Look to traditional cultures to solve
modern-day problems, says Jared Diamond
His latest, "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?," is on the New York Times best seller list, and Diamond has been on a globe-spanning book tour.
"The World Until Yesterday" finds Diamond drawing once again upon his vast spectrum of knowledge — biochemistry, geography, anthropology, history, world languages and more — to explore the human past as it had been for millions of years.
That past has largely vanished, except in traditional cultures that inhabit New Guinea, where Diamond has done extensive field work since 1964, and portions of the Amazon basin in South America.
"This is my most personal book," said Diamond, "and my most practical." He focused Tuesday’s lecture on a chapter in his book on the treatment of old people in traditional cultures and shared his hope that western cultures can learn from this.
In America, "we are throwing away our old people," said Diamond, pointing to practices like sending the elderly to nursing homes, separated from family and friends, and urging older people to retire and be replaced by "more useful" younger workers.
In many tribal societies, he noted, people continue to live in multi-generational households well into old age, and they are respected and appreciated for continuing to contribute to efforts like food-gathering and childcare and serving as folk historians.
Not that all tribal practices are enviable. Nomadic cultures "get rid of their elderly" when they become a burden — including widows who consent to be strangled by their brothers or sons.
"To us Americans, this sounds horrible," Diamond said, but then added that this approach isn’t so far removed from the American health care system’s "age-based allocation of health care resources" where transplanted organs that are in high demand go to younger, healthier patients rather than the elderly.
Taking a question from the audience, Diamond was asked how much time he thinks the planet has to turn things around before steep population growth and environmental abuses take an insurmountable toll.
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the bestsellers Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse returns to our past in search of a better future.
Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity.
Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things.
While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence.
Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.
The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today.
This is Jared Diamond's most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others.
Diamond doesn't romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us.
From Good reads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15766601-the-world-until-yesterday
Source:
Diamond offered an estimate of about 50 years, and added that "growing consumption is more the driving force of these problems than a growing population."
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
Book Review:The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the bestsellers Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse returns to our past in search of a better future.
Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity.
Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things.
While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence.
Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.
The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today.
This is Jared Diamond's most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others.
Diamond doesn't romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us.
From Good reads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15766601-the-world-until-yesterday
Source:
Jan 24, 2013 By Judy Lin
http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/jared-diamond-world-until-yesterday-242932.aspx
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