Re: No really, on the veldt.

1

I find faint vigilance totally exhausting and unpleasant

Maybe this is proof that cushy civilized living has degenerated the species.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:10 PM
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Maybe you're just out of shape for it? If your life was such that you had to be constantly watchful for leopards circling to leeward, you'd build up the necessary attentional 'muscles'?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:15 PM
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Maybe we weren't actually on the veldt long enough to completely adapt to it.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:17 PM
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2: Are you calling me fat?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:19 PM
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More vigilance, yes, but less actual work, I think is believed.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:19 PM
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Maybe you're just out of shape for it? If your life was such that you had to be constantly watchful for leopards circling to leeward, you'd build up the necessary attentional 'muscles'?

Yes! Short sprinting, intense exercise, followed by a lot of standing around using your brain at rapt attention. None of this "cardio" bullshit. No desks. Lean antelope meat.

Sitcom character OUT!


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:20 PM
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Maybe if you drank more water.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:30 PM
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Or hated George W. Bush more.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:31 PM
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Maybe if heebie's brain wasn't so consumed by worries about fashion, calculus and Unfogged posts, then it wouldn't be so exhausted by faint vigilance.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:31 PM
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5: That view is apparently no longer widely held among anthropologists.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:33 PM
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Have any of you watched Babies? It's Mara's favorite movie and a great one for hairstyling time since such a huge portion of the Namibia scenes also include hair time, but the Namibia scenes in general always make me think of "on the veldt" stuff that gets discussed here. (They've also caused Mara to (pretend to?) spit on her baby doll's head and pretend she's wiping baby poop from her leg.)

Almost everything that happens seems to involve a point person, so there's one mom with three babies, sometimes breastfeeding all three even if she's not their biological mom. And while the mom is styling the teenager's hair, the teenager is watching the baby or styling a younger child's hair. The kids seem to go out in packs.

It would be absolutely exhausting to have to keep an eye on your children all day every day while also getting everything else done, but we can't just translate our nuclear family structures to that context. If you had your time watching a small group of kids and your time digging vegetables while wearing a baby on your back while the older kids went to the river, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

I think a lot of the families living in ground zero for gang warfare are also ending up with a lot of communal child care and non-nuclear family and so forth, with both positive and negative outcomes.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:33 PM
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More vigilance, yes, but less actual work, I think is believed.

That seems to be the current position regarding hunter-gatherer and nomad groups: i.e., that they have substantially more leisure time than, of course, agriculturalists, but also more than John and Jane Cubicle. In A History of Warfare, John Keegan identifies the nomad's happy lifestyle as the emotional root of their great hostility to societies of fixed residence, whether from below or beside. (Also, they were easy prey.)


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:40 PM
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10: I am sympathetic to that position, because whenever I have tried to do anything the way that hunter-gatherers did it (make fire, make tools, navigate) it has invariably required hours of painful effort, followed by an utter shambles or a lame semi-failure.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:43 PM
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Sapolsky's writing about stress damaging health seems pertinent (as non-biologist I dunno if it is true or correct, but pertinent).


Posted by: Annelid Gustator | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:46 PM
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Ducks trade off - one is watchful while the rest eat or nap - why not humans? Sociobio brought you by T.H. White.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:51 PM
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There would also have been relatives available. Perhaps nurseries.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 12:56 PM
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16.last: Stocking the most efficient plants for gathering?


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 1:01 PM
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Now that's just a willful misreading.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 1:12 PM
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I find faint vigilance totally exhausting and unpleasant.

You get used to it. Stressful and taxing at first, but becomes much more reflexive with time. Or who knows, maybe I'm just better at ignoring the stress now and my job is slowly turning my arteries to stone.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 1:12 PM
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19: I thought the secret was donuts.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 1:13 PM
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19: This sounds right. Let me theorize that what's tiring isn't faint vigilance, it's faint vigilance in unfamiliar circumstances. That feels like the same thing for most of us, because most of us don't spend a lot of time in areas where we have to be watchful -- someplace we habitually hang around is likely to be totally safe. But if we did spend a lot of time in places with familiar safety issues that we were comfortable with, we'd figure out how to be vigilant but relaxed.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 1:20 PM
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I suppose driving is an example where I don't find it exhausting to be faintly vigilant for very long stretches. I definitely don't relax all the way, but it's not unpleasant.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:04 PM
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Good example -- I don't drive much, but I'm definitely vigilant on the bike path, and I don't mind it except when some asshole passes me close on the right just as I was about to swerve back all the way to the right of the path (after passing a pedestrian on the left). Then I hyperventilate for a bit (or, on one special occasion, find out what my top speed is in order to catch the guy and and call him an asshole. I really hate people who pass on the right.)


