On Going Native

I did some "serious research" on this particular bit of terminology, and I found some good things in journals, books, etc., but I found this and like it too.

Posted by Victoria S Dennis on September 03, 2007

In Reply to: Re: Going native posted by Bob on September 03, 2007

: : I am looking for the origin of the phrase "going native". It is often used to describe anthropologists' or travellers' growing immersion in new cultures they are engaged with (and has a racist note in it). But I can't find a source and would be grateful for information

:
: Not an origin, but another, perhaps older, use. In the (U.S.) State Department, diplomats and other embassy personnel are rotated to differenet countries at intervals, at least partly to avoid the problem of them "going native," meaning that they become so acculturated and familiar that they begin to identify with and sympathize with the locals, to the point of not representing our own national interests. It's a delicate balance: diplomacy requires experience and understanding of the host country, but too much experience, and one can forget who's signing the pay checks.

In British English it dates from the 19th century. The British felt it very important to their collective prestige in the Colonies to maintain their identity as "sahibs", as distinct from the black or brown "natives", so much anxiety was caused if any member of the British community showed signs of "going native" in his habits, e.g. by adopting the local dress and socialising with the locals. This anxiety lasted as long as the Empire itself did; in Kenya in the 1940s my father, aged 19, used to take off his shoes to save them getting dusty when riding his motorbike across the open savannah. When this was reported to his family he was taken to task by his elders for "going barefoot in public like an African". (VSD) 

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/55/messages/565.html

Boy howdy, do I like blogs - I can say "to hell with academic sources" whenever I feel like it. It's liberating. 

Anywho, the phrase "going native" is darn close to a dirty phrase in most anthropological circles. The idea is that, to maintain objectivity and scientific accuracy, a certain distance must be kept from the "subject material" (what a terrible way to talk about human beings!). The thing is, I'm not an anthropologist (at least by name - everybody does anthropology work whether or not they write it down and publish it) and I never plan to be one. I'm a musician. Most of the time, I feel that throwing "-ologist" on the end of something beautiful robs it of its warmth and relegates it to the realm of soggy textbooks in dank library-dungeons.  

My reason in going to and vision for being in Bylakuppe relates to what Bela Fleck did in his recent exploration of the origins of the banjo in Africa. There are definitely some of what could be called "ethnomusicological points of contact" made by what Bela did, through making high quality recordings and re-exposing people to an instrument that left their country and evolved in a different way in a different place, by comparing the modern American banjo to its analogues in various regions, and by interviewing the musicians who play these instruments at both virtuoso/professional and casual levels (if those terms may be very loosely applied - music doesn't mean the same thing everywhere). But his purpose in Africa - and, to a musician, this purpose is a sacred one - was to find some great musicians and make some great music. He didn't only play the banjo, the instrument for which he is famous, but he spent time learning instruments local to the areas. In the second picture, you can see that he traded instruments with the master musician he was visiting.

This is the kind of "going native" I'm into. Diehl, who wrote the book that was a large inspiration for going to a Tibetan community in India, was inducted into and played keyboard in a Tibetan rock and blues band - if that doesn't require some going native, I don't know what does. Playing that kind of music simply can't be done well whilst one is "detached." Rock and blues music don't work without mutual understanding and intense connection.

For the sake of music, and for the sake of the people who make it, Bela Fleck learned historical material along the way, and no doubt researched some of the areas of scholarship important to anthropologists that touched his journey (though I doubt he spent a bunch of time with JSTOR - hey, maybe). The wonderful thing is that that kind of learning is natural, completely owned by the learner, and takes none of what might be called "effort." Frustrations and troubles come up - the plane tickets might be expensive and the van might break down in the middle of the route and it might be easy to mistake the mosquitoes for birds of prey - but these problems are swallowed up in the joy of love for what one is doing.

