Talk:Early infanticidal childrearing/Archive

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Moved from the Talk:Early infanticidal childrearing page. Pgdudda, Sunday, June 16, 2002

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Does this "model" reflect actual facts?

Increased mortality after weaning is common in non-Neolithic cultures as well; it's a consequence of inadequate nutrition, not of parental desire. Vicki Rosenzweig

You're wrong there. "Inadequate nutrition" isn't some random fact of reality. It's a consequence of feeding pap to children, and not having the empathy necessary to understand that crying means the baby is hungry. These are both psychological problems of the parents (since feeding pap is a response to the fear of breastfeeding).

And if you'll pay more attention to the page, the crash in child population (which is enormous among the Papua New Guinea tribes) is not a result of parental desires for the child's death, or parental sexual desire for the infant. The latter is irrelevant and the former only develops in advanced societies where parents actually take care of their children to some degree. No, the crash is due to total neglect. That makes it axiom #3 of the model, not #1 or #2.

Does it reflect facts? Every single fact I'm aware of regarding neolithic tribes! -- ark

Well it would help if I knew who you were. I have no way of knowing if you've lived in PNG for 30 years and your information is commonly found in peer reviewed journals or if you are just repeating what you've heard third hand. My bs alert is going off, and it would really help if you inserted information about how you know what you know.
I believe every fact I've given is commonly accepted, though I haven't verified it. It's just the interpretation of those facts within a model which is controversial. If even half the stuff I've read is true, this is the model that fits best.

Cites, please? You seem to be aware of facts that I haven't come across--they'd strengthen the article. And no, inadequate nutrition isn't random, but it's a common cause of death worldwide, not only in "neolithic" cultures (which I'd be happier if you specified). Nobody breastfeeds children forever, and most cultures wean children later than the contemporary US: the problem isn't that weaned children are given soft, bland food--it's that there often isn't enough of that food. Vicki Rosenzweig

That's not true. If it were true, we'd expect the weaning crash to be smaller or absent in the upper classes, when in fact it's worse. With modern medical knowledge, things may be different, or maybe not. -- ark

I was wondering...

I was wondering where this article came from as well. If nothing else it needs more citation (i.e. who says this) and more context (i.e. do most antropologists actually believe this).

A disturbing number of anthropologists follow a radically different model called "Pedophilia is good". Or in their own words, "Pedophilia is a random and legitimate cultural variation." Let's not talk about that.

Why not talk about it? A lot of the times once you talk about it you find that the claim that X believes that is total non-sense.


Nice try. If this is true, we *need* to talk about it. How many anthropologists? (If this is something three people claim, it may be disturbing in that you wouldn't hire them to babysit, but it's not indicative of the consensus in the field.) Which ones? Do they actually say "pedophilia is good", or do they say "parents can touch children's genitals without sexual intention" (e.g., to wash an infant)? Vicki Rosenzweig

Both. And actually, they say that parents can masturbate children, and derive sexual pleasure from it, without it being incest. Which of course, is completely absurd.

I want anthropologists summarily disqualified from any matter related to childrearing or psychology. I except only the very few anthropologists who have specific psychological training or who are working in partnership with a psychologist. Without such training, they're simply not qualified to make any judgement about psychological or psychologically-driven phenomena.

Now, given this, it's clear that there is only a very small number of qualified people in the field at all. And there's only one I consider authoritative enough to make broad statements about culture. Which is why I'd prefer to discuss a long list of individual facts (widely agreed in the field) than a single name about what those facts mean. -- ark

If you're judging people's qualifications, I think you should state your own. And, again, I would like sources for facts.

I've done...

I've done a little googling. The US state department (http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/1998_hrp_report/papuanew.html) says that "In the past, children have been well cared for within the family and under traditional clan and village controls. However, preliminary, small-scale studies indicate that this situation has changed over the last decade, especially in areas where households have become isolated from the extended family support system and depend on the cash economy for a livelihood. According to a report prepared by the Government and the U.N. Children's Fund, sexual abuse of children is believed to have become quite prevalent. Because of the geographic isolation and remoteness of many villages, malnutrition and infant mortality rates are very high. More than 60 of every thousand children born do not survive their first year."

The International Planned Parenthood Federation states that "The maternal mortality rate is one of the highest in the world, the infant mortality rate is increasing , with considerable variation from province to province," and adds that most of the population lacks access to safe water. (http://ippfnet.ippf.org/pub/IPPF_Regions/IPPF_CountryProfile.asp?ISOCode=PG)

So PNG children were better off in the more "primitive" culture, and exposure to an "advanced" society has increased sexual abuse of children. Vicki Rosenzweig

Yeah right. The myth of the "noble savage" rears its ugly head again. Did you notice how in the State Dept's report, the past is something nebulous and unknown, and only the present is at all concrete? I trust their vision of the present, I don't trust their speculations about the past any more than I can throw them.

They're comparing ten years ago to now--that's not a nebulous and unknown past.

Let's dissect the claim that child mortality has been increasing, just from stuff that I personally know to be true.

  • the reproductive rate is inversely proportional to the ignorance and poverty of the population. So the more ignorant and poor the population, the more they will fuck.
What's generally the case is that birthrate is inversely proportional to *female education* and connects to chance that those infants will react adulthood--most people don't want to go through lots of (difficult, expensive) pregnancies, they want to be sure of having two or three children grow up and have children in turn. And "ignorance" is a complex term: ignorant of what? Poor in what terms?

How does this apply?

  • the PNG are very poor and ignorant
See above

apply Modus Ponens and we have,

  • the PNG have a VERY HIGH reproductive rate.

So far so good.

Now let's add:

  • the PNG have been stable for 10 millenia, never using up the resources of their island, yet maintaining a low density population.

That is also an obvious and non-controversial fact.

Is it? What happened 10,000 years ago, then? (PNG has been settled for 50 millennia.) Do we know that the population has been stable for the last 10,000 years?

Apply #4 to #3 above and you get:

  • the PNG have a VERY HIGH rate of infanticide, child suicide, parental neglect leading to "accidents" or some combination of the three.
Or some other cause of short lifespan, such as warfare killing off young males and childbirth killing off young women.

So now you know why I think those "noble savage" and "increasing child mortality, oh the horror!" is just complete bullshit.

Which isn't what anyone else is saying: they're observing that the older family structure provided more adult carers, and possibly more food, than the cash economy and the nuclear family. If that's "noble savage," medieval Europe and pre-WWI America were inhabited by noble savages.
I believe that traditional PNG social structure included a very high rate of a combination of 'infanticide, child suicide and parental neglect leading to fatal "accidents"' fundamentally contradicts what you are asserting.
The contradiction derives from the fact that 'high rates of either infanticide, child suicide or parental neglect leading to fatal "accidents"' implies a level of barbarity unimaginable to most people. Now, I have a pretty vivid imagination and I still can't imagine how the nuclear family or a cash economy (and as an anarcho-syndicalist, I know all of the evils of capitalism) could possibly make the situation worse. When you've already hit rock bottom, there's nothing lower than that.

And I got this conclusion from stuff I know to be true because it is self-evidently obvious. So what does that mean? It means both the State Dept and IPPF have their heads shoved up so far up their ass that they can't see daylight at high noon. -- ark

It means that you haven't offered facts. It is "self-evidently obvious" that the Sun goes around the Earth; that doesn't make it true. Vicki Rosenzweig

It does mean that unless you have superior facts or the scientific community undergoes a radical change in its understanding of culture and reproduction, that my argument will (or at least should) be accepted by an overwhelming majority of people. -- ark

At the very least, this article needs some citations -- "one model" of NCR is too vague. Why not describe who developed the model, and when, and perhaps cite some publications -- Wikipedia is after all a resource. Readers will want to know where to turn next to find out more about this model. Also, the article suggests competing models for understandint NCR (vaguely mentioning anthropologists); there should be names and citations for this as well. SR

That's going to be an interesting problem: googling on "Neolithic childrearing" got nothing useful; "Neolithic child rearing" (note space) got me an interview with Sarah Hrdy, who suggests that the Neolithic is when child rearing became problematic because births started being closer together. The phrase "Neolithic childrearing" does not occur anywhere that Google can find, which suggests that even if this theory can be found elsewhere, it's under some other name. Which should be mentioned, if so. Vicki Rosenzweig

Neolithic childrearing

Neolithic childrearing refers to childrearing practices in Neolithic societies. The neolithic, or "new stone age," was a period in human history dating from about 10,000 years ago to, in some places, 5,000 years ago and in other places until one to five hundred years ago. There are no longer any neolithic societies. Most data concerning neolithic societies is archeological, and it is extrememly difficult to determine child-rearing practices abased on such data. Moreover, it is likely that different neolithic societies practiced different forms of childrearing. There is some ethnographic data concerning contemporary societies with some similarities to neolithic societies, although there are many differences as well; anthropologists once believed that these tribes are representative of cultures one might have found in the Neolithic era, and many non-anthropologists continue to believe this. Nevertheless, most anthropologists today argue against this view.

The model of early neolithic childrearing developed by Lloyd deMause can be summarized into three basic ideas:

  • children are not considered human
  • infants are useful to parents as erotic objects
  • children aren't considered useful to any adult in any other way

This model explains the inordinate sexual attention paid by parents of neolithic tribes to their children, such as sucking, fondling and masturbating.

It also explains the total lack of non-sexual attention paid by neolithic parents, such as mutual gazes between parent and child. Such mutual gazing is widely recognized as crucial for proper mental and emotional development. Other examples of absent non-sexual attention include keeping infants away from open fires, preventing children from playing with knives, and stopping newborns from crawling into the sea.

The model explains many other recorded facts, such as the large jump in the mortality rate of Papua New Guinean children after they reach the weaning stage.

The consequences of neolithic childrearing are many and devastating. Even among young children, there is a high rate of insanity and suicide.

Despite its successes, this model of neolithic childrearing is not accepted by many anthropologists. On the contrary, anthropologists frequently explain sexual activity as "loving" and parental neglect as "a desire to teach by experimentation".

Ark wrote: "The model of early neolithic childrearing developed by Lloyd deMause can be summarized into three basic ideas:

  • children are not considered human
  • infants are useful to parents as erotic objects
  • children aren't considered useful to any adult in any other way"

What deMause really wrote was:

The invention of agriculture and then of civilized urban life which marks the Neolithic is an achievement based on the evolution of childrearing. This evolution consisted of an increase in attention, consistency and identification by the parent with the child. Hunting groups can be distinguished from farming and urban groups by the shift from the impassive mother-who can handle her infanticidal wishes only by either merging with the child or by complete emotional withdrawal - to the mother-father unit, which is able to massively project their unconscious into the child, identify with it, and then severely discipline and shape it. The mark of early civilizations is, paradoxically, connected with the invention of severe physical punishment in obedience training. Even with contemporary groups, the higher the level of culture, the more consistant the child training for "obedience, self-reliance and independence."

I would really like to know where he got his information from. Danny

I meant earlier than that, the tribes which aren't civilized, the ones who don't provide any attention to children. The Neolithic is a long period after all. Perhaps it's better called 'early infanticidal childrearing'. Probably should be now that I think about it. -- ark

We have practically no certain knowledge of paleolithic childrearing practices. There is absolutely no evidence that Paleolithic peoples did not gaze into the eyes of their children or used them as dildos. None at all. I will of course take this back if someone can cite any peer-reviewed archeological study that demonstrates either of these possibilities conclusively. By the way, ark, I am truly glad that you have finally decided to "think" about it.  ;) SR

It's not "the model" that characterizes anything. In physics, do we say that "General Relativity" characterizes planets as orbiting stars? No, that's simply an observation. If people refuse to look out a damned telescope, or if they want to interpret the data as the planets orbiting the Earth instead, you still cannot say that GR is responsible for that.