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:08 PM
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Maybe you're just out of shape for it? If your life was such that you had to be constantly watchful for leopards circling to leeward, you'd build up the necessary attentional 'muscles'?

God I wish this were the case; it would make my life so much more pleasant. One of the ways my anxiety manifests itself is constant vigilance, and it's fucking exhausting.


Posted by: Josh | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:18 PM
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25

Maybe you just wouldn't have survived on the veldt?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:19 PM
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26

If 25 is to 24, it's true in oh so many ways.


Posted by: Josh | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:21 PM
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24: But if you have anxiety issues, isn't the problem that you're vigilant when there's no real danger? What I'm thinking of as the possibility that would let you relax is "Danger is possible, but I'm confident I know what it looks like and what to do about it," or "I can spot a leopard." If you're looking for something that you can't identify, or that isn't there, it makes total sense that would wear you out.

You might be much happier on the veldt -- harnessing the vigilance to watch for real danger.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:27 PM
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28

"I can spot a leopard."

They come spotted.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:31 PM
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29

Not according to Kipling.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:38 PM
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30

I got a chance today to act like the Hispanic-serving cookbook joke was my very own, and I sold it for all it was worth.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:40 PM
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I wonder how great a deal of vigilance life on the veldt required. Your main threat was probably warfare with other humans, which would require preparation but was also somewhat ritualized. And there would be bursts of activity -- either in hunting (men), gathering (women) or processing and grinding the food and traveling (both sexes). Were lions and leopards and other large predators constant threats? I'd think probably not. But I don't really see it as a life of constant vigilance, or at least not more than modern life requires, which is plenty.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:46 PM
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32

How do you know so much about social life on the veldt, Rob?


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:50 PM
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33

I'm making it up. What are you all doing?


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:54 PM
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34

30: How did that come up?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:55 PM
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Were lions and leopards and other large predators constant threats?

You forget the most dangerous predator of all -- Man. (I was trying to think of some even more sententious way of saying that, but without tones of voice it's tough.)

I dunno about the non-human predators, but you have to figure they were around, and kids would be vulnerable. Might not be the kind of thing that happened often, but often enough to make it worth keeping an eye out. Like, there's some statistic about how most cops never fire their weapon on the job, but gswift is still on the alert all day at work.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 2:58 PM
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36

Bees, snakes, devil's club, quicksand, deadfalls, ankle-snapping {vertisols | mossy punky logs | cobbles | ice}, blood infections, camas that was the wrong color four months ago...


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 3:03 PM
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... wandering twenty minutes too far because this week it's hot and the waterholes are a little less reliable, kids eat the green apples a few days early, there shouldn't be quite that much ergot on the wild barley...


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 3:04 PM
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It wouldn't have to be something that plays well as adventure TV to require constant attention. Whether that feels like the vigilance specified, I dunno.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 3:05 PM
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39

But I mean almost everything we do in modern life requires a fair amount of vigilance, too, right? Just a different kind. Except wasting time commenting on the internet, I guess, but I'm vigilant about wasting time.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 3:06 PM
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40

I think what 27 is saying is that someone needs to introduce some stray big cats into Josh's environment.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 3:12 PM
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But I mean almost everything we do in modern life requires a fair amount of vigilance, too, right? Just a different kind.

I think the answer to this is that to make it true, you need a different enough kind of vigilance that it doesn't produce the same feeling.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 3:12 PM
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42

ANYONE KNOW WHERE JOSH LIVES?


Posted by: OPINIONATED LEOPARD | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 3:13 PM
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43

I think the *entire virtue* of modern life is that it requires almost no vigilance. F'rinstance, it's now a burden to be sufficiently conscious of the weather to hang one's laundry to dry (possibly not true in LA). Without supermarkets someone had to be constantly thinking of food storage & freshness & soaking the beans & making the starter for bread days in advance - how much in advance ? You have to pay attention to know.

We couldn't have the "attention economy " if we hadn't gotten a vigilance dividend.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 3:19 PM
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43 -- Well, technology lets you ignore some things so you can be vigilant about other things. But I'm not seeing a general vigilance gap. I sort of took the OP to mean "vigilance about immediate life-threatening danger" which we arguably have less of now than hunter gatherers did in the past. But if it's just "less need to worry about things" I'm pretty sure that we just substitute out one set of worries for another. The time I spend not being attentive about food preparation pretty much just goes into being attentive about something else.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 3:22 PM
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45

But if you have anxiety issues, isn't the problem that you're vigilant when there's no real danger? What I'm thinking of as the possibility that would let you relax is "Danger is possible, but I'm confident I know what it looks like and what to do about it," or "I can spot a leopard." If you're looking for something that you can't identify, or that isn't there, it makes total sense that would wear you out.

