Seinfeld Ethnography (44)—George's Tip Jar

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific.

[a] Tipster RF

Click below for all "Seinfeld Ethnography" posts: 

George Eats Trash     No Soup for You     Elaine Exclaims    The Puffy Shirt    Poppie's Pizza     Mr. Bookman

Marine Biologist         The Doorman          Opposite George   Newman's Mail   The Bootleg         Marriage
Just Dessert               Sleep Desk             Late Coffee            High Stakes        Motor Oil              Downtown 
Code Cracking           Nonfat Yogurt          Bad Boy                 It's Not You         I Can't Be...          Exploding Wallet
Elaine Flies Coach    The Close Talker     The Alliance           Broccoli               Coated Culture    Dinner Party
George's Friend        Jerry's Haircut          Face Paint             Mustachioed       Smoking              East River
Pool Man                   Dunkin' Joe              Life Lessons          Reckoning          Dog Medicine      Shower Heads
Looking Busy            George Tips             Kramer's Job          Empty Tank
Click here for the reference to the "Argonauts" title, below.

Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific

Historical contingency. That's what I want to think about today. And authenticity...well, and doing it over. You see, George wants to make sure that his dollar is seen as it goes into the tip jar. This is not a new issue—for George or for us. By chance (historical contingency), the guy behind the counter looks away and attends to other business just as the bill goes in.  I must say that I am amazed how often this happens in "real life," but that is another issue for another time. The real issue here, it seems to me, is that George tries to hit the ol' reset button on this little fragment of structural negotiation—this tiny event in a big, confusing world. Take a look at George's travails, and think about how you might handle the situation. If it hasn't happened to you yet...it will.

George's Tip Jar 0:36

[b] Chance RF

I have had this theme lined up for weeks, but chance would have it that a similar situation occurred for me today. I ordered my coffee and the proprietor turned to prepare it just as I was putting a dollar in the bowl. As more chance would have it (chance and structures often intersect, you see), I had not released the bill yet. Daring not pull back on my forward motion (putting it back in my pocket only to "tip" again seemed ridiculous on an almost Costanza level), I set it on the tip bowl in a way that would make the new bill hard to miss. When it was all over—the whole "event" took several seconds—I felt silly for the obvious "look, I gave you a tip" angle of the bill. Having watched George's tip clip, though, I let it be.

George has taught us that the sanctity of the tip jar's inner bowl must never be violated.

But enough about me. Maybe it is just George and Rob who seem to tip just as others are turning their attentions elsewhere. I am intrigued above all by the role of chance in the whole cultural encounter, and the expectation of the giver that the receiver will notice. George is just a little too obvious, of course, and way too concerned with his lost opportunity. Still, attentions are fickle, and "our" investment in the tip-giving may not be at all equal to the tip-receiver's. In fact, as I have pointed out before on these pages, acknowledgment creates its own kind of awkward moment.

[c] Tips RF

So, what readings will we tackle today as we think about fate, luck, and contingency? Since I am in northern Virginia right now, and do not have access to my full library, I cannot pick out the readings that would be my obvious choices (Martha Nussbaum's work, among them). On the other hand, that is part of the fun of these weekly posts for me. I get to think about our themes in ways that might not have been apparent to me if my library selection had been wider. Consider it a kind of bibliographical bricolage, and let's have some fun contrasting George's moment with history, philosophy, and cultural theory.

We start with T.S. Eliot's opening lines from Burnt Norton—some of the most prescient words ever written about time and chance. We then take a detour to Darwin, and Louis Menand's discussion of chance in natural selection from his fine book, The Metaphysical Club. We conclude with one of my favorite books, and an odd discussion (given our study of George) of learning. Just imagine George in the various learning environments Bateson offers. If you really imagine George under those learning conditions, it can be great fun.

[d] Possibility ADV

Burnt Norton
T.S. Eliot (1943)
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in times past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
                               But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.[1]

[e] Finch fate ADV

Chance and Natural Selection
Louis Menand (2004)

Darwin thought that variations do not arise because organisms need them (which is essentially what Larmarck had argued). He thought that variations occur by chance, and that chance determines their adaptive utility. In all seasons it happens that some finches are born with marginally longer and narrower beaks than others, just as children of the same parents are not all exactly the same height. In certain environmental conditions, a narrower beak may have a positive or negative survival value, but in other conditions—for example, when seeds are plentiful and finches are few—it may make no difference. The "selection" of favorable characteristics is therefore neither designed nor progressive. NO intelligence, divine or otherwise, determines in advance the relative value of individual variations, and there is no ideal type of "finch," or essence of "finchness," toward which adaptive changes are leading...

