Jared Diamond: World Until Yesterday

good evening that's the signal for silence I'm Pat Serra theater director of Cambridge forum and I am delighted to welcome you all here tonight on this snowy evening for a lively and fascinating conversation with Jared Diamond so now I'm going to give it to Tim Weiss Cole who will moderate the program for us tonight thank you very much Pat good evening and welcome to Camus forum before the program begins let me go through a few announcements here some of them you're familiar with first if you want to receive information about Cambridge forums future programs please be sure to add your name email and mailing address and stuff like that on the list on the table when you came in there's a list back there you can sign up for and sign in on you can also find information and they are concerning membership in the Friends of Cambridge forum our support organization Cambridge forum has been presenting these public discussions in the Harvard Square for 46 years it's quite a it's more than most 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this exciting evening alright welcome became its forum discussing the world until yesterday what we can learn from traditional societies or what can we learn from traditional societies put it as a question with poet sir prize winning author Jared Diamond I'm Tim why school remember the form is bored and I'll be the moderator for this evening his most personal book yet best-selling author Jared Diamond reflects on the profound differences between so-called traditional societies and our modern industrialized societies differences in everything from the way we count to the way we meet strangers as we meet and work with a whole series of new people from day to day today's traditional societies may have a great deal of insight to share with us until yesterday means until very recently in the long continuing of the relatively long period of human evolution some places as long as 6 million years in hominid evolution since we departed in the evolutionary tree from our most closely related relatives the chimpanzees while we wouldn't want to give up running water or electricity Diamond argues that we can still learn from traditional societies what do they have to teach us what can they help us by way of with by way of forging a better future world Jared Diamond is professor of geography at UCLA but he actually has a very broad range of interest he's known for his academic work in evolutionary biology ornithology environmental history and linguistics among his many awards the national medal of science tyler prize for environmental achievement japan's cosmos prize and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship as well as the Lewis Thomas prize honoring the scientist as poet presented by Rockefeller University diamonds previous books include why is sex fun the third chimpanzee collapse and Guns Germs and Steel which won the Pulitzer Prize his latest book the world until yesterday serves as the basis of our discussion this evening welcome to Cambridge forum Jared I'm let me first check whether you'll be able to hear me and back and up there can you hear can you hear okay it's a great pleasure for me to be back in Boston the city where I was born and grew up and back in Cambridge where I was an undergraduate and postdoc and it's also a mixed pleasure for me to reencounter snow and slush in which I spent 26 years of my life but we don't have it in Los Angeles first to give me an idea how many of you here this evening may find what I'm about to tell your practical interest I'm gonna ask you to raise your hands and either of two groups could you please raise your hand if you are either over age 65 or if you hope to live past age 65 or if you have a parent or grandparent to live past 65 raise your hands please lots of you those are the people here who may find my talk this evening a practical value now let me ask you to raise your hand if you are under 65 have no intention of living past 65 and have no parent or grandparent who live past 65 raise your hand please anyone in that category will find my talk of no practical relevance but I think you'll find it nevertheless fascinating the subject that I'm going to talk about constitutes just one chapter of my latest book which compares traditional small tribal societies with our big modern societies with respect to many aspects of society such as the status of old people bringing up children health dealing with danger settling disputes war religion and speaking more than one language tribal societies which constituted all human societies for most of human history are far more diverse than our era of modern big societies all big societies that have governments and where most people are strangers to each other as I am to you this evening are similar to each other and different from tribal societies and many basic ways regardless of whether our societies are American German Chinese or Israeli tribes constitute in effect thousands of natural experiments in how to organize a human society they constitute experiments from which we ourselves might be able to learn tribal society shouldn't be scorned as primitive and miserable but also they shouldn't be idealized as happy and peaceful when we learn of tribal practices some of them are going to horrify you but there are other tribal practices which when we hear about them we may admire and envy and wonder whether we could adopt these practices for ourselves to get some perspective how we treat elderly people in modern Western societies let me tell you the opinion of a friend of mine from the Fiji archipelago who had visited the u.s. there are some things that my Fijian friend admired about the u.s. other things that he disliked but what he most loathed about the u.s. was our treatment of older people he almost shouted at me indignant ly you Americans throw away your old people by that he meant that most old people in the u.s. end up living separately from their children and separately from their friends of the earlier years and often live in separate retirement homes for the elderly in Fiji and in other traditional societies older people instead live out their lives among their children there are other relatives and their friends nevertheless the treatment of the elderly varies enormous ly among traditional societies from much worse to much better than in our modern societies at the worst extreme many traditional societies get rid of their elderly in 105 increasingly direct ways by not feeding them until they die by abandoning them when the group moves on by encouraging them to commit suicide by killing them with their own COPO cooperation or by killing them without their consent to our cooperation in what tribal societies do children abandon or kill their parents it happens mainly under two sets of conditions one is in nomadic hunter-gatherer societies that often shift camp and that are physically incapable of transporting old people can't walk when the able-bodied younger people already have to carry the young children and all of their physical possessions the other condition for abandoning or killing old people is in societies living in marginal or fluctuating environments such as the Arctic or deserts where there are periodic food shortages and occasionally there just isn't enough food to keep everybody alive whatever food is available has to be reserved for able-bodied people still capable of contributing to the tribes survival and to children who grow up to be the tribes future adults to us modern Americans that sounds horrible to think of abandoning or killing your own sick spouse or elderly parent but what else could those societies do they face a cruel choice they're old people had to do it to their own parents and the old people know what now is going to happen to them at the opposite extreme is the treatment of the elderly in the happy extreme New Guinea farming societies where I've been doing my fieldwork for the past 50 