How Do You Explain This?
Acording to the ethnological/anthropological literature, our archaic ancestors would have nearly all been diagnosed with O.D.D. That’s “Oppositional Defiant Disorder.” That is, our distant relatives had serious “problems with authority” — in other words, they had problems with being told what to do.
Like this – – –
Briggs (1970:55-58) tells us in detail how religious services were conducted in iglus [igloos] and how Inuttiag (in the role of religious coordinator) tried at certain points to get his tiny congregation to stand. The community initially conformed, but then more and more people began to disregard his orders until the majority were ignoring him. At that point, he simply stopped trying to command them. –Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1999) p. 54
Is it a big deal to stand on cue during a church service? It was for our ancestors. But they were even more sensitive than that – – –
“Egalitarianism [among the !Kung of the Kalihari] is not simply the absence of a headman and other authority figures, but a positive insistence on the essential equality of all people and a refusal to bow to the authority of others …” (Lee 1979:457) quoted in (Boehm 1999:61) In fact to the !Kung, even just the arrogance of leadership amounts to a crime.
Such “oppositional” behavior was given a name in early America — Drapetomania — to explain why slaves, who lived an “idyllic existence” after all, would try to escape.
Such “problems with authority” were first diagnosed as a mental disorder in the Shrinks’ Bible, DSM III in 1980 as OD (Oppositional Disorder) and later, in 1987’s DSM III-R as full-blown O.D.D.
In fact, however, such so-called problems with authority are almost certainly reasonable, desirable — and genetic.
Because of the way we’ve been taught to think, however, this is hard for most of us to accept. Hollywood, John Wayne movies, cop shows, etc. but especially the hidden curriculum in government schools. One tell-tale result that shows up in our thinking as a result is, for example, the fallacy of the chief – – –
“There is a basic fallacy concerning Indian leadership of which nearly all are guilty. For purposes of discussion, we can refer to it as the ‘fallacy of the chief.’ Sometime in the pioneer era, we fell victim to the belief that the prevailing pattern of political organization among all American Indians was hereditary dictatorship; in other words, that a ruler from a particular lineage exercised unlimited power over a group of obedient subjects. … So ingrained is this belief that today the average tourist, when visiting an Indian reservation, is likely to ask ‘which one is the chief?’ … The North American Indians had ‘chiefs’ but often these were mere advisors and virtually never dictators. Except in emergencies, they had no power over the lives and property of their fellows.” –James E. Officer, Journal of American Indian Education, Volume 3 Number 1
And, from the “other” side – – –
“Before the white man came, we Indians had no chiefs. We had leaders, of course, men and women chosen by consensus for their wisdom and courage. The idea of a pyramidal hierarchy with a single person at the top was European. When whites first demanded to speak to a “chief,” my ancestors didn’t quite know how to respond. They pushed somebody out in front as spokesman–not necessarily the brightest or the bravest guy around, just someone willing to talk to the strangers and find out what they wanted in our country. But as far as the whites were concerned, he was our monarch, a sort of petty king, and therefore entitled to special privileges.” –Russell Means, Where White Men Fear to Tread (Los Angeles, Ca: General Publishing Group December 1996) p. 222
In fact, groups without permanent chiefs or leaders, that is without permanent established hierarchy, were first recognized in the late 19th Century by early ethnographers and anthropologists – – –
“With the help of Morgan (1877), scientific anthropology emerged in the nineteenth century as a robust but tiny discipline that faced the enormous task of explaining nonliterate cultures and their natural history to a world of urban literates.” … These small local groups [“bands” and “tribes”] had no leaders with any real authority; in contrast to
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