Entropic Differentiation

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier changed the focus of chemistry from qualitative to quantitative; his findings equal in stature those of Isaac Newton. His new understanding of the constituent parts of air and of the combustion process laid the groundwork for creation of the periodic table. Perhaps his greatest and most lasting achievement was to impose order on the language and symbolism that have shaped the thoughts of chemists. His beginner’s guide to chemistry included a table that recognized 55 elements, including both old and new names. Metals were shown to be compounds of metals with oxygen: hence “Vitriol of Venus” became “copper sulphate”. He also showed that gasses expand evenly, to fill available space.
In The Narration of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, various tribes seem reminiscent to the 1960’s Philip K. Dick classic, Clans of the Alphane Moon. Dick’s science-fiction tale hinges on an associative tendency among varieties of mental patients, leading to kinds of empowerment. It suggests availability of unacknowledged avenues for survival in the face of great odds. There’s also suggestion that societies differentiate to cover all possibilities of psychic space.

From my novel “Dignity, Too”:

Was, Geo wanted to know, tribalism based on a preference for individualized preference, distinction for distinction’s sake, as much as on physical and historical happenstance? Perhaps it was a natural tendency to develop a specialty? Personality types interact in predictable patterns, perhaps map-able in their tendencies, like ‘The Laws of the Motion of Gasses’ by the 16th century Frenchman Lavoisier (beheaded by the revolution for wealth).
“OK, it’s about how much of our behavior might really be made understandable. Sure, and, indeed, really, how much of our history has to do with things way beyond the ken of even most special, shamanistic individuals? Look at it from the example I like: a gas will spread evenly to fill available space. OK?”
“OK – if you’re not confusing people and things.”
“Things are what we can look at, more than personalities. But people of a similar mien, isolated, will diverge like gasses, spreading out, though in people’s case in variety, in character divergence, to fill each possible niche of the human range of character type, emotional proclivity, whatever. The gases don’t diversify, they just spread out, but people can spread out in emotional range. Suppose you take 50 seminarians…”
“Divinity students, right? Take ‘em where?”
“Yeah, right. 50 guys pretty much the same - put ‘em in some isolated place where they’re able to make do and survive. They’re gonna change. One will become more of a clown, another, the heavy or policeman. Some will do more work than others, some are gonna be more artsy. Some will act like bosses, some will be more sexual, some less; some popular, some rejected. Some will become overly assertive, some overly meek. Got the picture?”
“Like, get rid of the class cut-up, and another troublemaker pops right up to take his place? Barbara talks about that: the book Lord of the Flies.”
“Exactly! The way I figure it, among any race, once you’re familiar with them, faces suggest a similar range of personalities, of character varieties and habitual tendencies… the more some things change, the more others stay the same.”
“Gotcha! Ya know, though, the meekest of a really warlike group might still be more warlike than the most aggressive of a peaceful people.”
Clan rivalries, they decided, were a trying ground for the human condition - something most shamans might miss recognizing, for the sake of their necessary orientation to clan survival.
“This mathematician, Kurt Gödel, a friend of Einstein’s, showed how any method of organizing thought, any system, not only includes at least one internal contradiction, but also incidents which, though clearly part of the organizing, or system, can’t be really be accounted for, at least not mathematically. Human tools for grappling with reality are bent and inadequate; there’s more involved than we can possibly conceive. The spiritual aspect to this is, that directions people go in hardly involves just choice – we move along in syndromes. This is something I’m sure many Shaman understands, or understood, though, like me, in non-mathematical ways. They at least realized we have tendencies we can’t reverse.”