years and the village society my 4gn friend and other sedentary traditional societies around the world in those societies older people are cared for they're fed they remain valuable and they continue to live in the same hut or a nearby hut near their children relatives and lifelong friends there were two sets of reasons for this variation among societies in their treatment of old people the variation depends partly on the usefulness of older people and parsley on the societies of values first as regards usefulness older people continue to perform useful services in many traditional societies as in our modern societies older people may still be effective at producing food in hunter-gatherer or simple farming societies they may babysit their grandchildren thereby freeing up their own at all children the parents of the grandchildren to go out hunting and gathering food for the grandchildren they are typically the people who are best at making tools weapons baskets pots and texts miles all the people are usually the leaders of traditional societies and the people most knowledgeable about medicine religion politics songs and dances to some extent that's still true today the average age of American presidents on assuming the presidency is 54 years and finally all the people in traditional societies have one more huge significance that would never occur to us in our modern literate societies where the sources of information or books in the Internet in contrast in traditional societies without writing older people are the repositories of information it's their knowledge the knowledge of older people the spells the difference between survival and death for their whole society in a time of crisis caused by rare events of which only the older people have had experience so those are the ways in which all the people are useful in traditional societies their usefulness varies among traditional societies and contributes to variation in the society's treatment of the elderly the other set of reasons for variations and treatment of the elderly is the Society's cultural values which vary somebody independently of the usefulness of the elderly for example among big societies that have had centralized governments for thousands of years there's particular emphasis on respect for the elderly in East Asia associated with a philosophy of Confucius and his doctrine of filial piety which means obedience respect and support for elderly parents cultural values that emphasize respect for all the people such as Confucian filial piety contrast with the low status of the elderly in the United States older Americans are at a disadvantage in getting jobs for example a sociologist of Boston University carried out the experiment of submitting dozens of job applications in response to ads to prospect ads by prospective employers all the applications gave fictitious names of women and all of the applications were identical except that half the applications gave the woman's age is 25 to 40 and the other half the applications gave her age is 4 35 to 60 the result of the experiment was that employers were twice as likely to call a woman age 25 to 40 for a job interview as a woman aged 45 to 60 another example of the low status of the elderly in the u.s. is an explicit policy in our hospitals called age based allocation of healthcare resources that you familia nism it means that if hospital resources are limited for example if there's only a certain number of hospital beds available or if there's only one donor heart available for transplant or if a surgeon has time to operate only a certain number of people American hospitals have the explicit policy of giving preference to younger patients over older patients on the grounds that younger patients are more valuable to society because they have more years of life ahead of them even though the younger patients have less years fewer years of valuable life experience behind them there are several reasons for this low status of the elderly in the US the high status of the elderly in East Asia is based on the Asian emphasis on filial piety the low status of the elderly of elderly Americans arises from several American values that replace figlio piety one is our Protestant work ethic which places high value on work so older people who are no longer working are no longer valued another reason is our American emphasis on the virtues of self-reliance and independence so we instinctively scorn older people who are no longer self-reliant and independent and still a third reason is our American cult of youth which shows up even in our advertisements for coca-cola and beer they always depict smiling young people even though old people as well as young people buy coke and beer what's the last time that you saw a coca-cola or a beer ad depicting smiling people 75 or 80 years old I'm sure never the only American ads featuring white-haired old people are ads for retirement homes pension planning and adult diapers well what has changed in the status of the elderly today compared to their status in traditional societies there have been a few changes for the better and more changes for the worse big changes for the better include the facts that today we enjoy much longer lives much better health in our old age and much better recreational opportunities another change for the better is that we now have specialized retirement facilities and programs to take care of our old people changes for the worse begin with a cruel reality that we now have far more old people and fewer young people than at any time in the past that this means that all those old people are more of a burden on the few young people and that each old person has less individual value another big change for the worse is the state in the status of the elderly is the breaking of social ties with age because older people and their children and their friends all move and scatter independently of each other many times during their lives the average American moves every five years hence our older people are likely to end up living distant from their children and from the friends of their youth yet another change for the worse in the status of the elderly is formal retirement from the workforce carrying with it a loss of work friendships and a loss of the self-esteem associated with work perhaps the biggest of all changes for the worse in the status of our elderly is that they are objectively less useful they've lost some of their usefulness in traditional societies widespread literacy means that they does to say older Americans are no longer useful as repositories of knowledge when we want some information we go look it up in a book or we google it instead of as a New Guinean finding some old person to ask then the slow pace of technological change in traditional societies means that what someone learns there as a child is still useful when that person is old but the rapid pace of technological change today means to what we learn as children is no longer useful 60 years later and we older people aren't fluent in the technologies essential for surviving in modern American society for example as a 15 year old high school student here in Boston I was considered outstandingly good at multiplying numbers because I'd memorized the multiplication tables I know how to use logarithms and I'm quick up manipulating a slide rule today those skill at multiplying multiplication tables and at logarithms and a slide rules is utterly useless because any idiot can multiply eight digit numbers accurately and instantly with the pocket calculator conversely I at age 75 and incompetent at skills essential for everyday American life my family's first television set that we acquired in 1948 when television was ushered in to Boston had only three knobs that I quickly mastered we had an on/off switch we had a volume knob and we had a channel selector knob today just watch a TV on the television set in my own living room I have to operate a 40 one-button TV remote