quote: This is bound to raise the status of women.
Yes. Because nothing raises the status of women more than being sold and bought as chattel so long as the price is high.
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quote: This is bound to raise the status of women.
Yes. Because nothing raises the status of women more than being sold and bought as chattel so long as the price is high.
That only shows you don't understand bride price. Brice price compensates the family for the loss of a daughter; it is not a purchase. The legal status of wives in China is not tantamount to chattel. For one thing divorce in China has become commonplace -- even fashionable these days because of tax advantages. In the PRC husbands and wives are supposed to have equal status under the law; for example children may opt to take either their father or mother's name, which is a radical departure with tradition.
Of course legal equality and social equality are two different things (although under PRC law they're not supposed to be).
In any case, girls who are more educated and accomplished, who have a higher earning potential, are going to fetch higher prices. That will encourage families with daughters to invest more in them, which will over time raise the status of women.
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posted
You are correct. I don't understand bride price, nor should I, nor should any woman. To place monetary value on a woman does absolutely nothing to raise her status in society.
I find your comment highly offensive and insulting.
Are you married? How much did you compensate your wife's family?
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By the way, let me explain something to you. It's called trying to weasel yourself out of a sexist comment when you patronize me and tell me that I don't know what bride price is when you define it in one sentence as "a family's loss of a daughter" then forget your own definition and go back to treating women as chattel when you state "going to fetch higher prices."
You know what fetches higher prices? Cows at fairs, when farmers invest in good grain for them and fatten them up, and are then compensated for their "loss" when sold to the highest bidder.
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posted
Umm, I think this 'conversation' has gotten a little heated. However, if we're going to 'argue' bride-price, let's not make it ethnically based. Marriage in Western society was originally a financial contract between two families, not a religious or emotional compact between two willing participants.
What about now? Well, we like to think that arranged marriages are so passe, and yet, a large number of people who are in arranged marriages find that, in the end, they love each other just as much as us fools who 'fall in love at first sight'.
I don't think MattLeo was condoning the notion that women are simply chattels to be bought, sold and traded. I believe he was trying to point out that, as 'girls' are looked upon as an asset rather than a liability (a cultural imperative of those tied to the land, regardless of nationality), the discrimination against them will lessen.
Just my $0.02 worth; but what do I know, I'm a man.
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You're right, everything else is fluffery. The way I see it, most people don't stop to analyze why they do things, and most groups don't stop to analyze why they censure some activity and forbid other activity. They do it via natural selection, because it works. Actions that promote survival continue, actions that cause the individual, or the group, to self-destruct get weeded out.
I wasn't singling out Chinese culture. Infanticide is a universal human practice and has been throughout human history. I was responding to extrinsic when he said:
"The U.N. council on gender issues observes that fifty million or more female newborns may have vanished without a trace during the twentieth-century in China."
I have not researched this issue, so I simply took his word for it. The issue of Chinese men needing to buy wives that I mentioned came from information that I have read through various news reports regarding human trafficking in Asia.
I have no issue with either bride price or dowry. Both serve the function of sealing the deal and making sure that the families involved go through with the negotiated arrangement. Kind of like a down payment on a car or a house. neither custom means that the families won't be giving the married couple additional help down the line after they get married.
I also wasn't meaning to imply that the Chinese, nor any sub=group of the Chinese, are in danger of extinction. From the start I have been talking about bloodlines.
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quote:Originally posted by redux: I don't understand bride price, nor should I, nor should any woman.
If you don't understand it, what basis do you have for concluding that no woman *should* understand it? It seems to me you ought to understand something before you condemn it, much less insist other people not try to understand it.
Calling somebody's remarks "sexist" isn't an argument, it's a rhetorical brickbat. If you want to make an argument, you'll have to set aside your dudgeon and try to understand first.
quote:Originally posted by redux: Are you married? How much did you compensate your wife's family?
