“Do your social facilities make you feel wealthy?”
“Over the years, as we expanded our facilities, and as we learned more about the societies around us, it became clear that we were living better than they were. We had larger and better facilities than they did, and we were steadily adding to them. Our neighbors commented regularly on how well we lived and that was gratifying, so much so that we had to caution ourselves against arrogance.”
“How did you build up your social wealth?” asked Rick. “It obviously took a lot of effort over the years.”
“Yes, it did. It was a long, concerted effort which is ongoing today.”
“Who actually does the work of building your facilities?”
“We require young men and women to work for three years enhancing social wealth. It is a small price to pay for the social wealth they enjoy here for a lifetime. After the three-year period of service, all Euromamo are required to devote one-fourth of their time to social wealth enhancement.”
“What kinds of tasks do they do?”
“They work in the communal kitchen, tend the grounds and buildings, repair and improve the transportation system to La Puerta, work in the library, present plays, and expand our recreational facilities. There are many other examples.”
“All of that requires resources. You’ve talked about the labor involved but it also takes scato, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. Everything to build social wealth comes from the society, the scato as well as the labor.”
“How does the society get the scato it needs to build social wealth?”
“Basically through a death duty, an inheritance tax. You see, the descendants of the wealthy did nothing to justify inheriting the scato of their parents. They got it because of the luck of their descent rather than their genetic fitness or their individual efforts. Moreover, because they have scato given to them, they have less incentive to work than others. Some have shirked their responsibility to work entirely, clearly an undesirable result. Therefore, we concluded that the descendants of the wealthy don’t have a valid moral claim to inheriting the scato of their parents.”
“Thus, the justification for seizing it through taxation?”
“Yes, but we don’t seize all of an individual’s property at their death. We leave the personal effects of the deceased with the family, the most precious of these being the deceased’s status vest. The effects are personal items used or particularly treasured by the deceased. Neither do we take the deceased’s business interests, such as ownership of a business, provided that the members of the family work full-time running it. In most cases, family members are the most knowledgeable about the business, having grown up around it. This rule also gives the family an interest in investing in and caring for the business.”
“What happens if the family members do not run the business full time?”
“The society takes possession of the business and arranges for new management. We want active involved managers for our enterprises, and don’t tolerate loafers. It may sound harsh but it’s nothing more than the principle of usufruct, or possession during use, a rule that we have found useful in the rain forest as it encourages our villagers to utilize the resources available to us.”
“I am familiar with the rule,” said Rick. “As long as you use it, you can keep it. If you stop using it, it goes back to the society or kin group for use by others.”
“That’s right. We weren’t familiar with it before we arrived here, but we adopted it after we learned about it from our neighbors.”
“If you leave personal possessions and business interests with the family, where does the scato come from to build social wealth?”
“The remaining category is all other non-business assets of the deceased, mainly their scato. Think of it as the money they have taken out of their business rather than investing in their business. We take these funds through taxation and use it to grow social wealth. The deceased’s descendants don’t have a valid claim to it since they haven’t earned it.”
“It would seem to leave them destitute.”
“Not really. The descendants can work in the family business if they chose. They have that path to prosperity provided the business remains viable. If it does, they can pass that along, in turn, to their children provided, of course, that those children work there. The system encourages people to work, not loaf, and to invest in their businesses, not bleed the profits.”
“Isn’t the seizure of individual wealth by the society heavy-handed? After all, what claim does society have to take the individual’s property? Isn’t it getting the decedent’s wealth without having worked for it? Doesn’t society become like the children of the rich in that regard, getting something for nothing?”
“The seizure of scato by taxation might seem heavy-handed to those enamored with private property, but let me explain. In our early years, our forebears revered private property. However, they later figured out that those who have accumulated more individual scato by hard work tend to use more social wealth—for example, the water power system and the transportation system between here and La Puerta—than ones who are less diligent. Stated in blunt terms, the wealthy earn their individual wealth by using social wealth. Therefore, it makes sense that, upon their deaths, their scato would be taken and used to build social wealth for succeeding generations, rather than to enable the indolence of their children.”
“How have your policies worked?”
“We have a fairly even distribution of individual wealth in our society and, of course, we have a perfectly even distribution of social wealth because of its availability to all. We like this general result but we don’t have some theoretical attachment to making everyone equal. Some people work harder than others, and people have different skill levels. It’s to be expected that hard workers and skillful workers would accumulate more than others during their lifetimes. Rightfully, they should enjoy the fruits of their labors. With this said, remember that it’s the pursuit of status, not scato, that drives most people in our society.”