A way of thinking that regards individual differences as inessential departures from a general type is therefore not well suited for dealing with the general world. A general type is fixed, determinate, and uniform; the world Darwin described is characterized by chance, change, and difference—all the attributes general types are designed to leave out.[2]

[f] Apperception ADV

Contexts of Positive Learning
Gregory Bateson (1942)

Most profitably, I believe, we can combine the insights of the experimental psychologists with those of the anthropologists, taking the contexts of experimental learning in the laboratory and asking of each what sort of apperceptive habit we should expect to find associated with it; then looking around the world for human cultures in which this habit has been developed. Inversely, we may be able to get a more definite—more operational—definition of such habits as "free will" if we ask about each, "What sort of experimental learning context would we devise in order to inculcate this habit?" How would we rig the maze or problem-box so that the anthropomorphic rat shall obtain a repeated and reinforced impression of his own free will?"

The classification of contexts of experimental learning is as yet very incomplete, but certain definite advances have been made. It is possible to classify the principal contexts of positive learning (as distinct from negative learning or inhibition, learning not to do things) under four heads, as follows:
     (1) Classical Pavlovian contexts
     These are characterized by a rigid time sequence in which the conditioned stimulus (e.g., buzzer) always recedes the unconditioned stimulus (e.g., meat powder) by a fixed interval of time. This rigid sequence of events is not altered by anything that the animal may do. In these contexts, the animal learns to respond to the conditioned stimulus with behavior (e.g., salivation) which was formerly evoked only by the unconditioned stimulus.
     (2) Contexts of instrumental reward or escape
     These are characterized by a sequence which depends upon the animal's behavior. The unconditioned stimulus in these contexts is usually vague (e.g., the whole sum of circumstances in which the animal is put, the problem-box) and may be internal to the animal (e.g., hunger). If an when, under these circumstances, the animal performs some act within its behavioral repertoire and previously selected by the experimenter (e.g., lifts its leg), it is immediately rewarded.
     (3) Contexts of instrumental avoidance
     These are also characterized by a conditional sequence. The unconditioned stimulus is usually definite (e.g., a warning buzzer) and this is followed by an unpleasant experience (e.g., electric shock) unless in the interval the animal performs some selected act (e.g., lifts leg).
     (4) Contexts of serial and rote learning
     These are characterized by the predominant conditioned stimulus being an act of the subject. He learns, for example, always to give the conditioned response (nonsense syllable B) after he has himself uttered the conditioned stimulus (nonsense syllable A).

This small beginning of a classification will be sufficient to illustrate the principles with which we are concerned and we can now go on to ask about the occurrence of the appropriate apperceptive habits among men of various cultures...[3]

Notes

[1] T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1971), 13.

[2] Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2001), 122-123.

[3] Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 170-173.

Bibliography

Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. 
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1971.

Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2001.

NEXT

Wednesday, March 28th
Kramer Gets a Job

No, really. Kramer works his way up from the bathroom to the board room. Long story. See you next week on Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific

Seinfeld Ethnography (42)—Shower Heads

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific.

[a] Trickle RF

Click below for all "Seinfeld Ethnography" posts: 

George Eats Trash     No Soup for You     Elaine Exclaims    The Puffy Shirt    Poppie's Pizza     Mr. Bookman

Marine Biologist         The Doorman          Opposite George   Newman's Mail   The Bootleg         Marriage
Just Dessert               Sleep Desk             Late Coffee            High Stakes        Motor Oil              Downtown 
Code Cracking           Nonfat Yogurt          Bad Boy                 It's Not You         I Can't Be...          Exploding Wallet
Elaine Flies Coach    The Close Talker     The Alliance           Broccoli               Coated Culture    Dinner Party
George's Friend        Jerry's Haircut          Face Paint             Mustachioed       Smoking              East River
Pool Man                   Dunkin' Joe              Life Lessons          Reckoning          Dog Medicine      Shower Heads
Looking Busy            George Tips             Kramer's Job          Empty Tank
Click here for the reference to the "Argonauts" title, below.

Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific

[b] Hygiene RF

Jerry, Kramer, and Newman can't get the shampoo out of their hair. They (or at least some of them) seem to favor conservation in theory, but they want more practical water flowing onto their heads, sweeping away the pH residue from their Suave, Prell, Head and Shoulders, or L'Oreal Vive Pro for Men. They have dome hair, and are not themselves. Take a watch. 

Shower Heads 4:29 

"Low flow...I don't like the sound of that."
"I just took a bath Jerry...a bath."
"If I don't have a good shower, I'm not myself. I feel weak and ineffectual. I'm not Kramer."

So you won't be particularly surprised that today I wish to reflect upon matters of conservation, hygiene, and, well, self. What is it to be "a self?"

"I'm not myself when..." 

[b] Mashed RF

How many times do we say things like that? What is it to be "one's self" (oneself)? What is it not to be (or feel) oneself? It is not as though we are the first students of the human condition to consider these questions. In fact, the knotty little relationship between individual and "society" has figured in almost every major philosophical treatise in the history of the world. Plato and Aristotle? Check✓. St. Augustine? Check✓. Confucius, Mencius, and Zhuangzi? Check✓. Ibn Khaldun? Check✓. Immanuel Kant? Check✓.

There is a peculiar relationship between self, personal hygiene, and social interaction. While pasty hair may be problematic even if one is alone on a desert island (I cannot help but think of Tom Hanks here), there is no doubt that it is compounded by the frenzy of social interaction. There's nothing like a startled "What happened to your head?" question to awaken threads and vines of amour-propre. The mirror does not just show us to ourselves. It speaks to us in a voice we have internalized from "society." There is nothing quite as motivating—for our low-flow apartment troika—as seeing others as others see us...especially if our heads look like the top of a single scoop ice cream cone. 

***  ***

Our readings this week are a stretch, and that should not surprise anyone who reads Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific. I am interested in self, society....and hygiene. To begin, I have chosen two of the best musings on self and society written in the Western tradition. It will be apparent to anyone who reads through Rousseau's Emile and George Herbert Mead's Mind, Self, and Society that they take us a long, long way beyond shower heads and even poppy seeds. Yes. That is how this stuff works on Round and Square. These readings are meant to be juxtaposed with the Seinfeld clip above—read against the grain of the material that came before. 

Glance over them and think about the relationship between individual and society...and shampoo...and social interaction...and black market commerce....and vanity. I have concluded with a reading that most definitely speaks to tepid water and weak flow. After musing upon human nature in the phrasings of Rousseau and Mead, enjoy Claude Lévi-Strauss's account of sea travel, human needs, and time.

[d] Child self ADV

Jean Jacques Rousseau
Emile, or On Education (1762)
A child's first sentiment is to love himself; and the second, which derives from the first, is to love those who come near him, for in the state of weakness that he is in, he does not recognize anyone except by the assistance and care he receives...A child is therefore naturally inclined to benevolence, because he sees that everything approaching him is inclined to assist him; and from this observation he gets the habit of a sentiment favorable to his species. But as he extends his relations, his needs, and his active or passive dependencies, the sentiment of his connections with others is awakened and produces the sentiment of duties and preferences. Then the child becomes imperious, jealous, deceitful, and vindictive. If he is bent to obedience, he does not see the utility of what he is ordered, and he attributes it to caprice, to the intention of tormenting him; and he revolts. If he is obeyed, as soon as something resists him he sees in it a rebellion, an intention to resist him. He beats the chair or the table for having disobeyed him. Self-love, which regards only ourselves , is contented when our true needs are satisfied. But amour-propre, which makes comparisons, is never content and never could be, because this sentiment, preferring ourselves to others, also demands other to prefer us themselves, which is impossible.

