Section 6 – May 1992

7th May

Bystanding

I feel that I am at something of a watershed with this book. Dave has just read the March and April sections, and seemed quite excited by it, encouraging me to believe that it may be published and read, and that I should get on and complete it. If it were published, perhaps it could be called ‘Pattern! – a bystander’s exploration of the essence of life and thought’.

Why ‘bystander’? Well, that comes from a train of thought sparked off by an observation Dave made about my writing being dense, and the need for examples to lighten it up. He led into this comment by saying that he had liked my little progress reports to myself because they introduced some relief and reality into an otherwise very theoretical discourse. At the same time he questioned my ‘rule’ about not quoting anyone, and suggested I could mention others’ ideas if only to question them – the real purpose, again, being to bring in some variety to the writing. My reaction was a feeling that he had a valid and important point, but that I did not want to do what he suggested – and so to wonder why not.

One reason is that I feel that examples can distort the point one is trying to make; at least the writer’s examples can; much better if the reader makes his or her own connections. I would rather find some way to encourage the reader to take it slowly; perhaps a generous sprinkling of pictorial illustrations, rather than verbal ones, would help.

Another reason, which I an inclined to feel apologetic about, is that I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to bring in lots of examples and references. My way of studying any subject is to read widely, but then to shed the detail, retaining only the underlying concepts. But perhaps this way of thinking is a gift which, if actively pursued, leads to a valuable breadth of understanding – not something highly regarded in our society, which respects narrow and detailed expertise and not wider ‘wisdom’, which would be dismissed as shallow and lacking authority, if it were considered at all.

But that word ‘understanding’. I am fascinated by words, and very interested in their origins, which often give valuable clues about what concepts and processes people were seeking to express before these were reified and tied down by a single word being chosen. If a word comes from Latin or Greek, one can often see the construction of the new word out of other words and word bits, whose meanings were once significant to the meaning of the new word, but have got lost as the new word becomes ossified. But ‘understand’ comes from a single Old English word ‘understandan’ and, in my dictionary anyway, that is that, there is no meaning trail to follow – except by looking at the word itself.

‘Under’ and ‘stand’, ‘stand under’ – what an oppressive idea. It suggests that during life we have to carry more and more knowledge, support other people, uphold the burden of society’s values and assumptions, and generally be submissive slaves rather than free spirits. It is as if knowledge were the tribal trappings of civilised society. Instead of beads, bones, and bangles to weigh us down we have eternal truths, laws of nature, the burden of proof, and common sense. Instead of paint and feathers we have degrees and honours. And, as if to emphasise that society has to shackle its people, particularly its leaders, for fear they would lead us to dance away instead of bow down reverently, we hang on them chains of office, crowns and coronets and heavy trains of velvet and fur, academic gowns and lawyers wigs.

Another attribute of understanding is its ‘absoluteness’. You either understand or you don’t. A lump of understanding is either right or it is wrong – often yesterday’s or someone else’s or ‘their’ understanding is wrong; today’s or one’s own or ‘our’s’ is right.

But my understanding, which has culminated in the pattern! theory, is not like that. I do not carry around facts and figures, sources and references, to support what I believe. I do not accept or reject, agree or disagree; I do not see black or white, I see complex and subtle patterns!. Maybe ‘understanding’ is not really the best word for my sort of exploration. So, having fished around for an alternative, I hit upon ‘bystander’. That suggests an interested but uninvolved onlooker – which is what I feel I would like to be, at least sometimes. So I shall adopt the role of ‘bystander’, and extend it to include the process of ‘bystanding’ and the activity represented by the verb ‘to bystand’.

An example – Dave! – of a situation needing bystanders

I have said that as I read I tend to absorb concepts and shed detail. But this does not happen immediately. I know much of the detail of something I have read recently; it is only over time that what is, for me, the essential form emerges out of someone else’s elaborately presented argument. So I thought it would be useful to take a book I am currently reading and describe what I am getting out of it now, and then return to the subject in a few weeks time and report what I have retained. This may not work, because writing about it now will incline me to retain more than I otherwise would – but it’s worth a try.

The book is Margaret Mead and Samoa by Derek Freeman. The background of the book is the fierce academic debate about ‘nature’ versus ‘nurture’, or biological determinism versus cultural determinism, which was carried on from the middle of the last century to the middle of this, roughly between Darwin and Hitler. Although the debate was amongst academics, there was a political element to it. The ‘nature’ people saw a Darwinian process of natural selection determining human development, even in historical and modern times. This was seen to provide scientific justification for what we would now call racism, as well as the hierarchy of classes in society, as simply the outcome of an inevitable process of genetic selection of the best, who would outlast the other inferior people. This led to the formation of the ‘eugenics movement’, directed at saving mankind by choosing the best ‘blood’ to breed from.

On the other side were the ‘nurture’ people who believed that humans are essentially different from animals in that they are not involved in genetic evolution. Humans are formed by their culture; and upbringing and socialisation are effectively the sole determinants of human attributes and behaviour. Politically, the cultural determinists were in sympathy with the socialists and revolutionaries who believed in social justice and equal opportunities. They argued that every human being is born with the same potential, and that disadvantaged groups could have their chances improved by education.