The only possible reason why SR and Roadrunner change the page so it says such blatantly stupid nonsense is because they want to slander it. Because alternative explanations like "they don't understand how to use English" don't apply. So stop fucking up the page.

deMause, and anyone who isn't a cultural relativist, will invariably characterize masturbation of infants as "inordinate sexual attention". That means 99% of our society will agree with deMause and COMPLETELY DISAGREE with anthropologists. If you want to say that anthropologists don't think there's anything wrong with masturbating infants then say so explicitly. Do NOT say "deMause interprets the observed data in a way that's contrary to anthropologists" because anthropologists do NOT have primacy in this, not when they are themselves interpreting things in a completely insane manner.

The same rules as on the incest page apply; what *most* people call incest is what counts. So what *most* people call "inordinate sexual attention" and "total non-sexual innatention" is what counts. Not what some fucker in academia thinks it is. Unless you want to expose anthropologists to ridicule then you're more than welcome to explain that anthropologists see nothing sexual in the masturbation of infants. Actually now that I think about it, I'm going to add it. I've had more than fucking enough with pedophilia supporters. -- Ark

Ark, what the hell are you trying to do here? SR and Roadrunner are trying to improve this article by at least making it sound neutral. Cursing, reverting their work and making inflammatory statements are very counter-productive. This is obviously a pet theory of yours and you obviously have strong feelings about this subject, but what you are doing here is very un-wiki. This is not Slashdot. Please stop this edit and flame war and try to work on a consensus on this article. You will not be able to get an article you are 100% happy with and neither will SR or Roadrunner. Accept this and lets get to work. --maveric149, Wednesday, June 5, 2002

They're NOT trying to improve the article. The way they're making it sound neutral is by saying things that are the exact equivalent of:

"Some people have accused Scientist Schmoe of being a pseudoscientist."

This is something that came up in another page somewhere. It got thrown out because even if it's true, it's not supported by facts, it's repeating vicious slander against the person. You could make that accusation against ANYONE and it would be equally relevant/important.

I'll be happy with an article I can tolerate. I don't have to be 100% happy with it, nor did I ever expect to be.

The reason why what SR is doing is intolerable is because he redefines what "inordinate sexual attention" means. No, it has a very specific meaning relative to our own culture. If SR wants to say that anthropologists reject the common sense standard of what is and what is not appropriate sexual attention, and thereby leave anthropologists wide open to ridicule by any layman, then he should point out EXACTLY what anthropologists believe. As I wrote above, I'm going to do that for him, including ridiculing anthropologists for their insane beliefs, because I'm tired of this game.

Further, when SR (and Roadrunner) write that "the model characterizes" something. That's wrong too. It makes it seem like 1) only deMause and his followers believe the observed facts (ie, put a non-culturally relativistic spin on the fact of incest and sexual abuse on primitives), and 2) like the only reason deMause and others believe the facts is because they fit the model. You tell me: how is this not slander?? How is this in any way NPOV??

There are a bunch of known facts which everyone agrees on. 99% of modern people will put a very specific interpretation on those facts. That interpretation is that primitives are pedophilic, incestuous child molesters. This isn't something which is cooked up by deMause's model. The fact that anthropologists put a different, utterly bizarre and alien, pro-pedophilia spin on the facts is not my problem.

NPOV means that the 99% view gets most of the attention, is dealt with first and most importantly, and is recognized as the overwhelming majority view. It does NOT mean that the 1% view gets as much coverage as the 99% view in order to create a doubt in people's minds about which view is the right one. Which is exactly what SR and Roadrunner have been systematically trying to do. They've been POVing the article, vandalizing and undermining it. -- Ark

Consider this your warning Ark. Stop deleting the talk for this page -- you may feel it is no longer relevant but others do. So it stays. Got that? I'm at work right now so I can't respond to your above comment yet. --maveric149

Ark:

Ark:

First, let me quote someone who I have a fair amount of respect for:

...a theory is just a model of the universe, or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make. It exists only in our minds and does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean). A theory is a good theory if is satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the result of future observations.

All models characterize things, indeed, it is precisely the power of Copernicus's model that he describes the moons of Jupiter as orbiting Jupiter, and the Earth, like Jupiter, as orbiting the sun.

I do not question that deMause has a theory (the fact that I do not think it is a good theory is for the moment besides the point; let's, for the sake of argument, assume it is a good theory). Clearly a significant part of any theory or model is DESCRIPTIVE statements. The proposition that "touching this child's genitals" = "inordinate" "sexual activity" is a descriptive claim, not a prediction and not an explanation. To call it a description is uncontroversial.

Second, to say that this is a claimed description is also noncontroversial. Not everyone would say it is sexual, and othose who say it is sexual, not all would say it is inordinate.

By the way, I am unimpressed by your hysteical claim that 99% of our society would agree with this (so, Mr./Ms. Scientist, have you taken a survey? random sample? What is the margin of error?). My claim is that people in different cultures describe things differently. Even if 99% of Americans agreed that this is sexual, it would only prove my point. My point is not that it "is" sexual, only that within the categories of American culture it is considered sexual. The issue for me is, what do Marquesans, or Yolngu, or Gimi, or whomever, think it is? An article that makes claims about a particular society MUST care what members of that society claim is going on.

Why should it? You obviously don't care. If you did, you'd ask how the child or infant perceives the activity. Is it terrifying to them? Is it sexual? Et cetera. But of course, you've already answered these questions yourself. It is sexual to the infant.
This is your claim, I do not dispute that this is your claim. But it is not my claim. Do not write "you've already answered these questions yourself" and then insert your answer as if it were my own. I do not know if the infants consider it sexual, I do not know if they are terrified, and whether they consider it sexual or terrifying or not, I do not know that it is abuse. It may be -- I am not saying that it categorically is not. I am making only two claims: that it is deMause, yourself, and others (I do not know how many so I am not claiming that it is few or many) believe that it is abuse, and that more research is needed to discover whether these people consider it abuse. slrubenstein
I guess you don't recognize your own words. At the end of the nuked talk page, you said something along the lines that "If anything, the infant is sexually stimulated". That automatically makes it sexual. How could it be anything else?
Here is a piece of basic, Freshman college level advice: when interpreting quotes, be attentive to the context. At the end of the nuked talk page I was responding to one claim of yours with one, specific example. You claimed that the example was one of sexual abuse defined in terms of sexual pleasure for the adult. I pointed out that in this case, the adult received no sexual stimulation or pleasure; rather, it was the child. Call that sexual abuse if you like, I was merely pointing out an obvious flaw in your definition (or at least the definition at that point). But now I am refering to other exmplaes (including the one from Suggs' book) in which the child is not being sexually stimulated. You are quite correct that I made two different claims. But the two claims do not contradict because they are different claims about different ethnographic examples.
For other readers out there, this is also a good example of a "Freshman college" sort of error common in the laziest theories of cultural evolution -- first, label two different cultures "primitive" (or neolithic or paleolithic -- in this particular theory it apparently doesn't matter). Then you can assume that the description or interpretation of a practice in one culture is valid for another culture -- you do not have to do any more research!
Happily for me, I don't have to do any research in this sick field, whether at freshman level or otherwise, because I can rely on smart people to have done so for me. So if you want to find out what evidence deMause has amassed on the matter then read his fucking books.
And the interpretation of child abuse in the case of infants is acultural. Infants do not have culture so are incapable of "interpreting" anything through a cultural filter. Yet again, you persist in talking about the rationalizations of child abusers when these are completely irrelevant. And yet again, you persist in ignoring the child's point of view, as if the rationalization of the child abuser mattered to them. These are a lot more than "freshman errors" in psychology.
As for your claim to be giving a counter-example to a definition of child abuse of mine .... When I provide a definition, it is formal and rigorous. So you will know that I have provided a definition instead of having to interpret my words and your own beliefs as some kind of definition. -- Ark
I reject your position that "further research" is needed to determine whether sexual stimulation of infants and children is abusive. There is plenty of literature on the effects of child molestation in psychology journals, in case studies and elsewhere. That you are unaware of it is your problem and your problem only.
You're promoting a very specific POV, the one of the child molester, and don't seem to care at all about the POV of the infant. By the way, if we do consider them child molesters, and you seem open to the possibility we do, then answer me this question: do typical Western people care what child molesters think about their own activities?
hmmm... Perhaps I am beginning to see your point, in this particular regard. For example, I myself do not care one whit about what racist, Eurocentric, genocidal colonialists think of their own activities! slrubenstein
Agreed. Usually, the rationalization doesn't even provide significant insight into the perpetrator's psyche.

To be blunt, I do NOT redefine what "inordinate sexual attention means," I simply point out that it is inordinate according to deMause, which seems to be true. Maybe it does have a specific meaning "relative to our culture," (I am quoting you) but deMause is not making claims about our culture, he is making claims about another culture, so how they define "inordinate" and "sexual" is certainly important.

No, it's not! Same standard as 'incest'. ANY sexual attention to an infant is inappropriate, and in our culture constant masturbation of infants is not merely inappropriate and deviant, but it is completely inexplicable and inordinate. Only anthropologists care about how the members of the primitive culture rationalize their behaviours or think that we should suspend our moral judgements of primitives until we hear their rationalizations. If you want to talk about what anthropologists believe about child abuse, then make a 'anthropologists and pedophilia' subpage. That would be a completely legitimate move, which I regard as necessary in order to distinguish between people's normal moral judgement of primitives (which only cultural relativists consider illegitimate) and the anthropologists' view on the matter. Of course, if you make such a page, I will just slaughter the whole field of anthropology on it. (Being pedophile supporters will only be the first of many arguments.)
So to recap: people's abhorrence of what we regard as child abuse is a legitimate subject for an encyclopedia entry. In order to disambiguate matters, anthropologists' opinions should be separated out and made distinct. And in no case should it be ever said or implied that anthropologists have the final say about whether moral repugnance of what we consider child abuse is legitimate (that belongs only to psychologists, and probably not even them).

Third, it is not in any way slanderous to claim that deMause's model describes things in certain ways, or makes certain claims. That is a statement of fact; it is precisely what a theory does: it characterizes something in a certain way, and it makes certain claims. There is no negative implication here; to say that Copernicus characterized the Earth as orbiting the Sun does not mean that he is wrong, it only means that other people characterize it in other ways. Again, a statement of fact -- and in the fifteenth/sixteenth/seventeenth centuries, an important statement of fact. SImilarly, there are ongoing debates today about how to talk about non-Western cultures and how to talk about human sexuality; it is important to acknowledge that there are different views.