This is how the gentle and affectionate passions are born of self-love, and how the hateful and irascible passions are born of amour-propre. Thus what makes man essentially good is to have few needs and to compare himself little to others; what makes him essentially wicked is to have many needs and to depend very much on opinion. On the basis of this principle it is easy to see how all the passions of children and men can be directed to good and bad. It is true that since they are not able always to live alone, it will be difficult for them always to be good. This same difficulty will necessarily increase with their relations; and this, above all, is why the dangers of society make art and care all the more indispensable for us to forestall in the human heart the depravity born of their new needs.[1]

[e] Self and society ADV

George Herbert Mead
The Self (1934)

The self, as that which can be an object to itself, is essentially a social structure, and it arises in social experience. After a self has arisen, it in a certain sense provides for itself its social experiences, and so we can conceive of an absolutely solitary self. But it is impossible to conceive of a self arising outside of social experience. When it has arisen we can think of a person in solitary confinement for the rest of his life, but who still has himself as a companion, and is able to think and to converse with himself as he had communicated with others. That process to which I have just referred, of responding to one's self as another responds to it, taking part in one's own conversation with others, being aware of what one is saying to determine what one is going to say thereafter—that is a process with which we are all familiar. We are continually following up our own address to other persons by an understanding of what we are saying, and using that understanding in the direction of our continued speech. We are finding out what we are going to say, what we are going to do, by saying and doing, and in the process we are continually controlling the process itself. In the conversation of gestures what we say calls out a certain response in another and that in turn changes our own action, so that we shift from what we started to do because of the reply the other makes. The conversation of gestures is the beginning of communication.

The individual comes to carry on a conversation of gestures with himself. He says something, and that calls out a certain reply in himself which makes him change what he was going to say. One starts to say something, we will presume an unpleasant something, but when he starts to say it he realizes that it is cruel. The effect on himself of what he is saying checks him; there is here a conversation of gestures between the individual between the individual and himself. We mean by significant speech that the action is one that affects the individual himself, and that the effect upon the individual himself is part of the intelligent carrying out of the conversation with others. Now we, so to speak, amputate that social phase and dispense with it for the time being, so that one is talking to one's self as soon as one would talk to another person.[2]

[f] Tepid ADV

Claude Lévi-Strauss
On Board Ship (1955)
In addition to its human load, the boat was carrying some kind of clandestine cargo. Both in the Mediterranean and along the west coast of Africa, we spent a fantastic amount of time dodging into various ports, apparently to escape inspection by the English navy...Because of the heat, which became more intense as we approached the tropics, it was impossible to remain below and the deck was gradually turning into dining-room, bedroom, day-nursery, wash-house and solarium. 

But the most disagreeable feature was what is referred to in the army as the sanitary arrangements. Against the rail on either side—port for the men, starboard side for the women—the crew had erected two pairs of wooden huts, with neither windows nor ventilation; one contained a few shower sprinklers which only worked in the morning; the other was provided with a long wooden trough crudely lined with zinc and leading directly into the sea, for the obvious reason. Those of us who were averse to crowds and shrank from collective squatting, which was in any case rendered unsteady by the lurching of the ship, had no choice but to get up very early; and throughout the entire trip a kind of race developed between the fastidious passengers, so that towards the end it was only at about three o'clock in the morning that one could hope for relative privacy. 

Finally, it was no longer possible to go to bed at all. Except for the time difference of two hours, the same was true for the shower-baths, where the idea uppermost in every mind was, if not to protect one's modesty, at least to succeed in finding a place in the crowd under the insufficient supply of water, which seemed to turn to steam through contact with so many clammy bodies, and hardly touched the skin. In either case, there was a general urge to complete the operation quickly and get out, for the unventilated huts were made of planks of unseasoned, resinous pine which, after being impregnated with dirty water, urine, and sea air, began to ferment in the sun and give off a warmish, sweet and nauseous odour; this, added to other smells, very soon became intolerable, especially when there was a swell.[3] 

Notes

[1] Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile or On Education [Translated by Allan Bloom] (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 213-214.

[2] George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), 140-141.

[3] Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques [Translated by John and Doreen Weightman] (New York: Penguin Books, 1973), 25-26. 

Bibliography
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques [Translated by John and Doreen Weightman]. New York: Penguin 
          Books, 1973.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. Emile or On Education [Translated by Allan Bloom]. New York: Basic Books, 
          1979.

Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934. 

NEXT

Wednesday, March 14th
George Looks Busy
George looks busy. George is a master of the art.

Seinfeld Ethnography (41)—Dog Medicine

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific.

