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Apr 6, 2023
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Why do people live in Tornado Alley? The could just leave! /s

The land is an important part of who they are. I've visited/worked with Ojibwe, Cree and Inuit in their respective lands. The connection to the land is more powerful than mere hometown nostalgia. I recommend reading Paying the Land for more on this.

NB: Canada forcefully relocated Inuit communities into the far north to be human flagpoles for our sovereingty claims. The state has an interest in keeping mukluks on the ground.

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Apr 7, 2023
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Presumably the state wants to strengthen its claims against encroachment by other Arctic powers (*cough* Russia *cough*) independently of how (il)legitimate it asserts its foundation to be for domestic audiences.

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That's fine, but what if those people live in a modern state (e.g. Canada) and have terrible quality of life? Does the government have to pay the exorbitant cost of providing transport, schooling, police, electricity, sewage, power lines, medicine, and social services to every inhospitable square inch of the Arctic? Or is it fine for Canada to spend as much per capita in the Arctic as it does elsewhere, and get blamed for all the ills of Eskimo society because they're the Big Bad White Man?

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Apr 7, 2023
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I agree, but how much is a reasonable amount to spend? I'm OK with spending, say, 30% more on Arctic inhabitants than on non-Arctic inhabitants. I'm not OK with spending 5x more.

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That's a really loaded question and doesn't account for the fact that there are First Nations reserves south of 60 that are also deficient in those things, it's not just a northern thing. The Crown entered into treaties with First Nations, and it's not exactly clear that they negotiated in good faith. Regardless, if you sign a treaty that promises provision of certain services in exchange for concessions, then it's on you to hold up your end of the bargain.

From the Wikipedia entry on Resolute Bay (Qausuittuq, "place with no dawn"): "They [relocated Inuit] were told that they would be returned home after a year if they wished, but this offer was later withdrawn as it would have damaged Canada's claims to sovereignty in the area and the Inuit were forced to stay." So yeah... I think we owe them some goods and services.

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"That's a really loaded question and doesn't account for the fact that there are First Nations reserves south of 60 that are also deficient in those things, it's not just a northern thing. The Crown entered into treaties with First Nations, and it's not exactly clear that they negotiated in good faith. "

I'm sure the Crown didn't promise broadband Internet and electric lines back in the 19th century. But in my comment, I wasn't arguing that the government isn't at fault at all. I was questioning whether other Canadians should be obligated to pay for the Ojibwe, Cree and Inuit "connection to the land", and if so, what amount is fair. Obviously it's unreasonable to expect exactly the same per-capita spending in every region of a vast country, but is it fair to Ontario taxpayers to spend 100x more per capita in Nunavut than in Ontario?

From the same article: "The government paid $10 million CAD to the survivors and their families and gave a formal apology in 2008.[22]"

Also, the Inuit who live in Resolute Bay aren't prevented from leaving anymore, are they?

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Individuals can win $10 million awards in court for arguably lesser grievances. What's the price for using the state's monopoly on violence to relocate whole villages into environments where death and privation are daily hazards, where the sun doesn't rise Nov - Feb? What's the price of a life sentence for you, your children, and their children? $10 million and an apology won't bring back the dead. The Inuit in settlements like Resolute and Grise Fiord are manning our northern walls and they're not getting paid soldiers' salaries for it.

Regarding treaty obligations, this is a complicated issue that I'm not prepared to speak on with any authority, but I will say that it's more complicated legally and ethically than most Canadians care to admit. These are treaties between various nations and the Crown. These nations don't fit neatly into our Westernized box of concepts around citizenship, sovereignty, and the social contract. "If they don't like it then why don't they leave?" glosses over so many things, it's a single sentence Gish gallop. Asking a question like that betrays a fundamental lack of engagement with the subject at hand. Excusable for an American perhaps, but Canadians ought to know better by now.

