Chapter Sixteen

Millstones

John St. John

I have promised that I would not be one-sided. In a boxing match this is hard to do. I do not allege that anthropology is some sort of gigantic conspiracy. Even now there are cracks appearing in the monolith, I merely aver that it is subject to unnatural pressure from cultural forces. The "blob" theory is starting to come apart. This is the theory that Man has no genetic behavioral tendencies. An article headlined "Scientists search for evolutionary explanation of suicide" quotes Daniel Wilson, a clinical psychiatrist at Harvard medical school, and an anthropologist at the University of Cambridge in England. "Any time you have a behavior system that is relatively common and strongly persistent, it raises the question of whether the system is selected for. Suicidal behaviors are relatively stable across cultural lines. He emphasized that nobody argues there is a single gene for suicide, or that suicide or mental illness should be thought of as good. But he and others said there may be plausible evolutionary explanations for at least some self-destructive acts. What is more, the tendency to commit or try it, suggests that a predisposition toward self-murder is partly inherited, and while suicide occurs in nearly all countries, it is far more common among some ethnic groups." The good doctors demurral "that nobody argues there is a single gene for suicide", is an attempt to palliate the hounds of anthropology . . . That is exactly what he is suggesting.

I am in no position to take a stand on this question but it illustrates the millstone that is hung around the neck of honest investigators. Noam Chomsky's discovery that language is genetic had to be camouflaged with all manner of obscurantist verbiage as a defense against the scholastics. Anthropologists must learn early in their training the taboo against genetic determinism. Fortunately they also learn the jargon that can be used to hide behind. We have our modern Gallileos. We also have their oppressors.

The basic duality that describes Man is that he is technological and also social. The technological side is expanding and the social side is contracting under the leadership of the jungle. Man as a social creature must advance his social program to match the advance of technology. Present technology is loosening the chains that bind us. Fiber optic cables and satellites and the use of the computer by ordinary tribesmen offer an opportunity to break out of the net fashioned by the jungle. The bad news is that these innovations are causing anarchy in the financial centers. The new "derivatives" techniques of buying and selling are disestablishing in that they facilitate the corporate buy-out, and promote "computer trading" in the market. They presage a possible landslide that could destroy the market itself.

The present "social" situation has been pretty well covered but the technological needs more emphasis. I repeat that technology is essentially a labor saving device. What is going to be the outcome of a labor pool that is turning into an ocean of unemployed as technology replaces muscles and brains and populations continue to increase? This is not a Luddite tract. I do not suggest any smashing of computers. It is simply that labor and muscles are not going to be tied to production as they were in the past.
While population excess can possibly be controlled by scientific means, how are we going to occupy the intellectual and physical drive of youth? If this question is not resolved by fabricating cultural mechanisms and is left to nature, the only other denouement is war. This is exactly the reason youth are forming tribes of their own, and tribal warfare is the inevitable outcome.

One of the little publicized technological advances is the combination of radar and servo-mechanisms. They are computer responses to take the information gathered by radar and initiate a response in a vehicle. This is a product of space technology. While it is bruited as a method to avoid traffic accidents on the roads, its significance lies in the possibility that it could make individual air-travel fool-proof. When I say individual .
. . I do not mean a seat on a Jet. I mean vehicles with the dimensions of an automobile. It has been a dream of the airman for generations but has always foundered on the necessity for a technically trained pilot to navigate this medium. If an automatic flying car directed by computers could be programmed for its destination and a radar in conjunction with computer controlled servo-mechanisms, to avoid danger were combined, this could be possible. It would negate the danger of weather as an obstacle. It would take us into another dimension of personal travel. The third dimension adds height to the two-dimensional automobile. no more roads and freeways. if another plane flew too close . . . the radar would notice it and transmit the message to the computer which would initiate avoidance maneuvers.

