Recently, I have been re-reading a book by Eduard Storch called ‘Minehava’: in it, the history teacher/anthropologist turned author explores how and why early European tribal peoples turned from matrilinear societies into patrilinear ones. Since his books targeted about the same age-group as Lois Lowry’s ‘The Giver, the explanations are a ‘little simplified’. But, the basics are there: population growth leads to greater population density, more ‘intercultural contact’ leads to increased need for resources, assuring survival of the culture more willing to assert its dominance…
It got me started thinking about just how great a societal uphaval the change must have been. The adjustment to the expectations of the new social order must have been significant.
Now, we are also going through a bit of ‘societal upheaval’.
Of course, things are more complex now: the larger a human society is, the more complex ‘running it’ becomes. And, the ‘societal upheaval’ we are undergoing now is also much more complex. Yet, deep down we know that it is nothing less than the beginnings of the integration of all humans into one, global culture.
Let’s face it – that is what is happening. Whether we jump on the bandwagon quickly and work towards an integrated political system (world government) or not, the ease and speed of communication and immigration means that human societies throughout the world are indeed in the early stages of global cultural integration. (The economic bit had started quite a while ago…)
So, how will this play out?
Will the ‘best’ values and cultural practices ‘win’?
We could have a long and heated debate on what ARE the ‘best’ values and cultural practices – and not come to an agreement. (Actually, a brawl is a more likely outcome…over the internet, a vitrual brawl, but brawl none-the-less!) Yet, that debate would be mute. Because THAT is not the deciding factor for selecting the dominant factors in our emerging cultural hegemony…
Throughout human history, we have seen that it is not the ‘wise’ whose opinions are followed – perhaps for a little while, but not in the long run. Nor is it the ‘numerous’. And, let’s not even raise ‘the voice of reason’: it only alienates the ‘unreasonable majority’!
Instead, it is those who are the ‘loudest’ whose voices dictate the course of human history!
Those who are the most stubborn, uncompromising and who are willing to drown-out all competing voices (regardless of how ruthlessly) – THOSE are the voices which always (eventually) come to dominate any dialogue – and it is THEY who eventually succeed in having their own values and practices imposed on the whole of society as the cultural ‘norms’. Just look around!
Can we do anything to ensure that our voice – the voice of those who espouse freedoms of thought and speech, the voice which respects each individual – can we do anything to make sure that THAT voice is not drowned out? That it is not silenced forever, destined to be nothing more than a footnote in the histry about ‘extinct cultures’?
I don’t know.
It may be too late.
And even if it were NOT too late, I don’t know if this voice would even stand a chance. After all, when one’s very principles require one to treat others as equals – only to be treated (according to thier principals) back as an inferior – that tends to limit one’s ability to achieve ‘things’ (like, say, the survival of one’s ideas and ideals).
(I know I am expressing this poorly, sorry – I just don’t know how to say it better! What I mean is that just like a person who will not use violence, even in self-defense, does not stand a chance of survival against a gang of those intent to do violence to her, so the voice which will not silence others will have little chance to be heard over the noise raised by its opponents who have no such scruples. And, losing these ‘scruples’ would be to stop being that voice…)
So, what CAN we do?
Very little.
Aside from shouting as loudly as we can, without inhibbiting anyone else’s ability to shout, the only thing we can – and MUST – do is to teach people, especially young people, to question.
To question EVERYTHING.
Yes, it is not much. And, it can be trying (yes, I AM raising a teenager!). But teaching people to question everything: from political correctness to their own views – secular, religious or whatever… from science to cultural practices, from teachers and parents to their friends – that is what will teach them to evaluate for themselves which ideas and ideals are worthy of keeping, and which are not.
And THAT is teaching them to exercise the freedom of thought!
I cannot think of any weapon that would be more powerful.
Which brings me to my last question: can we arm enough young people with this weapon to make a difference?
I don’t know…. But, I’ll die trying!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
March 10, 2009 at 04:14
Xanthippa:
Don’t worry about the way you expressed yourself in this post. You got your idea across perfectly well. And you are right. Those who value fair play more than winning will lose against those who just want to win at any cost.
Unless we make a distinction between opponents who play fair and those who don’t. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “talk softly but carry a big stick.” If this is going to do you any good, you must be prepared to use that stick when required.
