Sorry for the politically incorrect term Man. Sign of my age. Like Neil Armstrong, I think inclusively with respect to our heritage of language. Man, capitalized, mankind, lower case, is genderless. Just a term for humans. Offensive? I guess one takes offense at and from whatever one wants to take offense, like terms for genetic heritage, religious heritage, political heritage.
Story my late dad told me: One of his cousins of Italian heritage moved to the upper Midwest of the USA in the 1940s. Moving into the rural community, he found himself a stranger to whom a local, not of Italian heritage, asked him, probably in an attempt either to humiliate or incite, “Do you know what a Wop is?” Unfazed and unoffended, the cousin said, “Yes, it’s the sound made when you take one cow chip and smash it against another.” Story over. No further confrontations, peaceful coexistence. Sticks and stones might hurt my bones, but words….
Today, that incident would be a social media sensation. Outcries would abound. But I digress…
So, back to Man, specifically, categories of man. Do you have any? Come on. ‘Fess up. You know you do. What are they? Let me guess. Some of your categories are economic, some religious, some psychological, some physical, some historical, and some I can’t imagine because, well, they’re your categories born of inculcation and experience. And they serve a purpose, of course. You can’t handle all the details and variations, so you categorize. Categorizing makes the world easy. In this we’re all a bit obsessive-compulsive. This isn’t a judgment. I categorize, also. I guess I can’t help it. And like you, I probably can’t be totally objective if someone categorizes me. We like boxes except when we’re placed in one.
In the “One small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind” (Yes, Armstrong said “a”) vein, let’s take a look at some categories as outlined in the nineteenth century to see whether there’s some continuity that we have either maintained or interrupted, elaborated or eliminated, or fully replaced. In 1898, Professor Daniel G. Brinton delivered a lecture to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia entitled “The Milestones of Human Progress.” Some of you will be happy to learn that the good Professor Brinton makes limited use of the term Man or Mankind in his talk even though the terms were universally understood to mean human. No, he used human and people as well. Now, remember, it’s the nineteenth century, and as bright as the Professor might have been, he had no familiarity with gender-neutral bathrooms unless he so designated a big tree or bush on a camping trip or used a local outhouse.
Brinton starts his lecture* with a note that some people of his time “still think” that people began in some noble state, “Arcadian simplicity” as he calls it, but that “minds…trained in archaeological studies and in ethnographic observations” know that in ancient times man lived in the “rudest possible condition of savagery.” So, there’s a hint on where this categorization stuff is headed. Right of the top, Brinton thinks “savage” and “civilized.” He remarks that the difference can be seen in the materials for tools: Stone, bronze, and finally, in his own age, iron (and steel). He mentions these materials because they “bear a distinct relation to all man’s other conditions at the time. “A tribe which had never progressed beyond the stone age…could never proceed beyond a very limited point of civilization.” And then he mentions the “celebrated chemist” Baron Liebig, who laid the difference among humans in a categorization of human progress in a single substance: Soap. Cleanliness, you remember is next to….
The Germans of Brinton’s time had two categories, also based on relative savagery or civilization: Natur-Voelker and Kultur-Voelker. Brinton says the people in these categories are “psychological,” the former are tied to Nature as “wild-people,” whereas the latter are free from the control of Nature. Brinton, like you and me, is a product of his times, so he judges the wild people as living a largely unconscious life. Those culture-people live self-consciously.
