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For Immanuel Kant, The Term Anthropology Embraced All The Human Sciences, And Laid The Foundation Of Familiar Knowledge We Need, To Build Solidly Grounded Ideas About The Moral And Political Demands Of Human Life. Margaret Mead Saw Mid-twentieth-century Anthropology As Engaged In A Project No Less Ambitious Than Kant's Own, And Her Terry Lectures On Continuities In Cultural Evolution Provide An Excellent Point To Enter Into Her Reflections.

-Margaret Mead

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For Immanuel Kant, The

Margaret Mead

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For Immanuel Kant, The Term Anthropology Embraced All The Human Sciences, And Laid The Foundation Of Familiar Knowledge We Need, To Build Solidly Grounded Ideas About The Moral And Political Demands Of Human Life. Margaret Mead Saw Mid-twentieth-century Anthropology As Engaged In A Project No Less Ambitious Than Kant's Own, And Her Terry Lectures On Continuities In Cultural Evolution Provide An Excellent Point To Enter Into Her Reflections.

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It Is Not Until Science Has Become A Discipline To Which The Research Ability Of Any Mind From Any Class In Society Can Be Attracted That It Can Become Rigorously Scientific.

Children Not Only Have To Learn What Their Parents Learned In School, But Also Have To Learn How To Learn. This Has To Be Recognized As A New Problem Which Is Only Partly Solved.

Dear Math, Please Grow Up And Solve Your Own Problems. I'm Tired Of Solving Them For You. Always Remember That You Are Absolutely Unique. Just Like Everyone Else.

One Characteristic Of Americans Is That They Have No Toleration At All Of Anybody Putting Up With Anything. We Believe That Whatever Is Going Wrong Ought To Be Fixed.

Characteristics

Each Home Has Been Reduced To The Bare Essentials -- To Barer Essentials Than Most Primitive People Would Consider Possible. Only One Woman's Hands To Feed The Baby, Answer The Telephone, Turn Off The Gas Under The Pot That Is Boiling Over, Soothe The Older Child Who Has Broken A Toy, And Open Both Doors At Once. She Is A Nutritionist, A Child Psychologist, An Engineer, A Production Manager, An Expert Buyer, All In One. Her Husband Sees Her As Free To Plan Her Own Time, And Envies Her; She Sees Him As Having Regular Hours And Envies Him.

Never Underestimate The Ability Of A Small Group Of Committed Individuals To Change The World.

I've Been Married Three Times - And Each Time I Married The Right Person.

An Education Not Founded On Art Will Never Succeed.

The Ability To Learn Is Older As It Is Also More Widespread Than Is The Ability To Teach.

We Women Are Doing Pretty Well. We're Almost Back To Where We Were In The Twenties.

I Am Interested In What Happens To People Who Find The Whole Of Life So Rewarding That They Are Able To Move Through It With The Same Kind Of Delight In Which A Child Moves Through A Game.

We Won't Have A Society If We Destroy The Environment.

The Prophet Who Fails To Present A Bearable Alternative And Yet Preaches Doom Is Part Of The Trap That He Postulates. Not Only Does He Picture Us Caught In A Tremendous Man-made Or God-made Trap From Which There Is No Escape, But We Must Also Listen To Him Day In, Day Out, Describe How The Trap Is Inexorably Closing. To Such Prophecies The Human Race, As Presently Bred And Educated And Situated, Is Incapable Of Listening. So Some Dance And Some Immolate Themselves As Human Torches; Some Take Drugs And Some Artists Spill Their Creativity In Sets Of Randomly Placed Dots On A White Ground.

When I Stand On A Street In A Canadian City And Look Across The Street, It Couldn't Be Anywhere But Canada, But How Can I Prove It?

I Suddenly Realized That Through No Act Of My Own I Had Become Biologically Related To A New Human Being.

In Each Age There Is A Series Of Pressing Questions Which Must Be Asked And Answered. On The Correctness Of The Questions Depends The Survival Of Those Who Ask; On The Quality Of The Answers Depends The Quality Of The Life Those Survivors Will Lead.

It Is Typical, In America, That A Person's Hometown Is Not The Place Where He Is Living Now But Is The Place He Left Behind.

Once Any Group In Society Stands In A Relatively Deprived Position In Relation To Other Groups, It Is Genuinely Deprived.

Through A Grandmother's Voice And Hands The End Of Life Is Known At The Beginning.

I Have Been Accused Of Having Believed When I Wrote Sex And Temperament That There Are No Sex Differences... This, Many Readers Felt, Was Too Much. It Was Too Pretty. I Must Have Found What I Was Looking For. But This Misconception Comes From A Lack Of Understanding Of What Anthropology Means, Of The Open-mindedness With Which One Must Look And Listen, Record In Astonishment And Wonder, That Which One Would Not Have Been Able To Guess.