Indeed I am married. I married an American so their family did not demand a bride price. However I do support my wife's family, for example when my father-in-law died or in making decisions about how to care for my mother-in-law. This functions something like bride price in China. Here we see marriage as blending families and so while my wife's duties to her birth family were not discharged her new obligations to my birth family are offset by my new obligations to hers.
Of course if we were culturally Chinese, I'd probably still help out of affection, but I'd be much more a secondary player.
I'm culturally American, but my Chinese heritage has given me a perspective on American culture. I frequently laugh at Star Trek's notions of "alien cultures", because they are uniformly easy for Americans to grasp. Chinese culture, on the other hand, is family-centric in a way that is almost beyond American comprehension.
Bride price wasn't the big issue for a young woman entering traditional marriage. The total subservience to her mother-in-law traditionally expected of her *was*. It was a notoriously difficult relationship, but it was often close and affectionate, because the mother-in-law would have gone through same experience.
Think of your typical "Disney princess"; she is a prototype of the young female hero in our culture, and she invariably throws off the bonds of authority to pursue her own agenda, and is rewarded with joy and personal fulfillment. In stories told to Chinese children, that doesn't happen. The heroes in those stories set aside their personal aspirations for the good of the family, and are rewarded by peace, harmony and understanding.
And it's not just women who have to do this. Recall that earlier I mentioned that my father was sent abroad to work when he was twelve. Can you imagine that? Being sent away from home forever, at the age of twelve, just so you can send money back to support the family? Can you imagine doing that to your own children? I can't. I want my children close by, where I can cuddle, coddle and spoil them to my heart's content.
Chinese and American stories don't so much differ on what character traits are virtuous, but rather which virtues they place at the center. In an American story, a hero is invariably intrepid, independent and driven. Chinese heroes display self-discipline, patience, and discernment. There's something to be said for the Chinese perspective. How many Americans have you heard complain that math was too hard? The implication is that if something isn't personally rewarding, we shouldn't have to do it. The Chinese attitude is if you have no talent for something, you should overcome that by working harder and longer.
If you're totally wrapped up in your own culture, the values of other cultures can seem outrageously corrupt. Bride price sends you through the roof. From a chauvinistic Chinese perspective, Americans look like horrible, self-centered narcissists.
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posted
Writing discussions invariably touch upon sensitive topics, especially topics with culture group contentions and differences of conducts, customs, and traditions, like loyalty, fealty, fidelity, and respect. Hatrack membership spans most of the English-speaking globe, eastward from India and Oceania and the Orient to the Baltics, southward from Scandanavia to Australia, northward from South Africa to Canada, not to overlook South America, and English speakers and many non-native English-speaking writers' countries between.
Discussing sensitive topics in this global culture, as a best practice, ought to qualify that a neutral, analytical position is espoused, and one that does not per se condone or glorify a particular unpleasant conduct, custom, or tradition.
This is a forum for writing discussions. Any given culture's custom or tradition from a purely neutral analytical approach for the purposes of writing discussion is potentially open for open-minded discussion. And here and above I use custom and tradition to mean the accepted and common cultural practices of esoteric identity groups, otherwise known as folk groups or culture groups.
Any writing topic is open for discussion so long as it stays within a theoretically speculative writing domain. Speculative meaning intellectual thought, a free and open exchange of writing ideas. Such topic discussion must respect the sentiments and sensibilities, the feelings of potential or actual Hatrack audiences no matter where or wherever they be from.
There is no doubt that one folk group's unpleasantness may offend others' sensibilities unintentionally. Anyone might not know that a particular conduct, custom, or tradition is unpleasant to another person or group, though, again, in this global culture the opportunities to learn them are manifold. Such unpleasant topic circumstances require greater consideration and sensitivity than celebrating unique culture group motifs, like, say, the concepts of the so-called "Noble Savage Myth," which I find misrepresentative of Native Nations' people's and other culture groups' identities. Nobleness in contemporary meaning is merely sincere self-sacrifice for a warranted greater good. Heroism too. Hence not unique to savages, which I take to mean expressly stone and bone tool and weapon users.
