Chapter One - Introduction: Civilization and Progress. 1 "Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home." 2 Civilized people are sensitive to "primitive" people striving for autonomy. In the mind of the imperialist, the loss of control in one area threatens the whole. At root, the story of every civilization is the same - any achievements are overshadowed by the common tragedy: "They [the achievements] were intended for the use and pleasure of the very few at the expense of the skill and labor of the many. 4 Writing was one of the original mysteries of civilization, and it reduced the complexities of experience to the written word. Moreover, writing provides the ruling classes with an ideological invincible law, mediated by priests. The Iroquois said: "Scripture was written by the Devil."
9 Marshall Sahlins pointed out that the richer the society, the greater the distance between its classes, and the greater the concentration of wealth at the summit. 17 In the early phases, the state permitted what it could not control. But, as the state grows stronger, the central authority permits less, commands more; the state grows more, not less, totalitarian. The idea of liberty was not invented until the French Revolution. Among primitive people, the concept of freedom does not exist, because society is not perceived as being oppressive.
24 As civilization grows, the remaining primitive people become more marginal. They become superßuous - if they cannot be transformed, they are destroyed. Primitive people have been fascinated, repelled, conquered, administered and decimated by civilization, but they have hardly ever chosen to civilize themselves. 25 Imperialists see civilization as progressive - "we are helping those we conquer to have a better life." "It is easier to believe the candid rationalizations for imperialism than to question them, for questioning them means questioning Western cultural assumptions; the meaning of civilization is at stake."
26 Colonies are sometimes retained, even when they are costing the home country money. "Colonial failure is perceived as symbolizing failure at home, and that could increase the restiveness of the domestic lower classes." 36 The question of progress is critical - many civilizations have imagined themselves to represent the height of human achievement.
39 If Europe is faithful to its own heritage, the rationalization runs, and fully realizes its potential, then it is bound to become the civilization of the world - everyman's fate. It follows that every contact of any consequence between European and the "natives of other lands" has been in bad faith. The missionaries, the businessmen, the soldiers, the colonial administrators, the anthropologists, all of these approach other cultures as raw material to be used in their own interests. Faith in progress is the justification used by the civilized men in their expansion. That faith is the dominant idea in Western civilization. The Western man cannot surrender the notion of progress without destroying the rationale for his entire civilization. He desperately clings to the idea of progress. "It is the notion of progress that mediates his alienation, and makes it possible for him to construct a reality which he does not actually experience."
40 The idea of progress is not based on a rational analysis of our civilization. "Modern technology, society and ideology are always out of joint with each other; and this sensed disjunction generates the idea of progress. Caught in the contradictions of society, Westerners see themselves as ciphers of history; incomplete and always waiting to be completed. Disintegrated by the extreme division of labor, by competition for goods and services and status rivalries, they obsessively anticipate integration. The idea of progress is, above all, the precipitant of unresolved social and personal conßicts in modern civilization, conßicts that feed on themselves. It is the awareness of this conßict, along with the effort at resolving that creates the sense of unresolved movement towards specific goals which are defined as progressive."
The structure of primitive societies is seen as being permanent. Progress is always changing. In primitive societies, the notion of progress would be a metaphor for spiritual transformation. 42 Academicians are almost unanimous in their support of the idea of progress, which is readily enough understood in the light of the priestly and scriptural origins of the academic profession. 44 Monopoly capitalism seeks to overcome its contradictions by producing goods and services that absorb and displace attention from the isolation and frustration that its form of society generates; these objects and services then become necessary, a sign of progress, a proof of prestige for those who "own" them, a symptom of class collaboration, and a way of holding the people at large, who have not other alternatives, to ransom. They are, in other words, addictions.
46 Two famous apologists for modern progress were Kroeber and Boas. The curiously shallow observations of both Boas and Kroeber in this matter, observations which are at variance with their understanding of the primitive world, illuminate the academic character of the ethnologist, his fundamental incapacity to seriously criticize his own society and his willingness to adopt a language that denies his experience. 48 It might be possible that the most alienated can, by confronting and acting on their own condition, free themselves. Only then can we speak of progress, which is always, in part, a primitive return.