Maleness In America Is Not Absolutely Defined; It Has To Be Kept And Re-earned Every Day, And One Essential Element In The Definition Is Beating Women In Every Game That Both Sexes Play.

Somehow, We Have To Get Older People Back Close To Growing Children If We Are To Restore A Sense Of Community, Acquire Knowledge Of The Past, And Provide A Sense Of The Future.

Children Must Be Taught How To Think, Not What To Think.

Fathers Are Biological Necessities, But Social Accidents.

I Have A Respect For Manners As Such, They Are A Way Of Dealing With People You Don't Agree With Or Like.

People Are Still Encouraged To Marry As If They Could Count On Marriage Being For Life, And At The Same Time They Are Absorbing A Knowledge Of The Great Frequency Of Divorce.

Living In The Modern World, Clothed And Muffled, Forced To Convey Our Sense Of Our Bodies In Terms Of Remote Symbols Like Walking Sticks And Umbrellas And Handbags, It Is Easy To Lose Sight Of The Immediacy Of The Human Body Plan.

The Prophet Who Fails To Present A Bearable Alternative And Yet Preaches Doom Is Part Of The Trap That He Postulates.

Chief Among Our Gains Must Be Reckoned This Possibility Of Choice, The Recognition Of Many Possible Ways Of Life, Where Other Civilizations Have Recognized Only One. Where Other Civilizations Give A Satisfactory Outlet To Only One Temperamental Type, Be He Mystic Or Soldier, Business Man Or Artist, A Civilization In Which There Are Many Standards Offers A Possibility Of Satisfactory Adjustment To Individuals Of Many Different Temperamental Types, Of Diverse Gifts And Varying Interests.

For Art To Be Reality, The Whole Sensuous Being Must Be Caught Up In The Experience.

To The Extent A Person Makes, Invents Or Thinks Something That Is New To Him, He May Be Said To Have Performed A Creative Act.

The Semimetaphysical Problems Of The Individual And Society, Of Egoism And Altruism, Of Freedom And Determinism, Either Disappear Or Remain In The Form Of Different Phases In The Organization Of A Consciousness That Is Fundamentally Social.

If Man Has Not Found Ways To Deal With Environmental Problems Such As Water And Air Pollution By 1998, It Will Be Too Late. The Future Is Not Determined And It Lies In Our Own Hands.

The Contempt For Law And The Contempt For The Human Consequences Of Lawbreaking Go From The Bottom To The Top Of American Society.

A Small Group Of Thoughtful People Could Change The World.

I Think Rigid Heterosexuality Is A Perversion Of Nature.

Heterosexuality Is

Heterosexuality

Sister Is Probably The Most Competitive Relationship Within The Family, But Once The Sisters Are Grown, It Becomes The Strongest Relationship.

If The Future Is To Remain Open And Free, We Need People Who Can Tolerate The Unknown, Who Will Not Need The Support Of Completely Worked Out Systems Or Traditional Blueprints From The Past.

The Important Thing About Women Today Is, As They Get Older, They Still Keep House. It's One Reason Why They Don't Die, But Men Die When They Retire. Women Just Polish The Teacups.

Grandparents Are Given A Second Chance To Enjoy Parenthood With Fewer Of Its Tribulations And Anxieties.

Having Two Bathrooms Ruined The Capacity To Co-operate.

An Occupation That Has No Basis In Sex-determined Gifts Can Now Recruit Its Ranks From Twice As Many Potential Artists.

What We Lack Is Not So Much Leisure To Do As Time To Reflect And Time To Feel. What We Seldom "take" Is Time To Experience The Things That Have Happened, The Things That Are Happening, The Things That Are Still Ahead Of Us.

The Young, Free To Act On Their Initiative, Can Lead Their Elders In The Direction Of The Unknown... The Children, The Young, Must Ask The Questions That We Would Never Think To Ask, But Enough Trust Must Be Re-established So That The Elders Will Be Permitted To Work With Them On The Answers.

War Is Only An Invention, Not A Biological Necessity.

In Contrast To Our Own Social Environment Which Brings Out Different Aspects Of Human Nature And Often Demonstrated That Behavior Which Occurs Almost Invariably In Individuals Within Our Society Is Nevertheless Due Not To Original Nature But To Social Environment; And A Homogeneous And Simple Development Of The Individual May Be Studied.

No Matter How Free Divorce, How Frequently Marriages Break Up, In Most Societies There Is The Assumption Of Permanent Mating, Of The Idea That The Marriage Should Last As Long As Both Live. . . . No Known Society Has Ever Invented A Form Of Marriage Strong Enough To Stick That Did Not Contain The 'till Death Us Do Part' Assumption.

No Skill, No Special Aptitude, No Vividness Of Imagination Or Precision Of Thinking Would Go Unrecognized Because The Child Who Possessed It Was Of One Sex Rather Than The Other. No Child Would Be Relentlessly Shaped To One Pattern Of Behavior, But Instead There Should Be Many Patterns, In A World That Had Learned To Allow To Each Individual The Pattern Which Was Most Congenial To His Gifts.