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On Philip Dick’s imaginary moon Alpha III M2, psychiatric diagnostic groups differentiated themselves into caste-like pseudo-ethnicities. The inhabitants have formed seven clans:
The Pares, paranoiacs, function as the statesman class. Their settlement is called Adolfville (named after Adolf Hitler). It is located within the northern sector of Alpha III M2, and is heavily fortified. This is where the supreme council building is, a stone, six-story-high building, the largest one in Adolfville. They correspond to MegaCorp CEOs.
The Manses are inventive people with mania. They are the most active class, the warrior, Kshatriya, class. They live at Da Vinci Heights, characterized as diverse but disordered, without aesthetic unity, "a hodgepodge of incomplete projects, started out but never finished." This is where Alpha III M2's television transmitter is. Tension between them and the Pares is constant, with the Manses ever trying to stage a coup d'état; they correspond to politicians, “journalists” and uniformed officers in current Earth society.
The Skitzes are schizophrenic. They correspond to the poet class, with some being religious visionaries. The Skitz town is named Joan d'Arc, “poor materially, but rich in eternal values.” Many are musicians, some preachers; some sometimes foresee some things.
Heebs have hebephrenia (disorganized schizophrenia). They correspond to Sudras and/or Untouchables, with settlement called Gandhitown, "an inhabited garbage dump of cardboard dwellings."To the other clans, they are useful only for manual labor. Like the Skitzes, some Heebs are religious visionaries, but occasionally produce ascetic saints (the schizophrenic group produces dogmatists). Some sometimes enjoy putting on entertaining shows.
The Polys have polymorphic schizophrenia. Their settlement is Hamlet Hamlet. They’re the Vaisya caste creative members of society, who produce new ideas. The children from every clan on Alpha III M2 were born Polys, went to their common, central school as Polys, and became differentiated only in their 10th or 11th year., some do not actually have mental disorders at all. They sometimes work as merchants, builders, drivers, farmers or herders, but often avoid the other “tribes”.
The Ob-Coms are obsessive-compulsive. They are clerks and office holders, money-lenders, bureaucrats and ritualistic functionaries, sometimes medics but never with original ideas. Their conservatism balances the radical quality of the Polys and offers stability. The Deps have clinical depression. Their town is Cotton Mather Estates, where they live "in endless dark gloom." They may occasionally orate to crowds that mostly ignore them.
In addition to these groups in Dick’s novel novel, (which I have expanded upon a bit) one can imagine catatonics – teachers, shop-keepers, book-keepers, and sometimes animal breeders. The autistic are sometimes farmers, sometimes librarians, sometimes, temporary intermediaries between the other groups. Nymphomaniacs produce advertising for the Pares and Heebs with enough ambition to occasionally seek paying audiences. Inverts are often soldiers or guards. Masochists serve as maids and garbage collectors. There are of course others, as in POTUS 45, and “Moses” Mike Johnson.
One might also add neurotics, phobiacs, anorexics, pedophiles, hypochrondiacs, klepto- and pyro-maniacs, plus and hoarders, but perhaps sociopathic or psychopathic tribes or “clans” would be quite a stretch, going too far.

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In the eastern foothills of the Himalayan “snow” mountains, the concept of a country or socially segregated society remains as unrecognized as it was everywhere 500 years ago. Elizabethan Britain was a kind of a country, and Spain becoming one; the Aztecs had a definite domain and there were others (Ashanti, Mali/Timbucktoo, Ayutthaya, Japan) but within each were largely almost invisible sub-cultures (sexual, philosophical, religious, magical, musical familial and sometimes business). Borders were not delineated or demarked, and could be more related to altitude, vegetation, water (those who farmed on lakes and those who irrigated had very different concerns) than anything else. Who was obligated to who was what mattered; who could be used to fight who. Not geographical borders. Those with armies usually had slaves and those with freedom, ability to blend into shadows. Some worked stone, others didn’t.
In other places, dry Anatolia for instance, some went underground. Some Steppe herders built stone cities they inhabited only in winter. There were water nomads as well as land nomads. The borderland crises of today are artificial compared to the practical flexibility of yesteryear. We have forgotten as much as we have learned.

Adapted from https://laowaizu.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/review-of-edmund-leachs-political-systems-of-highland-burma/ :

