Back in February, 2013, I wrote a two-part blog series entitled What’s So Social About Machine Media? In this blog series I mentioned a 2010 book by psychologist and social critic Dr. Mack Hicks entitled The Digital Pandemic—Reestablishing Face-to-Face Contact in the Electronic Age. In his book Hicks spends a lot of time talking about two overarching personality types: Gatherers and Hunters. Here’s how I described these two personality types in my blog series:
Throughout his book Hicks defines and describes two overarching personality types: Hunters and Gatherers. Simply, Gatherers are linear and left-brain oriented (e.g., comfortable with precision, certitude, and reliability); Hunters are holistic and right-brain oriented (e.g., comfortable with approximations, guesses, and hunches).
In my blog series I suggested that one can find an almost archetypal struggle between Hunters and Gatherers in the 1950s western movie Shane. As movie critics have pointed out, Shane is essentially a remake of the Cane and Abel story from the Old Testament. As mythologist Joseph Campbell often told his audiences, Abel was associated with sheep farming while Cane was associated with cattle herding. Simply, Abel was a Gatherer and Cane was a Hunter. Psychologist David Anderegg (in his book Nerds) describes Gatherers as people of thought, and Hunters as people of doing. Both Hicks and Anderegg suggest that President Obama embodies the Gatherer mindset with its focus on mental worlds, and the second President Bush would be a Hunter, a doer out in the physical world.
In the movie Shane, we see Alan Ladd (who plays Shane) struggle with his desire to leave behind his Hunter life (he was a gunslinger) for a more pastoral or Gatherer existence (living with a family of sheep farmers). Sadly, Shane is not able to throw off his Hunter history and rides off into the proverbial sunset with a young (impressionable) farm boy chasing along yelling, “Shane, come back Shane!” What the Old Testament and Shane stories tell us is that the struggle between the Hunter and Gatherer archetypes has been with us from the beginning of recorded history and persists even today.
Several of you have emailed me asking for more examples of Hunters and Gatherers in the movies. Thanks for your comments and interest in comparing and contrasting the Gatherer and Hunter personality types. In the rest of this post (by popular demand) I’ll look at what happens when Hunters and Gatherers go to the movies. In the interest of time I’ll be pulling these descriptions mostly from memory (which is always risky), so forgive me if the details are a bit off. You bet, Wikipedia and IMDb will be my friends here. Lets go to the movies.
Saving Private Ryan (1998) – Given that this is a WWII movie set against the backdrop of the Normandy invasion, it tips decidedly in the direction of the Hunter archetype. But one of the many subplots focuses on the struggle between the Gatherer and Hunter personality types. There’s a character in the movie who I have dubbed Map Man. He’s Corporal Timothy Upham, who was a translator (he speaks fluent German) and map reader. Captain John Miller (played by Tom Hanks) is ordered to find Private Ryan (played by Matt Damon). When Miller meets Map Man for the first time, it’s clear that Map Man has gathered together a number of maps but has never had to use them in any significant “doing” way. We also see that Map Man is rather clumsy and fumbles a lot. Miller cuts to the chase and asks Map Man to provide him with the map (out of many) that will help him find Private Ryan. Then Miller orders Map Man to come along and venture out into the land of Hunters. It is clear that Map Man is very reluctant to leave behind the security of his Gatherer existence and face the perils of being a Hunter.
What follows is Map Man’s tumultuous transition from Gatherer to Hunter. Along the way Map Man is duped by a German soldier. (The german soldier persuades Map Man to let him live by playing on Map Man’s heart strings.) This ends up being a pivotal event for Map Man as we will see. The climax of the Gatherer versus Hunter conflict for Map Man comes toward the end of the movie when Miller’s men have to defend a small town against advancing Germans. Suffice it to say that during this climatic scene bullets are flying and bombs are exploding everywhere. It’s mayhem. Map Man is given the sole task of carrying ammunition and delivering it where it is needed most. He fails in this Hunter task. Because he is not able to deliver ammunition in a timely fashion, several of his comrades die. Map Man ultimately freezes and crumbles into a shaking mass at the bottom of a set of stairs. I would suggest that this represents Map Man’s inability to move up from Gatherer to Hunter. In this crumbled and defeated state, a german soldier (who has just killed American soldiers waiting for Map Man’s ammunition delivery) walks by Map Man, pauses as if to ask himself, “Should I kill him?” and walks off as if to say, “No, this coward is already dead.”