[a] Dogvision RF

Click below for all "Seinfeld Ethnography" posts: 

George Eats Trash     No Soup for You     Elaine Exclaims    The Puffy Shirt    Poppie's Pizza     Mr. Bookman

Marine Biologist         The Doorman          Opposite George   Newman's Mail   The Bootleg         Marriage
Just Dessert               Sleep Desk             Late Coffee            High Stakes        Motor Oil              Downtown 
Code Cracking           Nonfat Yogurt          Bad Boy                 It's Not You         I Can't Be...          Exploding Wallet
Elaine Flies Coach    The Close Talker     The Alliance           Broccoli               Coated Culture    Dinner Party
George's Friend        Jerry's Haircut          Face Paint             Mustachioed       Smoking              East River
Pool Man                   Dunkin' Joe              Life Lessons          Reckoning          Dog Medicine      Shower Heads
Looking Busy            George Tips             Kramer's Job          Empty Tank
Click here for the reference to the "Argonauts" title, below.

[b] Beach cure RF

Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific

That's a nasty cough Kramer's got there. He doesn't like doctors, though, and wouldn't see an M.D. if his bronchitis depended on it. So he coughs, hacks, pants, and (to make a two and a half minute story short), finds a new best friend. They seek treatment together. Take a look.

Dog Pills 2:32

"We share the same affliction, so I'm going to have a vet check us out." 

"A vet?" 

"Oh, I'll take a vet over an M.D. any day. They gotta be able to cure a lizard, a chicken, a pig, a frog—all on the same day."

[c] Treat(ed) RF

You know how it goes from there. This is one of the strangest scenes by the strangest character in a rather odd show. The conflation of symptoms—drinking out of the toilet will do that—leads to a conflation of treatments (and medicines). Indeed, George looks positively professorial in this scene, complete with book, searching questions, and considered pauses. Smuckers also plays a practiced straight man('s best friend) in the unfolding narrative.

If you are a longtime reader of Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific, I suspect that your mind might be wandering ahead to the readings. How on earth are we going to find historical and cultural themes to contrast with big, foul, dog pills? Remember, it's all about the juxtaposition, so finding texts was a joy tempered only by the fact that I am not near my personal library filled with ethnographic texts detailing magic, healing, and various ritual cures. No matter. Even the trunkload of books I hauled with me to the nation's capital has more themes to juxtapose with dog medicine than you can wave a leash at.

[d] Zealous RF

Our first text tests our juxtaposition theme from the outset. As I state almost every week in this series of posts, the weekly analytical readings are not meant to "echo" the Seinfeld clip. Instead, they are meant to be read against the grain of it. It is juxtaposition, not reflection, that is our interpretive quarry. Well, our first reading this week is from an author and book I have admired for some time. Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind came to my attention my junior year in college, when my anthropology professor, Paul Riesman, exclaimed that it was a book worth pondering...and pondering. I keep a copy in my car (along with T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets and a copy of the U.S. Constitution—the latter mostly as an intellectual defense against zealotry—so I have something good to read if I am stranded without notebook or Kindle. In fact, I read a few pages of Steps to an Ecology of Mind while waiting for a fresh pot of coffee to brew in a Maryland service plaza the other night. That's why I have chosen a first reading on schizophrenia. Bateson thought about it a lot; Kramer thinks like a dog. I just couldn't resist.

[e] Return RF

Our second reading comes from Laura Bohannan's classic reflection on fieldwork, Return to Laughter. It is one of the best books ever written about doing fieldwork, and has influenced several generations of anthropologists. I will not repeat the long story about its origin (I have mentioned it several times on these "screens" in the past), but the short version is that anthropology as a discipline was so subjectivity-challenged in the 1950s that Bohannan published Return to Laughter under a pseudonym (and as "a novel") so that her personal reflections would not cause her professionalism to be questioned. The scene I relate here is as "real" as any in her ethnographic work (of which this is a part, in almost everyone's opinion today). Finally, the third reading presents us with a little glimpse of what can happen to an academic thinking only of scholarly matters of history and culture when he absentmindedly reaches for his bag at the airport. So consumed is he with his research (even in this autobiographical recounting of events years later) that a misplaced bag seems almost to be a minor nuisance, despite the threat of jail time.

Gregory Bateson
Schizophrenic Communication (1956)

[f] Ecology ADV

According to our hypothesis, the term "ego function" (as this term is used when a schizophrenic is described as having a "weak ego function") is precisely the process of discriminating communicational modes either within the self or between the self and others. The schizophrenic exhibits weakness in three areas of such function: (a) He has difficulty in assigning the correct communicational mode to the messages he receives from other persons. (b) He has difficulty in assigning the correct communicational mode to those messages which he utters or emits nonverbally. (c) He has difficulty in assigning the correct communicational mode to his own thoughts, sensations, and percepts.