The author, Freeman, clearly regards these extreme positions as absurd, and believes that both heredity and culture influence human development. He would seem to be a ‘btstander ‘ to the dispute. And he identifies a ‘bystander’ to the earlier stages of the debate, E. Ray Lankester, who observed in 1899 that ‘educability’ was genetically inherited, but that what was learned was not passed on in the the genes because, as everyone was beginning to agree, acquired characteristics cannot be inherited. But Lankester was disregarded and the two sides polarised under the leadership of their respective gurus: Francis Galton, the founder of the eugenics movement, for biological determinism; and Franz Boas, the founder of the American anthropological school, for cultural determinism and the exogenetic, man-made influences on human development.

If one looks at the nature/nurture argument from a pattern! point of view, one can go further than Freeman’s or Lankester’s compromise positions by observing that genetic and cultural influences on human development are not really two kinds of influence at all. From a pattern! viewpoint one can only be a bystander in this particular debate, one cannot take sides, because one sees that the two contestants were squabbling over nothing. Both sides are right, but not because there are two mechanisms determining human development, as Freeman believes, but because there is no determination as such, only a flow of patterns! through time.

By the theory, all past patterns! have a potential influence on the development of an individual. One can identify sets of patterns!, just as one can see sets of characteristics. But the division is somewhat arbitrary, and does not indicate any clear cut division, or any essentially different kinds of influence. Past physical characteristics guide new physical development and past cultural characteristics guide new social behaviour, not in any absolute way, but they tend to be copied more or less. And, of course, the patterns! which have been most often repeated, and the most similar or the most recent, tend to have more influence than rare and remote patterns!.

By pattern! theory, there are no ‘laws’, of chemistry, biology or genetics governing the characteristics of an organism, and the way it developes and grows and reproduces itself. There may seem to be laws because the chemical composition and shape of a protein molecule are patterns! which seldom vary because they have occurred so often in the past. The handful of different cell structures found in plants and animals are also pretty old and will not vary very much. Tissues and organs are somewhat less stable in the patterns! they can take. But organisms vary enormously because of the variety present in the past history of life. They tend to be influenced by more recent patterns! in others of their species and also by the patterns! of their environment. Human beings are flexible in their behaviour because they are recent evolutionary arrivals and there are fewer examples to follow. The nearest and most recent patterns! are going to be more influential than the very ancient patterns!, although old patterns! will guide physical development, and will effectively determine body chemistry and cell, tissue and organ structure.

Interestingly, pattern! serves to resurrect the notion of the ‘inheritance of acquired characteristics’ because patterns! which have occurred during life are available to be copied by future generations – once they have occurred they are there, permanently. In the pattern! model we are not expecting there to be any mechanism for passing on characteristics from parents to children, so it is unimportant whether a characteristic, physical or behavioural, is echoed in some gene sequence (thought it may be), or whether we can envisage a mechanism whereby the characteristic can be translated into a code capable of representing it, and a way for the code to get into an ovum or sperm cell.

In particular, what human beings learn during life can be inherited, even without deliberate socialisation or the need for anything in the genes – because what has happened in the past is still present in the world, and still influences by a process of resonance with anything that resembles and recognises it. It is there for children to ‘pick up’ even without deliberate teaching, although a little teaching will enable a child to ‘latch on’ to the past patterns! of their culture, and progress with leaps and bounds far beyond what they have actually been taught. An example of providing a hook to a huge body of cultural knowledge is where a deaf-blind child, as in the famous example of Helen Keller, is taught the concept of a word representing something in the world. When the child has grasped that concept, the whole package of language and communication is opened up – because the child can now recognise the pattern!, which consists of the whole history of language and communication.

But, let’s get back to the book, and go on beyond the acadenic and political background to the substance. Freeman, the author, is not really the bystander he would seem to be. He has something he is committed to proving by writing and publishing this book. He is critical and dismissive of the ideologies of the ‘nature v. nurture’ players, and he evidently regards himself as objective and scientific, and free of ideological bias. I shall come to what I judge to be Freeman’s ideological position later, but his lack of objectivity is revealed in way he demolishes the ‘anthropological myth’ created by Margaret Mead.

At one level the book is very convincing. Indeed it can be read as a serious investigation of the facts by an impartial critic who simply wants to put the record straight. But Freeman is over-anxious to be thought well of, as revealed by his repeated insistence that he does not accuse Mead of deliberate falsification, only of naivity and inexperience. And there is a kind of spitefulness about the book, starting with the photograph of pretty little Margaret Mead aged 23 on the front cover, and one is conscious that Freeman is personally involved as he patronisingly dismisses one of the best known and highly regarded anthropologists of this century as a naive young student anxious to please her teacher.

I now come to the story that Mead and Freeman disagreed about, and consideration of what light can be shed on the matter by pattern! thinking.

