h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Serious point, though...if we want people to embrace political change...do we also ned to get them to embrace the implausible?

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I would like to stress that I'm not simply making a pedantic scientific point here. (Although, for sure, our reasoning should be informed by science). It seems to me that the reasons for wanting early/native cultures to have been egalitarian and matriarchal is political: they represent a golden age to which we can aspire to return. While I thouroughly embrace Feminist, egalitarian aims, I don't think that this is a necessary premise. All we need to agree on is that things can and should be better than they are at present.
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Look, that argument completely ignores the fact that there are current and recent examples of egalitarian cultures that aren't patriarchal in the western sense. Or do you think they are representative of a golden age too and therefore are suspect as motivation or understanding?

god I hate that sigh thing. It looks like a grumpy maggot.

Examples (as requested):

Moso

Southern Maori (doubt you will find much online about that though)

Many (but not all) Native American tribes. I've forgotten which but can get some names if anyone is interested in looking it up.




AND, I'm not saying anything about a golden age. I can tell you some blood curdling stories about Maori. When you see me representing native peoples as angels who do no wrong and shit rainbows, then you can call me on it. Until then please stop attributing something to my arguments and views that simply isn't there.

AND, please go and read the research. It's there if you look for it and that is what you need to form an opinion.

>>Serious point, though...if we want people to embrace political change...do we also ned to get them to embrace the implausible?<<

It's not just political change that is needed though. It's a change in world view.

And having examples is useful, because so many people believe that patriarchy is natural and unavoidable.

OK - but our the egalitarian variations outposts that have managed to resist patriarchy...or interesting variants from a dominant pattern whicg (we can observe) has a tendency to assert itself. Exceptions that prove the rule.

Agreed, though the existence of alternate models shows us that patriarchy isn't inevitable. *On the other hand*...we're not trying to reprodice those societies: we're trying to advance our own.


'A Difference In Worldview' - Yes. But if we want to be true to ourselves - and to the scientific evidence - we should be clear that it is a view of how the world can and should be, not how it is or has been. 'This isn't working. Let's try something new.'

Ed, have you looked at the actual work that has been done in prehistory? Apart from the ape are patriarchal thing, what evidence do you have that patriarchy IS the norm (instead of being something from the last 5,000 years for part of the planet)?

Have you read any feminist analysis of culture? Or do you consider that to not be relevant because it's a political view and therefore somehow tainted?


Here's a starting point for the Native American experience, a review of Paula Gunn Allens's The Sacred Hoop (highly recommended if you want to be exposed to concepts you haven't experienced before):

http://tutubee1.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/week-9/



>>'This isn't working. Let's try something new.'<<

Like I said, too many people refuse to believe that anything else is possible. And IMO the West is seriously lacking in imagination when it comes to this. If you want to want to learn from native peoples (and other cultures too) you literally have to unlearn some of the ways that the West thinks. This doesn't mean you lose that capacity, just that you have a choice.

kea: "It's not just political change that is needed though. It's a change in world view."

On some level, are those two things not the same?

TRiG.

Not really TRiG. People can change their political minds relatively easily. Indeed most people's politics change somewhat simply with age. I'm talking about something much more fundamental. Paradigm shift might be a term but it's very new agey

What strikes me is how arbitary and vague all these poncy academic terms like patriarchy, matriarchy, etc are when really describing something as complex as the human 'social' in all its many worldwide and historical cultural manifestations. What's their exact definition?

I don't think one can analyse all cultures with the same language...that essentially are terms invented by our recent male dominated western culture.

>>Have you read any feminist analysis of culture? Or do you consider that to not be relevant because it's a political view and therefore somehow tainted?


Well...yes. Of course I have. And, as I hope I've made clear, I think it's a *valid* political view. All I'm saying is that studies of ancient and non-Western cultures provide only weak - but unessesntial - support for the argument.