Unintentional cognitive biases are part of culture group identities, as are intentional biases. Such is life. Without differences, we would all be identically dreary automatons and about as monotonously dull as a stagnant wheat field. However, as a discussion best practice for the sake of the Hatrack culture group's harmony and mutual respect, respecting those differences is paramount. Relating every discussion, every topic, every response to the broad topic of writing, at least, if not a specific thread's writing-related topic assumes a neutral approach, not negative, for sure.
Contrarily, on the positive side of emotional attitude valence, though celebrating a respectable unique identity, conduct, custom, tradition, or culture runs the risk of tacitly approving of, glorifying, or condoning a parallel unpleasantness, a degree of celebration is warranted.
I presented a paper to a writing conference last year titled, and I paraphrase out of personal privacy concerns, "Writing the Other: Identity Malappropriation." As writers of dramatic fiction, our stories need villains, nemeses, competitors, personas against which protagonists struggle. Yet we run the risk of alienating potential audiences when we indict entire culture groups by stereotyping our antagonist personas, like dehumanizing and demonizing, say, white Anglo Protestant male middle adults.
In simple summary terms, my paper's two main and related points are, be specific, "spell it out," portray unique characters that do not respresent entire culture groups, and, if as a writer the former is realized, then one can portray characters and narrators to whatever degree of credible wickedness and misery we desire with impunity that suits the drama. But in the story, please, not in discussions about writing.
Bringing this at length response into topic coordination, we Hatrack contributors owe to our audiences: actively-participating fellow contributors, solely grazing readers, and future readers, a loyalty in the social context to the group's harmony and respect in our mutual pursuit of writing development.
By the way;
A best practice, as I use it above and always, from the business culture group, means the safest and most efficient critical path process that accomplishes a desired task. Obviously, fair pratice, poor practice, and bad practice are increasingly less safe and efficient.
quote: That will encourage families with daughters to invest more in them, which will over time raise the status of women.
quote: I believe he was trying to point out that, as 'girls' are looked upon as an asset rather than a liability
quote:I have no issue with either bride price or dowry. Both serve the function of sealing the deal and making sure that the families involved go through with the negotiated arrangement. Kind of like a down payment on a car or a house. neither custom means that the families won't be giving the married couple additional help down the line after they get married.
Invest. Liability. Assets. Sealing the deal. Down Payment.
Can you men seriously stop? Do you not see how talking about human beings as if they were objects is wrong? Why do any of you think this is remotely ok?
Women are human beings. Human beings are not objects. Simple.
And let me emphasize that believing, condoning, and putting forward the idea that bride price raises the status of women in society is reprehensible.
I will explain why. Bride price does not raise the status of women. It raises their value as objects. Get it?
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quote:I will explain why. Bride price does not raise the status of women. It raises their value as objects. Get it?
I get it, it's just wrong. At issue is not the woman as an *object*, as she would be in the American media, which only cares whether she's "hot". The issue here is the woman as a source of labor. Recognizing that the work a woman does has economic value does not necessarily reduce that woman to nothing *but* a source of labor.
Would you agree that the work a woman who chooses to remain at home and raise the children has economic value? By your argument giving the woman a share of the cash her husband has earned in a divorce settlement reduces her to an object.
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quote:Originally posted by MattLeo: Would you agree that the work a woman who chooses to remain at home and raise the children has economic value? By your argument giving the woman a share of the cash her husband has earned in a divorce settlement reduces her to an object. [/QB]
Confusing apples and oranges makes for a fruity argument, indeed.
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quote:Originally posted by redux: My argument is so simple that it does not involve cultural or economic nuances.
In other words it is too simple to be of any use to anyone, other than for giving ourselves a pleasurable thrill of self-righteous indignation.