Sooner Or Later I'm Going To Die, But I'm Not Going To Retire.

Sooner Or Later

Don't Depend On Governments Or Corporations To Fix Problems. Social Revolutions Are Led By Passionate Individuals And That's What Makes The Difference.

Interest And Proficiency In Almost Any One Activity-swimming, Boating, Fishing, Skiing, Skating-breed Interest In Many More. Once Someone Discovers The Delight Of Mastering One Skill, However Slightly, He Is Likely To Try Out Not Just One More, But A Whole Ensemble.

Each Suburban Housewife Spends Her Time Presiding Over A Power Plant Sufficient To Have Staffed The Palace Of A Roman Emperor With A Hundred Slaves.

The Assumption That Men Were Created Equal, With An Equal Ability To Make An Effort And Win An Earthly Reward, Although Denied Every Day By Experience, Is Maintained Every Day By Our Folklore And Our Daydreams.

Laughter Is Man's Most Distinctive Emotional Expression. Man Shares The Capacity For Love And Hate, Anger And Fear, Loyalty And Grief, With Other Living Creatures. But Humour, Which Has An Intellectual As Well As An Emotional Element Belongs To Man

... Some Veil Between Childhood And The Present Is Necessary. If The Veil Is Withdrawn, The Artistic Imagination Sickens And Dies, The Prophet Looks In The Mirror With A Disillusioned And Cynical Sneer, The Scientist Goes Fishing.

The Atmosphere Is The Key Symbol Of Global Interdependence.

Interdependence

Human Beings Do Not Carry Civilization In Their Genes. All That We Do Carry In Our Genes Are Certain Capacities- The Capacity To Learn To Walk Upright, To Use Our Brains, To Speak, To Relate To Our Fellow Men, To Construct And Use Tools, To Explore The Universe, And To Express That Exploration In Religion, In Art, In Science, In Philosophy.

I Was A Child That Both My Parents Wanted. I Was Told From The Time I Was Born That I Was Totally Satisfactory. I Had A Chance To Be What I Wanted To Be.

We Know Of No Culture That Has Said, Articulately, That There Is No Difference Between Men And Women Except In The Way They Contribute To The Creation Of The Next Generation.

Nobody Has Ever Before Asked The Nuclear Family To Live All By Itself In A Box The Way We Do. With No Relatives, No Support, We've Put It In An Impossible Situation.

Impossible Situations

Sisters, While They Are Growing Up, Tend To Be Very Rivalrous And As Young Mothers They Are Given To Continual Rivalrous Comparisons Of Their Several Children. But Once The Children Grow Older, Sisters Draw Closer Together And Often, In Old Age, They Become Each Other's Chosen And Most Happy Companions. In Addition To Their Shared Memories Of Childhood And Of Their Relationship To Each Other's Children, They Share Memories Of The Same Home, The Same Homemaking Style, And The Same Small Prejudices About Housekeeping That Carry The Echoes Of Their Mother's Voice.

The Experience Of Having Brothers And Sisters, Born Of The Same Parents, Sleeping Under The Same Roof, Eating At The Same Table, Is An Inescapable, Delightful And Repelling, Desired And Abhorred Part Of Each Child's Life.

The Differences Between The Two Sexes Is One Of The Important Conditions Upon Which We Have Built The Many Varieties Of Human Culture That Give Human Beings Dignity And Stature.

As Far Back As Our Knowledge Takes Us, Human Beings Have Lived In Families. We Know Of No Period When This Was Not So. We Know Of No People Who Have Succeeded For Long In Dissolving The Family Or Displacing It.

Coming To Terms With The Rhythms Of Women's Lives Means Coming To Terms With Life Itself, Accepting The Imperatives Of The Body Rather Than The Imperatives Of An Artificial, Man-made, Perhaps Transcendentally Beautiful Civilization. Emphasis On The Male Work-rhythm Is An Emphasis On Infinite Possibilities; Emphasis On The Female Rhythms Is An Emphasis On A Defined Pattern, On Limitation.

The Pains Of Childbirth Were Altogether Different From The Enveloping Effects Of Other Kinds Of Pain. These Were Pains One Could Follow With One's Mind.

Men Have Always Been Afraid That Women Could Get Along Without Them.

Whatever Advantages May Have Arisen, In The Past, Out Of The Existence Of A Specially Favored And Highly Privileged Aristocracy, It Is Clear To Me That Today No Argument Can Stand That Supports Unequal Opportunity Or Any Intrinsic Disqualification For Sharing In The Whole Of Life.

In Our Contemporary World, No One Can Think Or Work With A Single Picture Of What A Family Is. No One Can Fit All Human Behavior, All Thought And Feeling, Into A Single Pattern.

We Are At A Point In History Where A Proper Attention To Space, And Especially Near Space, May Be Absolutely Crucial In Bringing The World Together.