Although Map Man fails and soldiers die as a result, both the town and Private Ryan are saved. But Map Man’s transition is not yet over. He encounters the german soldier who earlier had duped him. Once again the german soldier begins to dupe Map Man by pleading for his life. Map Man is tired of being duped and used, and ends up killing the german with a sense of newly acquired conviction. We can visibly see Map Man change from Gatherer to Hunter. His face changes, his body changes, he’s more erect, his whole essence and presence changes. He’s now a Hunter. He seems to have clear purpose and direction, not unlike putting a north arrow on a map. Pulling from mythology once more, in Map Man we see Parsifal (the holy fool) as he moves from being a foolish boy to being a wise and discerning man.
The Die Hard Series (1988, 1990, 1995, 2007, 2013) – The first Die Hard movie, starring Bruce Willis, came out in 1988. I would suggest that the first Die Hard movie was almost exclusively a Hunter movie with only hints of anything approaching a Gatherer sensibility. The first Die Hard movie is probably not a good place to look for any take on the Gatherer versus Hunter conflict. However, I would suggest that the Die Hard series itself goes through a transition and by movie number four—2007’s Live Free or Die Hard—a strong Gatherer sensibility enters the scene.
Live Free or Die Hard pairs together the Hunter character of detective John McClane (played by Willis) and the Gatherer character of Matt Farrell (played by Justin Long). Farrell is a young computer whiz kid and hacker extraordinaire who ultimately falls for McClane’s daughter. The main plot of the movie centers on tracking down an Internet terrorist. Ergo, there are now actual bombs and digital bombs blowing up. I would suggest that this installment of the Die Hard series is the first to acknowledge that Hunters (represented by McClane) will have to learn to work with Gatherers (represented by Farrell). For most of the movie Farrell gathers the necessary technical information required to track the Internet terrorist while McClane does the heavy lifting (e.g., kicking butt). Here we see the back worker McClane working with the brain worker Farrell. But there’s a twist. Like with Map Man above, in order for Farrell to transition to the world of the Hunter he has to kill one of the bad guys. In the movie we witness an actual death. However, in archetypal or even psychoanalytic terms, I would suggest that this is some form of killing the Gatherer personality so that the Hunter personality can flourish.
Before I end I’d like to point out that many popular TV programs today depict Hunters and Gatherers working together in relative peace and harmony. Here are a few examples:
NCIS – Gibbs, Ziva, and DiNozzo are the main back work Hunters while Abby and Dr. Mallard are the main brain work Gatherers. McGee is the bridge person who equally embodies both worlds.
NCIS: Los Angeles – Basically the same charter distribution as NCIS above. For example, Callen and Hanna handle most of the heavy lifting while Beale and Jones “man” the computer terminals.
Elementary – This present day version of Sherlock Holmes presents Holmes as a very capable Gatherer who is able to hold his own in the world of the Hunter. (As a general observation, I see many modern versions of Sherlock Holmes—most notably Robert Downey Jr.’s version—moving Sherlock in the direction of Hunter.) However, when push comes to shove, Holmes has no problem allowing either Captain Gregson or Detective Bell handle the heavy lifting. Dr. Watson tends to embody both worlds.
The Mentalist – Clearly Patrick Jane is a clever (although somewhat manipulative) Gatherer who allows Lisbon, Rigsby, and Cho to do most of the heavy lifting. Van Pelt often embodies both worlds.
If you have a media example of Gatherers and Hunters working side by side, please feel free to leave them in a comment. As a general suggestion, as you watch any media—TV, movies, web episodes—see if you can recognize the Hunter and Gatherer archetypes. Further, observe how they are depicted interacting with each other. Finally, see if you can recognize any so-called “right of passage” from one to the other. As the Saving Private Ryan and Die Hard examples above point out, it would seem that the passage is generally one-way—from Gatherer to Hunter—and involves killing. Why might this be? To conclude I’ll take a stab at answering this question.