Any program that is going to raise the status of an actual, living, non-fictional woman is going to have to start with the culture she finds herself in, that's embedded in *her* view of the world. It has to start with respect for her as an individual, and her cultural identity is part of her individuality.
"Wake up and find you've magically become an American, along with everyone around you," is not a piece advice that is supportive or respectful to a woman born in a very different culture than yours. You have no idea how rural Chinese or Indian women view bride price. You see it as reducing them to commodities, they may see it as providing support to the families that raised and loved them. Chances are it's more complex and yes, there are cultural nuances involved.
Saying something is a "nuance" in America is like saying "Math is too hard". It means it's something we'd rather not concern ourselves with because it's too much work. But people value the nuances in their culture -- even Americans. We just don't see them as "nuances" because we don't have to work to understand them.
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While widely deprecated in Western society today, the sociology, political geography, and anthopology concept "natural division of labors" is nonetheless still used to stratify Western cultures. In its primordial day, the concept was about cooperation by each according to their abilities. Grog have best eyesight. Molda have best berry-picking fingers, Larry have funniest story. Ochitaugh cure teethaches best. Burl have strongest club swing. Hante best keep fire. Lordes run fastest from raging mammoth.
Long since then, however, the concept has been used to oppress and dehumanize powerless persons and peoples. Womankind, ethnic minorities, young, aged, and emotionally, physically, intellectually underprivileged people powerless before the corecive force majeur of a numerical, political, or fiscal majority.
Treating any human being as an object diminishes her or his cooperative contributions. I'm surprised that as many oppressed people, as do still cooperate, cooperate with those who do not recognize their duty to mutually cooperate. And a duty of loyalty it is, since one and all benefit from the cooperative labors of others.
I raise these points because of a concept I'm developing, working titled "The First Story Ever Told." The natural division of labors I imagine was a far different concept when language first emerged and, hence, storytelling, than it is today. The discussions of "labor" and objectification raised new areas of consideration for my story's development. Like maybe in its fictional world, social stratification begins or at least becomes a social issue when Burl decides he's going to be in charge of everyone.
posted
To bring this back to the issue of writing about loyalty, the different nuances in the ways people view something like "loyalty" are what makes writing interesting. They're a rich source of both internal and external conflict.
Let's imagine a story in which a rural Chinese girl is befriended by a young American woman. The American opens the Chinese girl's eyes to new possibilities; encourages her to pursue her personal ambitions. It's all a great success until they have a falling out about bride price. The girl has an offer of marriage from a distant village, but her American mentor views bride price as literally selling out.
Here we have a conflict over different notions of loyalty. From an American individualist perspective, there can almost be no conflict between loyalty and self-fulfillment, because self-actualization is the highest goal in life. People either want you to be personally fulfilled or they don't deserve your loyalty. The way an American contributes to the group is to reach his highest individual potential. Accepting bride price in the American's view lets the side down; taking money would be symbolically accepting the girl's status as chattel.
The Chinese girl, on the other hand, is the product of the one-child policy; she will be moving far away and there is nobody to look after her parents. Loyalty to them demands she go along with the traditional arrangements so that her parents will have the resources to care for themselves, for forgo marriage entirely and care for them herself.
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posted
Thank you for striving to keep this topic focussed on writing. It can be difficult when issues come up that may be hot buttons for some.
Individual objectification is a valid subject to discuss, in talking about writing and in writing itself.
But we need to remember that we shouldn't take personally each others' observations about cultural things, especially as those things may be explored in our writing.
This is a writing discussion. Again, thank you to those who are trying to keep it that way.
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quote:Originally posted by hoptoad: In the case of loyalty, I suggest the virtue lays closer to Bob than to Alice. Alice is 'open' to the point of being fickle, this is not loyalty by any measure, ( without semantic contortions). Bob for all his vindictivness is at least steadfast.
I'd like to return to Alice and Bob for a moment, because the differences between them bears on rcmann's original problem.
