1 mar 2003
Man: the self-domesticated creature. Does it ever occure to you that most of the clothes we wear serve gender clarification or obscuration purposes? But that if we just walked around naked we'd always know what sex someone is? (I really like clothes, by the way, because I'm fairly heat/cold sensitive, but it just seems silly sometimes)
And then there's the family. Think back, waaaaaaaay back, can you form a reliable model of how the Nuclear Family must have came about? It has to be a really recent invention. Tribes would have had no room for it, early farming civilizations, maybe. It's only when you get a recognizable economy that having one spose and several children makes any sense. Polygamy wouldn't be so bad, really, provided that it's on equal footing between all members (that's why most polygamy as has been seen can suckit: it was one man owning several wives.)
I was just reading Looking for Lovedu, which in case anyone is interested is about the worst travel book I've ever read. But there's one line about how some tribe she meets thinks that Western families are unnaturally constricted-- they couldn't imagine living with only one's spose and children. They live in extended families, but don't consider them extended. Everyone who is related is just related. Kind of a communal thing.
And then she said something about how one of the woman said she ( the American writer) must be very rich.
Ann: No, I'm not that rich. I got the car/camping equipment/computer/camara/stuff from a magazine I work for
Woman: ?? No, I meant that you must be very rich to be able to take the time off to come visit us.
This woman measures wealth in how much free time one has, not what they have. I like that. ¶ 16:34
And then there's the family. Think back, waaaaaaaay back, can you form a reliable model of how the Nuclear Family must have came about? It has to be a really recent invention. Tribes would have had no room for it, early farming civilizations, maybe. It's only when you get a recognizable economy that having one spose and several children makes any sense. Polygamy wouldn't be so bad, really, provided that it's on equal footing between all members (that's why most polygamy as has been seen can suckit: it was one man owning several wives.)
I was just reading Looking for Lovedu, which in case anyone is interested is about the worst travel book I've ever read. But there's one line about how some tribe she meets thinks that Western families are unnaturally constricted-- they couldn't imagine living with only one's spose and children. They live in extended families, but don't consider them extended. Everyone who is related is just related. Kind of a communal thing.
And then she said something about how one of the woman said she ( the American writer) must be very rich.
Ann: No, I'm not that rich. I got the car/camping equipment/computer/camara/stuff from a magazine I work for
Woman: ?? No, I meant that you must be very rich to be able to take the time off to come visit us.
This woman measures wealth in how much free time one has, not what they have. I like that. ¶ 16:34