that I find utterly confusing to watch television what I have to do is to phone up my 25 year old son's and ask them to talk me through it while I try to push those wretched 41 buttons what can we do to improve the lives of the elderly in the US and to make better use of their value that's a huge problem in my remaining few minutes today I can offer you just a few suggestions one value of older people is that they are increasingly useful for offering high-quality child care as more and more younger women into the workforce and as fewer young parents stay home as full-time caretakers of their children compared to the usual alternatives of paid babysitters and daycare centers grandparents offer superior motivated experienced childcare if that's what they wish to do they've already gained experience from raising their own children they usually love their grandchildren and they're eager to be permitted to spend time with their grandchildren unlike other caregivers grandchildren and parents don't quit their jobs because they found another job with higher pay or more Social Security and medical benefits a second value of older people is paradoxically related to their loss of value as a result of changing world conditions and technology at the same time older people have gained in value today precisely because of their unique experience of former conditions that have now become rare because of rapid change but that could come back for example only older Americans now in their 70s or older today can remember the experience of living through a Great Depression the experience of living through a world war the experience of living through food and gas rationing most of our current voters and politicians have no personal experience of any of those things but millions of older Americans do unfortunately all of those terrible situations could come back even if they don't come back we have to be able to plan for them on the basis of the experience of what they were like older Americans have that experience younger Americans including younger American politicians don't the remaining value of older people that I'll mention today recognizes that while there are many things that older people can no longer do there are other things that they can do much better than younger people a challenge for our society is to make use of those things that older people are better at doing some abilities of course decrease with age those abilities include abilities of tasks requiring physical strength and stamina ambition and the power of novel reasoning in a narrowly circumscribed situation such as figuring out the structure of DNA best left to scientists under the age of 30 conversely valuable attributes that increase with age include experience understanding of people and human relationships ability to help other people without your own ego getting in the way and interdisciplinary thinking about large databases such as biogeography and comparative history best leftist scholars over the age of sick Steele best of all to scholars over the age of 75 hence all the people are better than younger people at supervising administering advising strategizing teaching and synthesizing I've seen this value of older people with so many of my friends in the 60s 70s 80s and 90s friends who are still active at that age as farmers lawyers and surgeons in short many traditional societies make better use of their elderly and give their elderly more satisfying lives than we do in modern big societies paradoxically nowadays when we have more elderly people than ever before living healthier lives and with denimm medical care than ever before old age is in some respects more miserable than ever before the lives of the elderly are widely recognized as constituting a disaster area of modern American society we can surely do better by learning from the lives of the elderly in traditional societies what's true of the lives of the elderly in traditional societies which constitutes just one chapter in my book is true of many other features of traditional societies as well of course I'm not advertising advocating that we all give up agriculture and metal tools that we return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle live in small tribes and resume making war against neighboring tribes there are some obvious respects in which our lives today are far happier their lives in small traditional societies to mention just a few examples our lives are longer they materially much richer and they're less plagued by violence than all the lives of people in traditional societies but there are also things to be admired about people in traditional societies and perhaps to be learned from them their lives in traditional societies are usually socially much richer than our lives or though materially poorer their children the children of traditional people are usually more self-confident more independent more socially skilled more precocious than are our children they in traditional societies essentially never die of diabetes heart disease high blood pressure stroke and the other non communicable diseases that are going to be the causes of death of most of us here in this room today that's not just because they in traditional societies don't live long enough to get diabetes and those other diseases even when compared at the same age people living in traditional living traditional lifestyles are far less likely to get diabetes and heart disease and those other non communicable diseases than are Americans of the same age features of the modern lifestyle predispose us to those diseases and features of the traditional lifestyle protect us against those diseases those are just some examples of what we can learn from traditional societies I hope that you find it as fascinating to read in my book about the legacies of traditional societies as I found it to live in those societies well I was asked to keep my prepared remarks down to 20 minutes and that gives us lots of time for questions and enthusiastic approval on your part you are joining us at Cambridge forum listening to Jarrett diamond discussing the world until yesterday what can we learn from traditional societies I'll begin with a question or two and then we'll open it up to the hall first question is what constitutes traditional and many respects I was drawn to the descriptions you had here very eloquently put forward but allot it that presents itself as traditional for example peasant societies in parts of the world not touched upon here say Europe or in large kingdoms say in Asia that you referred to in passing in your comments these are not categorized as it were in traditional society yet many would argue that it's in those societies we may learn the greatest amount for after all it's among peasant societies where agriculture has been established sometimes for thousands of years that communities have learned to live on the solar throughput one thing which we might learn from them in an enormous contributive manner that is to say we've now made our agriculture depend on fossilized the solar throughput and we're forgetting the great insight that the sense is also left out of your book about collective wisdom in technology I'm curious as to what you might reflect upon the groups that you studied certainly in New Guinea were agriculturalists and made use of solar throughput energy but what you focus upon is in a sense highly individualized pieces of information about how to treat the young how to treat the old how to be nurtured by a multilingual context and the like what about collective wisdom from this other kind of true culture sure as to what is a traditional society traditional of course there's entire spectrum from small-scale hunter-gatherer societies to modern states with the populations of up to 1.6 billion of traditional societies could naive would be described as those societies existing until 11 thousand years ago when or when many societies started get modified by agriculture so traditional