When you come up against someone who just wants to shout you down, pick up your stick and KICK ASS LIKE THERE’S NO TOMMOROW! Because if you don’t, there won’t be. But when you come up against someone who is willing to talk things over like a civilized human being, well then, put down your stick and talk.
And teach your children to do the same. Otherwise they will lose, no matter how much questioning you teach them to do.
One thing, though: don’t mistake “matrilineal” for “matriarchal.” Many cultures have traced kinship through the female, but the idea that once there was a female-dominated golden age, before those nasty men took over and started oppressing women and waging war and all that nasty man stuff — this is nothing more than feminist revisionism (see The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory by Cynthia Eller). Feminists made up a self-justifying fairy tale, and it shares a very important attribute with all other politically correct fairy tales.
It never happened.
The males have always dominated. That’s what males do.
That’s what males have always done, even before we became human.
To see that this is true, just look at the social organization of chimpanzees, macaques, and so on. They know who their mothers are and have no idea who their fathers are. But the alpha male rules the tribe.
They are matrilineal and patriarchal. Just as we were, until we developed language and started keeping records. Then we became patrilineal, and stayed patriarchal. Until the precursors of political correctness came along about 100 years ago and started re-writing history — and the law — with the express purpose of bringing Western culture to its knees.
It worked.
So, to answer your question — which culture will dominate?
It will be the one that retains the most respect for the male.
Because that’s what males do. They dominate.
Any culture that doesn’t leave it’s males room to do that is doomed to extinction.
Xanthippa says:
Thank you for your well-thought out comment.
The big stick comment: I fully agree with you. However, I doubt that our ‘Western’ society has the resolve to do so – or to allow us to do so. Most of us are just too easily cowed – at lease, these days, we are.
Just look at the protests people are raising about our intervention in Afghanistan: and the terrorists have done very little ‘terrorizing’ right here! Yet, many people are saying that IF we don’t get in their way, the Islamists will not harm us… Imagine how much more these people would hamstring any resistance, if the terror were closer to home!
Just remember what happened at Ecole Polytechnique: all the males offered 0 resistance and, without a single word of protest, in the face on one single gunman – and the men left the room, allowing the madman to butcher all the women left behind.
THAT does not fill me with any confidence that ‘carrying a big stick’ would be of any use to you and me: the rest of the people on ‘our’ side would probably jump us, take away our stick, and hand us over to the aggressors in the hope that they themselves will be butchered last!!! “Peace for our lifetime” and all that…
Am I wrong?!?!?
As for the maternal/matrilineal: I am fully aware of the difference. And, the tribes were not matriarchal, they were matrilineal.
The ‘daughters’ would stay within a tribe, and their children would be members of that tribe. Their husbands would move to their wife’s tribe upon marriage, but would remain members of their old tribe.
Inheritance was also matrilineal: children would inherit from their mother, and their mother’s brothers – but NOT their fathers.
This did not mean that the society was a matriarchy: the tribe had a male chief, and men were the ‘rulers’. Yet, the fact (at least, as presented in the book I cited) that the men were members of various tribes (perhaps ‘clans’ is a better word), there were too disunited, ‘clicky’, if you wish, which hindered the defense of the tribe/clan….which is why they were eventually displaced by the patrilieal tribes/clans.
It must have been a great upheaval when wives began to leave their tribe and join the husband’s, instead of the other way around. And it must have been a great ‘identity crisis’ for many people, when the tribe-affiliation changed from that of the mother’s to that of the father’s. I suspect it would have taken a few generations before this ‘identity crisis’ would be resolved….
Many North American Native people also developed matrilieal societies. Here, the children ALSO belonged to the mother’s tribe and inheritance was matrilineal, but the custom was that once a male child reached early teens, he would stop living with his parents and would move in with his maternal uncle in order to finish his ‘education’ and upbringing. There, the custom was, he would likely marry his uncle’s daughter… and it would be from this uncle that he would inherit. So, the inheritance was matrilieal, but with the avuncular bond, strengthened through marriage, the Native societies were more stable than the European societies described in the book.
Yet, neither these North American Native cultures, nor the early European ones, were matriarchal. That is a completely different thing.
March 10, 2009 at 16:42
Xanthippa:
Thanks for the details about Bronze Age European and North American Indian tribes. I didn’t know a lot of that, but it stands to reason. It matches well with what one would conclude from watching apes and asking, what would happen as they evolved into humans?
