Jemma said Jared and I will be having a
talk for up to about an hour and then
after that there’ll be some time for
questions before we finish at 9 p.m. and
Jared’s very kindly agreed to sign books
after that in the lobby and I think
we’ll begin jared if it’s okay with you
just by asking you to as it were set out
your store as relates to this the book
the world until yesterday drawing out
some of the I guess the key themes that
you think it’s interesting for us to
know about and if you can do that in
five minutes or so then we’ll go into
yes exactly so for those of you who
haven’t read the book you might might
want to leave after five minutes because
you’ll basically get 500 pages worth
they’re boiled down very handily in the
next few minutes if I can ask you to do
that for for five minutes or so will
then follow a conversation reasonably
organically picking up on threads that
come up and we’ll go from there
Jared I’ll also begin by asking whether
you can hear me okay and back and in
response to your suggestion Robert that
I summarized my book in five minutes I
have some experience of that because
when as a academic I encountered
journalists I found myself facing
journalists who would say things like on
mr. Dimon we know that you’ve written
this 500 page book that took you seven
years and you put hundreds of articles
and books into it but you have to
understand that our radio and TV radio
listeners and TV viewers and newspaper
readers are busy people so mr. Dimon
would you please some summarize the last
eleven thousand years of history in one
sentence yes
and because I completely agree with that
so I’ve learned how to do that so to
summarize this book now in 3 minutes and
45 seconds my latest book is about
small-scale traditional tribal societies
which we forget for the last six million
years all human societies have been
small tribal without centralized
government and it’s only within the last
five thousand years that we’ve developed
our first state governments and writing
and metal tools so that the way we
operate today is drastically different
from how we operated throughout human
history just as an example Robert you
and I have met each other about an hour
ago and I can assure you that in the
hour since I met you I don’t know what
are you about to say I have thought that
I have not made any move to kill you and
I have not detected you’re making any
move to kill needs but in tribal
societies that would be unthinkable in
tribal societies you live in an area
surrounded by other people that you know
so that you don’t encounter strangers
and if you should encounter strangers it
would be someone there to encroach on
your land to steal a pig or a woman so
that strangers are extremely frightening
that’s just one example of what we are
utterly used to today dealing with
strangers and you just say pig or a
woman but we might have to come back to
that
I will add the point that in in New
Guinea where I do my fieldwork they are
interchangeable because you buy women
with pigs and when I started in New
Guinea it was for pigs for women but for
woman but there’s no inflation so my
book is about I’m not sure that resolves
it but will thank you thank you for the
information that will do it that will do
it as a start a few bachelors out there
so the book my book is about differences
between what we take for granted in our
modern societies and traditional
societies which includes that we are
accustomed to encountering strangers but
traditionally that never happened that
our attitude towards danger today is
entirely different and much more
nonchalant than the New Guinea attitude
towards danger did we bring up our
children differently that we approach
old age differently that we die of
different things the vast majority of us
he will die of non communicable diseases
like diabetes stroke heart disease in
traditional New Guinea nobody ever died
of one of those diseases but that’s also
instructive because that’s because of
differences in lifestyle and those of us
who adopt a New Guinea like lifestyle
can minimize our risk of diabetes stroke
heart disease so those are just some
examples of differences between
traditional societies and modern
societies and now I’ve used my three
minutes and 45 ok
well let me just pick up on a couple of
thing I’ll come back to women and pigs
but just to be clear when you use the
word traditional there a couple of times
I would help me might help the audience
to just to understand exactly what you
mean by traditional and whether is is
that not just an artful euphemism for
primitive or are we not supposed to say
that anymore so perhaps you could help
us with what traditional means it is
true that we are not supposed to say
that but what that gets at is that
traditional societies are really all the
societies of the world until relatively
recently with the rise of state
government
the rise of dense populations which
permitted and required centralized
government so we are used to living in
dense populations with government with
writing with metal tools small-scale
traditional societies lacked writing
central government metal tools and over
the last particularly over the last
eleven thousand years traditional
societies have been gradually modernized
and to the point today we have a the
last semi traditional societies ought to
be found in parts of New Guinea and the
Amazon but even they are in transition
so New Guinea friends of mine would say
don’t talk about crowd ditional talk
about transitional sinseong right so
this is an important point just to be
clear on I think because I’m the title
the world until yesterday might lead us
to think that when we look into these
traditional societies it’s a bit like
looking at a star you’re looking at you
know the light that hasn’t reached it
yet as though we’re literally looking
back into our own past and those people
have been frozen in time for thousands
of years but you’re not quite saying
that are you there’s there is
development in these traditional
societies there there’s change that’s
happening as well as fixity that’s true
and as you Robert know from the titles
of your own book a title is either
shorthand or it’s a lie that’s a
stepping stone to the truth yes it is
true that that traditional saw all
traditional societies today
are in contact with the outside world
the traditional societies that were
encountered within the last several
hundred years of the European expansion
it’s only on the Australian continent
that they were hunter-gatherers
surrounded by hunter-gatherers so
traditional societies today they’re
marked by things including relatively
simple technology but they’ve all been
influenced to varying degrees by modern
industrial societies and presumably that
process is kind of unstoppable now I
mean what was traditional will become
increasingly like what you see in
non-traditional broadly westernized
societies you’re right that it’s it’s
unstoppable in two ways and in
traditional societies in the past before
there were airplanes the people in the
highlands of New Guinea did not know
that there was an outside world they
didn’t know that there was an ocean and
then eventually as airplanes came in
they realized there were other things
out there but there’s the phenomenon of
first contact in which they actually
encounter for the first time outsiders
the last groups of people in the world
who’ve not experienced first contact
face-to-face contact with societies with
centralized government aw a few cards
left in New Guinea both Papua New Guinea
and Indonesia New Guinea and more tribes
in the Amazon but probably within the
next decade something that has existed
throughout all of human history the
phenomenon of first contact the last
first contacts will probably come within
the next decade so you’re saying in
those particular examples these are
people who have literally had no contact
beyond their own kith and kin in the
sense of being exposed to non
traditional societies that’s correct in
New Guinea an extreme example the
highlands of New Guinea because New
Guinea PI lenders were farmers and they
were sedentary and they didn’t travel
more than say 10 miles from the place of
birth they did not know that there was
an outside world they received in trade
from the coast carry shells but they
didn’t know that carry shells came from
the ocean
and when Europeans came in there was in
the 1930s one of the first European
airplanes into the highlands of New
Guinea brought a New Guinean to the
coast a Highlander to the coast he was
astonished he scooped up some water salt
water he brought the salt water you know
container back to the highlands to show
people salt water something that they
had never encountered extraordinary
isn’t that for those of you who have not
read Jared’s book there’s an
extraordinary photograph of first
contact of somebody from a tribe seeing
a white face for the first time and I
think you described the look on their
face as one of terror effectively and I
mean of course how could how could it
not be I mean how could you be exposed
to difference without that being an
absolutely upheaving circumstance in
your life I have to tell you that that
well I have not had first contact with
New Guinea at all all the groups that
I’ve work with have had contact with the
outside world they’re in New Guinea
children in remote villages who had
never seen a European and as you tour
that first one they saw I was the first
one and I can recall an eminent
introduction to the Western world very
first person you meet from the West is
Professor Jared Diamond so you know you
guys must be really intelligent you know
any eminence was lost on them especially
I I can picture a baby who was being
held by its mother and was laughing and
giggling and facing its back to me and
then the baby turned around and within a
second or two I saw the expression on
the face of the baby turned from
laughter to order Hara and the baby
began screaming and then turned away I
have to just check whether you have that
effect on Western babies as well okay so
we’re talking about traditional
societies and although there are a few
societies which remain in the world few
tribes that literally have had no first
contact at all they are the exception
and generally you’re talking about
traditional societies in the sense that
you described in though metal tools and
so on which continue into this day have
had some first contact with the outside
world
but find themselves on a trajectory of I
don’t if this is the word you would use
but modernization of some kind and let
me just check is that modernization that
you see now developing among those
traditional societies does it all adopt
the same pattern I is it all becoming
westernized or are there kind of
varieties of development among the
people you’ve seen interesting question
Robert there there are big differences
there are some New Guinea societies that
are much more receptive to change and
others that are much more traditional I
remember working in a society in the New
Guinea Highlands in the 1960s where the
local people were rather conservative
but there were a few people from another
tribe who were much more entrepreneurial
and a missionary friend of mine was at
this site when the first airplane landed
at the airstrip and the local people
were rather conservative looked at the
airplane and wow-wow and then within
five or ten minutes they turned their
backs and resumed talking about their
sweet potatoes whereas the New Guineans
from an outside tribe who were much more
entrepreneurial looked at the airplane
and then asked the pilot so how much
does this cost and how much does it cost
to use and how far can you fly and then
they did the calculation they came to
the pile and said we want to charter
your airplane because they had they
figured out that they could make a
profit chartering this airplane to go to
an outlying place with lots birds
paradise by the plumes come back and
sell so that illustrates the broad
differences between the societies that’s
interesting I mean in the latter case I
mean I imagine that for us it’s easy and
maybe you’ll talk about us I think it’s
probably easy for us to fetishize
somewhat the idea of the traditional
society and the kind of Rousseau East
idea of going back to nature and so on
and we’ll come on to that but I let’s
ask the other question the other way
around first which is to what extent in
some of those societies is there a real
Envy desire or jealousy of the West or
what you call the weird way of life in a
Western educated
Industrial rich and democratic you know
is there a is there an active jealousy
or envy or coveting it goes on coveting
yes more than jealousy and envy every
New Guinea society that I’ve dealt with
they all see the advantages of some of
the stuff we have in New Guinea talk
pidgin pidgin English the word for this
stuff is cargo and New Guineans they
always want medicines they see the
advantages of being cured of malaria
they want metal axes because they see
metal axes keep their edge better than
stone axes they want tinned food to
provide and they want clothing so
they’re very practical things they’re
not a craving lifestyle necessarily or
mentality or the way Westerners seem to
behave it’s it’s practical tools that
they could assimilate to their lives to
make them better yes it’s all right
right well let’s talk about the other
way around as well because as you know
when in the West we talk about primitive
or traditional societies it can evoke
feelings of you know guilt
are we being a colonialist or
neo-colonialist in you know in the way
we describe people are we being
condescending and so on I mean from your
experience it would I it would help me
perhaps to help the audience to
understand a bit better what these sort
of what a good disposition might be
towards people of those societies
because one clearly doesn’t want to
write them off as crude savages on the
other hand one doesn’t want to sort of
fetishize them as the kind of the answer
this sort of the Rousseau naturalist
answer to all our worries and yet we
have very little for those of us who
haven’t lived among these people have
very little knowledge of them so can you
help us to understand what ah yes what I
saw a disposition towards them might be
a disposition that I adopt yeah in New
Guinea avoids the two extremes that
you’ve mentioned yeah there are many
people many well-meaning liberal people
today who adopt a ruse owest attitude
and believe the traditional people have
wisdom they love the environment they’re
free of all the vices that beset modern
civilization there are lots of people
whom one would pejoratively refer to as
racists who instead leave the
traditional societies are primitive that
they are mentally primitive that they
should be killed or brought into the mod
world or pushed out of the way as
quickly as possible in my work with New
Guineans I discovered I went out there
naive not knowing what they would be
like and my first compression was there
people like us
they laugh they cry they are scared when
I laugh cry and scared so my first
impression was people of people
everywhere and then gradually I realized
that there are big differences they have
different concepts of friendship they
have different approaches to marriage
they have different relationships to
young people and old people so the
fascinating thing for me about being in
New Guinea is that the people whom I can
understand at one level and then in
other ways even after years and they
surprised me yeah I mean we’ll come on
to kind of some of the more specific
details that you talk about especially
in terms of how to bring up children how
people deal with justice and so on and
aging but just was staying at this
broader level for a little while longer