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But you haven't answered my question: what amount of money is it fair to ask other Canadians to pay to subsidize Arctic living? We both agree that it's not zero, and I think you'd also agree that it isn't infinity, so l what is it? I'd set the limit at 50% the average per capita government spending in the rest of the country. I think this is well below what is needed to give Arctic dwellers an equal quality of life.

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Living in unfavourable places at least stops you being invaded.

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The Arctic in winter requires extraordinary effort to simply survive. Military operations on land up there are more about presence, getting there first and not dying, rather than offensive operations. Naval surface ops basically a non-starter, not sure about sub-surface. The air is the dominant domain

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I wonder how it compares with India vs China combat in the Himalayas. Which would be worse?

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Both would be miserable, but I'm not sure which would be worse. From a land perspective, sustainment (replenishment, transport, med support, etc.) would be the greatest challenge, followed by environmental hazards. One of my winter warfare instructors had attended a high altitude warfare school in Nepal. One of his team mates went down from altitude sickness and the evacuation became a mission in itself because they were higher than the working altitude for helicopters.

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It means you're among the last people to be invaded, but I note that no Eskimo community is an independent nation, they've all been annexed by great powers - being in remote and hostile territory just mean it happened circa 1900 rather than circa 1700

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Of course , technological advances are game changing about who you would want to invade an why....nobody was very interested in mineral oil until a hundred y ears ago.

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I'm so pleased at the Robert Service reference. The Cremation of Sam McGee is the first long poem I memorized.

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Nice, I've got that one memorized as well!

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Good for the two of you! I've tried to memorize it, but my brain keeps filling in every line or half-line I can't quite get right with the phrase "And the huskies howled", which doesn't appear in the poem nearly enough times for this strategy to work.

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I have the same experience trying to memorize The Raven, it’s weird.

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Howled the husky "Awooooorawr."

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For those of you who are too young to have learned poems in school.

"The Cremation of Sam McGee"

By Robert W. Service (1874–1958)

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

* * *

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45081/the-cremation-of-sam-mcgee

Published in 1907 in "Songs of a Sourdough".

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Thank you. Something about it sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it.

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My father loved to recite the poem when I was a lad.

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Another striking Robert Service poem is "The men that don't fit in"

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58012/the-men-that-dont-fit-in

I won't copy and paste it here because substack seems to have zero ability to format quotes or code segments in comments. (I have tried several forms of annotation all to no avail, such as HTML or square brackets, etc. If this can be done, I would love to know how!) I guess a simplistic comment facility is deliberate, to prevent complications in narrow mobile display windows.

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My brain always wants to switch to Kipling's Ballad of East and West at the ninth line.

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I've been working on "The Absinthe Drinkers" for a while now. I'll get it in time.

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April is National Poetry Month.

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April is also the cruelest.

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It will show you fear in a handful of dust.

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This is the way the world ends

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With a bang!

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You guys are making me remember one of my all-time most fun nights: I'd just graduated recently, and had some friends who were in an American Studies grad program. We got really very stoned and someone put on an album of TS Eliot reading The Wasteland and some other poems, in the voice of a pretentious undertaker. Every line seemed to have a ridiculous second meaning to someone in the group, and they'd shout it out, and we roared with laughter all the way through the poem.

Oh yeah, we also laughed our asses off at

Webster was much possessed by DEATH [deep sepulchral voice for this word]

And saw the skull beneath the skin

And breastless creatures underground

Lean backward with a lipless grin [trilling the r in "grin"]

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". At the risk of sounding like a judgmental Westerner who thinks other societies are worse than his own, Eskimo society is worse than mine. There is no privacy - after all, igloos have no walls. Nobody ever gets a moment alone, except on hunting trips. Everyone is watching each other and talking to each other all the time. In all this watching and talking, nobody ever compliments or praises anyone else, or expresses happiness or gratitude (the closest Foulks comes to admitting an exception to this rule is that a wife may sometimes smile when her husband arrives home from a weeks-long hunt). But they mock each other’s failures all the time, forever. That quote about qivitoq at the top of this post is pretty typical. Any Eskimo who makes a mistake or just fails to conform will be the butt of everyone’s barbs until they die - often of suicide"

Probably has something to do with living in a hard and unforgiving environment where someone who fails to conform to group standards may put the entire group at risk. In this, it is something like being a feral cat, although we are much more solitary and independent, because we are able to be so.

