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| Jared Diamond |
On 27 September,
Pulitzer Prize-winning polymath, author Jared Diamond, gave the first talk in
the Bristol Festival of Ideas series, in conjunction with the Cabot Institute, to promote the paperback release of his
new book “The world until yesterday”. The book surveys 39 traditional societies
and their attitudes to universal problems such as bringing up children, treatment
of the elderly and attitude to risk. The aim of the book is neither to idealise
nor disparage these traditional societies, but to investigate what lessons can
be learned from unindustrialised peoples.
Constructive paranoia
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| Photo©JahodaPetr.com (Papua Guide) |
One such tribe was the Dani whom
Diamond lived with while studying local ornithology in Papua New Guinea. He
opened his talk with a tale of the fear and trepidation that the New Guinean
tribe showed when he suggested making camp under a dead tree in the jungle.
Their “constructive paranoia” – while completely at odds with Diamond’s own
Western attitude – was essential to their survival in an ecosystem rife with
environmental dangers. Diamond mused that not only were accidents caused by the
physical environment less frequent in Western society, but the consequences
were less likely to be fatal or permanently disabling, due to our healthcare
system. This alters our perception of the risks associated with hazardous
behaviour.
Perception of risk
We worry too much about dangers
that do not kill many people – like terrorism, nuclear accidents, plane crashes
and DNA based technologies – but are comparatively blasé about the risks of
alcohol, smoking and cars. Westerners tend to overestimate the risk of things
beyond our control; things that are unfamiliar; that kill many people at once
or in a spectacular way, while we underestimate risks that we encounter every
day but assume “It will never happen to me”. This can be demonstrated by
comparing personal ratings of danger with the number of actual deaths, but this
does not take into account changes in personal behaviour to protect against
significant risks. Diamond recounted another tale of a tribe living in close
proximity to a pride of lions. Though the risk of being killed by a lion was very
real, few tribes people were actually killed due to the various precautions
taken such as travelling in groups and making a lot of noise so as not to
startle the lions.
Conflict management
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| Image from Penguin Books |
Jared also briefly covered
further topics from the book, such as our treatment of the elderly, whose
collective wisdom and knowledge is now usurped by the rise of the world wide
web. He also examines differing strategies for dealing with conflict. While in
the West we concentrate on perceived wrongs, and who is “in the right”, more
traditional societies contend with disputes with those who they
will continue to live with and trade with for the rest of their lives. Their
model for conflict-management more closely resembles the idea of ‘restorative
justice’, where victims and perpetrators meet to discuss the incident. The
emphasis is on restoring a working relationship rather than assigning blame or
retribution.
“The world until yesterday” goes on general sale by Penguin Books in
paperback on 29 October 2013.
This blog has been written by Boo Lewis, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol.
Watch the Jared Diamond event again online.
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| Boo Lewis, Cabot Institute blogger |
Watch the Jared Diamond event again online.