Let me propose a question: which is more durable, loyalty to a person, or loyalty to an ideal? I submit loyalty to a person is more durable, because it's embodied in that person as long as he lives. Your loyalty to your mother may be extremely strong, but it has its limits if she demands to much -- say if she's an abusive alcoholic. If she does not live up to what you see the responsibilities of a mother, chances are you still feel the tug of loyalty, although you may consciously limit her opportunity to capitalize on your loyalty. But you still are loyal to her as you can manage to be.
Loyalty to an ideal has a different nature. It lasts only as long as you hold that ideal to be true. Let's say you're a worshiper of Baal; you've sworn many a solemn oath to him. Then a missionary comes along and converts you to Christianity, and *poof*, there goes all your oaths of loyalty to Baal. They're null and void, and if your new beliefs are true they *should* be. The same treatment goes for socialism or capitalism; democracy or monarchy. As soon as you decide an ideal is untrue, it has no claims upon you. Truth per se always has a higher claim than any ideal.
Now loyalty to an *institution* is complicated, because institutions consist of both *value* and *people*. Maybe the Church of Baal does many good works; the priests of Baal fed, clothed and educated you when you were an indigent child. Your loyalty to the people in the church would probably to spread over into acceptance of the doctrines of Baal-ism. But in our hypothetical conversion case, you have a dilemma of divided loyalties.
The monarchy is another institution where the ideals of monarchical rule and the person of the monarch himself create potential clashes. It's fine when you have a king who embodies your ideals of a ruler, but what if he's absolute rubbish? Rationally it should make you want to chuck the ideals of monarchical rule, but that's a lot easier said than done.
So to return to Alice and Bob, Bob's loyalty to the church isn't necessarily closer to virtue than Alice's loyalty to her new friends. It depends on the church itself. If the doctrines are patently false, and the leadership of the church patently corrupt, then Bob's loyalty is quite vicious. Whether it is more vicious than Alice's abandonment of the church for her new friends depends on those friends.
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posted
So many comments, so few fingers to type with...
I'd like to respond to the comment regarding bride price and/or dowry (i.e. husband price). I don't see them as being a case of objectifying the individuals involved.
In the days when such exchanges were typical, marriages were arranged on the basis of social and economic advantages for the two families involved. If the couple happened to enjoy each other's company, so much the better. But that wasn't the point. The point was the formation of a long term alliance between two kinship groups.
Which comes back around to the morality of the practice. Was it moral or immoral? Does morality change over time in response to changing conditions?
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Dowry and bride price are two different customs. A dowry, more often a traditional Western custom, is the materials and monies a bride brings into a marriage, materials being the dowry chest items accumulated since her birth, many items like quilts and laces and linens, domestic items made by her own hand, or gifts of and awards won for the same, the monies usually paid by her family. A firearm in a dowry chest might surprise a husband and fill him in on his wife's proclivities.
A bride price, typically an Eastern tradition, is the money a groom or groom's family pays for a bride.
A rationale behind both customs, disparate as they may be, ensures that wife and husband are comparatively fiscal equals, which is also an indicator of equal social status, perhaps equal belief systems as well.
Both customs are largely out of fashion in the West, at least not as ritually rigid as they once were not more than two generations ago. Middle twentieth century social reforms driven by Postmodernism's questioning and challenging presupposed notions of propriety impacted marriage rituals too.
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Ever since human beings formed societies, morality ceased being about group survival and became an issue of conformity, or personal survival within society. Growing up in a tribe of cannibals, I would see the eating of human flesh as nothing immoral. In the society I did grow up in, it is immoral--except in the most desperate of circumstances.
As far as loyalty is concerned, I see no connection with morality. The SS were absolutely, and fatally 'loyal' to a personification of evil and an immoral idea. I would assume that the US Marines are loyal to an ideal (the Constitution, in theory, their comrades in practice). Are the Australian SAS loyal and moral? They're loyal to their mates and the ideals this country is founded on, but are they all, and always, moral in their actions? I don't know the answer to that but I'd hope so. Yet, reality tells me that 'incidents' do occur in situations of extreme stress.