Hate to burden you with too much, but consider Brinton’s words in light of your own categories:
“To make this difference between the two still more apparent, it is the conflict between the instinctive desires and the human heart and soul and the intelligent desires—those desires which we have by instinct, which we have by heredity and which have been inculcated into us wholly by our surroundings, which we drink in and accept without any internal discussion of them: those are instinctive in character. We go about our business, we transact the daily affairs of life, we accept our religion and politics, not from any internal conviction of our own or positive examination, but from our surroundings. To that extent people are acting instinctively; and, as such, they are on a lower stage of culture than those who arrive at such results for themselves through intelligent personal effort. This is a real distinction also, although somewhat more subtle, perhaps, than the ones previously given. Therefore, the differentiation made by the German ethnographers between wild people and the cultured peoples is, in the main, right; but it does not admit of any sharp line of distinction between the two. We cannot draw a fixed line and say, ‘On this side are the cultured people and on that the wild,’ because there are many tribes and nations who are about that line, in some respects on one side of it, in others on the other; but in a broad, general way this distinction (which is now universally adopted by the German writers) is one we should keep in our minds as being based upon careful studies and real distinctions."
You’re not buying it, right? And the reason? You’ve had more than a century of psychological, sociological, and anthropological studies and decades of psychobabble behind your views. Brinton didn’t have any of that. So, he continues to list categories from his nineteenth-century perspective: Hunter-gatherers vs. Farmers and Domesticators, for example. He argues that caring for animals makes man more humane—as though Elsie the Cow’s slaughterer couldn’t also be a serial killer.
Then Brinton turns to food supply as a way to distinguish humans in four stages of culture: The hunting and fishing stage, the nomadic or pastoral, the agricultural, and the commercial. And he mentions Lewis H., Morgan, an American ethnologist who categorizes humans through stages: Savagery, barbarism, semi-civilization, civilization, and finally enlightenment. In 1898 the world was still a decade and a half from the savagery of World War I, but surely, Brinton knew about the savagery imposed by individuals and groups in his own civilized times.
Balls in your court now. How do you categorize Man (okay, humans)? Do you do so through some historical perspective, some development or evolution? No? What’s your approach? What governs your categories? We all know you have them. You know you have them. But have you really thought about them? Do you keep revising them because of current influences? Finally, are your categories mutually exclusive?**
*Scientific American Supplement, June 25, 1898, Vol. XLV, No. 1178, p. 18766. Thanks to the Gutenberg Project, you can read Professor Brinton’s complete lecture online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18265/18265-h/18265-h.htm#art02
**Nothing like a little grey to overturn a black-and-white perspective.
Story my late dad told me: One of his cousins of Italian heritage moved to the upper Midwest of the USA in the 1940s. Moving into the rural community, he found himself a stranger to whom a local, not of Italian heritage, asked him, probably in an attempt either to humiliate or incite, “Do you know what a Wop is?” Unfazed and unoffended, the cousin said, “Yes, it’s the sound made when you take one cow chip and smash it against another.” Story over. No further confrontations, peaceful coexistence. Sticks and stones might hurt my bones, but words….
Today, that incident would be a social media sensation. Outcries would abound. But I digress…
So, back to Man, specifically, categories of man. Do you have any? Come on. ‘Fess up. You know you do. What are they? Let me guess. Some of your categories are economic, some religious, some psychological, some physical, some historical, and some I can’t imagine because, well, they’re your categories born of inculcation and experience. And they serve a purpose, of course. You can’t handle all the details and variations, so you categorize. Categorizing makes the world easy. In this we’re all a bit obsessive-compulsive. This isn’t a judgment. I categorize, also. I guess I can’t help it. And like you, I probably can’t be totally objective if someone categorizes me. We like boxes except when we’re placed in one.
In the “One small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind” (Yes, Armstrong said “a”) vein, let’s take a look at some categories as outlined in the nineteenth century to see whether there’s some continuity that we have either maintained or interrupted, elaborated or eliminated, or fully replaced. In 1898, Professor Daniel G. Brinton delivered a lecture to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia entitled “The Milestones of Human Progress.” Some of you will be happy to learn that the good Professor Brinton makes limited use of the term Man or Mankind in his talk even though the terms were universally understood to mean human. No, he used human and people as well. Now, remember, it’s the nineteenth century, and as bright as the Professor might have been, he had no familiarity with gender-neutral bathrooms unless he so designated a big tree or bush on a camping trip or used a local outhouse.