I wanted to ask you then if we’ve talked
about the word traditional just to
understand the word Society because it’s
clearly a critical word and one to not
be taken that lightly and there were all
sorts of assumptions we might make about
the word society and one way into this
might be that reading your book I get
the impression that if you belong to a
traditional society you absolutely
belong in other words the space for the
individual is much more limited than it
might be for example in the society we
live in in London or in the United
States in other words we feel in the
West
that’s at least in principle we might be
able to not agree with a society to
stand apart from it to cherish our own
individualism and express dissent or not
belonging to the society we find
ourselves perhaps even arbitrarily part
of but I get the sense from you that
when you talk about society particularly
in the traditional society environment
you are talking about environments or
cultures in which it’s not possible to
not belong so society is a is different
from what it is in the West Society we
almost are able to look at it over there
from our position here as individuals
but if I’m right and understanding you
in the traditional societies who talk
about that’s simply not the case you’re
entirely subsumed or enveloped in the
societies or the society is everything
rather than an option you’re absolutely
correct in fact if it’s inconceivable
you know that you not belong on New
Guinean will identify himself or herself
at several levels of belonging first he
or she will say I am a member of this
clan yeah and then he or she will say
that I’m a member of this clan in this
village and then the next he or she will
identify the language group I am a gimme
I am a foreign and then most recently
and then they may say and I add well er
of Southern Highlands province and then
most recently because the Papa New
Guinea state has existed only since 1975
the PNG state has been working hard at
telling New Guineans in pidgin English
um you all get along one fella country
we are all New Guineans but it takes
work to do that because people first
when asked who you are
they don’t say I’m a New Guinean they’ll
say I’m an hour plan
the nearest village of the for a
language group in the eastern gardens I
would find that absolutely stifling I
mean if I had to say you know I am part
of this family and I think my family is
pretty weird you know and I’m part of
this class I have very you know
ambiguous feelings about the class to
which I belong I’m from this background
you know which is public school Oxford
you know and I have some ambivalent
feelings about that if I had to stand up
and identify myself again and again in a
non ironic or non critical way with
those things it would cause me to feel a
considerable amount of discomfort as
though my sort of individualism or my
ability to determine myself was suddenly
taken away from me but I suppose that
doesn’t apply in what you’ve described
the idea of self determine is Imai would
imagine it would be a somewhat unusual
concept you’re you’re touching on a big
issue and a dilemma you know for New
Guineans who move from their tribal
village into the capital say Port
Moresby to get a job so that uprooting
themselves from their tribal identity
they’re now living in the capital where
there are hundreds of language language
groups they’re losing the communal
identity at the same time the communal
identity is reassuring from Port Moresby
they can go back to the village where
they know that they fit in when they go
back to the village there’s support on
the one hand there are obligations on
the other hand and just as as an example
the New Guineans whom I dedicated my
book who she’s educated a lawyer became
pngs ambassador to the United States and
for long time I’ve been talking with her
about whether she’ll go back or whether
she’ll stay in the United States she’s
decided that she’ll go back to New
Guinea but she said the thing that she
likes about the United States she loves
New Guinea she’s got all the time but
what she most likes about the United
States is that she can sit down at a
sidewalk cafe in Washington DC order her
coffee read the newspaper and nobody is
going to come up to her and say oh I’ve
got trouble
can you give me some money that’s to say
she she enjoys the anonymity but she
also treasures the connections so that’s
a kind of best of both worlds scenario
but would it be true to say them that in
these traditional societies there’s no
sense of self that you know the tribe
the clan the belonging group always
precedes or takes precedence over the
self and that in fact a concept of the
self would be sort of anomalous in some
way I would phrase it differently there
written here is a sense of self do
individuals differ in New Guinea as much
as they differ in in the United States
or in in the UK but there’s the Nexus of
obligations which you’ve been brought up
and interestingly I had thought of the
obligations as being something something
voluntary something embraced the New
Guineans from a given group love to help
each other and it was therefore an
eye-opener to me went on on one occasion
I bought a Highlander too from his
village to a Highland town and I was
going to buy him some things that I
asked are you going to share all this
bring this back and share it with your
fellow clans people and his response was
a blunt force but share it with my
fellow clans people my relatives those
no-good lazy good-for-nothings no I work
hard I’m going to get it for myself and
so it’ll astray –tz– that that the
communality partly it’s because life is
out in the open everything is visible
and so you have to share yeah but if
you’re given the opportunity you can’t
take it for yourself and so New Guinea’s
nowadays they love trousers with pockets
and that they love opaque bags because
they hide stuff from their home
it’s plumbing so I guess it’s impossible
to be private in that situations nope
you are that’s true there’s no kind of
place to withdraw I mean I mean how does
that work in practice I mean its privacy
is something we treasure in the West
even though it’s becoming more and more
difficult to to preserve I mean I mean
how do people without putting to find a
point about how do people have kind of
an intimate life with one another let’s
go straight to the example what what
does one do about having sex in such a
society yes it is with you well children
up to the age of six share the mat with
the appearance yeah and I read an
account I think it happened to be for a
Polynesian Society but could be for any
ways around the world so the parents
have sex on the mat and the babies are
there next to them and if the baby looks
up then the parent will say to the baby
pull the blanket over your head and
don’t look right
simple would you there’s all sorts of
reactions to that number and that okay
they say you have a seven-year-old son a
interesting very interesting but again
that sort of plays to this idea that
there’s no individual that isn’t sort of
part of a group you’re you’re in play as
it were all the time aren’t you in play
well let’s sort having touched on some
of those broader themes I wonder if we
can zoom in a bit and consider as it
were the lifespan that one might have in
these two contrasting environments a
traditional one in a western one so sort
of going from birth to to aging because
maybe we can touch at some points along
the way like in terms of how people deal
with risk or justice and so on diet in
particular because it’s interesting you
talk about different approaches to child
rearing in in the two different
environments and I’m conscious as you
say I’ve got a seven-year-old and I’m
conscious because I’ve also got older
children too conscious of how much kind
of almost paranoia they seems to be in
as in kind of London in middle-class
environments about child rearing and
it’s more like sort of training athletes
for you know to be perfect in some way
you know they’ve got to have the piano
lessons the violin lessons the extra
math and so I mean there’s it’s quite an
intense so the almost factory based
approach to producing perfection and
it’s sort of pre transactional and it
seems to me getting worse you know and
the idea the idea I mean I was telling
Jared beforehand this anecdote I
overheard in the school playground a
mother talking to another mother saying
but have changed the name of their child
involved it’s called that Alice yes we
know what we want fairness we wanted to
read economics of Harvard
seven-year-old seven-year-old child so
pretty terrible but I think probably not
entirely unusual and it’s I think what
some parents are thinking if not they’re
actually expressing so when you hear
that Jarrett I mean how does that make
you feel what’s that make you think of
in terms of the contrast between the two
cultures this is one of the areas where
living and working in New Guinea has
most influenced my personal life namely
my approached having brought up my wife
and I bringing up our children there’s
of course diversity and how children are
brought up in traditional society just
as there is in modern state societies
but a generalization is that children in
traditional societies small-scale
societies are given far more
independence they’re allowed to make
their own decisions and an extreme
example is that in the in the New Guinea
Highlands when I started to work there I
was struck by the fact that most New
Guinea Highlanders have fire scars on
their arms and I thought that it was
because children there’s a adults have
fire scars and I thought that they had
acquired this as adults making fires but
know many of these fires caused most of
them are acquired from babies playing
close to the fire and the attitude of
the parents is it’s for that baby to
decide and the baby will have to learn
well that goes further my wife and I did
not let our children play next Tigers
body we did leave our children as much
freedom as possible to make their
choices in an example I was telling him
beforehand about my son’s career choice
that son at age 3 saw his first snake it
was love at first sight it was a dead
snake my wife and I and our snake lovers
but max loved that snake he did he
picked it up he carried it around for
two weeks he then wanted a pet snake all
right child is not to be denied if it’s
it we’re not gonna get him a poisonous
rattlesnake but we bought him a snake
and then another and eventually max
built up to 147 pet snakes frogs
reptiles
Vivienne’s was in the Salomon riots but
this is what got used to making his own
choices and as I was telling you when
Murray and I were on a vacation just
after you graduated college and he had
not made a career choice
one day while we were on a ship and $15
per minute ship to shore phone max
called us up and said and said I’ve
decided I’m going to become a chef and
tomorrow I want to enter culinary school
and I need to write a check will you
write the check well this is this is a
boy who made his own who were you raised
him to make his own choices I resonate
with their being asked to write a check
I have to say okay so but that doesn’t
that take us to veering a bit towards
one of the extremes we talked about
earlier which is rather idealizing these
traditional societies note the children
run wild they spontaneously develop
they’re incredibly creative yes they may
get a little bit burned every now and
then but in the grand scheme of things
you know they don’t die so let them run
free so are we skirting a bit too close
to that perhaps idealized vision
the reality is reasonably close to what
you described it’s not that the children
don’t die sadly maybe half of children
in traditional New Guinea or Africa die
but not of fires and knives they die
particularly of infectious diseases or
starvation or unavoidable accidents but
it is true that the degree of
Independence is far greater and oh and
most people who’ve worked who’ve lived
in traditional societies who have an
African new guinea or somewheres else
are struck by the the self-confidence
the independence the ability to make
their own choices of children five or
ten years old I don’t give just the
story to illustrate I was in a village
in New Guinea where we had lost our
Porter’s we needed Porter’s to get on to
the next village and most of the adults
the men were out of the village so I had
to hire as Porter’s anybody who would
volunteer there was a ten you boy I
asked made him ten years old
who
volunteered to carry goods for us and
was gonna be for a week well his parents
weren’t around but this is a
ten-year-old boy who can make his own
decision so he went off with a white man
and when his parents came back they
would have been told that their son went
to off with some white man in this
direction at the end of the week of
carrying stuff I needed to hire one or
two people to help me with my work on
birds and this 10 year old again
volunteered so instead of coming back in
a week as his parents thought he came
back a month later and as far as his
parents were New Guinea parents their
view is we’ve raised that child to be
independent and he can decide for
himself and he can size up the white man
but he negotiated with me a ten-year-old
child or even a five-year-old child
negotiates with me from a posture of
self-confidence and certainly my own
children at age 5 would not have been
able to negotiate a job right that’s
extraordinary example isn’t it and I
think this brings us onto the area of
how kind of risk is managed in life
because when I think one of the things
that drives us in the West to be perhaps
overprotective with our children and to
keep them indoors rather than playing on
the street is because because of a kind
of Daily Mail sort of paranoia we’ve
developed this idea that you know if we
let our children play on the street
they’ll immediately be seized by a
pedophile and we won’t ever see them
again you know there’s a kind of
generalized paranoia about this or if
not that that they’ll be mugged or
they’ll get run over or if they go and
play in the garden that they’ll get
stung you know it’s as if we see the
childhood environments that our children
play in as sort of a fraught with danger
and it makes us you know correspondingly
risk-averse but I assume you’re not
saying that in traditional societies
people have no sense of risk they just
think children are fine though they’ll
get on with it there’s because
presumably there’s much danger in the
societies you’re describing as there is
in the ones real or unreal that we find
in the West so what’s what’s going on
with that how does danger how do people
deal with danger in those circumstances
you are correct that of course there’s
danger in
just as there’s danger in the United
States the dangers are different in New
Guinea or in traditional or in Africa
the dangers are especially environmental
dangers lions crocodiles stinging
insects in our sanitized Western world
we’ve we’ve tamed the environments who
environmental dangers or less of the air
there are the dangers of infectious
diseases which we’ve tamed we face
different dangers cars for example but
it’s not just we’ve traded one set of
dangers for another set it’s that the
overall level of danger in New Guinea is
higher than in the UK and let me check
so it’s because I think there’s a
distinction between real and perceived
danger certainly in the case of child
rearing in this country I think the
perceived danger is much greater than
the real danger are you talking in the
New Guinea example about you were
talking about real danger and that
people don’t as it were bump up the
danger through perception in the way
that we do in the West correctly the
real level of danger in New Guinea’s is
higher than in the UK for two reasons
yeah it’s measured by shorter life span