I would suggest that the killing associated with the one-way transition from Gatherer to Hunter often depicted in movies reflects a fear that machines might one day win the right to make life and death decisions for us. This is the basic fear expressed in the Terminator movie series. I would further suggest that this is the same fear often expressed when conversations turn to the subject of systems engineering. People are worried, with good cause, that the so-called kill decison is now being systematically turned over to systems engineers—Gatherers. For example, consider the following two articles (the second offers commentary on the first):
Recent reports (see the first article above) that the White House has authorized use of drones against US civilians only serve to concretize fears over the possibility that robots will receive the kill decision. Consider this quote by Latiff & McCloskey (authors of the first article above):
The problem is that robotic weapons eventually will make kill decisions on the battlefield with no more than a veneer of human control. Full lethal autonomy is no mere next step in military strategy: It will be the crossing of a moral Rubicon. Ceding godlike powers to robots reduces human beings to things with no more intrinsic value than any object.
When robots rule warfare, utterly without empathy or compassion, humans retain less intrinsic worth than a toaster—which at least can be used for spare parts. In civilized societies, even our enemies possess inherent worth and are considered persons, a recognition that forms the basis of the Geneva Conventions and rules of military engagement.
Susan Faludi, writing in her book Stiffed, and Lt.Col. Dave Grossman, writing in his book On Killing, both point to the rise of systems engineering and the passing of the kill decision from man to machine (starting with the Vietnam War) as constituting a huge pshycological blow to people in general and to the Hunter mindset in specific. I wonder if we as a society are now allowing a young stage of development—mechanical gathering—to now become manifest at the level of adult society. As systems engineering meets the Gatherer (now allowed to become an adult), we encounter the machine (mechanical Gatherer) in the machine (systems engineering). Once these two worlds meld or short-circuit against each other, machines acquiring the kill decision will not be far off. Stories of transition from Gatherer to Hunter via some type of killing process (i.e., Saving Private Ryan and Live Free or Die Hard) express hope that machines will never acquire the kill decision. Again, drones overhead will serve to dash these hopes. For more on this theme, request a copy of my executive summary of Carl Jung’s final book (published in the late 1950s) Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. You may wish to take another look at my reprint of Jay Nelson’s article entitled Robots, Robots Everywhere (March 19th, 2013).
One last suggestion: Keep the frame “death by algorithm” in mind because I believe it will come to increasingly define days ahead. If you happen to come upon a group of teenagers sitting around a table at a restaurant furiously tapping away on their screens not paying any attention to each other (or, for that matter, the people around them), think Death by Algorithm. If you happen to read MIT researcher Sherry Turkle’s 2012 book Alone Together—Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, think Death by Algorithm. Or if you happen to hear that over a billion people are now on Facebook, think Death by Algorithm. Hmmm … maybe that’s why the zombie and vampire archetypes have reemerged with a vengeance (especially in the movies).
Hunters and Gatherers Go To the Movies
Back in February, 2013, I wrote a two-part blog series entitled What’s So Social About Machine Media? In this blog series I mentioned a 2010 book by psychologist and social critic Dr. Mack Hicks entitled The Digital Pandemic—Reestablishing Face-to-Face Contact in the Electronic Age. In his book Hicks spends a lot of time talking about two overarching personality types: Gatherers and Hunters. Here’s how I described these two personality types in my blog series:
In my blog series I suggested that one can find an almost archetypal struggle between Hunters and Gatherers in the 1950s western movie Shane. As movie critics have pointed out, Shane is essentially a remake of the Cane and Abel story from the Old Testament. As mythologist Joseph Campbell often told his audiences, Abel was associated with sheep farming while Cane was associated with cattle herding. Simply, Abel was a Gatherer and Cane was a Hunter. Psychologist David Anderegg (in his book Nerds) describes Gatherers as people of thought, and Hunters as people of doing. Both Hicks and Anderegg suggest that President Obama embodies the Gatherer mindset with its focus on mental worlds, and the second President Bush would be a Hunter, a doer out in the physical world.