Human Beings Seem To Hold On More Tenaciously To A Cultural Identity That Is Learned Through Suffering Than To One That Has Been Acquired Through Pleasure And Delight.

No Society Has Ever Yet Been Able To Handle The Temptations Of Technology To Mastery, To Waste, To Exuberance, To Exploration And Exploitation... We Have To Learn To Cherish This Earth And Cherish It As Something That's Fragile, That's Only One, It's All We Have... We Have To Use Our Scientific Knowledge To Correct The Dangers That Have Come From Science And Technology.

Throughout History, Females Have Picked Providers For Males. Males Pick Anything.

Warfare ... Is Just An Invention, Older And More Widespread Than The Jury System, But None The Less An Invention.

The Time Has Come, I Think, When We Must Recognize Bisexuality As A Normal Form Of Human Behavior.

[in Bali] Life Is A Rhythmic, Patterned Unreality Of Pleasant, Significant Movement, Centered In One's Own Body To Which All Emotions Long Ago Withdrew.

To Demand That Another Love What One Loves Is Tyranny Enough, But To Demand That Another Hate What One Hates, Is Even Worse.

The Samoan Puts The Burden Of Amatory Success Upon The Man And Believes That Women Need More Initiating, More Time For Maturing Of Sexual Feeling. A Man Who Fails To Satisfy A Woman Is Looked Upon As A Clumsy, Inept Blunderer.

There Is No Lonelier Person Than The One Who Lives With A Spouse With Whom He Or She Cannot Communicate.

If A Fish Were An Anthropologist, The Last Thing It Would Discover Would Be Water.

Much Of The Ill-tempered Railing Against Women That Has Characterized The Popular Writing Of The Last Two Years Is A Half-heartedattempt To Find A Way Back To A More Balanced Relationship Between Our Biological Selves And The World We Have Built. So Women Are Scolded Both For Being Mothers And For Not Being Mothers, For Wanting To Eat Their Cake And Have It Too, And For Not Wanting To Eat Their Cake And Have It Too.

We Make Our Own Criminals, And Their Crimes Are Congruent With The National Culture We All Share. It Has Been Said That A People Get The Kind Of Political Leadership They Deserve. I Think They Also Get The Kinds Of Crime And Criminals They Themselves Bring Into Being.

It May Be Necessary Temporarily To Accept A Lesser Evil, But One Must Never Label A Necessary Evil As Good.

No Matter How Many Communes Anybody Invents, The Family Always Creeps Back.

A City Is A Place Where There Is No Need To Wait For Next Week To Get The Answer To A Question, To Taste The Food Of Any Country, To Find New Voices To Listen To And Familiar Ones To Listen To Again.

The Task Of Each Family Is Also The Task Of All Humanity. This Is To Cherish The Living, Remember Those Who Have Gone Before, And Prepare For Those Who Are Not Yet Born.

All Of Us Who Grew Up Before World War Ii Are Immigrants In Time, Immigrants From An Earlier World, Living In An Age Essentially Different From Anything We Knew Before.

It Used To Be When We Said, ''til Death Do Us Part,' Death Parted Us Pretty Soon. That's Why Marriages Used To Last Forever. Everybody Was Dead.

Our Humanity Rests Upon A Series Of Learned Behaviors, Woven Together Into Patterns That Are Infinitely Fragile And Never Directly Inherited.

Envy Of The Male Role Can Come As Much From An Undervaluation Of The Role Of Wife And Mother As From An Overvaluation Of The Public Aspects Of Achievement That Have Been Reserved For Men.

It Is Utterly False And Cruelly Arbitrary... To Put All The Play And Learning Into Childhood, All The Work Into Middle Age, And All The Regrets Into Old Age.

There Are Unidentified Flying Objects. That Is, There Are A Hard Core Of Cases-perhaps 20 To 30 Percent In Different Studies-for Which There Is No Explanation. We Can Only Imagine What Purpose Lies Behind The Activities Of These Quiet, Harmlessly Cruising Objects That Time And Again Approach The Earth. The Most Likely Explanation, It Seems To Me, Is That They Are Simply Watching What We Are Up To

We May Say That Many, If Not All, Of The Personality Traits Which We Have Called Masculine Or Feminine Are As Lightly Linked To Sex As Are The Clothing, The Manners, And The Form Of Headdress That A Society At A Given Period Assigns To Either Sex.

Masculine And Feminine

We End Up With The Contradictory Picture Of A Society That Appears To Throw Its Doors Wide Open To Women, But Translates Her Every Step Towards Success As Having Been Damaging.

I Was Wise Enough To Never Grow Up While Fooling Most People Into Believing I Had.

Sometimes, Instead Of Helping People To Advance, A Discovery Or An Invention Holds Them Back.

Dancing Is The Only Activity In Which Almost All Ages And Both Sexes Participate.