traditionally they would die at 45 or 50
we died at 77 or 80 so the the level of
mortal danger per year is higher in New
Guinea and the other difference is that
dangers in the UK and in the u.s. damage
can often be repaired whereas in New
Guinea it cannot be repaired the one
occasion when I broke a leg bone in the
US it was crossing Harvard Square and
Cambridge Mass on the ice I stumbled
over to a telephone rang my physician
father who picked me up by leg on set
and I was okay for the rest of my life
we were in New Guinea if you break a leg
on one occasion in New Guinea when I
injured the leg I was 20 miles from the
coast and there was no way that I was
going to be able to walk out if I had
not recovered in addition if you break a
bone in New Guinea there are not
experienced surgeons who will set it and
so not only may not be able to walk
get out but if you do somehow walk out
you’re likely to end up crippled for the
rest of your life so New Guineans are
more alert to danger than we are
yes I mean what other things we’ll do
before we close this part of the
discussion is try and capture I guess
some of the kind of lessons that we can
learn from these societies and we were
chatting earlier and I think it comes up
in the book about just four very simple
things we can do like being much more
careful in the shower than we might
otherwise be because actually our chance
of slipping over in the shower and
hurting ourselves is infinitely greater
than getting blown up in an aircraft for
example if that happen to me I slipped
over in the shower and I was in my 20s
and was serious serious accident all you
have to do is to read the obituary
column or the necrology column of any
newspaper or any day and you will see
that a one of a communist causes of
either death or crippling or loss of
quality of life of older people is
falling in the shower or on a stepladder
or on the sidewalk or going up and down
stairs I have already done today the
most dangerous thing that I will do all
day today namely I took a shower in my
hotel bathroom which is not very well
designed and that you might say well
Jared that’s ridiculous your chances of
slipping in the shower or only one in a
thousand to which I would respond 1,000
isn’t good enough just do the numbers so
I’m 76 my life expectancy now is 15
years that means daily showers I have
five thousand four and seventy five
thousand and if my risk of foreign
crippled myself in the shower is as high
as 1 in 1,000 I’m gonna kill myself five
times before I live out my life
expectancy so I have learned to be
really careful about showers you may
have noticed mine holding on to the
banister as I walked in here because
those are the real dangers of our
everyday life not terrorists not plane
crashes but showers stepladders alcohol
I’m very pleased to see the inner nerd
in you come out in those statistics as
well so but clearly there is there is
nevertheless danger in those societies
and you mentioned right at the beginning
and we’re having a conversation here
without is killing one another right so
presumably you might not get you might
not sleep over in the shower but the
chances of actually being killed by
somebody from another group are real
mm-hmm
so it’s probably a more glamorous ending
than slipping down the stairs I’d
imagine but it’s more likely to make
make the newspaper yeah but it is true
that if you’re in a society a sedentary
society where you know your own group
and you know the people next door a
stranger really does mean I’m dangerous
so the the the antennae go up yeah um
again one of the most profound lessons
that I learned from New Guineans
it came out of an incident in early in
my career in New Guinea
I was with New Guineans starting birds
we were moving up a mountain
I was picking a new campsite and so I
picked a campsite in a broad place and a
ridge that would be great for
bird-watching under a gigantic beautiful
tree and there was a drop-off where I
could see Swift’s and Powers and pigeons
and I told the New Guineans let’s make
camp here and to my surprise they were
frightened they said we are knocking up
sleep under this tree what’s the matter
this tree is dead so I looked up and yes
the tree is dead but it’s colossal and I
said this tree is gonna fall down for 40
years no they would not sleep under the
tree they would grab sleep in the open
and at first I thought they were being
paranoid with exaggerated fears but as
time went on every night that I sleep in
the New Guinea jungle you can hear
somewheres a tree falling and then I did
the numbers and if every night you sleep
under a dead tree and if the chances of
the dead tree falling on you that night
are only 1 in 1,000 but you do it every
night in 3 years 1,000 you’ll be dead
so that yeah so the dangers are real and
the killing is real as fascinated to
read about how people deal with the
consequences or how they deal with
disputes and killings and you know
tension between different tribes and
plans not other groupings and so on and
and we were chatting about this earlier
because I think there really are some
lessons to be learned here about the
difference between Western approaches to
justice and the other approaches that
you describe in the book because you
know broadly speaking in the West we
think justice is the answer you know if
there’s been a breach of some kind we
deal with it through justice and justice
is in theory a way of kind of balancing
the scales but it’s quite a it’s
obviously legalistic and it’s quite a
cognitive approach almost analytic
approach to the aftermath of a breach or
a disaster or whatever it might be you
know something’s gone wrong there so we
must even it up with that crack you know
there’s a there’s a crime and there’s a
punishment and that’s how we sort of see
it in the West almost as a yes literally
it’s a kind of analytical balance but
it’s very striking reading what do you
had to say in this and talking with you
earlier that there are some costs and
consequences to that approach which is
that the opportunity to move on for
healing is much less taken care of so
there’s no there’s no kind of
therapeutic element if you like or no
restorative element in justice seen in
that very crude way so I think it would
be interesting for us to hear a little
bit more how we might learn from dealing
with let’s call them breaches crimes or
what have you in a way which is perhaps
more human and allows people to move on
and whether or not that’s only possible
because those societies are smaller and
people have to live with upon another
and get on with one another and
therefore wouldn’t apply to the West
anyway so two questions in one there but
sure yeah this is a good example because
here’s an earring we’ve we’ve talked
about it here is where I can learn as an
individual from the
unions about bringing up children levels
of danger but they’re also areas which
which we cannot adopt as individuals but
it’s instead that our society has to
adopt them so justice in the UK and in
the u.s. is administered by the state
and its concern is right or wrong and
making amends and asserting the
authority of the state if you are wrong
you are not permitted to take revenge
yourself you turn it over to the state
because many of the things that and in
fact sorry to interrupt in a certain
sense that’s sort of how we define
civilization in the West it’s precisely
not while justice its I might want to
get my own back on you but actually I’m
not going to do that we sublimate things
through through the state it’s almost
like a hops or something you know
there’s a higher authority which enables
us to be civilized it’s precisely that
you know without that we might be
savages quote some quotes yeah one one
can define the state as centralized
organization that arose in order to
monopolize force and in order to justify
doing that to assert the practice of
justice and many of our encounters many
of the rights and wrongs we encounter
are with strangers that we never saw
before we’ll never see again but anybody
in the UK or the US who’s been involved
in a divorce or an inheritance dispute
you know perfectly well that the court
system doesn’t care a bit about
emotional reconciliation it cares about
right wrong and alimony and child
support and who gets the inheritance and
the result tragically is so often is
usually that the divorcing couple end up
hating each other or that the brother
and sister and inheritance dispute end
up unable to speak to each other for the
rest of their life there was a New
Guinea in traditional societies the
purpose of resolving disputes because
those people who can be around you for
the rest of your life the interest is
not and right or wrong but the interest
is in restoring relationship so you can
deal with
that person forever yeah an extreme
example that surprised me was that a
friend Hmong New Guinea friend of mine
described to me that his father was
killed by the next group when his mother
was pregnant with him and there was
fighting that went on so that his group
left near ancestral lands and finally 25
years later they achieved reconciliation
that let them come back to the ancestral
lands the reconciliation my friends had
consisted of us holding a feast and
giving them pigs and I thought I’m
misunderstanding
why on earth are you giving them then
pigs when they’ve killed your father and
other people and he said well they also
had their own complaints that we were
trespassing on their land but the
purpose of the whole operation was to
restore feelings so that we could get
back to our ancestral lands it was not a
pretense of determining right or wrong
but it was of restoring relationships so
we could then live the rest of our lives
in peace okay okay but then to the
second question
maybe that’s only possible because those
are smaller societies whereas you know
in the West I mean I don’t have any
statistics at my fingertips that
although lots of people are killed by
people who know them it’s often the case
that people are killed by complete
strangers and so the imperative for a
restoration is somewhat weaker because
the chances of being in that community
with that person for a long period of
time are a lower is that right you are
correct that the the personal imperative
for restoring relationship is weak or
non-existent because the dispute or
crime involves someone that you never
saw and will never see again
but the emotional consequences are with
you for life I have several for one
friend whose sister was murdered fifty
years ago and the criminals the killers
were sent to prison and my friend 50
years later is still tortured by the
murder of his sister because there was
no emotional confrontation of
reconciliation yeah there’s a movement
that
you know in the UK I think that of the
we in the u.s. called restorative
justice which brings together victims of
crimes or the survivors of the victims
with criminals to see each other face to
face and to see that the criminal is not
an ogre but as a person that had his or
her own reasons for doing it and that
the victim is not some inconsequential
person but that I did that harm that
Widow by killing that man
I made her life miserable and the
restorative justice system is reasonably
well developed in New Zealand and Canada
and some one in the UK and it’s starting
in the US I think I mentioned to you
earlier that I’m involved in this is
classic sort of group therapy thing
called constellations and one of the
things that comes up again and again in
that is that when a murder takes place
the bond a bond is created between
perpetrator and victim which is as
strong as any bond created and any other
kind of as it were a normal walk of life
and that it doesn’t go away anyway
I’m conscious of time I want us to talk
a little bit before handing over to the
audience about kind of later life and
how we deal with aging and so on and of
course enroute to that and you’ve
mentioned life expectancy our lifestyle
factors like diet and you know how that
affects longevity positively or
negatively and one of the facts that I
stuck out for me from many facts that
you’ve enumerated in the book is this
one about the pizza do you remember this
there’s more salt in one pizza than
there is in the entire life entire
yearly intake or somebody from Papua New
Guinea if I remember that correctly that
is true in particular there is a there’s
a restaurant in Orange County here the
food inspectors measured the amount of
salt in a new
Neal and was 18 grams whereas for New
Guinea harlot or yanomamö Indian soil
consumption per day is 50 milligrams
which means that that noodle Neal
contains one years worth of salt intake
for New Guinea Highlander and the
consequences of that are that we get
stroke and hypertension whereas in
traditional Guinea
no one got stroke hypertension type 2
diabetes heart disease yeah and not only
that but as you know in the West we now
have growing concerns over an aging
population dementia Alzheimer’s are
becoming more and more prevalent in this
society we’re not sure how to deal with
it we feel there’s a you know there’s a
resource issue there’s a finance issue
and so on what what are the things we
could potentially learn from traditional
societies in terms of how we might deal
with our older folk the most surprising
single fact that I learned in the course
of the reading for my book has to do
with with recent research with the last
five years on the prognosis of
Alzheimer’s disease and the dimensions
of old age this went on in Toronto
Canada
so Alzheimer’s in the old aged men
they’re feared because they they seem to
be unstoppable there’s nothing you can
do about them people talk about playing
bridge or pseudo GU but the fact is
there’s no evidence there until recently
there’s been no evidence that anything
protected you against the symptoms of
Alzheimer’s disease until a study in
Toronto in a old old people’s homes show
that the one predictor is that bilingual
or multilingual people get on the app if
they’re going to get Alzheimer’s they
get on the average five years of
protection against the symptoms of
Alzheimer’s the reason is that of course
being bilingual or multilingual is is
the most constant exercise you can have
for the brain what we don’t know is
whether a multilingual person with ten
languages gets only five years of
protection as those are bilingual
I have a personal interest in this
because
with 13 languages I would get 65 years
of protection but if it maxes out at
bilingualism then my other 11 languages
are doing me no good the fact that you
can ask for beer in German brings you to
great benefits one is your drinking the
greatest beers of the world with due
respect to the UK and the other is that
your ability to do this will give you
five years protection in case god forbid
etc okay Jarrod’s been fascinating this
part of the discussion we’ve moved from
a kind of general discussion about what
we mean by society what we mean by
traditional whether we should idealize
not idealize what lessons we can learn
talked a little bit about life stages if
you like bringing up children dealing
with dispute and getting older and so on
so we’ve done a bit of an arc and I’m
sure you know through through that
conversation there’ll be lots of things
that have come up in the minds of the
audience questions and themes and so on
so what I suggest is now for the next 20
minutes or so we turn to the audience
and if you’re happy to take questions
from hello professor Jarrett and
Portuguese 30 year old girl and what I
have two questions one what about the
sense of belonging in the societies you
saw in New Guinea up is it different do
people get more mental or psychiatric
conditions or do you see them some
disturbances because just Western
society it’s increasingly often second