Nobody nowadays has any theory of planetary motion where the planets move around the stars. That's why I'm using GR as an example, and not the Copernican model. Similarly, nobody nowadays (in the modern world) would ever characterize fondling and masturbation of an infant's genitals as anything other than child molestation (if not outright child sexual abuse). And in Western societies they would invariably consider it inexplicable. Anthropologists are just very bizarre people, and about as relevant to most people's view of what constitutes child molestation as experts in the paranormal. "different views" among anthropologists just do not count unless someone is specifically interested in academic views. And as I already explained, what anthropologists think about infant molestation is irrelevant to the infant since infants have no culture. The relevant experts in the area are developmental psychologists, not ethnologists nor anthropologists. But of course, this is if you're interested in how the infant views the molestation as opposed to how the child abuser rationalizes it in their mind.
Irrelevant: Copernicus's theory still stands as a useful example of what a scientific theory is. I do not see any advantage in useing GR as an example of a scientific theory, over Copernicus's. This is a red herring.
I'll explain the situation among psychologists as best as I understand it. There is a substantial faction that regards any kind of sexual activity with children to be inherently abusive. They would reject the anthropologists' claims that cultural attitudes are at all relevant to the matter. They would rather emphasize the universality and uniformity of children's emotional needs. At the center of this faction are the likes of Alice Miller.
There is another faction that traces its lineage all the way to Freud. When possible, it denies that child abuse exists. When it can't do that it denies that it is traumatic. And when it can't do that, it denies that it is inherently traumatic. deMause provides lots of historical as well as personal evidence that this faction has pro-pedophilia sentiments and that it is run by outspoken pro-pedophiles. This faction has historically run all of psychology. And even today it remains influential, as demonstrated by the changes to the pedophilia diagnosis in the DSM-IV.
The pro-pedophile faction is in decline, whereas the pro-child faction is on the ascendant. I'm certain that the recognition of child (sexual) abuse by society dealt the former a severe blow in the 80s.
So what's my position on the matter? It's 1) that anthropologists' theories of psychology are simply irrelevant, 2) that the pro-pedophile faction's views are antiquated at best, and morally repugnant at worst, and that they are not supported by any evidence. So from my point of view, there is no serious competition to the view that child molestation is inherently abusive.
Some interesting details to confuse the issue. Psychohistorians are slap dab in the middle of the pro-child faction. The war / revolution in psychology is a silent one, with no clear battle lines. I don't think that most psychologists belong to either faction and I can't even guess where their sympathies lie (it might be 'neither' or even 'both' for all I know). The pro-pedophile faction is sympathetic to the arguments commonly made by anthropologists (shouldn't judge till we know what the child molesters say, cultural differences, etc) but so are pedophiles themselves.

Fourth, Similalry, "deMause interprets the observed data in a way that's contrary to anthropologists" is also a simple, non-controversial statement of fact. You claim that one should not make this statement of fact "because anthropologists do NOT have primacy in this," which is a non-sequitor. To claim that two people have different views is NOT in any way to suggest that one view has primacy over the other. The reason I would put it this way (rather than "anthropologists have views contrary to deMause" is because deMause wrote AFTER anthropologists, and cites anthropologists, and is reacting to anthropologists by criticizing them and presenting an alternate view, so you could say anthropologists have chronological primacy -- but there is no necessary or implicit claim that anthropologists are right and deMause is wrong. An analogy: one should write that Copernicus and Galileo had views contrary to the Church, but this wouldn't be slandering Copernicus or Galileo or suggesting that they are wrong). You also write that anthropologists "are themselves interpreting things in a completely insane manner." which is obviously lacking in NPOV.

Finally, I never nuked your responses in the Talk section. If anyone nuked them, please do restore them -- people have a right to read them. But you have no right to nuke what I wrote just on the basis that you do not like it. slrubenstein

I never believed you did or tried to, nor intended to imply it. This talk page was completely deleted after a series of serious errors with the database, just before the RecentChanges page went kaput. It's a pretty big coincidence so it may not have been intentional. The talk page now is the result of Maveric moving the old neolithic childrearing talk page here. I'd prefer the entire talk page to be restored or not at all, that's why I deleted the comments above (which are largely irrelevant: eg, demands for cites which were fulfilled).

I'm not nuking what you wrote "just on the basis that I don't like it". I've explained my reasons extensively. The same courtesy was often denied me. -- Ark

I have edited the text of the article with the goal of NPOV -- at times that has led me to delete material you inserted, or to reword it, which is my right and obligation as a Wikipedian (as it is your right and obligation). But I have never knowingly deleted any of your explanation in the "talk" page and if I have I apologize. I am not sure what happened concerning the database, but like you I wish the original "talk" for this page were restored. slrubenstein

My view is that Talk is temporary. If people nuke it then it wasn't important and I don't sweat it. I wasn't even bothered that the entire Talk page got deleted. In fact, I favour nuking Talk regularly so that discussion can start fresh, unhampered by obsolete issues and preconceptions. But that's Talk: substantial changes to the character of an article are a different thing. -- Ark

2002.06.05

2002.06.05:
A few thoughts to add to the debate (hopefully without getting too drawn into it myself):

I was an anthropology major in college, so I think I can speak with at least some pretense of knowledge about this area. First, the behaviors described by deMause and others are news to me. Do they surprise me? Not exceptionally so; there are cultures in which young adolescent and pubescent males participate in oral sex with adult males. This is rationalized as enhancing the young man's virility and preparing him for sex later in life, and is not categorized as "homosexuality" in any way whatsoever.

Do I like it or agree with it? No. But I do have to ask if deMause, et alii, ever asked the adults in these cultures whether they consider their behaviors to be sexual, and why (or why not). Because if they haven't, I smell undisclosed bias, and it reeks.

The purpose of anthropology is to describe culture, not judge it. If an anthropologist judges a culture under study, the ability to describe a culture objectively and explain how it is perceived by its members is lost. It is the job of psychologists, religious leaders, and laymen to judge a culture.

One example that is actually relevant is "northern" European notions of abuse and sexuality, which are in some ways the opposite of those of the United States. For example, Americans have little trouble allowing a 12 year old to watch a movie that contains graphic violence. Europeans have great trouble with this, and consider it to verge on child abuse. Conversely, Europeans see little difficulty with nudity and displays of genuine sexual affection, whereas Americans consider it to verge on child abuse if a 12-year-old is allowed to see a man and woman having loving, gentle sex. An anthropologist would simply describe the differing attitudes, without judging them -- A professional, if unable to overcome biases, should disclose them. (Much as an experimental physicist or biologist attempts to be neutral when testing a hypothesis, but must also disclose potential sources of bias in their interpretations.)

Napoleon Chagnon's work on the Yąnomamö is also relevant here. The Yąnomamö as a culture participate in husband-wife dynamics that would be considered severely abusive by American standards, but is perfectly normal to the Yąnomamö. In Yąnomamö territory, the anthropologist cannot interfere; if a Yąnomamö couple moved to the United States and continued the same types of behavior, social norms would require that even an anthropologist interfere, explaining that "in the United States, we do not act that way, and it is illegal here. Your choices are to change your behavior or end up in jail." (Just as I would never engage in homosexual acts in a Muslim country, despite what my own values hold. Caveat viator, so to speak. *grin*)

Hope that contributes some useful thoughts to the discussion. pgdudda

You bring up...

You bring up some good points.

The position of anthropologists (and historians) that they only describe cultures (or history) and not seek to explain them is exactly why their judgement of a practice as being abusive is irrelevant. Now, anthropologists widely report that primitives do not see their practices as abusive or sexual. I have no hesitation agreeing with that. But then, neither do typical pedophiles see their practices as abusive either.

As to whether the primitives' practices are sexual.

Definition: sexual is anything that, wholly or partially, does or would ordinarily, generate sexual arousal.

Ark, play nice. JHK is many things, can even be abrasive sometimes but "stupid" and an "idiot"? That's over the top. She is one of the smartest people contributing to wikipedia -- and from what I've seen of the quality of your arguments and work, she is most certainly brighter than you (hey, I admit it; she's smarter than me too). She has contributed a great deal to wikipedia, all you have done is cause controversy and anarchy (a goal of yours?). I've been trying to be nice to you per wikipedia policy but it is difficult when you are constantly insulting people who have contributed a hell of a lot to the project. --maveric149 So masturbation is sexual. So are hair fetishes. And so is rape. In any case, it's difficult for us to imagine how a man can ejaculate without feeling sexual arousal. And if they don't feel arousal then a psychologist would have an easy canned answer to give: they're repressing it. The fact that it involves the genitals provides a very strong indication that it's sexual. (And thus that it's homosexual pedophilia, regardless of the rationalization.)

Are you intending to imply that the rape of a man in which the victim is forced to ejaculate is sexual for the victim? (I doubt it, I'm mostly asking rhetorically.) It is possible to force a man to ejaculate against his will; I can think of two ways to do this, and there may well be others. pgdudda
It may not be pleasurable but it's still sexual. And actually, one of the problems with rape is precisely that it's partly pleasurable; the self-hatred that results from that drives people mad. Another problem is that it ends up closely associated with an activity that should be pleasurable. So it's sexual whether or not it's pleasurable.
The issue of rapists being primarily dominance-motivated instead of sexually motivated is something else entirely.

deMause hasn't done any field work among contemporary primitive cultures AFAIK. He's spent most of his time on the history of Western cultures throughout the last couple millenia. His theory of childrearing spans all of history. The paleolithic part of it is primarily based on extrapolation of the theory to more primitive cultures, some salient facts about the psyches and childhoods of contemporary psychotics (not evidence anthropologists would consider), and a number of interesting facts from contemporary infanticidals. It's not his job to redo all anthropological work. Maybe some psychohistorian will do it in the future, maybe not. There are much more interesting questions in psychohistory than the infanticidal cultures; eg, our own culture.

Additionally, deMause's agenda seems to be to make psychohistory a separate academic field, independent of history, anthropology and (probably) even psychology. So the basic idea is to completely steal the psychology and childrearing of non-Western cultures (contemporary and historical) away from anthropologists. If that happens, then theories about these phenomena will be held to different standards than theories in anthropology. Obviously, I support this outright theft. :)

Regarding western mores (pgdudda adds: see next paragraph for context). Northern European psyches are more advanced than American ones because NE childrearing is far in advance of America's. When psychologists believe this, it is very much similar to a physicist believing in, say, string theory. It's something based on conjecture, speculation and quite a bit of experimental evidence. It's also based on their own emotional reactions, which to a good psychologist are as much of an indispensible (research and clinical) tool, as sight is to an astronomer. Anthropologists are trained to ignore that tool. -- Ark
Ah, so you're an opponent of cultural relativism. That's your decision to make; I don't consider NE values to be "more advanced" - just different. The fact that I tend to agree with them is a personal judgment. But there's a difference between considering a set of values to be more amenable to one's conscience and labeling one set of values as "more advanced" than another. That's like implying that a Papuan is dumber than a European just because his culture doesn't use electricity. After all, a Papuan child adopted by American parents has the same capacity to learn and use electric gadgets that an American child raised by Papuan parents has - in this case, it's culture that mediates whether the person has the necessary skill set to use a given type of tool, not any innate intelligence. Anthropologists do regularly debate how much they can or should interfere when they disagree strongly with the values of a culture under study. The most sensible answer I've seen boils down to that change can only come from within a culture - people who want to change, will; people who don't, won't. Ethically, all we can do is present viable options and allow individuals to make their own choices and suffer the consequences of those choices. pgdudda
But Papuans are dumber than Europeans because they don't use electricity. :) You just have to ask "why do we use electricity"? We use it because we have a high population density and a high technological level. Why is that? Because we are culturally evolved. Why is that? Because at some point a couple of millenia ago, our ancestors decided to stop murdering their children and start evolving culturally. Does that look like the Smart Thing To Do? It does to me! Of course, that only proves the Papuans are dumb, not that we're smart; we're just the product of a long line of smart mothers.
Your ethics argument is a nice try but it doesn't wash. It doesn't apply to children at all. And because of that, you have to rely on moral arguments. And the moral arguments will all say, in any reasonable moral system, that you should take away their children and raise them to be non-Papuan. -- Ark

pgdudda's comments, 2002.06.06

I have to wonder whether Australian Aborigines or Native Americans in the United States would agree with you. After all, their children were forcibly removed from their homes and placed with European families because they were "primitives incapable of raising their children properly". What you are proposing is a form of genocide: systematically destroying a culture, simply because you consider that culture to be primitive and immoral.