Today's Children Are The First Generation To Grow Up In A World That Has The Power To Destroy Itself.

Photographs [are] Of Course Heavily Dependent Upon The Culture, The Disciplinary Point Of View And The Idiosyncratic Vision Of The Particular Photographer-analyst.

People In America, Of Course, Live In All Sorts Of Fashions, Because They Are Foreigners, Or Unlucky, Or Depraved, Or Without Ambition; People Live Like That, But Americans Live In White Detached Houses With Green Shutters. Rigidly, Blindly, The Dream Takes Precedence.

There Is No More Creative Force In The World Than The Menopausal Woman With Zest.

The Time Has Come, I Think, When We Must Recognize Bisexuality As A Normal Form Of Human Behavior... We Shall Not Really Succeed In Discarding The Straitjacket Of Our Cultural Beliefs About Sexual Choice If We Fail To Come To Terms With The Well-documented, Normal Human Capacity To Love Members Of Both Sexes.

Capacity To Love

Keeping Even The Most Humble Talent Wrapped In A Napkin Becomes The More Reprehensible The Greater The Emergency.

The Mind Is Not Sex-typed.

If Sports Are The Toy Department Of Life, Then The Nfl Is The Fao Schwartz Of Sports.

For The Human Species To Evolve, The Conversation Must Deepen.

Pigs And Cows And Chickens And People Are All Competing For Grain.

To The Extent That Either Sex Is Disadvantaged, The Whole Culture Is Poorer, And The Sex That, Superficially, Inherits The Earth, Inherits Only A Very Partial Legacy. The More Whole The Culture, The More Whole Each Member, Each Man, Each Woman, Each Child Will Be.

I Think The Important Thing About Sisters Is That They Share The Same Minute, Familiar Life-style, The Same Little Sets Of Rules. Therefore They Can Keep House With Each Other Late In Life, Because They Share The Same Bunch Of Housewifely Prejudices. The Important Thing About Women Today Is, As They Get Older, They Still Keep House. It's One Reason They Don't Die, But Men Die When They Retire. Women Just Polish The Teacups.

Everybody's Suffering Is Mine But Not Everybody's Murdering ... I Do Not Distinguish For One Moment Whether My Child Is In Danger Or A Child In Central Asia. But I Will Not Accept Responsibility For What Other People Do Because I Happen To Belong To That Nation Or That Race Or That Religion. I Do Not Believe In Guilt By Association.

Mead's Anthropology Had Many Other Red, White And Blue- Blooded Virtues. One Was The Common Anthropological Conceit, Out Of Which She Made A Career, To The Effect That The Ultimate Value Of Studying Other Cultures Was The Use We Could Make Of Them To Reconstruct Our Own - A Heady Kind Of Intellectual Imperialism, As If The Final Meaning Of Others' Lives Was Their Significance For Us.

Young People Are Moving Away From Feeling Guilty About Sleeping With Somebody To Feeling Guilty If They Are *not* Sleeping With Someone.

In The Presence Of Grandparent And Grandchild, Past And Future Merge In The Present.

Women Are Scolded Both For Being Mothers And For Not Being Mothers, For Wanting To Eat Their Cake And Have It Too, And For Not Wanting To Eat Their Cake And Have It Too.

Our Human Situation No Longer Permits Us To Make Armed Dichotomies Between Those Who Are Good And Those Who Are Evil, Those Who Are Right And Those Who Are Wrong. The First Blow Dealt To The Enemy's Children Will Sign The Death Warrant Of Our Own.

I Have Spent Most Of My Life Studying The Lives Of Other Peoples - Faraway Peoples - So That Americans Might Better Understand Themselves.

Lives Of Others

Every Time We Liberate A Woman, We Liberate A Man.

The Assumption That Men And Woman Are Essentially Alike In All Respects, Or Even In The Most Important Ones, Is A Damaging One, As Damaging As The Assumption That They Are Different In Ways In Which They Aren't Different, Perhaps More So.

Orientation In Time, Space, And Status Are The Essentials Of Social Existence, And The Balinese, Although They Make Very Strong Spirits For Ceremonial Occasions, With A Few Startling Exceptions Resist Alcohol, Because If One Drinks One Loses One's Orientation. Orientation Is Felt As A Protection Rather Than As A Strait Jacket And Its Loss Provokes Extreme Anxiety.

Any Town That Doesn't Have Sidewalks Doesn't Love Its Children.

Never Believe That A Few Caring People Can't Change The World. For, Indeed, That's All Who Ever Have.

And When Our Baby Stirs And Struggles To Be Born It Compels Humility: What We Began Is Now Its Own.

Never Depend Upon Institutions Or Government To Solve Any Problem. All Social Movements Are Founded By, Guided By, Motivated And Seen Through By The Passion Of Individuals.