At this point it is appropriate to compare what was said in the previous paragraph with von Domarus' approach to the systematic description of the schizophrenic utterance. He suggests that the messages (and thought) of the schizophrenic are deviant in syllogistic structure. In place of structures which derive from the syllogism, Barbara, the schizophrenic, according to this theory, uses structures which identify predicates. An example of such a distorted syllogism is:
                                                     Men die.
                                                     Grass dies.
                                                     Men are grass.
But as we see it, von Domarus' formulation is only a more precise—and therefore valuable—way of saying that schizophrenic utterance is rich in metaphor. With that generalization we agree. But metaphor is an indispensable tool of thought and expression—a characteristic of all human communication, even of that of the scientist. The conceptual models of cybernetics and the energy theories of psychoanalysis are, after all, only labeled metaphors. The peculiarity of the schizophrenic is not that he uses metaphors, but that he uses unlabeled metaphors. He has special difficulty in handling signals of that class whose members assign Logical Types to other signals.

If our formal summary of the symptomatology is correct and if the schizophrenia of our hypothesis is essentially a result of family interaction, it should be possible to arrive a priori at a formal description of these sequences of experience which would induce such a symptomatology. What is known of learning theory combines with the evident fact that human beings use context as a guide for mode discrimination. Therefore, we must look not for some specific traumatic experience in the infantile etiology but rather for characteristic sequential patterns. The specificity for which we search is to be at an abstract or formal level. The sequences must have this characteristic: that from them the patient will acquire the mental habits which are exemplified in schizophrenic communication. That is to say, he must live in a universe where the sequences of events are such that his unconventional communicational habits will be in some sense appropriate. The hypothesis which we offer is that sequences of this kind in the external experience of the patient are responsible for the inner conflicts of Logical Typing. For such unresolvable sequences of experiences, we use the term "double bind."[1]

[g] Dispensation ADV

Laura Bohannan
Anthropological Medicine (1954)
The children playing under the central tree looked up and started to shriek, "Redwoman's coming! Redwoman's coming!" At their cries, Poorgbilin himself squeezed out of his reception hut and came toward me. I was shocked by the distress on his plump face. "My wife is ill. I sent my son to Kako's, but you were not there." I asked which wife and what illness, but Poorgbilin was too concerned with hurrying me into his reception hut to answer. I forgot Ticha.

A woman was sitting with her back against one of the posts of the drying platform, arms raised above her head and crooked back to embrace the post. Her legs jerked as though she were trying to run. Her whole body shook with a harsh sobbing. "Can she swallow?" I interrupted Poorgbilin's babble. Only some alleviation of her pain mattered just then. At his nod, I ordered hot water and a drinking calabash into which I crushed to aspirin. He got it down her throat somehow. We sat anxiously until her body began to relax and then, as much from exhaustion as from the medicine, she slumped down and fell asleep.

Poorgbilin himself relaxed and dropped his weigh into a chair. He began to tell me more coherently of her illness. While he spoke, I stared at the woman's now quiet face and recognized Poorgbilin's second wife, whom he had named "Where I rest my head" as a sign of the peace he had always found with her. When he finished, I shook my head: "This is beyond my skill. I am not a doctor. The medicine I can give her can make her sleep sometimes, but if she drinks much of it, she will get used to it and it will no longer help her. It cannot cure what is hurting her. The dispensary cannot help either. You must take her to the hospital."

"She cannot travel." Poorgbilin looked obstinate. "She must."[2]

Jan Vansina
Scholarly Gravitas (1994)
Meanwhile, other side issues demanded larger investments of my time. The art history project was one of these, oral traditions another. It was as if I had once grasped a tiger by the tail and it would not let me go! The debates about oral traditions raged for years, and I reluctantly realized that I would have to write a new book to replace my original work about the topic. I did this in Frankfurt, when the opportunity arose for me to spend a semester in residence at the Forbenius Institut there. Claudine's and my arrival there lacked somewhat in panache. At the airport in Frankfurt we were asked to identify our suitcases and then were almost arrested as smugglers when I mistook a case identical to mine for my suitcase. But rather than fifty pounds of books and papers, it contained fifty pounds of pure heroin! If it were not for the tags which showed which suitcase came from Madison and which one from Karachi, we would have landed in jail rather than at the institute. After this little incident, however, Claudine and I spent a marvelous time there. She was happily discovering and drawing old and striking art objects of Zaire, mainly from photographs of objects collected by Frobenius and others, while I worked hard at the new book and discussed moot points with the two first-rate historians in residence, Adam Jones and Beatrix Heintze. We also found the time for excursions to various German cities and their museums of African art.[3]

