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Dr. Susan Williams Minsos
Canadian Published Author
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What's My Line?
Academic, Canadianist, Philosopher, Theorist, Essayist, Dr. Minsos is a published Canadian Writer of seven interdisciplinary print and audiobooks, including four novels and three academic works. Methodology for all books centres on the theory of manners: Homo sapiens’ overriding instinct to build power structures (culture clubs) for which dominators can set and administer harmonizing club manners is evident in all but the most solipsistic literature.
Minsos says, "In fiction, I kept wondering why time and place and cultural domination were crucial is determining the wherefore of a character's public behaviour and social choices. The same phenomenon is as curious and runs as true in the works of Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro (oh boy), and Edith Wharton as it is true in William Shakespeare and Honoré de Balzac."
Topics, lectures, illustrations reflect her philosophical perspective. She pairs her interest in human nature and socialization with her feminine Canadian outlook.
Minsos’s academic background – English playwrights, (MA thesis, James Reaney’s Trilogy, The Donnellys, and reviewer of new drama for NeWest Magazine), and her PhD thesis on novels of manners written in English, (doctoral dissertation focus, novels in English and Sara Jeannette Duncan) – invest her fiction and nonfiction with a distinctive and innovative style.
Minsos calls the asymmetrical tit-for-tat matrix game we play to socialize, Weird Tit-for-Tat, because the matrix social game has three moves instead of the expected two.
Selection and evolution have favoured animals that make herds but think outside the box. (Image art ©Stephen Gibb; Flammarion Engraving, 1888)
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Scroll down for a Q. and A., offering an explanation of affordances, manners, domination and culture clubs (power structures).
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Formal Education
Doctor of Philosophy - English Literature
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University of Alberta | Edmonton, Alberta
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Master of Arts - English Playwrights
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University of Alberta | Edmonton, Alberta
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Bachelor of Arts - English and Philosophy
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Western University | London, Ontario
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In Conversation With
Dr Minsos
Q: What gives your philosophy credibility?
M: Reading, I suppose. If, like me, you'd spent ten thousand (+) hours studying manners – the novels, plays, histories of this culture, or that culture, in this era, or that era – you too would find yourself wondering whence manners come. And wherefore?
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Q: Wherefore should we care about this issue. . . where manners come from?
M: . . . And what they're good for. Manners are fascinating. Harmonizing. Manners adapt to changing conditions (affordances). That's what makes them fascinating. Manners are fluid.
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Q: What do you mean "fluid"?
M: Flexible sapiens fluidly (often unconsciously and not rationally) adopts the appropriate manners to fit into any given culture club he/she wants (or is forced) to join. The knitting club, the sports team, the family, the nation, the religion, the corporation, – all clubs have their own laws, policies, rules, civilities, and customs, which I call manners. A common purpose and manners-in-common encourage group harmony. Everyone knows why one needs to behave to fit in. But the domination we choose (those whom we choose to set manners) depends on affordances. Affordance is another word for total environmental context, from the personal to the external. Affordances determine dominators.
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Q: Stop. Be specific. What are affordances?
A: Environment. Climate change. Economies. Enemies. Age. Health. All Contexts. Zeitgeist. Fire. Water. Air. Earth. All the factors you face today as you make your choices about your relationship to the herd's leadership. Psychologist James J Gibson coined the term affordance in his 1966 book, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. The affordances of the environment are what the environment offers the animal, what context provides or furnishes, either for good or ill. In reaction to affordances, dominators tailor a club's manners to fit the herd's common purpose. Like the common purpose of the individual, the common propose of the culture club is survival. In war, the two common purposes (of the individual and the culture club) come into conflict.
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Q: Okay, so what is a culture club's common purpose?
A: Same as the individual's. Safety. Survival. Renewal. Alliances. Conquer the enemy. Trade with the rival. If you're competing in a zero-sum game (hockey), beat the competition. If not, maybe trade commodities. Currently, as experts warn, sapiens might want to manage the deep-learning potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Will we choose national dominators to try to halt deep-learning research? Or do we fear other nations or rogue states will charge ahead with their own research, leaving ours to bite the dust? We are up against some big choices. Nuclear deterrence in AI.
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Q: We are facing big choices. So who are the most culturally agile? Men or women?
M: In socialization, the role that women and children play is certainly the most overlooked. Hence the big mistake.
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Q: What is the big mistake?
M. Whatever socialization is about, mothers and children are intimately involved. Plus. Some game theorists muse about socialization's happening with no central authority. Mums and kids know that's a big joke. Remember your mum? She set the house rules. As a mathematical premise in game theory, cooperate-don't cooperate works but it is too restrictive – a non-starter in explaining the real fount of socialization.
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Q. Why?
M. Our fates are tied not only to a conscious and rational (see John Nash) ability to cooperate but also to an instinctive, very simple three-cornered game we play in our search for authority. Children play Weird Tit-for-Tat. Children play the game of life to survive. The search for authority is inherent. Weird Tit-for-Tat builds power structures, which I call culture clubs. With this question, we come full circle.
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Three Fates as Weirdo Sisters,
oil on canvas
©Kiff Holland FCA, CSMA, RI (HON)