Mmm, I'm not sure. "Hey, that stand of grass just moved. Was that the breeze, or was it a leopard?"

And I get anxious about things I know how to handle, too. Even when I'm (rationally) certain I've dealt with a situation properly, there's still a little voice in the back of my head saying "You were careful and thorough... but were you careful and thorough *enough*?"

(Of course, this is all kind of beside the point when it comes to anxiety, because my anxiety, at least, is never about the surface issue. It's always about some deeper issue manifesting itself through a particular pattern of thoughts and latching onto or creating something to worry about.)


Posted by: Josh | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 3:22 PM
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I'd imagine a life in which we are surrounded by 1 ton metal objects hurtling past us at 30 - 80mph is one that requires quite a lot of low level vigilance, too.

Anyway, kids don't need that much watching.

'Piss off and come back when your tea is ready, and don't go near the tawny hair things with the big teeth.'


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 4:00 PM
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I think the *entire virtue* of modern life is that it requires almost no vigilance.

Hah! The little old lady coming at you in the supermarket aisle may blind you with a pickle jar. Sure you say, unlikely and you think you can judge what is in the heart, but how can you know, really? Hmmm? How can you calculate the odds when you posit the absolute freedom of the will and grant the Other their infinite Subjectivity? How can you know?

We are so much more anxious now.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 4:03 PM
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I was serious in 46, btw. Cars, ffs. I imagine we are inured to the danger much like veldt-living types get inured to other dangers and concentrate on getting enough to eat, taking the piss out of people, and bullshitting. Like humans everywhere.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 4:08 PM
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Yes, I was going to mention unbusy motorway driving earlier, as a good example of modern low-level vigilance -- whwre you're basically semi-relaxedly on the semi-alert for changes in pattern, but can mostly think about other stuff.

Would have posted earlier, but The Thing came on telly: now that's what I call high-level vigilance. HOW DO WE kNOW WHEN WE'RE EVEN HUMAN ANYMORE.


Posted by: tierce de lollardie | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 4:09 PM
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Should I read 4 dozen posts or assume that SiFu could find the answer lies within,

'Sometimes I wonder how people in the midst of gang violence or drug violence handle the stress of it all'.

Not on their own supply !


Posted by: E | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 4:11 PM
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49.2: You should watch these two analyses and let us know what conclusions you come to.


Posted by: Josh | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 4:19 PM
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Hah, that's the second time I've been directed to the Windows-dropped-the-keys detail this evening. Bennings doesn't really have time to pick em up though; nor has he finished transforming in time to know to. (My guess is Norris.) Will watch part two tomorrow.


Posted by: tierce de lollardie | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 4:33 PM
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But if we did spend a lot of time in places with familiar safety issues that we were comfortable with

In a known environment, all you have to monitor for is change. When my dad does airport noise sleep studies, they issue sleep boxes to people in the surrounding neighborhoods. (Sleep box is a box with a big button on the top. If you are awakened, you hit the button and it records the time. The researcher can then match it up to flight records, to see whether aircraft noise is waking people.) Turns out everyone sleeps soundly through the regular flight schedule/plan, no matter how noisy. But if they reverse a runway and a plane lands in the opposite direction, everyone in the neighborhood wakes, hits the button and goes back to sleep.

Surely people don't realize they have the normal flight schedule internalized, but they do detect variance right away.


Posted by: Megan | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 4:39 PM
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54

I used to have no trouble sleeping through noise of coal trains just outside my wall every night.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 4:46 PM
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I really don't think attention and vigilance are the same thing, Halford. Tasty/stylish/slimming isn't as scary as poisonous.

Cars *are* as scary, and designing so much of our environment for them was dumb: hence the comfort of malls, Disneyland, Catalina.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 4:50 PM
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The modern industrial world was full of low-level vigilance situations; it's the stuff we often think of as requiring discipline. Factory work; learning how to ride a railroad: like with driving, and with the early trains especially, you had to learn when you could stand, when you could board, how to cross tracks (especially in a yard type of situation) and so on; anything involving open flames indoors, and so on. It was definitely a strain on people, if the disorders like neurasthenia and the like are to be believed. And of course beyond or rather adding to the mental strain it was not uncommon to lose bits and pieces of yourself, sometimes extremities, sometimes whole limbs, in various machines if you weren't careful, and even if you were.

Our current world may require that kind of vigilance in fewer situations, or for fewer people,* but there's still a fair amount of it.

