Word: human
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...entirely unfounded, though the reasoning behind it is unfair. the "science" Mead sought to popularize is the study of man. Unlike physics or calculus or other hard sciences there is no justification for anthropology confining itself to scrutiny by a specialized elite. It concerns itself with examining something tangible--humans--by means of a very common human device--observation. Mead had no practical training before venturing into the field. Basically she did little more than what all of us are capable of doing if we set our minds to it: she kept her eyes and ears open. Yet her results...
...reputation threw wight behind all her views, whether they dealt with the Arapesh in New Guinea or the divorce rate in America. What her critics should have pointed out was not that she had too many opinions but that people tended to view her as an expert on human nature, and what was happening to man, as well as an expert on a few specific societies. Too many people were too willing to listen and then agree because the speaker was Margaret Mead...
...gold rush is still pervasive. Writes Kevin Starr in Americans and the California Dream: "The state remained, after all, a land characterized by an essential selfishness and an underlying instability, a fixation upon the quick acquisition of wealth, an impatience with the more subtle premises of human happiness." Of the 1960s, when some 1,000 people a day fled west, Joan Didion wrote in Slouching Towards Bethlehem: "Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that...
...child, John, was born in 1972 to Grace Stoen, who with her husband Timothy was one of Jones' top associates. At Jones' behest, Timothy Stoen signed an affidavit declaring that he had personally requested that the child be sired by "the most compassionate, honest and courageous human being the world contains." The Stoens now deny that Jones was the father and won legal custody of the child last year after a court fight. But Jones refused to let him leave Guyana. Just before Jones' death he told a newsman that the fear of losing the child prevented...
...Jonestown deaths pose the vital question of whether in our modern way of life our institutions provide a sense of sufficient stability." Commented Tokyo's daily Asahi Shimbun: "The Guyana incident is a ghastly reminder of how fanaticism born of the contradictions of modern society can destroy human beings...