Yesterday (Saturday), I had lunch with a Ph.D. in educational psychology, who now lives out here, having taught at the University of Nebraska for.....decades.
As she has frankly admitted, she's no spring chicken; a couple of years too young to have voted for Henry Wallace in 1948, but old enough to have voted for Adlai Stevenson three times (1952, 1956, and the Democrat presidential primary in Nebraska in 1960), and was on a first-name basis with Eleanor Roosevelt.
(In 1980, 1984, and 2004, she does admit however to have voted for the (R) candidate for president, especially in 1980.)
Drawing on her expertise at observation of people who at first aren't aware they're being observed, but then at some point become aware, I inquired of her for suggestions about dealing with the primitives who, now that they know they're being observed, stubbornly refuse to be their natural selves.
"You know, it's really stupid," I commented; "we're watching the primitives from a distance, and from the other side of a glass wall through which real life can't penetrate, yet the primitives seem to fear us, and adjust their behavior accordingly, usually by receding from posting.
"Even though we can do the primitives no harm, they act as if we can.
"It's really stupid, really paranoid."
After which she recited several anecdotes from her professional experience, the bottom line being that people and primitives, once they know they're being observed, even if by harmless observers, change their behavior, and there isn't a damned thing one can do about it.
"It's a pity," she said, "but even Margaret Mead, as you know, had that problem."