When asked about the perfect humanity (zhi ren 至仁), Zhuangzi replies, “Perfect humanity is without affection for parents,” and further explains,
The ultimate humanity is supreme and so filial piety is not enough to describe it. . . . It is easy to be filial by being reverent, but it is difficult to be filial with love; it is easy to be filial with love, but it is difficult to forget one’s parents; it is easy to forget one’s parents, but it is difficult to make parents forget me; it is easy to make parents forget me, but it is difficult to forget the whole world; it is easy to forget the whole world, but it is difficult to make the world forget me. (Zhuangzi 14.497–99) 

Here, perfect humanity as that without affection for parents does not mean that parents are obstacles to perfect humanity. It simply means to forget your parents. It is more difficult to forget your parents than to love them, because as long as you know that you should love them, you can at least make some effort to do so. Here, to forget your parents does not mean to not love them; rather, it is to love them without knowing that you ought to love them and that you are loving them. When you love your parents so naturally, spontaneously, and effortlessly, you have forgotten your parents, which is certainly something more difficult to accomplish. So it is easy to love with effort, but more difficult to love effortlessly. It sounds paradoxical, but conveys a profound message: sages can do things effortlessly, but one cannot become a sage without making great effort. 

From: Respecting Different Ways of Life: A Daoist Ethics of Virtue in the Zhuangzi by Yong Huang

How tragic when people get so caught up in research and discourse that they forget why they got into the focus in the first place! Happiness flitters away.

My faculty mentor, Dr. Grimshaw, he has expressed sadness and frustration at the ethnomusicology world's continual shifting of paradigms from participatory observation to cold, purposely outsider observation and back again. I vibed with his view of how to do in-field research - by golly, be in-the-field! Participate in the culture as well as the subject of study, whatever it is, insomuch as it doesn't interfere with personal moral beliefs (and it's not a bad idea, especially for a Latter-day Saint, to evaluate whether or not a cultural practice is at odds with core doctrine or if it is really just at odds with Mormon/American/Utahn/Whatever culture). So what if you lose some objectivity? You gain some life. Then, when back in the office, sitting in front of the computer, be fully there as well and do some scholarly justice to the material.

So, to tie it together, I want to (need to) "go native" as much as possible if I want to understand and be able to make this music from the inside out, and if I want to effortlessly (using Zuangzi's definition) take part in the music and culture, understanding that no matter what I do I will have 23 years (is that really how old I am?!) of background that is unavoidable and inexpugnable. Heck, I might seem as strange to the Tibetans as these guys would have to the Londoners:

These guys from Vanuatu visited London as part of a British television series. They wore British clothes most of the time, in case you're wondering. Everybody's got to adapt a little! It was probably too darn cold anyway.

but that's just part of life and intercultural interaction. I'm cool with that. We are going to learn from each other, not because I'm American and have something to teach them, or because their culture is so much better and richer than mine (these being the two polar sides that plague many views of world culture), but because we are all human beings with something to give and room to take something in return.

We're going to make some great music, and make some great friends. And, damn the torpedoes, ain't no-one gonna stop it.

P.S.

This is pretty funny.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/22/72-study-abroad/

HUM 201 Journal Entry 3

The Sage:

A Comparison of Wisdom and the Wise As Found in The Apology and Tao Te Ching

Only faulting faults is faultless,

The Sage is faultless

By faulting faults,

And so is without fault.

-        Tao Te Ching 71

            When comparing 6^th century Chinese and 5^th century Greek thought, BCE, the hundred years of separation is the smallest gap to bridge. Thousands of miles of rough terrain and layers of political boundary kept either society from doing much more than imagining what lay far to the east or west. Philosophy, too, took widely variegated stances in both cultures, producing Confucianism, Taoism, Moism, etc. in the Orient, and Sophism, Socratic Method, Platonism, etc. in the Occident. Growing up as a student in a largely Occidental educational system, I have always been drawn to the “other,” wondering what folks on the opposite side of the planet were ruminating on when peripatetic dominated the Greek side of things. Here I will compare and contrast two influential schools and persons of philosophy, and by pitting Lao-Tzu and Socrates in the same arena I hope to gain a rounder understanding of the universal human condition. Two areas of thought will be examined: the nature of sagacity and the way of the sage.

