Unfortunately, rather than making that the end of the book he adds two concluding memorably, amazingly bad chapters (remember I said the book was too long). First he throws over the tone of careful judiciousness in assessing foreign cultures that he has built up through the book and which one would think would be a prerequisite to being an anthropologist by launching into a random, unhinged attack on Islam and then, as if permanently destabilized by that, proceeds to a number of facile characterizations of various religions and cultures (Islam=masculinity, Buddhism=femininity, etc.), engages in some extravagant pessisim by complaining that human society has been in a state of continual decline since its birth, vaguely and incoherently tries to reconcile Marxism and Buddhism before finally sinking into a sea of meaningless, disjointed abstractions. So I guess the three chapters sort of cancel each other out and I feel about the same about the book’s overall quality, just on different grounds now. If you do read it, just don’t read the last two chapters and it will be a much more enjoyable experience.

The second point is undoutedly true, and the first may be true of some tribes but I’m not sure if it can be generalized. For one thing, even in the relatively simple, violent conditions of tribal life a leader probably would need to have a more comprehensive skill set than just bravery in battle. For example, Lévi-Strauss points out that especially for the poorer tribes the primary imperative of tribal chiefs is securing food sources. Fighting other tribes is undoubtedly one way to do this, but a rather costly and uncertain one. Often more important is the ability to keep a detailed map of the area in one’s head for purposes of foraging and hunting, organizational ability in devising a food-gathering strategy and so forth, all while managing the shifting alliances and loyalties of the group. Lévi-Strauss also empahizes how totally passive the other members of the tribe often are in letting the chief solve all their problems. Of course, the tribes he writes about seem to have been so decimated by disease that they didn’t encroach on each other all that much. In any case, I’m not saying that tribal leaders are all wise, simply that it might make intuitive sense that in small groups leaders would be of consistently higher quality than in large ones.

Incidentally, what do you think of Tristes tropiques? I read Myth and Meaning a few weeks ago and found it pretty interesting.

It’s definitely interesting, mainly because he’s more reflective than the average conservationist and actually explores his motivations and values in studying indigenous tribes, although I don’t think he ever very seriously questions them. His biases themselves are a bit grating, since he’s a pretty conventional noble-savageist and exoticist, and he’s pretty convinced that tribal life was much freer than civilized existence, which I’m rather skeptical about. Plus, whenever he’s trying to make a big point (or rather make a not-so-big point seem like one) his wrtiting style often falls into the over-heated airy nothings that French seems to particularly lend itself to in the wrong hands, though maybe in English the translator has squashed that tendency a bit, and on a related note I think the book is a bit too long, though memoirs generally are. But in general, as the back cover informs us, he seems to have aimed at recapturing the sort of erudite, self-aware travel writing of the “voyages philosophiques” of the 18th and 19th century (and the shadow of the philosophes certainly hangs over his idolization of primitive tribes), and I’d say he more or less pulls it off. After reading all too many National Geographic travelogues, I can’t tell you how refreshing that is.

Today voters usually elect persons who appear pleasant but underneath have inhuman ambition. What you get are scary persons who are often pathologically driven. Would you want to be president? Having read extensive biographies of Nixon and Johnson that drive to get elected was what they had in common. You have to admire that kind of energy. By the way, both Nixon and Johnson were student body presidents of their colleges, though they were both personally unpopular, confirming your observation that the really big shot leaders even at the college level may be not particularly likable. In more intimate circumstances, such as ones day to day life, leadership takes place in a more positive atmosphere but there are always problem people and problem circumstances.

Neither is true in large-scale democracies; most people have a very poor idea of how good or bad a job a politician is doing because it’s impossible to keep track of everything he does. Likewise, it’s extremely unlikely that a, say, Congressman has enough expertise in energy, military, economic, environmental, health and jurisprudence issues to be able to act intelligently in all of those areas or to know when aides or agencies specifically tasked to advise him on or deal with those issues are doing a good or bad job. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that a successful politician is expert in much of anything other than getting elected.

Incidentally, what do you think of Tristes tropiques? I read Myth and Meaning a few weeks ago and found it pretty interesting.