In the movie Shane, we see Alan Ladd (who plays Shane) struggle with his desire to leave behind his Hunter life (he was a gunslinger) for a more pastoral or Gatherer existence (living with a family of sheep farmers). Sadly, Shane is not able to throw off his Hunter history and rides off into the proverbial sunset with a young (impressionable) farm boy chasing along yelling, “Shane, come back Shane!” What the Old Testament and Shane stories tell us is that the struggle between the Hunter and Gatherer archetypes has been with us from the beginning of recorded history and persists even today.
Several of you have emailed me asking for more examples of Hunters and Gatherers in the movies. Thanks for your comments and interest in comparing and contrasting the Gatherer and Hunter personality types. In the rest of this post (by popular demand) I’ll look at what happens when Hunters and Gatherers go to the movies. In the interest of time I’ll be pulling these descriptions mostly from memory (which is always risky), so forgive me if the details are a bit off. You bet, Wikipedia and IMDb will be my friends here. Lets go to the movies.
Saving Private Ryan (1998) – Given that this is a WWII movie set against the backdrop of the Normandy invasion, it tips decidedly in the direction of the Hunter archetype. But one of the many subplots focuses on the struggle between the Gatherer and Hunter personality types. There’s a character in the movie who I have dubbed Map Man. He’s Corporal Timothy Upham, who was a translator (he speaks fluent German) and map reader. Captain John Miller (played by Tom Hanks) is ordered to find Private Ryan (played by Matt Damon). When Miller meets Map Man for the first time, it’s clear that Map Man has gathered together a number of maps but has never had to use them in any significant “doing” way. We also see that Map Man is rather clumsy and fumbles a lot. Miller cuts to the chase and asks Map Man to provide him with the map (out of many) that will help him find Private Ryan. Then Miller orders Map Man to come along and venture out into the land of Hunters. It is clear that Map Man is very reluctant to leave behind the security of his Gatherer existence and face the perils of being a Hunter.
What follows is Map Man’s tumultuous transition from Gatherer to Hunter. Along the way Map Man is duped by a German soldier. (The german soldier persuades Map Man to let him live by playing on Map Man’s heart strings.) This ends up being a pivotal event for Map Man as we will see. The climax of the Gatherer versus Hunter conflict for Map Man comes toward the end of the movie when Miller’s men have to defend a small town against advancing Germans. Suffice it to say that during this climatic scene bullets are flying and bombs are exploding everywhere. It’s mayhem. Map Man is given the sole task of carrying ammunition and delivering it where it is needed most. He fails in this Hunter task. Because he is not able to deliver ammunition in a timely fashion, several of his comrades die. Map Man ultimately freezes and crumbles into a shaking mass at the bottom of a set of stairs. I would suggest that this represents Map Man’s inability to move up from Gatherer to Hunter. In this crumbled and defeated state, a german soldier (who has just killed American soldiers waiting for Map Man’s ammunition delivery) walks by Map Man, pauses as if to ask himself, “Should I kill him?” and walks off as if to say, “No, this coward is already dead.”
Although Map Man fails and soldiers die as a result, both the town and Private Ryan are saved. But Map Man’s transition is not yet over. He encounters the german soldier who earlier had duped him. Once again the german soldier begins to dupe Map Man by pleading for his life. Map Man is tired of being duped and used, and ends up killing the german with a sense of newly acquired conviction. We can visibly see Map Man change from Gatherer to Hunter. His face changes, his body changes, he’s more erect, his whole essence and presence changes. He’s now a Hunter. He seems to have clear purpose and direction, not unlike putting a north arrow on a map. Pulling from mythology once more, in Map Man we see Parsifal (the holy fool) as he moves from being a foolish boy to being a wise and discerning man.
The Die Hard Series (1988, 1990, 1995, 2007, 2013) – The first Die Hard movie, starring Bruce Willis, came out in 1988. I would suggest that the first Die Hard movie was almost exclusively a Hunter movie with only hints of anything approaching a Gatherer sensibility. The first Die Hard movie is probably not a good place to look for any take on the Gatherer versus Hunter conflict. However, I would suggest that the Die Hard series itself goes through a transition and by movie number four—2007’s Live Free or Die Hard—a strong Gatherer sensibility enters the scene.
