If we value freedom, health, productivity, social stability, knowledge, growth, and peace, we are in a good position to critici...  Read More

If we value freedom, health, productivity, social stability, knowledge, growth, and peace, we are in a good position to criticize the evils and mistakes of any culture.  Read Less

The more that they can project today's enlightened view of egalitarianism on long distant cultures the more they can point a fi...  Read More

The more that they can project today's enlightened view of egalitarianism on long distant cultures the more they can point a finger of blame on their own cultures that permitted them to be able to ask such questions in the first place.  Read Less

*sick societies* sometimes reads like a catalogue of cultural maladaptation and expert opinion, and would have benefited from a...  Read More

*sick societies* sometimes reads like a catalogue of cultural maladaptation and expert opinion, and would have benefited from a more rigorous organization of its material, a more transparent outline and a better classification of the phenomena described.  Read Less

Anthropologists don't get any academic accolades for identifying a behavior or custom as maladaptive; rather they feel compelle...  Read More

Anthropologists don't get any academic accolades for identifying a behavior or custom as maladaptive; rather they feel compelled to demonstrate they have shed their own ethnocentrism by going through empirical and interpretive contortions to define virtually all primitive conduct, regardless of how perverse it is, as adaptive.  Read Less

The cave man mentality made common sense at the time since to do otherwise was merely to allow a competitor to gain an unwanted edge.

The cave man mentality made common sense at the time since to do otherwise was merely to allow a competitor to gain an unwanted edge.  Read Less

Edgerton points out that while selective forces have sometimes forced societies to adapt, get absorbed by others, or become ext...  Read More

Edgerton points out that while selective forces have sometimes forced societies to adapt, get absorbed by others, or become extinct, "more often there has not been enough competition among societies to bring about major social or cultural change.  Read Less