This is a wonderfully engaging book, surveying the cultural behaviors of people from all stages of social complexity. Jared Diamond has great gifts of pattern recognition and a most engaging way of explaining his observations and views. He is well known from his Pulitzer Prize winning
Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse
.
Diamond has worked for many years in New Guinea, where the full spectrum of cultural options can be found in a fairly concentrated geographic area. He points out that “most of human psychology is based on subjects who may be described by the acronym WEIRD: from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic societies” (p. 8-9, taken from observations of Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan).
Diamond’s fascinating discussions point out that we may have much to learn from people in other societies about diverse (and sometimes markedly better) options than we find in modern Western societies for addressing property ownership; engaging in war and establishing peace; bringing up children; treating old people; responding to dangers; understanding religion; appreciating the diversity of languages; diets and chronic illnesses; and more.
I particularly enjoyed Diamond’s discussions and clarifications on:
•The differences between perceived proximate, immediate causes of problems and ultimate causes of problems. An example he gives is of a couple in psychotherapy, where the husband complained his wife had hit him in the face with a bottle, so that he no longer felt safe in the
relationship. She responded that she was truly tired of his having affairs. He complained about her being a selfish, cold person. So often the media offer proximate explanations for world events, when the ultimate causes are far more complex.
•Many complain about the impersonal nature of social services and interactions in modern societies. Diamond amply illustrates how people who live as hunters and gatherers, family or extended family units, and villages interact on much more personal bases. In such groups there are often family and friends who are available to help with childcare, food sharing, and other supports. Children grow up feeling safe because mothers keep them physically close for the first several years of their lives; breast feed them many times, day and night on demand; and there are many adults around to guide and protect them. From an early age, children learn to share and support each other. There are also varieties of adult examples for how to behave, providing children with diversities of choices for behaviors. The elderly have family close by to support them in their old age. The downside is that when someone is wronged they or their families may seek revenge, often in acts of violence. Might is right. Wars may develop out of disputes.
• Larger clans, villages, cities and nations offer the advantages of individuals or institutions that are able to set rules for behaviors, and for dealing with unaccepted behaviors and through mediation or enforcement of laws and mandated consequences for disobeying them. This provides for a
safer environment in terms of personal acts of violence by individuals or groups.
• Diamond offers varieties of observations on understanding why humans resort to wars. He points out that warring appears to be a behavior of humans for as long as recorded history. Those who are stronger or who feel endangered will resort to wars – for conquest of land, resources, wives and slaves. From the fact that Chimpanzees (mostly adolescents and young adults) will go to war against other chimps, it appears likely that there is an innate disposition towards such violence in some primates.
• What I found most interesting is Diamond’s discussion on religions. He points out that there is no generally accepted definition of religion, providing sixteen varying definitions of religion from respected sources. He summarizes these, pointing out that “The components commonly attributed to religions fall into five sets: belief in the supernatural, shared membership in a social movement, costly and visible proofs of commitment, practical rules for one’s behavior (i.e., “morality”), and belief that supernatural beings and forces can be induced (e.g. by prayer) to intervene in worldly life.” (p. 329) This is one of the most concise and helpful discussion of religion I have seen.
• Diamond also provides an excellent discussion on how religion serves varieties of societal functions for maintaining social stability. Sometimes this is at the cost of granting powers to religious leaders, and sometimes to monarchs or other leaders who assume a cloak of anointed
authority as the heads of the religion in their country.
This is also the one topic in the book in which I was disappointed about Diamond’s discussions. He takes the view that religions are composed of beliefs about the world, and that they came into existence out of needs of people for explanations and order in their lives.
This is a very left-brained way of addressing this subject, apparently reflecting Diamond’s personal beliefs that religion is a figment of the imagination or a functional tool developed and evolving to explain and cope with transcendent aspects of life (which he identifies, somewhat disparagingly, as ‘supernatural’). There are two broad ways to address issues in cultures other than our own:
• The emic approach considers that the culture being considered has valid and legitimate reasons of its own for analyzing and explaining the world they live in, and that these reasons may be correct and accurate for them.
• The etic approach assumes the culture of the investigating person(s) has the accurate and valid perceptions, interpretations and explanations for the world, and that other cultures have distorted these true interpretations of the world to suit their misguided local needs and preferences.
I have conducted my own investigations of published research of gifted psychics, intuitives and healers, and personal investigations in developing my own healing gifts (Benor, 2006). These have provided strong evidence that there are legitimate, real transpersonal/ spiritual phenomena reported in other societies and in substantial segments of our own, Western society. Diamond rejects these as wishful thinking, fantasies, or creations of leaders who wish to manipulate their people. While there are those who behave in manners that Diamond describes and explains, there are others, ignored and/or dismissed by Diamond, who are reporting legitimate transpersonal, supernatural phenomena.
Despite these criticisms, I very highly recommend this book to anyone interested in deeper understandings of what human life is – in its fuller spectrum, and what we can learn from other societies that might enhance and improve our lives in our own societies.
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Top reviews from other countries
Client d'Amazon
Vraiment très bien. A lire absolument
Reviewed in France on February 21, 2020
Ettore Menguzzo
Great source of ideas and debates
Reviewed in Italy on January 7, 2017
Gabriel Iordache
My favourite scientist offers another gem.
Reviewed in Canada on October 18, 2015