It would make possible electric power in aviation as the machine sensed that its power was low it could head automatically to a battery exchange station . . . make the switch and continue on its way. These exchange stations could be located on towers that used computers to recharge batteries and discard defective batteries. They could be totally automated. Electric motors are lighter than internal combustion motors and as weight is a factor in aviation, could compensate for the additional weight of batteries. The elaborate running gear . . . transmission, frame, drive-shaft, and axles would be eliminated and so would their weight. There would be no need to carry the weight of a tank of gasoline. The short running distance of batteries could be compensated for by the ease with they could he switched. The towers could he constructed to handle a number of vehicles at the same time and the speed of switching batteries would eliminate waiting in line. In this solution the lack of power and limited reach of the electric automobile would not affect our air-car. Without the weight of wheels and tires it should have no problem of lift and acceleration with the friction of rubber-to-road eliminated.

The obvious lack of interest in taking to the air is caused not by the costs of developing the techniques and systems neccesary to it. There is an extant investment in airlines, freeways, gas-stations, and factories, not to speak of oil industry involvement. It would require scrapping not only a lot of automobiles, but re-inventing transportation. The PC started out small because it could be individually owned and only needed to be plugged into an electrical outlet. It grew like Topsey. The air-car invention would require an effort by government. A government that is controlled by industry is not going to do anything that might anger them unnecessarily. In the long run it would be a godsend to business but business is in it for the short haul. It could only come as a result of an increasingly aware electorate demanding that government do what it was set up for . . . "provide for the common welfare."

There are a lot of people who are terrified of flying. Most people have overcome their acrophobia as a result of the relative safety and comfort of jet travel. Anyone who had never ridden in an automobile would have been terrified by the speed that we take for granted. A vehicle that has eliminated all danger, such as the one I describe, would soon become accepted. The annoyance of the sensation caused by quick avoidance reactions by the air-car would soon be accepted. These same forces are an annoyance of ground travel. Man can become accustomed to anything.

This would certainly stop the cementing over of our landscape and the ecological damage caused by freeways. It would obviate the parking problem as every roof-top would provide parking space. At ball-games a vehicle that could hang from a hook over a walkway would eliminate the jams at the ball-park. A winch chair from inside the vehicle could lower the occupant to the ground and a manual remote control could send it back up. Navigation would be in a straight line, saving distance and the computer would take it in the right direction. The risk in air-travel would be eliminated. The computer can not think but in conjunction with such an avoidance system would certainly become animated. It would avoid power-lines that should have been buried in the first place because of their emission of microwaves that cause cancer. It could make popular transportation capable of travel anywhere. The oceans could carry floating tethered buoys that would allow battery switching. This is only a skeletonal description of what could be accomplished with technology that we already have. Newer technologys that we cannot foresee might make it even more realizable. The research in lowering the weight of batteries that is taking place with the goal of using them in automobiles will continue. Any other problems that might develop can be solved. The first automobiles lacked roads. The infrastructure neccesary for the air-car is a much simpler proposition.

Deserted freeways could become enormous cities that would accommodate commerce. Factories and shopping centers and housing for everyone could exist on the abandoned concrete. The enormous bridges and overpasses would not be neccesary and earthquake damage to transportation would be eliminated. Car-jacking would be impossible. The advent of free power promised by nuclear fusion could make transportation one of its benefits.

Many would like to dismiss this as a science-fiction fantasy. The technology for this "fantasy" exists. It is lying there. If our future is to be the future outlined in the movie "road warrior" it will be because we have been outmaneuvered by the toad of reaction blocking our future. If some young technocrat billionaire like Garrison would carry the ball here, he would find a new dimension for the computer. The computer would not only have sensory apparatus but become animate. Why should we leave the glorious sensation of unimpeded flight to the birds? Why should they be the only ones to perch on a tall building or join the geese in migration. They fly without thought. Without log-books or worry, our flying computers will do the same thing.