I have read of pioneer humans going stir crazy in the long Dakota winters.

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I just watched a very hard to watch movie, "The Homesman" on HBOMax. Three Nebraska women go around the bend and need to be returned to the safety of civilization in Iowa in the late 19th century.

Tommy Lee Jones and Hillary Swank are the main players. Like I said, it is pretty hard to watch but it does depict frontier women made mad by the privations of a very rough life.

Viewer discretion is advised.

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I'm glad you mentioned that. I just read the book a few weeks ago and didn't realize the movie had been made.

Great book, although not particularly cheerful. The description of life in early Nebraska was pretty bleak.

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Shades of Mari Sandoz's Old Jules, maybe? I still recall the story-within-a-story of how Gentleman Jim discretely canceled a horse thief's retirement.

But then settlers have to sort out what to do if the ad hoc enforcer or committee goes rogue, and you have to form a second committee to reign in the vigilantes. It's an old story on the frontier.

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Maybe, but I'm not sure I'm convinced. The military during wartime is probably relatively analagous and while there is certainly the pressure not to fail it doesn't seem to require an absence of positive interactions or a disapproval of positive feelings. Indeed, it seems like often the positive reinforcement of group bonding is as important as the negative.

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I dunno, far as I can tell, the military seems to push forced conformism pretty hard.

Axtually, the analogy I originally was thinking of was the Taliban. Fuckup Taliban not only got killed, a bunch of other Taliban tended to get killed along with them.

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Yes on conformism. But my point is that conformism doesn't always require a prohibition on positive interpersonal interactions. Indeed, sometimes it comes along with a positively sappy amount of brothers in arms kind of talk.

I agree that it usually brings along the mocking of failure etc but the prohibition on positive reinforcement is what seems odd.

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I'm not really sure that it's fair to assume that all "tribes" of Eskimo were similar WRT that custom. Perhaps there's a selection bias. If piblokto only showed up among groups without positive reinforcement, those are the ones you would notice. Certainly among the folks I know, different families have different ways of interacting, and that's within the same culture.

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It's pretty easy to come up armchair anthropological explanations for why some seemingly strange or cruel social custom is important for survival. But I think such explanations need to be taken with a grain of salt, or maybe an entire salt lick.

For one thing, you can easily make one up about the exact opposite custom. If the book had instead said that Eskimos were incredibly warm and kind people who showered each other with praise all the time, you could say that because they live in such a hard and unforgiving environment they need to make everyone feel like a loved and needed part of the group, so that they will strive to protect it.

Also, such explanations ignore non-survival-related reasons such dynamics might develop. For example, they might have resulted from an out-of-control loop of virtue signaling where people competed to one-up each other for intolerance of noncomformity, sterness, toughness, or some other value that is good in moderation, but toxic in excess. Other commenters have pointed out that there are other societies that manage to survive in dangerous scenarios without being quite so cruel to each other.

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The lesson of "The Secret of Our Success" is that stone-age societies are long shaped by cultural group selection. Life is quite marginal that far north, so there's not a lot of slack for practices that would screw things up. On the other hand, the lower population density also makes war less important than in places like the Amazon or New Guinea (which is not to say it wasn't a factor).

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I'm not sure I buy that in harsh environments destructive signaling loops can't necessarily get started because there isn't enough slack. There might be no slack in some parts of the environment, but plenty in others. Or people might get stuck in a permanent loop of mediocrity, where they never screw up bad enough to get everyone killed, but never really excel either (in fact, in a low war environment such a loop seems more likely, since they're competing more against nature and less against rival humans).

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Where do you live?

