Jared Diamond. Diamond is a professor of geography at UCLA. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. His books "Guns, Germs, and Steel" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?" is his latest book.
The following are my notes from the conversation. Any errors are due to my lack of memory.
Traditional society. Our modern society sees traditional society as something to either kill off or as something that is noble. He feels there is a lot to learn from traditional society.
In small scale tribes: people don’t move around. Are collective. In the US, people move every 5 years. So we get disconnected.
It is true that in nomadic societies, the elderly are often encouraged to die; however, in sedentary societies, elderly have a more satisfactory life than those in modern society.
If a high school has 400 students, the principle knows everyone by name. At a high school with 1,000 students, the principle definitely doesn’t. If a society grows, you need a leader.
We are accustomed to strangers in modern society. In traditional society, strangers are people to fear. Strangers are there to steal or are looking to invade. In modern society, we need to support the need to get along with strangers.
Any society must be able to keep peace. In modern society, the court system maintains a monopoly on force. The court doesn’t care if you end up on good terms.
Justice in traditional society is meant to restore relationships.
In modern society, you have a third party, the state. In traditional society, you talk without a third party.
A disadvantage of traditional society is that there is no individualism. An example, a young man bought a sewing machine to make money. What happened was that he couldn’t charge his relatives and he had to fix all their cloths for free.
American teenagers of missionaries have a hard time adjusting to American culture. You’ll find them running around in the more traditional societies. Everyone is your uncle/aunt. You eat at various homes. When they come back to America, they are in a culture shock.
Opaque bags introduce an unequal society in traditional society. You can hide what you own.
What if we had an issue in modern society? We’d have to act like traditional societies, killing the elderly or babies.
In New Guinea, children are given a lot of freedom. He (Diamond) gave his children a lot of freedom, also. One kid ended up with 147 pets (snakes, frogs, etc). Eventually, his son decided to be a chef.
We don’t allow kids to take chances/risks in modern society. We obsess about wrong dangers. Kids are micromanaged in California. If a 10 year old is dropped in New Guinea, they wouldn’t survive. Kids in New Guinea are allowed to make mistaken and get to learn from it.
In America, we’re told not to kill, but once we turn 18 we’re told we can kill – military soldiers. Half of all soldiers in WWI and WWII couldn’t kill the enemy. In traditional society, warfare is constant. You grow up with killing.
Benefit of modern society: punishment results in deterrence. In traditional society, there is social deterrence.
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