Besides, decisions of mental health have to be placed in cultural context, too. We have to ask if the children in question are being raised in a manner that leads to them living successful lives in their communities as an adult, not whether they would lead successful lives in the US (or wherever) - a place they likely never will visit. If lip piercing, or trauma to the brain, or walking on one's hands, leads to successful adult lives (and successful production of offspring), is that not sufficient justification for continuing the practice? (Before you say "no", answer the question: "Why do Europeans and Muslims circumcise male infants? And why is the trauma induced by this not considered morally repugnant?")

But then, you sound to me as if you are a "moral absolutist". I'd hazard a guess that you believe everyone should live under the same moral code (in the US, these people are likely to be conservative Christians). [Apologies if my assumption is incorrect.] But what happens when you try to impose, say, Biblical morals on people who categorically deny the existence of the Christian God? Why should Biblical morals apply to them, if they deny the validity of the very basis for that moral code's derivation?

Btw, I have a hard time imagining someone who's studied moral philosophy becoming a cultural relativist, so it seems to me like cultural relativism is a type of ignorance. -- Ark

And I consider moral absolutism to be a type of ignorance, too. To quote Tanita Tikaram, "different thoughts are good for me". *grin* Without divergent thinkers, we'd still be chipping away at obsidian to create stone knives. For that matter, the US would still be a colony, Columbus would never gotten out of Europe, non-Europeans would be considered to be without souls, and the Chinese would still be using gunpowder solely for fireworks.  ;-) pgdudda
This of course, is not true. (Though nice try.) It's possible for a person (let alone a society) to be a moral absolutist and change their beliefs about what constitutes the absolute moral truth over time. This position is very similar to physicists', the majority of whom are realists (believe there is a single absolute reality) yet certainly do not believe that we have perfect access to that reality! Just because I'm a moral absolutist doesn't mean I think I have a perfect access to moral truth. It does mean, based on my provisional judgement, that I have a far, far better understanding of basic moral truths than people who beat or sexually abuse kids. -- Ark

Ark, pgdudda is right. Cultural relativism is an important line of current modern thought and their criticism needs to be reflected in the article. --maveric149

Pro-pedophilia is an important line of thought in modern psychology. Does that mean the views of (pro-)pedophiles get the same treatment on a child abuse entry as developmental psychologists and child psychologists?

Post-Modernism is an important line of thought in academia. Does that mean it gets the same treatment in political science entries as the work of Chomsky?

Questioning (or doubting) Realism is an important line of thought in philosophy, as well as many religious people and cranks. Does that mean we should reflect it in a physics entry?

Like I said, I think that moral relativism (and hence cultural relativism) is only prevalent among people ignorant of moral philosophy. Even if we decide to reflect morally relativistic views, and I'm not ready to concede we should, that decision doesn't dictate how we're going to reflect it. There are many possibilities. Here's one:

We could explain the anthropologists' views side by side with psychohistorians'.

This seems like the preferred option of many. It's not mine since 1) psychohistory is a new field and most laypeople don't even know it exists, let alone understand its status, 2) by right of expertise, I think the issue is best handled by psychohistorians. So there is a wide disconnect between the respect psychohistory can expect to get and the respect they should get.

There is no way to correct that though. If we gave an extensive explanation of psychohistory in the article, people would perceive it as irrelevant to the entry (and remove it), or defensive (and not believe it).

Then there's my solution, which I'm making up as I go along:

We could emphasize that anthropologists don't really try to understand their subjects' psyche, that many don't even consider it a proper avenue of study, and that they lack the psychological tools or training to do a proper job of it.

But as soon as you do that, that cuts anthropologists out of the loop, doesn't it? This seems faintly unsatisfying to me because it leaves out a lot of issues. Like the danger of counter-transferance when working with a foreign culture. Like the horror that anthropologists must feel when they're watching some of these barbaric practices, and what kinds of defenses (and I think cultural relativism is one) they've had to built up to protect themselves from it.

Hrmm, I think it's more accurate to say that anthropology is concerned with description of culture, not evaluation of its moral virtue (or lack thereof). The only assessment you'll generally see in anthropology is evaluation of whether a given culture succeeds in (1) allowing members of that culture to adapt to and survive in their physical and social environment and (2) in passing on its characteristics from generation to generation. Anything else will generally be marked with something equivalent to "from my own cultural perspective... (insert judgment here)".
As for "theory of human culture" (see below), part of the reason for its lack is that anthropologists are still busy gathering data. European cultural imperialism has led to the endangerment and/or eradication of countless cultures, and so anthropologists are busy recording data before it all disappears. If we should ever reach an "equilibrium point" (as such), anthropologists may then begin concerning themselves with developing such a theory. The lack of cohesive data available at this time makes it difficult to address the question. In addition, anthropology is a relatively young discipline, and is still developing some of its basic principles of observation, recording, and analysis, which also hamper the development of such a theory. pgdudda
The situation is different for psychology, where (unfortunately!) the less advanced personality will stay with us for a long time. But I still don't accept your explanation. The dearth of data never stopped psychologists from constructing theories. Freud made his theory of id, ego and superego, without even knowing about personality types outside of his own society, and I doubt he cared. The acquisition of data doesn't seem that important in psychology. -- Ark
I suspect part of it was that Freud may have been ignorant of the existence of additional relevant data. For that matter, I am also under the general impression that he wasn't particularly concerned with validating (proving or disproving) his theories. pgdudda

Either way, there's the peripheral issues which are important and should be addressed. The main one is that anthropologists concern themselves with the wide diversity of cultures, distinguished by language, practices, beliefs, et cetera, whereas psychologists concern themselves with the essential similarities in people's mental and emotional functioning. This difference in attitude is related to psychologists at least trying to create a complete theory of the human mind whereas anthropologists have given up on a complete theory of human culture. So anthropologists don't think you can extrapolate culture back in time based on contemporary examples, but psychologists do think you can extrapolate the psyche with that kind of basis. -- Ark

Ark, are you then saying that "Early (Neolithic) infanticidal childrearing" is a psychological concept attempting to explain anthropological data? If so, this should be included in the article, as it would reduce the amount of discussion we are seeing here. It appears to me, based on your preceding paragraph, that psychohistorians are attempting to explain cultural history from a psycho-developmental POV, and argue that cultural change can be assessed as "advancement" or "regression" based on the psychological consequences of various cultural practices. Is this an (reasonably) accurate assessment/synopsis? pgdudda

Yes, that's a very good assessment. -- Ark

Good. I've made an attempt at incorporating the above summary into the first paragraphs of the article. I think it will help set a better frame of reference for those reading the article. pgdudda

Agreed.

What you are proposing...

What you are proposing is a form of genocide: systematically destroying a culture, simply because you consider that culture to be primitive and immoral.

That's not correct. I don't propose something so radical simply because I think it. I propose it because I can make detailed moral arguments starting from self-evident moral truths, moral truths which even the primitives acknowledge. It's not moral assumptions which differ between societies. It's the capacity for empathy and rationality. Primitives are not capable of rationality like we are. (And actually even most modern people still aren't.)

Oh? *arches eyebrow* "Primitives are not capable of rationality like we are"? Please demonstrate. Also please list for me the "self-evident moral truths" you speak of. pgdudda
Egalitarianism and fairness. By fairness I mean the moral irrelevancy of size, weight, age, skin colour, gender, intelligence, et cetera. When people violate egalitarianism and fairness, they usually rationalize it with some tortuous argument where they "really are preserving egalitarianism and fairness". Very few people will violate these moral axioms without some rationalization. That's because both of them originate in the capacity for empathy. Few people totally lack empathy and those that do are forced to acknowledge social mores which are based on egalitarianism and fairness anyways.
Thank you for answering the second part of my request for information. Now please answer the first for me.
Thanks for reminding me. Well, there's some study (can't seem to track down where I read about it) about people's inability to apply syllogisms. About half of university students couldn't do it and no preliterate tribesmen could. The question was "If all animals in the arctic are white and polar bears live in the arctic then what color are they?" The answers were usually "The only bears I've seen are brown".
And here's an interesting article demonstrating many modern people's thin grip on sanity. If you understand deMause's theory of warfare, you're likely to identify the hypocrisy the author talks about as psychotic states of mind.

Putting the issue in terms of "you only propose this because you think that way", as if our opinions mattered at all in the matter, is predictable from a moral relativist though.

Besides, decisions of mental health have to be placed in cultural context, too. We have to ask if the children in question are being raised in a manner that leads to them living successful lives in their communities as an adult

Define "successful". Is it "successful" to kill your own children? Is it "successful" to live a mentally and emotionally stagnant life in a culturally stagnant society? Is it "successful" to not be able to withstand contact with an advanced civilization with an alien mentality? Is it "successful" to live on the brink of extinction?

O please enlighten me, just what is "successful"?

"Successful" in this context means "surviving into the next generation". If these cultures are a "failure", as you state, they should be allowed to die out on their own, without outside "help" (such as forcibly removing children). And by "die out" I don't necessarily mean "all members become extinct" - I mean "the culture changes to a more successful pattern". pgdudda
It will die out one way or the other, pediatrists will do all they can to make sure of that. I've even heard somewhere that it's already dying out.
Now, as to what constitutes "outside help". If members of our society take it upon themselves to take infants away from the PNG natives (with their consent) then I claim this is part of their "physical and social environment". -- Ark
If it's with the parents' consent, I can't really take issue with it from an ethical point of view. The anthropologist in me, OTOH, still bemoans yet another drop added to the overflowing bucket of human cultures forever lost. But the latter sentiment isn't really all that germane to the current discussion.

The primitive cultures are a failure. We should let them die, like the California Condor which has outlived its habitat, and not try to preserve this grotesque example of dead-end cultural evolution. And make no mistake, we are artificially helping them survive. To give just one example, we extend our legal protection to them so that foreigners can't just take away their babies.

As for your example of biblical morals. Nobody in philosophy considers religious morals to be serious moral systems. Nobody. In fact, the guy arguably responsible for setting off modern moral philosophy, Immanuel Kant, was a theologian who didn't take "divine law" as a serious moral argument.

It seems that you have severe preconceptions about moral philosophy. Let me reassure you that 'morals' in philosophy has no connection with what preachers mean by the word. Any intelligent person should reject morals, and declare themselves amoral, if their only exposure to the concept is from preachers and other religious types. Fortunately, that's not what moral philosophy is about. -- Ark

Thank you for distinguishing the two for me. It helps me to better understand your own POV. Is there a Wikipedia article on moral philosophy, and if so, do you agree with its basic precepts? pgdudda

theory of conduct lays the historical groundwork of moral philosophy, but it never gets to modern theory. There doesn't seem to be anything on wikipedia about it.

I think that philosophers are heading towards an axiomatic approach to morality. They keep refining their arguments, making them more and more rigorous and at some point they're going to get an axiomatic system. They aren't there yet, nor anywhere close, and that's why Rawls wrote a several hundred page book instead of a several dozen page one. But they'll get there eventually; philosophers do a lot of work related to logic so they're very familiar with axiomatic systems. So I do believe the entire field can be completely axiomatized and a calculus defined on it and I'm certainly not alone in that belief. IIRC, Leibnitz tried to create a moral calculus in his day.

(Also, when you can show that the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics has an impact on whether you can solve a notorious problem in moral philosophy, that lends some support to the belief that there's rigorous logic hiding in the subject. And when you start thinking about whether Godel's Incompleteness Theorem applies to moral systems .... :)

It's just that current research in the field is extremely poor so you can't expect anything close to rigor. As an example of exactly how poor the research is, there aren't any rigorous definitions of morality and ethics out there. It isn't difficult to come up with them but writers seem to prefer to go on and on describing what they are, sometimes even using the words interchangeably, rather than just defining them. If I wrote a book about morality, I'd put my definition of it in the first chapter, and Rawls didn't (though I'm going by my sketchy memories here, and the fact that I had to construct my own definitions).

