The Green Eyed Monster v. The Logicians
Aug. 29th, 2005 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorThe following is a lengthy musing (What?!? That's unusual!), but on a topic I don't necessarily consider near and dear to my own interests.
The whole thing started when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tacit, in his own journal, began this little thread which spiralled out of the original context. I was having enormous trouble grasping at what he was trying to say.
Why?
After the dust settled, it seems we suffered from a lack of definitional integrity, specifically on the definition of jealousy.
Years ago in college, my Begining Anthropology prof told many stories of his post-graduate studies living with the Blackfoot Indians in Montana. He hooked up with an army buddy, a member of the tribe, moved to Montana, got a job teaching on the reservation, and started observing the differences between their culture and his own.
One of the first differences he noted was social. His army buddy simply wouldn't treat my prof's wife cordially. He would instead avert his gaze from her, talk to her only when addressed, and even then respond in ways that a Westerner would consider rude, or at least cold and formal. This was simply the Blackfoot way; one did not deal other with his friends' wives, lest he be seen as flirting and inciting jealousy.
Ah, but to the wives of brothers, a different story. In the Blackfoot tradition, when a woman is widowed she is expected to wed to her ex-husband's brother. (In fact, her brother, not her husbabnd, is the Man of the House, the one who disciplines the children; but I digress.) In keeping with that expectation, a man is supposed to flirt outrageously with his brother's wife, greeting her with a tongue down the throat and a good grab of her ass. I believe it was called the "joking relationship", since there was seldom any obvious sex as a result of these flirtations. The behavior did, however, make having sex with each other after the death of the spouse much easier.
Family is very important to the Blackfoot, be it biological or adoptive. My prof's buddy befriended his whole family, and mom decided it simply was not proper that my prof had no family. In a complete surprise, he and his wife were invited over one night only to find a full-blown adoption ceremony in progress -- and prof was the adoptee. The surprises continued to mount when, immediately after the ceremony, prof's buddy, his wife's cold and distant nemesis, proceeded to gleefully grope and playfully maul the woman. It was only proper to the Blackfoot eyes, but a complete shock to the poor Western woman.
The lesson? All behaviors are situational and culturally defined. What is seen as proper behavior toward a brother's wife in a Blackfoot setting is competely inappropriate, even taboo, to a friend's wife. (Probably a good thing to remember when visiting a friend on the Rez.)
We all realize this, at least intuitively, but often have trouble sorting our feelings from our learned cultural behaviors. "Should you flirt with your sister or brother?" Eeewwww. "But why not? Let's assume that a full DNA screening has been done. The offspring from a mating between you and your sibling will be the most healthy, most happy little rugrats on the face of the planet. So, really, why don't you go and fuck your sister or brother?" Double eeewwww. Go through an exercise like that, and soon it becomes apparent that it's often hard to separate our emotional revulsion toward taboo behavior enough to logical responses. The more revulsive the taboo suggested, the more difficult it is to articulate. Likewise, lesser taboos and merely culturally inappropriate behaviors defy logical explanation but nonetheless remain in the brain.
Another story.
A few friends and I were at a party thrown by a friend of one of the friends present. We were the out-of-towners, visiting a small town populated by, well, country folk (I do not mean that as a compliment. I never mean that as a compliment.) Certain of the friends of my friend's friend were as ingnorant, boorish and repulsive a lot as I could struggle to imagine. Still, I soldiered on, being polite and making pleasent chit-chat. John drove. I was stuck there.
John, the common link to us all, was on a roll. He has a habit of mentally latching onto a concept and tenaciously ripping at it like a rat terrier on coccaine. The concept for the weekend was "in and out of the box". The inside of/outside of the box meme was just taking off in the business community. John had decided to apply the phrase to sex.
Mind you, I had no idea at the time what he was trying to say. He was simply belaboring the phrase, "Sex is a box, sex is a box, there is this box called sex" saying it over and over again with minor changes. All who knew John were sighing and laughing. That was John.
I was still struggling with the core concept behind his rant when this shallow, Christer cow of a woman, a new wife of one of John's friends, finally had enough. Frustrated by John's behavior -- talking about sex in public! -- she rose and announced, "I don't care what you say! When my husband does the dishes for me without being asked, that can also be sex!"