Xanthippa says:
Thanks for reading it through! I KNOW I get a little long-winded when I get into one of my ‘areas of interest’!
I actually got started in high-school, with Konrad Lorentz’s famous book ‘On Aggression’: it ‘spoke’ to me. As an Aspie, I am better fit to ‘learn’ animal ‘languages’ than human social rules! So, I jumped right in (also reading quite a few psychiatry textbooks at this same period, hoping to learn how I was different)….these were the types of books I learned my English on! (Perhaps that’s why it often sounds so pedantic and bookish…)
I read about animal psychology and communication and social community governance – it bordered on sociology, even if I never saw that label used for it (nor the word ‘governance’ – it was not a popular buzzword back then – yet…though, that IS what it was).
Did you know that many species have the equivalent to our ‘court system’??? Both among mammals and birds? They do! (Actually, being able to accurately interpret (and mimic) animal body language had got me – more than once – labeled ‘psychic’!!!)
Then, in University, I used all of my available ‘soft’ credits (we were forced to take some non-core-science/math stuff every year, to be ‘well-rounded’) in the study of anthropology and sociology of religions.
What fascinated me most was not the ‘profoundness’ or ‘truthfulness’ of the ‘message’ of any religion (by then, I had realized that the door of ‘faith’ was closed to me). Rather, I was fascinated by how different environmental factors affected a people’s ideas of what constitutes ‘the divine’ – and how these believes, once dogmatized, had in turn affected the social and political development of said society. And, how accurately this ‘dovetailed’ with ‘animal sociology’…though, I don’t usually talk about it in those terms.
Yeah – obsessive/compulsive behaviour and a deep interest, perhaps seeded in my desire to understand my inadequacies in the area of ‘faith’ and ‘believing in things’… that’s a combination that leads to acquiring a lot of ‘data’!!! And, I took it ‘practical’, too: from Mosque to Wiccan ceremonies, from many denominations of the Christian Church to Synagogue, from Gurdwara to Hindu Temples, from Pow Wows to Tibetan Buddhist ritual demonstrations, plus quite a few more: been there, took part myself, talked to ‘priests’ and ‘regulars’….asked impertinent questions, raised eyebrows….kept notes, analyzed my observations vs. stated theories – I guess instead of ‘choo-choo trains’, this Aspie is interested (and obsessed with) ‘trains of religious evolution’!
If you let me, I will go on this topic for DAYS!!!!!
March 10, 2009 at 17:15
Xanthippa:
Your comments about Western culture are exactly correct. And your example of young Canadian males, cravenly refusing to protect the women from Gamil Gharbi at École Polytechnique, is a very good one. I was disgusted by the cowardice they displayed. At first I thought, only in Canada… but then Seung-Hui Cho opened fire at Virginia Tech.
The only one who physically stood up to him was a 76 year-old man, Dr. Liviu Librescu.
He stood there and resolutely took 5 rounds from a 9mm Glock while holding the door closed to give his students time to escape through the windows. Then he died.
I tried to picture a room full of engineering students — all, or almost all, young men — running away, screaming like little girls, and leaving a 76 year-old man to die, facing the gunman alone. I tried to imagine them hiding under tables in other rooms, meekly letting themselves be shot without raising a finger to defend themselves.
It made no sense to me.
At the time, I commented to a group of engineering students on my campus — all young men — saying that those sorry excuses for engineers at Virginia Tech. were pathetic, cringing cowards who deserved nothing but our deepest contempt.
Xanthippa, you should have heard the chorus of yelps from those spineless little wimps. They unanimously denigrated me, claiming that advocating self-defence made me as bad as Cho–!
Yes indeed, the cultural Marxist campaign to bring down the West is working very, very well.
Xanthippa says:
YES!!! EXACTLY!!!
When the most ‘macho’ of our young men are THIS emasculated – what is to become of us???
March 10, 2009 at 17:51
Xanthippa:
Speaking of the cultural Marxist campaign to bring down the West, I was reminded of your comment about the person who will not resort to violence, even in self-defence.
This view is relentlessly promoted by the left-wing media, holding up a piously fraudulent two-dimensional cardboard cut-out cartoon figure of Gandhi as the ultimate role model. They love to quote him saying
“There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.”
But this is a quote from the 1982 movie (!) about Gandhi, directed by Richard Attenborough. I can find no evidence that Gandhi himself actually said it. It’s cultural Marxist propaganda.
