The Nacirema Effect

            The piece we read about the Nacirema and their bizarre ideas about their mouths blew my mind.  The whole time, even though I was noticing the clues as to the identity of the Nacirema, I’d just think “huh, that’s similar to (whatever aspect of our culture was in question).”  I didn’t realize the subject of the piece was our own culture until Richard mentioned something about the invention of the toothbrush.

            Why is it that my brain was able to find a multitude of similarities between our culture and that of the Nacirema, but still maintain an attitude of separation and surprise at the weird beliefs described?  At the mention of the mouth-related rite of ablution in children to improve “moral fiber,” the soap incident from the movie A Christmas Story came to my mind (Miner 318).  When the Miner’s piece discussed how the people of the mysterious tribe believed all sorts of miseries would befall them if they ceased obsessive dental hygiene – “their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed … their friends desert them” – I thought of how similar this was to our own societal beliefs about the mouth, but I still didn’t consciously make the full connection (318).  Am I unusually clueless?  Yes.  I don’t know how quickly the rest of the class realized the true identity of the Nacirema, but I’m fascinated by the fact that it took at least me so long to clue in.

            I think the root cause (unplanned tooth pun) of my feelings of distance from the people described is that we are raised to view other cultures as slightly weird.  The good thing is, we’re also trained to look for commonalities between ourselves and any other group of people, which is probably why I noticed all the connections between the Nacirema and my own culture.  The disturbing revelation is that even as we tell ourselves we accept all others, that differences are good, there’s still a part of us that says “That’s weird!”, and finds the weirdness distancing.  Weird is good, I think – we want to celebrate differences.  The trick I’m seeking is the one that would allow me to say “Weird Nacirema people!” without feeling so separate from them.  The point of the piece, I think is thus: We shouldn't distance ourselves from others just because we think the others are strange, because from an outsider’s view, we’re pretty weird ourselves.

Consider the Other (and look for fishy puns)

Humans are, in almost all cases, capable of empathy.  We have needed this ability to feel ourselves what others feel – it keeps us alive, helping one another, not only other humans but other animals.  Sometime millennia ago, a human felt empathy for the hunger of a wild canine, and tossed it a piece of meat.  This happened several times, each time canine and human learning to trust each other a little more, until eventually a bond^A was formed – each creature, that might (if empathy had not been present to turn the tide) have fallen prey to the other, now trusted the other.  The two relied upon each other, helping one another to stay afloat in a dangerous world.

This is why empathy is helpful – it’s purpose, boiled down, (as I sea it) is to unite two or more creatures to aid mutual survival.

Sometimes, however, humans decide to wave off empathy.  This can also be necessary for survival – if you feel empathy for your food, it’s more difficult to eat it.¹  Soldiers are trained, often, to shut off their empathy – it’s a lot easier to assail and destroy an evil “enemy” than another human.  I intended to write more on the topic, but I choose right now to feel empathy for whomever may read this blog post – you have things to do, I’m shore, so I’ll dock a few lengthy paragraphs and clam up (am I punishing you with puns? Does it make you crabby?  Am I flippant?  Does it affect the net worth of this post?  Should I seal this up?  Do you want to lob me, or stir things up? (I am still impressed you used the last two as etymology on the quiz, Lena)).  Okay, I’m almost dophinately done now – I’m verboaten.

Oh, weight – don’t be shellfish, support better treatment of animals, because your empathy should make doing otherwise unbearable.

^A Sea how many water-related puns you can find that seam to connect to our Lobster piece from this week.  I hope to Foster more puns, so come up with your own literary pearls, because I’m running out – I may have hit a Wall(ace). 

¹For waterver reason, I struggle to eat meat for breakfast, but am a happy omnivore the rest of the day – maybe I feel more empathy in the morning, before the world around me demands that I drown my empathy “for practical purposes” (Wallace 665).

