Of Everyday Gossiping and Over-rated Civilisation

"The mad tea party" by Mark Bryan, Taken from https://www.artofmarkbryan.com/politics/

Kaleidoscope belongs to a species which is highly ethnocentric in its character. It thinks that it is superior than any other species of the earth.

Enormous divisions and inequalities:

The species within itself is divided based on a variety of symbolic attainments and value perceptions. It thinks, strongly believes and makes it natural that the ability to run a computer is far superior thing than to be able to run itself! Hence, it has a detailed and infinite divisions of the feeling of superiority. Most often it hates each other in the name of certain bodily,  behavioural and fictional differences. It is so important for the species that it adopts symbolic cannibalism! The sense of hierarchy usually ends at an individual level and sometimes even within individual levels divisions are there. Imagine such statements as "I have become a much superior person than what I was a year ago!" Hence Kaleidoscope's species is always going through at least three things:

1. A growth story
2. A classification story
3. A criteria story.

The Gossip theory:

The curious case is it's everyday practices in present time when it attempts to adopt mechanisms to sustain the fictional nature of hierarchy. It usually loves to form group, group within a group, group within a group within a group. The critical problem that Kaleidoscope's species faces is primarily of two kinds, first, the problems of information processing. Imagine when the size of the group is fifty, there are 1225 different combinations of one-to-one relationships! These 1225 individuals in a complex society - such as the one in which Kaleidoscope firmly believes that he lives, has other relationships as well. Therefore,the amount of information that the human brain needs to process in unimaginable. Second, the problems of dealing with heterogeneity and instability.  Even when Kaleidoscope's species is settled (but not sure) about each of the individuals they tend to remain sceptical and seek information to participate in a continuous process of system update, because of insatiable suspicious curiosities. Even in Chimpanzee society groups seldom cooperate (Frans de Waal 2000).

Therefore Kaleidoscope's species tend to form groups and seek information. How to seek information? It is by gossiping. For early humans it was important to know and constantly keep tracking "who hates whom?" "Who sleeps with whom?" "Who is reliable and who is a cheat" - Kaleidoscope's present society continues to remain the same. Kaleidoscope's fellow members continue to gossip through each an every medium of communication! (Dunbar, 1998) 

The re-incarnation of primordial gossips:

What makes present species different through civilisation is its incredible ability to imagine things. Behind the back gossips are often sexually charged or are in a way or other linked to essential nature of the species - looks, Body features (size and shape of breasts, for example!), smell and smile!

Now, when there is rarely any significant data about the rival groups the species tend to imagine things. Remember rivalry can come through a variety of sources: a) rival for different nature/culture/looks b) rival for different opinions, c) rival for conflicts of interests, d) rival for attraction and lack of availability, and so on. When there is a serious lack of substantive data to 'rationalise' rivalry, imagined gossip game helps achieving it. The easiest way in the society in which Kaleidoscope lives in, is to spread rumors about flaws in the imagined standard of living (society calls it morality). Such gossips usually carry sexually charged content and hence become easily popularised. Kaleidoscope would like all his readers to remember the most popular gossips in their office or neighbourhoods. Yes, you know it, its about flaws in the imagined standard of morality- it does not have to be sex only, every culture has different sets of standards and so does different mechanisms of imagined gossips.

The classification of re-incarnated group mobilisers:

1. The frequent oscillators: These are the people who changes their positions according to the actors and agencies with which s/he is interacting. They usually lack strong personalities and usually able to sense the pulse of group dynamics well. Therefore, these are the people who attempts to remain in good book of every power centres.
2. The power cravers: These are the members who compromise anything to retain certain imagined positions of authorities.
3. The open bookers: Represent those who continues to remain open about their positions and orientations and opinions
4. The opportunists: are those who look for self interest maximising opportunities in every situation
5. The strategic silent beings: never speak unless something involves their personal interests, but when anything does involve personal interests they raise their voice and take a stand.
6. Unopinionated: represents those who never gives opinions.
7. The black and whites: those handfuls who manage to remain relatively unattached with any of the subgroups and continue to criticise everything which in their opinion is wrong.

All these players usually love an equilibrium - which is hard to get. One can remember Foucault's notion of power as a net-like organisation where the concentration of power is never settled and extremely situational.

The changing power terrain:

Usually, in a rapidly changing power terrain the "frequent oscillators" initially exchange information between groups and then change their group affiliations. The "power cravers' usually are driven out of the power centres or are given relatively less important but ornamental positions. The 'open bookers" does not experience much of a stress and remain intact. "The opportunists" seeks new opportunities and usually forgets old power centres. "The strategic silent beings" remains silent unless something disturbs their inner equilibrium. "Unopionated" and "black and whites" remains the same, only the later continue to make new enemies.

