zach fauver, a powerful thought

“Too say that we are snatching food from our children’s’ mouths is to put it too gently; what we are snatching from them is the very possibility of feeding themselves.” This is a bold claim from Eisenberg’s text, The Ecology of Eden, but the punch packs some truth. We are taking from and abusing the earth in a manner that does not allow it to naturally cycle everything back at a healthy rate. Do we ever think about how much energy it takes to have a nice prepared meal on our plates? Or how much is wasted in our developed means of waste disposal? Its quotes like these from the far right extremist like Ann Coulter that makes me hesitant to admit that I am a republican, “its your planet, take it, rape it.” Has she not even used logic and considered the reproductions for the future generations? It is pure selfishness to support continued destruction of our planet and not take steps toward conservation. So next time you enjoy that meal at the dinner table, or flush your toilet, take a minute to think about the bigger picture and what the world might look like for the next generations.

Jackie Trono - Homo narrans?

A few weeks ago, Dr. Redick mentioned (and we briefly discussed) Walter Fischer’s work, “Narration As a Paradigm of Human Communication.” (Fischer’s work is available [in segments] on the WebCT site for our class.) Here, Fischer presents his argument for the primacy of the narrative paradigm over the rational-world paradigm. Each paradigm comes with its own presuppositions and implications about the nature of humans and their interpersonal interaction.

The rational-world paradigm presupposes five things, according to Fischer. They are: (1) humans are essentially rational beings, (2) discourse that features clear-cut inferential and implicative structures is standard, (3) the conduct of argument is situational, (4) rationality is determined by subject-matter, knowledge, and argumentative ability, and (5) the world is a set of logical puzzles that are solvable by analysis and reason. With these five presuppositions in mind, one can see that the rational-world paradigm suggests that argument is the means of being human; thus, being rational or learned means being competent in argument.

On the other hand, Fischer’s narrative paradigm presupposes that (1) humans are essentially storytellers, (2) “good reasons,” which vary in form among situations, genres, and media of communication, are standard, (3) the practice of good reasons is ruled multifariously by history, biography, culture, and character, among other forces, (4) rationality relies on the nature of persons as narrative beings, and (5) the world is a set of stories to be chosen to further the process of continual re-creation. Arising from these presuppositions is the concept that narrative rationality operates by identification rather than deliberation. According to Fischer, there are three reasons why narrative is more universal and efficacious than argument. They are: (1) narration comes closer to actual experience of the world, (2) narrative probability and fidelity are innate, not learned, and (3) narration works by suggestion and identification. As Fischer writes, “stories are enactments of the whole mind in concert with itself.”

I’m not sure with whom I side on the subject of the fundamental state of man. Fischer would have us view man as Homo narrans, man the storyteller. The wider world has us as Homo sapiens, man the wise. In a recent discussion with Dr. Teschner, he suggested that perhaps we are really Homo ludens, man the player. The shift in emphasis from Fischer to Teschner is that man either mediates his experience through language, through reflection, or that he simply acts. In the course of his essay on the narrative paradigm Fischer quotes Heidegger: “We are a conversation…conversation and its unity support our existence.” Do I agree with Heidegger? Here, I recall Dr. Redick’s reading of Helen Keller’s ascent to knowledge through language. Dr. Redick claimed in class that we cannot have differentiated knowledge without language, and I suppose I agree. Notably, however, all of us have had experiences we would refer to as ineffable. Yes, this is a word for the experience, but it really tells us nothing of the experience except that ineffability, our inability to articulate its contents, is its main feature linguistically. In many cases ineffable experiences are the most behaviorally altering in one’s repertoire. Considering Heidegger again, I’m still uncertain. I do think that there is more to the human experience than the constituents of his language would allow. Perhaps the ineffable experience is incommunicable, but I don’t think that its incommunicability in any way diminishes its efficacy.

What is more primary – man’s status as an active/productive creature or his status as a linguistically-mediated/narrative being? Is there a hard distinction between the two states? I find this topic enthralling and yet I feel no closer to a clear answer after countless hours of consideration. I suppose that’s one of the larger problems for humans in general. We have these experiences, we reflect on them, we mediate them with language, but the speed at which we process the experience never nears the speed at which we have new experiences that we must then reflect upon and mediate with language. To confound the problem further, the process often occurs in a random order, e.g. we reflect upon a previous experience, try to mediate it with language, and create new complex metaphysically problematic experiences. There is a mysterious interplay among these states of man, and I don’t know that I’ll ever feel satisfied as to its solution.

