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Back to the Forum Archives I recently finished reading a thought provoking book by Ruth Benedict entitled, "Patterns of Culture." Considering that it was written by a scientist, it is remarkably easy to read. Now, having said that, I must add that it is not the easiest book I ever picked up. I should also point out that what I am telling you is from my understanding of what she had to say. It may not necessarily be an accurate portrayal of her thoughts. To get that, you may want to read the book yourself. Benedict is an anthropologist as the title of her book suggests. I have also found she is something of what I would call a social philosopher. In this book she deals with some primitive cultures and brings to light some of the behavioral characteristics of these cultures. She takes a unique perspective on these behaviors by assigning to them the descriptive terms of human psychology and philosophy. Two that she seems to favor are Apollonian and Dionysian. When describing the behavioral patterns of these cultures, she refers to them in these terms. To make sure I understood, I looked them up in the Microsoft Bookshelf. Here is what I found. Apollonian Dionysian In leading into this study of primitive cultures, one of Benedict's most interesting points concerns her understanding of human nature. To get to that she defines a quality of humans that she calls elasticity. This is the basis of intelligence. It is the ability to adapt. From the way I understand her description, for any practical purpose there is no such thing as human nature. It is irrelevant when measured against the influence of culture. In her thinking, race is completely irrelevant. Culture and our ways of adapting to it are everything. This is no longer just a theory. Benedict has the scientific studies to back up what she says. As to theories, Benedict has some pointed criticism of the old style armchair anthropologists. These were the earlier people who, fancying themselves scientists, would sit in their clubs in their leather armchairs and read reports from traveling salesmen and adventurers like Marco Polo. Then they would weave ridiculous gossamer theories about people they had never seen. Now, Benedict does not carry this cultural influence theme to the extreme of tabula rosa. Clearly we are all born with those characteristics that differentiate us from other animals. Among these is our ability to adapt. We adapt to whatever we are presented with. In that way human behavior is almost completely culturally transmitted. It is transmitted, not by heredity, but directly through education. This is key, culture is transferred from generation to generation through some form of education. To me this means that public education looms even larger as a form of cultural conditioning. About education, I find that Benedict speaks of the Gestalt in terms of culture. When you see the gestalt you see the whole thing. You see the pattern or underlying theme of it. It's like a painting. A painting is a gestalt, not a bunch of lines and brush strokes. If you see it as a collection of lines and brush strokes, you will not see what the artist intended. That is exactly what is wrong with most of the art appreciation nonsense. When reading about this, I suddenly realized that this is also what is wrong with education the way we now do it. We are separating the lines and brush strokes from the gestalt, the experience of life. We teach details. Little kids will see gestalts naturally until we beat it out of them. We force them to study and learn separate pieces and eventually they get the engineers mind set. Then they cannot see the gestalt of life anymore. They only see the pieces. They can only deal with details. That is the difference between a genius and the rest of us. A genius sees the gestalt. If there is no gestalt he knows why and what is needed for completion. This will help him move across disciplines and even across cultures. A true genius cannot get lost in the details. Back to Benedict. She points out that all animals that adapted and later became extinct did so because over time they had adapted very well to a particular set of conditions. They became rigid in their responses. When the conditions changed they were not adaptable enough to survive in the new environment, the ice age for example. Now along comes human beings who have this adaptive quality that Benedict calls plasticity. This allows for rapid adaptation to new and varied situations. Hence, homo sapiens have survived and even prospered. However, just as with the other animals, out tool of adaptability, our brain, may betray us in the end. Although it is humans who are changing our situation, we will probably destroy ourselves if our ethics do not catch up with our technology. I fear myself that we are very near to ensuring our own extinction. In her final chapter, Benedict makes some sobering comparisons concerning what may be called psychotic behaviors in various cultures, including ours. She points out how a culture can honor and even deify a behavior which taken out of context is clearly aberrant in the extreme. This is one of the things which, when seen in other cultures, makes us abhor the behavior. I used to wonder how a country could keep a madman like Hussein or Stalin in power. Then Benedict opened my eyes. I realized that we are doing the same thing. It's simply that we lie to ourselves. We create false standards of what is normal and aberrant. We live a charade. the people we honor and promote, when seen clearly, are classic examples of madness. For example, take a look at our White House and Cabinet, then take a look at this definition from Microsoft's Bookshelf. Paranoid I urge you to read Benedict's book, take an honest look around
you, and draw your own conclusions.
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