So, rcmann, I'd say that loyalty is one coin and morality is another coin. The conundrum the individual faces is: Will they forgo their morality for loyalty, or their loyalty for their morality. That answer depends on the makeup of each individual character.
quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: Dowry and bride price are two different customs. A dowry, more often a traditional Western custom, is the materials and monies a bride brings into a marriage, materials being the dowry chest items accumulated since her birth, many items like quilts and laces and linens, domestic items made by her own hand, or gifts of and awards won for the same, the monies usually paid by her family. A firearm in a dowry chest might surprise a husband and fill him in on his wife's proclivities.
A bride price, typically an Eastern tradition, is the money a groom or groom's family pays for a bride.
A rationale behind both customs, disparate as they may be, ensures that wife and husband are comparatively fiscal equals, which is also an indicator of equal social status, perhaps equal belief systems as well.
Both customs are largely out of fashion in the West, at least not as ritually rigid as they once were not more than two generations ago. Middle twentieth century social reforms driven by Postmodernism's questioning and challenging presupposed notions of propriety impacted marriage rituals too.
It also helps stabilize the situation, since in many cases a marriage failure would require the return of the money/gifts. In the case of upper class families, this could easily add up to a goodly piece of change. Both bride and groom would be under a fair amount of pressure to make things work, when one or both of their families stand to lose mucho dinero if they don't. Plus the status issue.
Grumpy, I don't see how you can separate one aspect of human behavior from any other aspect. People aren't subdivided like that. Morality, loyalty, respect for status, respect for law, sense of identification with a larger group, these are all intertwined inside a person. I have no idea how one would go about separating them even if I wanted to.
I agree about the cannibal example. That's part of what I am working toward. All humans used to be cannibals. Just ask a paleontologist. As we became more technically sophisticated, we gradually dropped the practice.
Why? Was it because we received divine instruction? Was it because the slowly dawning awareness of civilization taught us that cannibalism was *a bad thing*? Or was it because cannibalism gradually became a behavior pattern that threatened group survival, and therefore the groups that practiced it most assiduously suffered a disproportionate disadvantage in competition to those groups that were not quite as voracious about it?
Whatever the reason, it is a fact that the most numerous, richest, and most powerful human civilizations today universally condemn cannibalism except in emergency survival civilization, and them only under strictly defined limits, and even then to do so incurs lifelong stigma.
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posted
This reminds me of when Johnny Lingo pays eight cows for Mahana. Her loyalty is guaranteed since she is worth five to six cows more than the average village woman. She has a lot to live up to. Johnny, in exchange, will be loyal to her in order to get a return on his investment. Johnny was indeed a shrewd trader, making him priceless.
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Contemporary customs surrounding engagement rings reflect the bride price custom. Expending a quarter to a third of a suitor's annual salary is the common custom.
Placing a moral importance upon a contentious custom is for me partly a matter of appreciating the place moral values play in a given culture in a given time, place, and situation, or setting, and partly more for me about analysis and interpreting functionality than value judgments. I respect and appreciate feminist values as much as I do masculinist (macho) values.
I might appreciate misogyny in a fictional context, like be amused or disgusted by it and thus enjoy it, but I don't hold much respect for it as a social custom. I like determining that a particular narrative, one that disguises its misogyny, might espouse that ideal, and hence the writer's world view, but I don't have to agree with it. Of all my reading passions, glimpses into the unique lives of others most interests me.
I might equally as well appreciate radical or reactionary feminism in prose, but, again, I don't have to agree with it. Frankly, I'm a big fan of New Feminism, which expresses the unique roles of women's lives. I like New Feminism because it shows how others cope with the struggles the accident-of-birth gender complications impose upon women.