it would have to do with how do they
deal with sexuality
I mean prejudice I don’t know the right
word for preconception
I’m not English so how do they deal with
different do you mean discrimination yes
we’re discrimination right not only
women but also against sexuality itself
okay so that would be my two questions
these are both very interesting
questions to take the first one sense of
belonging and the consequence for people
who lack a sense of belonging of
psychiatric conditions I’ve often asked
friends who are physicians or
psychiatrists who have experience in
traditional societies whether the
frequency of mental disorders
is higher lower or different mental
disorders and the answer they give me is
we don’t know the reason we don’t know
is the difficulty of diagnosing bipolar
conditions or other mental disorders in
a New Guinea society compared to a
Western society what I can say from my
observation is that that in New Guinea
often I see in villages people who the
villagers themselves recognize as being
they would say long-long that’s that
they the person has a mental problem but
the person is never less integrated
within village life and does what he or
she can so that’s the first question
and the second question sexuality and
prejudice varies enormous ly among
traditional societies things that vary
heterosexuality versus homosexuality
child sexuality it’s difficult to
generalize the only generalization is
that there was a study that looked at
the role of women in many respects in
traditional societies and it turns out
that there’s not a single role of women
it’s not the case that that a society
treats women badly across the board at
least the well across the board
women they have more economic power and
less social power they more
child-rearing power a general pattern is
that that women in most traditional
societies and more authority as regards
the younger children and the involvement
of the men may be stronger after age six
but in short there’s just an enormous
variation in sexuality so these are two
important questions both of which would
have been worth a chapter in my book be
grateful that my book is already it’s
already long I want to ask you a
question which touches on the territory
that you’ve explored in your number in
your books and it’s quite a complicated
question but it’s to do with dealing
with some of the issues or of the limits
of our planet and the environmental
issue human nature human societies are
really formed and structured by the
essential requirements of living in in
an environment acquiring security
acquiring goods sugar of fats etc etc
and that that’s a driver of our
consumption pattern but in a sense we
need to transcend that way of of being
and living our lives and we need to
actually sublimate or suppress those
those drives to achieve a balance in a
limited system and you looked at this a
bit in in collapse but what are your
thoughts about how we can actually solve
that problem the limits of our planet
but our unlimited desire for consumption
and and security a shameless author
would recommend that you read my book
collapse but that would be utterly
shameless and I need to say something
worthwhile to you now so sir one thing
one thing that’s that’s will be useful
in getting us to a sustainable economy
and we’ve got to get to a sustainable
economy in the next 40 years because we
don’t we have finished at the rate that
we are depleting resources at the moment
important is for people to feel the
consequences of their own environmental
mistakes that’s to say their own
overconsumption
and for for example when I look at past
societies that have messed up their
environments and declined as a result
the ancient Maya the Qamar Easter
Islanders and so on and I look at
societies that have managed their
resources successfully for millennia
after millennia Japan to capilla Iceland
the New Guinea Islands and when I asked
are there any consistent differences one
difference seems to me that societies in
which the the elite the leaders feel the
consequences of their own environmental
mistakes are more likely to adopt sound
environmental policies whereas if the
leaders can insulate themselves from the
consequences of their actions they may
go on exploiting the environment and the
commoners may then be suffering
increasingly but the Kings may still
have enough food until it’s too late has
happened with with the Maya and that of
course it’s a worldwide problem today
because when one compares the first
world and the developing world
consumption rates in the first world in
the UK and us something like 32 times
those in the in the developing world but
the first world is not yet suffering the
consequences of its over-exploitation
what we need to do well to get us onto a
sustainable path we in the first world
need to suffer the consequences of our
destroying the environmental resources
on which we depend it’s interesting that
that doesn’t necessarily apply in the
case of obesity which is a direct form
of overconsumption I mean there’s a
direct consequence of eating too much
which you get fat so you’re faced with
it pretty immediately and yet we have
obese societies where it seems to be the
norm and accept it in fact part of your
belonging is to look the same as
everybody else this illustrates the fact
that that for individuals as for
society’s knowledge of what is good
doesn’t good for you or for the society
doesn’t mean that you will do what is
good for you or for the society there’s
now widespread information from public
health about the importance of a healthy
diet
and nevertheless the frequency of
diabetes in the UK and us at seven
type-2 at seven to nine percent but
diabetes is exploding in India and China
and in the Mideast and it’s exploding
because those societies are acquiring
affluence the ability to get onto a
Western diet before they’ve acquired the
public health knowledge of how the
Western diet is bad for them and so you
have the irony that in India and China
diabetes particularly afflicts wealthy
urban people whereas in the UK in u.s.
diabetes particularly affects poor two
things I’d really like your observations
on the first is when you stated that
societies become more enclosed and
certainly with the tribes in New Guinea
they identify themselves by their name
and the village they come from and
Robert you mentioned that you find that
quite frustrating and enclosed and I
would argue that we actually identify
ourselves on a daily basis with branded
labels the car we drive the area we
choose to live in so I’d like your
comments on that and the second thing is
with regard to learn to dangers I think
we all learned angels but I would query
the fact that we probably take less
responsibility for learning dangers in
Western society because our lives are
more and more complicated on a daily
basis whereas a New Guinea arguably
lives are more simplistic but they rely
more heavily on instinct learned
instinct two very interesting questions
as regards identity identity in
traditional societies is a social
identity that refers to the group into
which you were born or into which you
marry and so at various levels the
identity is your clan your village your
tribe your language group and nowadays
your nation
the types of identity that you mentioned
that you mentioned they’re real types of
identity there are people who identified
who identified themselves as I used to
as a folks fog an owner and I certainly
identify myself as a Bostonian as a
Boston Red Sox fan and a Yankee hater
but the those that those are acquired
identities they’re not born or marital
social groupings that’s the difference
in their density the second thing about
less responsibility it’s a very
interesting point that you mentioned the
reality is that the dangers that we many
of the dangers that the real dangers for
us in the UK in the u.s. are mostly
dangers that are under our control we
worry about terrorists and GM crops and
things done to us but really the main
dangers that we face are alcohol
slipping and so on the the average
person this is gonna sound funny but the
average if you ask the average person
what is your risk of having a car
accident the average person will say my
risk of having a car accident is lower
than the average person because I Drive
carefully that’s to say for things that
are under our control we minimize the
risk because we think that we are
careful and yet by definition the
very interesting question it’s something
that I wrestled with in the first
chapter of my my book um we we’re
accustomed we in state-level societies
are accustomed to defying boundaries
that are surveyed and God and their
customs posts and and controls at the
borders in traditional societies
boundaries range all the way from as
fixed as in modern state-level societies
to very fluid cases where traditional
societies that have well-defined
boundaries tend to be densely populated
sedentary societies that have valuable
stuff to protect such as pigs or fields
and large enough population that you can
devote some men to patrolling the
boundary and so for example for the
denied people of the bow valley of
western New Guinea the boundaries are
sufficiently well defined that
traditional dan I put up watchtowers at
the boundary and men would spend some
men would spend all day in the
watchtowers looking out to see whether
people from the other side we’re going
to come sneak across so those are
boundaries as well-defined as the
boundary between France and Germany at
the opposite extreme societies living at
low population densities that are mobile
where there’s not valuable stuff to
defend tend to have rather fluid
boundaries that’s to say each group they
have its home days and they have first
rights to a certain area but other
people can come into that area on a
reciprocal sharing base and so for
example for the people of the
Kalahari Desert water holes would be
onde but in a draw year when many water
holes dry up the people over there can
come use your water hole but in return
the expectation is that when they’re
mongongo nuts or producing you then have
the reciprocal right to go harvest among
Congo nuts so a short answer then is
that the boundaries in traditional
societies run the whole spectrum from as
strict as in modern state-level
societies to quite fluid but always
based on shared relationships and shared
as opposed to state definition as
opposed to state as opposed to state
definition in the case of the the Dan I
of the bowel and Valley there is no
state but each cry would never less
define its area and it patrolling with
West African societies where they seem
good question perhaps the best answer I
can give to that is a one sentence
answer that a friend of mine a cultural
anthropologist whose work worked for
decades in an interior country of Africa
said about comparing the lives of rural
Africans with the lives of Americans he
summed up by saying their lives in
Africa materially poor but socially
richer than our lives meaning that they
have their lifelong friendships they
have their relationships they have the
material poverty they have misery from
more deaths of children but they have us
but the phenomenon of loneliness
particularly loneliness in old age is
non-existent in a sedentary traditional
society oh hi I’ve just come back from a
remote part of Australia called
Katherine in the Northern Territory so
I’ve got two questions the first one is
about the Dreaming and whether in Papua
New Guinea they have a similar way of
organizing and communicating
spirituality and the second one is about
you might not want to answer I don’t
have time to answer both them it’s like
ons about how when a generation of
indigenous people leave their community
what’s the relationship in your
experience of the second and third
generations when they go back to their
land and their spiritual beliefs on on
the first question about about
spirituality virtually all societies
traditional especially all traditional
societies have something that can be
identified as religion one can get a
debate about defining a religion my long
chapter on religion has a table of one
and a half pages with 13 different
definitions of of religion but virtually
all traditional societies have something
that we would recognize as religion
whether it’s defined by belief in us in
a supernatural whether it’s defined as
the power of certain acts producing
certain results
the term dreaming is a term applied
particularly to Aboriginal Australian
spiritual beliefs
the term dreaming is not applied in New
Guinea but nevertheless the the
spiritual beliefs in New Guinea within
the general framework of spiritual
beliefs in Australia that’s to say
they’re all religious beliefs
the second question about going back
after two or three generations that’s
rare in traditional societies going back
after one generation my friend whom I
mentioned whose father had been killed
while he was in utero in his mother his
group returned after one generation I am
trying to think of any New Guinea group
that returned after two or three
generations certainly New Guinea groups
have their tribal memories and they’ll
remember that we were driven out of that
land a couple of generations ago but
it’s unusual in at least in my
experience for New Guineans to make the
effort to recover land of three
generations ago in the way that I saw
the effort to recover their land of one
generation but it’s worth testing is
that atheism is very much Western
phenomenon is there such a thing as
atheism in traditional societies I am
not aware partly depends upon the
definition but I’m not aware of any
traditional society that lacks something
that we would call religious beliefs the
religious beliefs we might not identify
with a God in traditional New Guinea
societies people don’t talk about God’s
there are place other societies that
they would talk about God they would be
talking about spirits they would be talk
about their ancestors they would be
talking about their ancestors going up
to the sky and then coming back in the
form of birds but in this if you define
atheism as a lack of what we would
recognize as religious beliefs I am not
aware of any traditional society that’s
that’s that’s this is this is a great
question to end on I think thank you
very much how the tradition societies
perceive success well as you see I’m
having to think about that in New Guinea
Highlands society individual success
among many among many New Guinea
Highlands is our individual success for
a man would be marked by how many pigs
you’ve accumulated and how many wives
you’ve accumulated I think we just need
to clear this out more more wives mean
that you can produce more pigs more pigs
mean that you can buy buy more wives so
for a man that’s the mark of success for
a woman I’ve not heard of marks of
success for women that maybe because of
the paucity of female anthropologists
who’ve asked about things such as
success I would guess that that women
women would measure success by their
ability in the garden by how much crops
they can bring home by their rearing of
their children and then success at the
society societal level success would be
measured by whether you’ve succeeded in
defeating the neighbouring groups and
whether you’ve succeeded in acquiring
more land so I guess you know I’m
evolving my answer to your interesting
question it’s the success would be
defined differently at the individual
level and at the group level and would
be defined differently for men and for
women thank you very much thank you for
the question either we’re gonna have to
bring things to close the witching hour
is upon us Jared I just want to say to
you thank you so much for your
generosity the ideas you’ve shared with
us and the spirit in which you’ve asked them thank you very much indeed