*There's some harrowing sections of Saviano's Gommorrah about the fear in which construction workers live in southern Italy.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 5:23 PM
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Then there was the strain of living in the early modern world, particularly on the "frontier." You never know when a tree is going to drop a limb on your head.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 5:24 PM
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43: I think the *entire virtue* of modern life is that it requires almost no vigilance. F'rinstance, it's now a burden to be sufficiently conscious of the weather to hang one's laundry to dry (possibly not true in LA). Without supermarkets someone had to be constantly thinking of food storage & freshness & soaking the beans & making the starter for bread days in advance - how much in advance ? You have to pay attention to know.

I'd say it makes a great deal of difference whether you have enough money in our modern world to be able to avoid having to attend to the weather, or longer-term food preparation. The more limited your resources, the more attention you have to pay. I'm pretty sure people living on the edge financially are constantly vigilant.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 5:34 PM
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I'm pretty sure people living on the edge financially are constantly vigilant.

That's got to be true. I've been living on extreme budget as I'm not working currently and worrying about expenses does seem to create a state of vigilance. Because food is important to me, I end up spending a lot of time planning meals, figuring out where to shop, etc., which does take up a lot of time (enjoyable for me, though). (And that's with knowing that I have a safety net and that it'll be over soon.) I also wonder how "decision fatigue" plays into this sort of thing - I find myself denying expense after expense and then spending what I have on something dumb.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 5:41 PM
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Also, I think how someone processes what we're understanding as vigilance is affected by their understanding of more abstract concepts like causation and responsibility. I know I'm just making things up here speculatively, but if you have, say, an animist belief system where prey gives itself up to you (which we might alternatively think of as a successful hunt) and where the quality of forage depends on more than the human ability to forage, then you are likely to see those activities in a different light. Of course, this may just mean displacing the vigilance from the immediate needs of sustenance and not being killed by stuff to the performance of regular and correctly done rituals.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 5:45 PM
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58, 59: The price of neoliberal freedom is eternal vigilance.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 5:47 PM
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62

to the performance of regular and correctly done rituals.

Human resources lives on the veldt.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 5:57 PM
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61: That's a terrific post.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 5:59 PM
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It was really hard to file a claim on the veldt. First, you have to make a file out of stone and then work from there. This is why, in the modern world, paper beats rock.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:13 PM
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First, you have to make a file out of stone and then work from there.

Then you have to find a wild claim to harvest, which requires knowledge of where they grow and in what season they ripen.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:14 PM
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66

All while keeping an eye out for leopards and hyenas.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:15 PM
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65: You dig them in shallow waters off sandy beaches, with a claim rake.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:16 PM
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Well, but once you had made the file out of stone, you could use it again and again. It made you practically rich just to have it! Everybody wanted to borrow it.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:17 PM
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69

Everybody wanted to borrow it.

Luckily, however, with a few small alterations a well-made file can double as a shiv.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:19 PM
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70

Or, depending on the size of it, a club.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:20 PM
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Love on the Veldt:

If you're going out with someone new
I'm going out with someone too
I won't feel sorry for me, I'm getting drunk
But I'd much rather be somewhere with you

Laughing loud on a carnival ride, yeah
Driving around on a Saturday night
You made fun of me for singing my song
Got a hotel room just to turn you on

You said pick me up at three a.m.
You're fighting with your mom again
And I'd go, I'd go, I'd go somewhere with you

I won't sit outside your house
And wait for the lights to go out
Call up an ex to rescue me, climb in their bed
When I'd much rather sleep somewhere with you

Like we did on the beach last summer
When the rain came down and we took cover
Down in your car, out by the pier
You laid me down, whispered in my ear

I hate my life, hold on to me
Ah, if you ever decide to leave
Then I'll go, I'll go, I'll go

I can go out every night of the week
Can go home with anybody I meet
But it's just a temporary high 'cause when I close my eyes
I'm somewhere with you, somewhere with you

If you see me out on the town
And it looks like I'm burning it down
You won't ask and I won't say
But in my heart I'm always somewhere with you



Posted by: K. Chesney | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:21 PM
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69: Hence the concept of "rescission."


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:21 PM
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Clubs were also difficult on the veldt -- making the requisite upholstered furniture out of grasses and twigs was really hard.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:21 PM
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The most popular club on the veldt was of course the Lions. The Masons, not so much (no stone). Odd Fellows generally got eaten by lions before they could manage to form a club.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:25 PM
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I suppose I should say "not enough stone for building purposes." There was of course some stone that could be chipped into tools.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:27 PM
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The Flintknappers Club, now extinct, was the only major competitor to the Lions.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:27 PM
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The Elks were not so much a competitor to the Lions, as they were prey.

(I've mentioned that I knew a Moose once, and he taught me the "Moose in distress" hand signal? I can't really call it a secret signal, it was pretty obvious.)


