Non-Judgement

 

Participant-Observer

“…I think there’s a huge benefit to being a participant-observer…And to learn to go back and forth…simultaneously learning and observing and at the same time be fully present—was a marvelous thing to learn. And it’s a marvelous way to live, actually.”

Mary Catherine Bateson (“Living as an Improvisational Art,” On Being interview with Krista Tippet)

          Mary Catherine Bateson, Professor Emerita in Anthropology at George Mason University, and daughter of anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson grew up as an anthropology experiment. She tells in the interview with Krista Tippet about an occasion when she was eight or nine years old, of going to a child’s house because her mother had been asked to observe him and help the parents learn how to help him behaviorally. Mary Catherine was sent to the playroom with this child while Margaret Mead interviewed his mother, and after two hours of being hit, pinched, and generally abused, she gave her mother a recorded analysis of his behavior. At eight, she was already trained to participate and observe.

          Participant-observers engage rather than simply observe; they ask questions and record the answers. They sit with, and take part in, the lives and everyday rituals of their subjects of interest; they listen to the instructions given to children and observe the treatment of elders. In doing this emersion into a different culture, they experience the life of the people with the goal of understanding who they are, what they value, and how they live.

          What makes anthropology different from other professions is that there is no judgement of the lifestyle—how different it is, how to “fix” it to make it better, which too often means, more like ours. We assume that our lifestyle is the best one, and that everyone else wants to be like us, and to have what we have. I’m not an anthropologist, but I don’t believe that’s true. Other people in other lands love their way of life as much as we do in most cases. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have an occupying force tell me that the way I live is all wrong, and that from now on, I should live differently. Can you?

          It would be wonderful if we were to simply learn from each other, and care about the lives of people who are dramatically different from us—including our neighbors and friends. The lust for power interferes with that in many places and within many hearts. Here’s what Carl Jung said about it: “Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. One is the shadow of the other.” That’s true in our personal relationships as well as our national ones. Today, go forth in love and leave the desire for power behind. We’ll have a safer, kinder planet if we do.

                                                            In the Spirit,

                                                            Jane