Anthropological Systems Theory

The patterning that is characteristic of all human behavior is distinct to our species and unique in our universe. The closest we find in terms of interspecific behavior is the behavior of primates, particularly Chimpanzees and Gorillas, under captive conditions in which there has been intensive socialization and experimentation conducted, and the behavior can be attributed to deep level interspecific acculturation or cross-over from human to broader non-human primate systems. Naturalistic observation of feral primate communities with minimal human contact has demonstrated primitive forms of cultural patterning, and variation of this pattern among different groups, including and not limited to the use of tools and techniques in food getting and habitation and in terms of social and cultural organization and behavior. This appears especially to be the case among communities of Chimpanzees of both Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus types.

Intelligent forms of behavior and accompanying patterns of social organization can be described for many kinds of animals, particularly among social mammals that have relatively large brains and that have certain ecotropic adaptations that dispose them to complex and cooperative social relations. Social intelligence appears to occur even in animal systems that lack significant brain development or individually identifiable features of human-like intelligence. Mostly, these alternative animal based systems can be said to be similar and analogous in some limited forms to human-based systems, but they are strictly speaking non-homologous to human systems. In all cases, such systems can be construed as the consequence of evolutionary adaptation to certain eco-trophic profiles that demand complex social adaptations and patterns of interaction. Similarly, it must be construed that human systems arose evolutionarily as a consequence of the social requirement for adaptation in varying environmental circumstances demanding cooperative and possibly competitive social arrangements.

The typical behavioral patterning of human systems, particulary in a wide range of possible circumstances and under widely varying conditions, is incredibly complex, and it its patterning appears to be both organized in a systematic manner, and structured by limiting factors and primary determinants that underlie and belie its complexity. Even apparently disordered or disruptive human behavior can be seen from the standpoint of its underlying structure and sense of organization. There is an astounding and sublime simplicity to the structure of human behavior, constrained by key anthropological variables.

2. Tendency towards iso-clinal cultural differentiation, expressed in terms of material artifacts, as a function of stylistic elaboration and varying adaptation that is measured in basic terms of distance of time and place.

4. Human cognition and behavioral psychology that is symbolically structured and that achieves complex problem solving and apperceptive self-recognition as well as regulation of behavior through advanced cerebral control structures.

Anthropological systems are artificial systems in the sense that they are the product of human creation and constructive activity. They are thus ultimately and critically arbitrary systems, though they are rooted in what can be considered to be non-arbitrary fundamental constraints of human nature. Anthropological systems are ultimately and fundamentally human-made systems, though the fact of their contrivance, their invention and construction, is often disguised and hidden from view by means of symbolic ideology and symbolic fallacy that attributes supernatural or natural origins to things anthropological. One would even say that one's feelings, one's moods, one's sense of self, one's sense of being, one's sexuality, one's manner of thinking, one's values of what is important, or not, are all anthropological constructions of our ego-identity and social reality.

All human behavior is expressively mediated by terms and forms of symbolism. Behavior serves different and multiple functional purposes, but the form this behavior takes is defined and constrained by the symbolism, or symbolic system, that informs and contextualizes this behavior in larger social settings. Whatever we do, for whatever purposes, is always done symbolically and always also serves symbolic purposes of expression, mediation and communication.

Symbolic dialectics is a behavioral language expressed in terms of artifacts and correlates of human behavior, and it is said to have its own syntactic patterning that is loosely structured, analogical in structure, and that allows the transference of one symbolic form or meaning easily onto another form or meaning, often very different or even contradictory.

Human systems develop naturally, albeit artificially. That is an inherent paradox of human systems, as they are both natural and cultural at the same time and it is impossible to separate the two sets of aspects of the same systems. Human's may be said to be naturally system oriented creatures. In other words, they develop systems at various levels of their functioning, and they organize their adaptive behavior in terms of complex systems.

A general model of natural development--change that is non-linear. Extrinsic and intrinsic variables affecting change. Natural development is non-self-determining. It is not self-conscious development. Therefore it is not intentionally predetermined or rational development--it just happens as the consequence of interacting variables leading to differential sets of outcomes.

A general model of healthy development. Healthy and pathological development can only be defined from the standpoint of human development: ie. artificial development. These are relative human standards that can be defined from the standpoint of some pedigree, prototype, ideal set. Of course, different cultural orientations may pursue different sets of ideals, and in fact do so.

Human development therefore is fundamentally artificial and artifactual development. There is no human development that is not artificially or culturally mediated--culture is constructed process of symbolic, social and technological mediation of our behavior in the environment.

This is essentially symbolically and technologically mediated development. There must be therefore a link between ideology and technology. Both mediate change with the world, albeit upon different levels. Must not leave human biology or society out of this formulation.

Anthropological Modeling can be thought of as a form of imprinting--it is in all probability a form of open-ended imprinting, or extended or elaborated imprinting that occurs upon multiple levels of the brain. The period that imprinting occurs is lifelong. It is most rapid in the first few years of life, and slows down on a curve as age advances. It can be referred to as the basic form of transcultural mediation that occurs--the basic mechanism for the transmission of human cultural patterning from one person to another. Modeling is based upon the brain's capacity for symbolic mediation of reality.

Transcultural--transcending cultural or ethnocultural orientations. It is the basis of what can be called transcultural human civilization. Metaculture is the process of human civilization, or of metacultural development, that leads to cross-cultural exchange, sharing and human systems development.