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:32 PM
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If you do nothing but knapping your flint, eventually you will go extinct.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:32 PM
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78: "If you do nothing but knapping your flint, eventually you will go extinct."

That's after hair grows on your palms.



Posted by: bill | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:42 PM
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30: How did that come up?

Well, we really are a Hispanic-serving institution. It comes up a lot.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 6:48 PM
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So, at a meeting somebody says, "We must address how this policy fits with our role as a Hispanic-serving institution" and you go "Vamos, es un libro de cocina."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:04 PM
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I think one of my grandfathers, in a shocking departure from the saturnine and moody son of a bitch contemplative and absent-minded qualities shared by both sides of the family, was a Lion, and for a while held the position of "Tail-twister" in his chapter, so called for his dues-collecting duties. I'm pretty sure my other grandfather and father made a little game of evading, avoiding and, when absolutely necessary, flat-out declining invitations to join things (the Masons, country clubs, stuff like that).


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:07 PM
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If you do nothing but knapping your flint, eventually you will go extinct.

Eventually? You won't last two generations.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:08 PM
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84

It comes up a lot.

You gringos can't handle the spiciness, eh?


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:08 PM
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82: Also, of course, the armed forces, even at the invitation of the U.S. government.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:08 PM
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83: From time to time, someone Hispanic comes along and you have to serve them.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:10 PM
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I believe I've mentioned this before, but my great-grandfather was a really big deal in the Masons. He was Grandmaster of the state at some point in the 1930s. My grandfather was also a mason, but he wasn't as involved in it. My dad never had any interest in joining, nor do I.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:12 PM
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Knapping flint is actually very difficult, if you like to have your intentions reflected in the ultimate shape of your knapped work.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:13 PM
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87: That pretty well tracks Freemasonry's decline over the past century or so. I wonder what the quotidian experience of belonging to such organizations was, in the '20s and '30s, and how it failed to change to meet evolving needs/expectations in its demographics.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:15 PM
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I wonder what the quotidian experience of belonging to such organizations was, in the '20s and '30s, and how it failed to change to meet evolving needs/expectations in its demographics.

We've got a bunch of masonic paraphernalia and literature inherited from my great-grandfather, and from looking at it the quotidian aspects of it mostly just seem kind of dull. Lots of secrecy and weird rituals, but aside from that the lodges don't seem to have actually done very much.

My impression is that it was basically just seen as a standard thing for middle-class men to do, and a normal part of their lives. Certainly the number of such organizations implies that there was considerable demand for them. I suppose they probably provided a forum for men to socialize with each other and an alternative social environment to the family.

Why that wasn't as much in demand for subsequent generations is an interesting question. American society has changed a lot over that period, of course, but which specific changes are most implicated in the decline of fraternal organizations is hard to pinpoint.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:23 PM
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My maternal grandfather was a fairly active member (some thirty-xth level or other) and I think my father might have been a very passive member. One of my sisters was certainly a Rainbow Girl, but that connection might have come through a friend I recall zero discussion of my joining Demolay.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:31 PM
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Nowadays we have blogs for that kind of thing.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:32 PM
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48: Cars, ffs. I imagine we are inured to the danger much like veldt-living types get inured to other dangers and concentrate on getting enough to eat, taking the piss out of people, and bullshitting.

ttaM gets it exactly right. Dying or being incapacitated by having crumpled metal impact and penetrate vital parts of your body is completely normalized/sublimated for most of us. Brought home this past week by the very different reaction to four people dying in a flash flood on a heavily-traveled road about a mile-and-half from here as the crow flies.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:36 PM
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I've been to Masonic events, and it kind of creeps me out with the "Your worshipful" bits. Some of the language of the prayers is reminiscent of the Book of Common Prayer in a dumbed down way.

There was a sort of women's auxiliary component called the order of the Eastern Star.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:36 PM
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A fellow I know is actually an authority on Masonic ritual, specifically the des/gn of the sets for the degree-granting rituals.

From him and his research, I've gleaned a couple of things:
1. Fraternal organizations were essential in re-solidifying white male solidarity after the Civil War.
2. In the old days, when you actually had to perform a whole ritual to get advanced one degree, it took a long fucking time to advance to the point where you could become a Shriner and drive a tiny car. So they compressed the rituals into plays, and then you could just take the train to Chicago or Frisco or wherever the big regional Masonic hall was, and sit through a few hours of amateur theatricals and hey! Presto! You advanced like 10 degrees in an afternoon.


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:49 PM
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93: And driving that road does not give many clues as to how nine feet of water could pile up. It always looked to be like it would drain out the Allegheny River Blvd end, but that is clearly not the case.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:50 PM
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re-solidifying white male solidarity after the Civil War.