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This. We could even argue the other way round -- when you have no slack, people can get stuck in completely stupid local maxima, if doing the obviously better thing requires a small upfront cost they cannot pay.

For example, the situation with abusive teachers seems like a stable equilibrium. If you have few experts, they can afford to be as abusive as they like, because the students do not have a choice. But then only the most determined students become experts, which means you have few experts in the next generation, too.

The other equilibrium, where you have enough experts, so if your teacher is abusive, you simply choose another one, and that gives you enough experts in the next generation, is also stable. And probably better for the tribe: more experts means higher productivity, and also a smaller risk that the only local expert randomly dies.

Problem is, that "better for the tribe" does not give you a recipe how to get from here to there. You have one local expert, which makes him high-status, he likes to abuse the students, and he is not going to cooperate at destroying his source of power.

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Intuit fought the Cree and did pretty well before the Europeans gave the latter guns.

Thule vs Dorset

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There's a TurboTax joke in here somewhere...

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Assets frozen? Cree-dit problems?

Inuit can help!

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There's not a lot of slack for *experimenting.* The fact that they're surviving and that changing it would end badly means that they've found a local maximum, but not a global one.

(Actually, an especially conformist society might *create* local maxima - if the rest of the tribe bullies you to death for not conforming, then obviously attempts to change are going to end badly for you, but that doesn't say anything about whether the change itself is a good idea.)

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Deliberate experimentation is uncommon among all the societies Henrich was focused on. Instead cultural evolution is said to proceed randomly, with people not understanding why what they do works. And any random change that would give one group an advantage can lead to them replacing others. Although I suppose one could borrow the logic of "The 10000 Year Explosion" that selection is stronger vs drift in larger populations and thus that there won't be as much random cultural change in an environment that doesn't support as many people & groups (in contrast to a place like New Guinea).

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They can definitely end up in an equilibrium that's stable but awful for most people in it. Human civilizations do that *all the damn time*.

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Nigel Barley (*1947) wrote best-selling (and rather funny) anthropological books about his studies of a tribe in West-Africa (Dowayo) and later in Indonesia (Toraja). After those kinda rude Dowayos he was amazed how friendly the Torajan were (with each other). And was at a complete loss to explain: Why? - OTOH, late Marvin Harris was always great at theories why (holy cows, witch hunts, pig wars ...). Controlling the number of surviving baby-girls is often crucial in Malthusian societies. One tribe in India used to(?) kill so many, that they found a stable and peaceful equilibrium, where all brothers marry ONE girl. The guys do all serious work, the girl combs her hair. When one brother is making out with the wife, he leaves a mark at the door, so the others know not to disturb. - Others (see: Yanomami) kill baby-girls more often than boys, too. But just enough to have constant fights about the remaining, who get mistreated a lot. - What are the gender ratios at different ages among Eskimos (1850 vs. 2020)?

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If that environment would be the primary cause of these unusual social habits, then we'd expect the same patterns to appear in groups in similar circumstances, for example, the indigenous peoples on the other side of the arctic - the Chukchi (who are so close to Siberian Yupik), Samoyeds, Sami peoples. I don't know enough about them to dare to assert if they have similar or contrasting habits (AFAIK they're different, but I may be wrong), but either way that would be relevant information about that hypothesis.

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Nowhere did I say that this was the only solution, or even an optimal solution.

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Doesn't the classic military version involve some kind going nutso during carpet bombing or a long artillery bombardment?

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Eskimos are assholes.

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Hey watch that colonialist POV, man! :)

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Come on, knock it off with this low-effort strawman-leftist humor. Comment threads like this are why NYT was able to paint Scott as a bigot.

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> Comment threads like this are why NYT was able to paint Scott as a bigot.

Hmmm… I’d be interested in your reasoning here.

>Strawman-leftist

First time I’ve seen that particular hyphenation

WTF does it even mean?

More cowbell or something?

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GGP says:

> Eskimos are assholes.

