 |
Margaret Mead Today
Some
of
Margaret
Mead’s
robust
no-nonsense
view
of
the
tribal
world
would
be
welcome
today.
She
did
not
regard
a
“culture”
as
more
valuable
than
its
people—let
alone
something
of
transcendent
value
to
be
perpetuated
regardless
of
people’s
needs.
She
understood
that
the
intellectual
features
of
tribalism
cannot
be
defended;
that
its
moral
code
leaves
much
to
be
desired;
that
its
economic
assumptions
obstruct
and
stultify.
All
living
cultures
have
to
change,
and
primitive
cultures
have
to
change
most
of
all.
(See
also
her
remarks
in
the article What Native Peoples Deserve on our Spiked page)
Mead
forcefully
set
out
these
views
in
the
introduction
to
her
1956
book
New
Lives
for
Old.
The
“new
lives”
were
those
being
embraced
by
the
people
of
Manus
Island
off
the
coast
of
New
Guinea
in
the
wake
of
World
War
II,
while
the
“old
lives”
were
those
she
had
seen
when
she
first
visited
Manus
in
1928.
As
she
makes
abundantly
clear—and
as
the
great
majority
of
Manus
Islanders
recognized
themselves—the
old
culture
was
inimical
to
modern
life,
and
there
was
no
way
it
either
could
or
should
have
been
preserved.
The
only
question
was
how
to
handle
the
process
of
modernization
in
a
humane
and
practical
manner.
Her
view
of
social
change
grew
from
her
understanding
of
both
western
civilization
as
a
whole
and
of
its
distinctive
American
offshoot.
American
civilization
progressed
by
accepting
change,
learning
to
live
with
change,
and
welcoming
it
in
the
belief
that
“men
have
only
to
see
a
better
way
of
life
to
reach
out
for
it
spontaneously.”
They
must
first,
however,
be
able
to
clearly
grasp
its
manifest
advantages;
and
the
relevance
of
this
philosophy
to
global
developments
in
recent
years
is
not
hard
to
see.
In
what
follows,
passages
from
the
first
pages
of
New
Lives
for
Old
alternate
with
brief
interpolated
commentary.
* * *
The situation in 1928
Mead
says
that
the
story
she
brings
from
New
Guinea
is
about
a
people
who
since
1928
‘have
traversed
in
the
short
space
of
twenty-five
years
a
line
of
development
which
it
took
mankind
many
centuries
to
cover’:
It
is
a
story
of
a
particular
tribe
of
the
Admiralty
Islands—the
Manus—whom
I
saw
in
1928,
a
mere
two
thousand
nearly
naked
savages,
living
in
pile
dwellings
in
the
sea,
their
earlobes
weighed
down
with
shells,
their
hands
still
ready
to
use
spears,
their
anger
implemented
with
magical
curses,
their
morality
dependent
upon
the
ghosts
of
the
recently
dead.
It
is
the
story
of
a
people
without
history,
without
any
theory
of
how
they
came
to
be,
without
any
belief
in
a
permanent
future
life,
without
any
knowledge
of
geography,
without
writing,
without
political
forms
sufficient
to
unite
more
than
two
or
three
hundred
people.
The situation in 1953
It
is
also
the
story
of
a
people
who
had
become,
when
I
returned
to
visit
them
in
1953,
potential
members
of
the
modern
world,
with
ideas
of
boundaries
in
time
and
space,
responsibility
to
God,
enthusiasm
for
law,
and
committed
to
trying
to
build
a
democratic
community,
educate
their
children,
police
and
landscape
their
village,
care
for
the
old
and
the
sick,
and
erase
age-old
hostilities
between
neighbouring
tribes.
* * *
Optimism versus pessimism
The
author
places
her
argument
for
cultural
change
in
the
primitive
world
within
the
wider
context
of
postwar
pessimism
regarding
the
value
of
modern
life,
and
of
pessimism
about
the
American
way
of
life
in
particular.
Her
argument
challenges
this
entire
negative
cast
of
mind.
This
book
is
set
firmly
against
such
pessimism.
