society’s strict rules of personal and sexual conduct whichngenerated the violence and immorality they were supposednto curb. Rousseau, like Locke, said that in the long gonenpast, man was most perfect. He ate and fornicated by whim.nThere was no guilt, competition, or territorial disputesnbecause morality, wealth, and property did not exist. But asncivilization advanced, man degenerated. The Discourse wasna tale with a hidden meaning. Rousseau implied that andictatorship was needed to strip contemporary man of hisnwealth and property and to absorb the Church, to stop thenpropagation of ideas that kept men believing in morality andnfamily attachments, which kept him imperfect.nThe Discourse created a sensation. Many Royalist intellectualsnasked, “Does such a perfect society exist? Somenfar-off people, untouched by civilization, that would proventhe theory?” If so, nationalizing wealth and the Churchnwould be justified. The search for the “Noble Savage”nbecame an important aspect of national policy for Absolutistncountries, to promote the power of rulers. To an extent,nanthropology arose in response to that search; shortly afternthe Discourse was published, that paradise was discovered!nIt was 1768. Great Britain was on the verge of losing hernAmerican colonies. So King George III focused on thenPacific for new possessions. He sent James Cook on anclandestine mission in an innocent looking coal freighter.nThe Endeavor. Supposedly this was a scientific journey tonobserve an eclipse of the sun. In reality, it had a politicalnpurpose: to chart the Pacific for secret Navy bases, tondiscover new lands, to make diplomatic contacts, and collectndata about the various people’s social and political structuresnfor future colonization. One of Cook’s stops was at thenjust-discovered island of Tahiti.nBut the French, having just lost their possessions innCanada, learned of Cook’s objectives. They rushed Louisnde Bougainville into the Pacific on the same kind ofncolonizing mission. He beat Cook to Tahiti by a fewnmonths. After further long and exhausting wanderingsnthrough that vast ocean, both navigators returned home,nwhere they reported on Tahiti’s Eden-like hedonistic culture.nCook’s journals became Voyages, Bougainville’s: Descriptionnof a Voyage Around the World. Both booksnbecame best-sellers.nBougainville literally believed he had found Rousseau’snState of Nature, and the Description popularized Rousseau’snideas.nThen war with the Americans came to Britain, andnPacific exploration stopped. When the colonies freed themselves,nthe British need to absorb the Polynesian area was farnmore urgent. By then James Cook was dead, killed by thennatives in a fierce battie on a Hawaiian (Sandwich Island)nbeach. His second-in-command, William Bligh, was put inncharge of another secret operation to continue the process.nThe objectives were sketched in at the beginning of thisnessay: creating the dictionary and the taking of breadfruit tonstrengthen diplomatic and trading ties.nThe mutiny and later the drama of the highly publicizedntrial brought home to Britons the Tahitian Utopia morenvividly than Cook or Bougainville had. Major questionsnwere raised. Fletcher Christian was an aristocrat. Did hisndefection represent a weakening of the class system? Did hisndisappearance to a place unknown mean he was going toncreate his own pagan Utopia? Had the long stay in Tahitinundermined the morals of the entire Bounty crew so thatnthey might contaminate society-at-large? Hanging three ofnthe mutineers was a symbolic gesture by the Admiralty thatnsociety stood firm. But did it?nWithin a generation Socialist philosophy rose up, emphasizingnRousseau’s vision of the evils of materialism, property,nand “bourgeois morality.” Soon the world drifted towardnMarx’s Socialist Eden, and wherever it touched, the Churchnand all competing value systems were absorbed by ThenState. Later, Freud emerged, echoing Marx and Rousseau’snblame of man’s torment on civilization’s moral inhibitions.nFreud also proclaimed the liberation of sexual repressionsnwould set mankind free. When young anthropologist MargaretnMead went to Samoa (near Tahiti) to prove hernmentor’s thesis that culture, not heredity, determinesnhuman character, she also echoed Rousseau’s faith that manncan be perfect if the State would only free him fromninhibitions and “things.” (Cook and Bougainville stopped atnSamoa and observed hedonism there, too.) Mead uncoverednsocial patterns the early explorers missed: androgynousnbisexuality, a lack of interest in the family, a communenstructure to take up the slack. She advocated all this to undonthe “evils” of Western monogamy and possessiveness. HernComing of Age in Samoa was the mid-20th century’snanswer to Description of a Voyage Around the World.nMargaret Mead’s ideas suddenly seemed to ring true.nEverywhere governments accepted their obligafion to makenman perfect by replacing religion’s role of defining values.nThe method? The vast social bureaucracy and the schoolnsystems. Children are malleable. They must be weanednfrom their inhibited parents’ values. First, “Progressivism,”nJohn Dewey’s philosophy of cooperation, sexual equality,nand “spirit” over materialism, became the federal educationnstandard. These views were directly at odds with the freenenterprise, individuality of the sexes, and upward mobilitynmores that permeated American culture. (After half ancentury, critics wonder whether Progressivism has broughtnus closer to Utopia or abject docility.)nMead’s brand of anthropology (based on Franz Boas’nvision) pursued a similar logic. Continually focusing onnprimitive societies to discover paradise-on-earth, it sought tonprove that other illiterate, superstitious, homicidal, cannibalisticnand particularly sexually inverted cultures were just asnvalid as ours. This was another way to demonstrate thatnAmerica’s competitive, opposite-sexes society was just onenmore variety of man’s infinite mutability and was no morensignificant. This view denied there was any connectionnbetween Americans’ values and their freedom.nAs a result, sociologists, psychologists, lawyers, and thencourts have focused their attention on “what is gender.”nThe results have influenced our national law, so that todaynequality means court-ordered neutering of the sexes, both innthe work place and in interpersonal relations. Androgynynhas replaced individuality.nThese laws have made it necessary to integrate sexneducation into school curriculum. This is less concernednwith fornication than with explaining equal rights lawnsupposed to end sexism. Interpreted into androgyny, equalnrights became interchangeable sex roles — masculine andnfeminine are reactionary ideas that must be replaced bynnnFEBRUARY 1988 I 11n