Notes
[1] Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 205-206.
[2] Elenore Smith Bowen, Return to Laughter: An Anthropological Novel (New York: Anchor Books, 1964),138-139.
[3] Jan Vansina, Living With Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), xxx.

Bibliography
Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.
Bowen, Elenore Smith. Return to Laughter: An Anthropological Novel. New York: Anchor Books, 1964.
Vansina, Jan. Living With Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

[i] Medicated RF

NEXT
Wednesday, March 7th
Shower Problems 
We'll take a week off so that we can feature Leap Day next Wednesday in a "Just Do It Over" post. Two weeks from today, though we'll see some funny looking hair. The shower heads in Jerry's (and Kramer's and Newman's) apartment building emit barely a trickle, and the boys are concerned about coiffure. We'll examine shower heads and pasty hair in two weeks on Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific.

Seinfeld Ethnography (39)—Life Thoughts

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific.

[a] Circle of Life RF
Click below for all "Seinfeld Ethnography" posts: 

George Eats Trash     No Soup for You     Elaine Exclaims    The Puffy Shirt    Poppie's Pizza     Mr. Bookman

Marine Biologist         The Doorman          Opposite George   Newman's Mail   The Bootleg         Marriage

Just Dessert               Sleep Desk             Late Coffee            High Stakes        Motor Oil              Downtown 

Code Cracking           Nonfat Yogurt          Bad Boy                 It's Not You         I Can't Be...         Wallet Bust

Elaine Flies Coach    The Close Talker     The Alliance           Broccoli               Coated Culture    Dinner Party

George's Friend        Jerry's Haircut          Face Paint             Mustachioed       Smoking              East River

Pool Man                   Dunkin' Joe              Life Lessons          Reckoning          Dog Medicine      Shower Heads

Looking Busy            George Tips             Kramer's Job          Empty Tank

Click here for the reference to the "Argonauts" title, below.

Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific

George is a broken shell of a human being. Kramer says so. Hunkered in his restaurant booth over coffee, George shrinks to fetal proportions as he answers Kramer's relentless questions about the state of his life. Take a look.

Life Lessons 0:44

"Do you have any conceivable reason for getting up in the morning?"

I would agree that the newspaper plays a role in wanting to get up, although, these days, the Kindle, Nook, or IPad makes it easier just to stay in bed, assuming wireless connectivity. This is pretty pathetic, but then George screams "pathos" (of a sort), even when he his just plain ol' pathetic. 

[b] Up and at 'em, George RF

So that question got me thinking. Do you have any reason at all to get up in the morning? Wow. That is a bit of a "what is the meaning of life" sort of question, if you think about it in a certain way. Beyond George, or even Kramer, maybe we need to ask ourselves a calm, reflective version of that question. A whole bunch of self-help gurus think that it is a good thing to start the day with a series of questions that will power you through your day. Keep in mind, that very few gurus would recommend the negativity of Kramer's half-dozen or so questions. Empowering, they are not. Still, we ask ourselves questions all of the time, and a pretty good one might be framed by "why do we get up in the morning?" 

Think about it. A whole bunch of our social and economic lives is founded on this very question—except we usually leave it sitting in the background. This "what is life all about" stuff is a window unto our daily lives that even many anthropologists don't think about enough (and they do more than just about anyone, including analytical philosophers). I'll have more to say about this angle in coming weeks. Anthropologists and historians study life. Why don't we look at that little cultural passage, so to speak, that gets us...out of bed in the morning?

***  ***

This week, we'll read a few selections from the ethnography and philosophy...of life. These are not "obvious" readings in any way. If you are a regular reader of Round and Square you already understand this. Today, we are not going to take a "what is life" tack so much as a "let's reflect upon aspects of life" one. We will look at Arnold van Gennep's classic essay on the rites of passage. Rites of passage are all about, well, life, and this passage is all about getting out of bed and through the door (if you think about it). Our second reading is from the philosopher Hilary Putnam who reflects upon "pragmatism and relativism" in, well, life. Finally, we'll wrap up with Roy D'Andrade's thoughts about culture and psychology.