Rawls' theory is the first one which you can sortof pretend it's axiomatic and sortof derive conclusions from the axioms. If you analyze Kant's Categorical Imperative, you can show it's equivalent to a couple of axioms Rawls makes but it's not the same. Not least because Kant makes some weird, unjustified assumptions and his whole analysis is impenetrable.

Okay, I tried reading A Theory of Justice, honest I did, but it's unbearably tedious. So I relied on a friend who told me what I got "wrong" about Rawls' theory and gave me some relevant quotes. I then decided that Rawls had made a fundamental error in his construction. If you're interested, his concept of a "bare person" isn't a person at all so it's useless, and when he uses that concept later on, he unwittingly sneaks Utilitarianism back into the discussion (Rawls' theory is supposed to be an alternative to Utilitarianism).

I'm obviously not satisfied with Rawls. As for Utilitarianism, it was completely disproved by Amartya Sen a couple decades ago as far as I'm concerned. Sen's proof shows that Utilitarianism can't prove any conclusions so that's why I don't consider it an axiomatic moral theory (even if it preceded Rawls' theory). I don't know of any alternatives out there, though I'm not up on the subject.

So what's my personal moral theory? It's a variation on Rawls' that starts with the same axioms but follows a slightly different analysis in order to get 99% of the same results he did (it would get the exact same results if he hadn't made yet another error at a higher level). But it's not likely to see the light of publication anytime soon so I can't point you to any literature. So probably the best place to start would be with A Theory of Justice. -- Ark

new topic

This talk page is getting rather long. I'm wondering if perhaps we should move some earlier discussion to an "old talk" page or somesuch? It's useful information, good for background, but the quantity of information is making editing difficult. What do y'all think? pgdudda

Agree. It would also be most helpful if everyone goes through and sign their posts (esp. Ark) -- it is sometimes difficult to determine who is saying what. Having a bief summary of what was moved would be nice to have here also. I suggest the name Talk:Early infanticidal childrearing/Archive. --maveric149
I think we should move everything to some other page and find out what's going on with the diff utility. It seems to be comparing with a version of the nuked page. -- Ark

This debate should be taken to Meta (or e-mail). Are any of the debaters trying to create an article here, or what?

I'd like to see some hard references for the following:

  • anthropologist reports parental stimulation of infant genitals
  • anthropologist says it's "not incest",
  • or anthropologist reports that the culture he's studying (A) believes the practice is not incest or (B) has no taboo against incest.

I'd also like to see some references to religious leaders or other advocates and their views on:

  • the morality or immorality of incest,
  • or the irrelevance of the concept of incest

Oh, and one more thing: how about some statistics on the frequency of:

  • infant genital stimulation (in pre-literate hunter-gatherer tribes or modern cultures)
  • parent/child incest (however defined)

Without at least some of the above, this article and the incest and incest taboo articles will never get anywhere at this rate. Ed Poor

You've found me out. I've been debating cultural relativism as a tactic to stall the article forever.
If you want some hard references, you can go through deMause's books, take his cites and then look them up. SR or pgdudda might help you look them up. For myself, I have little interest in anthropology per se.
Incidence rates of incest (or any kind of child abuse) are very hard to find. Hardly anyone ever does studies on them; they're just not funded by government or research institutions. Neither is any sex research in the USA for that matter (it being a sexually repressed country and all).
deMause does mention studies about child sexual abuse, from 10 to 50% with the better studies giving the higher numbers, and incest as a function of child sex abuse (though I don't recall off the top of my head.} -- Ark
You wouldn't happen to have deMause's citations handy, by any chance? This would be useful information in my work in the field of domestic violence. Fifty percent sounds rather high to me. I'm willing to accept a 25% figure of all people experience some kind of sexual abuse at some point in their lives; what percentage of those are childhood abuse, are incest, or are rape, I'm not sure I can assess. Nor can I assess how many of these incidents lead to long-term psychological and/or physical trauma, other than that the victim's perception of matters and the severity and frequency of the assaults has a certain bearing on the amount of trauma that occurs, plus the psychological resiliency of the victim in question. Complicated variables, indeed, and difficult to measure in so many ways!! pgdudda

I got lucky this time and google got the page. As it happens, it's just in his The Universality of Incest essay, in the section Childhood sexual abuse in contemporary western societies. (Hmmm, the replacement of human memory by google ... something to bear in mind.)

Tell me what you find out, or publish it somewhere, ok? -- Ark

Psychohistorians may be...

Psychohistorians may be the best-qualified to talk about what psychohistory is or says. They aren't inherently best-qualified to discuss child-rearing. It's a new theory: it may be as important as electromagnetism. Or it may be as important as phrenology.

One question that occurs to me: does washing children's genitals count as "Manipulatio

Also, you're welcome to have little interest in anthropology--but that lack of interest doesn't leave you well-qualified to generalize about anthropologists. Vicki Rosenzweig, Friday, June 7, 2002

I'm sorry but childrearing throughout history is inherently psychological. Saying that parents raise their children one way because of "culture" begs the question of why the parents don't deviate from culture in the first place (we know some parents do, otherwise cultural evolution would be impossible). Psychohistory answers that.

Washing children's genitals counts as fondling if you spend any more time on the genitals than any other part of the child's body. If you do it 20 times a day and otherwise leave the infant to stew in her own feces .... -- Ark

Just for the record: it is false to claim that anthropologists describe but are not interested in "explanation." It is true that SOME ethnographies are purely descriptive. But the emphasis in most ethnographies and most published articles is on explanation and interpretation. slrubenstein

What kind of explanation and interpretation are we talking about? Is this the kind where incest and child abuse get redefined, reinterpreted, apologized for and explained away? Because we already know they're not interested in any serious theory of cultural evolution, so I doubt you're referring to that. -- Ark

of course I am not refering to a theory of cultural evolution -- with the exception of Steward's (you may not have read him; like Rawls he was a serious thinker thus you are likely to be bored) model, and some archeological work by people like Johnson and Earle, most of it is racist and wrong. (what passes for a "theory" of "cultural evolution" in this article is hardly serious, it is quite laughable if it were not so dangerous and destructive) Of course there is a lot of current theorization of culture change, much of which is quite good, but not relevant to this discussion. Obviously I meant explanation/interpretation of various beliefs and behaviors, including those that we would consider sexual that others do not, as well as those that others would consider sexual, that we do not (and of course those that both we and others agree are sexual).

There is no "explanation" needed. I specifically rejected, and do so again here, any interpretation of child sexual abuse other than my own. And since child abuse can't have any explanation outside of a psychological basis, the anthropologists are distinctly unqualified, unprepared and unlikely, to ever provide an adequate explanation.

"Explaining" one piece of culture in terms of another piece of culture is nonsense. It is as if a chemist explained one chemical fact in terms of another chemical fact (and chemistry had no relation to physics, nor had ever developed any universal chemical laws). It's complete bullshit. -- Ark

Good -- as long as we all understand that psychohistory has nothing to do with history and is not even accepted by all schools of psychology. I think that there's a real problem here in that the entire concept as titled makes no sense -- primitive cultures tend to be those most concerned with long-term survival on a basic level. The title implies that these cultures intentionally endanger and kill their children (not to mention that it's plain oxymoronic) -- something that makes no sense for peoples who want to survive and which, if these cultures still exist after thousands of years, is clearly is misleading.

There also seems to be little evidence here -- just assertions that present-day pre-industrial cultures belong to this group. And yes, some things ARE relative, Ark. I'm not saying they are right or good, but that one has to take things in context. If this article is true, then I expect there should be an article here on adolescent and post-adolescent childrearing in the US -- after all, we as a society put our children and their development last when it comes to taxes, making sure that families can afford for children to have a family member as primary caregiver, etc. Moreover, we expect that children will be exposed to huge amounts of violence in the media (and often reality), have access to firearms (not those that should be locked up, but in the form of hunting and target shooting as a family activity), and that they learn to fear their sexuality. Huge numbers of children are substance-addicted, others are criminals who are incarcerated in dangerous reform schools and sometimes prisons.

all I'm saying here, Ark, is that you seem to have a "sexual abuse is the worst thing possible" scenario here, when sexuality and sexual mores vary hugely from culture to culture, even within western society. I should think that this kind of study would need a through examination of those mores in order to judge whether harmful intent exists. We are often horrified by, for example, ancient marriage practices that allowed 12 or 13 year olds to marry -- even when we learn that many of those "women" were not expected to bear children and may no have been sexually active until they were more mature. This is somewhat predicated on our views of marriage as a legitimization of a sexual relationship, rather than seeing it as a business or political alliance between families.

Again, I am not saying this is right or good -- any more than I think that peoples who practice female circumcision should be allowed to continue for tradition's sake. But one has to accept (and reflect to the reader) that this practice was not likely to have been devised as a form of abuse.

Oh -- and by the way, rape (except for the statutory kind) is very seldom about sex. It's about power, degredation, and humiliation. Your view on this one subject and ability to reduce something so complex to "it's a sexual thing" makes me truly wonder about your ability to judge any such subject impartially. JHK, Tuesday, June 11, 2002

(I've chosen to take extreme offense at what you've said, eg. "psychohistory has nothing to do with history", and to treat you like a hostile.)

I already explained that rape wasn't just about sex. I also explained exactly why it was still sexual. If you accuse me of reductionism, when I have explicitly warned against that, then it's only because you're deliberately being stupid.

I really wish I didn't have to deal with people who say stupid things. For example, things that amount to "every human being is rational and since it's not rational to kill children, this negates the overwhelming evidence that infanticide occurs". Never mind such truly stupid statements like "preliterate hunter-gatherer tribes are those most concerned with basic survival". Oh really, I guess that explains why they never developed any technology in order to guarantee their survival. They were too busy being "concerned about their survival" in order to do anything that would ensure it! (Never mind such annoying facts like beliefs in reincarnation, animism and ancestor-worship.)

There isn't going to be an article on US childrearing because I know it will be butchered by small-minded Americans. If anyone could give me the freedom to rant about American childrearing practices, there would have been an article long ago. So you can take your cultural relativism and shove it.

Regarding child-brides. I guess that's why girls before the modern era didn't have hymens. Because they weren't sexually active. That makes perfect sense. And obviously, the widely practiced rape of child-brides that occured in India within living memory (and still occurs today) well, that's irrelevant too. And the stated reason for the child bride practice (that if pre-adolescent girls aren't married off, they'll be raped by male relatives) that's obviously irrelevant too. And obviously, case studies such as India are completely irrelevant to any other culture because there's no such thing as universal laws of culture or a theory of culture.

And no, sexual abuse is not the worst possible scenario. The worst possible scenario is being forced to kill and eat your brothers and sisters as a young child. Following that is just killing your brothers and sisters. Then there's watching your brothers and sisters be killed by your parents. And so on. But when people make such a fuss about sexual abuse, I don't even want to bother with cannibalistic rituals. (And of course, we know that cannibalism never existed because ancient myths involving cannibalism are all fiction and "just culture".) -- Ark

Ark, play nice. JHK is many things, can even be abrasive sometimes but acting "stupid" (I see you modified the "idiot" statement - thanx)? That's over the top. She is one of the smartest people contributing to wikipedia -- and from what I've seen of the quality of your arguments and work, she is most certainly brighter than you (hey, I admit it; she's smarter than me too). She has contributed a great deal to wikipedia; the main thing you have done is cause controversy and anarchy (a goal of yours?). I've been trying to be nice to you per wikipedia policy but it is difficult when you are constantly insulting people who have contributed a hell of a lot to the project. --maveric149

Intelligence doesn't count if you're unwilling to consider outré arguments and points of view. That's because you can't understand the world if you stay within the bounds of conventional thought. And the myth of the noble savage is about as conventional as it gets. So is trusting established authorities even when they've been remarkably unproductive (historians, most psychologists, et cetera).