            On the nature of sagacity, Lao-Tzu and Socrates find surprising agreement. “[The] one among you is wisest, mortals, who, like Socrates, has recognized that he’s truly worthless where wisdom’s concerned” (NA 763). “Know not-knowing: supreme. Not know knowing: faulty” (TTC 71). Socrates was found to be wisest because he understood and embraced his own lack of wisdom. In understanding his own worthlessness and nothingness, he became worth more than nothing. In a vein of over-puffed self-importance, men of science and men of politics began to think they had the mastery over earth and the self. The god’s mission for Socrates was to understand the faultiness of this thinking and correct it by retreating to a humbler and more accurate picture of self. Taoism has long, perhaps always, seen itself as the balancing antidote to the other emergent 6^th century BCE Chinese philosophical school, Confucianism. While Confucianism emphasized order, knowledge of world matters, and arduous righteous action, Taoism focused on a realization similar, in part, to what Socrates was given – the human mind is much healthier when it knows its limitations and accepts them. Though different methods were used to arrive at this realization, as will be addressed shortly, both schools of thought sought to chip or wear away at pride until it was gone. Sagacity, then, is found in not-knowing, or in other words, coming to an awareness of one’s own lack of wisdom.

            The way of the sage consists of two main parts. First, “the way” describes the path that is taken to sagacity. Second, “the way” also describes the method(s) by which the sage imparts knowledge. Socratic method is decidedly and admittedly brash, abrasive, and to use the Eastern conception of gender, male. “It’s as just such a gadfly, it seems to me, that the god has attached me to the city – one that awakens, cajoles, and reproaches each and every one of you…” (NA 770). Socrates, having his own wisdom awakened by the god and confirmed by experimentation, seeks to impart wisdom by chipping away at the “wisdom” of his contemporaries through intense questioning and the occasional well-placed insult. Socrates’ invective against Meletus shows this style of teaching forcefully, as Socrates berates Meletus out of love for him and the audience in an attempt to help them experience humiliation and transform it into humility. Taoism takes a very different approach, one that is slower, without conflict, and, again in Eastern conception, female. “Nothing in the world is soft and weak as water. But when attacking the hard and strong nothing can conquer so easily. Weak overcomes strong, soft overcomes hard” (TTC 78) and “Pursue knowledge, gain daily. Pursue Tao, lose daily. Lose and again lose, arrive at non-doing. Non-doing – and nothing not done.” (48) Instead of chipping away at it, the Tao erases pride through the slow wear of erosion. To use a Taoist analogy, natural and patient methods get the Taoist to the other side of the river.[1] In imparting wisdom of the Tao to others, rhetoric and debate are not permitted by Lao-Tzu.[2] As stated at the outset, the Taoist sage is faultless through the faulting of faults, but the method of faulting faults is not through direct debate. “Good people do not quarrel. Quarrelsome people are not good… The Sage’s Tao acts and does not contend” (81). Direct Socratic confrontation is unthinkable in philosophical Taoism. How might a Taoist sage impart wisdom, then? “I do nothing/And people transform themselves” (57). The sage faults faults occasionally through writing or speech, but mostly does it through living without those faults. Taoism is the ultimate laissez-faire, trusting in people to make their own changes, while the Socratic method is a high form of hands-on teaching. In summary, Socratic wisdom comes and is further propagated through skilful abrasion, while Taoist wisdom is gained through natural erosion and shared through quiet example.

            Taoism and Socrates’ philosophy, as examined, have some very similar goals and some very similar effects, yet they have been shown to approach their ideals through very different methods. Other similarities that stand open for exploration include the philosophical reasons for fearlessness, the non-tragedy of death, compassion as the ruling standard, and the use and abuse of the founders’ teachings by later propagates.[3] Other dissimilarities include action vs. non-action, emphasis on ontology in Taoism vs. emphasis on epistemology in Socratic philosophy, and Taoist roots in nature vs. Socratic roots in thought. I find both philosophies to be engaging, inspirational, and worth further contemplation and emulation. In the spirit of Yin and Yang, it is not evident that either is necessarily superior, but it is sure that they both have their special uses when the situation demands.

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[1] The Taoist story goes something like this: the Taoist and the Confucian both want to cross a river (even a Taoist has goals to accomplish). The Confucian swims hard in a straight line, battling the current with every stroke. The Taoist is leisurely in the swim, allowing the current to take him or her downstream. The Confucian reaches the other side first and flops down on the shore, exhausted and sucking air. The Taoist reaches the other side a little while later, though displaced downstream. The Taoist is not winded, but refreshed by the cool swim as he or she exits the river and begins walking to the final destination. The Confucian is still trying to catch breath when the Taoist reaches the goal.

[2] The later Taoist tradition, however, employed these methods extensively.

[3] Just as it is difficult to determine which of the words attributed to Socrates were actually his, Lao-Tzu’s writings and teachings are obscured by time and revisionist history.