Which, based in the article, is a fair enough joke/observation, sure. Your reply:

> Hey watch that colonialist POV, man! :)

might just be a harmlesss joke. Or it might be the type of joke that's meant to be a cheeky political observation, something along the lines of *Liberals are way too obsessed with the idea that westerners are colonizers, and that's ridiculous, so watch out before a liberal calls you a colonizer!* The "strawman-leftist" is that hypothetical upset liberal you might be making fun of.

NYT read Scott's posts and comment sections and spun a story that we're a bunch of casually-bigoted libertarian edgelords. I don't agree with that, but can you see how trying to be funny about the impacts of American colonialism could support that kind of spin? We committed a genocide, let's not forget that.

IDK, maybe I'm reading into things too much. But these comment sections tend to be about hyperanalysis, so here it is.

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No sarcasm intended. Have a good day.

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You cannot live your life worrying about what the NYT types thinks. And the NYT hit piece doesn't seem to have harmed Scott anyway. And for what its worth, the only reason I am here is precisely because of the NYT hit piece. If they had showered him with praises, I wouldn't be here :)

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That doesn't follow. A lot of Eskimos decided they didn't like that culture and noped out of there once given the opportunity.

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I can't imagine people who evolved and were raised in such an environment not being to some degree assholes.

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Not my experience.

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"Knud Rasmussen asked his guide and friend Aua, an angakkuq (spiritual healer), about Inuit religious beliefs among the Iglulingmiut (people of Igloolik) and was told: "We don't believe. We fear.""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_religion

The harsh Arctic environment seems, from my vague impressions, to be a common thread in all these strange Arctic anthropological phenomena.

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I recall reading that the Auca natives of South America had a similar "religious" situation. I think it may be common among "uncivilized" people groups: those without writing, or city building, or the other things that bring about organized religion. The natural world is a frightening place.

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It's at least intuitive that if you live in a super harsh, barely-livable environment, your gods/spirits/etc. would also be super harsh. OTOH, who the hell had more terrifying gods than the Azteks? And they lived in a pretty nice part of the world, at least if you could avoid having your heart cut out to appease the gods so they wouldn't end the world.

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That's pretty much how Graeco-Roman paganism worked too. People performed rites to avoid angering the gods, to calm them or to gain their protection.

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Umnn... partially. They also did it for fun. Some did it for enlightenment. Simple pictures are usually wrong. (And the rites of Orpheus appear to have started as a work of fiction, though it may have been presented as truth.)

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> This sort of training still persists today. The young hunter accompanies older men on their hunting trips and learns by observing them. If he succeeds in duplicating their actions properly, he is rewarded by silent acceptance. If he should make an error, he is chastised and teased. This ridicule continues beyond that which takes place at the time. The other men are also told of his failings so that they can join in

This reminds me of the guy who went to Japan to learn how to craft bonsai form the masters – they acted in ways that strike me as brutal and abusive. He became very good, returns to the States, won acclaim, and when he attempted to teach the American disciples who came to him in the same fashion he had been taught, they all left.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/21/the-beautiful-brutal-world-of-bonsai

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That sort of total Respect for Authority just isn’t built into American civilian culture.

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I read that too, and while usually I am quick to be envious of anyone's skill in virtually any hobby - one of those resentments only available to moderns, but abundantly so - including the skill of practicing at some one thing in a dedicated fashion - I began to perceive what they did to the poor trees as brutal and abusive.

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Apr 7, 2023
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Do tell.

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Interesting. My sister is a Buddhist, non-violent, etc. And she is an amateur bonsai practitioner.

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I think the guys in that article practiced what might be called "extreme bonsai" but I dunno.

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I was also never going to like the idea of wresting very old trees from the very marginal places where they had managed to survive.

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Thanks for sharing, it was an enjoyable article to read.

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Pretty much like it used to be in japanese martial arts. Sensei is silent is the highest praise, usually there is criticism. Not much left of that in European dojos, it seems to me.