talk for up to about an hour and then
after that there’ll be some time for
questions before we finish at 9 p.m. and
Jared’s very kindly agreed to sign books
after that in the lobby and I think
we’ll begin jared if it’s okay with you
just by asking you to as it were set out
your store as relates to this the book
the world until yesterday drawing out
some of the I guess the key themes that
you think it’s interesting for us to
know about and if you can do that in
five minutes or so then we’ll go into
yes exactly so for those of you who
haven’t read the book you might might
want to leave after five minutes because
you’ll basically get 500 pages worth
they’re boiled down very handily in the
next few minutes if I can ask you to do
that for for five minutes or so will
then follow a conversation reasonably
organically picking up on threads that
come up and we’ll go from there
Jared I’ll also begin by asking whether
you can hear me okay and back and in
response to your suggestion Robert that
I summarized my book in five minutes I
have some experience of that because
when as a academic I encountered
journalists I found myself facing
journalists who would say things like on
mr. Dimon we know that you’ve written
this 500 page book that took you seven
years and you put hundreds of articles
and books into it but you have to
understand that our radio and TV radio
listeners and TV viewers and newspaper
readers are busy people so mr. Dimon
would you please some summarize the last
eleven thousand years of history in one
sentence yes
and because I completely agree with that
so I’ve learned how to do that so to
summarize this book now in 3 minutes and
45 seconds my latest book is about
small-scale traditional tribal societies
which we forget for the last six million
years all human societies have been
small tribal without centralized
government and it’s only within the last
five thousand years that we’ve developed
our first state governments and writing
and metal tools so that the way we
operate today is drastically different
from how we operated throughout human
history just as an example Robert you
and I have met each other about an hour
ago and I can assure you that in the
hour since I met you I don’t know what
are you about to say I have thought that
I have not made any move to kill you and
I have not detected you’re making any
move to kill needs but in tribal
societies that would be unthinkable in
tribal societies you live in an area
surrounded by other people that you know
so that you don’t encounter strangers
and if you should encounter strangers it
would be someone there to encroach on
your land to steal a pig or a woman so
that strangers are extremely frightening
that’s just one example of what we are
utterly used to today dealing with
strangers and you just say pig or a
woman but we might have to come back to
that
I will add the point that in in New
Guinea where I do my fieldwork they are
interchangeable because you buy women
with pigs and when I started in New
Guinea it was for pigs for women but for
woman but there’s no inflation so my
book is about I’m not sure that resolves
it but will thank you thank you for the
information that will do it that will do
it as a start a few bachelors out there
so the book my book is about differences
between what we take for granted in our
modern societies and traditional
societies which includes that we are
accustomed to encountering strangers but
traditionally that never happened that
our attitude towards danger today is
entirely different and much more
nonchalant than the New Guinea attitude
towards danger did we bring up our
children differently that we approach
old age differently that we die of
different things the vast majority of us
he will die of non communicable diseases
like diabetes stroke heart disease in
traditional New Guinea nobody ever died
of one of those diseases but that’s also
instructive because that’s because of
differences in lifestyle and those of us
who adopt a New Guinea like lifestyle
can minimize our risk of diabetes stroke
heart disease so those are just some
examples of differences between
traditional societies and modern
societies and now I’ve used my three
minutes and 45 ok
well let me just pick up on a couple of
thing I’ll come back to women and pigs
but just to be clear when you use the
word traditional there a couple of times
I would help me might help the audience
to just to understand exactly what you
mean by traditional and whether is is
that not just an artful euphemism for
primitive or are we not supposed to say
that anymore so perhaps you could help
us with what traditional means it is
true that we are not supposed to say
that but what that gets at is that
traditional societies are really all the
societies of the world until relatively
recently with the rise of state
government
the rise of dense populations which
permitted and required centralized
government so we are used to living in
dense populations with government with
writing with metal tools small-scale
traditional societies lacked writing
central government metal tools and over
the last particularly over the last
eleven thousand years traditional
societies have been gradually modernized
and to the point today we have a the
last semi traditional societies ought to
be found in parts of New Guinea and the
Amazon but even they are in transition
so New Guinea friends of mine would say
don’t talk about crowd ditional talk
about transitional sinseong right so
this is an important point just to be
clear on I think because I’m the title
the world until yesterday might lead us
to think that when we look into these
traditional societies it’s a bit like
looking at a star you’re looking at you
know the light that hasn’t reached it
yet as though we’re literally looking
back into our own past and those people
have been frozen in time for thousands
of years but you’re not quite saying
that are you there’s there is
development in these traditional
societies there there’s change that’s
happening as well as fixity that’s true
and as you Robert know from the titles
of your own book a title is either
shorthand or it’s a lie that’s a
stepping stone to the truth yes it is
true that that traditional saw all
traditional societies today
are in contact with the outside world
the traditional societies that were
encountered within the last several
hundred years of the European expansion
it’s only on the Australian continent
that they were hunter-gatherers
surrounded by hunter-gatherers so
traditional societies today they’re
marked by things including relatively
simple technology but they’ve all been
influenced to varying degrees by modern
industrial societies and presumably that
process is kind of unstoppable now I
mean what was traditional will become
increasingly like what you see in
non-traditional broadly westernized
societies you’re right that it’s it’s
unstoppable in two ways and in
traditional societies in the past before
there were airplanes the people in the
highlands of New Guinea did not know
that there was an outside world they
didn’t know that there was an ocean and
then eventually as airplanes came in
they realized there were other things
out there but there’s the phenomenon of
first contact in which they actually
encounter for the first time outsiders
the last groups of people in the world
who’ve not experienced first contact
face-to-face contact with societies with
centralized government aw a few cards
left in New Guinea both Papua New Guinea
and Indonesia New Guinea and more tribes
in the Amazon but probably within the
next decade something that has existed
throughout all of human history the
phenomenon of first contact the last
first contacts will probably come within
the next decade so you’re saying in
those particular examples these are
people who have literally had no contact
beyond their own kith and kin in the
sense of being exposed to non
traditional societies that’s correct in
New Guinea an extreme example the
highlands of New Guinea because New
Guinea PI lenders were farmers and they
were sedentary and they didn’t travel
more than say 10 miles from the place of
birth they did not know that there was
an outside world they received in trade
from the coast carry shells but they
didn’t know that carry shells came from
the ocean
and when Europeans came in there was in
the 1930s one of the first European
airplanes into the highlands of New
Guinea brought a New Guinean to the
coast a Highlander to the coast he was
astonished he scooped up some water salt
water he brought the salt water you know
container back to the highlands to show
people salt water something that they
had never encountered extraordinary
isn’t that for those of you who have not
read Jared’s book there’s an
extraordinary photograph of first
contact of somebody from a tribe seeing
a white face for the first time and I
think you described the look on their
face as one of terror effectively and I
mean of course how could how could it
not be I mean how could you be exposed
to difference without that being an
absolutely upheaving circumstance in
your life I have to tell you that that
well I have not had first contact with
New Guinea at all all the groups that
I’ve work with have had contact with the
outside world they’re in New Guinea
children in remote villages who had
never seen a European and as you tour
that first one they saw I was the first
one and I can recall an eminent
introduction to the Western world very
first person you meet from the West is
Professor Jared Diamond so you know you
guys must be really intelligent you know
any eminence was lost on them especially
I I can picture a baby who was being
held by its mother and was laughing and
giggling and facing its back to me and
then the baby turned around and within a
second or two I saw the expression on
the face of the baby turned from
laughter to order Hara and the baby
began screaming and then turned away I
have to just check whether you have that
effect on Western babies as well okay so
we’re talking about traditional
societies and although there are a few
societies which remain in the world few
tribes that literally have had no first
contact at all they are the exception
and generally you’re talking about
traditional societies in the sense that
you described in though metal tools and
so on which continue into this day have
had some first contact with the outside
world
but find themselves on a trajectory of I
don’t if this is the word you would use
but modernization of some kind and let
me just check is that modernization that
you see now developing among those
traditional societies does it all adopt
the same pattern I is it all becoming
westernized or are there kind of
varieties of development among the
people you’ve seen interesting question
Robert there there are big differences
there are some New Guinea societies that
are much more receptive to change and
others that are much more traditional I
remember working in a society in the New
Guinea Highlands in the 1960s where the
local people were rather conservative
but there were a few people from another
tribe who were much more entrepreneurial
and a missionary friend of mine was at
this site when the first airplane landed
at the airstrip and the local people
were rather conservative looked at the
airplane and wow-wow and then within
five or ten minutes they turned their
backs and resumed talking about their
sweet potatoes whereas the New Guineans
from an outside tribe who were much more
entrepreneurial looked at the airplane
and then asked the pilot so how much
does this cost and how much does it cost
to use and how far can you fly and then
they did the calculation they came to
the pile and said we want to charter
your airplane because they had they
figured out that they could make a
profit chartering this airplane to go to
an outlying place with lots birds
paradise by the plumes come back and
sell so that illustrates the broad
differences between the societies that’s
interesting I mean in the latter case I
mean I imagine that for us it’s easy and
maybe you’ll talk about us I think it’s
probably easy for us to fetishize
somewhat the idea of the traditional
society and the kind of Rousseau East
idea of going back to nature and so on
and we’ll come on to that but I let’s
ask the other question the other way
around first which is to what extent in
some of those societies is there a real
Envy desire or jealousy of the West or
what you call the weird way of life in a
Western educated
Industrial rich and democratic you know
is there a is there an active jealousy
or envy or coveting it goes on coveting
yes more than jealousy and envy every
New Guinea society that I’ve dealt with
they all see the advantages of some of
the stuff we have in New Guinea talk
pidgin pidgin English the word for this
stuff is cargo and New Guineans they
always want medicines they see the
advantages of being cured of malaria
they want metal axes because they see
metal axes keep their edge better than
stone axes they want tinned food to
provide and they want clothing so
they’re very practical things they’re
not a craving lifestyle necessarily or
mentality or the way Westerners seem to
behave it’s it’s practical tools that
they could assimilate to their lives to
make them better yes it’s all right
right well let’s talk about the other
way around as well because as you know
when in the West we talk about primitive
or traditional societies it can evoke
feelings of you know guilt
are we being a colonialist or
neo-colonialist in you know in the way
we describe people are we being
condescending and so on I mean from your
experience it would I it would help me
perhaps to help the audience to
understand a bit better what these sort
of what a good disposition might be
towards people of those societies
because one clearly doesn’t want to
write them off as crude savages on the
other hand one doesn’t want to sort of
fetishize them as the kind of the answer
this sort of the Rousseau naturalist
answer to all our worries and yet we
have very little for those of us who
haven’t lived among these people have
very little knowledge of them so can you
help us to understand what ah yes what I
saw a disposition towards them might be
a disposition that I adopt yeah in New
Guinea avoids the two extremes that
you’ve mentioned yeah there are many
people many well-meaning liberal people
today who adopt a ruse owest attitude
and believe the traditional people have
wisdom they love the environment they’re
free of all the vices that beset modern
civilization there are lots of people
whom one would pejoratively refer to as
racists who instead leave the
traditional societies are primitive that
they are mentally primitive that they
should be killed or brought into the mod
world or pushed out of the way as
quickly as possible in my work with New
Guineans I discovered I went out there
naive not knowing what they would be
like and my first compression was there
people like us
they laugh they cry they are scared when
I laugh cry and scared so my first
impression was people of people
everywhere and then gradually I realized
that there are big differences they have
different concepts of friendship they
have different approaches to marriage
they have different relationships to
young people and old people so the
fascinating thing for me about being in
New Guinea is that the people whom I can
understand at one level and then in
other ways even after years and they
surprised me yeah I mean we’ll come on
to kind of some of the more specific
details that you talk about especially
in terms of how to bring up children how
people deal with justice and so on and
aging but just was staying at this
broader level for a little while longer
I wanted to ask you then if we’ve talked
about the word traditional just to
