My master narrative is that most of our ancestors were doing subsistence agriculture just a few lifetimes ago.
For instance my father-in-law was in fascist (no kidding!) Italy which got attacked by fascist (Nazis!) Germany and had their farm ruined, their wine barrels spilled. Many members of his family wound up in Binghamton NY where their social networks channeled them into certain occupations. (Splits pretty well based on unionized/self-employed and across gender: construction, Italian restaurants, K12 education, hairdressers; my French Canadian and Polish relatives in New England seem to all be in law enforcement or some other kind of "first response", even the girls, except for the pro hockey player who now coaches college hockey and lives with his husband; if any of them tried to break into teaching at college, newspaper reporting, or things that other ethnic groups specialize in, they'd discover the same baffling barriers that black people would encounter)
A friend of my son has mental health problems I can't DX (e.g. "pathological narcissism" is a sign, i see "body dysmorphia" is a symptom even if it is a DX in the DSM) but his mom who grew up in rural China (educated, got a medical certificate which doesn't let her practice here, thinks it was a mistake because she knows many people who got really rich thanks to economic expansion back home and is seriously committed to an evangelical church that should teach her better) believes the DX is "possessed by demons" which was a culturally universal and common DX almost everywhere throughout almost all of human history and prehistory.
I worked for a startup where there were two Indians (a Reddy and a Juggernaut, Hindus will get a clear understanding of their social position based on that) who grew up in a village about 30 miles from Bangalore, got educated in that city, got more education here, and wound up working together where they stuck up for each other like blood brothers. Like many Indians I've met working in the industry, the younger struggled in the US, not least with the immigration authorities, and I tried really hard to communicate my sympathy, admiration and respect but failed as so I often have with Indians in his position.
Various "BiPOC" histories are equally valid yet basically the same story (farm to city via severe trauma) if you separate them from the label which erases the reality: e.g. still on the farm in Africa, got torn away against their will, deliberate destruction of their culture in the past, present (and future so long as the idea that "the holocaust should never happen again" displaces the reality that genocide happens over and over again,) etc which is general but can't really be understood without the personal specifics.
"Cargo cult", "BiPOC" and many other terms ought to get phased out and replaced by better and more detailed stories.
> ...his mom who grew up in rural China (educated, got a medical certificate which doesn't let her practice here, thinks it was a mistake because she knows many people who got really rich thanks to economic expansion back home and is seriously committed to an evangelical church that should teach her better) believes the DX is "possessed by demons"...
If she really believes someone is possessed by demons, I'd say it's a good thing that her "medical certificate" doesn't let her practice there.
I don't know exactly what she studied but it was probably some combination of western and traditional Chinese medicine. The government of "The New China" has been highly supportive of the latter and trying to find a scientific basis for some of it with some success.
Folk religion includes other practices which are illegal under the Communist regime and were also illegal under Chiang Kai-Shek.
In Hubei province, for instance, a family with a troubled child might seek help from a "fox medium" who might attempt to divine the problem by inspecting the ashes from burnt incense and then, if that fails, be possessed by a fox spirit who will tell the people involved how it's going to be. If people don't play along they may be "haunted" for months which could partially be a matter of laying down a strong memory but is also not a difficult feat to accomplish in a culture where there are small and large fox shrines everywhere and everybody gets a fox figurine when they are born (which you will put on an altar together with your partner's when you get married.) Arraigning scenes in a small village isn't that hard, particularly if the fox has a network of confederates who owe the fox a favor or are otherwise in its power.
C's mom may very well have seen these practices be successful herself and almost certainly knew people who knew people who had been helped.
That was psychiatry for most of human existence, I mean we've had Freud for 120 years, decent psych drugs for 60. Similar practices have been documented in Africa, Polynesia, the Americas, etc. Here people get multiple psychiatric hospitalizations but never a real DX or RX. Here I saw pamphlet funded by a pharmaceutical company that made it sound as if, with his prescription pad, a doctor transforms Ritalin from a dangerous addictive drug to a safe ADHD treatment just like the priest at the Catholic church transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.
From a cross-cultural perspective our practices are a fad like everybody having gluten intolerance or autism and those practices are time tested. If I tried to do the same thing in modern North America, however, I'd have a much harder time.
For instance my father-in-law was in fascist (no kidding!) Italy which got attacked by fascist (Nazis!) Germany and had their farm ruined, their wine barrels spilled. Many members of his family wound up in Binghamton NY where their social networks channeled them into certain occupations. (Splits pretty well based on unionized/self-employed and across gender: construction, Italian restaurants, K12 education, hairdressers; my French Canadian and Polish relatives in New England seem to all be in law enforcement or some other kind of "first response", even the girls, except for the pro hockey player who now coaches college hockey and lives with his husband; if any of them tried to break into teaching at college, newspaper reporting, or things that other ethnic groups specialize in, they'd discover the same baffling barriers that black people would encounter)
A friend of my son has mental health problems I can't DX (e.g. "pathological narcissism" is a sign, i see "body dysmorphia" is a symptom even if it is a DX in the DSM) but his mom who grew up in rural China (educated, got a medical certificate which doesn't let her practice here, thinks it was a mistake because she knows many people who got really rich thanks to economic expansion back home and is seriously committed to an evangelical church that should teach her better) believes the DX is "possessed by demons" which was a culturally universal and common DX almost everywhere throughout almost all of human history and prehistory.
I worked for a startup where there were two Indians (a Reddy and a Juggernaut, Hindus will get a clear understanding of their social position based on that) who grew up in a village about 30 miles from Bangalore, got educated in that city, got more education here, and wound up working together where they stuck up for each other like blood brothers. Like many Indians I've met working in the industry, the younger struggled in the US, not least with the immigration authorities, and I tried really hard to communicate my sympathy, admiration and respect but failed as so I often have with Indians in his position.
Various "BiPOC" histories are equally valid yet basically the same story (farm to city via severe trauma) if you separate them from the label which erases the reality: e.g. still on the farm in Africa, got torn away against their will, deliberate destruction of their culture in the past, present (and future so long as the idea that "the holocaust should never happen again" displaces the reality that genocide happens over and over again,) etc which is general but can't really be understood without the personal specifics.
"Cargo cult", "BiPOC" and many other terms ought to get phased out and replaced by better and more detailed stories.