One of the millstones of civilization is waste disposal. Most so-called waste is valuable. If an individual home instead, of pouring the products of its sinks and toilets into massive drainage systems that require treatment plants had its own waste-processing equipment the water saving alone would make it feasible. Waste can be turned into methane which can be used to heat or power a home. The salvage water can be purified and reused. What is left can be used as organic fertilizer. This too is technology that is already available. The other wastes like paper, garbage, and plastic can be added to this process by the use of genetically altered bacteria that would bio-degrade that which here-to-fore had been non-bio-degradable. This is an area that could attract the entrepreneur. Government is now doing R&D for corporations. Why can they not turn scientific engineering in this direction?

Somehow we must learn to regard a human being as something other than a worker. The investors and others who live by unearned increment have no problem finding something to do. Why in an age of ubiquitous technology does unemployment have to be a curse? We not only have earth for a play-ground but all of the galaxy. By separating our tribe from the jungle we could make outer space something other than a junkyard for the engineers of NASA. Why does capital have to be like a gigantic show ball rolling down hill and increasing in size as it rolls? The primitive did not need money to motivate him. Are there no other rewards for service available than cold cash? I have seen people risk death for a medal. I am not suggesting that we hand out medals to "heros of socialist labor." It just seems to me that some of the honors given to primitives by their grateful tribesmen would be in order. Like the bull-fighters getting an ear or the tail of the bull, or the Oscars and Tonys that are handed out to entertainers. After one earns a certain amount of money it begins to have meaning only in terms of the status it conveys. It surely is no guarantor of security. Amateurs in sports struggle valiantly for gold medals. A title or a uniform often outweighs the money paid a worker.

Mother Teresa endures poverty for spiritual fulfillment. The spiritual rush of knowing that one is needed is payment enough for many people. The tribal elders should concentrate on methods of motivating people. Unemployment compensation was a way of holding a complaisant labor pool during slow periods. The time spent drawing checks is extending because, although business is not slow, the need for labor is decreasing. The unemployed tribesman is left in limbo. You cannot just park a human being like you do a truck. Instead of cutting entitlements to the poor . . . they should be looking for more. If the amount of money being wasted by the tribe promoting the jungle was diverted to this even the jungle would benefit. The jungle control of government is going to further impoverish the worker displaced by technology. Where are they going to find their customers? Government economic statistics indicate that things are perking along all right. Inflation is two-percent this year, employment is stable, savings are normal. Sounds great but the parks are filling up with unemployed homeless and generations of youth are learning to live without a job. Crime is rising and domestic violence is taking over the headlines.

The Chimp family that has existed since agriculture in "civilization" has lost the moral cement provided by religion. The gift of Eve that was pointed out to her by the serpent (technology) was the apple of agriculture. Plucked from "the tree of knowledge" it resulted in the unlucky pair being evicted from Eden (ecologically balanced nature.") Agricultural technology led to mining and eventually trade, ship-building, and banking. This mandated what was essentially a regression. It sent basic human relationships back to the family or band. Technology advanced other aspects of human life but it disestablished sociological advance. (Tribalism)

As technology advanced to its present dominance it began its insidious attack on the family. We are being presented the oldest form of carnivore life. A single family mother like the bear. The offspring of this ursal mother are re-forming the tribe.

