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Darcia Narvaez's 2014 Book and Donald J. Trump's 2016 Presidential Primary Campaign (REVIEW ESSAY)

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Smith's book chapter is reprinted in the ambitious anthology Of Ong and Media Ecology, edited by me and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, 2012, pages 117-141).

In her award-winning 2014 book, Darcia Narvaez focuses on small-group hunter-gatherer people, all of whom were among our pre-historic and pre-literate human ancestors who embodied oral culture 1.0 characterized by the world-as-event sense of life.

For all practical purposes, what Darcia Narvaez refers to as our Western worldview is characterized by what Ong refers to as the world-as-view sense of life.

Also see my essay "Understanding Ong's Philosophical Thought" online at the following URL:

http://hdl.handle.net/10792/2696

On a related but different point, Ong notes that G. E. R. Lloyd's book Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1966) is an important study for understanding the ancient Greek sense of adversativeness -- of being up against something.

The ancient Greek sense of adversativeness, in Ong's terminology, contrasts with Darcia Narvaez's characterization of child raising among small-group hunter-gather people. She claims that they raise children "with easy attention to [the children's] needs and a sense of attachment to the group, fostering deep trust in the nature of the world. There is no sense of individual 'standing against' anything. They have agency in communion" (page 277). For parents in the Western world today to raise their children, she recommends what she refers to companionship care (also see pages 78, 86-91, 94, 103, 120, 167, 170, 183, 215-216, 219, 220, 227, and 259).

(2) Darcia Narvaez also skillfully discusses attachment theory. However, I wish that she had also integrated the perceptive and important work of the British Jungian psychiatrist Anthony Stevens (born in 1933) in his book Archetype Revisited: An Updated Natural History of the Self (Inner City Books, 2003; orig. ed., 1982).

Also see my essay "Understanding Jung's Thought" online at the following URL:

http://hdl.handle.net/10792/2576

(3) Darcia Narvaez also skillfully discusses David Bakan's terminology about agency and communion in the 1966 book The Duality of Human Existence: An Essay on Psychology and Religion (Rand McNally, 1966).

In principle, all human persons have both orientations -- that is, both agency and communion. In terms of stereotypes, agency is stereotypically masculine, and communion is stereotypically feminine. Those persons who have developed each of these two orientations optimally are described as psychologically androgynous persons. However, not all human persons have developed both orientations optimally.

Now, as mentioned above, Rob Kall is really interested in charming psychopaths. Their charm suggests that they have developed their communion orientation to a certain degree, but apparently without developing genuine empathy for others. Of course there are also psychopaths who are not charming.

Also see my essay "Understanding Jung's Thought," mentioned above.

Now, as quoted above, in her discussion of small-group hunter-gatherer people, Darcia Narvaez uses the expression "agency in communion" to characterize small-group hunter-gatherers, as she understands them (page 277). Of course her happy expression "agency in communion" can serve to remind us that certain people may develop their agency orientation without an equal development of their communion orientation, provided that their communion orientation involves genuine empathy. When persons develop both orientations with equal strength, then they tend to act with agency in communion, provided that their communion orientation involves genuine empathy.

But I would also mention that Aristotle in his famous treatise on civic rhetoric points out that the civic orator uses three ways to appeal to his or her audience: logos, pathos, and ethos.

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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