The amazon- unnatural histories!

[Amelanchier]

We live in a world of "have's" and "have nots", its very easy for the "have's" to say how wonderful the world is.

 

Yes it is. There is a fundamental problem waiting for us though if we disregard the information collected by the 'haves' on the basis that it is all biased - the 'have nots' aren't doing a lot of research. So we either take the information we have and scrutinise it, double check it and critically analyse it or we have nothing more than guesswork.

 

Clearly things could be better. We should have less poverty, disease, crime (and all the other bad things to numerous to mention), and there are problems that humanity will have to address in the near future (adaption to climatic variability, the eventually rising price of conventional fossil fuels, etc etc) but things are better than they were.

[RobArb]

Watched this the other night, some thought provoking stuff going on!

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b45zh

 

Sent from Rob's GalaxySII

Edited January 24, 2012 by RobArb

[Amelanchier]

Yanamamo - no. Kuna, Ngobe, Boruca - Yes

 

Predictably I chose the Yanamamo (or Yanamami) for their well documented history of violence, some of it documented by a brown Brazilian woman for the record (does that make it more truthful?). You presumably met idyllic harmonious people living at one with nature, no matter. Perhaps yours is the white man's history?

 

I doubt that, no matter how well travelled I was (and I'll admit I'm not), I could ever consider my limited interactions as a single individual would overthrow the corpus of modern anthropology.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Amelanchier
spelling

[tommer9]

Sometimes I wonder if Mad Max is actually a film that depicts a realistic future scenario.

 

Modern society is built on a abudance of non renewable fossil fuels & other resources that are going to get increasing more expensive & uneconomical to extract. Question is can there be a smooth transition away from them without a collapse or was malthus right after all?

 

What population can the world support without any oil based fertillizer boosting crop yields or the extraction of fossilized water from aquifers.....

 

One that shrugs off the amount of meat we eat. A major part of deforestation is due to the production of soya and the grazing of animals (cattle mostly) for meat....soya is one of the biggest ingredients in animal feeds. It also requires huge amounts of nutrients to grow in otherwise impoverished (former) rainforest soil, which has its own negative implications too.

[gibbon]

Predictably I chose the Yanamamo (or Yanamami) for their well documented history of violence, some of it documented by a brown Brazilian woman for the record (does that make it more truthful?). You presumably met idyllic harmonious people living at one with nature, no matter. Perhaps yours is the white man's history?

 

I doubt that, no matter how well travelled I was (and I'll admit I'm not), I could ever consider my limited interactions as a single individual would overthrow the corpus of modern anthropology.

 

No, I met proud, displaced, people trying to work out how they could maintain their culture in this ever changing world. You are right to point out my limited experiences of these cultures, and possibly the errors of my veiws. My opinions are made from the experiences I have had meeting these people, conversations I have had with them and other western people who have spent a long time living with and learning from these people. I have friends in Latin America and Africa who work closely with indigenous groups and have a deeper understanding of their cultures than most who may read this. Yes there were inter tribal battles in almost all cultures, look at the world today is it any different? Often stories and tales of violent murdering neighboring tribes were elaborated stories that helped to maintain social and political boundaries between the tribes, which helped to maintain a peaceful status quo. “Don’t cross the river cos they will murder your whole family and eat your brains”, so we don’t cross the river.

 

When Europeans “invaded” both the new and old worlds, boundaries between new countries did not represent these existing tribal boundaries. When people are displaced by the settlement of others from foreign lands than surely further inter-tribal disputes will arise as people fight for what habitat land remains. When 2 or more tribes with different cultures are expected to self govern and rule a country who’s boundaries were drawn up by white men, is it any wander that conflicts occur? This is exactly what is happening all over Africa. It is also worth noting that some indigenous groups do not live in their original homelands but have settled new areas because of western pressures. The Kuna Indians of Panama were originally from Colombia but moved to Panama to avoid war and disease (Conquistadors?). This was a forced move and I doubt it was peaceful.

 

Your description in the earlier post described short and possibly violent lives which these people led before Europeans settled their lands. Lets not forget that the British Empire saw almost every other culture as barbaric savages who must be saved from themselves and in the process destroyed the very cultures who held the key to sustainable living. What did the indigenous people gain from this? Was it medicines derived from plants they already used but in the process lost the knowledge of how to utilize these these plants locally? Religion which was at odds with local beliefs and a monetary system which ultimately serves to benefit the wealthiest folk. What did we gain – taxes, cheap disposable labour (they are just savages remember) and a shed load more resources to make us all feel richer.