Chapter Two - The Politics of Field Work. 50 Nigeria was not a settler's colony. Colonies with settlers were always more difficult to manage, because the interests of the colonists were in conßict with the interests of the indigenous. 60 Natives around Jos had rarely seen Europeans, and ßed when Diamond appeared. "It probably was easier for me to get used to them. I quickly came to appreciate the mature, deeply experienced, deeply incised faces of the older people. These were the most expressive, most fully human faces I have ever seen. They made me feel pity and shame for the cosmetic, contrived, acquisitive, vain, uniform, despairing and empty faces that are familiar even among the elderly in the cities of the West." There were no caricatures, no masks. 61 There are profound qualitative distinctions between primitive and civilized peoples, and these are often glossed over by anthropologists.
64 Every colonial is basically a material or spiritual profiteer. He comes to extract, earn, administer, win to a cause or faith, and he brings his superior manner and technique with him; 65 he could not be a colonial, I thought, if he came to learn or to look for a lost humanity. That would make him disloyal to his government, his company or his church or, if he were a social scientist of a certain type, to his profession.
66 A tribal elder cooperated with Diamond with good humor. He knew that his culture and people were dying out, but he wasn't concerned about this. The Anaguta preferred to preserve their culture by withdrawing from civilized contact. They made a conscious decision not to try to adapt to the new world that was growing up around them. 67 They did not migrate from their dwindling lands, nor convert to Christianity or Islam. They didn't send their children to schools. They are disinterested in agricultural resettlement. They shun work at the tin mines. "They believe their native territory is at the center of the world, where space and time intersect, and that, for them, is equivalent to living as close as possible to the Gods." 68 They see whites as recently evolved animals, but human.
70 Some natives have the power to become invisible - what greater gift could a people ßeeing before civilization desire? 72 Natives drawn into the colonial sphere soon see themselves as being superior to their primitive friends and relatives. Audu was bursting with abstract piety, but he spent all of his money on European clothing, utterly ignoring his wife, who roamed our back yard nakedÉ 73 Umaru never shared a shilling with his friends or relatives - none of his tribesmen had contributed to his livelihood.
74 So I watched him as he luxuriated in his new European vest and trousers or in his white Hausa cap and gown - jaunty, confident, apparently free as a feather is free but actually at the mercy of every current of air, and rootless - neither Anaguta nor Nigerian, nor pagan, nor Christian, a man losing his identify in the pursuit of an illusion. 77 These societies were under colonial assault; objectively, the future had ceased to exist for them. 78 My mode of life, my opportunities, the very clothes I wore were an insult to these disinherited. 79 How were we to recover our primary capacity to let hate ßow so that we might love? How were we, the civilized, to recover our senses? 80 This has nothing to do with making friends or inßuencing people, but recognizing that what they are and what they know is necessary to our survival, while the converse is more than false. For our existence is systematically obliterating theirs.
Chapter Three - Anthropology in Question. 93 Anthropology, abstractly conceived as the study of man, is actually the study of men in crisis by men in crisis. 94 The anthropologist must behave as if he had no judgment - it is very alienating.
Chapter Four - The Search for the Primitive. 120 Wherever civilization arises, the primitive in man is subordinated; it withers away, grows attenuated or is replaced. Thus, the search for the primitive (which is anthropology) begins.
Chapter Six - The Uses of the Primitive. 207 The longing for a primitive mode of existence is no mere fantasy or sentimental whim; it is consonant with fundamental human needs, the fulfillment of which is a precondition for our survival. 208 Samuel Johnson said: "when man began to desire private property then entered violence, and fraud, and theft, and rapine. Soon after, pride and envy broke out in the world and brought with them a new standard of wealth, for men, who till then, thought themselves rich, when they wanted nothing, now rated their demands, not by the calls of nature, but by the plenty of others; and began to consider themselves poor, when they beheld their own possessions exceeded by those of their neighbors." Predatory property and production for profit does not exist among primitive people.
