Anthropology is cool
Life has been very busy for me the past week, and that hasn’t given me a chance to write what I wanted to. We’ll see how this schedule works next week, and depending on its success, I may change it again. Please enjoy the article below.
I took three anthropology classes as a college student, which shaped my thoughts about humanity as a whole. I would suggest that any writer take classes outside of writing that cover history or science, as this will broaden their writing capabilities.
After taking these classes that observed ancient civilizations and modern chiefdoms, I realized two things. One, your anthropology teacher will really influence what you learn. Two, that humans are just like any animal, and that’s not a bad thing.
My professor was an active member of the archeological community using his time in the summer on archeological digs in Peru on the Andes Mountains for the Moche Civilization. Before this class, I would have known nothing about the Moche or any of the Andean Civilizations other than a little bit about the Inca. Now, I think constantly about them and their vibrant culture and art. If I hadn’t had my professor as a teacher, I would never have known there was a lineage of powerful and advanced civilizations in South America. Now that I do know, I desperately want more people to know about them. I want documentaries, dramatic series, and good books based on the culture. I am tired of the Romans, the Greeks, and medieval Europe. It's time for other nonwhite cultures to get the spotlight in historical dramas and fantasy.
As for my so-called grand conclusion on humanity, I came to it in only three classes; it’s not a pessimistic one. In all honesty, I can’t be pessimistic. It is too destructive to my own mental health. I need to have hope that humanity is better and that there is a better future that our efforts are going toward. I know people may find that naive, but it’s necessary for my survival. As to my grand conclusion about the inherent morality of humanity, I feel that there is no inherent morality of humanity. We are animals that can now think in the abstract, and that is it. If an animal kills another animal, it is neither good nor bad; if they nurse the sick, it is not good. It just is. We people create the rules of good, and that is neither good nor bad. But just because we live in a world without inherent morality does not mean the construction of it is useless. It has built lasting civilizations and cultures that will live longer than us. We should pursue a better world for everyone, not because we will ever get there but because we will get closer. We shouldn’t accept a slow crawl of progress because we know things can be better now, and that is enough. We also shouldn’t judge people or cultures for different morals and values but as unbiased simply as things that have been done and their consequences. This is not to say we should give wholesale forgiveness to anything anyone has done, but we should attempt to understand why it happened.
I have a lot of fun nowadays thinking about decentralized societies because it helped me understand how people wield social, symbolic, and political power. I used to not understand how people could connect the actions of people with complex social power plays but now I do. It is not a learned treat but an inherent one. I might talk about it more another day.