 

I have had the pleasure to meet short lived, frog eating, witch doctor worshipping (or local plant expert and medical man as he might be referred locally), spear wielding savages. The one lasting impression that I take away with me is that without the economic trappings of the “developed world”, these people smile, wave, laugh, share, embrace life, community and family values far more than we are able to here. I question who are the real savages on this planet.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

No, I met proud, displaced, people trying to work out how they could maintain their culture in this ever changing world.

 

I have had the pleasure to meet short lived, frog eating, witch doctor worshipping (or local plant expert and medical man as he might be referred locally), spear wielding savages. The one lasting impression that I take away with me is that without the economic trappings of the “developed world”, these people smile, wave, laugh, share, embrace life, community and family values far more than we are able to here. I question who are the real savages on this planet.

 

There is nothing that puts my back up more than assumptions regarding the morality of other cultures and whether or not they are "happy" I agree with you:001_cool:

 

So according to Tony western society has the moral high ground, civilised and living the dream?

[Amelanchier]

No, I met proud, displaced, people... ...The one lasting impression that I take away with me is that without the economic trappings of the “developed world”, these people smile, wave, laugh, share, embrace life, community and family values far more than we are able to here. I question who are the real savages on this planet.

 

My point wasn't that indigenous peoples are less morally or culturally advanced than us, nor that they would not have been better of if historically left alone it was simply to say that the average person alive today is better off on average than their ancestors on any criteria that you care to measure.

 

The reality of the indigenous life is very different (as I'm sure you have experienced) from that imagined by those that wish for us to smash our technology, return to bartering, live in yurts and live off the land. It's hard and one must embrace different (note not lower or higher) expectations. As a result I find the glibness of the "everything would be better if we lived in harmony with nature" mindset epically naive and essentially insulting. It basically demeans the ethics of modernity (and by extension, my ethics) in favour of an unreal never never land.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Amelanchier
clarification

[Amelanchier]

I knew someone wouldn't bother to read the actual content of my posts, would pick the bits they felt they could deal with, and come up with some sort of parallel arguement that was utterly divorced from the spirit and letter of the original.

 

There is nothing that puts my back up more than assumptions regarding the morality of other cultures and whether or not they are "happy"...

 

You just made exactly that assumption. You assumed they were happy. Anyway, leaving that amusing error aside, presumably you somehow interpreted what I wrote as saying that I considered indigenous people 'unhappy'? I didn't. There is nothing that puts my back up more than assumptions regarding the content of my posts...

 

So according to Tony western society has the moral high ground, civilised and living the dream?

 

Is this what I said? Did I single out 'western society' for comparison? Did we discuss morality? Civilisation? Nope. That detour into your ranting territory is closed i'm afraid.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

I knew someone wouldn't bother to read the actual content of my posts, would pick the bits they felt they could deal with, and come up with some sort of parallel arguement that was utterly divorced from the spirit and letter of the original.

 

 

 

You just made exactly that assumption. You assumed they were happy. Anyway, leaving that amusing error aside, presumably you somehow interpreted what I wrote as saying that I considered indigenous people 'unhappy'? I didn't. There is nothing that puts my back up more than assumptions regarding the content of my posts...

 

 

 

Is this what I said? Did I single out 'western society' for comparison? Did we discuss morality? Civilisation? Nope. That detour into your ranting territory is closed i'm afraid.

 

I was expecting it to be a little harder than that to get you going tony!

 

wouldnt we all envy a society that sacrifices the mother in laws and naughty members of its society!

 

I am just teasing, good debate though, never expected that from a heads up on a program!

[gibbon]

My point wasn't that indigenous peoples are less morally or culturally advanced than us, nor that they would not have been better of if historically left alone it was simply to say that the average person alive today is better off on average than their ancestors on any criteria that you care to measure.

 

QUOTE]

 

That’s what I call a sweeping statement. Do you consider the children working 12 hours a day in diamond mines under the AK47 swinging militias with whom westerners consort, or the people who are forced to prostitute out their own kids because the oil companies have trashed the forests which once provided all their needs and now they live in sprawling urban shanty towns with no prospect of work. What about all the people dying of aids in Africa, not because they are promiscuous and devoid of morals, but because the men have to work in these mines hundreds miles from the homelands and use prostitutes (as all mining cultures do), and intern return home to infect their wives.