Few people seem willing to touch the issues I explore, think about the viewpoints I advocate, or even consider the arguments I construct. That's why my arguments seem so primitive, because I construct mine, where others regurgitate theirs. (In this light, this page has been a singular failure for me since, except for cultural relativism, most of the arguments I present are not original to me. Geez, no wonder I'm so pissed; I loathe arguing third-party views.)

Plus, I feel no need to convince people so long as I can get them thinking. Casting doubt on the enemy's position is usually just as good as winning the argument outright (cardinal rule of public relations). By not exerting myself fully, I remain in harmony with my inner nature; laziness. -- Ark

Newton once said that he could see so far because he stands on the shoulders of giants. This is also the cornerstone of modern thought and education. Everyone here, except for you on cultural relativism, seem to be following this maxim -- even when they don't personally agree with the work previously done. This is an encyclopedia, not a soap box for new ideas. Sorry, but regurgitation of the canon of human knowledge is what we do here. --maveric149


I disagree, maveric. One of the things that makes wikipedia different from a standard encyclopedia is our ability to reflect new thinking, and it would be a shame not to take advantage of that. Certainly, we have not hesitated to do so in many scientific matter, like M-theory. We only have the catch that ideas should be reflected in a 'fair' way.

Now, the whole that deMause put together and Ark is advertising here is striking, but I think that you will find most of the individual points are not nearly as radical or contrary to current understanding as you seem to present. To begin with, there are many people who would reject cultural relativism. The first example that comes to mind are the women's historians which have become increasingly common, but a proper search shouldn't have trouble coming up with others. Further, the idea of the noble savage is very controversial, and one should hardly consider it some sort of canon.

With regards to infanticide per se. I personally have very little knowledge about the Paleolithic, but that deliberate murder or abandonment of infants was common among ancient civilizations like Carthage, Greece, and Rome is well-known, and I can remember a mainstream text mentioning Mohammed's prohibitions against the then-widespread killing of children without any implication that might be controversial. In absence of further data, a backwards trendline would be all it takes to suggest that Paleolithic infanticide was very common indeed. And I can recall articles suggesting that tribal cannabilism, to take the most headline-grabbing example, was far more common than previously thought.

With regard to sexuality, I think the page as admitting that social mores very widely, and claiming that those of earlier cultures tended to allow practices now considered quite harmful. As for whether or not young wives were sexually active, it would be interesting to see any source on that, one way or another. I know that one of the highest rates of mortality was for women in their teens, attributed to childbirth, and that mythical Achilles had a son at age 15 or so without contemporary comment, but anything more direct than that would be surprising.

In short, I think this position is not nearly outlandish enough to deserve such curt rejection. An informative and lasting page on this would be valuable enough, with controversy, criticisms and any evidence against you can dig up, as well as evidence for, explained but not focused on to the point of putting parentheticals at the end of every paragraph. Beyond that, what are we worrying about?

Sorry, Josh --

I'm not worried about the article per se, but rather the fact that, from what I've read of Ark's comments, I honestly can't depend on his neutrality. The continual references to cannibalism, etc., on the talk page have not been attributed, and appear at best hyperbolic. And, although he seems unwilling to accept the fact, pshychohistory is only marginally accepted by historians. As for things like teenaged childbirth deaths, one should remember that there are 7 vastly different years that comprise the teens -- no doubt some deaths were in the early teens, but it's wrong to portray the fact that people tended to enter into marriage and begin to have children in their teens when people only lived into their 40s or 50s on average as some kind of sick attraction for little girls. On the other hand, I certainly can see that younger, more inexperienced wives were easier for their husbands to train and control -- not a sexual dynamic as much as a power one. Back to the childbirth death thing -- do we know the comparison between teenagers and women overall? Childbirth is, after all, one of the most dangerous things a woman of any age can go through. I have no idea what Ark is talking about with the hymens thing, BTW -- just another example of his making inflammatory yet unsubstantiated, overgeneralized, statements. To the best of my knowledge, many western cultures have checked in one way or another to make sure that the bride is a virgin -- this has gone on for centuries. In fact, what I have heard suggests the opposite to what Ark says -- modern girls (in the west) tend to have thinner, or nonexistent hymens because they tend to be more involved in sports and other non-sexual physical activities. JHK

And by that reasoning, most pre-modern girls should have hymens, unless they have been raped or molested.

So let's consider the evidence:

  • virginity is extremely important in primitive (pre-modern) cultures so we should think they would have some reliable means to determine it.
  • instead of sticking a finger up a girl's vagina (which the Chinese for example had no compunctions about) to see if she had a hymen, primitives use various magical means to test for virginity. Like the famous "blood on the sheets" which any prostitute can simulate.
random aside: but how many 12-13 year olds know enough to know how to fake it convincingly? Given how sexually repressed most societies with such practices are, the girls are unlikely to get advice from Mommy on the subject, and their grooms have a vested interest in keeping things honest enough for government work... a pondering pgdudda'
If a 12-13 year old is raped, you can bet there's gonna be blood, hymen or no hymen. Also, repression doesn't necessarily mean puritanism. If Mommy was molesting her daughter since birth, we're talking about an entirely different kind of sexual repression.

Conclusion:

  • either the primitives (up to pre-modern times) were completely irrational, no one has ever been really interested in virginity (which is absurd), or hymens simply did not exist until the modern era (with rape or molestation as the only serious reason why).

-- Ark

Moved old discussions to Talk:Early_infanticidal_childrearing/Archive -- Pgdudda, Sunday, June 16, 2002

Recapitulation of archived discussions

Super-fast recap of discussions:

  • pointed out that the use of "Neolithic" is inaccurate and misleading, since it's impossible to gain significant data about child-rearing practices from archeological remains dating to the Neolithic - this led to a change of article title from "Neolithic infanticidal..." to "Early infanti...".
  • determined that deMause drew his analyses from anthropological data of modern hunter-gather societies, while ignoring or disputing anthropological explanations or interpretations
  • argued about the validity of and value of cultural relativism
  • debated the validity of deMause's conclusions
  • some of these debates continue below; you may need to refer to the archive for context not provided here.

Cultural relativism

Maybe we're worrying about cultural relativism, eh, Ark? I think that when the talk page is 10 times longer than the article, something is wrong. This talk page has become the focus of multiple controversies, and it's leading nowhere.

I propose that each participant lay their cards on the table, and an impartial referee count up the points. By this metaphor I mean that each person should report the values they believe in and the reported facts they trust. From there, we can attribute each value and reported fact to its (non-wiki) proponent.

For example, someone quoted de Mause. That's a good start.

We can also link to other articles on rape, incest, molestation, child abuse, indigenous cultures, anthropology, and so on. Note that the definition of rape and molestation vary among cultures.

Finally, a specific question I'd still like an answer to: which anthropologists have reported and/or commented on parental stimulation of infant genitals, and what does that have to do with incest, molestation, child abuse, et al.?

Are these questions even related to this topic?

In fact, is there even a topic here, or are we all talking at cross purposes? All I want is more good articles for Wikipedia.

Ed Poor, Wednesday, June 12, 2002

Rape and molestation do vary among cultures. This is bad.
Parental stimulation of infant genitals is molestation by definition. Who said it? Look up deMause's citations. SR looked up one it checked out. Of course, he denies it checked out.
I'll lay my cards on the table:

Please cite the article and section, and if possible, the quote in which this Convention "explicitly" (do you really know what the word "explicitly" means?) rejects cultural relativism.

Article 24.3. See also cultural relativism. And since "Traditional practices" is just a synonym for cultural relativism, that's pretty damned explicit. -- Ark
Article 24.3 says "States['] Parties shall take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children." Traditional practices as used here, I think, means "socially-accepted behaviors" not "cultural relativism". You're confusing rejecting cultural relativism with rejecting behaviors dangerous to others. I guess I'd call the stance reflected in 24.3 "modified cultural relativism" - any behaviors that do not directly endanger the child are acceptable, such as circumcision, lip-piercing, wearing hijab, or (gasp!) washing a child's genitals. (I think you are aware of the difference, Ark, I just wanted to make it explicit.) Pgdudda
Article 24.3 abrogates cultural practices. It doesn't abrogate all of them since not all of them are relevant. Lip-piercing and wearing the hijab have no more to do with children's health than growing up to be an astronaut and going to the moon (and by the way, Article 24.3 does outlaw circumcision as traditionally practiced in Africa). The Article concerns itself with a very specific thing, the health of children, and does not merely reject but calls for the abolition of cultural practices which violate the health of children. That is a plain and complete rejection of cultural relativism, within the admittedly limited context of the article. -- Ark

And if it had been structured like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights then the mere promotion of cultural relativism would be in violation of human rights. I'm sad to report this isn't so and that cultural relativists are merely denying human rights. (On a moral level, they are still violating human rights.)

  • anthropology and history have achieved nothing, or close to nothing, by the standards of any halfway-decent scientific field (ie, they have done nothing towards constructing theories of culture and history, except for rejecting dozens of the obvious candidates).
  • the reason anthropology and history are fucked is because they reject psychology and that is the only possible explanation for both culture and history, either as an ultimate cause or as an intermediate.
  • deMause has done extensive and authoritative research on childrearing practices in the last 2 millennia and has constructed a general theory of psychological development for that period. This theory explains cultural change over short and long periods of time, as well as the most important facts of culture and history.
  • this theory is sound, and if by some magic it turned out not to be sound, we would need to learn from it since it does explain a lot of things (eg, why warfare occurs, probably the number 1 unresolved question in both history and anthropology). In fact, warfare is a very indicative example and one where deMause crucifies historians.
  • there is only one possible extension of deMause's theory back to the Paleolithic, and it ain't the noble savage.
  • The extension of deMause's theory fits a particular interpretation of some reported anthropological data from contemporary preliterate hunter gatherer tribes.
  • For psychological reasons, anthropologists have been butchering psych-heavy data, and as a result the only reliable thing they say is what they "let slip". So it's possible to get some good clues about what actually happens in the field but on the whole, the data is irretrievably corrupt and needs to be junked.
  • Psychohistory is a new field of academia which grew up around the methods deMause pioneered. It is independent of both history and psychology. It is at war with both for their turf and so extreme animosity is predictable. As the new kid on the bloc, it's going to get attacked as "simply not recognized by most historians / psychologists".
  • Since psychohistory actually gets results while history and anthropology are too busy jacking off, we should give it preference.
  • There is no rational argument against psychohistory's methods. Conservatism is not a rational argument. And as noted above, there are plenty of arguments against both history and anthropology (ie, they deny psychology's influence even in psychological phenomena).

Most of this shouldn't be on this page. It should be on 'Psychohistory's relations to other fields' or 'Psychohistory and academia'. -- Ark

Ark, you're missing the point of history. It's not an attempt to form causative theories like sciences are, but more a temporal equivalent of cartography. Any models explaining what's going on would immediately be something other than history per se - economics, politics, or in the case of the present discussion the distinct field of psychohistory.
That's pretty much my point. Like cartography or natural history, anthropology and history (A&H) aren't sciences per se. Cartography was never anything more than an engineering enterprise (though it did give rise to plate tectonics) and when the time came, natural history gave way to evolutionary biology. Similarly, A&H should give way to psychohistory wherever the latter is interested in taking over.
Unfortunately for me, those most devoted to A&H (like SR) aren't interested in recognizing its limitations, and those most ignorant of it (like JHK) don't even know them. So they keep bringing up irrelevant counter-arguments to perfectly valid psychohistorical models. For example, "but anthropologists don't believe this" (would someone ever dare to write "but most experimental physicists don't believe in superstring theory? I think not!) or miss the point entirely ("as long as we all understand that psychohistory has nothing to do with history").