Mead set out for Samoa to study a culture which was different from that of the United States. At the time, in 1928, the problems which American parents were having with their adolescent children was a popular subject of discussion. In the view of biological determinists, this stage of growing up would prove troublesome in any culture because it was associated with the transition to sexual maturity, and with hormone changes bringing mood swings. There was nothing that parents or others could do to smoothe the passage, it was not their fault, they just had to put up with their kids’ behaviour until they grew out of it. This view must have enhanced the popularity of biological determinism which, as I have indicated, dismissed social responsibility in favour of competition and individual initiative, which fitted in with prevailing American attitudes.

Mead had the idea of studying adolescence in Samoa, in particular the experiences of the teenage girls, to see if their troubles were similar to those of American girls. What she discovered was a ‘contrary instance’ of the biological determinists’ theory. She found that the Samoan girls had a smoothe and happy passage through adolescence, as a result of the easy going Samoan culture. As well as talking to 25 adolescent girls from a number of villages, Mead studied the culture as a whole. She discovered that the Samoan people were cooperative and uncompetitive, unconcerned about rank and status, peaceful, reared children kindly but without strong parental ties, were without jealousy, encouraged free love before marriage and tolerated it afterwards, and were uninterested in religion.

Mead’s book about her findings, ‘Coming of age in Samoa’, became a bestseller, Mead herself acquired a high reputation, and many other students of anthropology praised her work and confirmed her observations by further studies of the Samoan way of life. Of course, her report was heartily welcomed by the cultural determinists, whose beliefs it vindicated.

The demolition job that Freeman did could not have been more total. He reduced Mead’s ‘impressive study’ to a few months spent interviewing her 25 girls away from their villages, and the most cursory look at Samoan life, which she did not participate in since she did not live with them or properly learn their language. He then provides a huge weight of evidence from historical reports, local police records, extensive studies (some decades in duration), his own investigations, and statements from the Samoans themselves, to show that the Soamoan culture was precisely opposite to how Mead described it. In particular, the incidence of mental disturbance, crime and delinquency, and suicide amongst Samoan adolescents was higher than in many countries in the world, including America. Some of this disturbance was attributable to the harsh physical punishment usually meted out to children. Virginity was extremely highly prized and a woman was deflowered (often raped) by the man she married. Girls were carefully guarded, there was no free love before marriage, and adultery was traditionally punished by death and, at the time of Mead’s study, was punishable by fines and imprisonment. Furthermore, Samoans were devout Christians. Freeman even gives examples of Mead making statements which contradicted her own evidence.

On the face of it, there would not seem to be anything that pattern!, or any other theory, could add to this, or indeed anything that needs to be added. Freeman, the painstaking scholar and fair-minded man, has made his case and proved his point. Anthropology must enter a new era of thorough research, free of dogma and pre-conceived ideas, and a synthesis is due between biological and cultural determinism.

I cannot add anything to the argument in terms of information or expertise, nor would I, because I do not wish to take sides. I do have to admit to an emotional bias, in that I read Margaret Mead during my teenage years when I used to devour books by the ton, and I loved her. But what I would like to do is to show what the bystander is able to see which is invisible to those involved.

By pattern! theory we create a world to match what we believe; belief and experience are inseparable. So Mead and Freeman each created and experienced a Samoa which echoed their beliefs, or they each saw the Samoa they were looking for. Mead shared her Samoa with 25 girls not much younger than herself. Freeman shared his with competitive, status conscious male chiefs who, like him, were good Christians. Mead and Freeman resonated with different patterns! in the Samoan culture.

Mead and her girls saw the male world as games of rank and ritual, played for pleasure rather than for material advantage or power. Freeman saw reflected in Samoan culture the attitudes and behaviours typical of men the world over: to him the status and power rituals were serious. Mead saw through her girls’ eyes the absurdity of the men’s games. The real business of life was, in Samoa, as elsewhere, the responsibility of women. No wonder the adolescent girls experienced their stage of life as free and easy: they were well aware of the essential work of bearing and raising children, food preparation and home making, nurturing and nursing, which would be their lot all too soon.

Neither Freeman nor Mead approached their studies of Samoa with open minds. Freeman was almost certainly more inclined than Mead would have been to regard the course of human historical development as one of progress and improvement. He would not have been inclined to regard a primative culture as being superior to civilised society. The best he could credit the Samoans (the Samoan men, that is) with is ‘being like us’, and this he does, emphasising his own patronising personal approaches to Samoan chiefs. One can almost see his arm over their backs and hear him say ‘Good man!’. And of crucial importance to Freeman, though not very relevant to Mead’s study, is the fact that the Samoans were Christians – again qualifying them to be regarded as ‘like us’. It is no surprise therefore that he sees in Samoan society all the faults of Western society, and no superior ways which we could learn from.

So Freeman makes much of the fact that Mead went to Samoa with pre-conceived ideas of what she would find, but he obviously did not see that the same was true of himself.

The pattern! bystander avoids the trap of trying to ‘be objective’, thereby seeing what Samoan culture is ‘really’ like, because he or she knows that every view is ‘really’ what is there – to the viewer. They are all ‘right’, even if they see phenomena which in a solid, material world would contradict each other. The fact that many people do often seem to see the same as each other is due to the resonance between them, rather than to there being an external world for them to observe.

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