understand the word Society because it’s
clearly a critical word and one to not
be taken that lightly and there were all
sorts of assumptions we might make about
the word society and one way into this
might be that reading your book I get
the impression that if you belong to a
traditional society you absolutely
belong in other words the space for the
individual is much more limited than it
might be for example in the society we
live in in London or in the United
States in other words we feel in the
West
that’s at least in principle we might be
able to not agree with a society to
stand apart from it to cherish our own
individualism and express dissent or not
belonging to the society we find
ourselves perhaps even arbitrarily part
of but I get the sense from you that
when you talk about society particularly
in the traditional society environment
you are talking about environments or
cultures in which it’s not possible to
not belong so society is a is different
from what it is in the West Society we
almost are able to look at it over there
from our position here as individuals
but if I’m right and understanding you
in the traditional societies who talk
about that’s simply not the case you’re
entirely subsumed or enveloped in the
societies or the society is everything
rather than an option you’re absolutely
correct in fact if it’s inconceivable
you know that you not belong on New
Guinean will identify himself or herself
at several levels of belonging first he
or she will say I am a member of this
clan yeah and then he or she will say
that I’m a member of this clan in this
village and then the next he or she will
identify the language group I am a gimme
I am a foreign and then most recently
and then they may say and I add well er
of Southern Highlands province and then
most recently because the Papa New
Guinea state has existed only since 1975
the PNG state has been working hard at
telling New Guineans in pidgin English
um you all get along one fella country
we are all New Guineans but it takes
work to do that because people first
when asked who you are
they don’t say I’m a New Guinean they’ll
say I’m an hour plan
the nearest village of the for a
language group in the eastern gardens I
would find that absolutely stifling I
mean if I had to say you know I am part
of this family and I think my family is
pretty weird you know and I’m part of
this class I have very you know
ambiguous feelings about the class to
which I belong I’m from this background
you know which is public school Oxford
you know and I have some ambivalent
feelings about that if I had to stand up
and identify myself again and again in a
non ironic or non critical way with
those things it would cause me to feel a
considerable amount of discomfort as
though my sort of individualism or my
ability to determine myself was suddenly
taken away from me but I suppose that
doesn’t apply in what you’ve described
the idea of self determine is Imai would
imagine it would be a somewhat unusual
concept you’re you’re touching on a big
issue and a dilemma you know for New
Guineans who move from their tribal
village into the capital say Port
Moresby to get a job so that uprooting
themselves from their tribal identity
they’re now living in the capital where
there are hundreds of language language
groups they’re losing the communal
identity at the same time the communal
identity is reassuring from Port Moresby
they can go back to the village where
they know that they fit in when they go
back to the village there’s support on
the one hand there are obligations on
the other hand and just as as an example
the New Guineans whom I dedicated my
book who she’s educated a lawyer became
pngs ambassador to the United States and
for long time I’ve been talking with her
about whether she’ll go back or whether
she’ll stay in the United States she’s
decided that she’ll go back to New
Guinea but she said the thing that she
likes about the United States she loves
New Guinea she’s got all the time but
what she most likes about the United
States is that she can sit down at a
sidewalk cafe in Washington DC order her
coffee read the newspaper and nobody is
going to come up to her and say oh I’ve
got trouble
can you give me some money that’s to say
she she enjoys the anonymity but she
also treasures the connections so that’s
a kind of best of both worlds scenario
but would it be true to say them that in
these traditional societies there’s no
sense of self that you know the tribe
the clan the belonging group always
precedes or takes precedence over the
self and that in fact a concept of the
self would be sort of anomalous in some
way I would phrase it differently there
written here is a sense of self do
individuals differ in New Guinea as much
as they differ in in the United States
or in in the UK but there’s the Nexus of
obligations which you’ve been brought up
and interestingly I had thought of the
obligations as being something something
voluntary something embraced the New
Guineans from a given group love to help
each other and it was therefore an
eye-opener to me went on on one occasion
I bought a Highlander too from his
village to a Highland town and I was
going to buy him some things that I
asked are you going to share all this
bring this back and share it with your
fellow clans people and his response was
a blunt force but share it with my
fellow clans people my relatives those
no-good lazy good-for-nothings no I work
hard I’m going to get it for myself and
so it’ll astray –tz– that that the
communality partly it’s because life is
out in the open everything is visible
and so you have to share yeah but if
you’re given the opportunity you can’t
take it for yourself and so New Guinea’s
nowadays they love trousers with pockets
and that they love opaque bags because
they hide stuff from their home
it’s plumbing so I guess it’s impossible
to be private in that situations nope
you are that’s true there’s no kind of
place to withdraw I mean I mean how does
that work in practice I mean its privacy
is something we treasure in the West
even though it’s becoming more and more
difficult to to preserve I mean I mean
how do people without putting to find a
point about how do people have kind of
an intimate life with one another let’s
go straight to the example what what
does one do about having sex in such a
society yes it is with you well children
up to the age of six share the mat with
the appearance yeah and I read an
account I think it happened to be for a
Polynesian Society but could be for any
ways around the world so the parents
have sex on the mat and the babies are
there next to them and if the baby looks
up then the parent will say to the baby
pull the blanket over your head and
don’t look right
simple would you there’s all sorts of
reactions to that number and that okay
they say you have a seven-year-old son a
interesting very interesting but again
that sort of plays to this idea that
there’s no individual that isn’t sort of
part of a group you’re you’re in play as
it were all the time aren’t you in play
well let’s sort having touched on some
of those broader themes I wonder if we
can zoom in a bit and consider as it
were the lifespan that one might have in
these two contrasting environments a
traditional one in a western one so sort
of going from birth to to aging because
maybe we can touch at some points along
the way like in terms of how people deal
with risk or justice and so on diet in
particular because it’s interesting you
talk about different approaches to child
rearing in in the two different
environments and I’m conscious as you
say I’ve got a seven-year-old and I’m
conscious because I’ve also got older
children too conscious of how much kind
of almost paranoia they seems to be in
as in kind of London in middle-class
environments about child rearing and
it’s more like sort of training athletes
for you know to be perfect in some way
you know they’ve got to have the piano
lessons the violin lessons the extra
math and so I mean there’s it’s quite an
intense so the almost factory based
approach to producing perfection and
it’s sort of pre transactional and it
seems to me getting worse you know and
the idea the idea I mean I was telling
Jared beforehand this anecdote I
overheard in the school playground a
mother talking to another mother saying
but have changed the name of their child
involved it’s called that Alice yes we
know what we want fairness we wanted to
read economics of Harvard
seven-year-old seven-year-old child so
pretty terrible but I think probably not
entirely unusual and it’s I think what
some parents are thinking if not they’re
actually expressing so when you hear
that Jarrett I mean how does that make
you feel what’s that make you think of
in terms of the contrast between the two
cultures this is one of the areas where
living and working in New Guinea has
most influenced my personal life namely
my approached having brought up my wife
and I bringing up our children there’s
of course diversity and how children are
brought up in traditional society just
as there is in modern state societies
but a generalization is that children in
traditional societies small-scale
societies are given far more
independence they’re allowed to make
their own decisions and an extreme
example is that in the in the New Guinea
Highlands when I started to work there I
was struck by the fact that most New
Guinea Highlanders have fire scars on
their arms and I thought that it was
because children there’s a adults have
fire scars and I thought that they had
acquired this as adults making fires but
know many of these fires caused most of
them are acquired from babies playing
close to the fire and the attitude of
the parents is it’s for that baby to
decide and the baby will have to learn
well that goes further my wife and I did
not let our children play next Tigers
body we did leave our children as much
freedom as possible to make their
choices in an example I was telling him
beforehand about my son’s career choice
that son at age 3 saw his first snake it
was love at first sight it was a dead
snake my wife and I and our snake lovers
but max loved that snake he did he
picked it up he carried it around for
two weeks he then wanted a pet snake all
right child is not to be denied if it’s
it we’re not gonna get him a poisonous
rattlesnake but we bought him a snake
and then another and eventually max
built up to 147 pet snakes frogs
reptiles
Vivienne’s was in the Salomon riots but
this is what got used to making his own
choices and as I was telling you when
Murray and I were on a vacation just
after you graduated college and he had
not made a career choice
one day while we were on a ship and $15
per minute ship to shore phone max
called us up and said and said I’ve
decided I’m going to become a chef and
tomorrow I want to enter culinary school
and I need to write a check will you
write the check well this is this is a
boy who made his own who were you raised
him to make his own choices I resonate
with their being asked to write a check
I have to say okay so but that doesn’t
that take us to veering a bit towards
one of the extremes we talked about
earlier which is rather idealizing these
traditional societies note the children
run wild they spontaneously develop
they’re incredibly creative yes they may
get a little bit burned every now and
then but in the grand scheme of things
you know they don’t die so let them run
free so are we skirting a bit too close
to that perhaps idealized vision
the reality is reasonably close to what
you described it’s not that the children
don’t die sadly maybe half of children
in traditional New Guinea or Africa die
but not of fires and knives they die
particularly of infectious diseases or
starvation or unavoidable accidents but
it is true that the degree of
Independence is far greater and oh and
most people who’ve worked who’ve lived
in traditional societies who have an
African new guinea or somewheres else
are struck by the the self-confidence
the independence the ability to make
their own choices of children five or
ten years old I don’t give just the
story to illustrate I was in a village
in New Guinea where we had lost our
Porter’s we needed Porter’s to get on to
the next village and most of the adults
the men were out of the village so I had
to hire as Porter’s anybody who would
volunteer there was a ten you boy I
asked made him ten years old
who
volunteered to carry goods for us and
was gonna be for a week well his parents
weren’t around but this is a
ten-year-old boy who can make his own
decision so he went off with a white man
and when his parents came back they
would have been told that their son went
to off with some white man in this
direction at the end of the week of
carrying stuff I needed to hire one or
two people to help me with my work on
birds and this 10 year old again
volunteered so instead of coming back in
a week as his parents thought he came
back a month later and as far as his
parents were New Guinea parents their
view is we’ve raised that child to be
independent and he can decide for
himself and he can size up the white man
but he negotiated with me a ten-year-old
child or even a five-year-old child
negotiates with me from a posture of
self-confidence and certainly my own
children at age 5 would not have been
able to negotiate a job right that’s
extraordinary example isn’t it and I
think this brings us onto the area of
how kind of risk is managed in life
because when I think one of the things
that drives us in the West to be perhaps
overprotective with our children and to
keep them indoors rather than playing on
the street is because because of a kind
of Daily Mail sort of paranoia we’ve
developed this idea that you know if we
let our children play on the street
they’ll immediately be seized by a
pedophile and we won’t ever see them
again you know there’s a kind of
generalized paranoia about this or if
not that that they’ll be mugged or
they’ll get run over or if they go and
play in the garden that they’ll get
stung you know it’s as if we see the
childhood environments that our children
play in as sort of a fraught with danger
and it makes us you know correspondingly
risk-averse but I assume you’re not
saying that in traditional societies
people have no sense of risk they just
think children are fine though they’ll
get on with it there’s because
presumably there’s much danger in the
societies you’re describing as there is
in the ones real or unreal that we find
in the West so what’s what’s going on
with that how does danger how do people
deal with danger in those circumstances
you are correct that of course there’s
danger in
just as there’s danger in the United
States the dangers are different in New
Guinea or in traditional or in Africa
the dangers are especially environmental
dangers lions crocodiles stinging
insects in our sanitized Western world
we’ve we’ve tamed the environments who
environmental dangers or less of the air
there are the dangers of infectious
diseases which we’ve tamed we face
different dangers cars for example but
it’s not just we’ve traded one set of
dangers for another set it’s that the
overall level of danger in New Guinea is
higher than in the UK and let me check
so it’s because I think there’s a
distinction between real and perceived
danger certainly in the case of child
rearing in this country I think the
perceived danger is much greater than
the real danger are you talking in the
New Guinea example about you were
talking about real danger and that
people don’t as it were bump up the
danger through perception in the way
that we do in the West correctly the
real level of danger in New Guinea’s is
higher than in the UK for two reasons
yeah it’s measured by shorter life span
traditionally they would die at 45 or 50
