Xenophobia

I would first like to inform you that I have a great interest in Anthropology. Correction, I have a great interest in Biological Anthropology. I am somewhat interested in Cultural Anthropology as it pertains to human development/survival but I don't really care much for learning the subtleties between redware/blackware nor how different dyes were produced to print various types of textiles. In addition, I have great respect for other cultures and their intricacies whether I specifically know what those intricacies are or not. This continent (North America) has learned and can continue to learn great lessons about life and living from other countries and cultures.


One of my more academically successful classes in college was strangely Cultural Anthropology. I think my success had less to do with my knowledge and interest of the topic and more to do with everyone else in the class being borderline brain dead. In every Cultural Anthropology class there is a subtext and that subtext is that America is a greedy, fat, wasteful apathetic country.  While I do not think that America can outright deny any of those claims I'd like to look at the topic a little bit beyond the surface.


A portion of my class was based around a tribe of People called the Baka. From what I recall they are a small tribe of rain forest dwelling people. The live in a pack of of about 30 people comprised of men, women and children. Their entire lives are devoted to community and sharing. The men hunt and trap and the women tend to the children and also build nets for fishing in the river.  One of the videos we watched in class chronicled the arduous yet rewarding task of obtaining honey from high up in the tree tops. It is a task that requires 4-5 men and one or two who are particularly skilled at climbing. The video took special pains to highlight how even though 1 or 2 people do the majority work in retrieving the honey that they make sure that everyone in the tribe gets some. The video also took great pains to show how the men trap animals and pass down their knowledge to the younger children.

The video wants us the entitled, wasteful, greedy American to take pause and consider the idea that we are not as evolved as we think we are. Further, maybe other societies know a little bit more about peaceful living and how to work as a team.  It's like one of those animated films that involves animals who only exhibit a kind and gentle spirit.  Somewhere along the way the dog, fish or polar bear who only has love in his/her heart reveals through the song the inhumanity of humanity.


Here is my rebuttal:


The Baka are comprised of small groups of people who roam the forests together. Their reliance on each other is built in and is necessary to their survival. There is no way that you can compare a small collection of people with an entire continent. If that was the case then I could compare my immediate an extended family to  the Baka. Well, not my family but a family that loves each other.  As a family unit we tend to be more generous and more apt to provide/take care of/ teach each other skills.

Honey also seems to be the greatest and most coveted currency of the Baka tribe. While the video emphasizes how honey is fairly distributed at the same time it is evident the amount of pleasure and excitement that the honey provides. I theorize that you could disrupt their whole sense of community simply by altering the way that they access honey.  If everyone did not have to work together in order to get honey I suspect that no one would. Moreover, if one member of the tribe developed a skill for obtaining honey in a faster, safer more plentiful way then surely he/she would be viewed as a more important if not the most important member of the tribe.

The dominant attitude when making a film or when anthropologically studying a culture is that they (the other culture) have somehow evolved and grown around our greedy and insensitive ways in order to find a better life. The thesis is that tribes like the Baka have perhaps found the true meaning of life and their way is superior to our way. But let's be honest, for the most part it's bullshit. I don't want to live in the forest wearing a speedo made out of leaves. I don't want to dig a hole to poop in, I don't want to catch and prepare my own food. If the vote comes down to popularity, neither does the rest of the world. Even third world countries have embraced the awesomeness of cars, cellphones and laptops. We invented technology because we didn't like the fact that our lives were harsh, brutal and short. Whatever we lack in connection to the earth we have traded for longer lives and a trajectory that will take us into the stars. To infinity and beyond!

If You Should Die Before You Wake

I grew up in Canada. In the land of polar bears they have health care for all. I don't want to argue whether or not the level of health care offered in Canada is superior or inferior to that which is offered in the Unites States. What I do want argue is the volume at which that service is offered. 


When I used to go to sleep in my igloo at bedtime I would leave the television on to help lull me to sleep. After eleven o'clock at night there is nothing good on T.V. I'd just set the channel to the first talk show I could find and let it drone on in the background. The commercials that would come on were for various food and drink products. Every so often a semi pornographic phone sex ad was spliced in but those always had soft saxophone music that did little to interrupt a determined sleeper. 

At this point I need to disclose something. I have panic attacks. Many people who don't know what panic attacks are think that they are instances in your life where you worry, stress or panic about things. Real panic attacks however are nothing like you feeling anxious about your new job or failing a math test. Often panic attacks are unexplained and happen spontaneously. Imagine yourself reading a book sitting out in the sun. Suddenly every muscle in your body tenses up, your heart rate ramps up to about 180 beats per minute, you start having chest pains, you can't breathe and you think in about 3 seconds you are going to die from a heart attack. This can happen up to and including 50 times a day and each time you sincerely believe that you are dying. The attack can last for minutes or hours, the length is all decided by your own crazy mind. As you can imagine, having no control over when attacks strike and seemingly no reason why they do it can be a source of great tension and anxiety in ones life. 

Why do I bring this up you ask? While living in the U.S. I've tried to use the same method of leaving the television on for background noise while I try to sleep. The one major difference? health care is big business in the United States. It all began with anti depressant and mood stabilizer ads. Abilify, Cymbalta, Pristiq Effexor, all of them were the same. They would fade in with some down tempo music describing the symptoms of depression. They would then go on to tell you how their product would solve your depression. That was about the first 30 seconds. What followed next was a minute and a half of them disclosing warnings and side effects, chief among them "An increase in your depression, thoughts of suicide, diarrhea and death. I don't know about you but someone who is grappling with anxiety doesn't need to be repeatedly injected with thoughts of diarrhea induced death.

What would naturally follow these commercials were the ones about class action lawsuits. "Have you recently had a heart attack? Do you know someone who has? Do you know someone who is thinking about having a heart attack? Have you ever seen the twisted purple corpse of someone who has died from a heart attack? Are you thinking about that image? Is it scaring you? Are you starting to panic? Are you breathing into a paper bag and hyperventilating? If so, call the law offices of Dewey, Rapem and Howe today!

Follow this with commericals from Dr Oz's next show "Do you have skin? Find out about a very common disease found on all door knobs that will probably kill you." How the hell am I supposed to sleep through that? At what point can we start pointing fingers and label this shit hysteria for ratings? Isn't there something in the Hippocratic oath that says not to do unnecessary damage? Just because psychology is a soft science does not mean that I need to be paranoid about dying every moment of my life. 

I guess I could just turn the television off, but then it would be so dark and quiet.