Ultimately Why We Work

Yes, this is not scholarly. I have no sources, and have done no research. It's not even original. It's just what I've been thinking about on the way home... from work.

We work, though, because we, somewhat, fear what idleness can do. I'm certain when we all didn't work, when we meandered and thought, socialized and did whatever else idle humans do, we got into trouble. We see sometimes how children behave when they can do whatever they want, and I suppose even adults may do the same. We'd found we could do things, construct things, put things together, and went with that.

Someone worked, and then eventually more worked. Then we'd started deciding things had relative worth, and that we could trade one thing for another. We got the idea of fairness, because this person shouldn't have to work harder than someone else and not get more out of it than that someone else.

We began having an ethos of gaining things, wealth. Our populations expanded, meaning we had to make sure resources lasted, even though people with more wealth could buy as many resources as they wanted, leaving others without. Or they would sell those resources to gain more wealth. We created governments as we'd learnt about power and resource apportioning, including that governments could raise funds from land just as individuals found they could.

People who don't want anything to do with the regular scheme of things -- working for pay, having a mortgage, living in a proper house, creating more humans -- don't propagate the system humanity has created. Other human beings sometimes look at those who would take what they have and go out on their own with some amazement and some jealousy. "Why does he get to not work? I don't want to work." The person striking out on his own would have a time trying to do that, though, because the system wants everyone to pay for land.

The system has budgeted that so many people who make money will put a certain amount of that towards the system to keep it going. Having less people doing so undoes the system. People can't have tiny tracts of land for tiny houses because the system wouldn't make enough to sustain itself, so they'd set rather large minimum plot sizes.

Minimalism in a culture that treasures having more is a sin, something awkward and unseemly.

We work to keep ourselves busy and because it keeps the system that developed out of keeping ourselves out of idleness going.

Hobby Lobby to pay $3mn fine, return Iraqi artifacts

US retailer to pay $3mn fine, return Iraqi artifacts

More New York (AFP) - US arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby has agreed to forfeit thousands of ancient Iraqi artifacts and pay $3 million to…

Read it on Flipboard

Read it on yahoo.com

Antiquities… Goodness me, the delicate issue of antiquities.

Having studied anthropology, and archaeology obliquely, I've heard and read about cases of pillaging antiquities, and even modern things. The Nazis had stolen art.

Now, I wouldn't say personally this is anywhere near pillaging antiquities or that they're anywhere even remotely like Nazis, but sometimes I wonder if thinking one can take better care of something than those who had it by, essentially, birthright is a really wrong thought to have.

The company and its head seemed to mean well, but no dice.

Rape/Sexual Violence/Stuff I Don't Get

I'm a fan of The Handmaid's Tale series on Hulu, and had been anticipating it since practically they'd put it up that they'd be broadcasting it. They go into a lot of heavy things, including rape.

So, this on top of, especially via the BBC World Service Africa Today podcast, hearing about "corrective rape" and just a casual rape culture in especially Africa, I've tried to fathom why these especially men (or "men", since what true man actually does that?!) feel they need to do this.

It would require a lot of reading into probably a bunch of stories that would probably make me cry and hate humans more, but I'd been mulling over some possible underlying "provokers" to "induce" a "rape culture".

That's a lot of scare quotes.

I think those cultures that really, really make masturbation taboo make a powder keg. This itself may not be a reason, because I think they might combine that with sex having to mean something (so, if they rape someone, they can get their sexual urges out of the way doing it the "proper way", but not having to care about the person; it's not legitimate sex of you don't view the "thing" with what you're copulating as anything, right? 😤).

Then they're doing it in groups, which makes them no better than their primate cousins (and even cetaceans too, I think I've read) that have their own rape gangs. And they, conceivably, don't realize consciously and thoughtfully what they're doing, either.

Then, bringing it back to the phrase "corrective rape" I'd used earlier, some people use sex like a weapon, that they use something God has given us and made it into something to shut someone up violently, or using it to meld someone to one's will (like God didn't give us free will and choice).

I'm kind of scared to research this.

Pokémon GO Outing

(From a Facebook post)

So, I'd decided to spend part of my day off at Mercer, because it's (sadly, some might say) got a variety of pokémon and a few pokéstops.

It kind of turned into some fun afternoon of anthropological observations for me, too.

• 20-something Asian female obviously doing the one-finger flick one does when trying to capture a pokémon 

• 20-something White female in athletic clothing walking with her phone (and I think we both went for the same nidoran♂, but she got it)

• group of 13 pre-teen and teenaged summer campers gathered around two different pokéstops with lures engaged every so often squealing with glee as they capture various pokémon (with one newly-deepened voice yelling "OMG, there's a squirtle over there!" and the rest scampering after him), after which I verbally comment "Oh, youthful exuberance…"

• 20-something White male with a man bun/top knot who's putting #PokémonGO into his fitness regimen because he's obviously been jogging back and forth between the five six pokéstops spread across campus

•40-something African male who's been walking between pokéstops with his phone with a sheepish, but slightly embarrassed, look on his face whenever we cross paths at said pokéstops

• 20-something athletically fit White male stopped in the shadow of a tree in front of the student center/campus pokémon gym (currently under #TeamInstinct) furiously tapping at his iPhone screen

• 50-something Black female who nearly collided with a parked 2012 Ford Taurus while scouting pokémon

I love when I'm actually able to use my major actively.

#GoFIUAnthropology #SuburbanAnthropologist

Taking in The Foreign Content

This half-season of two shows I like, Teen Wolf and Supernatural, decided to take different tacks than what I've known them to do: they've taken elements of foreign mythologies and made plot points out of them.

And for some reason, while I'd enjoyed that fact, it felt a little weird at first. Thinking about that underlying reaction, I had to reflect about that because I also happen to be a somewhat-passionate anime fan. Anime, the animated Japanese-originate phenomenon, often borrows elements from non-Japanese and Japanese mythology and history (often the former) to drive their stories, and it's never felt odd.

One of my favorite anime series is Digimon, and there are thousands of digimon that have names coming from all kinds of sources. For example, you have Sakuyamon, coming from Japan, Wolfmon (pronounced 'vollfmon'), from Germany, and Shinduramon, from India. Another favorite series, The Big O, borrows highly in style and feel from the American cartoon Batman: The Animated Series. Yet with Teen Wolf, bringing in kitsune, oni masks, and demon warriors into the werewolf and coyote spirit mix, and Supernatural having in its most recent episode a Peruvian/Andean beast called a pishtaco, it felt weird for the first couple seconds hearing it.

Might it have been because Teen Wolf and Supernatural, for the majority of their histories, have used United States-based (more or less) creatures, beasts, and myths? That's more than likely probable. Bringing in other bits so late into the game might have been a little jarring, though the anthropology major in me jumps for joy at the chance to learn different aspects of other culture's artefacts and how American writers use them in their creations as much as learning that one of the Pokémon, Ooper, looks like the Mexican amphibian the axolotl.

It might be as well that one's imagination can accept animated series bringing in other myths more easily than a series with human actors. I suppose I should stay tuned to see what other shows I like start importing things, especially the live action ones. 

Exciting stuff!

Top 10 Useless Limbs (and Other Vestigial Organs)

LiveScience: "In Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) and in his later works, he referred to several 'vestiges' in human anatomy that were left over from the course of evolution. These vestigial organs, Darwin argued, are evidence of evolution and represent a function that was once necessary for survival, but over time that function became either diminished or nonexistent."

Take a gander. It's fun reading.