“I haven’t seen any poverty here,” commented Rick.
“There’s some, almost entirely among the loafers, but even they are given subsistence.”
“Why is it so low?”
“Social wealth. All who work have access to our communal kitchen, medical facility, and other social wealth, so they are well fed and have good medical care. Loafers have access to social wealth but on a limited basis. Importantly, social wealth does not come free. Everyone is expected to work throughout their lives to build it.”
“Hmmm. I see that you live well and that your system has generated an impressive amount of social wealth but, if even the most durably built social wealth will deteriorate over time, is it worth the effort to build it?”
“Social wealth isn’t permanent, but it’s the most enduring form of wealth that we’ve discovered,” John said confidently.
We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights -- older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred…. The principles laid down in this opinion …affect the very essence of constitutional liberty and security. They reach farther than the concrete form of the case…before the court…; they apply to all invasions on the part of the government and its employees of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.
William O. Douglas
CHAPTER 19
Sex and Marriage
Rick’s spirits were raised by the discussion of social wealth. It was why the Euromamo were better off than their neighbors. Beyond that, building social wealth gave a worthwhile purpose to their lives and was a retort to nihilism. In John’s words, “it amounts to something.” While social wealth was clearly important, Rick understood it well enough and needed to press forward through his remaining topics. He had to finish them all.
My next research topic is so
cial organization. There are some important questions that I have to answer: What kind of social groups do the Euromamo have? Kinship will be important, I know, but what other ways do they group themselves? What are Euromamo rules regarding marriage? How does property descend from one generation to the next? Although I got a good foundation in social organization from Lasington, I must apply it to the Euromamo on my own. All I’ve got to help me is my HRAF Research Guide, plus some notes I typed from H.R. Radcliffe-Brown, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, and Meyer Fortes. I’ll have to work carefully to collect data that’s good enough for my Committee. At least I know the Euromamo do not have tykonymy like Chagnon’s Yanomamo. Imagine if the names of kindred were sacred and couldn’t even be uttered. An awful barrier for anthropologists researching social organization.
Rick approached John to get his insights, as he usually did while venturing into a new area of research. There was no blue privacy disc but when he knocked, there was no answer. As he walked back to his room, he asked a Euromamo youth who was tending a flower bed if he had seen John. He suggested that Rick look in the library as John spent a lot of time there.
“A very studious man, that John Eel Hunter,” he added.
“He knows a lot, that’s for sure” said Rick.
Rick found John in the library, his head down, between two stacks of books.
“I can see that you’re busy, John. I’ll come back later.”
“Thank you for your thoughtfulness, but we can chat a bit now,” John responded kindly in a low voice. “What’s on your mind today?” he said as he motioned for Rick to move toward a more private part of the library.
“I’m beginning my research on social organization and would like to learn about your kinship, marriage, and inheritance rules; even your courtship and sexual customs, if you are willing to discuss them.”
“Certainly. The place to start is with our forebears’ hard journey up the La Cuerda to this valley.”
“I recall the ‘Origins Poem.’”
“You know, then, that our forebears fought their way up river. That’s crucial, you see, because the burden of that fighting—and the dying—fell on the men. As a result, when the group arrived in this valley, there were twice as many women as there were men. Quite a disparity. The leaders were particularly worried because they needed men to fight in the future.”
“That seems like a very difficult situation,” remarked Rick. “How did your forebears replace your warriors?”
“I’ll get a journal from that bookcase that has records of what our forebears did. Let’s go to the communal kitchen and chat over tea. I need a break, anyway.”
They sat with their cups outside the tea house at a small table shaded by a fiber cloth awning. John thumbed through the journal, looking for the relevant passage.
“Here it is. Nathan Neuline, a wise member of our group, pointed the way forward. He argued that our women were our strength and salvation.”
“How so?”
John scanned the journal entry, paraphrasing as he went.
“The strength of the women was not as fighters but as reproducers. They could restore the ratio between the sexes in one generation if all of them bore children. Our male population would return to its former numbers in a few years because half of the children born would be male. Some looked at Nathan curiously.
“Here is the part where Nathan stated his case. I’ll read it. ‘Think about it this way,’ he began. ‘We are much better off having women than men. Sure, if we had a lot of men and half the women, we might be protected in the short run, but how could we increase our population quickly enough to sustain us? Specifically, where could we get enough men to defend us? The last time I checked, men don’t bear children, so we must get our new generation of fighters from the loins of our women. It is they who are our salvation.’ Once stated, his argument was so obvious and compelling that it carried the day.