I'm not a physicist, so don't quote me on this, but my understanding is that most physicists don't believe in superstring theory. It's one of several related theories that all explain current data with about equal amounts of minor deficiencies, with no clear "best" theory. Again, IANAP, but that's my layman's understanding.

It depends what you mean by 'physicist'. If you mean 'theoretical fundamental physicist' then most physicists do believe in superstrings. And the reason why is because there's no real alternative. If you mean just your average run of the mill physicist, then they don't believe in superstrings, but their opinion doesn't matter.

As for being one of several related theories, your information is out of date by 5-10 years. In the mid-90s it was discovered that there's really only one theory; see the entries on superstring theory and M-theory about it.

In the words of one string proponent, all of the alternatives to string theory (and they're not even considered alternatives since they don't accomplish the same stuff as it does) feel artificial. They're constructs which some people are putting together like LEGO blocks. String theory is different. It's natural; it's something that exists out there somewhere and is being discovered (very slowly and painfully) instead of being constructed with a predetermined goal in mind. Even if it turned out to be wrong (ie, not representative of our universe) then studying it would remain worthwhile because it would tell us about some universe out there, even if not ours, that must surely exist.

A&H aren't the only non-scientific fields of academic study. Another one is, surprisingly enough, neurology. Neurology grew out of medicine, and medicine isn't a science per se. In neurology, it's forbidden to theorize about what the data means on a large scale (eg, speculate about the impact of some discovery on the nature of consciousness). Of course, things are now changing on that front. -- Ark

“Noble savage”

Someone (unsigned, I think) wrote:

To begin with, there are many people who would reject cultural relativism. The first example that comes to mind are the women's historians which have become increasingly common, but a proper search shouldn't have trouble coming up with others. Further, the idea of the noble savage is very controversial, and one should hardly consider it some sort of canon.

Three points:

First, no one in the article or the "talk" page, to my knowledge, has promoted the myth of the noble savage. What I myself have been criticizing is the equally mythic notion of the "savage" savage (or savage primitive, or however you want to put it). Many people do adhere to either of these myths, but both are wrong -- non-Western peoples are not all alike. To those who promote the myth of the noble savage, I point out that almost no non-Western society entirely devoid of violence or inequality. To those who promote the myth of the brutal savage, I point out that Westerners have often characterized non-Western practices as stupid, unhealthy, or wrong in part out of their own ignorance, and in part to justify colonial oppression.

I know Ark has dismissed some criticisms of his position as examples of the myth of the noble savage, but readers of this page should realize that this is a common tactic of Ark's -- to misrepresent his opponents and to raise a red-herring. One can easily reject the myth of the primitive, without accepting (let alone promoting) the myth of the noble savage. Indeed, as people like Derrida and Torgovnic and a host of others have demonstrated, the two myths are two sides of the same coin.

Second, there are several forms of cultural relativism. You have the right to dismiss all forms of cultural relativism if you like, but to equate one form of cultural relativism with another either reflects a misunderstanding or promotes misrepresentation.

Finally, it is true that some reject cultural relativism in all its forms. Ark seems to be one. But the fact remains that many people continue to hold to relativism in one form or another. For this article to have NPOV it must recognize these different positions. slrubenstein

The savage savage isn't a myth. What do I mean by the "savage savage"? I do not mean by it that we aren't savages. That is a notion you rightly reject and which is indeed the flip side of the noble savage myth. However, since that's not a notion I've ever defended and the only reason I don't attack it is because it would be futile (any article attacking modern people as savages will be destroyed), belief in the savage savage myth isn't something you can level on me.
What I do claim is that modern societies are less savage than societies in the past. That's most certainly not a myth. And to argue otherwise is to promote the noble savage myth. If you have an absolute standard of morality, there is no choice other than the savage savage or the noble savage. Even if you use just "violence and inequality" as your absolute standard, that's sufficient to force a choice between either the savage savage or the noble savage (as long as you don't redefine rape and murder as non-violent behaviors, which by now I don't trust you not to do). Whether deliberately or unwittingly, you have been promoting the noble savage myth. Either that or complete cultural relativism.
To recap:
Primitives, in relation to modern people can be either:
  1. equally savage (obviously untrue)
  2. differently savage (cultural relativism)
  3. less savage (noble savage)
  4. more savage (savage savage)

So rejecting options #2 and #3 leaves one only with #4. There is no maneuvering room for anyone to weasel around. -- Ark

And this is where you and I differ. I generally contend that all present-day cultures are essentially "differently savage". Fancy technology just allows Westerners to be savage in more creative ways that have greater potential for wiping out the entire human race, instead of just individuals or small villages. We don't seem to have evolved the emotional maturity to handle the destructive power of the technology we have access to. pgdudda

When the USA sends F117 planes to destroy a whole village by carpet bombing, is this more or less savage than a half-dozen savages slaughtering a couple people and bathing in their blood? From my point of view, it's less savage. Casualty numbers don't really matter when they depend on different population densities, the available technology and power relations. All of which have nothing to do with morality per se. What matters to me is people's ability to act in immoral ways, that's what I consider savagery. People nowadays are forced to carpet bomb foreign nations because they can't accept, cannot rationalize, deliberately doing harm to innocents. They need to be able to tell themselves that it's an "accident" which they never intended and do not take responsibility for. This is a genuine advance in morality. [Ark - unsigned]

So you're saying that the refusal to accept responsibility for one's actions is a moral advancement? That strikes me as... disingenuous? hypocritical? irrational? a poorly-thought out principle? (I'm unable to think of the right word. *sigh*)... There is a certain nobility in being able to say "I killed someone, yes it sucks, but in my view it was (or was not, and why... as the case may be) the best of the available options", rather than saying "I had nothing to do with the jet plane that my tribe's leader sent your way to blow up your village and farmland. Too bad for you."
Now, having gained the "moral sophistication" to (a) know something was wrong, (b) admit to yourself it was wrong, (c) assess whether there existed better alternatives, and (d) accept the conclusion of that assessment and act on it, that I would consider an advancement. I rather suspect that the vast majority of the human race is a long way off from scoring 100% on this particular test. (Whether it's a valid test or not is a separate debate.) -- pgdudda
(c) and (d) are secondary since they follow from (a) and (b).
Assuming intelligent rational persons, yes, that's true. But look at the majority of the human species and tell me that you seriously think that (c) and (d) will automatically follow from (a) and (b). Pgdudda
It's difficult to fit the categories you made onto a psychological basis. You're asking very fundamental questions about the nature of rationality and empathy, and their relation to each other. I don't think anyone understands this topic very well. My intuition tells me that both rationality and morality are a byproduct of increasing integration (decreasing dissociation) of the mind. If morality also requires empathy as a fundamental element then it's possible for a person to be rational without being moral. But I don't think there is any fundamental element to rationality other than increasing integration, so the reverse (morality without rationality) would not be possible. -- Ark
The ability to know something you did was wrong, even if you're unable to accept having done it yet, is an important moral advance with major and far-reaching consequences. You shouldn't discount its consequences just because they fall short of the ideal. Nor should you discount how difficult it is to arrive at that stage in moral evolution just because you're beyond it yourself.
You have an idealized image of casual murderers. Trust me, there is nothing noble in committing murder and not having any problem with it. That's what psychopaths are about. And psychopaths are far worse, and far more disturbing, than those with merely lethal tempers. [unsigned]
Uhm, as I understand it, most casual murders recognize that their actions are considered morally "wrong". They just don't care - for whatever reason - whether they disagree with that value judgment, feel they are justified in their actions, or are so sick that they care more about the adrenaline rush of the act than the consequences it brings about. Pgdudda

Okay, the problem here is that you conceive of morality as a social phenomenon, instead of as a psychological phenomenon. The way you use morality in the paragraph above, it's just a judgment rendered by society. So in that view, for a person to be moral means they submit themselves to social judgment, and moral evolution is a purely social phenomenon. Here's the thing: all of that is wrong.

Morality is a psychological phenomenon. It refers to a person's capacity for empathy. Empathy is an innate ability modulated by how dissociated a person is, whether they have overriding compulsions, and how rational they are. It's difficult to describe empathy since nobody has a good grip on what it means, let alone what it is. It does seem to be a fundamental ability though.

Now, the people who "just don't care" about moral judgment ... they don't have morality. In the words of one psychopath, they "don't see the big deal" with stabbing an old lady a few dozen times. They don't understand morality because of a fundamental lack of empathy. It's often the case that they know they don't understand morality and will try to fake such understanding in order to avoid being labelled psychopaths, but that doesn't change their lack of understanding.

Reading my response, I don't think I'm being very clear. Your (a) and (b) categories are both psychological. It seems you think that (a) is social or intellectual and (b) is psychological, but that's not the case (ie, a psychopath who just abstractly knows about morality doesn't know morality in any meaningful sense). The human mind is complex enough that it's possible for a person to have enough empathy and rationality in order to know that some action is wrong, and yet be dissociated enough so that this knowledge does not impinge on their actions. Just because some part of a person's mind believes killing to be immoral doesn't mean that all parts of their mind do so. Dissociative identity disorder (aka multiple personalities) is just an extreme example of how most people's minds are structured. -- Ark

The way you phrase it (taking "responsibility") implies that the person knows it's a bad act to have committed. But just because someone says "Yeah, I killed so and so." doesn't mean they feel there's anything wrong with the action or that they feel guilt or remorse having done it. It doesn't even mean they feel regret! These emotions are things which you, a morally evolved person, assume exist in all people. But of course, that's the point: if a person has no morality then they don't have any of these emotions.

Would you say that there is something noble in a person taking pride, or gloating, over murdering someone? Taking "responsibility" for one's actions is easy, and meaningless, when one doesn't consider any of them to be wrong. That's why considering your actions to be wrong (and thus being unable to take responsibility for them anymore) is an essential advance in morality. -- Ark

So, you're saying that Western society (for the most part) has passed level (a), but has not yet reached level (b)? Pgdudda

Yes, but it's not a simple matter of stage (a) then stage (b). For example, most modern people will accept that rape is wrong even if they don't admit, though they know, that killing is wrong. There are some things for which most people are already past stage (b), others for which they haven't reached it. -- Ark

As a consequence of people becoming more moral, they gain greater mental abilities which let them discover technologies, which let them produce things which more effectively kill and butcher people. But this whole chain of causality is only incidental to morality. It is not the case that people became more moral in order to be able to kill more people more effectively.

Additionally, while the greater mental abilities (and thus the greater military power) come from the more advanced people, the desire for destruction comes more from the less advanced people. So as long as all society doesn't advance in lockstep, bloodshed (and greater bloodshed) is inevitable. That doesn't mean there hasn't been an advance in morality, it just means you have a very dynamic system and the complex feedback loops are fouling up your static measurements. In order to get a good (comparable) measurement about the morality of a society, you'd need to keep it static, with no social or technological progress, over a period of maybe a couple generations. You can't make that kind of measurement in our case, but keep in mind that our very ability to accept social and technological progress at the rate we're going is something which primitives lack. And we've yet to annihilate a foreign nation (as the Assyrians did) to pay for that progress. This too is a genuine advance. -- Ark

Yeah, but India and Pakistan came awfully close last month. *sigh* pgdudda
India and Pakistan have societies that are at least 2 centuries behind the times; in relation to the Northern European countries. The USA is behind maybe 50 years. We're talking about fairly primitive societies for the amount of technology and military power they have. -- Ark

deMause’s article

Ark -- in the interests of fairness, I went ahead and looked at the deMause article. Basically, it can be digested into one Philip Larkin poem. Big Whoop. Parents fuck up their kids. We know that. There is absolutely NOTHING there besides that fact that is provable. It is a mass of huge generalizations predicated on two simple ideas -- violence begets violence (duh) and everything that happens is down to psychology. Taking it one step further, de Mause seems to be saying that violent and abusive treatment in childhood are the only possible causes for violence in adulthood. He also denies the possibility of evil in some form, which is morally relativistic -- not a far cry from the cultural relativism Ark so abhors. Yes, there are references to acts of violence by parents (particularly mothers) against children, but we don't get to see the breadth of the studies to show what kind of population was used, etc.

