Personal Breakthroughs for 600, Alex

I've just had an epiphany--an epiphany about myself. (Incidentally, this is one of my essential characteristics of a critical thinker--the ability to continually discover new things about oneself.) Throughout high school and college, I received several Bs. Each time, as one would expect from an ordinarily straight-A student, I decided on a reason for the B--in order to internalize and deal with the situation, and thus move on from my perceived failure. I offer a list of the Bs that stand out in my mind, with accompanying reasons for their existence.

Chemistry (High School): I'm bad at science.
Pre-Calculus (High School): I'm two years ahead in math.
Gender and Society (College): I skipped some classes that resulted in missed quizzes, and I didn't like the professor.
History 105 (College): I never went to class.
Forensic Science (College): I'm bad at science.
Linguistics (College): Lingustics is hard, and I'm not really interested in it.
Anatomy and Physiology (College): I'm bad at science.

Notice any patterns there?

With the exception of any "I'm bad at science" answer, every reason on that list is completely valid. I was indeed two years ahead in math; I did indeed never go to class; Linguistics is indeed hard and uninteresting (to me, anyway). In retrospect, I got a B in forensic science because the course was heavy on entomology, which I am decidedly not interested in. I got a B in Anatomy and Physiology because the course was heavy on physiology, and I hadn't taken a basic biology course in about 5 years, and hence was rusty on central topics like cell function and replication, enzymes, the like. Straight-A students are monsters in that they expect to consistently excel; when I got a B--a B, for chrissake!--I assumed I was bad at something.

Except, not always. I didn't assume I was bad at math when I got a B in pre-calc; I rightly recognized that I was in an advanced course and so found it a bit challenging. I didn't assume I was bad at gender studies when I got a B in it; I rightly recognized that I didn't like the professor, and so skipped class as as well as failed to give the course the time and attention I should have. I just kind of blew it off. But these are things I've always known I'm good at; I've always been good at math, and since I usually got As in my major, I knew I wasn't bad at anthropology, just didn't care about Gender and Society. I also didn't decide I was bad at anthropology just because Linguistics is hard; I didn't dismiss an entire field just because one piece of it was hard for me.

So. Why do I think I'm bad at science? I'm clearly not. I did exceptionally well in classes on things like evolution, human biological diversity, research-oriented statistics,  and archaeology--all clearly science-based topics. As an anthropologist, I have regularly excelled in an field that relies on scientific methods to explore cultural and societal issues. Now, if I were really bad at science--the fucking foundation of most of the things I'm good at--how could I possibly be good at anthropology?

I can think of two possible reasons.

1. We did a lot more of everything else besides science when I was homeschooled; it was more a function of a homeschool environment lacking equipment rather than because my mom is a bad teacher or doesn't know anything about science. When I started public school, I had less of a science foundation than most of my peers; consequently, I may not have excelled as easily at science as I did in other subjects, leading to the belief that I was naturally less adept.
2. My culture tells me women are bad at science.

Both, maybe?

My point is, I'm not bad at science. I am currently a scientist, and I'm damn good at it. I decided against forensic anthropology because I thought I'd be bad at it, but I probably shouldn't have. Getting lost in an entomology class doesn't mean I can't be a forensic anthropologist; getting a B in Anatomy and Physiology because I lacked a solid cellular biology foundation doesn't mean I'm bad at physical science. Even if I'd taken an actual forensic anthropology course and gotten a B, all it would have meant was that I'd have to work a little bit harder at forensic anthropology than I had to at, say, the trigonometry course in which I earned roughly a 99% and learned absolutely nothing.

In Which I Mercilessly Dismantle Sam Schulman’s “Knowledge” Of Kinship, Laughing All The While

This is a response to Sam Schulman's "The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage". I won't post a link, but fear not; google will show you the way. 

In order for an argument to hold water, you must first accept the basic premises. In this case, firstly, that we have a rigid kinship structure; and secondly, that this rigid kinship structure must be preserved. I am completely ignoring the issue of whether or not marriage does indeed fulfill the functions laid out by Mr. Schulman, because that portion of the argument is completely irrelevant. His assumptions are faulty; there is no need to consider arguments supporting a faulty assumption.

Besides, I’m pretty sure a lot of people have already torn his article apart on those grounds.

But back to my issues. To begin with, the idea of a rigid kinship structure is laughable. Clearly, this person has no idea what kinship actually means.

Kinship, like all cultural traits, is fluid. This fluid nature is harder to see when you only examine a short period of time in the history of a culture, but it is always there. Do you really suppose that the Yanomamo came into existence using ebene? This notion ignores the process of cultural evolution; it's possible that we can define the moment they became Yanomamo as the period when they began practicing the use of ebene, but it's absurd to propose that they've "always been that way". Nobody has "always" been anything.

Unless you’re a Creationist, of course. If that is the case, you might as well stop reading right now, because 1) you’re going to get annoyed with me, and 2) you are obviously unequipped to grapple with the basic rules of logic and reading this is a waste of your time.

Culture, like "nature", is continually in flux. There is no end goal; no set purpose; no state to which we are moving. Understanding of this concept has fallen into shadow with the advent of our own particular culture, as we have developed the cultural trait of seeking the "best" way to do things; but in reality, there is no such thing as “best”. Just the fact that I can point out our desire to do things "right" proves my point; have humans "always" tried to things “right”? Of course not. The Yanomamo do not run up to the U.S. and attempt to get us to use ebene. Neither do they attempt to coerce neighboring villages into joining theirs; on the contrary, historically, Yanomamo societies are more likely to split than merge. (Chagnon 82)

Because, for example, our technology trends toward faster, smaller, and more efficient, we feel that our society is also trending upwards. I will not offer a commentary on whether we are trending upwards or downwards, because to me, the issue is moot. We’re not trending up or down—but we are trending in a direction. And that direction is change—just change. Undeniably, the United States has changed radically since its inception; but there is no reason to suppose that today we are inherently better than we were on May 27, 1809. To be sure, our society had ills at that time that we have since attempted to erase, but again, there is no reason to suppose that we are “better”. We are merely different.

