Anthropologies of Age

I unearthed a rather thought provoking blog while on a rather mundane google search of "panda names."

I think this is someone I'd like to meet, though of course because meeting people from the internet is creepy, someone I'd like to meet in a strictly neutral, strictly hypothetical non-threatening pocket dimension, free of the dual burdens of awkwardness and judgmentalism.

The quality of thought changes when you know you actually could meet someone, someone who's not just a nebulous text-spawning "person on the internet." If I went out and took Metro lines so and so, I could meet him... You know when something is "based on a true story," it's a better story? And so it is.

I think he's smarter than me also. Not smarter necessarily IQ-wise (I couldn't judge, but I wouldn't be surprised) but just in the "Oh, I never thought of that," category, a certain level of self-awareness. Maybe this is the difference between old people and young people, what "maturity" is. (Asking me to define "maturity" is like ... well... Blind people don't dream in color, from what I've heard. When people who are born blind are asked, "Do you wish you could see?" they say, "How could I wish it, when I've never known it?") It's only a theory I have; my actual contact with people outside my age group is rare. More anthropological fieldwork on my part must be done.

Unfortunately, whenever I talk to anyone older than me, it's within a hierarchical context: parents, relatives, teachers, bosses, "superiors"¹ even informally. In the case of the blog, I have spontaneously been handed the revelations, stripped of formality and rank, of someone older than me, but not old enough to be "old." You can tell, I think, just from the writing style- reading things by people older than you is like dropping a pebble into a deep pool, watching it sink, and watching the ripples. I can't explain why. It just is.

When I was younger, and my parents kept using the "when you're more mature" line on me, I thought rebelliously that, surely the consciousness of a twenty year old and the consciousness of a forty year old were similar? Your IQ does not improve so much after a certain age. If education were the issue, then a ten year-old public school American brat would be more "mature" than an 80 year old peasant from a third world country. It's not so much about family status and responsibility either- there are thirteen year-old wives and avowed bachelors to the grave. Between age 10 and age 20 a person goes through revelations of seismic magnitude, and compared to that, I didn't think the mental difference between someone, say 25, and 45 was a difference in "maturity" so much as a difference in physiological, economic, social conditions.

That was a theory, and theories can be disproved.

I know I am smarter now than when I was twelve. Smarter than when I was eighteen. How it happened and the nature of this "wisdom" is a mystery. At any age, you dwell within your consciousness. All of the world, for its great size, can be encompassed inside my head, and vast as the universe is, it cannot be bigger than my mind.

So. I enjoy watching thoughts bloom...

Sorry for the two philosophy-babble posts in a row.

¹ Except for lower-class adults. Un-PC, but true. Consider: My boss is "Dr. Mitch." The janitors at Harbor are "Sheila and Lynette." My dentist is "Dr. Miyamoto." My school bus driver was "Bobby." The esteemed culinary expert cum tv celebrity is (the honorable) "Iron Chef Kenichi." The food services employee working the dining hall cashier is "Valerie." Us young'ns are taught to address adults (I'm a "college girl," emphasis on "girl," hence not a "real" adult) as superiors, but if forms of address have any social implication, then what am I to think? I still find addressing adults by first name abhorrent. Sometimes I will call the janitor "Ms. Sheila."

Good Morning, Edward Said!

I've been watching Going Tribal, a Discovery Channel reality show about this British marine who goes to live with various tribes for a month. I find it to be quite interesting, though on the Discovery Channel forum a bunch of anthropologists are stirring up a ruckus.

I concur that the advertising is retarded. "Oohhh, watch the white man try to survive a month with the CANNIBALS!!!" Plus, the generic "tribal" drumbeat, the cliche spiral pattern and leet flame motifs get a thumbs down. You know if they did a show called "Going Oriental" and had a bunch of geishas, dragons and Jackie Chan in the trailer, (with ying yangs and that "chop suey" font), I'd be pretty pissed off too. It'd be almost as bad as the description^* UMBC dining services wrote of our Chinese takeout. Anyway, the show itself is actually pretty good, though I think that the hour-long episodes are too short to give us anywhere near a comprehensive understanding of various cultures. True to its reality show nature, you get all the crazy shit, ("I'm Bruce Parry, watch me drink cow blood!") but not so much normal things.

Of course, all the anthropologists are screaming, "Cultural Imperialism!" I think the anthropologists should pull their heads out of their asses and be glad a show like this was even made, and is widely watched. One of the criticisms I saw was, "OMG how dare the Discovery Channel send a normal joe, and not a trained anthropologist!" I find that to be a paternalistic and imperialistic statement in itself. So the only people who can "study" foreign peoples are "trained scientists"? So the only contact indigenous people should have with the outside world should be people sent there to study them? God. The Suri and the Kombai, among others, are living and breathing people, not Jane Goodall and the monkeys. They should have the final say over who to invite into their homes to live with and befriend, not scientists who want to "protect the natives from cultural contamination." Explorer Bruce Parry never claims to be an objective scientist doing a scholarly documentary. His show is merely the memoir of his personal experience and how it changed him. It's not the be-all-end-all authority about a people, and nothing ever will be. If someone produces a reality show about living in Japan or England or Sweden, will the anthropologists jump on his ass too?

Anthropologists are also annoyed that Bruce Parry spins his experience as being exciting and dangerous. This annoyance is understandable, since for ages anyone who wasn't white has been labeled an exotic, wild savage. To which I respond... exotic, wild, or no, living miles away from the nearest modern medical facility is dangerous. Having bows drawn on you by a dozen Indonesian tribesmen is dangerous. Living in Sudan on the border between two warring ethnic groups, in the middle of a civil war, is dangerous. Parry made it quite clear that his hosts were hospitable and kind, but be that as it may, anyone in his situation is in great danger, regardless of the disposition of his companions. It's a hard life, and it does a great disservice to the people involved to pretend that, "Ladeedadeeda, there's no war or disease here! We live in Rousseau's paradise!"

Bruce Parry has balls. Give him credit for that.

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