On the other hand, here is what Gandhi really did say:
“Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I would advise violence.”
“When my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence.”
“I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.”
— Mohandas K. Gandhi, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 133, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India.
And just for good measure, here is what Gandhi had to say about gun control:
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.”
— Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, p. 446, translated from Gujarati by Mahadev Desai, Navajivan Publishing House.
Xanthippa says:
You know, you are making me re-think this Gandhi person. Here, I had him ‘figured out’ as 100% evil – along the lines of Hitler, Lenin and Stalin, for what he did to Indians. He had put his ambitions above the well-being of his followers…causing death to so many of them, and their kids!!!
Yet, I had NOT studied his works: I had gone mostly on ‘stories’ I heard from people (some of whom had relatives who met him, and re-counted their ‘family tales’) and what I knew of the results of his ill-advised actions. (Yeah, OK, I admit it – irresponsible of me, but, I watched ‘the movie’, got so angry at the evil person portrayed in it, I did not want to learn anything more about such a vile and contemptible creature…did not want to waste any more of my short time on Earth on him…)
Because of the deceptions he committed on his followers, I had classed him with the other mega-villains of the 20th century.
Now, I will have to re-consider. May be, he was just misunderstood….
Dang you!!!! Shaking my ‘sealed’ opinion like that!!! (Awesome, mind you, but – now I will not be happy until I do my homework on Gandhi!!!)
March 14, 2009 at 23:41
Xanthippa:
I had to laugh when I read that you’ve been called psychic for “being able to accurately interpret (and mimic) animal body language.” It reminded me of times when I’ve had complete conversations with animals — mostly cats — but also with dogs, once with a horse and quite often with a certain macaw. I would speak English, and they would meow, bark, whinny or squawk, and we would glance at each other, and make certain gestures, and adopt certain postures, and our meanings would be perfectly clear to each other. Of course, we never talked about anything abstract… Nevertheless, any other humans in the vicinity would invariably shake their heads in disbelief.
Xanthippa, these sounds, glances, looks and postures are different from the ones humans use, but not that different! It baffles me that most people don’t clue in. In some ways, actually, communicating with humans is harder… mostly because animals neither lie, nor pretend, nor expect you to read between the lines.
By the way, what do you mean when you say that “many species have the equivalent to our ‘court system’?”
Xanthippa says:
Both among ‘higher mammals’ and among the more intelligent birds – among those, that is, that ALSO form tightly knit social groups – there is such a thing as ‘judgments’.
Let me give one example: crows.
These birds have highly structured, relatively large social groups. (By the way – I HAVE seen them counting cars on residential roads…) And, they are also territorial animals. Each murder of crows (I hate that a group of crows is called ‘a murder’ – but there is a reason for it!!!) has a highly structured social set of rules.
One of the things crows do is to post sentries in very specific spots which ‘define’ the borders of their territory. Then, extreme cold or extreme heat – there is always a crow posted as a sentry in that vicinity. Sometimes, its more immediate (what we would call ‘nuclear’) family members or ‘friends’ will join it, but, most of the time, the sentries are alone. Their job is to sit, watch and report.
They are to report ‘anything out of the ordinary’ – from a predatory bird, like a hawk (that is why squirrels, if you watch them carefully, can be seen to actually ‘monitor’ the ‘crow chatter’ – and not just because crows can be a danger to a young or sick squirrel, but because the squirrels listen to the crows for ‘news’ of ‘danger’) to something as silly as a person repeating their calls…. (Yeah, I do that: but, I have VERY good reasons!!! I have a rabbit, and when I make it clear that ‘my yard’ is ‘my territory’ (calls in early spring, like right now), the bring in more ‘senior’ crows that ‘test’ me (repeated calls, 5,4,3,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,3,4,5… in a row, then a set of random ones….just to make sure I am talking to them) they will ACTUALLY – NO KIDDING fly over my neighbour’s yard, make a turn to do a zig-zag to avoid my yard, and continue on their ‘original path’ over my other neightbour’s yard! The fact that I feed them in my FRONT yard seems to help them respect MY territorial claim on my BACK yard absolutely.)