It
is
based
on
the
belief
that
American
civilization
is
not
simply
the
last
flower
to
bloom
on
the
outmoded
tree
of
European
history,
doomed
to
perish
in
a
common
totalitarian
holocaust,
but
something
new
and
different.
American
civilization
is
new
because
it
has
come
to
rest
on
a
philosophy
of
production
and
plenty
instead
of
saving
and
scarcity,
and
new
because
the
men
who
built
it
have
themselves
incorporated
the
ability
to
change
and
change
swiftly
as
the
need
arises.
This
book
is
based
on
the
belief
that
Americans
have
something
to
contribute
to
a
changing
world
which
is
precious,
which
can
be
used
with
responsibility,
with
dedication…
This
precious
quality
which
Americans
have
developed,
through
three
and
a
half
centuries
of
beginning
life,
over
and
over,
in
a
virgin
land,
is
a
belief
that
men
can
learn
and
change—quickly,
happily,
without
violence,
without
madness,
without
coercion,
and
of
their
own
free
will.
For
three
centuries,
men
of
vastly
different
ways
of
life
have
come
to
America,
left
behind
their
old
language,
their
old
attachments
to
land
and
river,
their
betters
and
subordinates,
their
kin
and
their
icons,
and
have
learned
to
speak
and
walk,
to
eat
and
trust,
in
a
new
fashion.
As
we
have
learned
to
change
ourselves,
so
we
believe
that
others
can
change
also,
and
we
believe
that
they
will
want
to
change,
that
men
have
only
to
see
a
better
way
of
life
to
reach
out
for
it
spontaneously.
Our
faith
includes
no
forebodings
about
the
effect
of
destroying
old
customs,
and
calls
for
no
concentration
camps
or
liquidation
centres
such
as
have
been
used
in
totalitarian
states
by
those
with
the
desire
and
the
power
to
change
others.
We
do
not
conceive
of
people
being
forcibly
changed
by
other
human
beings.
We
conceive
of
them
as
seeing
a
light
and
following
it
freely.
Doubts about the US among refugees
Mead
notes
how
recent
immigrants
from
Europe,
many
of
them
displaced
by
war
and
oppression,
have
been
uncomfortable
with
the
plainness
and
uniformity
of
life
in
the
US,
and
have
contrasted
American
civilization
unfavourably
with
‘the
dignity
of
living
all
one’s
life
in
a
distinctive
setting,
even
though
in
mortal
terror
of
the
gibes
and
jeers
which
kept
one
firmly
fixed
and
so
secure
in
the
position
in
which
one
was
born.’
This
attitude,
she
says:
has
been
fostered
by
the
presence
in
America
of
refugees
who
did
not
come
freely,
but
who
were
driven
out
from
countries
which
they
still
prefer.
It
has
been
fostered
by
the
moves
and
counter-moves
inspired
by
Communism,
which
has
incorporated
the
standard
Russian
myths
about
European
civilization.
It
has
been
manipulated
by
the
leaders
of
non-European
countries
who
confuse
the
retention
of
various
outmoded
forms
of
feudal
power
with
a
defence
of
ancient
civilizations
against
the
‘vulgarities’
of
the
American
way
of
life,
a
vulgarisation
which
makes
it
possible
for
a
simple
laborer
to
buy
articles
of
good
design
in
Woolworth’s.
So
today
there
is
a
great
doubt
in
the
land,
a
doubt
of
our
distinctive
heritage,
a
doubt
as
to
whether
we
have
anything
to
give
to
the
rest
of
the
world,
even
a
fear
that
we
may
be—as
our
ready
critics,
especially
the
ready
critics
within
our
doors,
are
so
quick
to
tell
us—offering
nothing
to
the
world
except
the
cheap
and
the
destructive,
or
soft
drinks
seen
not
against
a
poverty
which
could
afford
neither
bottled
drinks
nor
shoes
for
their
children,
but
only
as
beverages
lacking
in
genuine
intoxication,
fit
only
for
children…
* * *
Old world critics v. new world values
Between
1918
and
1950,
in
response
to
tumultuous
events
in
central
and
eastern
Europe,
the
US
acquired
a
ready-made
alienated
intelligentsia
hostile
to
many
aspects
of
American
life.