“‘However, there’s one small detail,’ John continued, quoting Neuline. ‘We’ll have to change our sexual and marital arrangements so that any woman who wants a mate can have one and get pregnant.’ As you might imagine, the meetings our forebears had on this topic were very intense,” said John as he closed the journal. “Although it was clear that, for the long-term survival of our society, they needed women to bear as many children as they were willing to bear, they also knew that our primitive environment made childbirth risky. Women insisted, and men agreed, that each person, male or female, would have an equal vote on changing marital relationships. Because women outnumbered men by two to one at that time, no social change could be approved without women’s acquiescence.”
“What did the women want?” asked Rick.
“From the beginning, women wanted assurances that the group would make childbearing as safe as possible by providing them good medical care. Community resources were to be directed to this purpose as a priority. Women also wanted birth control—admittedly primitive at the time—so they could manage when they got pregnant. These were approved by vote, including the votes of most men, and thereby were established as fundamental Euromamo policies.”
“It seems strange to include birth control as a part of policies to increase the birth rate.”
“As we say, ‘Women cannot get control of their lives unless they have control of their reproduction’.”
“You’ve continued your attentiveness to women’s health and reproduction since then?” Rick asked.
“Absolutely. As you know, at our medical facility, we devote resources and attention to pregnant women and their infants. We do this today even though we are not under the demographic pressure that our forebears endured. For over one-and-three-quarters centuries, we have had enough people to defend our valley and to sustain our population so the need for women to reproduce is still necessary, but not imperative.”
“During the early years, to encourage women to bear children, your forebears changed the marriage rules?”
“Yes, and the changes they made were fundamental. English monogamy wouldn’t work. On average, each man needed to impregnate two women, at least during the crucial first generation. I know this is stating the goal baldly, but that’s how things were. The challenge was how to encourage that while maintaining stable relationships so that the women and their children would have long-term, familial relationships in which they could flourish. Ultimately, the solution was straightforward. They permitted individuals to work out their own marriage arrangements and took government out of it except for conducting and recording the marriages. Men could marry as many women as they wished, and vice versa, although multiple husband marriages were rare at the beginning given that there were fewer men to go around. In addition, multiple men could marry multiple women—group marriage—it’s called. Finally, same sex marriages were also permitted out of respect for individual rights even though they obviously didn’t lead to reproduction. It was no business of the government who fancied whom.”
“Where did your forebears learn about these different rules for marriage?” asked Rick. “They must have seemed quite strange.”
“They did seem strange at first, but various neighboring groups used them and they seemed to be doing well, so our forebears gave our people access to all forms of marriage. They knew if there were flaws in the new arrangements, they could be altered as needed.”
“Didn’t your forebears resist the idea of men having multiple wives?” asked Rick.
“It took some mental adjustment but remember that allowing men to have multiple wives was the point. The quickest way to restore the population was to have as many females as possible get pregnant. As a result, our forebears not only permitted multiple-wife marriages, they encouraged them. As the changes were implemented, women had effective control of the society through their voting power so all rules had their support.”
“Were your forebears concerned that the multiple-wives pattern would become prevalent over time?” asked Rick.
“They left it to individuals to decide t
heir marital arrangements. If it prevailed, so be it. They knew that, after the first generation, most marriages would be between one male and one female, or group marriages between roughly equal numbers of males and females, simply because equal numbers of each sex would be born into the society. Stated another way, after the initial period of redressing the numerical imbalance between the sexes, it would be mathematically impossible for every man to have two or more wives because not enough females would be available. Of course, the older men could have run out younger males, leaving more women for multiple-wife marriages, but they weren’t about to do that because they had just experienced the problems of having too few males in the group.”
“This all seems very liberal by the standards of most outside societies. Why did they bother with marriage at all?” asked Rick.
“Marriage has important functions in providing care for infants and young children. The marital bond increases the odds that adults will be around to perform that childcare. During the early period, each young Euromamo increased our chances of survival. Also, we suspected that a long-term relationship between mates was good for both parties, even if it involved sharing them with another person.”
“I assume that some marriages didn’t last. How did you care for the children in those cases?”
“Almost always, one or both of the parents provided the care. However, if both parents died, or if they otherwise could not care for their children, adoption was encouraged and increased the status of the adoptive parents. If adoption could not be achieved, society stepped up to provide care. We learned from some neighboring groups that well-adjusted children could be raised communally, that is, by the group rather than by their parents. In our village, those who provided group care were supported by social wealth because the society needed more people.”
The Blue Disc Page 22