The First Step In The Direction Of A World Rule Of Law Is The Recognition That Peace No Longer Is An Unobtainable Ideal But A Necessary Condition Of Continued Human Existence. But To Take Even This Step We Must Return To A Calm And Responsible Frame Of Mind In Which We Can Face The Long Patient Tasks Ahead.

Because Our Civilization Is Woven Of So Many Diverse Strands, The Ideas Which Any One Group Accepts Will Be Found To Contain Numerous Contradictions.

...recognize And Respect Earth's Beautiful Systems Of Balance, Between The Presence Of Animals On Land, The Fish In The Sea, Birds In The Air, Mankind, Water, Air, And Land. Most Importantly There Must Always Be Awareness Of The Actions By People That Can Disturb This Precious Balance.

We Are Now At A Point Where We Must Educate Our Children In What No One Knew Yesterday, And Prepare Our Schools For What No One Knows Yet.

Be Who You Really Are, Do What You Want To Do, In Order To Have What You Really Want.

Learned Behaviors Have Replaced The Biologically Given Ones.

Learned Behavior

Everyone Needs To Have Access Both To Grandparents And Grandchildren In Order To Be A Full Human Being.

Margaret Mead Was Both A Student Of Civilization And An Exemplar Of It. To A Public Of Millions, She Brought The Central Insight Of Cultural Anthropology: That Varying Cultural Patterns Express An Underlying Human Unity. She Mastered Her Discipline, But She Also Transcended It. Intrepid, Independent, Plain Spoken, Fearless, She Remains A Model For The Young And A Teacher From Whom All May Learn.

Human Nature Is Potentially Aggressive And Destructive And Potentially Orderly And Constructive.

Britons Put Up With, Americans Fix, Canadians Cope

The Negative Cautions Of Science Are Never Popular. If The Experimentalist Would Not Commit Himself, The Social Philosopher, The Preacher, And The Pedagogue Tried The Harder To Give A Short-cut Answer.

You Just Have To Learn Not To Care About The Dusty Mites Under The Beds.

The Most Extraordinary Thing About A Really Good Teacher Is That He Or She Transcends Accepted Educational Methods. Such Methods Are Designed To Help Average Teachers Approximate The Performance Of Good Teachers.

The City As A Center Where, Any Day In Any Year, There May Be A Fresh Encounter With A New Talent, A Keen Mind Or A Gifted Specialist-this Is Essential To The Life Of A Country. To Play This Role In Our Lives A City Must Have A Soul-a University, A Great Art Or Music School, A Cathedral Or A Great Mosque Or Temple, A Great Laboratory Or Scientific Center, As Well As The Libraries And Museums And Galleries That Bring Past And Present Together. A City Must Be A Place Where Groups Of Women And Men Are Seeking And Developing The Highest Things They Know.

I Discovered When I Had A Child Of My Own That I Had Become A Biased Observer Of Small Children. Instead Of Looking At Them With Affectionate But Nonpartisan Eyes, I Saw Each Of Them As Older Or Younger, Bigger Or Smaller, More Or Less Graceful, Intelligent, Or Skilled Than My Own Child.

For Immanuel Kant, The Term Anthropology Embraced All The Human Sciences, And Laid The Foundation Of Familiar Knowledge We Need, To Build Solidly Grounded Ideas About The Moral And Political Demands Of Human Life. Margaret Mead Saw Mid-twentieth-century Anthropology As Engaged In A Project No Less Ambitious Than Kant's Own, And Her Terry Lectures On Continuities In Cultural Evolution Provide An Excellent Point To Enter Into Her Reflections.

Because Of Their Age Long Training In Human Relations For That Is What Feminine Intuition Really Is Women Have A Special Contribution To Make Any Group Enterprise.

Instead Of Being Presented With Stereotypes By Age, Sex, Color, Class, Or Religion, Children Must Have The Opportunity To Learn That Within Each Range, Some People Are Loathsome And Some Are Delightful.

Ninety-nine Percent Of The Time Humans Have Lived On This Planet We've Lived In Tribes, Groups Of 12 To 36 People. Only During Times Of War, Or What We Have Now, Which Is The Psychological Equivalent Of War, Does The Nuclear Family Prevail, Because It's The Most Mobile Unit That Can Ensure The Survival Of The Species. But For The Full Flowering Of The Human Spirit We Need Groups, Tribes.

Life In The Twentieth Century Is Like A Parachute Jump: You Have To Get It Right The First Time.

What Is New Is Not Bisexuality, But Rather The Widening Of Our Awareness And Acceptance Of Human Capacities For Sexual Love.

Parents Feel Like Immigrants In The Country Of The Young.

Earth Day Reminds The People Of The World Of The Need For Continuing Care Which Is Vital To Earth's Safety.

It Is An Open Question Whether Any Behavior Based On Fear Of Eternal Punishment Can Be Regarded As Ethical Or Should Be Regarded As Merely Cowardly.

