So, learning about individuals is automatically more relevant to individual student's interests , which is of course , especially in themSELVES.
Anthropological Psychology ,is especially in opposition to evolutionary psychology, socio/biology , all social phony "darwinisms". Anthropological psychology places emphasis on culture , language and inter and intra -
generational memories in the psyches and personalities of individual humans :
the "We" in the "I".
The human "I " is more "We" than other animal species' "I"'s BUT NOT ABSOLUTELY DETERMINED BY THE "WE. "; not absolutely _socially_ constructed.
What is unique about the individual human psyche as compared to other primate or mammal individual's psyches , minds, brains , memories, perceptions ?
The human difference is so many of our memories are symbols , words, drawings , music, dance. Symbolic communication
The whole collection of memories held in our INDIVIDUAL minds: Each human individual has her WHOLE language and culture and symbols in her MEMORY ;
and memories directly imitative ( not symbolic) of sensations or perceptions of the world outside her individual mind, of objective reality .
We have memories. We also have direct sensation of our immediate , here and now , surroundings . BUT most of the time that we see or hear or smell
or touch something or somethings there must right way come to our mind a MEMORY of it or something like it or a SYMBOL OF IT. at the same time. Why ?Because it's familiar . We recognize it. Otherwise we would constantly feel lost . Every new sensation would be strange .
A main current new thought for me here is to focus on memories. Most thought is memories not perceptions and sensations of your individual external surroundings
However this is true of all animals ! All individual animals have most of their thoughts as MEMORIES !
Chimps have lots of picture similar images proportionately . We have proportionately more symbolic memories: words , sentences, conversations .
Anthropological Psychology : Self
On the Self, I'd say every individual animal has an instinct of SELF-preservation , and therefore a self. Every brain is a Self.
Humans have a personality , which is a cultural , symbolic self, with a name; an individual . It is socially constructed in association with other people; in communication between brains.
The Self is in the brain, consisting of memories in brain cells.
Language is in brain cells, memory cells. When you say "you" exist in language , that means "you" exist in brain cells, memory cells specifically.
WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY ABOUT ?
Our textbook_The Essence of Anthropology_, at page defines Anthropology as the study of
humankind in all times and places, systematically and objectively,
a very good definition. More candidly anthropologists believe that we have a profound
understanding of the truth about human societies and Individuals biologically,
historically and scientifically. There is but one science, the science
of history. Anthropology is the life science of human beings; the
natural and cultural history of the species Homo sapiens.
Studying "all" of something , the whole or
holistically, systematically and objectively is scientific study and
knowledge , because the truth must be the whole truth. So, to say anthropology is open to evidence of human
endeavor from wherever it might be is to declare anthropology has a
scientific approach to knowledge of the truth.
Following the motto of the poet
Terrance: Nothing human is alien to anthropology , so to speak.
Originally , anthropology specialized among the academic disciplines
in studying human beings in times and places remote from the present
and the West, traveling far in time and space , expanding the
representative quality and quantity of the sample of the social
sciences, such as they were , of evidence on human activity and behavior , bodily motion..
Anthropology aimed in part to expand the sample of data Western
academe had on humans in a scientific endeavor to represent more
fully the whole of humanity , "all" of the object of study, that is
humans in _all_ times and _all_ places, not just the history of Europe - a correct scientific mission.
One main and unique contribution of anthropology in expanding the
sample of human life studied by modern science, including natural
history, is the study of early humans and humans' immediate ancestor
species in the evolutionary origin of the species _homo sapiens_.
This evidence and sample represent at a minimum 200,000 years of human
society and as much as 2.5 million years when the whole of the genus
_homo_ is considered human society, that the human species originates
with _Homo habilis_ and _Homo erectus_.
"_Sapiens_" means "wise" In Latin. Homo sapiens
Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise being" )
What is culture, language or _symbolic_ communication ?
For anthropology, culture, language or symbolic communication are the unique species characteristic of
_Homo sapiens_. In a sense, "culture" is another word for "wisdom",
from the notion that humans are the species _homo wise_. It is
humans socially learned practices, customs, language, traditions,
beliefs, religion, spirituality _passed down through many generations that make us "wise" in so many ways,
certainly clever and winners _as a species_ ( not just as a few "fit"
Individuals) in the struggles and snuggles to survive as a species. That is successful in the Darwinian struggles to increase the species population.
Since the advent about 6,000 years ago of so-called civilization, as you have no doubt heard it referred to a, sometimes it's not so clear how wise
our culture makes us. Therein lies the central drama of the history of
the human species.
Nonetheless, clearly in the Stone Age, our having
culture was a highly adaptive advantage over species that did not have
culture , stone tools or controlling fire made through culture or symbolic or imaginary thinking and communication, etc, raising our species
fitness. This is evidenced by _Homo sapiens_ expanding in population
and therefore migrating to an expanded area of living space across the
earth , out of what is now named Africa to the other continents. Stone Age
foraging and kinship organized societies were the mode of life for
the vast majority of time of human species '
existence, 95% or more.