Edmund Leach's “Political Systems of Highland Burma” (1954) challenged theories of social structure and cultural change. Leach was "fiercely critical of generalizations from one society to a narrative about 'politics' in so-called 'primitive societies'". This book about the Kachin and Shan of Northeast Burma, a region of hills and valleys which the author refers to as the “Kachin Hills”, is classic of anthropology and special because rather than a history of an “ethnic group” or “tribe” it is a history of a region. The people who live in the hills speak different languages, wear different kinds of clothes, and live in different kinds of houses, but understand one another’s ritual. Leach explains his idiosyncratic definition of “ritual acts” as ways of ‘saying things’ about social status. He claims that since the ‘language’ in which these things are said is common to the whole Kachin Hills Area, we are justified in treating the entire region as a unit. He states, “the Kachin seem to value political independence more highly than economic advantage. …in [some area where 94 out of 143 villages contained less than 10 households] it would certainly have been to the economic advantage of this population if it had lived in larger communities in more accessible situations, but the preference was evidently for independence above all else”.
Leach provides a lot of evidence against treating linguistic, ethnic, cultural or kin groups as clearly-defined, exclusive and internally consistent. Though the book is about “the Kachin and Shan”, he does not see them as different in any essential way. Instead, he sees valley and hill societies as economically inextricable and culturally symbiotic. The book begins with an account of an old man who for 70 years had been both Kachin and Shan. His argument isn’t based on viewing social systems as stable through time, but, quite the opposite: social systems are unstable and “what can be observed now is just a momentary configuration of a totality existing in a state of flux.” He provides documented examples of groups who change their language, ethnic identity or political structures over time.
Social scientists require unambiguous terminology for description and analysis, but since all the words we commonly use have various connotations and implications, one “adopts the normal scientific procedure of inventing a language of special terms which have no meaning at all other than that with which the scientist endows them. Such expressions as exogamy, patrilineage, status, role, etc., which are used by anthropologists to describe a system of structural relationships mean just what the anthropologist says they mean, neither more nor less. Consequently structural systems as described by anthropologists are always static systems.”
“Kachin” was originally a classifier like “Hu” or “Man” in Chinese, i.e. vaguely referring to “barbarians” of a certain geographical area. The Kachin are actually an ethnic affinity of several distinct tribal groups, including Rawang, Lisu, Jingpo, Zaiwa, Lishi and Maru, perhaps also Nu and Derung - each known for their disciplined fighting skills, complex clan inter-relations, craftsmanship, herbal healing, jungle survival skills, and fierce independence. There is no more a Kachin tribe than there is a Sioux tribe..Originally the term was a cultural and geographic referent, not a linguistic or ethnic one. However, Leach notes that from 1900 onwards the name began to be increasingly interpreted in linguistic and ethnic terms. The Kachin region contains 4 major linguistic groups, Jinghpaw, Maru, Nung, Lisu. Tai (the language of the Shans) and Jinghpaw speakers have always held power disproportionately in the region; language has political and economic implications. Leach describes the Kachin highlands as politically and socially always in flux, floating between two “ideal social models”, Gumlao and Gumsa. The greater part of this book is consumed in the articulation and analysis of these two social models. For the moment they can be encapsulated as follows:
Gumlao: essentially anarchistic, equalitarian, does not believe in social stratification by lineage, chiefdom, etc., while Gumsa is a “compromise between Gumlao (democratic) and Shan (autocratic) ideals” and assimilates Shan ideals more and more until they feel they “have become Shan”; with complicated hierarchical relations between clans/lineages, and chiefs, etc. The Shan are loyal to a place, not a kin group; the Lisu are opposite to that.
Few, if any, societies are purely Gumsa or purely Gumlao, but rather somewhere between the two. Gumlao areas are especially linguistically diverse. Leach mentions a village cluster called Hpalang with no less than six different dialects spoken as “mother tongue” in a community of 130 households!
Kachins trace descent patrilineally, with one or multiple surnames from fathers. Everyone in village with a common surname is considered close patrilineal kin, of one ‘household’ (htinggaw). Relationships between individuals are determined by the relationship between their respective lineages. Lineages are ordered hierarchically, and each lineage has long-term on-going structured relations with at least two other lineages, which are denoted by the relative terms mayu and dama. Men may not marry into their dama, women may not marry into their mayu. (If the Johnson family is mayu to the Roberts family, then the Roberts family is dama to the Johnson family. Johnson men may not marry Roberts women, but Johnson women are expected to marry Roberts men. To not do so would be an insult unless a symbolic price is paid beforehand. Johnson men are expected to marry Smith women, the Smith family being mayu to the Johnson family, etc.). The highest ranking lineage in a village will most likely have their mayu lineage in another village so as to maintain their position of superiority. Therefore, the top ranking linage accepts women from lower lineages, and sends their women outside the village to another lineage which ranks higher. Sometimes (esp. in Gumlao society), there’s a circle, where A is mayu to B, B is Mayu to C, C is Mayu to A etc.

