Book Reading #28 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Title:
Chapter 9: The Attitude of the Personality

Reference:
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)


Summary:
Mead opens the chapter speaking of 'musu', a mood among Samoa that is used to describe any ill-tempered mood.  This goes without question as the motives of someones move save the attitude of close relatives toward that person.  The taboo is that if one holds bad feelings toward another, then bad luck may come on the one held in contempt.

No one has much privacy as they live in homes of many family members and maybe many families.

The Samoan language has no regular comparative, so when asked a questions such as "who is the best..." the response is often, "they are all good".  The exception to this is when talking about negative characteristics Mead points may be due to Christian missionaries and their ideas of sin.  The most disliked trait of all is the desire to be the highest.

Discussion:

This most interesting part of this chapter was that the desire to be the highest was the most disliked trait.  That seems to be the attitude of an American, that he wants to be the best, the highest, the most important and powerful.  If this indeed is the case, there is a stark contrast between the attitude that the west has and that of Samoa.

It is interesting hearing about different languages and their parts of speech.  It would be difficult for us to use speech without comparatives, but for them it is simply natural.  That probably contributes to the fact that people are not striving to be the best - they don't have even have words to describe it.