Book Reading #28 - Coming of Age in Samoa (Mar 1)

Chapter 9: The Attitude of the Personality

Summary:

In this chapter, Mead talks about general attitude and personality traits of people in Samoa. "Musu" is the type of attitude that expresses unwillingness and intractability. The appearance of musu attitude is treated with almost superstitious respect. People seldom question this attitude. If someone is being stubborn and unwilling, people just accept it and move on. Mead found that Samoans avoid answering personal questions and questions that involve private matters of someone else. Samoan language lacks comparatives and so attitudes are described simply as good or bad, positive or negative. Relative goodness, relative beauty, relative wisdom are unfamiliar formalizations to the Samoans. Ugliness and viciousness were more vivid and unusual attributes of personality while beauty, wisdom and kindness were taken for granted. Judgments were made in terms of age groups, from standpoints of the group of the speaker and the age of the person judged.

Discussion:

It was interesting to know about the attitudes and personality traits of people living in Samoa. However, I was amazed to read that if someone is obdurate and unwilling, no one tries to force him/her in to speaking what he/she is holding back. Instead, people just let go. This was a little surprising and I think this can actually worsen some conflicts, because talking things out usually helps in resolving problems. Anyway, overall, it was an interesting piece of observations and findings about the general attitudes of the indigenous people of Samoa.