Those of you who know me know I'm not actually that ignorant of history. i stand by my statement that most historians reject psychohistory -- not because we feel threatened by it (and by the way, Ark -- the fact that we get clubbed in with social scientists doesn't make History any less of a Humanity), but because most historians believe that human society is complex and filled with individuals who may act in particular ways for any number of reasons. Generally reductionism is not provable -- merely a simplistic way for the insecure to find meaning. 12.230.209.205

You can reduce or generalize things mathematically or statistically but reduction / generalization is the way all science works. Where's your proof that reductionism isn't provable in history? Where's your exhaustive study showing it can't be done? In fact, historians reduce all the time, but they stop when they're no longer comfortable doing so; like when they would have to reduce onto a psychological basis.
And the moment you've given up on reducing / generalizing (or on working out their consequences) you're no longer doing science. Historians may not care to reduce things, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. The work of real scientists in the fields of Complexity Theory, Chaos Theory, et cetera, make a mockery of your claim that history can't reduce human societies down to verifiable laws because "the subject is too complex". You may be familiar with history, but it's apparent you don't know much about science.
You dismiss the article I cited because it doesn't provide concrete proof against history's "no explanations" stance. Well so fucking what? I never claimed it did. I merely claimed it crucified history as a scientific field and historians as scientists; by showing that the theories historians entertain are all unbelievably idiotic. If you wanted a detailed theory and the evidence to back it up, you'd have to read half a dozen of deMause's books on the subject. You haven't provided a single remotely intelligent argument, satisfying yourself with irrelevancies and vague aspersions (this is what you call "fair"?). If you stand by your statement on that basis, it just proves you're an idiot. I dismiss you from my consideration.
Oh, by the way, dismissing "evil" as a causal explanation doesn't mean one is a cultural relativist. I'm an absolutist but I know enough psychology to reject descriptions of people as "evil" where it doesn't serve my own propaganda purposes. Moral absolutism doesn't require evil, just an absolute, universal concept governing human action. And psychology provides plenty of options! There's brutal, savage, backwards, primitive, unhealthy, maladapted, non-functional, and defective, to name just a few. Like other people dealing with extremely unfamiliar concepts (psychology and moral absolutism) you're eager to claim "contradictions" among them when in fact there are none. (I've done the same thing on many occasions, I was just never stupid enough to think of myself as fair-minded when doing so.) -- Ark
I know enough psychology to reject descriptions of people as "evil" where it doesn't serve my own propaganda purposes. Ark, are you really sure you meant to say this? If so, you've just given yourself away as someone not interested in acquiring new truths, just in expounding and proselytizing the portion of truth you already (think you) know. Given your style of argumentation, I'm inclined not to give you the benefit of the doubt. But I suppose I can always hope you merely suffered a case of not carefully reading what you typed before hitting "save". *wry grin* pgdudda (hope for the human race springs eternal.........)

Propaganda only has negative connotations for me when it's people in positions of power who spread it. When someone in a position of power (corporation, government, media, or cult leader) then even "public service announcement" gets connotations of "evil" as far as I'm concerned. If people refuse to make the essential distinction between a person in a position of power indoctrinating them and someone informing them of what they believe (and they do refuse to make that distinction) then 'propaganda' should be synonymous with 'advocacy'. The fact that it's not means that the media use it as a propaganda word (what we like is advocacy, what we don't is propaganda) exactly like the distinction between terrorist and freedom fighter.

As for your concern that I'm merely interested in advocacy instead of learning new things; that's the purpose of writing on a wiki. You may learn about something on a wiki but to actually learn it you'll have to read a book on it, or argue with a friend for dozens of hours about it.

I have a much narrower view of what a person can learn from a wiki than you do. In my view, NPOV pretty much makes it impossible to learn something because it forces every fact and every argument to be either so vague as to be useless or presented in huge indigestible chunks, with qualifiers and secondary arguments boilerplating it. (wow, why does this feel like deja vu?)Proselytizing, as you put it, is all that's possible on a wiki. It's what every contributor here does, one way or another.

Oh well, I don't think I'm going to be around much longer. The two most important things I could contribute are all but impossible. These stupid fights have drained all my enthusiasm and I'm too tired to continue. If I don't see you again, I think talking with you was the only genuinely pleasant time I had. -- Ark

"a Ranting Troll"

Will someone please ban ARK? His non-stop slander, personal attacks, and foul language are damaging the Wikipedia community. [unsigned]

RK, I would happily do so, but being a ranting troll who supports crank theories in an anti-social way isn't enough for a ban. He is correct in his assertion that deMause's theories deserve their own article -- even if he's amazingly rude in the way he treats others. Although I can't imagine that any long-time wikipedian finds him anything but offensive (and his insults towards me are certainly evidence of that)we can't ban people for acting like jerks. Unfortunately, we also can't ban people for deliberately misunderstanding people and then accusing them of stupidity.
To that end, Ark, I never have and never will claim that history is scientific -- History is a humanity, meaning that it deals with human things. Unless you are trying to deny the uniqueness of the individual and perhaps even to deny the soul/mind/whatever it is that makes us thinking, reasoning beings, you can't reduce history in purely scientific terms. This doesn't mean it's not logical, nor that we don't use certain scientific approaches, but is certainly NOT what you seem to think it is. In fact, you constantly demonstrate ignorance of how historians work -- or at least seem to condemn non-scientists for not acting like scientists. BTW -- Psychology is also not scientific...it's a social science, and liable to far more interpretive errors than any pure science. And yes, we do reduce things -- and yes, to where we're comfortable. That comfort level is bound by what we can reasonably conclude -- beyond that point, we let people know that we are dealing with a larger probability and also are obliged to point out possible reasons that a thesis CAN'T be proven past a certain temporal, societal, geographic, etc., point.
Not that it really matters, because it's clear that you have no ability to see things in any way other than your own narrow-minded worldview will allow. Continue to cast your insults if you must. You haven't convinced anyone that you're anything but a crank who thinks he's far more intelligent than he's demonstrated so far. Moreover, I sincerely doubt you've done anything to make people give any credence to deMause and his theories, so I'm thinking you don't need the rest of us anyway ;-) JHK
I have a pretty good grasp on what history is and what it is not; more or less what you describe actually. As for psychology, you're wrong about its scientific basis. Overall, it's a fucked field but it's one that has always aspired to be scientific. Its current status is merely a temporary setback. Actually, this is what it means to be a social science; scientific but fucked up due to enormous political pressures.
As for psychohistory, it gets its scientific status from psychology but being on the forefront of psychological theory, it is not a fucked field. These two facts (history not being science and psychohistory being science) explain why I'm so eager to dismiss history. Why should scientists be subjected to the authority of non-scientists? The same arguments apply to anthropology, and doubly so when the psyches of primitives are concerned.
Convincing people was never my goal, I'm too lazy and people are too bigoted for that. And given the enormous amount of resistance I've encountered on a subject that should be pretty cut and dried, having to fight for every single fucking word in that article, I think the subject is inherently controversial and, you'll be disappointed to hear, I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't manage to enhance psychohistory's repute.
As for people thinking I'm a crank. I'm a power unto myself and I haven't need for their approval nor favour. What people think of me can't change who and what I am. And even if I were craven enough to give that kind of power to others, I certainly wouldn't give it to some anonymous nobodies. As for your opinion, I've already maligned your intellect; did you seriously believe I'd care what you think of me? (Don't feel compelled to respond, I know you're just acting for the audience, as am I for that matter.) -- Ark

Ark,

  1. You'll get better cooperation by not insulting or swearing at the other contributors.
  2. Try writing articles on philosophical topics, such as morality.

I advise you to channel your strong feelings into the accepted format of the Wikipedia. If you think something is significant, find a non-wikipedian who agrees with you, and cite them. For example,

  • de Mause concluded that Neolithic peoples did X.
  • Famous theologian A says X is bad, or
  • Prominent philosopher B says X is bad, or even
  • A poll conducted by C reports that __% of D (fill in the blank) say X is bad. (D could be citizens of country...)

There is no way you can get the Wikipedia itself to endorse your views. Please focus on improving the article.

Ed Poor, Monday, June 17, 2002

Frankly, that's too mind-numbingly tedious for me to bother with. I've never kept track of citations and references for my beliefs and I'm not interested in turning over half of my life to that activity. -- Ark

Ark insults editors. End of 2002 discussion

This article has been vastly improved in the direction of NPOV from the original version; I for one appreciate the hard work of the many editors. There's a section that I think still needs to move further toward NPOV; my comments are given in segments below.

This model is also based on a reported lack of non-sexual attention paid by infanticidal parents, such as mutual gazes between parent and child, observed by Robert B. Edgerton, Langness, Maria Lepowsky, Bruce Knauft, John W. M. Whiting and Margaret Mead among others.

Citation of sources for a few of these names would be useful. In the absence thereof, I must question them. Since Margaret Mead, at least, disputes the identification of "infanticidal parents" wholesale, this would seem on the surface to be an incorrect statement.

Such mutual gazing is widely recognized in developmental psychology as crucial for proper bonding between mother and child, the failure of which invariably results in absent empathy (i.e., psychopathy).

Sources? I especially question "invariably" - that's a very strong claim, and one that would be disproven by a single counter-example. This seems quite nonscientific to me; I would recommend it either be supported with citations, or withdrawn.

Other examples of absent non-sexual attention include keeping infants away from open fires, preventing children from playing with knives, and stopping newborns from crawling into the sea.

Is there any evidence of such practices culture-wide, and that the practices are not intended to let children learn by experience? The phrase "burned hand teaches best" is a product of such an attitude in Western culture, after all. And - newborns crawling into the sea? That's hyperbole at best; newborns can't crawl!

The model also explains many other well-documented facts, such as the large jump in the mortality rate of Papua New Guinean children after they reach the weaning stage.

If the fact is so well-documented, give a citation or three! It would also help to discuss whether other models might not equally well explain this observation (if supported). Reference to "many other facts" is weak without citing a list of said facts rather than a single example.

Onward and NPOV-ward! -- April, Monday, June 17, 2002


I give up. You can butcher the article at will. There are only one or two people interested in the truth on the subject at all. The rest just want to destroy it (eg. just deleting every sentence that's not referenced and cited, without ever asking for refs or cites, and unilaterally changing the wording so as to minimize what's said without consultation) because they don't like the conclusions.
This is a fucking encyclopedia article. I'm not interested in proving a goddamned theory here. Like I said, only two people other than me are interested in cooperating, giving some leeway and credit to other contributors. Since there are masses of idiots and butchers intent on destroying the theory for every one person interested in helping, I'm just not interested in being the whipping boy on this subject. Fuck you all. -- Ark
Encyclopedia articles, "fucking" or otherwise, do not state absurdities like this article's claim that every child whose mother died in childbirth is "invariably" a "psychopath." "[T]he failure of [mutual gazing] invariably results in absent empathy (i.e., psychopathy)." (I have not the slightest doubt that someone as knowledgeable as you is aware that "i.e." stands for "id est", meaning direct and absolute equivalence.) So please feel free to leave in a huff. If that's too soon, leave in a minute and a huff. --the Epopt