we died at 77 or 80 so the the level of
mortal danger per year is higher in New
Guinea and the other difference is that
dangers in the UK and in the u.s. damage
can often be repaired whereas in New
Guinea it cannot be repaired the one
occasion when I broke a leg bone in the
US it was crossing Harvard Square and
Cambridge Mass on the ice I stumbled
over to a telephone rang my physician
father who picked me up by leg on set
and I was okay for the rest of my life
we were in New Guinea if you break a leg
on one occasion in New Guinea when I
injured the leg I was 20 miles from the
coast and there was no way that I was
going to be able to walk out if I had
not recovered in addition if you break a
bone in New Guinea there are not
experienced surgeons who will set it and
so not only may not be able to walk
get out but if you do somehow walk out
you’re likely to end up crippled for the
rest of your life so New Guineans are
more alert to danger than we are
yes I mean what other things we’ll do
before we close this part of the
discussion is try and capture I guess
some of the kind of lessons that we can
learn from these societies and we were
chatting earlier and I think it comes up
in the book about just four very simple
things we can do like being much more
careful in the shower than we might
otherwise be because actually our chance
of slipping over in the shower and
hurting ourselves is infinitely greater
than getting blown up in an aircraft for
example if that happen to me I slipped
over in the shower and I was in my 20s
and was serious serious accident all you
have to do is to read the obituary
column or the necrology column of any
newspaper or any day and you will see
that a one of a communist causes of
either death or crippling or loss of
quality of life of older people is
falling in the shower or on a stepladder
or on the sidewalk or going up and down
stairs I have already done today the
most dangerous thing that I will do all
day today namely I took a shower in my
hotel bathroom which is not very well
designed and that you might say well
Jared that’s ridiculous your chances of
slipping in the shower or only one in a
thousand to which I would respond 1,000
isn’t good enough just do the numbers so
I’m 76 my life expectancy now is 15
years that means daily showers I have
five thousand four and seventy five
thousand and if my risk of foreign
crippled myself in the shower is as high
as 1 in 1,000 I’m gonna kill myself five
times before I live out my life
expectancy so I have learned to be
really careful about showers you may
have noticed mine holding on to the
banister as I walked in here because
those are the real dangers of our
everyday life not terrorists not plane
crashes but showers stepladders alcohol
I’m very pleased to see the inner nerd
in you come out in those statistics as
well so but clearly there is there is
nevertheless danger in those societies
and you mentioned right at the beginning
and we’re having a conversation here
without is killing one another right so
presumably you might not get you might
not sleep over in the shower but the
chances of actually being killed by
somebody from another group are real
mm-hmm
so it’s probably a more glamorous ending
than slipping down the stairs I’d
imagine but it’s more likely to make
make the newspaper yeah but it is true
that if you’re in a society a sedentary
society where you know your own group
and you know the people next door a
stranger really does mean I’m dangerous
so the the the antennae go up yeah um
again one of the most profound lessons
that I learned from New Guineans
it came out of an incident in early in
my career in New Guinea
I was with New Guineans starting birds
we were moving up a mountain
I was picking a new campsite and so I
picked a campsite in a broad place and a
ridge that would be great for
bird-watching under a gigantic beautiful
tree and there was a drop-off where I
could see Swift’s and Powers and pigeons
and I told the New Guineans let’s make
camp here and to my surprise they were
frightened they said we are knocking up
sleep under this tree what’s the matter
this tree is dead so I looked up and yes
the tree is dead but it’s colossal and I
said this tree is gonna fall down for 40
years no they would not sleep under the
tree they would grab sleep in the open
and at first I thought they were being
paranoid with exaggerated fears but as
time went on every night that I sleep in
the New Guinea jungle you can hear
somewheres a tree falling and then I did
the numbers and if every night you sleep
under a dead tree and if the chances of
the dead tree falling on you that night
are only 1 in 1,000 but you do it every
night in 3 years 1,000 you’ll be dead
so that yeah so the dangers are real and
the killing is real as fascinated to
read about how people deal with the
consequences or how they deal with
disputes and killings and you know
tension between different tribes and
plans not other groupings and so on and
and we were chatting about this earlier
because I think there really are some
lessons to be learned here about the
difference between Western approaches to
justice and the other approaches that
you describe in the book because you
know broadly speaking in the West we
think justice is the answer you know if
there’s been a breach of some kind we
deal with it through justice and justice
is in theory a way of kind of balancing
the scales but it’s quite a it’s
obviously legalistic and it’s quite a
cognitive approach almost analytic
approach to the aftermath of a breach or
a disaster or whatever it might be you
know something’s gone wrong there so we
must even it up with that crack you know
there’s a there’s a crime and there’s a
punishment and that’s how we sort of see
it in the West almost as a yes literally
it’s a kind of analytical balance but
it’s very striking reading what do you
had to say in this and talking with you
earlier that there are some costs and
consequences to that approach which is
that the opportunity to move on for
healing is much less taken care of so
there’s no there’s no kind of
therapeutic element if you like or no
restorative element in justice seen in
that very crude way so I think it would
be interesting for us to hear a little
bit more how we might learn from dealing
with let’s call them breaches crimes or
what have you in a way which is perhaps
more human and allows people to move on
and whether or not that’s only possible
because those societies are smaller and
people have to live with upon another
and get on with one another and
therefore wouldn’t apply to the West
anyway so two questions in one there but
sure yeah this is a good example because
here’s an earring we’ve we’ve talked
about it here is where I can learn as an
individual from the
unions about bringing up children levels
of danger but they’re also areas which
which we cannot adopt as individuals but
it’s instead that our society has to
adopt them so justice in the UK and in
the u.s. is administered by the state
and its concern is right or wrong and
making amends and asserting the
authority of the state if you are wrong
you are not permitted to take revenge
yourself you turn it over to the state
because many of the things that and in
fact sorry to interrupt in a certain
sense that’s sort of how we define
civilization in the West it’s precisely
not while justice its I might want to
get my own back on you but actually I’m
not going to do that we sublimate things
through through the state it’s almost
like a hops or something you know
there’s a higher authority which enables
us to be civilized it’s precisely that
you know without that we might be
savages quote some quotes yeah one one
can define the state as centralized
organization that arose in order to
monopolize force and in order to justify
doing that to assert the practice of
justice and many of our encounters many
of the rights and wrongs we encounter
are with strangers that we never saw
before we’ll never see again but anybody
in the UK or the US who’s been involved
in a divorce or an inheritance dispute
you know perfectly well that the court
system doesn’t care a bit about
emotional reconciliation it cares about
right wrong and alimony and child
support and who gets the inheritance and
the result tragically is so often is
usually that the divorcing couple end up
hating each other or that the brother
and sister and inheritance dispute end
up unable to speak to each other for the
rest of their life there was a New
Guinea in traditional societies the
purpose of resolving disputes because
those people who can be around you for
the rest of your life the interest is
not and right or wrong but the interest
is in restoring relationship so you can
deal with
that person forever yeah an extreme
example that surprised me was that a
friend Hmong New Guinea friend of mine
described to me that his father was
killed by the next group when his mother
was pregnant with him and there was
fighting that went on so that his group
left near ancestral lands and finally 25
years later they achieved reconciliation
that let them come back to the ancestral
lands the reconciliation my friends had
consisted of us holding a feast and
giving them pigs and I thought I’m
misunderstanding
why on earth are you giving them then
pigs when they’ve killed your father and
other people and he said well they also
had their own complaints that we were
trespassing on their land but the
purpose of the whole operation was to
restore feelings so that we could get
back to our ancestral lands it was not a
pretense of determining right or wrong
but it was of restoring relationships so
we could then live the rest of our lives
in peace okay okay but then to the
second question
maybe that’s only possible because those
are smaller societies whereas you know
in the West I mean I don’t have any
statistics at my fingertips that
although lots of people are killed by
people who know them it’s often the case
that people are killed by complete
strangers and so the imperative for a
restoration is somewhat weaker because
the chances of being in that community
with that person for a long period of
time are a lower is that right you are
correct that the the personal imperative
for restoring relationship is weak or
non-existent because the dispute or
crime involves someone that you never
saw and will never see again
but the emotional consequences are with
you for life I have several for one
friend whose sister was murdered fifty
years ago and the criminals the killers
were sent to prison and my friend 50
years later is still tortured by the
murder of his sister because there was
no emotional confrontation of
reconciliation yeah there’s a movement
that
you know in the UK I think that of the
we in the u.s. called restorative
justice which brings together victims of
crimes or the survivors of the victims
with criminals to see each other face to
face and to see that the criminal is not
an ogre but as a person that had his or
her own reasons for doing it and that
the victim is not some inconsequential
person but that I did that harm that
Widow by killing that man
I made her life miserable and the
restorative justice system is reasonably
well developed in New Zealand and Canada
and some one in the UK and it’s starting
in the US I think I mentioned to you
earlier that I’m involved in this is
classic sort of group therapy thing
called constellations and one of the
things that comes up again and again in
that is that when a murder takes place
the bond a bond is created between
perpetrator and victim which is as
strong as any bond created and any other
kind of as it were a normal walk of life
and that it doesn’t go away anyway
I’m conscious of time I want us to talk
a little bit before handing over to the
audience about kind of later life and
how we deal with aging and so on and of
course enroute to that and you’ve
mentioned life expectancy our lifestyle
factors like diet and you know how that
affects longevity positively or
negatively and one of the facts that I
stuck out for me from many facts that
you’ve enumerated in the book is this
one about the pizza do you remember this
there’s more salt in one pizza than
there is in the entire life entire
yearly intake or somebody from Papua New
Guinea if I remember that correctly that
is true in particular there is a there’s
a restaurant in Orange County here the
food inspectors measured the amount of
salt in a new
Neal and was 18 grams whereas for New
Guinea harlot or yanomamö Indian soil
consumption per day is 50 milligrams
which means that that noodle Neal
contains one years worth of salt intake
for New Guinea Highlander and the
consequences of that are that we get
stroke and hypertension whereas in
traditional Guinea
no one got stroke hypertension type 2
diabetes heart disease yeah and not only
that but as you know in the West we now
have growing concerns over an aging
population dementia Alzheimer’s are
becoming more and more prevalent in this
society we’re not sure how to deal with
it we feel there’s a you know there’s a
resource issue there’s a finance issue
and so on what what are the things we
could potentially learn from traditional
societies in terms of how we might deal
with our older folk the most surprising
single fact that I learned in the course
of the reading for my book has to do
with with recent research with the last
five years on the prognosis of
Alzheimer’s disease and the dimensions
of old age this went on in Toronto
Canada
so Alzheimer’s in the old aged men
they’re feared because they they seem to
be unstoppable there’s nothing you can
do about them people talk about playing
bridge or pseudo GU but the fact is
there’s no evidence there until recently
there’s been no evidence that anything
protected you against the symptoms of
Alzheimer’s disease until a study in
Toronto in a old old people’s homes show
that the one predictor is that bilingual
or multilingual people get on the app if
they’re going to get Alzheimer’s they
get on the average five years of
protection against the symptoms of
Alzheimer’s the reason is that of course
being bilingual or multilingual is is
the most constant exercise you can have
for the brain what we don’t know is
whether a multilingual person with ten
languages gets only five years of
protection as those are bilingual
I have a personal interest in this
because
with 13 languages I would get 65 years
of protection but if it maxes out at
bilingualism then my other 11 languages
are doing me no good the fact that you
can ask for beer in German brings you to
great benefits one is your drinking the
greatest beers of the world with due
respect to the UK and the other is that
your ability to do this will give you
five years protection in case god forbid
etc okay Jarrod’s been fascinating this
part of the discussion we’ve moved from
a kind of general discussion about what
we mean by society what we mean by
traditional whether we should idealize
not idealize what lessons we can learn
talked a little bit about life stages if
you like bringing up children dealing
with dispute and getting older and so on
so we’ve done a bit of an arc and I’m
sure you know through through that
conversation there’ll be lots of things
that have come up in the minds of the
audience questions and themes and so on
so what I suggest is now for the next 20
minutes or so we turn to the audience
and if you’re happy to take questions
from hello professor Jarrett and
Portuguese 30 year old girl and what I
have two questions one what about the
sense of belonging in the societies you
saw in New Guinea up is it different do
people get more mental or psychiatric
conditions or do you see them some
disturbances because just Western
society it’s increasingly often second
it would have to do with how do they
deal with sexuality
