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by bbor
818 days ago
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I don’t think people are so simple - that Aldous Huxley joked about wanting more sex doesn’t convince me that’s truly the driving force of his entire life. And, just practically speaking, a smart scientist man could live a sex-filled emotionless life at that time, and still today… you don’t need to be a nihilist to go on Ashley Madison or seek a Sugar Baby. More substantively, it seems like you’re endorsing a view that Wikipedia sums up as anti scientific and biased. I hate to dismiss someone so blithely but it is fairly strongly worded. To quote the spiciest parts: Freeman's book was controversial in its turn and was met with considerable backlash and harsh criticism from the anthropology community, but it was received enthusiastically by communities of scientists who believed that sexual mores were more or less universal across cultures. Later in 1983, a special session of Mead's supporters in the American Anthropological Association (to which Freeman was not invited) declared it to be "poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading." Some anthropologists who studied Samoan culture argued in favor of Freeman's findings and contradicted those of Mead, but others argued that Freeman's work did not invalidate Mead's work because Samoan culture had been changed by the integration of Christianity in the decades between Mead's and Freeman's fieldwork periods.
Eleanor Leacock traveled to Samoa in 1985 and undertook research among the youth living in urban areas. The research results indicate that the assertions of Derek Freeman were seriously flawed.
At the least, I think we should all agree that no one was out to “prove the way humanity should be”, just explore non-western ways of life. And I believe the consensus among gender theorists and anthropologists is that western sexuality is arbitrary in many ways. That’s not a condemnation of every single part of it, especially dishonest adultery as you seem focused on, but it’s certainly a reason to investigate non-western society’s IMO. |
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