Female Animals Defending Their Young Are Notoriously Ferocious And Lack The Playful Delight In Combat Which Characterizes The Mock Combats Of Males Of The Same Species. There Seems Very Little Ground For Claiming That The Mother Of Young Children Is More Peaceful, More Responsible, And More Thoughtful For The Welfare Of The Human Race Than Is Her Husband Or Brother.

From A Hundred Cultures, [there Is] One Culture Which Does What No Culture Has Ever Done Before-gives A Place To Every Human Gift.

Monogamous Heterosexual Love Is Probably One Of The Most Difficult, Complex And Demanding Of Human Relationships.

It Is Of Very Doubtful Value To Enlist The Gifts Of A Woman Into Fields That Have Been Defined As Male; It Frightens The Men, Unsexes The Women, And Muffles And Distorts The Contribution Women Could Make.

The Capacity For Friendship Usually Goes With Highly Developed Civilizations. The Ability To Cultivate People Differs By Culture And Class; But On The Whole, Educated People Have More Ways To Make Friends... . In England, For Instance, You Find Everyone In Your Class Has Read The Same Books. Here, People Grope For Something In Common-like A Newly Engaged Girl Who Came To Me And Said, "it's Absolutely Wonderful! His Uncle And My Cousin Were On The Same Football Team.

Home, I Learned, Can Be Anywhere You Make It. Home Is Also The Place To Which You Come Back Again And Again.

Again And Again

The Solution To Adult Problems Tomorrow Depends On Large Measure Upon How Our Children Grow Up Today.

The Way To Do Fieldwork Is Never To Come Up For Air Until It Is All Over.

You Can No Longer Save Your Family, Tribe Or Nation. You Can Only Save The Whole World.

The Way In Which Each Human Infant Is Transformed Into The Finished Adult, Into The Complicated Individual Version Of His City And His Century Is One Of The Most Fascinating Studies Open To The Curious Minded.

Those Social Behaviors Which Automatically Preclude The Building Of A Democratic World Must Go - Every Social Limitation Of Human Beings In Terms Of Heredity, Whether It Be Of Race, Or Sex, Or Class. Every Social Institution Which Teaches Human Beings To Cringe To Those Above And Step On Those Below Must Be Replaced By Institutions Which Teach People To Look Each Other Straight In The Face.

The Institution Of Marriage In All Societies Is A Pattern Within Which The Strains Put By Civilization On Males And Females Alike Must Be Resolved, A Pattern Within Which Men Must Learn, In Return For A Variety Of Elaborate Rewards, New Forms In Which Sexual Spontaneity Is Still Possible, And Women Must Learn To Discipline Their Receptivity To A Thousand Other Considerations.

As The Traveler Who Has Once Been From Home Is Wiser Than He Who Has Never Left His Own Doorstep, So A Knowledge Of One Other Culture Should Sharpen Our Ability To Scrutinize More Steadily, To Appreciate More Lovingly, Our Own.

It Has Been A Woman's Task Throughout History To Go On Believing In Life When There Was Almost No Hope.

Even Very Recently, The Elders Could Say: 'you Know, I Have Been Young And You Never Have Been Old.' But Today's Young People Can Reply: 'you Never Have Been Young In The World I Am Young In, And You Never Can Be.' ... The Older Generation Will Never See Repeated In The Lives Of Young People Their Own Unprecedented Experience Of Sequentially Emerging Change. This Break Between Generations Is Wholly New: It Is Planetary And Universal.

No Society That Feeds Its Children On Tales Of Successful Violence Can Expect Them Not To Believe That Violence In The End Is Rewarded.

Our First And Most Pressing Problem Is How To Do Away With Warfare As A Method Of Solving Conflicts Between National Groups Within A Society Who Have Different Views About How The Society Is To Run.

Creationism: The Theory That Rome Was Built In A Day.

Mothers Are A Biological Necessity; Fathers Are A Social Invention

We — Mankind — Stand At The Center Of An Evolutionary Crisis, With A New Evolutionary Device — Our Consciousness Of The Crisis — As Our Unique Contribution.

In Almost Any Society I Think, The Quality Of The Nonconformists Is Likely To Be Just As Good As And No Better Than That Of The Conformists.

And As I Had My Father's Kind Of Mind-which Was Also His Mother's-i Learned That The Mind Is Not Sex-typed.

Anthropology... Has Always Been Highly Dependent Upon Photography... As The Use Of Still Photography - And Moving Pictures - Has Become Increasingly Essential As A Part Of Anthropological Methods, The Need For Photographers With A Disciplined Knowledge Of Anthropology And For Anthropologists With Training In Photography Has Increased. We Expect That In The Near Future Sophisticated Training In Photography Will Be A Requirement For All Anthropologists. (1962)

American Society Is Very Like A Fish Society. . . . Among Certain Species Of Fish, The Only Thing Which Determines Order Of Dominance Is Length Of Time In The Fishbowl. The Oldest Resident Picks On The Newest Resident, And If The Newest Resident Is Removed To A New Bowl, He, As Oldest Resident, Will Pick On The Newcomers.