societies run a spectrum from societies of a few dozen a band of hunter-gatherer societies of a few hundred who may be foragers on their Navy small-scale farmers societies a few thousand that would be called a chiefdom societies of up to tens of thousands it could be solved called a simple state and then the large modern industrial states a friend of mine in New Guinea friend of mine suggested for this reason that one should speak not of traditional societies but transitional societies because in fact all societies in modern world even societies and most remote parts of New Guinea in the Amazon have been modified by the modern world or by knowledge of modern world even if they haven't had contact first contact they may already have acquired pots and steel tools and even if they haven't acquired any of that stuff they now have the knowledge that there's an outside world because they've seen the airplanes flying overhead whereas in New Guinea as of 1931 and 1938 they didn't even know that there was an outside world so that's the spectrum from traditional to modern and in particularly when you mentioned farming society the great majority of the societies that I've worked with in New Guinea are small-scale farming societies foragers hunter-gatherers all the minorities people in New Guinea mainly in the lowlands and in some fringe areas of the hills as for the things that one can learn from traditional societies a occupational hazard of an author who whites wants to write a book on a large subject such as societies is that there are lots of things to write about in societies and if I had written about everything I would have had a encyclopedia 30,000 pages long costing 7,200 $32 which nobody would buy or read and that means that I had to select I've selected on various criteria but when when you select you then are exposed to the hazard of the review who says he selected this but he left out my favorite subject they've been reviewers to complain that I left out gender relations it's true I left out art it's true I left out marriage it's true to which I can only say I had to select and be grateful that I left out those subjects because the result is that my book is 499 pages and affordable rather than colossal or not affordable one of the things that is the result of that selection is that we tend to idealize in many respects relationships that are generalized and the problem with that is that as Yogi Berra used to remind us nostalgia any what it used to be no it's most of us are thinking back already upon an encounter that occurred in a different time now this is a bit kind of inside baseball for anthropologists in a way but anthropologists and cultural geographers like yourself spent time in these cultures at another time to put it another way we're in counting encountering say in the Western Sahara and in Mali today or last week on the bridges between Ottawa and Ontario and the United States indigenous populations who are speaking in the name of tradition in very political terms when do we choose to listen to political messages as opposed to say information about child rearing and insight about how we treat our elders and when do we say well that's political not traditional speaking about traditional people at another time my work in New Guinea began in 1964 my last trip to those islands was several months ago and my next tip trip to the island will be the month after next so much of what I write about New Guinea in my book some of it is based on 4050 years ago but a lot of it is based on recently things have changed some things that were persisted other things have changed but among my New Guinea friends I've talked with with New Guineans who made the last stone tools in the area made the last trip to the stone quarry I've talked with some of my New Guinea friends have participated in the last of the tribal wars and there's still lots of treatment of children I would say most of the treatment of children in villages is similar to this in New Guinea is similar to the treatment of children in villages described by people who are going into New Guinea 50 years ago okay well now the floor is open for questions from the audience please make your way to the centre microphone here so your comments can be recorded and keep them to questions rather than long statements okay play vous outfalls yes thank you so much for coming longtime reader enjoyed everything you've written so the first one to say is that as my father would say laputan diamond him long Pele mr. Peller Dumas I was conceived in New Guinea my father was a key upon patrol officer and an education officer there could you speak up I'm having difficulty sorry I'm shy just gonna say my as my father would say laputan diamond in istanbul at Dumas I've enjoyed everything you've written my father was a patrol officer and education officer new guinea from 1954 Manus Island Haga and so forth and I'm just going to reflect on something that he came back to me with which his variance in your getting over a 15-year period as a very very retail level administrator government official and so forth he came back with the abiding conclusion that that that cultures are the sum of people and that many of the lessons that that you are trying to bring to us and which I frankly absorb completely on a personal level aren't so much a consequence in this would be again channeling him of the cultures from which the individuals came as much as it was a reflection of the individuals in those cultures with whom he had contact and I'm just reflecting on that that perhaps what your what you're urging which suggesting is less a cultural lesson less than anthropological lesson as much as it is a personal moral lesson we should take advantage of our elders we should call on them regardless of our own sort of personal and abyssion z-- to give childcare to give advice to give console I'm a mathematician I work with wouldn't say I work with but I have a collection of mentors to whom I turn for advice about how to manage people less because of the culture I'm from and more in a sense because of my father's experience in New Guinea sixty years ago where he learned the importance of mentoring and the importance of taking value from individuals as an educational person responds to that they're interesting comments but I'm having difficulty distilling them down into a question to which I can respond perhaps you can condense well the question was very succinctly put in terms of is this a moral lesson that we would learn about how individuals are to relate to one another rather than a specific behavioral pattern that we might learn from within the culture in other words and you could generalize it beyond perhaps what he intended but what's interesting in face-to-face societies is the way people learn to treasure one another and learn from one another and that's in a sense of moral lesson independent of the cultural lessons from specific societies one to another I don't think that one can pigeonhole the sorts of things that one can learn from traditional society because as with any human institutions they cover a whole spectrum you can learn from the things that individual people do I've had some dramatic experiences in New Guinea where one New Guinean behaved in a certain way one New Guinea I remember spending an hour examining a stick in the ground to try to figure out whether that stick had fallen out of a tree and meant nothing or whether the stick had been planted in the ground by landowners in which case we were in deep trouble I was strongly influenced by a small group of New Guineans about six of them who did not want to camp under a big tree it was a dead tree and I learned about the importance of paying attention to rare events I've learned about I've learned from the behaviors of entire societies in New Guinea on how they they deal with with conflict so there's an a thistle there's a whole spectrum of things that one can learn either from individuals or cultures