Topic: Communities taht Abide... (Read 563 times)

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2013/06/communities-that-abide-preamble.html

Another good post from Dmitry Orlov.  Yes, he's as much a 'progressive' as he (counter-)attacks in this article, and he has many questionable 'facts' in here, but it's a great read.  There's also this little tidbit...

"This is why every successful community I've looked at knows how to exclude (shun, expel) people. Every successful community jealously safeguards its separateness from the surrounding society. This is critical to their survival and for achieving much better outcomes for their members than the surrounding society. In my understanding, these practices must also extend to the family, the extended family being a microcosm of community.
 (...)  As far as the labels of “patriarchy” and “matriarchy” are concerned, the winning label for me is, of course, anarchy—a well-organized, copacetic one. And, sure enough, most of the successful communities I have looked at are, in fact, anarchic in the structure of their self-governance. But most important is their separatism. Their value systems are their own—not yours. Do you wish to “improve” these communities, bringing them more in line with your own value system? Well, there is a word for that sort of activity: persecution.

The women who took offense and spoke up after my talk zeroed in on some specific areas, indicating that the communities I chose as examples of success are in fact intolerable by their standards. Some of these communities do not offer birth control to women, and/or resort to corporal punishment to discipline children, and/or do not give women equal rights, and so on. It's a good thing I didn't include any communities that practice polygamy or infanticide, or I would have probably caused a riot (there probably are some polygamous communities that I would consider successful; not sure about infanticide). I did include one group (the Roma) who practice arranged marriage. All of these deviations from the current American politically correct norm are problematic for those who allow themselves to regard others through the lens of their own value system (a common failing). But is that even a valid approach? My approach is to study these communities as if they were a different (sub-)species of hominid. After all, none of you will ever be allowed to interbreed with any of them. Do lions practice polygamy? Yes. Do males kill cubs sired by other males. Yes they do. Does this make them worth emulating? Probably not, but they are still worthy of study, because they are what evolution wrought, and were it not for poaching and habitat destruction (a.k.a. persecution), they'd probably still be a success story. Similarly with human communities that achieve significantly better results than the rest: you may not like them, but then who do you think you are anyway?"

Emphasis is mine.