The first human societies had an extraordinarily high survival need to
be able to rely on each other at levels of solidarity that we cannot
even imagine. The intensity of the network of social connections of a
band of 25 to 100 people living in the ecological food chain location
close to the one described in our textbook _Man the Hunted_ , Chapter 4, would almost constitute a new level of organic organization and
integrity above individual bodies or selves. Ancient kinship/family/culture /symbolic communication systems from around 2.5 million years ago ( the beginning of the Truly Civilized Stone Age were almost
super-organic bodies; the human social group was as a harmonious
multi-individual Body, organism. The Individual human bodies, Selves, were very frail and weak in contrast with the the bodies of the field of
predators they were prey for . The dominance of the food chain
that humans, ultimately reached even in the Stone Age with relatively _frail_ individual bodies. could only be
reached by super-social , super internally-cooperative,
super-intra-species harmonious. This was only possible with symbolic communication both within a living generation and across generations, It is
clear to me that natural selection , in the classical Darwinian sense, elected hominin groups with policies and practices of
of "love thy neighbor as thyself " and "charity" over those that might
have derived principles of "selfishness and greed", if there were any
in the Stone Age before Civilization.
Anthropology demonstrates its holistic/ whole truth, and thereby scientific method
of study by specialization into sub-disciplines of cultural
anthropology, physical or biological anthropology, archaeology and
linguistics. Paleoontological anthropology, study of early and
proto-humans, is something of a combination of biological
anthropology and archaeology. Clearly , the pre-eminent and world
changing natural historian Charles Darwin is an initiator of
paleontological anthropology with his book The Descent of Man, and
Selection in Relation to Sex ( although for some reason anthopology classes to not name Darwin's book as the beginning of physical anthropology; I think it is) By the title to his book, Darwin may
have been signaling a correction to the popular distortions of his
theory which imply that "survival of the toughest warriors" rather
than the "gentlest lovers" are the fittest and selected for naturally.
Or as Antoinette Blackwell, excellent Darwinist theoretician termed it, cooperation and balance was selected for over competition and savage rivalry, beyond a reasonable doubt. ( The Sexes Throughout Nature is a book written by Antoinette Brown Blackwell, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1875. )
Culture is founded in kinship; symbolic communication across generations; progeny care/ancestor "worship"
Please critique and challenge the following statement:
In Darwin's theory of natural selection concerning living beings, the
"struggle" in the struggle for existence, to live, is not between
Individual Selves of the same species to the point of Individual Bodies, somebodies,of the same species killing each other except very rarely. Most of the deaths before passing on genes to the next generation, are due to
failures in struggles with some Individual Body of _another_ species.,
plant and animal, as predator and prey; or struggle against bad
weather, heat exhaustion, sunburn
It is easy to see how some people get a misconception of Darwinian
natural selection because it _is_ posed in most of it prime
formulations with a sort of emphasis on the fact of indirect
"competition" in the sense that for the typical bodily form of a
species to change under Darwin's theory, some members with genes that
change species typical traits must more successfully pass them on than
members with species typical traits over successive generations until
the new trait is universal and the old typical trait is extinct. But
this does not necessarily or even conventionally imply direct physical
conflict between Individuals of the two types but the same species in the day-to-day struggle for existence to survive as Individual Bodies.
This is demonstrated by the famous anthropological micro-evolutionary
study of sickle cell genes on pages 44 to 46 of _The Essence of
Anthropology_. There is no direct physical competition between the people of
the various genotypes with different fitnesses in the different
environments in the study.
It is not an Individual , but a species, a group of the same type who
"evolve", "adapt" or "survive". Individuals must live their individual
life long enough to reproduce for the species to survive. However,
every individual eventually dies. "Survival" of the individual means
living long enough to pass on genes or a geno-type to the future
generations. If mutated genes, changed geno-type, are passed on, there
is a potential unit of evolution between the parent and the offspring.
That is evolution occurs between Individuals of different generations, not in one Individual Self. If the
mutated genotype results in a phenol-typical trait that is adaptive
in some significant way, it may become an evolutionary change by the
species through several individuals.
An Individual organism, Some Body, has an instinct for
self-preservation. This is said to be the first law of nature. This
is an instinct to live as long as possible before the inevitable end,
as all animals are mortal. Every Individual Some Body has a lifetime
or ontogeny in which it is born, develops, exists and dies. The
development of an Individual overtime is not evolution , but ontogeny.
Significantly, the institution of war which arises in human history
with so-called civilization around 6,000 years ago involves human Individuals violating
their natural instinct of self-preservation. Going into battle is to
risk one's individual life for a social value of some type,
nationalism or religion, not the exercise of a non-existent "instinct
of aggression". Humans do not even eat those they kill in war (
joke) , another unnatural aspect. No animal species kills without
the motive of getting food.
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Overview of anthropology
Sent from my iPhone
Begin forwarded message:
From: Charles Brown <cb31450@gmail.com>
Date: January 5, 2016 at 10:50:31 AM EST
To: charles brown <cb31450@gmail.com>, PHILLIP BROWN <psb2@prodigy.net>
Subject: Could you print this for me please ?