Anyway, back to the ‘crow sentries’…
IF a crow sentry fails at its job and a ‘danger’ penetrates their territory without a warning being sounded, the flock (murder, to be accurate) seems to ‘get together’ and do a lot of ‘chattering’. IF they find the sentry ‘not guilty’, all is fine – it will never be ‘chattered about’ again. BUT, IF they find the sentry ‘guilty’, then they will all attack it at once and kill it….hence, a ‘murder of crows’!
This is true of wild dogs, wolves, but – there seems to be some (though NOT definitive) evidence that meerkats and prairie-dogs may also have similar ‘court systems’. I suspect there are more similar species that also do this, but the crows and ‘communal canines’ are the most definitive and most scientifically documented examples of ‘courts’ among the animal kingdom.
This proves – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that the concept of ‘justice’ is NOT a human construct, nor is it something ‘divinely ordained’ to humans alone. It is perhaps because of these implications (non-uniqueness of humans, and the religious implications of demonstrating we are not the only species with a ‘soul’) that this bit of animal behavioural science is not generally known about outside of this narrow field of study. But, that does not mean that this had not been verified…just not talked about much.
P.S. – I think that many humans are very ‘deaf’ to animal communication – often because we have been taught that to ‘imagine’ it is an anthropomorphism of the animal…and impossible, as ‘animals’ are just not ‘that smart’. However, I think that many Aspies are WAY better at it than most non-Aspie humans – which is a bit weird, as we are supposed to be ‘unable’ to ‘read body language’ and ‘tones’ and ‘facial expressions’. Yet, there are some studies that show that Aspies who are FIRST taught to ‘communicate’ with pets (the studies do not term it quite this way – they go on about ‘forming social bonds’) or animals in general tend to then employ more successful strategies in interpreting these ‘things’ in humans. My completely un-verified, 100% ‘me-thought-up’ hypothesis is that Aspies are bad at ‘fake’ – and that most non-Aspie humans learn early on to display ‘fake’ facial expressions and body language. It would take at least a post or two to explain this – it is not meant to be a ‘put-down’ – just that our ‘social rules’ demand that the ‘actual’ emotion displayed is what is ‘supposed to be’ in order to achieve a particular ‘manipulation’, NOT what is actually ‘felt’ by the person. And, in Aspies, I think this ‘skip-a-step’ from ‘what I feel’ to ‘what I want to achieve’ is not as easily bridged (or leapt across) than among other people: that is why we are such poor liars, and so on…
March 15, 2009 at 17:28
Xanthippa:
There is no need to re-evaluate Gandhi, you are right about him.
He was 100% bought and paid for by the Crown. He and Mountbatten were on the same team: they worked together to get the British formally out of India while retaining the colonial infrastructure to the benefit of the British peerage. It is no accident that the richest Indian today, Lakshi Mittal, lives in Britain.
Nevertheless, the secular slave-religion called Political Correctness has created a pious fraud called Gandhism which is an apotheosis of cowardice so craven that Gandhi himself would have been unable to stomach it. Gandhi may have been a sell-out, but he wasn’t stupid.
March 15, 2009 at 17:38
Xanthippa:
Your descriptions of the sociology of crows is very interesting. I didn’t know any of that, yet in a few places, I felt a sense of recognition. Yes, indeed, when I go into the forest, the crows always sound the alarm when I pass a particular tree. Yes, indeed, when you caw back at them, you get entangled in a little ritual with them. But I had never noticed how the squirrels pay attention to them. Now that you’ve alerted me to it, I’ll be on the lookout for it. And the way they judge and execute traitorous cowards is, to say the least, fascinating!
And your point is very well taken, that many aspects of ethics and morality, supposedly unique to humans, are actually much, much older that the human race. I am reminded of another species I didn’t mention: raccoons. One incident in particular comes to mind.
Late one night, I heard a sound on my porch and went to investigate. I surprised a family of raccoons, making a smorgasbord out of my garbage can. A male, a female, and two cubs. When they saw me, the cubs scurried behind the mother and the male pushed her behind him with his left forepaw as he stood up on hind legs to face me! He stayed there, motionless, looking me in the eye, until mama and the cubs had vanished into the dark. Then he turned and followed them.
What more proof do we need that the patriarchy was invented by evil human men to justify the oppression of women?
Xanthippa says:
Ah! NOW I see!
Patriarchy is a conspiracy, imposed upon us by the raccoons!!!
No wonder these ‘bandits’ always go around ‘masked’!!! ;0)