Discover S Minsos, PhD

Manners are the starting point and the end point.

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Together, Herders and Individualists Make the Manners of a CULTURE CLUB

 

What is an Individualist?

 

We're Homo sapiens. Sapiens is a species of self-conscious human individuals, who have self-defining perspectives.

 

An individual sapiens with a self-defining perspective is an individualist.

 

When is a Herd a Culture Club?

 

But sapiens are herders too. As herders, armed with our singular perspectives, we regularly and often unconsciously squelch our druthers, adjust our perspectives, and adopt strange default behaviours (females accept the male default), which suit the group, aka, the herd. With distinct and definable manners, the herd turns into a culture club.

 

The Agility of the Individualist in Adopting New Manners.

 

In any case, muffling one's desires to suit the common purpose of the herd is an amazing give-over. When you think about it, the give-over is more than amazing, since many, many, many, power structures ––or culture clubs ––claim our membership and belonging, from the family, the local PTA, to the nation-at-large, with lots of culture clubs in between, and yet, even as we're dedicated and rugged individualists with goodness-know-what desires, we understand the need for manners, for sapiens' agility in shifting manners ––for our knowing what is polite and what is rude in each group we belong to, from the family culture club, to the preferred church, to the new country we emigrated to, to the UN. 

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Affordances (You don't always get what you want . . .)

In every social interaction, mannerly individuals group-read and interpret context, navigate power, and respond to what their environment affords: Hence, in conflating environment, context, rules into a single term, Minsos argues the word "affordance" is key in socialization and culture clubs. Put simply, what does today's environment allow you to do ––today? That's your affordance.

 

Affordance and Social Harmony 

 

Affordance. You cannot do today what you cannot get away with. If for the safety and survival of the herd, your mother or your city or your country or your church still won't let you drive until you're sixteen years old, you cannot jump behind the wheel when you're fourteen, sans consequences. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, you're not willing to pay the high cost of disobeying the culture club's rules. Or since you're fourteen, a little teen crazy, and pushing away from your primary culture club, perhaps you might go for it and drive to Vancouver. Nonetheless, the rules of the road are your driving affordance. The rules of the road are meant to keep other members of the culture club, safe. You, the individualist, decide how far you can go. But for disregarding its manners, you should not be surprised when the club sends enforcers to catch and punish you. Affordances matter. Maintaining social harmony ––by dulling individualists' competitive natures ––, manners (laws, bylaws, civilities) matter.

 

Cultural Status Quo is a Sapiens' Killer

 

Herds and individuals juggle priorities. They fight. They agree. Both search for permanence, the illusive status quo, but frustratingly perhaps, tension between the culture club and the individualist is ongoing. The tension is Sisyphean. The Sorcerer's Apprentice feels the pain. Change never stops changing.

 

Culture clubs, being adaptable social constructs, are meant to change. Individualist-culture-club tension presents the most penetrating, all-inclusive, hard, but necessary fact regarding the survival of life on earth––both the herd's and the individual's: Life is held in cultural balance, always sought, never found.

 

How could we react and adapt to ever-changing affordances if culture clubs were fixed and faded traditions never saw the back door? Why are we agile mannerists? Natural selection made it so. In the process of adapting our culture clubs to meet current affordances, we toss out, modify, and revamp our manners. Sometimes, we actually toss out the entire culture club. Or it tosses us out.

 

AI adds serious complication to the already complicated individualist and culture-club relationship.

 

Power Structures are Always the Same. Manners Differ

 

Our instinct for qualifying the value of individuals, teams, groups, etc., interferes with our understanding of what's going on.

 

We should clearly see, via a disinterested academic assessment, a universality in the structure of culture clubs.

 

In social and literary research, we should cite our demonstrable appreciation for our primary herding agility ––being mannered and mannering. 4 Non Blonde's may not understand their world, but really, in terms of manners, the majority of us should know the why and how behind the What's Up? We just don't seem to get the particulars. We should. Minsos states her complaint: In seminars focusing on culture and custom, humanities academics rarely discuss (as a single, intersecting contagion) any given era's contemporary affordances, structural samenesses, and manners agility.

 

Weird Tit-for-Tat: The Game is Dead Easy, but Culture Clubs Can Be VERY COMPLEX

 

Dr. Minsos’ work focuses on a process of recognition —revealing how reasonable individualists commonly assess situations, make decisions, and engage with other individualists and herds through an intuitive understanding of the matrix game of life, a triangular tit-for-tat game...

 

...which, as we're always mindful of affordances, we know allows a group's dominator to set group manners. Mother, (phoning you right now), was your primary dominator and manners-setter, and not unsurprisingly you shiver at the memory of her most effective cultural tools, shame and guilt.

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Minsos' work is not about instruction, but awareness: Recognizing what we (you and I) intuitively know, how we harmonize group behaviour to confirm the common purpose of a culture club, and why we do it ––strength in numbers ensures survival.

 

The matrix three-optioned tit-for-tat game is easy to explain; and yet, playing the game, one sees how manners and culture clubs can turn simplicity into intensely complex and rule-bound culture-clubs ––aka, power structures (eg., Catholic Church), which is why we cannot see the trees for the forest.

 

Put another way: Socially, we see the complex body, but miss the savvy cell. Constructively, we see the complex building, but miss the strength of the brick. Politically, we see the complex society, but miss, going on right under our noses, the way culture clubs and individualists constantly interact and play the three-optioned matrix social game. Through a sliding door, dominators and compliors make manners. Manners, suitable for meeting the affordance of the day, harmonize the group, making and re-making a culture club. 

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Understanding IS NOT Qualifying

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Lest you believe I believe all culture clubs are equal in importance and of the same value to the individualist, I assure you I do not think this. I'm a citizen and a fan of liberal democracy.

Danger: Prescription (I want everyone to live in a liberal democracy) and description (to foster the aims of a liberal democracy, describe the necessary affordances) get muddied all the time. Beware. And don't be rude to the idiot who doesn't agree with you.

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Click the navigation buttons below to delve deeper into

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–the matrix social game  The Culture Clubs Series

–Canada's contemporary manners in The Hurtig Lecture

–pre-Confederation BNA manners in The Mohawk Trilogy

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To learn more about manners and culture clubs, click below. 

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