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Reminds me slightly of this banger from De Gaulle

Nothing enhances authority better than silence, the splendor of the strong and the refuge of the weak.

Unfortunately only the first sentence made it to the internet, there is a 20-lines paragraph of it in "Le Fil de l'épée", but the core concept is that speaking dilute a leader's ability to get respect, while silence keeps the subordinate attentive.

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"Not much left of that in European dojos, it seems to me."

Probably because is mostly doesn't work, but other things can.

In college many years ago I was taught Shotokan Karate from an old-school Japanese instructor. Five foot zero, slender, smoked. His day job was selling real estate, but he taught Karate in the evening because he wanted to. Which meant that he didn't NEED the students to continue to show up as he would if instruction was his job.

He was an excellent instructor, but had also figured out that what worked in Japan in the 1960s was not going to work in American in the 1980s. Because he wanted his American students to learn he adjusted his approach while still managing to instruct well ... his black belt candidates went to Japan to get their black belts so he clearly wasn't cutting corners with his instruction. And he did not want them to go to Japan and fail their black belt test.

Times and places change. He adapted. I didn't realize at the time how unusual his adaptation might have been.

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Yes this is a critical, difficult transition it seems... Effective instruction, or finding a new pedagogy, of the same art in a new cultural environment.

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Wow, looks like the "Wax on, Wax Off" trope you'd see in films like "The Karate Kid" (the one where the master makes the apprentice do menial chores as part of their training; see https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WaxOnWaxOff) wasn't an exaggeration. In fact, the trope was rather romanticizing/underselling the sort of thing apprentices are subjected to:

"In the morning, Neil would bring a sample of his wiring to the workshop and ask Kimura to critique it. Neil recalls Kimura once saying, “I’ve never even seen anyone do something this terrible. I would have to *try* to do something this terrible. Why are you so stupid?”"

&

"Neil was even more disheartened by the abuse that the senior apprentices inflicted on those below them: slapping them, striking them with sticks, even punching them in the face. On one occasion, he saw Urushibata repeatedly kick another apprentice, who was balled up in the fetal position. (Urushibata says that he “is sorry for using unreasonable corporal punishment.”) During these beatings, Neil recalls, Kimura often watched and laughed, exclaiming, “I bet you won’t forget that lesson!”"

&

"Neil has never been able to watch “Whiplash,” the 2014 film about a sadistic jazz conductor who pushes a young drummer to practice until his hands bleed, because the story line is “hauntingly” reminiscent of his experience as a bonsai apprentice. “That kind of mental warfare—that was my apprenticeship,” Neil said. He was often criticized for mistakes that he hadn’t actually made, and he was never complimented on his achievements. He learned that the only way to survive was to switch off his emotions, store away his ego, and give himself over to predicting and fulfilling Kimura’s needs."

(This sort of thing used to be common of course, in apprenticeships & master-apprentice relationships in Europe and elsewhere, as the article points out. But it's easy to see why this died out, as the article also points out.)

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So I'm wondering how this seeming lack of positive interactions is perceived by the traditional tribe members. I mean, do they perceive it as bleak or as a kind of warm group acceptance which doesn't need to be voiced?

Still, something about it seems weird to me. I mean I don't think one sees similar behavior in isolated indigenous tribes in the tropics and while in some sense food might be easier to find in that environment presumably human tribes grow until birth and death rates even out (whether because of war, food limits or disease) so it doesn't seem like the lack of positive affect interactions can be an essential feature of the level of danger/reliance.

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>So I'm wondering how this seeming lack of positive interactions is perceived by the traditional tribe members. I mean, do they perceive it as bleak or as a kind of warm group acceptance which doesn't need to be voiced?

I was wondering that as well. People from more expressive cultures often perceive people from more reserved cultures and emotionally repressed, although the reserved people don't perceive it that way, and (for those in the know) can often pack a lot of emotion into a seemingly minor act or phrase ("You know, I really am rather fond of you, old girl"). Maybe the Inuits have ways of marking acceptance and approval that are obvious to them but tend not to get noticed by westerners.