The
critical
disdain
of
this
new
intellectual
elite,
many
of
them
disgruntled
and
reluctant
refugees
voicing
an
essentially
European
critique,
increasingly
prevents
Americans
themselves
from
understanding
their
own
‘priceless
inheritance
of
political
innovation
and
flexibility.’
In
accepting
this
negative
image
of
America,
we
often
feel
we
are
getting
closer
to,
reaching
a
better
understanding
with,
our
sophisticated
and
cultivated
European
and
Asian
friends.
Actually
we
are
depriving
them
of
finding
something
here
to
value,
something
that
they,
who
are
searching
rather
more
busily
that
we
for
ways
of
change,
could
use.
And
we
deprive
them
either
way,
whether
we
slavishly
agree
that
America
is
a
dreadful
country
in
which
drugstores
and
conformity
contrast
in
sorry
fashion
with
the
ubiquitous
culture
of
the
Old
World,
or
whether,
still
reacting
to
their
negative
image,
we
insist
that
everything
in
the
United
States
is
better,
brighter,
and
nearer
perfect
than
anywhere
else.
American
complacency
and
bumptiousness
was
born
of
just
such
doubts
two
centuries
ago.
It
is
the
voice
of
the
immigrant
assuring
the
relatives
he
left
behind,
and
himself,
that
America
is
better
than
Europe.
So,
in
every
foreign
capital
today,
the
emissaries
of
American
diplomacy,
the
Point
Four
men,
the
journalists,
jostle
one
another
in
their
laments
and
counter-laments,
seeing
America
through
this
smoke
screen
of
the
feared
judgement
of
other,
older
countries,
in
turn
denying
and
truculently
defending
our
institutions.
Meanwhile
our
genuine
heritage,
our
personal
knowledge
of
change
is
denied
and
forgotten,
as
false
prophets
seek
to
change
our
priceless
inheritance
of
political
innovation
and
flexibility
into
some
untouchable
fetish
of
unchangeableness.
Change and civilization: the relevance of New Lives for old
This
book—the
record
of
a
people
who
have
moved
faster
than
any
people
of
whom
we
have
records…
of
men
who
have
skipped
over
thousands
of
years
of
history
in
just
the
last
twenty-five
years—is
offered
as
food
for
the
imagination
of
Americans,
whom
the
people
of
Manus
so
deeply
admire.
It
is
no
accident
that
a
people
who
represent
a
civilization
built
on
change
should
catch
the
imagination
of
a
primitive
people
intent
on
changing.
Every
mile
of
both
my
voyages
to
Manus
is
relevant
to
the
whole
problem
of
what
American
civilization—a
civilization
dedicated
to
the
proposition
that
all
men
are
created
equal,
created
with
a
right
of
equal
access
to
all
that
men
have
learned
and
made
and
won,
a
civilization
made
of
men
who
changed
after
they
were
grown—has
to
give,
to
Americans
and
to
the
peoples
of
the
world
with
whom
we
work.
(End
of
quoted
material.)
* * *
It
is
likely
that
Mead
was
rather
too
optimistic.
"Never
doubt
that
a
small
group
of
thoughtful,
committed
people
can
change
the
world,”
she
once
said.
“Indeed,
it
is
the
only
thing
that
ever
has."
But
her
small
group
of
thoughtful,
committed
people
need
other
thoughtful
people
around
them
to
listen
and
understand.
What
if
they
won’t
listen,
or
can’t
understand?
What
if
they
stubbornly
prefer
their
unenlightened
ways?
Like
many
reformers
she
had
an
underdeveloped
sense
of
human
perversity,
and
seemed
blind
to
the
fact
that
innumerable
men
and
women,
even
when
shown
the
light,
do
not
follow
it.
But
after
thirty
years
with
the
‘nabobs
of
negativism’
riding
high,
how
refreshing
her
thought
and
writing
is!
May 2005
|
 |