Human civilizaiton may be said to consist of that cultural complex of artifacts, institutions and associated means of cultural production and reproduction, that is shared by a grouping of people and that tends to diffuse accultratively or transculturatively to other peoples. Civilization is a complex of traits that tend to be distinctively stylized, and the style patterning characteristic of a particular kind of civilization may be said to be an emergent trait of the system of that civilizaiton. Civilization is therefore the process patterning of a human system, the phenomenal patterning that manifests itself in terms of new artifacts, ideas, habits, values, etc.

Ethnoculture is a distinctive patterning of culture that is shared by a distinctive grouping or subgrouping of people and that is usually associated with local and/or regional characteristics tied to habitation, community pattern, social behavior, the actual articulation of social structure, etc. Human ethnoculture is rooted to a community and to a set of habitations.

Materculture is the cultural patterning and modeling that is passed from the mother, whether biological or adopted, actual or surrogate, to the child. Mother culture extends throughout life and consists of a component of modeling that is tied to a female symbolism or animus.

Paterculture is the cultural patterning and modeling that is passed from the father, whether biological or adopted, fictive or factual, to the child. Father culture is an overlay upon Mother culture and is a component of modeling tied to male symbolism or anima.

All people share materculture and paterculture to varying degrees, and the patterning becomes psychologically variable in personality and character. Conversion or transformation of character can occur, almost anywhere during the life cycle, in which the relationships between materculture and paterculture can be switched or radically altered and reevaluated.

Definitions of materculture and paterculture are therefore open ended and subject to reevaluation and transformation, not only in the course of an individual's lifetime, but in the course of a communities history. Sexual roles and Gender identity are not naturally bound, but defined through materculture and paterculture, and this provides a degree of flexibility and reidentification to occur. Homosexuality and transgenderation are processes and patterns that are rooted to the plastic nature of our egocultural identity.

Materculture and paterculture have psychological roots, and are open-ended in terms of a community ethos and a person's life who is a member of that community. Community ethos usually defines norms, explicitly and implicitly, that serve to define appropriate kinds of expression and embodiment of materculture and paterculture.

Materculture and Paterculture exist in a kind of symbolic dialectic with one another. This dialectic may be conflictual or contradictory, and can be the source of psychopathological development based upon confused symbolic models. Conflict of embodied models of materculture and paterculture result in confusion of identity, and this may have various forms of pathological expression, from chronic neurosis to certain psychopathologies including schizophrenia or sociopathology. It may exist in a harmonious interrelationship, and this is the basis usually for the development of healthy ego identity and social relations that are non-pathological.

Personality develops through modeling of complex forms of identity and behavioral-expressive symbolism in social life. This modeling tends to begin upon primary levels in the native or home or parent culture, and extends by ever-widening degrees to encompass larger and larger circles of other people who, one way or another, have significant contact in one's life. Symbolic development of one's personality, of one's manifest and latent sense of self in dialectic, is based upon what can be called sexual-symbolic identification of the self in relation to others in the world. This sexual identification has a basic control over one's sexual drives, fantasies, and sexual-symbolic expressive behavior. Paterculture and materculture is rooted to sexual-symbolic identification, and we may refer to a corresponding anima-culture and animus-culture that defines the dialectical poles of one's behavior.

Fear motivated response is instinctively rooted, and seems to be closely connected to sexual drives and motivations, such that there appears to be some transference or cross-over between the two sets of drives, or a confounding of these sets of drives in terms of behavioral expression of symboic behavior. It may be said that all aggression in human behavior has only one of two possible sources--one is a fear-motivated fight-or flight response that is fundamentally related to a survival instinct. The second is a sex-motivated form of agonistic display that is rooted to a basic instinct for reproductive fitness and survival.

Human emotions are constructed in symbolic behavior--emotions attach our sense of being to our identity. They attach our thoughts and feelings to our bodily and behavioral responses. Emotions are pliable and plastic, and they are a consequence of our human cultural plasticity.

Ego-culture is that cultural patterning posited in the person, in the sense of self, or ego, that mediates reality and that forms the basis for adaptive behavioral functioning of the individual. Ego-culture may be said to be the internalized other, or the internalized sense of self.

Alter-culture is that culturl patterning that involves the sense of others, primarily significant others, that become internalized through psychological modeling, in the self, and that sets up a sense of "alternation" of ego-identity, which can be seen as a form of fundamental discrepancy of identity and sense of reality. The result of contact with alter-culture is one of symbolic displacement and whatis known as the marginalization and "relativization" of one's symbolic worldview. Alter culture is the consequence of the existence of alternative cultural patterning in the world and the unavoidable circumstance of the exchange of cultures that are different upon basic or derivative levels or both.

Psycho-cultural pathology can be explained as obsessive compulsive neurosis. It is borderline to true psychosis, primarily dementia praecox or schizophrenia. It constrains patterns of rapport or social relationship that is defined by serving ego-gratification needs at the expense of the other. Psycho-cultural pathology can be shared, and can be shared indirectly, and becomes selective transmitted through media or other forms. In its extreme form psycho-cultural pathology can result in the ritual murder of victims who fit a certain "type" profile in the cultural psycho-path's mindset. The form of expression this pattern of ritual killing takes is significant of the personality profile of the killer--asphyxiation, torture, stabbing or shooting, mutilation are typical forms of such expression. The act of expression is sexual-symbolic.