there's a spectrum of things that you can incorporate into your everyday life such as to be very careful standing in the shower in the morning and things that your entire society has to adopt them that you can't incorporate yourself for example if you want to reduce the salt in your diet yes you can get the soil shaker off your table but you have to persuade government to work with food manufacturers to get the salt out of processed food in the supermarket so broad spectrum that can't be pigeonholed thank you I have a general question about your experiences over the course of your research did you encounter any aspects of traditional societies that although very good could not by definition be incorporated into or learn from modern societies without us losing what makes us a modern society and to clarify that using an analogy although there are many admirable aspects of religion science some of them cannot be incorporated into science without losing what makes science science empiricism that's an you know that's an interesting question the difficulties the various difficulties that we encounter in operating things from from traditional societies and I'm gonna think out loud and see if I can lead up to an answer to your question I may get 70% of the way but may not give the answer there there are some things in traditional societies that that you can easily adopt for yourself regardless of what other people do for example most traditional small-scale societies don't spank their children and that may be one of the things that may be one of the things that contribute to the sense of security and independence and making their own decisions that is frequently commented Vonn and children and traditional societies you can decide you're not going to spank your children regardless of what your neighbors doing so that's easy to adopt there are some things in traditional societies that you might like to adopt but that are difficult to adopt because it requires action on the part of the entire American Society for example traditional societies are good at resolving disputes by negotiation and finding emotional reconciliation rather than the American style of hiring hiring lawyers suing determining right or wrong and being angry adjourned up for the rest of your life there are some things that you can do if you have a dispute with your neighbor but if you have a car accident in the United States you cannot handle that and as would a New Guinean by trying to negotiate with the other party the police get involved so there's a case where if you want change in the United States to incorporate some of the admirable features of New Guinea dispute resolution it's got to be done in terms of our legal system in there are efforts there's a movement called restorative justice that tries to get some elements of dispute resolution in traditional societies into the American justice system and then the the treatment of the elderly there are big problems in treating the elderly in American society that require changes in Americans so I'll give you a specific example my father was a professor at Harvard and he retired at 1916 1960 80th age of 66 not voluntarily because but because Harvard in those days had a mandatory retirement policy man retirement policies were widespread in American University and until a couple of decades ago and yet all the people often older academics often still want to work they have long experience they were often creative in my father's case he moved to university California and continued to teach and saw see patients till he was he was 93 years old so here's a case on where one cannot do something as individual if your society has laws that make implementing it more possible impossible so that's a long-winded answer to say that again there's a spectrum there are things that you can do regardless of the rest of society there are things that require though changes in society in some cases laws on the part of governments long-winded but I think I've got it there one of the ways you mentioned in which elderly people could be valued or used by society is in child care now Scandinavian countries northern European countries have social policies in place that make it that facilitated even make it mandatory for parents to spend more time with their children especially when young so I am wondering if you think I mean I would like to see such policies implemented in this country but you seem to suggest that maybe that's going down a dead-end and I wanted to ask you how you would see legally associated Lee how do we implement this involvement of elderly people in child care it's not going to be just a voluntary thing family by family I assume but there's going to be social policies that make it easier that remunerated I don't know whatever you have in mind good example so child care by older people some of it you can do yourself there are there are many many of our friends friends of my wives in my age who are grandparents and who are devoting time to their grandchildren there are also cases as you mentioned in Europe there's more social support and legal support for parents to take off I'm for childcare that's much less frequent in the United States but we have a number of friends where maternity leave in the United States on the part of their businesses or universities has been extended to either parent so good friends of ours in Los Angeles it's the father who decided to stay home for six months and do childcare rather than the mother but that requires a policy on the part of the employer that leaves that option open in short here again we have an example of things that you can do as individuals and things that require institutions and permissions and laws on the part of society thank you I I just don't have the specific question so much as things that I heard you say that I maybe you could comment on elaborate on the declining number of young people in the society in proportion to older people is true I think in Japan in Western Europe even I think in Russia so in other words there's a kind of industrialized global culture where that's happening but there's also the I think reverse in parts of the Middle East Africa where it's actually hugely increasing proportion of younger people yet I would ask you on you know I'm just throwing this out is are they not also part of this global modern or you know relatively industrialized nations and so I wonder how that's gonna play out almost like an equation like a mirror to you know what you're saying about the US versus say New Guinea one other thing I just wanted to mention because I think it connects whether it's directly to the treatment of older people or eyes I think to all of us is that you said well one of the advantages I think you put it of you know a society like ours compared to was this you know a more traditional hunter-gatherer society is that we are subject to less violence than they are but I just want to throw out I guess maybe it's a cliche I'm sorry if it is but um in my lifetime and I granted you've got about eleven years on me I think as an American we export violence and so even though we kind of don't turn it on ourselves as directly I think that really in a way the the other side of exporting violence is that we internalize a kind of social psychological cultural repression so I'm just wondering if you could somehow comment on both both of those things because I think there's some connection there sure thank you very much um you've mentioned two large issues relations between the relative proportions between young and old population and the issue of violence given the finite time and the that there are other people who have things that they want to discuss let me comment on one of those two things the relation between the young population in the old population in which industrial countries of the world the birthrate is falling and the survival of people is rising so that the ratio of old people to young people is increasing and as you