It continues, in your family, office, schools, clubs and in nations. Kaleidoscope's species could only mask the primordial craves in the name of over-rated imagination of Civilisation.

See if you like

Dunbar, Robin (1998). Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press

Frans De Waal (2000). Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Archaeological Imagination and the imagined present: Reality and its Juxtapositions

This post is about the imagined nature of our present time. It is in support to the contention of archaeologists in the cultivation of imagination. It is important to note, at the beginning, that archaeology is considered itself as a discipline of imagination (Thomas 1996). To extend this argument I suggest that archaeology is about imagination not because of the paucity of material remains to 'reconstruct' our past, but more so because we live in imagined world and each and every moment of our life are imagined moments.

Before going into the abstraction of the imagined nature of our everyday living, I wish to present two cases of the jumbled up space in Haldia - my work place to show in what ways reality is misleading and reality is imagined.

CASE I: Haldia Govt College and the beer bottles nearby.

Haldia Govt College used to have a huge tract of land. I have gathered the information that the college had about 50 acres of land which was never fortified. Even today when college administration can identify about 25 acres of land it does not have any boundary wall. In 2009 after the famous Nandigram incident several families have started to take refuge nearby. Most of them were political refugees from Nandigram. Initially they set up shanties - make shift arrangements which eventually is converted to semi permanent structure. Now they have successfully brought electricity, installed hand-pump for water. One of the major occupation of these people is to bring and resell scrap materials which ranges from factory waste, smashed car scraps from highway accidents to beer bottles. Since there are two bars nearby, the most conspicuous material is beer bottles. There are thousands of beer bottles, hundreds of whisky, vodka bottles and many more country liquor bottles being stocked every week.

The beer bottles nearby the college building - juxtaposed space

Possible archaeological inferences: 

Its less than a hundred meters away from the college building. Therefore, in a site formation process the material remains that archaeologists might have is the college building. That means a building with blackboards, laboratory equipment and then thousands of beer bottles. What would they infer?

1. Bottles were most important aspect of education in 2016
2. Students were encouraged to drink because drinking has direct linkage to concentration that early men believed.
3. The educational institution had a wine manufacturing unit too.
4. Teachers and students used to drink together and drinking was an integral part of that civilisation.

CASE II: the removal of Lenin's statue

While there are several industries in Haldia, it nevertheless also had many strong labour movements under the leadership of CITU. The erstwhile Member of Parliament Mr. Laxman Seth provided leadership to install several association offices in Haldia. One of such office is  a two story building near railway track close to Bandar (meaning port) railway station. The most conspicuous emblem is a lively statue of V. Lenin.

The Lenin Statue which is now removed

Now, since there  is a political change in the state, the two story buildng known as Shramik Bhaban (building for labours) lies there, which is now a home to some of the still faithful followers of CITU. The building is slowly decaying without maintenance. The Lenin statue has been removed from the place.

Possible Archaeological inferences:

The material remains of the past symbolising left labour movement is decaying, perhaps being destroyed purposefully. With such removal of the statue if Lenin, now, the history only survives in the oral narratives. The more the time passes by, there is lesser chance to the history to survive with material remains. This is typical of power shift and an indifferent attitude towards history that makes even the present imagined.

The Imagined Present

While as  discipline with scientific hangover rooted from positivist philosophical tradition archaeologists were once hopeful about the possibility for a 'reconstruction' to a certain degree of accuracy. It has increasingly recognised the impossibility for a 'reconstruction.' It is impossible to reconstruct because of several practical reasons. First, there is paucity of material remains to reconstruct, second, even the written records may be misleading (written with a voice, voice of the powerful people), third, and more importantly there is juxtaposition of time and space (as we can see even in present time, the Haldia case matters, right?). 

While archaeologists and to a certain degree social scientists have accepted the fact that there is no single reality, and with the age of postmodernism we are increasingly stepping towards the multiplicity of reality. However, postmodern philosophy and postsructuralism talks much about the perspectives (an emphasis on how we see, rather than what we see, as we find in Woods, 2011, p. 7). 

However, what these juxtaposed realities suggests is that it is perhaps the time to rethink the present as well. Are we not living in a present which is filled with so many juxtaposed, jumbled up and hodgepodge, extremely heterogeneous realities and power play that whatever we think about time, and more importantly how we take note of it, how we fix it in our everydayness is also imagined?

We restore our faith in the material entities of our time. But can we really believe that the material reality is also constant and not a changing one? Or can we rest our assumption that there is any unchanging  narrative of the present? If we secure foundation of meaning and live comfortably in our narratives of the meaning, are we not living in an imagined reality?