220 Condorcet probably committed suicide in Robespierre's prison. He was not progressive enough, having fought against the death penalty for the deposed King.
225 Lewis Henry Morgan: "Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding, and its management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the state to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners."
Chapter Seven - Schizophrenia and Civilization. 227 In 1972 the Chief of the Psychology Laboratory at the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) estimated that 60 million Americans could be classifiable as schizophrenics.
228 The mental health establishment assumes that, given enough money and research, the causes of mental illness can be found - and the cures. Research can reveal the cause and cure of anything. We are tinkering with a machine. Pain can be eliminated. Our culture generates tragic contradictions, and simultaneously avoids acknowledging them.
229 In the broadest sense, schizophrenia is the process through which the inadequacy of the culture is concretized in the consciousness of individuals; and that inadequacy may be deeply sensed, without being named, as it is reßected in "pathological" behavior.
Thus, NIMH is symptomatic of civilization's investment in the expert, who, segregated in specialized institutions, works on problems that are necessarily isolated from the context that generate and define them. Such problems inevitably take on the character of reifications.
230 But in fact the bureaucracy becomes the custodian, not the resolver of such problemsÉ the problems are somehow administered or researched out of existence without the basic changes in society having been achieved. For, above all, the bureaucracy must not be self-liquidating.
Similarly, the mental health establishment is a pathological symptom of the society that created it; it is part of a fragmented social process within which the alienated study the alienated.
231 But the fact remains that after decades of research, the behavioral science experts in the mental health establishment, including the NIMH, have failed to discover either the cause or the cure of schizophrenia.
232 Despite lofty intentions, the mental hospital cannot be turned into an authentic community of reciprocating, autonomous, working and loving persons. It cannot rise above its source - it exhibits the same problems that exist in the outer society. So, it turns outer society into a mental hospital via psychoactive drugs.
236-237 A schizophrenic feels like a visitor from another planet - traumatic cultural shock - an acute identity crisis.
When a primitive person sees a spirit in a whirlwind, he is not insane. The spirit is real. When a modern sees a spirit, it is an hallucination, a psychopathological event - our culture defines this as wrong and bad.
239 Schizophrenia, as we know it, gives every indication of being a protest against and a response to the problem of learning how to be human in contemporary society.
241 The suicide rate of psychiatrists is higher than that of other professionals.
242 In the course of the project it became clear that unless the psychotherapist can attain a commanding position vis-a-vis the patient, he is likely to lose confidence in himself very quickly. If he cannot define himself as representing normality, reality, competence, the world, in sum, the establishment - and the patient as seriously inadequate, his professional armor disintegrates.
252 The schizophrenic reaction is no more and no less than the ultimate pathology of modern society; that pathology may be seen in its actuality as a society-wide dynamic manifested in varying degrees and combinations in all individuals according to their temperaments, their talents, and their precise circumstances.
253 Antoine Artaud said that psychoanalysis was invented to destroy the visionary in man.
In 1939 George Devereaux said: "Schizophrenia seems to be rare or absent among primitives. This is a point on which all students of comparative society and anthropology agree."
Does schizophrenia exist in primitive people? Schizophrenia as a diagnostic category is irrelevant in authentically primitive societies. Here is why:
- Everyone has rights to food, clothing, and shelter. Functionlessness is not a problem in their culture.
- Rituals ease the transitions from one phase of life to another.
- 254 Rituals and ceremonies permit people to act out their strong feelings, and this is acceptable.
- Kinship provides a strong support system. Social alienation is unknown.
Primitive cultures realize the major function of culture which is to make men human, and at the same time to keep them sane. That is what civilization, as we know it, is failing to do. Schizophrenia, then, is no less and no more than the subjective aspect of the socio-economic dynamic of alienation.