Anansi Cameron

I was a young lad from a small fishing town in the NE of Scotland in the mid twentieth century. My enculturation seeded me with high expectations of the good and great.

I was expected to be silent in their presence and to implement their projects with efficiency and effectiveness. Things seemed to work out most of the time. But there were some incidents to suggest that all was not well.

• On separate occasions the Minister and the English teacher wrongly accused me of plagiarism
• The Suez Crisis (1956) showed that individuals in the good and great category can have very different views about what to do
• The Profumo Affair  (1963) showed that many of the supposed good and great were  in fact bad and beastly.
• Before the demise of local govt in 1975 there were some muted complaints about having to suck up to the Provost to get a house.
• In a rural, co-ed, boarding school in Zambia in 1979 the Headmaster was renting out female students to ‘entertain’ local big men.
• Whilst facilitating a curriculum conference in Belize in 1990 I was subject to an ad hominem attack by those representing technical and vocational education. The CEO for education apologised but I said that it did not matter. When a participant mounts an attack on a person it shows that they do not have any serious points to make.

I no longer remember when I first read Machiavelli (1469-1527). He is the father of real politics. Which often means of deceit. Private individuals are expected to keep their promises. Public figures often have to break them. In politics and business ‘reality’ changes very quickly. I cannot help but think of the reneging on the big VOW in the lead up to the Scottish Referendum. David Cameron says whatever it takes to get his own way – a text book Machiavellian!

Evolutionary psychology presumably has a take on this issue of deceit. We are social animals and therefore have concerns about status and place in the hierarchy. But in a fast changing world we must beware of group think and rigidity.

One of the folk heroes in the Caribbean is anansi spider who is a trickster, joker and clown. A trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal that exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behaviour. Variability is thus assured and is available for selection.

Anancy Cameron plays the vow trick – it never fails.