In the preceding chapter I presented the sex-life of the Chimp and noted that modern human sexuality was little different. The latest anthropological advice is to return to the social organization of the chimp. Sex therapists have long advocated that we adapt their sexual mores. Now we are advised by anthropologists as well as our progressive president and other Republicans to re-build the family. How we are to do this when we have castrated the Alpha-male as economic leader of the band is not quite clear. In an article by William Rasberry in the Washington Post advocating marriage he quotes David W. Murray an anthropologist. "Cultures differ in many ways but all societies that survive are built on marriage," he writes in the spring 1994 issue of Policy Review. "Marriage is a society's cultural infrastructure, its bridges of social connectedness. sic. The history of human society shows that when people stop marrying their continuity as a culture is in jeopardy." Societies that survive are not built on marriage. For three million years the only societies that survived were built on the tribe. Certainly I agree that marriage is post-agriculture's societal infrastructure and that when people stop marrying, slave, feudal, and bourgeois cultures are in jeopardy. The problem with the unlimited proliferation of technology is that a new culture is being formed. To propose that we retreat to the band or family is reactionary. Progressive intellectual thinking should be more inventive. A rational designer of social change should take that social organization that is most "human-like . . . the tribe that organized our lives for three-million years, and see what can be done with it today. There is little doubt in the headline readers mind that the tribes are rising. not only city gangs but tribal activity in Africa and the countries affected by the fall of communism make this theory plausible. If anything distinguishes the "youth culture" it is its tribal nature. Tribal music, tribal drums, and the tribal joy of youth during spring-break.

Those same reactionaries that are banning dope and are calling for a return to family values can not prevail against the cultural surge of modern technology. Being tough on crime might be plausible in the short run but the disestablishment of whole cultures by technology can not be contained. It is for this reason that I urge the intellectual elite to use their brainpower on the real question. There is little value in solving the wrong one. They are like those early thinkers who wanted to devise ways for the early mariner to keep from falling off the end of the world. Let us pose the real question. Why is the horizon curved if the world is not round?

We need a new form of social organization. The social organization that we had for three million years is part of our genetic behavioral makeup. Its down side is that it needed war to keep it ecologically viable. Here we have the problem. How do we organize tribes and keep them peaceful. International sports and sports at the neighborhood level are a traditional method of diverting the totem gene. The tribe was essentially an economic unit. How can we insure the economic stability of the proposed tribes? The switch from tribe to family was occasioned by the necessity of the property owner to hand his property on to an heir. He needed one wife so that he could keep an eye on her. He didn't want some "woods colt" to take over. The trading in property caused everything to become property. It became "My wife, my kids, and my house." I do not believe that social progress can be furthered unless we separate the greater tribe from the technojungle of commerce. The greater tribe in this scenario would not only become a behavior modifier but would insure that tribal moneys would be for the purpose of securing the economic stability of the lesser tribes.

The techno-jungle depends on stable markets. A stable tribe means a stable market. If a market self-destructs as did the markets in 1929 . . . how then are the entrepreneurs going to sell their products? I cannot see how technical progress can benefit us in any significant way unless social progress is allowed to catch up. I can not see how social progress can take place if the intellectuals responsible for it are not released from the chains placed on them by commerce. We do not look to our anthropologist to reinforce failed opinions put forth by those who wish to keep things as they are. If being an anthropologist is going to have any meaning it is that he is going to have to do what other scientists do . . . work from a base of reality.

At the age of fifty-three I married a Mexican lady with two children. As is the custom we got married in the Catholic Church. I had already been married before. Our priest in Tijuana, Father Daley, an American with a bent for construction like Father Kino, sent a missile to the Catholic Church in Stratford Ontario where I was born. He inquired about my baptism and record. The answer came back that I was a good Catholic boy who had never been married. (If you are not married in the church it don't mean a thing!) My wife and I subsequently had four more healthy children. This was the start of a family such as I had never known existed. I have brothers in law, sisters in law, and a whole community of nieces and nephews. I have compadres and co-madres, and the many friends of my children and their parents are in a family sense close. My wife and her two children are legal residents and the other children born in Tijuana are American citizens.

This is not an extended family, it is a tribe. Being an Anglo I had to learn Spanish and as a person with a theoretical bent, I relished the process of adapting to a state of affairs that I was already intellectually interested in. I also have had experience with "The Family" I came from. The family is a very transient thing. An ideal American family is Mom and Pop and Dick and Jane. When Dick and Jane reach maturity they leave. Ideally; Dick to college and Jane either to college or the arms of a stranger. Dick and Jane return home to put mom and Pop in a rest home . . . End of family!