I finally got what John was ranting all weekend -- that certain behaviors were considered sexual and therefore could conceptually be placed in the "box" of sexual definitions -- and replied, as she was trundling in a huff off the patio, "So, if your husband does the dishes for another woman, is that adultry?"
I have experienced jealousy, just like most everyone I know. So when someone makes a statement like [Bad username or unknown identity: tacit's], "I'm not sure I follow this part--do you mean you believe that jealousy is an inevitable response when your spouse is with another person?", my interest is picqued. I mean, depending upon what it means to be "with" another, how can it not be inevitable?
As you can read for yourself in the lengthy thread, I was working with a conceptual absense of response to explain his comment, as if he had claimed to be the emotional equivalent of a person who had trained himself to not feel physical pain.
In fact, he had simply engaged himself in relationships that within themselves redefined the box, the boundaries, the definition set of behaviors and what set is and what set is not considered acceptable:
I no longer thinktacit and I differ perhaps at all on the topic of jealousy. We both recognize it is a fact of life while we find ourselves trapped in these human bodies, something to experience, just like diarreah and borborigmie (sp). Unlike myself, he has gone to great lengths to understand and change his responses by opening the conversation with his partners. (I have had quite enough benefit/detriment of past experience observing similar polyamorous groupings to be skittish about attempting anything similar myself. . . I know a few of you out there know exactly to what I refer. . . .)
In essense, he and his partners are doing nothing less than creating culture. Cultures are, like individual behaviors, "emergent phenomena" (great quote from someone named Shelly). They evolve -- or can, provided there are people liketacit willing to challenge the established conventions through analysis and experimentation.
Remember from the Fucking Your Sister or Brother example above, this is not very easy at all. Culturally and/or biologically ingrained emotional response patterns are by definition Olde Habbits. Cultures are not easy habits to break.
The whole thing started when
tacit, in his own journal, began this little thread which spiralled out of the original context. I was having enormous trouble grasping at what he was trying to say.Why?
After the dust settled, it seems we suffered from a lack of definitional integrity, specifically on the definition of jealousy.
Years ago in college, my Begining Anthropology prof told many stories of his post-graduate studies living with the Blackfoot Indians in Montana. He hooked up with an army buddy, a member of the tribe, moved to Montana, got a job teaching on the reservation, and started observing the differences between their culture and his own.
One of the first differences he noted was social. His army buddy simply wouldn't treat my prof's wife cordially. He would instead avert his gaze from her, talk to her only when addressed, and even then respond in ways that a Westerner would consider rude, or at least cold and formal. This was simply the Blackfoot way; one did not deal other with his friends' wives, lest he be seen as flirting and inciting jealousy.
Ah, but to the wives of brothers, a different story. In the Blackfoot tradition, when a woman is widowed she is expected to wed to her ex-husband's brother. (In fact, her brother, not her husbabnd, is the Man of the House, the one who disciplines the children; but I digress.) In keeping with that expectation, a man is supposed to flirt outrageously with his brother's wife, greeting her with a tongue down the throat and a good grab of her ass. I believe it was called the "joking relationship", since there was seldom any obvious sex as a result of these flirtations. The behavior did, however, make having sex with each other after the death of the spouse much easier.
Family is very important to the Blackfoot, be it biological or adoptive. My prof's buddy befriended his whole family, and mom decided it simply was not proper that my prof had no family. In a complete surprise, he and his wife were invited over one night only to find a full-blown adoption ceremony in progress -- and prof was the adoptee. The surprises continued to mount when, immediately after the ceremony, prof's buddy, his wife's cold and distant nemesis, proceeded to gleefully grope and playfully maul the woman. It was only proper to the Blackfoot eyes, but a complete shock to the poor Western woman.
The lesson? All behaviors are situational and culturally defined. What is seen as proper behavior toward a brother's wife in a Blackfoot setting is competely inappropriate, even taboo, to a friend's wife. (Probably a good thing to remember when visiting a friend on the Rez.)