Political and religious office:
Leach presents very strong, objective evidence that the ways we intuitively think of the identity and cohesion of ethnic groups (and in fact social groups in general), is wrong. The intuitive way of viewing ethnic groups is as a coherent group, with clear boundaries delineated by language, culture, heredity, or some other “objectively observable characteristic”; ethnicity is “primordial”. As with “nationalism”, authors have tried to provide a single concise definition that encapsulates the idea of ethnicity, while simultaneously distinguishing it from all other units of social organization. This may be a fool’s errand as no social grouping (national, cultural etc.) is distinct in essence, but merely in the ways they pretentiously manifest. Ethnic identity (and for that matter national identity, subcultural identity, gender identity, etc.) is socially constructed, a matter of self-ascription, and ascription by others in social interaction. In this way, symbols like language, accent, hair style etc. are hardly the essence of a group, but rather symbols used to distinguish membership. Counter-intuitive though it may seem, there is no such thing as an “ethnic group”, simply because no group is ever defined on just one symbol. Ideas of kinship or common descent are only one aspect of the group’s identity, and there’s no reason to privilege one above all others, even if group members themselves believe it to be a most important or even the only distinguishing characteristic.
Unlike previous anthropologists, Leach doesn’t a priori assume that Kachin and Shan society are two separate social systems. Instead, he argues “in any geographical area which lacks fundamental natural frontiers, the human beings in adjacent areas of the map are likely to have relations with one another – at least to some extent – no matter what their cultural attributes may be…… cultural attributes such as language, dress and ritual procedure are merely symbolic labels denoting the different sectors of a single extensive structural system.”
The lowlands and the hills are a single, codependent economic system. Hill agriculture consistently does not produce enough staple crops, and this shortage must be made up for with trade with the lowland paddy states. The paddy states rely on a rich variety of goods collected from the hills, especially elites, who rely on prestige goods from the hills which serve as symbols of their elite status (this seems similar to the agriculture-pastoralism relationship). Thus, “it seems to me axiomatic that where neighboring communities have demonstrable economic, political and military relations with each other, then the field of any useful sociological analysis must override cultural boundaries”.
Leach insists that language groups cannot be taken to be hereditarily established or stable through time, and provides several examples of specific communities whose language changed over the course of a century. Some villages seem to be very conservative and stubborn in using one language when groups all around them use another language, while others are almost “as willing to change their language as a man might change a suit of clothes”. Leach’s explanation for this is couched in terms of his view that the choice of language is an active, meaningful social choice. He sees social behavior as primarily used to determine, negotiate, or affirm positions in society. “(it is) necessary and justifiable to assume that a conscious or unconscious wish to gain power is a very general motive in human affairs… Individuals faced with a choice of action will commonly use such choice so as to gain power.” But how ‘commonly’ is commonly? What defines a “choice of action”? To assume, as Leach seems to do, that all behavior is both purposeful and calculated not only precludes the possibility of altruism, it also ignores the large element of randomness in human behavior. It also begs question of heredity vs. environment and even of free will. Chemical “imbalances” DO exist, so does madness, but we all like to believe in the possibility of at least some self-control.

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So. River dwelling mahouts differ in personality from nomadic hunters who easily carry all they need when they move away from a soiled mountaintop haven to a new, unsoiled one. Valley rice farmers cultivate with a different degree of co-operation than mountain terrace dry-rice farmers. When a Jamaican flees the beach for safety in high hills, how does that impact on personality? Do we sometimes form personality aspects mostly to stand out from others? Might one day there arise a pre-cog tribe? People more able to anticipate responses than others? Shape-shifters able to make themselves appropriately attractive, or ugly, to whom they wish? Mind influencers who easily convince those near them to whatever is clever by them? And can influence the perceptions and even active personality of any near enough? Telepaths? Weather influencers?
The sea-shore differs from the desert and the wily from the strong. Some live in cities, some of us despise cities. One ability serves sometimes, another ability serves better other times. Homogeneity is weakness.