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Judging by "... their family and community start hounding them to commit suicide, ratcheting up the social pressure until they comply." & "Frequently relatives admonished the individual to the point of encouraging him to do away with himself. Rasmussen mentions a young man who was told by his foster father, “I wish you were dead! You are not worth the food you eat.” ", I don't think that can be the full story. Or perhaps any part of the story at all. Saying “I wish you were dead! You are not worth the food you eat.” sounds like it has the opposite problem of being a bit *too* direct, something better off emotionally repressed.

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That certainly is but how common is that and how common was that before outside pressure.

I mean maybe when the society was healthy it was just a difference in expressiveness but then when it starts to collapse this is how things go bad. I mean, I expect you can find similar family issues in troubled western communities now (at least based on the dubious evidence of 90s shows like Jerry Springer).

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Why do you feel such a desperate need for the West to be either at fault or "just as bad" that you must throw out baseless speculation, contra the evidence WindUponWaves provided you?

WELL I KNOW IT SAYS THEY ARE DIRECT AND EXPRESSIVE RIGHT THERE BUT LIKE THE WEST IS JUST AS BAD SOMETIMES SO THERE!!

C'mon, man.

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I don't. It's just a possibility. Could be their culture just sucks too. But the reason I feel motivated to make it is that we evolved various positive reinforcement mechanisms for a reason so it seems unlikely that a culture which is split up into such small units (so seemingly plenty of opportunity for a group with a more effective social system to outcompete the others) to end up not making use of these mechanisms. Besides, my intuition is that being constantly miserable is itself a significant competitive disadvantage (other things being equal).

Generally, I think that being rich and educated tends to make a culture better and nicer. But I'd expect there either to be a specific reason why an absence of positive affect is selected for in this environment or for it to be used. The conformity aspect seems perfectly understandable but not the aspect of any positive emotional connections/feedback.

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Well...

....okay, fair enough, heh. I apologize for assuming the worst of you, my friend!

_edit:_ WAIT HOLD ON WHY WOULD YOU NEED TO OBSERVE "PARTS OF THE WEST ARE JUST AS BAD" THEN, HUH?! That *undermines* the point you outline above, if anything! My beady eye is now upon you, P.G., ol' chum; upon you like veritable glue!

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Maybe their model is that the units that one loves and are loyal to are not individuals, but groups -- the family, the whole village. If you can't work, and are eating the food other members of the family produce, you are showing lack of love for the family.

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Coming from India, this seemed like just like the interactions I'm used to - people will rarely positively reaffirm you directly, at least as effusively as seems to be common in North America. When I first experienced Western-style compliments I thought I was being made fun of. However, this style of communication doesn't feel bleak or cold, at least when you're used to it - it feels warm and accepting (they didn't even expect that I would fail!) whereas aggressive complimenting feels weird and condescending (were you expecting that I would do badly?...)

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I’m American and find the “culture of compliments” weird. I wouldn’t even say I come from a family that particularly withholds compliments and approval, so it’s not that. But in recent decades I think it’s gotten *much* more standard to shower people with praise, especially at work. It’s practically required (maybe literally required) for managers to praise people routinely. My parents definitely did not experience that, so they did not teach me to expect warm praise at work and thus I tend to find it confusing.

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I would say that North America is at the upper edge of the compliment distribution. Certainly those Americans whom I have had the pleasure to meet have been very free with positive praise. It is the sort of thing that can look insincere if one is unfamiliar with their calibration.

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In (my bit of) China, there are a lot of compliments. In fact, it's one of the things I've struggled most to master. Where I was brought up on snarky British insults, everything said at dinner parties here comes coated in a layer of personal praise - though of course, expert practioners may be using that praise to mock, bond, celebrate, denigrate, or anything in between.

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That's very interesting! Do you think the culture is similar to the American one (if you're familiar with it), or is it done in a different way?