Overview of anthropology
By Professor Charles Brown
Ant 152 introduces students to the four branches of anthropology.
Physical anthropology explores the biological basis for human
evolutionary origins and human physical diversity. Archaeology and
ethnology explores the development of culture through the Stone Age
and so-called Civilization, examining artifacts, material culture,
fossil remains , etc. and examining theories about modes of production
from cooperative/egalitarian foraging and horticulture to
domestication of plants and animals with private property and economic
classes and male dominance. Ethnology or Socio-cultural anthropology
, also gives and understanding of diverse customs , traditions; and
religion, economic classes, nations and race in the present historical
era of capitalism and globalism. Linguistic anthropology investigates
language, like culture, an exclusive human capacity enabling us to
share knowledge and experience with people remote in time and space;
and like culture , shaping our worldviews and perception and
interpretation of events.
Anthropology is the study of human beings in all times and place;
study that is systematic and objective, that is to say scientific,
based on logical consideration and testing of material evidence, and natural theories ;
from 100's of thousands of years ago to the present; from Detroit to
the ends of the Earth. This is in contrast with understanding humans
based on whims, superstition, untested intuition , uncritical faith
or unquestioned authority or supernatural beings. It is an understanding of human societies
and individuals biologically and historically, that is as they have
changed and developed over time. It seeks to be truly holistic in
approach and scope. It welcomes contributions to its understanding of
people from all the other academic disciplines, natural sciences,
social sciences and humanities. It even considers respectfully and
sympathetically systems of thought and belief from cultures very
different than our own. In fact , learning the culture or customs,
beliefs , ideas, religions of foreign and other peoples is the
original focus of anthropology in contrast to sociology, psychology
and the other social sciences which focus on Western and European
society's ways of being. In this regard , it is important to be honest
and confess that anthropology and ethnology was often a "handmaiden"
of European colonialism and imperialism, especially in its beginning.
Anthropology and ethnology has largely overthrown that legacy today
and, predominantly champions the interests of the foreign peoples who
are the main subjects of its study. Also, many anthropologists today
study American and European culture, with applied anthropology to
practical problems "at home" a major section of the discipline today.
Anthropology's special contribution to scientific understanding
of humanity is the concept of _culture_. Culture is a system of
shared customs, traditions, values, ideas and material products of a
particular group of people. Culture and language are unique and
exclusive characteristics of human beings. No other animal species has
them. Culture and language provided the human species with an
enormous adaptive and Darwinian selective advantage in the tens of
thousands of years that the human species came to be and inhabit the
whole globe, again to a greater extent than any other species. This
is because it made humans extremely socially interconnected both with
living other humans so that human labor and methods of physical
survival are very _social_, not individualistic; and perhaps more
importantly, socially connected to dead generations of the species
through , again, language and culture, as in ancestor "worship" ,
myths, stories, customs, historical accounts of past generations'
experiences. Two heads are better than one in the struggle for
survival. By sharing the experiences , discoveries, knowledge of many
generations past and those of fellow living people, humans had and
have a big Darwinian or natural selective advantage especially in the
stone age in prehistoric times over the course of tens of thousands of
years and starting going back tens of thousands of years. Again , this
enormous social networking within living generations and between
living and dead generations is encapsulated in the concepts of culture
and language, the _differentia specifica_ of the human species.
Another special contribution of anthropology to our wisdom is the idea
of ethnocentrism or anti-ethnocentrism; and the concept of
culture-bound. Ethnocentrism is the belief that the ways of one's own
culture are the only proper ones. It is a form of racism and
xenophobia. Culture-bound ideas are theories about the world and
reality based on the assumptions and values of one's own culture. A
big part of the study of anthropology is to broaden one's scope , make
one less parochial , open one's mind to a wider world of people. In a
way, anthropology is theoretical world travel, that is going other
places without having to actually go there physically; and trying on
different ways of thinking about the world; with the effect that when
one looks back at oneself, one gains a more objective and full
understanding one's own culture, philosophy, beliefs, society, etc.
It can give us a gift of seeing ourselves as others see us, as the
poet once wished for. The growth of "applied anthropology" ( "applied"
to domestic or Western society) is an institutional development within
the discipline expressing this metaphor of looking at ourselves
through the eyes of others.
Thus, if some of the ways of anthropology are a bit foreign to I hope
you will use this course as an opportunity to step out of your
intellectual comfort zone and think a little differently than you
usually do; a chance to "travel" and broaden your scope without having
to go through all the physical discomforts and annoyances of an actual
trip abroad. Hopefully it will give you some new knowledge about your
humanity and fundamental commonality with all humans from all times
and places; and encourage you to respect some of the differences you
might have with others; you might even decide to adopt some of other
people's culture a bit. On the other hand, you might understand
yourself and your history and culture better and be happier with whom
you are.
Finally , I add a fifth sub field to the conventional 4 : philosophical anthropology raising questions like "What is life ? " , "What is human life and human nature ?", etc.
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