We all realize this, at least intuitively, but often have trouble sorting our feelings from our learned cultural behaviors. "Should you flirt with your sister or brother?" Eeewwww. "But why not? Let's assume that a full DNA screening has been done. The offspring from a mating between you and your sibling will be the most healthy, most happy little rugrats on the face of the planet. So, really, why don't you go and fuck your sister or brother?" Double eeewwww. Go through an exercise like that, and soon it becomes apparent that it's often hard to separate our emotional revulsion toward taboo behavior enough to logical responses. The more revulsive the taboo suggested, the more difficult it is to articulate. Likewise, lesser taboos and merely culturally inappropriate behaviors defy logical explanation but nonetheless remain in the brain.
Another story.
A few friends and I were at a party thrown by a friend of one of the friends present. We were the out-of-towners, visiting a small town populated by, well, country folk (I do not mean that as a compliment. I never mean that as a compliment.) Certain of the friends of my friend's friend were as ingnorant, boorish and repulsive a lot as I could struggle to imagine. Still, I soldiered on, being polite and making pleasent chit-chat. John drove. I was stuck there.
John, the common link to us all, was on a roll. He has a habit of mentally latching onto a concept and tenaciously ripping at it like a rat terrier on coccaine. The concept for the weekend was "in and out of the box". The inside of/outside of the box meme was just taking off in the business community. John had decided to apply the phrase to sex.
Mind you, I had no idea at the time what he was trying to say. He was simply belaboring the phrase, "Sex is a box, sex is a box, there is this box called sex" saying it over and over again with minor changes. All who knew John were sighing and laughing. That was John.
I was still struggling with the core concept behind his rant when this shallow, Christer cow of a woman, a new wife of one of John's friends, finally had enough. Frustrated by John's behavior -- talking about sex in public! -- she rose and announced, "I don't care what you say! When my husband does the dishes for me without being asked, that can also be sex!"
I finally got what John was ranting all weekend -- that certain behaviors were considered sexual and therefore could conceptually be placed in the "box" of sexual definitions -- and replied, as she was trundling in a huff off the patio, "So, if your husband does the dishes for another woman, is that adultry?"
I have experienced jealousy, just like most everyone I know. So when someone makes a statement like [Bad username or unknown identity: tacit's], "I'm not sure I follow this part--do you mean you believe that jealousy is an inevitable response when your spouse is with another person?", my interest is picqued. I mean, depending upon what it means to be "with" another, how can it not be inevitable?
As you can read for yourself in the lengthy thread, I was working with a conceptual absense of response to explain his comment, as if he had claimed to be the emotional equivalent of a person who had trained himself to not feel physical pain.
In fact, he had simply engaged himself in relationships that within themselves redefined the box, the boundaries, the definition set of behaviors and what set is and what set is not considered acceptable:
I prefer to fix the refrigerator not by telling my partner she can't do something that triggers a negative reaction in me, but rather by analyzing and processing and picking apart that negative feeling until I really understand it, all the way down to my bones. If possible, I like to involve her other partner in the processing as well. I've found that once I've grabbed the negative response by the tail and dragged it, kicking and screaming, out into the light where we can all see it, it tends to look a lot smaller and less scary than it does while it's still buried in the closet. (Emphasis mine)
I no longer think
tacit and I differ perhaps at all on the topic of jealousy. We both recognize it is a fact of life while we find ourselves trapped in these human bodies, something to experience, just like diarreah and borborigmie (sp). Unlike myself, he has gone to great lengths to understand and change his responses by opening the conversation with his partners. (I have had quite enough benefit/detriment of past experience observing similar polyamorous groupings to be skittish about attempting anything similar myself. . . I know a few of you out there know exactly to what I refer. . . .)In essense, he and his partners are doing nothing less than creating culture. Cultures are, like individual behaviors, "emergent phenomena" (great quote from someone named Shelly). They evolve -- or can, provided there are people like
tacit willing to challenge the established conventions through analysis and experimentation.Remember from the Fucking Your Sister or Brother example above, this is not very easy at all. Culturally and/or biologically ingrained emotional response patterns are by definition Olde Habbits. Cultures are not easy habits to break.