Brinton starts his lecture* with a note that some people of his time “still think” that people began in some noble state, “Arcadian simplicity” as he calls it, but that “minds…trained in archaeological studies and in ethnographic observations” know that in ancient times man lived in the “rudest possible condition of savagery.” So, there’s a hint on where this categorization stuff is headed. Right of the top, Brinton thinks “savage” and “civilized.” He remarks that the difference can be seen in the materials for tools: Stone, bronze, and finally, in his own age, iron (and steel). He mentions these materials because they “bear a distinct relation to all man’s other conditions at the time. “A tribe which had never progressed beyond the stone age…could never proceed beyond a very limited point of civilization.” And then he mentions the “celebrated chemist” Baron Liebig, who laid the difference among humans in a categorization of human progress in a single substance: Soap. Cleanliness, you remember is next to….
The Germans of Brinton’s time had two categories, also based on relative savagery or civilization: Natur-Voelker and Kultur-Voelker. Brinton says the people in these categories are “psychological,” the former are tied to Nature as “wild-people,” whereas the latter are free from the control of Nature. Brinton, like you and me, is a product of his times, so he judges the wild people as living a largely unconscious life. Those culture-people live self-consciously.
Hate to burden you with too much, but consider Brinton’s words in light of your own categories:
“To make this difference between the two still more apparent, it is the conflict between the instinctive desires and the human heart and soul and the intelligent desires—those desires which we have by instinct, which we have by heredity and which have been inculcated into us wholly by our surroundings, which we drink in and accept without any internal discussion of them: those are instinctive in character. We go about our business, we transact the daily affairs of life, we accept our religion and politics, not from any internal conviction of our own or positive examination, but from our surroundings. To that extent people are acting instinctively; and, as such, they are on a lower stage of culture than those who arrive at such results for themselves through intelligent personal effort. This is a real distinction also, although somewhat more subtle, perhaps, than the ones previously given. Therefore, the differentiation made by the German ethnographers between wild people and the cultured peoples is, in the main, right; but it does not admit of any sharp line of distinction between the two. We cannot draw a fixed line and say, ‘On this side are the cultured people and on that the wild,’ because there are many tribes and nations who are about that line, in some respects on one side of it, in others on the other; but in a broad, general way this distinction (which is now universally adopted by the German writers) is one we should keep in our minds as being based upon careful studies and real distinctions."
You’re not buying it, right? And the reason? You’ve had more than a century of psychological, sociological, and anthropological studies and decades of psychobabble behind your views. Brinton didn’t have any of that. So, he continues to list categories from his nineteenth-century perspective: Hunter-gatherers vs. Farmers and Domesticators, for example. He argues that caring for animals makes man more humane—as though Elsie the Cow’s slaughterer couldn’t also be a serial killer.
Then Brinton turns to food supply as a way to distinguish humans in four stages of culture: The hunting and fishing stage, the nomadic or pastoral, the agricultural, and the commercial. And he mentions Lewis H., Morgan, an American ethnologist who categorizes humans through stages: Savagery, barbarism, semi-civilization, civilization, and finally enlightenment. In 1898 the world was still a decade and a half from the savagery of World War I, but surely, Brinton knew about the savagery imposed by individuals and groups in his own civilized times.
Balls in your court now. How do you categorize Man (okay, humans)? Do you do so through some historical perspective, some development or evolution? No? What’s your approach? What governs your categories? We all know you have them. You know you have them. But have you really thought about them? Do you keep revising them because of current influences? Finally, are your categories mutually exclusive?**
*Scientific American Supplement, June 25, 1898, Vol. XLV, No. 1178, p. 18766. Thanks to the Gutenberg Project, you can read Professor Brinton’s complete lecture online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18265/18265-h/18265-h.htm#art02
**Nothing like a little grey to overturn a black-and-white perspective.
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