Live Free or Die Hard pairs together the Hunter character of detective John McClane (played by Willis) and the Gatherer character of Matt Farrell (played by Justin Long). Farrell is a young computer whiz kid and hacker extraordinaire who ultimately falls for McClane’s daughter. The main plot of the movie centers on tracking down an Internet terrorist. Ergo, there are now actual bombs and digital bombs blowing up. I would suggest that this installment of the Die Hard series is the first to acknowledge that Hunters (represented by McClane) will have to learn to work with Gatherers (represented by Farrell). For most of the movie Farrell gathers the necessary technical information required to track the Internet terrorist while McClane does the heavy lifting (e.g., kicking butt). Here we see the back worker McClane working with the brain worker Farrell. But there’s a twist. Like with Map Man above, in order for Farrell to transition to the world of the Hunter he has to kill one of the bad guys. In the movie we witness an actual death. However, in archetypal or even psychoanalytic terms, I would suggest that this is some form of killing the Gatherer personality so that the Hunter personality can flourish.
Before I end I’d like to point out that many popular TV programs today depict Hunters and Gatherers working together in relative peace and harmony. Here are a few examples:
If you have a media example of Gatherers and Hunters working side by side, please feel free to leave them in a comment. As a general suggestion, as you watch any media—TV, movies, web episodes—see if you can recognize the Hunter and Gatherer archetypes. Further, observe how they are depicted interacting with each other. Finally, see if you can recognize any so-called “right of passage” from one to the other. As the Saving Private Ryan and Die Hard examples above point out, it would seem that the passage is generally one-way—from Gatherer to Hunter—and involves killing. Why might this be? To conclude I’ll take a stab at answering this question.
I would suggest that the killing associated with the one-way transition from Gatherer to Hunter often depicted in movies reflects a fear that machines might one day win the right to make life and death decisions for us. This is the basic fear expressed in the Terminator movie series. I would further suggest that this is the same fear often expressed when conversations turn to the subject of systems engineering. People are worried, with good cause, that the so-called kill decison is now being systematically turned over to systems engineers—Gatherers. For example, consider the following two articles (the second offers commentary on the first):
With Drone Warfare, America Approaches the Robo-Rubicon
Death by Algorithm Is the Ultimate Indignity Says 2 Star General
Recent reports (see the first article above) that the White House has authorized use of drones against US civilians only serve to concretize fears over the possibility that robots will receive the kill decision. Consider this quote by Latiff & McCloskey (authors of the first article above):
Susan Faludi, writing in her book Stiffed, and Lt.Col. Dave Grossman, writing in his book On Killing, both point to the rise of systems engineering and the passing of the kill decision from man to machine (starting with the Vietnam War) as constituting a huge pshycological blow to people in general and to the Hunter mindset in specific. I wonder if we as a society are now allowing a young stage of development—mechanical gathering—to now become manifest at the level of adult society. As systems engineering meets the Gatherer (now allowed to become an adult), we encounter the machine (mechanical Gatherer) in the machine (systems engineering). Once these two worlds meld or short-circuit against each other, machines acquiring the kill decision will not be far off. Stories of transition from Gatherer to Hunter via some type of killing process (i.e., Saving Private Ryan and Live Free or Die Hard) express hope that machines will never acquire the kill decision. Again, drones overhead will serve to dash these hopes. For more on this theme, request a copy of my executive summary of Carl Jung’s final book (published in the late 1950s) Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. You may wish to take another look at my reprint of Jay Nelson’s article entitled Robots, Robots Everywhere (March 19th, 2013).
One last suggestion: Keep the frame “death by algorithm” in mind because I believe it will come to increasingly define days ahead. If you happen to come upon a group of teenagers sitting around a table at a restaurant furiously tapping away on their screens not paying any attention to each other (or, for that matter, the people around them), think Death by Algorithm. If you happen to read MIT researcher Sherry Turkle’s 2012 book Alone Together—Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, think Death by Algorithm. Or if you happen to hear that over a billion people are now on Facebook, think Death by Algorithm. Hmmm … maybe that’s why the zombie and vampire archetypes have reemerged with a vengeance (especially in the movies).