Our laws make more sense now; that’s all. Laws shape a society as often as they reflect it; quite frequently, a law is enacted that does not reflect the society as it is, but how [enough] people wish it to be. And it takes time for the attitudes to catch up with the laws; we don’t consider black people to be property anymore, but that doesn’t mean every individual in the U.S. is free of racism. The longer we live in a society that prohibits slavery, the more we come to collectively agree on the immorality of racial discrimination. It’s a simple, observable fact.

And so, who are you to choose an arbitrary point in our cultural history and claim it as the best? On May 27, 1809, plenty of people thought we were already the best we could possibly be. Think about that.

The plain and simple fact is that if you consider a kinship system to be so glorious that it can and should resist evolutionary (in a societal sense) pressures, you have disregarded the fluid nature of culture and placed that particular system as the end result of cultural change. Which just means that all cultures are striving to be like yours.

Do you recall the “Great Chain of Being”? The Great Chain of Being placed squirrels above insects; dogs above squirrels; dark-skinned humans above dogs; light-skinned humans above dark-skinned humans; angels above light-skinned humans; God above angels. The Chain placed creatures in this manner as a reflection of how God had ordered his creation; the position of dark-skinned humans below light-skinned ones allowed the white Europeans to consider their African peers as subhuman.

You may laugh at the ignorant people who made the Great Chain of Being, and well you should—but if you laugh unfettered, unmindful of your hypocrisy, perhaps you should go back to the beginning and read every word of this over again.



Works Cited:

Chagnon, Napoleon A. Yanomamo. 5th edition; 1997.

My degree (in anthropology).

If you aren't in awe, you aren't paying attention

Atheists garner a lot of criticism for “abandoning the wonder” in life. The assumption is that without supernatural belief, humans lack something to inspire awe, to marvel over; there is no imagination or room for creativity in a life without religion.

This, as you may have guessed, is something I believe to be composed entirely of bullshit. I believe in some things for which I have very few reasons; these bring me no end of mystery to ponder, no end of enjoyment. Some of my crazy theories are backed by [albeit slight] evidence; some are merely fancy. But none of them are harmful—and that’s what makes them ok.

Sometimes I believe the spirits of my dead relatives are awash across the universe in the form of stardust. Sometimes I believe fairies live in flowers, water sprites in creeks, and dryads in trees. Sometimes I believe in an unseen collective of consciousness made up of the energy of all living things, communicating constantly regardless of time and distance.

I have reasons for believing these things; they’re not necessarily excellent reasons, but they exist. I believe in the first because I “feel” them occasionally around me; plus it’s a pleasant thought, thinking of your cousin who died from a gunshot wound to the head flitting through galaxies, pure energy swarming through stars and space debris. It’s entirely possible that his matter will become star material someday, but it’s unlikely he has any awareness of it. Still, it’s a harmless belief. Silly—but harmless.

Religious beliefs are anything but harmless. I’m ok with pretending that fairies live in flowers because it doesn’t affect my behavior—except in a good way, if it spurs me to protect the Earth. I’m not trying to throw children in jail for picking flowers because it infringes on the rights of fairies, or going around college campuses passing out free copies of The Fairy Manifesto, or telling my high school significant other that he or she is going to burn in hell for not worshipping the Fairy Queen.

My third irrational belief is not as irrational as it may seem at first. Quantum physicists have demonstrated that particles can communicate instantaneously across vast distances; I’ve merely extrapolated from those experiments. Since we are made up of particles, and particles communicate regardless of space and time, something like my theory is possible. According to quantum physics, these particles communicate instantaneously because they are actually the same particle. (think about that for a minute. i dare you to tell me your mind isn’t blown.) 

Think about how that idea could affect the entire human population, and then tell me how your belief has equal ramifications.

Believing in God is not harmless, even if you throw out all the wars and disagreements and policies and all of that. See, if you subscribe to Intelligent Design, if you just content yourself with “Oh, God did it,” there is no room for further inquiry. Why bother? God did it. God started it all. Sure, there might be a single being who started the universe rolling (emphasis on MIGHT), but there’s no evidence for it, so what good is that opinion?

“No good at all” is the answer you’re looking for. A hole in our knowledge is inspiration for intellectual growth; plugging that hole with an idea just because that idea has been handed down to you (the number of generations is irrelevant) stymies any hope you may have of finding what’s actually in the hole. And the more people who believe they’ve already filled the hole, the less likely we are to find what’s really in there.

I acknowledge my flights of fancy as such—but they also have the added benefit of not prematurely plugging holes. My flights of fancy feed my imagination as well as my essence; I enjoy them, and they sustain me. However, they're ideas that admit to being so; they allow for further exploration, and not the false exploration of evolution confined to the cage of religion.

My flights of fancy could be true. They could be utter hogwash. Either way, I'm good.

Now try these on for size:

• If you condense the history of the universe to a single year, humans would appear on December 31st at 10:30 pm. 99.98% of the history of the universe happened before humans even existed.
• We are star material that knows it exists.
• Through the wonder of DNA, you are literally half your mom and half your dad.
• The faster you go, the slower time moves.
• All life on Earth is directly related by descent. You are a cousin not just of apes, but of the sequoia and the amoeba, of mosses and butterflies and blue whales.

Now that, my friends, is wonder.

~ From "Teaching Kids to Yawn at Counterfeit Wonder" by Dale McGowan; excerpt from Parenting Beyond Belief