point out that's extreme in Japan on the other hand there are countries in the developing world where because of medical care that is there's an explosion of young people and things such as the AIDS epidemic have prevented that being translated into increased survival of old people so in different parts of the world the ratio of young people to old people is going different ways in in Japan and in Europe and in the u.s. we have the ratio of old people to young people is going up that has several consequences it means that there are more old people to be cared for by fewer young people it means there are more old people growing Social Security benefits with fewer young people contributing the Social Security benefits and it's widely recognized that our Social Security system has funding problems in the long run because of those demographic reasons it's also the case that with the state of the American economy today more and more old both are finding it economically necessary to continue working at the same time as more and more older people would like to continue working in short in short there's a mixture of things going on there we're not the only ones apparently there was a much publicized birthday of two individuals man and wife 100 years old born in the same day in China BBC ran an article on it celebrated their 100th birthday on the same day and surrounded by grandchildren great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren all living in the same household and the BBC reporter at the end of the story commented that there will be in excess of 1 million cases in the next 50 years of people in excess of 100 years old that is China is aging as a population and when that dependency ratio changes between those contributing to incomes and those drawing upon them it's going to be global circumstance as life expectancy extends and the reproduction rate drops in industrialized areas any case this is the kind of shift demographically sociologically that's going to be experienced increasingly well at the same time third world population growth is taking place most voluminous Lee in the peasant cultures where child labor is most demanded and useful so it's an extraordinary transition we're aiming for I was wondering the as far as the treatment of the elderly goes the difference between the East and the West is that not because of the Occidental emphasis on individualism whereas in the East for the better for better or for worse the community sort of always is placed before the individual so that puts some unas and responsibility on people to look after their other elderly so I was wondering is this a difference then between traditional and modern or is this a difference between the cultural tendencies of the west and the East good question question about the the emphasis different emphasis on the individual versus community in the East and West or in transition in traditional versus modern societies in the traditional societies with which I've experienced I think this is widespread in small-scale traditional societies there is an emphasis on the community and a/d emphasis on the individual for example in the New Guinea societies of which I have experience it is difficult for an individual New Guinean embedded in his village of a few hundred people to get a job and become richer and get ahead because the expectations of the community are that a member of the community is going to share what he earns with other members of the community so it's difficult for an individual to advance himself without sharing his wealth with a with the community and so the differences between the the west and east a problem here is that we often over generalize about the West on the one hand and the east on the one hand and the East is incredibly diverse just as the West is also diverse it is the case I understand that in those parts of East Asia are heavily influenced by the Confucian philosophy of hylia parties there is an emphasis on certainly the family but it's also the case in in Europe in the Mediterranean and in the eastern Mediterranean so-called patriarchal societies invest power in the oldest male of the household but the unit is the family not the individual the family lives together in southern Italy and in Mexico and the emphasis as in small-scale traditional societies is on the good of the family rather than on the good of the individual this basic question that you had so long ago from from Yali about distribution of cargo how does that question relate to this to to this kind of idea and in the the ill distribution of cargo so the question is that my book Guns Germs and Steel began with yollie's question Yali was in New Guinean who asked me why is it that you white people came to New Guinea and brought lots of cargo that stuff whereas we knew gideon's had little and that was what triggered off my thinking that resulted in the book guns during the steel the relation between yollie's question and the question of why history has unfolded differently on different continents and my current book the relation is that both of those books are by the same or author but the books I'm serious but the books themselves are on entirely different subjects so yollie's question does not come directly into my current book except that yollie's question namely why history unfolded different differently in different continents explains why in modern times they were still largely traditional people using stone tools in the mountains of New Guinea but not in Europe that's the relationship thanks for asking the question yeah hi so your account stresses the differences in status between old people in the West or and in traditional societies or the East but the Contin are active which is about economic and political power and old people have never had as much economic and political power as they do today I mean just to take one example when Paul Ryan proposed turning Medicare into a premium support system system he chose to exempt people over the age of 55 so if you're over the age of 55 you have the guarantee of the same health care if you were under 55 you would not support for the Early's gonna take up growing share of the federal budget going to increase federal debt and the elderly are extremely important political vote back more so than they've ever been before aren't they utterly actually more powerful than the other states and they ever have been previously good point the question of the whether the old people older people in the United States have more power than ever before in from a certain point of view all the people have more power than they did 30 years ago because they're better organized they have effective organizations like ARPA I believe which I and they're a vocal political force which I take to mean that all the people are not helpless but they've organized in groups such as ARPA precisely because the situation of the old people is overall so unfortunate in the United States compared to traditional Society yes they are organizing politically and they're lobbying but the fact is that the life of older people in the United States's is socially more impoverished than in traditional societies and one American friend of mine who's an anthropologist who works in West Africa in the Central African Republic and has long experience of traditional societies in the ciear summarizer thing for me by saying life in Africa is socially much richer although materially poorer than life in the United States request for a clarification and then a question I'm hoping you can elaborate a little bit more on the how you're distinguishing traditional societies or traditional communities from indigenous people and if I understood can you have a traditional society or that adopts new technologies or is it only hunter-gatherer and if you could just clarify how you distinguish those two traditional society versus indigenous or Aboriginal and I guess the question I'd have is there anything in your in your experiences and