Empowerment of womankind is to me a noble and neccessary practice for the global greater good. They say the Colt revolver and Winchester repeating rifles tamed the Wild West. I don't agree. The fairer gender's civilizing influences tamed the West, and much of society since long before humans settled into permanent habitations.
Womankind's empowerment is one of the most influential factors for the present and future of the planet. Overpopulation links to every social and enviromental issue before us today. Womankind's empowerment directly results in sustainable fertility rates, for one. Yet more than half the world's population, including women, believes women should be subjugated to a degree. I'm not one of them.
One novel project I have under development and on the front burner turns both the Robin Hood legend and William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies, and other inspirations, around and portrays them from a female perspective. On point is matters of loyalty in a social context as a duty toward womankind and humankind. The idea is of a large scope but managable through the writing principle of specificity. An underlying complication of the whole, perhaps the most influential yet intangible one, is coping with a woman's identity crises in a male dominated society.
quote:Contemporary customs surrounding engagement rings reflect the bride price custom. Expending a quarter to a third of a suitor's annual salary is the common custom.
A marked difference of the engagement ring from bride price is that the bride, and not her family, is the one receiving the consideration for the engagement.
Historically, the ring was held as security against default of the engagement because a jilted bride was considered damaged goods. Now much of its original meaning has been forgotten, or ignored, and the engagement ring has taken on the equivalent of signaling.
An interesting and potential correlation that emerges is that perhaps loyalty is closely tied to economic rewards and punishments.
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quote:Originally posted by redux: An interesting and potential correlation that emerges is that perhaps loyalty is closely tied to economic rewards and punishments.
I believe now we're getting closer to addressing rcmann's original inquiry. Preservation of the status quo and dissent in the face of possible gains and losses buy loyalty, fealty, and fidelity. I think precedence too becomes a matter of habit and not rocking the boat, although history has shown that following the pack can be a dangerous precedent.
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posted
I'm sorry, rcmann, but morality, loyalty, respect for status, respect for law and a sense of identification with a larger group are all learned behaviours and none of them are intrinsic parts of human nature, either collectively or individually.
As individuals we all make choices on which group we will join, who we will respect or follow and every other sort of 'moral' judgement you care to name. However these choices are not based on some genetic imperative, but by the society we embrace; and some of us choose to embrace it less wholeheartedly than others.
quote:Originally posted by redux: An interesting and potential correlation that emerges is that perhaps loyalty is closely tied to economic rewards and punishments.
I believe now we're getting closer to addressing rcmann's original inquiry. Preservation of the status quo and dissent in the face of possible gains and losses buy loyalty, fealty, and fidelity. I think precedence too becomes a matter of habit and not rocking the boat, although history has shown that following the pack can be a dangerous precedent.
Although I think I've also pointed out the importance of self-interest when it comes to how loyalties are formed and broken, I think loyalty is more complex than that. Yes, economics and power shape our loyalties in ways we may be reluctant to admit, but people often act against their own interests -- or at least the superficial ones.
What we call loyalty is the intersection of many behavioral and value axes. For example, there is a person's stance toward authority and tradition. Some people react strongly against questioning authority or received norms. Others react strongly against accepting authority or expected behavior. This intersects with personal relationships: feelings of affection, affiliation, and gratitude (sometimes misplaced).
And then there's the question of economic or political self-interest, modified by the degree to which a character is capable of questioning his own motives. Some selfish people may be cynical, fully realizing they're acting against accepted norms of behavior. Others may be self-deluded, and rationalize their self-interested actions so they appear generous to themselves.
You create different mixes of these factors, and you get different kinds of character situations. For example you may have a cynical, selfish character who nonetheless feels genuine affection towards someone he ought to be working against. This is just as much a dilemma as an idealistic person who is tempted by a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to score big at the expense of his principles.
