[Note: This is the eleventh sample from my rough draft of a
far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy. I don’t plan on reviewing more books for a
while. My blog is home to reviews of 199
books, and you are very welcome to explore them. The Search field on the right side will find
words in the full contents of all rants and reviews, if you are interested in
specific authors, titles, or subjects.]
Social
Structure
You and I are tropical primates, and our family tree
originated in Mother Africa. Africa
played a primary role in the evolution of our bodies and minds. Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers for at
least two million years. Because they
were predators on the savannah, they could not live in large herds. Too many hunters spoil the ecosystem. Their ability to function as high level
predators was heavily dependent on powerful technological crutches. At the same time, they were pitifully slow,
plump, juicy, walking meatballs. They
were far too vulnerable to survive as solitary predators, like tigers or bears.
The key to success was to live in small groups of maybe 15 to
30, work as a team, and move elsewhere when food got scarce. The normal daily experience of wild hominins
included constant exposure to a wide variety of other species. In the family of life, we were a wee minority
group, not the dominant animal. Ancestors
spent every day of their lives in a healthy natural habitat, not an ugly noisy
stinky industrial gulag of concrete and steel.
Joe Kane spent time in the Amazon rainforest. He noted that, prior to contact with
outsiders, most Huaorani never encountered more than seventy or eighty people
during their entire lives, most of whom they knew by name. Imagine that.
Mentally, we are far more comfortable being in small groups where we are
known and respected. It’s not groovy being
a stranger in a vast mob of strangers, day after day, year after year. You might feel like a zoo animal, serving a
life sentence for being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Functioning as a wild hunting and foraging team was very
different from civilized life. Sharing
was essential. Nobody went hungry unless
everyone did. Louis Liebenberg mentioned
a study of San hunters. Of those aged 15
to 38, just 17 percent of the hunters were responsible for 70 percent of the
kills, while half of the hunters killed nothing at all. If meat was not shared, many would starve,
and the community would blink out.
Cultures had different methods for distributing portions of the meat,
but this task was never a job for the day’s lucky hunter, and his portion was
never the largest.
It was essential for effective teamwork to avoid personal
conflicts, and to promptly resolve the ones that occurred. Clans typically had time-proven strategies
for nurturing good interpersonal relationships.
A humble and respectful demeanor encouraged warm drama-free
relationships. Self-deprecating
discourse (the opposite of boasting) was common among wild people. Peter Freuchen wrote that when an Eskimo
hunter brought home a primo feast, he would shamefully apologize to the others
for bringing back crappy meat that was unfit for dogs. The people nodded and smiled.
Bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers had no tolerance for
bigheads. Whenever someone displayed the
first symptoms of pride, they were mocked, teased, or shunned — whatever was
needed to restore the swollen head to normal size. Then came reconciliation and
forgiveness. Uppity males who could not
be reformed might be deported to other clans.
Incurable jerks sometimes had to be euthanized.
Christopher Boehm described how an American anthropologist
created an ugly scene while staying with the Utku Eskimos of northern Canada. She behaved in an ordinary American manner,
sometimes a bit moody, occasionally displaying a flash of anger when
irritated. This was totally uncool in a
culture where folks spent long, dark, frigid winters in close company. Folks were expected to smile, laugh, and joke
— to display good manners.
Everyone’s highest responsibility was to maintain the
stability of the group. In the Utku
culture, except for childish outbursts, it was rude to show your emotions,
because strong thoughts can kill or cause illness. Anger was dangerous juju, highly toxic. Eventually, the natives ran out of patience
with the American drama queen, and she became a nonperson.
A primary benefit of nomadic life was that you couldn’t have
more belongings than you could carry in both hands. This avoided all of the bad juju of hoarding,
inequality, and hierarchy — the core curse of modern society. In regions having abundant wild food, like
the Pacific Northwest, tribes became sedentary, lived in permanent dwellings,
and became able to hoard stuff. Those
with lots of stuff tended to look down on folks who don’t. Inequality was a reliable cause of resentment
and conflict.
Vine Deloria noted that everyone is a descendant of tribal
ancestors. In each tribal homeland,
unique spiritual traditions emerged, fine-tuned to its landscape, ecology, and
climate. Every homeland had sacred
places where the community participated in special ceremonies. All members of the tribe had deep roots in
the homeland, and all shared the same worldview. A tribal person “does not live in a tribe,
the tribe lives in him.”
In modern society, neighborhoods are constantly-changing
swarms of occupants having highly diverse incomes, ethnicities, religious
beliefs, and political views. People may
live side by side for years, yet have nothing in common, and sometimes intense
differences. Many do not know the names
or faces of most folks in their neighborhood.