research that we might learn from traditional societies in their social contract with the environment both their social contract and their individual behavior that might move us beyond stereotypes of savages and noble savages right let me take those interesting questions let me take them in reverse order so good thing about second question about what we can learn from their social contract as regards say their management of their environmental resources outstanding work on that error was done by the the famous economist Elinor Ostrom who died a year or so ago and who got her her Nobel Prize basically for working out why is it that some societies particularly some small-scale traditional societies succeed in managing their environmental resources sustainably while others fail to do so and end up destroying their resources and Ellen Ostrom conclusions were that to summarize a lifetime of Nobel prize-winning work in one sentence her conclusions was were that societies are more likely to manage their resources sustainably if they're able to hold those resources for themselves and exclude Outsiders on the one hand and on the other hand if they have the confidence that they will succeed in passing on their resources to their children if they think that those resources will be passed to their children and if they can exclude outside then they have the motivation to manage their resources sustainably whereas if their resources are not going to get passed to their kids and if there's no way that they can include outsiders then realistically the best policy for them is to grab those resources and destroy him before other people destroy them so that's question number two question number one about relation between traditional and indigenous indigenous is a term usually applied to peoples that were in that area 500 years ago it's a matter of definition the people in north of the fish river in South Africa 2,000 years ago were sand people the people north of the fish river in modern times are banned to people who is indigenous north of the fish river depends upon the timescale that one takes so that's indigenous and and similarly for Indonesia the who are the indigenous people of Indonesia are they the modern Indonesian speaking bahasa indonesia Austronesian people or are they people related to New Guineans who were largely swept away with the Austronesian expansion of 2000 BC into Indonesia and left just in a few pockets so that's indigenous traditional going back to your question um traditional means Loosli people living with a lifestyle retaining much of what lifestyle was like up to eleven thousand years ago but people around the world have been influenced by changes since eleven thousand years ago and so with the so traditional in Central America would mean farming people traditional in West Africa would mean farming people although farming arose in West Africa 3000 BC and yet farmers in West Africa one could call traditional but as you pointed out they've been influenced by the slave trade and by colonization over the last hundreds of years this goes back then to the comment of my New Guinea friend that one should not refer to trend traditional people but to transition transitional people because all traditional peoples today have been influenced to greater or lesser degrees by the modern world so you spent the bulk of your lecture talking about the treatment of the elderly and I assume that was because you find it to be the most important topic that we could learn from about traditional societies what would you say is the second most important topic of the broad topics you've covered in the book you mentioned what you see is the first most important topic covered in my book and then then the second most important topic in my book this may seem like a flip answer but I don't mean it to be a flip answer to your question which is this serious question a much broader than the question that you you ask in life one is frequently asked what is the most important digit a to two so as for example as an environmentalist I'm often asked what is the biggest problem facing the world today is it climate change is it deforestation overfishing is it etc and my flip answer is the biggest problem facing the world today is our quest to find the biggest problem facing the world today I'm saying and I'm serious because the reality is that there are lots of big problems in the last chapter of a book collapse I listed what I see is 12 major problems facing the world today and we got to solve them all because if we solved 11 of the world's major problems and we don't solve the water problem we're finished or if we solve 11 of the world's major problems and we don't solve the problem of toxic chemicals we have finished similarly to translate this tend to your question about what one can learn from traditional societies rather than looking at the first the most important thing and then the second most important thing traditional societies are in effect thousands of natural on how to organize a human society all human societies have had to deal with children old age dangers health war disputes the whole panoply of human experience and in principle we can learn from that whole panoply of human experience in the whole panoply of human societies I'd rather focus on that rather than focus on the first or the second message hello I'd like to thank you so much for this book it's incredibly timely and on a topic that's very close to my heart I've been learning directly from some teachers of traditional societies and I'm curious about you know it's interesting to learn in a book form about something that's generally an oral and a physical experience and so I was curious what I'm gonna back it up a second I just want to thank you for bringing this like translating that kind of wisdom into a book form so people in our culture can hear it and understand it and take it in but I'm curious about your experiences of learning these things through direct experience through oral teachings versus how we learn here and the importance of listening to people if you ever do have the honor or opportunity to listen to some directly some words about that too because I'm trying to help get the the voice growing and just it's important to me to hear what you have to say about that thank you yeah good question big questions let me take the second half of your question first how does one learn in a literate society we learn especially by reading and now by the internet and we forget that until the development of writing and the first writing system was until 3400 BC in the Fertile Crescent everything that people learned was orally one learned it by listening to or observing older people and that has still been the case in traditional New Guinea and in traditional societies generally in these non literate societies one learns from the people with the most experience the older people that experience has not been put into a book whereas in our literate society the experience has been put into a book and 23 year old can get it out of book and you don't need the older people so that's the second part of it and the first part of it of regarding how one learns in traditional societies does one learn by oral communication or by observing or by teaching for me it's been a mixture of those things I've learned by watching New Guineans in some cases they didn't say anything I just watched what they did in some cases they explained to me explicitly what they were doing and why they were doing it in some New Guineans have been introspective and have distilled the lessons in a form that I that I could easily that in a form that I didn't it was predigested other important lessons that I learned from New Guinea New Guineans never summed it up for me I just observed it and so for example what I was surprised to learn about the nature of friendship in New Guinea no New Guinean until recently ever explained to me how friendship plays out differently in the United States