Protestant white male solidarity.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:52 PM
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97: Well, but they accepted Papes Catholics, you just couldn't be in good with the Pope and be publickly a Mason too.


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:54 PM
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Also, back in the bad old days, pretty much every single local lodge had a skeleton for the rituals. Now that there are far fewer lodges, there's a bunch of skeletons stacked up like cordwood here and there around the country at whatever lodge was left.


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 7:56 PM
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I went to a Masonic ritual for the bat mitzvah equivalent of a junior high school friend. As a Mormon used to shoddy reception halls, amateur speakers of rituals, and symbolism expressed incoherently, I was familiar enough to feel a certain contempt. Had it been a couple steps weirder, like the Sikh wedding my mom and I got dragged into around that time, I would have just went along with the unfamiliar.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:00 PM
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And on the vigilance theme, I thoroughly endorse 58 and 59.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:02 PM
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The Knights of Columbus was simpler in structure. There are only four degrees so the Irish could keep track even after a minor industrial accident.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:07 PM
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Fraternal organizations were essential in re-solidifying white male solidarity after the Civil War.

This makes sense. That was certainly the period when they seem to have had their greatest florescence.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:08 PM
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Nowadays we have blogs for that kind of thing.

Yeah, but the big decline seems to have happened in the seventies and eighties.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:09 PM
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It's like you guys don't even read Dsquared's blog. The fraternal organizations were largely insurance schemes, in which people would join together to purchase life (and sometimes health) insurance in a time before mass-market insurance policies were available. They were basically financial institutions with some weird exclusionary ritualism on top, or maybe weird ritualistic organizations that got overtaken by their financial arms.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:10 PM
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105: Oh yeah, now I remember that post.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:11 PM
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They were basically financial institutions with some weird exclusionary ritualism on top, or maybe weird ritualistic organizations that got overtaken by their financial arms.

Probably the latter in the case of the Masons, who go back a bit further than the others.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:12 PM
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96: My thinking as well. But I drove it on Sunday and although going up it I did not notice the change in slope, coming back down I could see that it subtly goes back uphill to the junction with Allegheny River Blvd. Just a month ago my wife was a couple of minutes in front of being in a group of a dozen or so cars that got trapped in a slightly less serious flood there. Makes me think the sewers are blocked somewhere, especially when you see video footage like this.

But apparently not a new problem, very similar pictures from a 1951 flood that killed one there. And from that article, Rescue operations were complicated by a giant geyser from a sewer that shot water 25 feet into the air.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:14 PM
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Anyhow, if it were remotely normal for my generation I'd totally love to join the Elks Club or whatever. Basically, you'd have a kind of permanent bar and restaurant you could drop into anytime and see friends without planning, plus a bunch of organized charity, parties, etc. Plus a chance to dress up in costumes. Totally great. Another nice social institution destroyed by Bowling Alone America.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:17 PM
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Dying or being incapacitated by having crumpled metal impact and penetrate vital parts of your body is completely normalized/sublimated for most of us.

Yeah, familiarity is huge. Loads of crazy stuff doesn't really get a stress rise out of me anymore. Had a teenage girl get pried out of a car with the jaws of life on a traffic accident yesterday and that was after the domestic violence call but before the hobo gladiator showdown where four pronged cane hobo emerged victorious over hatchet hobo. Busy shift but felt totally routine.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:18 PM
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hobo gladiator showdown where four pronged cane hobo emerged victorious over hatchet hobo

Stressful... or TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME?


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:21 PM
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where four pronged cane hobo emerged victorious over hatchet hobo.

Is it a general rule the the hobo with the greater reach wins or was hatchet hobo a worse fighter (or smart enough not to want to murder some guy)?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:22 PM
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109: you could join the gay metal frontman citizen's association. I hear they have a nice little place off the 710 with foosball and a kegerator.


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:23 PM
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108: If they were blocked, it may not still be blocked after the rush.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:28 PM
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I find faint vigilance totally exhausting and unpleasant. Sometimes I wonder how people in the midst of gang violence or drug violence handle the stress of it all. I wonder why we didn't evolve to be better at that sort of thing.

Perhaps because your genes think it is better for you to get out of dangerous situations than feel comfortable in them.


Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:33 PM
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Genes don't have feelings, James.


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:34 PM
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or TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME?

It was definitely awesome. Victory due to reach for sure. Four pronged cane hobo split hatchet hobos head open and he was bleeding all over the place. Witnesses said hatchet hobo was the instigator. Hatchet hobo did not appreciate being cuffed and at the hospital it took like four of us to hold him down while he was getting his head stitched so he could go to jail. Calmed down later though. Wore himself out struggling and screaming that he was going to find me on the street and kill me. Lovely fellow.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:34 PM
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110-112: Being in the midst of a Game of Thrones jag* I'm imagining this as written by George RR Martin.