Put it another way...I sometimes say that my political outlook was fixed early on when I wanted to be (what we called in those days) a Red Indian, rather than a cowboy. That's not to say I want to recreate anything remotely resembling the Plains culture.

Frs:
>>What strikes me is how arbitary and vague all these poncy academic terms like patriarchy, matriarchy, etc are when really describing something as complex as the human 'social' in all its many worldwide and historical cultural manifestations. What's their exact definition?

Point completely taken. Where I've used them, they're simply convenient shorthand for something a lot more complex. And they show the paucity of my vocabulary.

Good point Effers. That's why language is so crucial to culture. When you talk to native speakers of native peoples they say that there are some things that you simply cannot talk about in English in a good way.

We can choose our own definitions though, so that we have a shared understanding.

>>We can choose our own definitions though, so that we have a shared understanding.

Not entirely impossible, unfortunately. Sometimes we may as well stay fuzzy.

-> not entirely *possible*, unfortunately.

But they also relate to kea's point, about lack of imagination...not you personally...but our way of trying to analyse the social. I've had this discussion with you before about Aboriginals, when you kept going on with the Marxist thing of putting dinner on the table, and I said I'd seen the terrible results in Alice and other places because the complexities of the social had been ignored, however many hand-outs the state gave to put dinner on the table, most of that money got spent on getting wasted.

I agree with kea. We should challenge our imaginations, and realise what a *prism* of western seeing we use to try to understand other cultural set-ups.

An example of different ways of thinking. It's normal in many native cultures for there to be differing layers of reality, and apparently contradictory realities are not such a problem whereas in the West we tend to think in more absolute terms and make ourselves choose one reality over another.

If I say to you I had a dream last night about going to the beach and talking to my dead cousin, most people would say that the dream wasn't real. I wasn't really at the beach and I wasn't really talking to my dead cousin. But even according to our own world view, the dream did exist (we can measure REM). So what are we saying didn't exist?

Native peoples accept that there are different realities and so the dream is real. I did go to the beach and talk to my dead cousin. And the accepting of that as real is what gives it power that it doesn't have if you think it's not really real. That last sentence is the crucial bit, and I'm sure now we'll all get caught up in arguing about what is real and what's not. Which is completely missing the point.

Fuzzy yes. But not always. I think I made it clear why using 'matriarchy' was not helpful because it actually means something else than what we are talking about.

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Put it another way...I sometimes say that my political outlook was fixed early on when I wanted to be (what we called in those days) a Red Indian, rather than a cowboy. That's not to say I want to recreate anything remotely resembling the Plains culture.
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Ok, but I really feel like you are misunderstanding where I am coming from. I've been reading and listening to native peoples for 20 years. And sure, when I was younger I was enamoured of the noble savage paradigm, but that gets knocked out pretty quick in NZ if you are serious about the issues and able to take the truth from many sides (I've been told off by Maori and white rednecks who both had valid points).

I have to wonder if some of this is because I live with native peoples and you don't. That's not a criticism. I just know that NZ is a polynesian culture, so I don't have a problem with thinking about us becoming native (and I mean that quite literally - NZ's population will be more than 50% polynesian within my lifetime). It's inevitable here.


I know you are supportive of feminist politics I just think this goes beyond that. Read some non-white feminists (they might not even call themselves feminist), because that will take things in another direction completely and get us beyond the male vs female political thing.

It looks like someone smoking.

I don't think I would ever guess it means 'sigh' which is still why I type 'sigh'.

For instance, a lot of white feminism has been taken up with getting power within the culture eg equal rights, equal pay etc. But it doesn't really challenge the patriarchy beyond that, it simply wants the patriarchy to be more fair.

And that's understandable, and probably necessary. It won't work though, it'll just mean there will be a period of time where women appear to be doing better and then things will be repressive again.

That's why I look outside my own cultures (because there are useful examples to be found) and why I look to my cultures' pasts (because I want to see how long it's been since we were native and what can be gleaned from there).