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Coming from the UK- people will rarely positively reaffirm you directly, at least as effusively as seems to be common in North America. Also, very few things are deemed "awesome" or "hysterical".

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I’d second this; if you complement someone in Britain un-sarcastically, it comes across as creepy and fake. We very rarely seriously suggest people should kill themselves, although it can be used as a joke if someone seriously embarrassed themselves.

Similarly, in UK legal education there’s typically an explicit no positive feedback rule. I’ve no idea if other professional education is the same.

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"I was on a conference call with an American group yesterday, and the organizer began, I am absolutely thrilled to be with you this morning. Only an American would begin a meeting like this. Let's face it, everyone in the room knows that she is not truly, honestly, thrilled. Thrilled to win the lottery--yes. Thrilled to find out that you have won a free trip to the Caribbean--yes. Thrilled to be the leader of a conference call--highly doubtful."

--The Culture Map, Erin Meyer

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That captures it perfectly!

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I don’t want to make generalizations about cultures I don’t know about. But just as a general comment, praise or displays of favor to one person can lead to jealousy, which is toxic to social harmony. In a situation where people have very little privacy, even favor or affection between friends or partners is seen by everyone and might therefore be riskier.

Similarly, an individual’s going around telling people about his successes or specialness is varyingly unacceptable in different cultures, maybe atypically relatively acceptable in America.

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Ice on face is definitely helpful with vagus nerve malfunction and migraine onset, at least for me; seems connected to sympathetic nervous system going haywire. Works best on the cheekbones for some reason.

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I get occasional migraines, once every year or two. I have found these are triggered when I have "overdosed" on something sugary and I then encounter a sudden visual change, such as a dark PC display suddenly going white!

But as soon as the characteristic Jacob's Ladder shimmering pattern (sometimes called an aura) makes an appearance at the centre of my vision, I neck a couple of Anadin Extras and everything is back to normal in a few minutes. Haven't actually had a painful migraine for thirty years or more, but woe betide me if one ever starts with no headache pills handy!

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Yes, this is called the mammalian diving reflex. Cold water on face and nostrils --> body goes into oxygen preserving mode --> lowered heart rate, selective vasoconstriction, etc. Also helps against tachycardia and other arrythmias.

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Clearly there was a lot of pent up frustration with life before, and there is now, and all that pressure wants to get out one way or another. The form of course depends on the culture, and the degree that the psyche is warped by the inability to blow off steam depends on the person and on the society. It makes sense that addictions mostly replaced an occasional running amok.

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I'm highly skeptical of this idea that frustration and other strong negative emotions can be ameliorated through "venting".

Nonetheless–it seems like most cultures have some kind of festivals, rituals, and other customs where the normal social rules are suspended or even upended, or at least different rules are temporarily in effect; and one benefit of these things might be to serve as a kind of mental reset or "trip" that relieves some of the accumulated weight of the everyday stresses. Maybe these arctic cultures have relatively few of these built-in communal breaks from normality, so individuals are more prone to do them individually, in the form of ad hoc personal freakouts.

Maybe we're starting to see more ad hoc freakouts in mainstream society today, because a lot of our old normality-breaking festivals, rituals, customs, etc. are fading away; "culture" is increasingly a matter of passive content consumption; our lives are becoming more isolated, and an increasing percentage of the parts of our lives that do take place in community are mediated by bureaucratic institutions–we're at school, we're at work, we're in some form of professional "care"; there's nothing to break up the monotony, nothing to shake us free from our everyday perspective, and anything that does remain to serve this function is getting relentlessly watered down...

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Best justification for the Burning Man!

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go outside

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That's a good point, and not a perspective I've come across before

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Are there good explanations why some strange phobias like fear of dentists or flying are catered to in Western culture and sometimes even clinically diagnosed?

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Apr 7, 2023
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Well, dentist visits are probably the most painful and uncomfortable experiences for an average child, so it isn't surprising to me that this often results in irrational hangups.

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