*Just finished #4 in the paperback boxset I got relatively cheap from Borders going-out-of-business. Need the fifth... checked and miraculously one of only three available copies in the county library system is at the branch where my daughter works, but it's her day off, but I pressured her to go in and get it anyway. And I'm actually pretty tired of them.

But            must              finish             fifth.

God, I'm easy.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:35 PM
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117: ain't had time to bleed. Nor duck.


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:35 PM
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Basically, you'd have a kind of permanent bar and restaurant you could drop into anytime and see friends without planning, plus a bunch of organized charity, parties, etc.

From the outside, it seems as though some music communities have managed this, although in a much less organized way. I regularly see announcements for concerts to pay for so-and-so's bills and always wonder whether they can raise nearly enough.

My mother is a high poohbah in the women's section of her church, which basically means that she organizes and delivers charity to the poorer members, from driving them to doctor's appointments to coordinating care (including church-supplied food aid) to arranging funeral services. From a mercenary standpoint, joining the LDS would seem to be a wise move for a marginal person.

Arthur Conan Doyle has touched on all these themes, it seems.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:42 PM
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But must finish fifth.

Remember, every time you complain about how long the books are dragging out, Martin kills a Stark.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:44 PM
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I regularly see announcements for concerts to pay for so-and-so's bills and always wonder whether they can raise nearly enough.

The disco scene in New York was a direct outgrowth of the regulations permitting rent parties for persons living in (I guess?) semi-commercial spaces.


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 8:44 PM
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Those Martin things broke me -- I read the first three (thought the first was the best thing ever) and then just didn't want to pick up the fourth. Everyone I was interested in seemed to be dead, and the whole terrifying impending change of seasons thing wasn't changing. I'll probably break down and read them sometime, if I break a leg or something.


Posted by: Lizardbreath | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 9:04 PM
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I feel like I've paid my dues with all the Stirling books. The last thing I need is another hack crypto-fascist fantasy series on my shelf.


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 9:13 PM
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I do like the idea of a drop-in bar like an Elks or VFW lodge. Mormonism doesn't fit the bill in this regard (despite carrying on the aprons, secret handshakes, and social insurance aspects of masonry) because it doesn't have drop-in spaces open all the time and, of course, doesn't serve domestic beer. I've sometimes been tempted to covet those old-fashioned fancy club memberships (C/entury Club, etc.) that I'll never be able to afford (and yeah, wrong side of the class war, etc.).


Posted by: Bave Dee | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 9:19 PM
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I broke my long-standing rule against unfinished fantasy series to get invested in The Game of Thrones. Natilo, I can't actually recommend you try them, given my current level of disenchantment, but seriously, it's not crypto-fascist. Martin's intelligent analysis of women's roles in an advanced feudal structure was what drew me in.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 9:20 PM
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it doesn't have drop-in spaces open all the time

True. My mom always seemed to have keys, though, and we always used the parking lot, which in Berkeley felt like belonging to an elite club.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 9:22 PM
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Martin is good buddies with Stirling though, so he can't be all that great, politically. Also, the description on Wikipedia of his decision to transition from screenwriting to novels was kinda sleazy. I mean, whatever, no man but a blockhead and all that, but still, his decision making process sounds exploitative to say the least.


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 9:29 PM
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123 describes my experience, exactly.


Posted by: emdash | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 10:33 PM
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And a nice little Bay Area quake. Vigilant now!


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 08-23-11 11:57 PM
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61. Corey Robin is fantastic. I discovered her/him last week in this little beauty of a piece. Robin's riff in the last 3 paras on Obama, the Tea Party and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is a thing of wonder.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 2:30 AM
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re: 131

Yeah, I liked that LRB piece. It was a cracking issue in general; Stefan Collini's thing on the current education white paper/legislation was really good, too.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 3:35 AM
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This: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n16/stefan-collini/from-robbins-to-mckinsey


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 3:40 AM
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131:I liked it, but the CR piece in LRB is just Bourgeois vs peasants, progressive vs reactionary, services vs taxes. Or as in Libya, it's all about teh freedom! Rights!

So is 18th Brumaire, but Karl's purpose was to so show how these dichotomies, how this very level of analysis is pathological.