This is not a coherent community sharing a profound sense of
responsibility for the wellbeing of their ecosystem.
Colin Turnbull wrote that in the Pygmy world, it’s hard to
see a clear boundary between work and play.
The vital task of maintaining social harmony required generous amounts
of singing and dancing, followed by gathering ripe fruit, or hunting, or
fireside chats, or teaching the children.
They enjoyed a society harmonized by a common set of beliefs, values,
and lifestyles. Everyone was on the same
channel.
Modern society is a cranky boisterous mob of numerous
cultures, classes, ideologies, and religious beliefs. We are expected to accept diversity, and even
take pride in our tolerance of those who are different. Turnbull realized that “a society that was not
bound together by a single powerful belief is not a society at all.” It was just a mob of folks kept under control
by law and force.
Turnbull spoke fondly of Father Longo, a Catholic
missionary. Pygmies had no word for
evil. “In order to convert them, then,
he would first have to teach them the concept of evil, and that he was not
prepared to do.” He left them
unmolested.
John Gunther saw that folks in the wild animist tribes of
Africa were of one mind. When
missionaries taught them Christianity, it was highly disruptive, because it
taught the importance of the individual, a foreign idea. While you might have a salvation experience,
your friends and family might not. The
unity of the group could be rubbished by spiritual discord.
In modern society, everyone is an individual, and we spend
our lives competing with everyone else to climb the organizational ladders, and
proudly display our glittering status trinkets.
Self-centeredness is the norm. Jay
Griffiths wrote that missionaries in South America often provided the natives
with mirrors, to heighten their sense of individuality. She learned that in Peru, four Christian
groups used helicopters and speedboats in their fierce competition to locate
uncontacted tribes. They fully
understood that they would inevitably be sharing the diseases of civilization,
but they didn’t care. In some places,
half of the natives died within two years.
Daniel Everett was sent to the Amazon to translate the Bible
into the language of the illiterate Pirahã hunter-gatherers. Eventually, overwhelmed by the absurdity, he
became an atheist, abandoned the project, and lost his family. “I would go so far as to suggest that the
Pirahãs are happier, fitter, and better adjusted to their environment than any
Christian or other religious person I have ever known.”
Jean Liedloff described the natives she met in South
America. The Tauripan people of
Venezuela were the happiest people she had ever met. All of their children were relaxed, joyful,
cooperative, and rarely cried — they were never bored, lonely, or
argumentative. The Yequana people seemed
unreal to Liedloff, because of their lack of unhappiness. As an expedition was moving up a challenging
jungle stream, she noticed that the Italians would get completely enraged at
the slightest mishap, while the Yequana just laughed the struggles away. Their daily life had a party mood to it.
Colin Turnbull spent years with the Mbuti Pygmies. He was amazed by their joyful way of living. They would laugh until they could no longer
stand, and then sit down and laugh. We
tend to regard our childhood as a golden age of innocence and joy — before
we’re shipped off to dreary schools, jobs, and nursing homes. The Pygmies did not idolize childhood, because
they spent their lives in a place of wonder, and with each passing year, the
wonder of it all kept growing.
Robert Wolff described the Sng’oi people of Malaysia. They knew each other’s unspoken thoughts,
communicating telepathically. “They had
an immense inner dignity, were happy, and content, and did not want
anything.” They loved to laugh and
joke. They were often singing and
smiling. Angry voices were never heard.
Lewis Cotlow visited Eskimos in arctic Canada. One night, he spent several hours talking to
local officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They kept repeating one idea in different
ways: “The Eskimos are the happiest people in the world.”
Knud Rasmussen traveled across the arctic, from Greenland to
Siberia, from 1921 to 1924. He enjoyed the
Eskimo people. “A notable feature was
their lively good humor and careless, high-spirited manner.” The women worked very hard, but “they were
always happy and contended, with a ready laugh in return for any jest or kindly
word.” Eskimos perceived whites to be
uptight and coldly impersonal.
Peter Freuchen spent a lot of time with the Eskimos, and
married into their culture. He wrote
that “they always enjoy life with an enviable intensity, and they believe
themselves to be the happiest people on earth living in the most beautiful
country there is.” Inuit women had “perpetual
smiles,” and “they seem to have more natural grace, more zest for life than
their white sisters.”
Joe Kane was impressed by the fact that Huaorani men and
women enjoy equal status. It was always
unacceptable to give orders, or to raise a hand against a woman or child. Family harmony was important.
Richard Lee spent time with the !Kung of the Kalahari
Desert. He noted that the women were
quite independent from their parents and husbands. “The many forms of sexual oppression that
women experience in other societies, such as rape, wife battering, purdah,
enforced chastity, and sexual double standards are absent in !Kung society.”
