Society

Dominador Awiten .

DURING the first week of our law course, our well-travelled law instructor in Persons and Family Relations (Civil Law 1), the late RTC Judge Antonio Malferrari, barked at us: “There is no such animal as a solar month!”  This he did after a round of everyone reciting to answer his question “What is a solar month?”

In a similar vein, an anthropologist invariably insists: “There is no such thing as a primitive society.”

The anthropologist differentiates a modern from a traditional society.  And, there lies the rub.  The critic says that anthropology is biased in equating modern society with Western civilization, often carrying the implication that traditional societies are backward and retrogressive, and, thus, justifying colonialism by a world power.

They are only considered “not primitive” in the sense that they have no culture of their own.  For even if referred to as traditional, they are a highly organized, complex sets of families, traditions, and belief systems.  The difference is in the fact that a modern society is an aggrupation of industries, trades, professions, vocations, with stratification, and politically assimilated under a government of laws.  Intrinsically, all societies are the same.

That is the premise of the 2012 book The World Until Yesterday: What We Can Learn from Traditional Societies, written by Jared Diamond.    Diamond was first trained in physiology, later engaged in geography and history, but now is considered a top-notch public intellectual and a highly acclaimed popular science writer.

In that category, may I venture to cite our own erudite scholar, Prof. Randy David.

The book was written on the basis of the author’s life experience of more than fifty years (from 1964) in New Guinea and the neighboring islands.   

By traditional living, Diamond meant: “using stone tools, lacking matches and steel tools and writing and manufactured clothing, still practicing tribal warfare, divided into a thousand tribes speaking a thousand different languages (not just dialects),  and without a central government in a tribe.”

Discounting stone tools and having a central government, the description pretty much applies to us (even if we are backsliding to becoming a “failed State”) at this time.

The book’s hypothesis is that until very recently (fifty years ago or so) traditional societies were the norm, against the backdrop of 6 million years of human evolution.  Even in a nation-state, traditional societies are found because the people in them are outside of State control and have no knowledge of the outside world, being remote from it.

When “yesterday” became the present, the problems that affected traditional societies have been gradually overcome, mostly about their lack of technology and mobility.

But for Diamond, the advantages that we can learn from traditional societies are manifold and excellent:  their freedom from diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and many types of cancer; bringing up children who are autonomous, self-confident, and socially-skilled; providing satisfying lives for the elderly; dispute resolution that brings about emotional reconciliation and restoration of prior relationship; and understanding and avoidance of dangers.

A particular anecdote about child-bearing in the book was about the child-bearing practice among the Agta of Luzon:  “childbirth is a community event with the whole tribe offering assistance to the mother.”

In contrast, there was the practice of infanticide among the Ikung of Africa – and the reason had to do with the necessity to prefer the survival of the whole tribe because of scarcity of food.

There are several criticisms against the book.  For one, the book is anecdotal and not grounded on widely accepted research methodology, like statistical sampling and correlation.  Another is the observation of the New York Times that Diamond was “curiously impersonal” in his approach. 

In any event, the book is a panorama of society before it became modern, and a guide on how we can benefit from the traditional practices of our ancestors, enabling us to avoid or overcome the pitfalls of modernity.

Today, we do not have to forfeit the benefits from the genius of technology.  We only have to temper its rigors with the humane and caring values of our society before we became modern.