The bourgeois want the value of their urban property to be improved by gov't, which is also their property. The peasants don't want to pay for that.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 3:51 AM
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Speaking of scanning the environment for threats, the WaPo says that the "the red ruffed lemurs" at the National Zoo started "alarm calling" 15 minutes before the quake. That's crazy. They must have felt some tremors, I suppose. According to a quick search, "Madagascar is seismically active: ∼1300 events are recorded yearly," which might explain why the lemurs from Madagascar were able to sense it. We need lemurs strategically placed throughout the country to sense earthquakes, and then webcams will be monitored by volunteers to see if they're predicting an imminent event. This is foolproof. Then we can shut down the nuclear reactors ahead of time. This is foolproof.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_ruffed_lemur


Posted by: bjk | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 5:03 AM
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We need lemurs strategically placed throughout the country

I don't know if we need them, but I kind of want them now that you mention it.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 5:10 AM
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Adam Kotsko recommends...

Eternal and constant vigilance? Ezra is reading what looks like a good book on the history of debt. So I looked it up and it by David Graeber. Uh-oh. I have read some DG, and he is very very good, but he is an anarchist. If he was a right-winger, he wouldn't be so dangerous, so insidious. Do I let this guy into my head?
It is so tough to juggle all the historically and socially determined perspectives while you are simultaneously trying to gather knowledge and critique ideologies.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 5:10 AM
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Vigilant lemurs, the only thing between us and the next Fukushima.


Posted by: bjk | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 5:25 AM
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The lemurs, they work for the tsar.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 5:29 AM
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131: Yeah, most of his stuff I've read is pretty great. (I still keep meaning to read his book on fear.) I thought it was too bad when we had a thread here not that long ago about something he wrote in the Nation about the politics of freedom, it turned into a discussion of public transportation and cars. Which is ok in general, but not what the piece was about.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 5:41 AM
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Speaking of scanning the environment for threats, the WaPo says that the "the red ruffed lemurs" at the National Zoo started "alarm calling"

How often do they alarm call when there isn't an earthquake, though?


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 5:42 AM
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Eternal vigilance, yadda yadda.

Here's a fun piece on the NYPD's intelligence operation. (Built by an active duty CIA officer!) Reminds me of that force in the 1960s.


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 5:44 AM
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I've been thinking about the OP and one of the things that occurs to me is that it's unusual now for kids to grow up vigilant, at least in the kinds of communities most of us live in. Mara's hypervigilant in a way typical of kids who were learned to fend for themselves as babies, and it's been interesting to see her testing forgetting on purpose and trusting us to take care of her needs.

She's been pretending to forget her best friend's dad's name, knowing that since he's been our friend for years we can always supply the name. I can tell it's a test of sorts and that if we agreed we didn't remember either she'd say, "Oh, it's Jim!" She also showed this weekend that she can still manage turn-by-turn directions including using the elevator to get to an office in a building she'd visited with me once before, ten months ago. So she's definitely still paying attention wherever she goes because she never knows when she'll have to find her own way back to safety. I don't know what this will mean for her memory long-term, but she's sleeping and growing well now and certainly seems relaxed, so I think it's lessening to some degree. Her experience may have been more veldt-appropriate than the HPs'.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 5:46 AM
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I've sometimes been tempted to covet those old-fashioned fancy club memberships (C/entury Club, etc.) that I'll never be able to afford (and yeah, wrong side of the class war, etc.).

I would like the opportunity to follow the example of my forefathers and decline an invitation to join such a club.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 5:48 AM
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142: Devil's advocacy: In the twenty-first century, a large urban police force without an intelligence operation would not be, or be capable of, doing its job.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 5:51 AM
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123, 129: Everyone I was interested in seemed to be dead

To avoid a direct spoiler, I'll link this (but don't even hover). Plus variants thereof.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 7:56 AM
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Blah, blah, blah.


Posted by: Pauly Shore | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 8:33 AM
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118: Success! Book Five obtained from the library with no extra carbon emissions as my daughter was called into work on her day off. And now to be a good citizen and library patron I need to read it in a couple of marathon reading sessions*, because in addition to being an environmentalist, I'm considerate that way.

*I did seriously contemplate just finding someplace on the web that had a plot summary so I could quickly find out where the main story threads ended up.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08-24-11 3:00 PM
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Re: Game of Thrones, I've read all the books but the most current one. I still plan to, it's not like Martin pissed me off somehow or I lost patience for that kind of series, but after several days of my girlfriend assuming I'd need to go to the bookstore right away to get it (which was how I approached the recent Harry Dresden book, among other things), I thought about it and explained that I'm in no rush to read this because while it's good, it's not fun. It's grim, there are very few actually likeable characters and they're on opposite sides of the war, the only humor is one-liners and dark irony... Still worth reading for an epic fantasy fan for many reasons, but not the kind of thing I need to go out and read ASAP.

Definitely want to download it tonight or tomorrow, though, because I'm traveling soon and could use something nice and big. Thanks for the reminder.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 08-25-11 6:27 AM
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I'm traveling soon and could use something nice and big

Have you tried rentmen.com?


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-25-11 6:30 AM
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