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Can anyone define loyalty? I am loyal to certain intellectual and emotional precepts, but not to any one ideology or demigod. My loyalty is to myself and my own perceived notions of morality, which I would not, in any fashion, attempt to impose on any others.
Does this mean I stand outside accepted society? I damn well hope it does, because I find that the unquestioning predilection of most of today's youth to follow the herd a worrying trend indeed. To thine own self be true, is not a platitude.
In response to rcmann's original question, even he has forgotten what he originally asked: What's the tension between 'loyalty' and 'duty'? Suddenly we got sidetracked into questions of morality. Duty and morality have nothing in common.
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The qualities of loyalty and duty, and blindly following a leader are I believe rcmann's original quandries. Loyalty and duty, fealty and fidelity are intangibles, abstracts, immaterial in the sense they are not tangible objects that can be held in the hand. Bought loyalty is tangible to a degree in the sense thirty pieces of silver expresses where loyalties lie most faithfully. The silver being tangible tokens of monetary value.
A monarch expects barons or lords to be faithful, if for no other reason than they owe their positions to the monarch's generosity, their lands, fortunes, and estates, from which the monarch may draw human, monetary, and object resources in times of need.
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posted
The longer this conversation continues, the more fascinated I become with the implications relative to behavioral evolution. Granted, morality and duty are learned behaviors, at least to a degree. although I would advance the premise that humans demonstrate an inborn tendency to display loyalty toward their blood kin. Every human society everywhere in the world, as far as we know throughout all of human history, has placed a high value on family.
If one is loyal to family, it follows like stink on sewage that one must feel a sense of obligation toward one's family, which is another way of saying that one feels a sense of duty. By that reasoning, loyalty an duty, at least to one's own kinship group, could very well be instinctive. If that's the case, how does an instinctive sense of loyalty to one's caregivers and siblings transfer to a sense of loyalty to one's clan and tribe? And thence to one's nation? And then, possibly, to humanity as a whole?
Behavior evolution figures that behavior patterns evolve just like physical structures, and usually in conjunction with physical structures. The anteater didn't suddenly grow a long snout and tongue, then decide to go eat ants. he ate ants, and the ones who had the longest snouts and tongues got the most munchies.
So is this true for humans? Does a strong sense of loyalty to one's group provide survival benefits? Does the survival value of learned behavior shift over time? I speculate that it does, like my earlier example of the American bison hunters.
A more controversial, and to some enraging, example might be the attitude that some of the founding fathers had toward slavery. From reading their writings I get the impression that both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington disliked slavery in principle, and wished that they could free their slaves. But they (1) couldn't afford to do it without putting themselves and their families in hardship, (2) couldn't do it without invoking the wrath of their fellows, and (3) truly didn't believe that their slaves were capable of taking care of themselves without white supervision.
It's interesting to me that Washington evidently either changed his mind, or didn't give a care, when he died because he freed his own slaves in his will and damn the consequences to his widow. Makes you wonder what was going on behind closed doors at Mt. Vernon.
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Actually, Washington stipulated in his will that his slaves would be freed only after Martha's death. And I thought it was quite clear what was going on behind closed doors at Mt. Vernon.
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You are right. I sit corrected. I recall from his will that he freed his personal sidekick, and said that he would have freed the other slaves except that they had married his wife's slaves and he didn't want to bust up the families right away.
So, since his wife's slaves would become the property of her heirs once she kicked off, Washington's slaves would be freed once Martha was dead. I gather she freed them about a year or so after he died, by rumor because she was afraid they would kill her.
Weird institution, American slavery. Odd in many respects, and not merely in terms of modern morality.
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posted
By and large, Washington acquired his slaves when he married Martha. They were hers, not his. (Marrying for money does work out sometimes.)
One thing about Washington's last will and testament. Mostly it's the standard "give and bequeath" stuff---but the paragraph on freeing the slaves reads like it was written by someone accustomed to giving orders, and also one accustomed to having those orders obeyed.
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