Mourning Has Become Unfashionable In The United States. The Bereaved Are Supposed To Pull Themselves Together As Quickly As Possible And To Reweave The Torn Fabric Of Life. ... We Do Not Allow ... For The Weeks And Months During Which A Loss Is Realized - A Beautiful Word That Suggests The Transmutation Of The Strange Into Something That Is One's Own.

Even Though The Ship May Go Down, The Journey Goes On.

If We Are To Give Our Utmost Effort And Skill And Enthusiasm, We Must Believe In Ourselves, Which Means Believing In Our Past And In Our Future, In Our Parents And In Our Children, In That Particular Blend Of Moral Purpose And Practical Inventiveness Which Is The American Character.

Standardized Personality Differences Between The Sexes Are Of This Order, Cultural Creations To Which Each Generation, Male And Female, Is Trained To Conform.

Where We Choose To Put Our Attention Changes Our Brain, Which In Time Can Change How We See And Interact With The World.

The Anonymity Of The City Is One Of Its Strengths As Well As - Carried Too Far - One Of Its Weaknesses.

We Must Devise A System In Which Peace Is More Rewarding Than War.

There Are Now No Elders Who Know More Than The Young Themselves About What The Young Are Experiencing.

Samoa Culture Demonstrates How Much The Tragic Or The Easy Solution Of The Oedipus Situation Depends Upon The Inter-relationship Between Parents And Children, And Is Not Created Out Of Whole Cloth By The Young Child's Biological Impulses.

Leisure And The Cultivation Of Human Capacities Are Inextricably Interdependent.

I Don't Consider My Marriages As Failures! It's Idiotic To Assume That Because A Marriage Ends, It's Failed.

Many Societies Have Educated Their Male Children On The Simple Device Of Teaching Them Not To Be Women.

We Must Have...a Place Where Children Can Have A Whole Group Of Adults They Can Trust.

What Are The Determinative Factors In The Early Training Of The Child Which Assures That It Will Be Placid And Contented, Unaggressive And Non-initiatory, Non-competitive And Responsive, Warm, Docile, And Trusting?

The People Of One Nation Alone Cannot Save Their Own Children; Each Holds The Responsibility For The Others' Children.

This Is A Precious Possession Which We Cannot Afford To Tarnish, But Society Always Is Attempting To Make The Physician Into A Killer To Kill The Defective Child At Birth, To Leave The Sleeping Pills Beside The Bed Of The Cancer Patient ... It Is The Duty Of Society To Protect The Physicians From Such Requests.

We Must Recognize That Beneath The Superficial Classifications Of Sex And Race The Same Potentialities Exist, Recurring Generation After Generation, Only To Perish Because Society Has No Place For Them.

Just As The Difference In Height Between Males Is No Longer A Realistic Issue, Now That Lawsuits Have Been Substituted For Hand-to-hand Encounters, So The Difference In Strength Between Men And Women Is No Longer Worth Elaboration In Cultural Institutions.

Jealousy Is Not A Barometer By Which The Depth Of Love Can Be Read. It Merely Records The Degree Of The Lover's Insecurity.

No One Will Live All His Life In The World Into Which He Was Born And No One Will Die In The World In Which He Worked In His Maturity.

Women Want Mediocre Men, And Men Are Working To Be As Mediocre As Possible.

One Of The Most Dangerous Things That Can Happen To A Child Is To Kill Or Torture An Animal And Get Away With It.

Motherhood Is A Biological Fact, While Fatherhood Is A Social Invention.

There Is No Greater Power In The World Than The Zest Of A Postmenopausal Woman.

Earth Day Uses One Of Humanity's Great Discoveries, The Discovery Of Anniversaries By Which, Throughout Time, Human Beings Have Kept Their Sorrows And Their Joys, Their Victories, Their Revelations And Their Obligations Alive, For Re-celebration And Re-dedication Another Year, Another Decade, Another Century, Another Eon.

Today Our Approaches To Children Are Fragmented And Partial. Those Who Care For Well Children Know Little Of Children Who Are Sick. The Deep Knowledge That Comes From The Intensive Attempt To Cure Is Separated From The Knowledge Of Those Whose Main Task Is To Teach.

Man's Role Is Uncertain, Undefined, And Perhaps Unnecessary.

Many Women, Particularly Young Women, Have Claimed The Right To Use The Most Explicit Sex Terms, Including Extremely Vulgar Ones, In Public As Well As Private. But It Is Men, Far More Than Women, Who Have Been Liberated By This Change. For Now That Women Use These Terms, Men No Longer Need To Watch Their Own Language In The Presence Of Women. But Is This A Gain For Women?

Never Ever Depend On Governments Or Institutions To Solve Any Major Problems. All Social Change Comes From The Passion Of Individuals.

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John Philpot Curran

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