“We are told that modern couples aren’t as flexible as the Melanesians and many of the societies surveyed earlier. Now that readers have more details, perhaps we have some insight into this lack of ‘flexibility’. Perhaps modern people don’t like the whole package that comes with such male dominance and control? Perhaps, looking at the Melanesians, modern Western women don’t think men should be able to buy, pimp out, and discard young women that way?”

“The single most important human insight to be gained from this way of comparing societies is perhaps the realization that everything could have been different in our own society – that the way we live is only one among innumerable ways of life which humans have adopted. If we glance sideways and backwards, we will quickly discover that modern society, with its many possibilities and seducing offers, its dizzying complexity and its impressive technological advances, is a way of life which has not been tried out for long. Perhaps, psychologically speaking, we have just left the cave: in terms of the history of our species, we have but spent a moment in modern societies. (..) Anthropology may not provide the answer to the question of the meaning of life, but at least it can tell us that there are many ways in which to make a life meaningful.”

“We moderns are great compartmentalizers, perhaps never more so than when hungry.”

“I don’t think we should try to make space our own. I believe that as modern people we should live in mobility. We should always be moving.”

“What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!”

“Male dominance in society always means that out of public sight, in the private, ahistorical world of men with women, men are sexually dominating women.”