Modern Western civilizations haven’t solved the problem of gender, but Samoa has the answer. Or at least it does according to the work of influential anthropologist Margaret Mead, subject of the animated introduction from Alain de Botton’s School of Life above. Her mentor Franz Boas, the founder of anthropology in the United Regime, identified not a macrocosm progressing “in a linear fashion from wickednes to savagery to civilization” but “teeming with separate cultures, each with their own unique positions, revelations, and efficiencies.”

Though Mead’s time living among the natives on the distant islands of Samoa came at Boas’ suggestion, she previously believed that “isolated cultures could serve as laboratories that they are able to uncover ways of living that the modern world had forgotten about, but needed to remember.” The ensuing volume, 1928 ‘s Coming of Age in Samoa, turned Mead into the most famous anthropologist in the world. In it she describes Samoan culture as “far more open and pleasant with sexuality than the modern United District. Little children in Samoa knew all about masturbation, and learned about intercourse and other ordinances through first-hand observation, but thought of it as no more abominable or worthy of comment than death or birth.”

Mead also mentioned an acceptance of not just homosexuality but a natural switching in sex direction over period — a condition bound to intrigue a serious scholar who herself resulted a preferably unconventional life, “simultaneously involved with consecutive spouses and her ever-present female lover.” Her analysis of Samoa, which informed the worldviews of such influential figures as childrearing leader Benjamin Spock, would take on an even broader petition in the 1960 s, when a rising counterculture sought inspiration in its propagandize to change Western society. Proponents of the “sexual revolution” and its relax of standards noted a natural ally in Mead, and detects of her life and work remain in scraps of the Summer of Love up to and including Hair, one of whose minor personas has her name.

Mead too is just coming up in Hunter Thompson’s 1971 inscription for the counterculture, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The representation is the National District Attorneys Association’s Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, at which a participant suggests that Mead partakes in the substance known as marijuana. The “drug expert” onstage replies thus: “At her age, if she did smoke grass, she’d have one hell of a trip.” Though Mead publicly presented sympathy for addicts, whom she described as “casualties of a poorly planned culture, ” her own experiences with mind-altering essences are less well documented. But then, her time in Samoa may well have been the only consciousness-expanding trip she needed.

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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and programs on metropolitans, communication, and culture. His assignments include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21 st-Century Los Angeles and the video serial The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall, on Facebook, or on Instagram.

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