and New Guinea I have served New Guineans dealing with new people that they met whom in the West we would consider as potential friends and my New Guinea friend whom I knew very well didn't so that was by observing and then educating New Guinea friend explained it to me explicitly so in short I've learned there by observing what people do without words and by listening to what people say although they may not be introspective about it and occasionally by the introspection what additionally is gained from going beyond the book though like what you like you know the books are a great starting point I imagine you read some amazing books when you started but what do you learn when you get beyond the book sure what do you learn when you get beyond the book fortunately the book has printed eight pages of further readings and online about 50 pages of further readings on law with literally hundreds of references and these references are to the outstanding works of anthropologists and sociologists and travellers who've observed and so if you want to go if you want to go beyond the book first of all you'll have your hands full for with 499 pages for a while if you still have appetite after that there's an infinite amount to read of them that many people learn in these kinds of circumstances is the value of language itself I'm curious if you observed and have any anecdotes to tell us about people whose use of speech was so extraordinary in the field the use of language itself a subject dear to my heart use of language what can I say about the use of language yeah on the one hand there are New Guineans who are good orator and they're admired for being good orator and being good orator means that they are likely to be influential that's one piece of language was another important thing to say about languages is that we in the United States many maybe most Americans are opposed to multilingualism because we think that children growing up hearing two languages from their two parents are going to get confused and that they'll be slower at acquiring language so we Americans were often hostile to Moe multilingualism which is weird because among traditional people it's routine to be multilingual I personally have never met a New Guinean who spoke fewer than three languages the average New Guinean that I that I know speaks five languages and once when I did a poll of 20 New Guineans in a campsite we just went around the campfire asking how many languages you you you speak the lowest number was five in highest number was 15 and these are not s-- dialects like southern English and the Queen's English these are different languages that are different as are Chinese from from Arabic languages and everybody who speaks more than one language you know that languages and rich your experience and one of the most surprising single filings findings that I report in my book was work within the last five years by Elham D our stock and colleagues and in Toronto Canada who she's been interested in multilingualism of quite a while and she was studying together with physicians all the people in all people's centers in Toronto and a big fear in old age nowadays is Alzheimer's disease and the other dimensions of old age there's no effective prevention against Alzheimer's disease people talk about pseudo coup and bridge but the value is debated the the best protection that we know of against Alzheimer's disease against the symptoms has emerged just within the last five years and that's being bilingual bilingual people get on the air get in five years of protection against the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and the reason is it's the same reason why if you workout and do push-ups you'll develop the muscles of your shoulders similarly if you are constantly exercising your brain that keeps your brain functioning your brain can function reasonably well even if you have the organic brain damage that comes with Alzheimer's disease well we don't know L&V our stocks study shows that being multilingual or bilingual gives you five years of protection but she did not distinguish bilingual for multilingual what we're waiting to see is whether you get five years of protection for each language that you know if that's the case then I'm in great shape because with 13 languages I've got 65 years of protection but maybe it knocks us out at four at one language and maybe my extra 11 languages do me no good and we also don't know whether to get that protection you need to learn the language in infancy say by being a crib bilingual or whether you get any protection by learning languages in school I didn't learn my first foreign language until I was 11 years old and so if you have to learn the language as an infancy to get the protection against Alzheimer's I'm in bad shape I'm over the hill Yanni yes you mentioned earlier that traditional societies don't tolerate as much individualism as modern societies in terms of what it means to be a human what worthy goals are what virtuous behavior is but can into but but can traditional societies tolerate more individuality in terms of explaining expression of one as an individual and if they can why is that the case interesting and I think I've wonder whether that in fact might be a good good question on which to end because it's such an interesting question the distinction between individuality and individualism you're correct that individualism this is really interesting individualism is prized in the United States it's less prized in Europe you know I've spent a lot of time in Europe and in Europe there's much more emphasis on the community than on the individual in Canada there's more emphasis on the community than on the individual in traditional societies there's strong emphasis on the community and less scope for the individual to get ahead what about individuality though is there any inhibition of individuality none at all that I can detect in New Guinea New Guineans they're as different from each other as our Americans they're fascinating they're wonderful they're in your face people by that I mean that when I'm talking with the New Guinean he or she is not text messaging he's not talking on a cell phone he's not looking over there and looking back to talk with me it's I straight at you full attention conversation and it goes on throughout the day and sometimes it drives me crazy by going on throughout the night that's one of the things that I find wonderful and fascinating about New Guinea perhaps that's a good note on which to end thank you very much Jared you have been listening you've been listening Cambridge forum co-sponsored by the first Paris church in Cambridge Unitarian Universalist the Lowell Institute and the Friends of Cambridge forum for more information about this program entitled the world until yesterday recorded in January 2013 featuring Jared Diamond or for more information about us and future programs visit us on the world wide web at Cambridge forum dot o-r-g in Harvard Square Tim Weiss go thank you very much for joining us Cambridge forums next public program takes place on Tuesday February 5th when we host author Christoph M sure discussing his new biography of Lewis agassi's the controversial and charismatic figure who created the modern practice of science in America the program is here in the meeting house at first parish church at 7:00 p.m. on the 5th of February I hope you can all join us then now there are books for sale and if you'd like Jared I diamond to sign them please make a line in the outside aisle move that way come down forward and he will sign them at the table here sign but he can't write dedications to your great-grandmother I'm afraid so thank you very much for joining us

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Keywords: Jared Diamond, traditional societies, world until yesterday, anthropolgy, New Guinea, lanuage

Id: K-XxkLfHEI0

Length: 78min 49sec (4729 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 29 2013