 

Imperfection, Humans, Nature, Glow in the Dark Cats … Life and Death

            We all feel a need to be perfect; however, we often mistakenly pursue ideas of perfection warped by the perception of human society.  Nature provides a myriad of examples of human attempts to make perfect that which they see as imperfect.  Take the recent idea of glow-in-the-dark cats: humans thought something natural was imperfect, and so they decided to change it. 

I remember being struck years ago by a quote in a book called The Roar, when a character notes how “whenever humans tried to imitate nature,” they got it wrong.  Specifically, the character was contemplating a plate with a leaf shape repeating around the edge; the same leaf every time, perfectly symmetrical, without blemishes – the leaf represented not nature in its natural state, but nature influenced intentionally by humans.

While glowing cats seem strange to us for now, some attempts at human “perfection” have been accepted for so long that we don’t even consider them to be altering nature anymore.  For example, drugs allowing us to live longer lives past when we would otherwise die – not fully natural.  Eyeglasses, hearing aids, sleeping pills; none of these common objects were around before modern civilization started on a dangerous quest to eliminate imperfections.  Keeping everyone alive and well, doing our best to fight natural selection – thus interfering with adaptation and long-term evolution - we have been, by some theories, weakening our gene pool by allowing the weak to survive past what would have been their times to die. 

Why do we do this – fight death, alter life?

We humans often see death as imperfect, so we seek to correct it.  Septimus, however, when he jumps out the window in Mrs. Dalloway, thinks “It was their idea of tragedy, not his or Rezia’s” (Woolf 149).  Death is a tragedy in that it takes a loved one from us, ending that specific bit of beauty on earth – but, as Septimus sees when he achieves mental clarity, death is also natural.  As Richard tells Clarissa before his suicide in the movie The Hours, there is a time to “let go,” “so [we] can be free.”  When Virginia’s husband asks in The Hours why someone must die in the book, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia is writing, she replies “So that the rest of us can value life more.”  It is life’s ephemeral (Ms. Valentino’s high-diction word for “passing”) nature that makes it so worth living.

                                                                                Time

            We all (hopefully) remembered to adjust our clocks for the recent time change.   Speaking on the phone with my Grandmother yesterday, we casually contemplated the meaning of time.  With all her clocks adjusted except for the clock in one room that self-adjusts, but had yet to do so, my grandmother said she felt like she changed time zones whenever she entered or left the room.  This seemed funny to me; what the clock says doesn’t actually affect what time it actually is.  I shall go eat cheese-filled meatballs for dinner – yum!  Now I’m here again.  And yet, if I hadn’t mentioned my leave for meatballs, would you have ever known?  What to me was a lengthy, delicious pause in writing might not have even existed to you. 

While I initially thought that what time my grandmother’s clock showed shouldn’t have had any effect on what time was to her, I realized today that I was wrong.  What we perceive the time of day to be, or that of the week, of the year, et cetera, has a large psychological impact on us, and thus what we think and do.  If you think you’re short on time, you hurry more.  If you find out it is Friday when you’ve been thinking it was Tuesday, you might be filled with hope for the weekend, and act much more energetic.  Knowing that it is Christmas season has been proven to make workers more efficient. 

We do not control the flow of time; we simply live as “the leaden circles dissolve.”  Since we cannot stop the circles, why do they matter to us?  I think it is because we control how we spend the time we have.  I think perhaps we give time meaning, just as we give things in literature meaning that the author maybe never tried to create.  I’d suggest that you contemplate the meaning of time, but who has the time?

NO ONE IS PERFECT AT GRAMMAR
MIT has this on the University's admissions page.  When speaking of English proficiency, MIT displays a very ironic lack thereof:
"For non-native English speakers:
You have two options: 1) take the tests required for native English speakers (see above), or 2) you may take the TOEFL and two SAT Subject Tests, one in math (level 1 or 2) and one in science (physics, chemistry, or biology e/m).
If you have been using English for less than 5 years or do not speak English at home and school, we strongly suggest that you take the TOEFL.  We do not accept IELTS in place of TOEFL".

Fewer than 5 years, MIT.:)