Arnold van Gennep
Territorial Passages (1903)

[c] Passages ADV

The procedures discussed apply not only in reference to a country or territory but also in relation to a village, a town, a section of a town, a temple, or a house. The neutral zone shrinks progressively till it ceases to exist except as a simple stone, a beam, or a threshold (excerpt for the pronaos, the narthex, the vestibule, etc.). The portal which symbolizes a taboo against entering becomes the postern of the ramparts, the gate in the walls of the city quarter, the door of the house. The quality of sacredness is not localized in the threshold only; it encompasses the lintels and the architrave as well.

The rituals pertaining to the door form a unit, and differences among particular ceremonies lie in technicalities: the threshold is sprinkled with blood or with purifying water; doorposts are bathed with blood or with perfumes; sacred objects are hung or nailed onto them, as on the architrave...Precisely the door is the boundary between the foreign and domestic worlds in the case of an ordinary dwelling, between the profane and sacred worlds in the case of a temple. Therefore to cross the threshold is to unite oneself with a new world. It is thus an important act in marriage, adoption, ordination, and funeral ceremonies.[1]

[d] Life ADV

Hilary Putnam
Pragmatism and Relativism (1994)
But the distinction between our values and our "compliance" is too simple, and in two different ways. In the first place, our values are not all that clear. This is the problem to which Rawls's work is addressed. In the real world, our values of liberty and of equality conflict, and the conflicts are difficult to adjudicate. In principle, I suppose, one could have perfect economic equality (equality of political power is a far more difficult notion). At one time, the more left-wing kibbutzim in Israel required all their members to have the same furniture in their apartments, to make sure that no invidious inequalities would arise. Most of us would feel that this degree of equality requires an inadmissible interference with individual freedom. On the other hand, the wide-open "freedom" of economic enterprise on which the United States and England today pride themselves has led to massive inequalities, including the inequality between the homed and the homeless.

In the second place, the massive and long-continued failure of the West's societies to comply with their own supposed values suggests that large numbers of people find them insufficient in some way...In a conversation, my old friend Sidney Morgenbesser once remarked that many philosophers confuse the notion of a "universal ethic" with the notion of a "universal way of life." Thinking about the present topic has caused me to wonder whether that confusion may not be intrinsic to the Enlightenment itself or, perhaps, even to Western philosophy itself. Aristotle's Politics poses the question as "What is the best constitution for a polis—for any group of civilized human beings?" And it is undeniable that many Enlightenment thinkers framed the question in the same way.[2]

[e] Culture ADV

Roy G. D'Andrade
Cultural Meaning Systems (1984)

There appears to be an implicit assumption in anthropology that anything that is known to involve complex psychological processes cannot also be cultural. Thus attitudes, needs, goals, and defenses, because they clearly involve complex psychological processes, are typically considered to be part of personality, not culture, no matter how shared or institutionalized a particular attitude, need, goal, or defense may be.

What is not appreciated is that most human behavior involves complex psychological processes. Take, for example, the formulation that culture is primarily knowledge. It is widely assumed that knowledge can be transmitted without involving psychological processes to any significant extent: Someone tells someone else something, then the other person knows it. Simple communication through the transmission of information has occurred. George Lakoff has discussed this metaphor of transmission in detail and has indicated some of the confusions it engenders...All these kinds of evidence indicate that there is an emotional side to meaning. Often the evocative function blends with the directive function into a powerful good-happy-like approach versus a bad-fright/anger-dislike-hit/flee attitude...In summary, the general position presented here is that meanings involve the total human psyche, not just the part of us that knows things.[3]

Notes
[1] Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage [Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 19-20.
[2] Hilary Putnam, Words and Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 182-184.
[3] Richard Shweder and Robert LeVine, Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 98-100.

Bibliography

Putnam, Hilary. Words and Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Shweder, RIchard and Robert LeVine (eds). Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion.  
       Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Pasage [Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. 
       Caffee]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.

NEXT
Wednesday, February 15th

Day of Reckoning

Newman isn't just scary. He isn't even just Book of Revelations scary. He's...well, really scary. Tune in next week to hear about revenge, response, and Newman.