What the mafioso calls "The Family" is in reality a tribe. It is a warrior tribe and has its soldiers (warriors). Unlike a primitive tribe it is structured hierarchically. Marlon Brando is the alpha-male boss. he is closely connected with feudal structures like the church and the syndicate. It arose out of the feudal troglodytes in Sicily. It is a viable form of organization except that it is in opposition to the greater tribe because they possess different totems and are natural prey for the Mafia who are looked at by the larger tribe as criminal. The reason being; that the logical foothold to economic power is by engaging in those businesses that weaken the larger tribe and are proscribed . . . dope, gambling, and prostitution.

Carl Sagan is now in competition with The national inquirer. He is taking over the readership that read books. The only conclusion he seems to reach on the family is that it has a lot to learn from the chimps. The conclusions by William Rasberry and David Murray calling for a revitalization of the family offer nothing more than the same call issued by President Clinton. If that section of the intelligentsia that relies on popularizations of anthropological opinion, a la Sagan, for their outlook is not offered something more original . . . the transition to the new world is going to be wrenching.

The pioneer family tended to be large and cohesive because it was rural and agricultural and distanced from urban centers. For us to demand that urban families adopt these noble characteristics is to ignore the urban landscape. It is like proposing 4H clubs for Watts. Urban families tend to fragility. They are not isolated and their social life is fractured as mom goes shopping, pop goes bowling, and the kids go their separate ways. When I was a boy the family gathered around the piano and sang. Now they fight over possession of "the remote". Pop wants to watch the ball game, Mom wants to watch Oprah, and the kids want to watch Beavis and Butt-head feel Cher up.

The Mexican "raza" is not the only example of tribalism in American life. A Maharishi from India arrived on our shores and developed a tribe of disillusioned middle-class Americans. They gifted him with twenty seven Rolls Royces. Not sharing with the I.R.S. caused his downfall and he was deported. Jim Jones built a church tribe that he moved to Belize in Central America. When he was investigated by a congressman. He killed the congressman and then convinced his followers to commit mass-suicide with him. A similar fate came to the Branch Davidians in Texas at the hands of the minions of the attorney general. Other . . . luckier fanatics belong to the "Moonies" and "Hare Krishna". Every bar owner knows that the more he can make a tribal meeting place out of his bistro . . . the more booze he will sell. Chuck Dietrich founded Synanon with little more than common persuasiveness and a smattering of Alcoholics Anonymous. The establishment of beneficent and socially acceptable tribes would not be a difficult proposition. It has Man's own genetic behavior on it's side., It is a downstream proposition. Our social scientists should investigate this solution. Every neighborhood is an ostensible tribe and helps provide the money neccesary for schools and local street repair out of property taxes. A top-down effort at the precinct level would provide the tribal power to take care of many other problems.

The present social worker bureaucrat transformed into a tribal elder would be available in every neighborhood as omnisbudsman and organizer of tribal functions. Her or his job would be to organize street-dances and the participation of the youth and elderly in political efforts to assure their representation in larger tribal matters. This is important as it affects youth who are left to the fabrication of tribal structures of their own . .
. tribes that carry with them the threat of warfare. By using traditional totemic devises to motivate her tribe she can divert the totem gene to sports and community service. The present community center approach does not have the elan to organize a tribe. It is not tribal in that it does not aggressively include everyone in the neighborhood. The precinct organization of ancient Tammany Hall in New York and the Chicago base for Governor Daley was organized by corrupt politicians but it took a hands-on approach to everyone in the precinct. It was there at weddings and deaths and troubled neighbors could depend on it for help in times of personal crisis. While this enabled entrenched politicians to mulct the treasury of these cities from their strong political base, it had a good effect on the neighborhoods.

We can learn a lot from their methods although I do not recommend their motivation. Precinct organization provides power at the bottom of the political pyramid. Present day intelligent neighborhoods could keep them straight. Surely enlightened social workers could do what corrupt Irishmen did.