Anthropology and the Assault on Common Sense: Critical Thinking About Being Human Is a Useful Hobby

[bluedigger]

[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0.3077em 0.3077em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]Anthropology and the Assault on Common Sense: Critical Thinking About Being Human Is a Useful Hobby By Agustin Fuentes[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3077em 0.3077em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]Recently, the nominee for vice president on the Republican ticket, Paul Ryan, talking about human rights, stated, "Our rights come from nature and God, not from government." Thinking as an anthropologist, one would be forced to ask Ryan, "What do you mean by 'nature,' and whose God are you talking about?" Rather than assuming that there is one way to be human, one set of human behaviors that lie in our genes or our culture, and one way to experience the spiritual and transcendental, anthropologists know that there are many ways to be and become human.

An important way to ask about human behavior, why humans do what we do, is to first question what we assume is "normal" or "natural" behavior. The renowned anthropologist Clifford Geertz told us that common sense "can be questioned, disputed, affirmed, developed, formalized, contemplated, even taught, and it can vary dramatically from one people to the next. It is, in short, a cultural system.... Here, as elsewhere, things are what you make of them." Much of what we think of as "natural," what we consider intuitive knowledge and common sense, rarely emerges from some inner biological core, subconsciously telling us what is "true." Rather it is more likely the result of the experiences we have had throughout the course of our lives and the way in which these events interact with and shape or influence our bodies and minds.

More than 80 years ago one of the core figures in American anthropology, Franz Boas, noted this and saw that we are influenced by the world around us and that, at the same time, our actions shape and influence that world, as well. We are biological organisms, but the totality of the human experience cannot be reduced to either specific innate (biological/nature) or external (environmental/nurture) influences. Rather, it is a synthesis of both; we are naturenurtural. The anthropologist Tim Ingold tells us that "to exist as a sentient being, people must already be situated in a certain environment and committed to the relationships this entails," and these relationships are built up and modified over the course of our lives.

Unfortunately, rather than being open to, and interested in, this perspective, many people get uncomfortable when challenged to be critical of their common sense. Realizing that what we take for granted as a given in the world is actually a hodge-podge of reality, belief, and experience melded together into what only feels like the truth (and varies from person to person and culture to culture) is a hard fact to face. Few of us want to accept that we know much less than we think, or that the basis for many of our actions and perceptions are not "natural" but naturenurtural: emergent properties of how we live our lives.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/american-anthropological-association/anthropology-and-the-assa_b_1834358.html

[bemildred]

1. Just ask the "candidate" how he expects those rights to be enforced if not by the government?

But otherwise, yeah, we are, in our origins, just big, smart, mean apes, and the sooner we allow ourselves to deal with that fact, the better our lives are going to be.

[xchrom]

3. +1

[RainDog]

2. k&r n/t

[Odin2005]

4. people confuse social custom with the laws of nature all the time.

It is something Karl Popper talks about in The Open Society and It's Enemies.