I’m not sure whether any anthropological analysis of another culture isn’t fraught with some error. We know, for example, that just by going as an outsider into a group, we somehow affect that group’s behavior. So, I’m a little leery about accepting findings by anthropologists. However…
K. E. Read made some comments about the Gahuku-Gama and their stand on morality and judgment that might serve as a point of departure for those outside New Guinea to reexamine their current stand on judging others. First a background in Read’s words:
"The [Gahuku-Gama have] no body of explicit principles, no formal code of ethics, in the sense of a more or less coherently stated and inter-connected system of moral concepts: [they have] nothing to offer which is comparable to the integrated concepts of the person, of a natural moral law and a universal moral order. Abstract ideas of the good, of the basis of right or wrong, do not interest the Gahuku-Gama. Their moral rules are, for the most part, unsystematized—judgments which refer to specific situations rather than to any explicit ideology of right and wrong as such." (229) *
"One of the most noticeable characteristics of the Gahuku-Gama is their unconcern with and their unwillingness to judge actions or situations in which they are not personally involved. Moral offences and breaches of rule which do not affect them either as individuals or as members of a particular group stand, as it were, outside the range within which the moral judgment operates." (228)
If Read is correct in reporting on the nature of Gahuku-Gama culture, then in them we have a model of non-judgment within a context of a morality that is not generalized or codified. Make your own comparison: Look through the condemnatory comments on social media and on pundit shows to see how judgment pervades almost every issue, even those that do not affect people or groups personally. Outside New Guinea there are codified moral systems: Judeo-Christian morality, Common Law, Legal Precedent, Islam and a number of offshoot codes of right and wrong that serve as the bases for judgment and condemnation. But Read seems to have found a place where judgment and condemnation is not quite the same as it is elsewhere. As he writes,
“Nor are the Gahuku-Gama alone among New Guinea peoples in showing this unwillingness to judge. Dr. J. B. Watson of Washington University has told me that he has also come across it among the Agarabe of the eastern Highlands. Dr. K. O. L. Burridge of the University of Malaya has mentioned a similar attitude among the Tangu of Madand District, and I have heard it referred to by Miss Chowning from the University of Pennsylvania, among the Nakanai of New Britain.” (229)
Take a look around. Do you and your contemporaries operate within a codified moral system that makes you juror and judge?
*Read, K. E. “Morality and the Concept of the Person among the Gahuku-Gama,” in Myth and Cosmos: Readings in Mythology and Symbolism, Ed. By John Middleton. Garden City, New York. The Natural History Press, 1967.
K. E. Read made some comments about the Gahuku-Gama and their stand on morality and judgment that might serve as a point of departure for those outside New Guinea to reexamine their current stand on judging others. First a background in Read’s words:
"The [Gahuku-Gama have] no body of explicit principles, no formal code of ethics, in the sense of a more or less coherently stated and inter-connected system of moral concepts: [they have] nothing to offer which is comparable to the integrated concepts of the person, of a natural moral law and a universal moral order. Abstract ideas of the good, of the basis of right or wrong, do not interest the Gahuku-Gama. Their moral rules are, for the most part, unsystematized—judgments which refer to specific situations rather than to any explicit ideology of right and wrong as such." (229) *
"One of the most noticeable characteristics of the Gahuku-Gama is their unconcern with and their unwillingness to judge actions or situations in which they are not personally involved. Moral offences and breaches of rule which do not affect them either as individuals or as members of a particular group stand, as it were, outside the range within which the moral judgment operates." (228)
If Read is correct in reporting on the nature of Gahuku-Gama culture, then in them we have a model of non-judgment within a context of a morality that is not generalized or codified. Make your own comparison: Look through the condemnatory comments on social media and on pundit shows to see how judgment pervades almost every issue, even those that do not affect people or groups personally. Outside New Guinea there are codified moral systems: Judeo-Christian morality, Common Law, Legal Precedent, Islam and a number of offshoot codes of right and wrong that serve as the bases for judgment and condemnation. But Read seems to have found a place where judgment and condemnation is not quite the same as it is elsewhere. As he writes,
“Nor are the Gahuku-Gama alone among New Guinea peoples in showing this unwillingness to judge. Dr. J. B. Watson of Washington University has told me that he has also come across it among the Agarabe of the eastern Highlands. Dr. K. O. L. Burridge of the University of Malaya has mentioned a similar attitude among the Tangu of Madand District, and I have heard it referred to by Miss Chowning from the University of Pennsylvania, among the Nakanai of New Britain.” (229)
Take a look around. Do you and your contemporaries operate within a codified moral system that makes you juror and judge?
*Read, K. E. “Morality and the Concept of the Person among the Gahuku-Gama,” in Myth and Cosmos: Readings in Mythology and Symbolism, Ed. By John Middleton. Garden City, New York. The Natural History Press, 1967.
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