I mean prejudice I don’t know the right
word for preconception
I’m not English so how do they deal with
different do you mean discrimination yes
we’re discrimination right not only
women but also against sexuality itself
okay so that would be my two questions
these are both very interesting
questions to take the first one sense of
belonging and the consequence for people
who lack a sense of belonging of
psychiatric conditions I’ve often asked
friends who are physicians or
psychiatrists who have experience in
traditional societies whether the
frequency of mental disorders
is higher lower or different mental
disorders and the answer they give me is
we don’t know the reason we don’t know
is the difficulty of diagnosing bipolar
conditions or other mental disorders in
a New Guinea society compared to a
Western society what I can say from my
observation is that that in New Guinea
often I see in villages people who the
villagers themselves recognize as being
they would say long-long that’s that
they the person has a mental problem but
the person is never less integrated
within village life and does what he or
she can so that’s the first question
and the second question sexuality and
prejudice varies enormous ly among
traditional societies things that vary
heterosexuality versus homosexuality
child sexuality it’s difficult to
generalize the only generalization is
that there was a study that looked at
the role of women in many respects in
traditional societies and it turns out
that there’s not a single role of women
it’s not the case that that a society
treats women badly across the board at
least the well across the board
women they have more economic power and
less social power they more
child-rearing power a general pattern is
that that women in most traditional
societies and more authority as regards
the younger children and the involvement
of the men may be stronger after age six
but in short there’s just an enormous
variation in sexuality so these are two
important questions both of which would
have been worth a chapter in my book be
grateful that my book is already it’s
already long I want to ask you a
question which touches on the territory
that you’ve explored in your number in
your books and it’s quite a complicated
question but it’s to do with dealing
with some of the issues or of the limits
of our planet and the environmental
issue human nature human societies are
really formed and structured by the
essential requirements of living in in
an environment acquiring security
acquiring goods sugar of fats etc etc
and that that’s a driver of our
consumption pattern but in a sense we
need to transcend that way of of being
and living our lives and we need to
actually sublimate or suppress those
those drives to achieve a balance in a
limited system and you looked at this a
bit in in collapse but what are your
thoughts about how we can actually solve
that problem the limits of our planet
but our unlimited desire for consumption
and and security a shameless author
would recommend that you read my book
collapse but that would be utterly
shameless and I need to say something
worthwhile to you now so sir one thing
one thing that’s that’s will be useful
in getting us to a sustainable economy
and we’ve got to get to a sustainable
economy in the next 40 years because we
don’t we have finished at the rate that
we are depleting resources at the moment
important is for people to feel the
consequences of their own environmental
mistakes that’s to say their own
overconsumption
and for for example when I look at past
societies that have messed up their
environments and declined as a result
the ancient Maya the Qamar Easter
Islanders and so on and I look at
societies that have managed their
resources successfully for millennia
after millennia Japan to capilla Iceland
the New Guinea Islands and when I asked
are there any consistent differences one
difference seems to me that societies in
which the the elite the leaders feel the
consequences of their own environmental
mistakes are more likely to adopt sound
environmental policies whereas if the
leaders can insulate themselves from the
consequences of their actions they may
go on exploiting the environment and the
commoners may then be suffering
increasingly but the Kings may still
have enough food until it’s too late has
happened with with the Maya and that of
course it’s a worldwide problem today
because when one compares the first
world and the developing world
consumption rates in the first world in
the UK and us something like 32 times
those in the in the developing world but
the first world is not yet suffering the
consequences of its over-exploitation
what we need to do well to get us onto a
sustainable path we in the first world
need to suffer the consequences of our
destroying the environmental resources
on which we depend it’s interesting that
that doesn’t necessarily apply in the
case of obesity which is a direct form
of overconsumption I mean there’s a
direct consequence of eating too much
which you get fat so you’re faced with
it pretty immediately and yet we have
obese societies where it seems to be the
norm and accept it in fact part of your
belonging is to look the same as
everybody else this illustrates the fact
that that for individuals as for
society’s knowledge of what is good
doesn’t good for you or for the society
doesn’t mean that you will do what is
good for you or for the society there’s
now widespread information from public
health about the importance of a healthy
diet
and nevertheless the frequency of
diabetes in the UK and us at seven
type-2 at seven to nine percent but
diabetes is exploding in India and China
and in the Mideast and it’s exploding
because those societies are acquiring
affluence the ability to get onto a
Western diet before they’ve acquired the
public health knowledge of how the
Western diet is bad for them and so you
have the irony that in India and China
diabetes particularly afflicts wealthy
urban people whereas in the UK in u.s.
diabetes particularly affects poor two
things I’d really like your observations
on the first is when you stated that
societies become more enclosed and
certainly with the tribes in New Guinea
they identify themselves by their name
and the village they come from and
Robert you mentioned that you find that
quite frustrating and enclosed and I
would argue that we actually identify
ourselves on a daily basis with branded
labels the car we drive the area we
choose to live in so I’d like your
comments on that and the second thing is
with regard to learn to dangers I think
we all learned angels but I would query
the fact that we probably take less
responsibility for learning dangers in
Western society because our lives are
more and more complicated on a daily
basis whereas a New Guinea arguably
lives are more simplistic but they rely
more heavily on instinct learned
instinct two very interesting questions
as regards identity identity in
traditional societies is a social
identity that refers to the group into
which you were born or into which you
marry and so at various levels the
identity is your clan your village your
tribe your language group and nowadays
your nation
the types of identity that you mentioned
that you mentioned they’re real types of
identity there are people who identified
who identified themselves as I used to
as a folks fog an owner and I certainly
identify myself as a Bostonian as a
Boston Red Sox fan and a Yankee hater
but the those that those are acquired
identities they’re not born or marital
social groupings that’s the difference
in their density the second thing about
less responsibility it’s a very
interesting point that you mentioned the
reality is that the dangers that we many
of the dangers that the real dangers for
us in the UK in the u.s. are mostly
dangers that are under our control we
worry about terrorists and GM crops and
things done to us but really the main
dangers that we face are alcohol
slipping and so on the the average
person this is gonna sound funny but the
average if you ask the average person
what is your risk of having a car
accident the average person will say my
risk of having a car accident is lower
than the average person because I Drive
carefully that’s to say for things that
are under our control we minimize the
risk because we think that we are
careful and yet by definition the
very interesting question it’s something
that I wrestled with in the first
chapter of my my book um we we’re
accustomed we in state-level societies
are accustomed to defying boundaries
that are surveyed and God and their
customs posts and and controls at the
borders in traditional societies
boundaries range all the way from as
fixed as in modern state-level societies
to very fluid cases where traditional
societies that have well-defined
boundaries tend to be densely populated
sedentary societies that have valuable
stuff to protect such as pigs or fields
and large enough population that you can
devote some men to patrolling the
boundary and so for example for the
denied people of the bow valley of
western New Guinea the boundaries are
sufficiently well defined that
traditional dan I put up watchtowers at
the boundary and men would spend some
men would spend all day in the
watchtowers looking out to see whether
people from the other side we’re going
to come sneak across so those are
boundaries as well-defined as the
boundary between France and Germany at
the opposite extreme societies living at
low population densities that are mobile
where there’s not valuable stuff to
defend tend to have rather fluid
boundaries that’s to say each group they
have its home days and they have first
rights to a certain area but other
people can come into that area on a
reciprocal sharing base and so for
example for the people of the
Kalahari Desert water holes would be
onde but in a draw year when many water
holes dry up the people over there can
come use your water hole but in return
the expectation is that when they’re
mongongo nuts or producing you then have
the reciprocal right to go harvest among
Congo nuts so a short answer then is
that the boundaries in traditional
societies run the whole spectrum from as
strict as in modern state-level
societies to quite fluid but always
based on shared relationships and shared
as opposed to state definition as
opposed to state as opposed to state
definition in the case of the the Dan I
of the bowel and Valley there is no
state but each cry would never less
define its area and it patrolling with
West African societies where they seem
good question perhaps the best answer I
can give to that is a one sentence
answer that a friend of mine a cultural
anthropologist whose work worked for
decades in an interior country of Africa
said about comparing the lives of rural
Africans with the lives of Americans he
summed up by saying their lives in
Africa materially poor but socially
richer than our lives meaning that they
have their lifelong friendships they
have their relationships they have the
material poverty they have misery from
more deaths of children but they have us
but the phenomenon of loneliness
particularly loneliness in old age is
non-existent in a sedentary traditional
society oh hi I’ve just come back from a
remote part of Australia called
Katherine in the Northern Territory so
I’ve got two questions the first one is
about the Dreaming and whether in Papua
New Guinea they have a similar way of
organizing and communicating
spirituality and the second one is about
you might not want to answer I don’t
have time to answer both them it’s like
ons about how when a generation of
indigenous people leave their community
what’s the relationship in your
experience of the second and third
generations when they go back to their
land and their spiritual beliefs on on
the first question about about
spirituality virtually all societies
traditional especially all traditional
societies have something that can be
identified as religion one can get a
debate about defining a religion my long
chapter on religion has a table of one
and a half pages with 13 different
definitions of of religion but virtually
all traditional societies have something
that we would recognize as religion
whether it’s defined by belief in us in
a supernatural whether it’s defined as
the power of certain acts producing
certain results
the term dreaming is a term applied
particularly to Aboriginal Australian
spiritual beliefs
the term dreaming is not applied in New
Guinea but nevertheless the the
spiritual beliefs in New Guinea within
the general framework of spiritual
beliefs in Australia that’s to say
they’re all religious beliefs
the second question about going back
after two or three generations that’s
rare in traditional societies going back
after one generation my friend whom I
mentioned whose father had been killed
while he was in utero in his mother his
group returned after one generation I am
trying to think of any New Guinea group
that returned after two or three
generations certainly New Guinea groups
have their tribal memories and they’ll
remember that we were driven out of that
land a couple of generations ago but
it’s unusual in at least in my
experience for New Guineans to make the
effort to recover land of three
generations ago in the way that I saw
the effort to recover their land of one
generation but it’s worth testing is
that atheism is very much Western
phenomenon is there such a thing as
atheism in traditional societies I am
not aware partly depends upon the
definition but I’m not aware of any
traditional society that lacks something
that we would call religious beliefs the
religious beliefs we might not identify
with a God in traditional New Guinea
societies people don’t talk about God’s
there are place other societies that
they would talk about God they would be
talking about spirits they would be talk
about their ancestors they would be
talking about their ancestors going up
to the sky and then coming back in the
form of birds but in this if you define
atheism as a lack of what we would
recognize as religious beliefs I am not
aware of any traditional society that’s
that’s that’s this is this is a great
question to end on I think thank you
very much how the tradition societies
perceive success well as you see I’m
having to think about that in New Guinea
Highlands society individual success
among many among many New Guinea
Highlands is our individual success for
a man would be marked by how many pigs
you’ve accumulated and how many wives
you’ve accumulated I think we just need
to clear this out more more wives mean
that you can produce more pigs more pigs
mean that you can buy buy more wives so
for a man that’s the mark of success for
a woman I’ve not heard of marks of
success for women that maybe because of
the paucity of female anthropologists
who’ve asked about things such as
success I would guess that that women
women would measure success by their
ability in the garden by how much crops
they can bring home by their rearing of
their children and then success at the
society societal level success would be
measured by whether you’ve succeeded in
defeating the neighbouring groups and
whether you’ve succeeded in acquiring
more land so I guess you know I’m
evolving my answer to your interesting
question it’s the success would be
defined differently at the individual
level and at the group level and would
be defined differently for men and for
women thank you very much thank you for
the question either we’re gonna have to
bring things to close the witching hour
is upon us Jared I just want to say to
you thank you so much for your
generosity the ideas you’ve shared with
us and the spirit in which you’ve asked them thank you very much indeed
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