Katie Lamp- Food for thought

Yes, the title is very cliched, but I think it is appropriate because I have often stopped to think about food. You know, what we eat, when we eat, why we eat what we eat, and all of that. After yesterday's video on food and how it contributes to emotional occassions and connections, I thought about food even more. In recent years, one of the hot topics has been food, including a focus on dieting and just where the food we eat comes from. It's almost like people are obsessed with having the most natural foods, eating exactly the right proportions, and eating only the best foods available. For a long time, food hasn't just been about nutritional value and survival. Non-human animals eat for survival and they eat to make up the caloric expenditure of foraging. Humans eat at parties, restaurants, weddings, family celebrations and many other occassions. Yes, people have to eat in order to survive and nutrition is very important in maintaining a healthy body, but there are so many other reasons people eat. If people ate simply to survive, there wouldn't be a problem with obesity, there wouldn't be eating disorders, and there wouldnt be as many brands and varieties of food available as there are today. The are as many reasons people eat as things they can choose to eat, and this is what is interesting to me. When someone is planning a party, food is important. A wedding- once again, food is very important. The restaurant business has thrived because people associate food with social settings. Most people have a favorite food or foods, and maybe this is just because I'm in college, but I know that I myself and other people get very excited about good food and going out to eat at restaurants that we like. If eating was not a highly social event, the catering business wouldn't exist, and I really don't think food just wouldn't be as interesting anymore. Anthropomorphism aside, animals only have "favorite" foods based on biological needs, not based on what they had at their birthday or what their parents fed them growing up.
Something else I have considered is how the creation of grocery stores and restaurants has made us stop thinking about what's in our food and where our food comes from. We are told from a young age to not put things in our mouths that aren't food, but parents and caregivers rarely explain all of the ingredients in the food they do allow their children to put in their mouths. When I ate my yogurt this morning, I didn't even think about the process by which that yogurt was made and how it ended up in the container with a Yoplait label on it, but maybe I should have given that a second thought. When we get food at the dining hall or at a restaurant, we usually do not know how it was prepared or where the ingredients came from. Most processed foods have ingredients that the average person can't even pronounce. What does this say? In our fast-paced society, we haven't stopped to slow down and really examine what we're putting our bodies. While I know I'm not going to do this all the time, and I will continue to put processed foods in my body without looking at the ingredients because I trust health inspectors to make sure my food is okay, it's definitely something I wish everyone thought about more often.

Gordon Mallonee - Food and Community

Yesterday in class we watched a movie that showed the different ways people are brought together with food. As a society the act of eating can be very social or personal depending on how you go about it. Taking a girl out to dinner and paying for it is different than going out to dinner with a group of friends for someone birthday. In the movie one of the examples of how food is used to bring people together was the wedding where lots of friends and family came together for a special event and shared good food. A more personal example from the movie was when it talked about the Muslim tradition of Ramadan. During the month of Ramadan eating is only done before Sun-up and after Sundown. At the end of the month there is a big feast where family gets together and celebrates.

There is a very different community and tradition, that is in the developing stages, here at CNU. A group called the Urban Foragers is trying to impact the large amount of food that is wasted everyday. We do this by going to Grocery stores and instead of going inside to get our food we go around back and take a look in the dumpster. Everyday perfectly good food is thrown out and waisted. I have found Milk thats expiration date was weeks away. The only thing wrong with it was it had a dent in the container. So naturally its not good and must be thrown out. Noe where the community comes into play with the Urban Foragers is that we are planing to have a what we call a "group dive" where everyone goes to different locations and gets what they can and bring it to a place where it can be combined and a feast prepared. Then we will all enjoy a sit down dinner that did not coast us anything other than the time it took to gather the food that was on its way to the dump. This type of community is doing good for the world while at the same time keeping a little extra money in our pockets. :-P

However the reality of things is very sad. Think about how much food you wast everyday and the fact that there are still starving people all over the world. It is not right that America, as rich as we are, waste so much instead of trying to help others. So even you can make a differences, no matter how small you think it might be, it still helps.


Go Green or Die!

Katie Lamp- What makes a place sacred?

I find it interesting how something like a house, a building or a field can have special meaning attached to it simply because an important event occurred there or an important person was said to have lived or been there. Historical examples and Biblical examples extend further back into human existence, and places such as celebrities' or politicians' homes are considered superficially sacred by many people in today's society. With historical events, there are national parks and monuments devoted to buildings, statues and fields that are considered historically significant. Whether an important document was signed in a building or a battle took place on a field, suddenly four walls, a ceiling and a floor become an important place or a stretch of grassy field becomes a battlefield. When an elementary school class takes a field trip to a monument or a national park to learn about the historical things that happened there, the kids only associate the place with the event because of what they are told. If a child went to a field or saw a building without a teacher or other adult telling them something important happened there, they would simply see the field or the building, plain and simple. Some places with Biblical significance are considered especially sacred, and people will travel from miles around to pray at or simply see these places. When someone attaches religious or spiritual significance to a place, they see past the material aspects of the place, such as the structure of a statue or building, and see what it means to them. While more superficial, the homes of well-known and famous people in today's society are considered sacred on some level as well. Places that are frequented by celebrities or politicians, such as stores, clubs and restaurants, become well-known and get more business because of the well-known people who go to those places. The fact that people will go to a place just because a celebrity has been there shows that in today's society, people place value in the places that famous people have been or have lived. I think that while a place that has Biblical or historical significance has a deeper meaning than a place well-known because of a famous person, all of these places have something in common: they have become sacred in someone's mind because of the stories told about that place. The stories people tell make the places in those stories memorable, and this is how I think those places become sacred.

Sunset at the River

Today I went down to the James River to enjoy the sunset with a friend of mine. There were several observations that I found noteworthy. One was the mix of raw nature and the development of man’s hand. If you fix your eyes on one spot you could be under the illusion that you were in the middle of nowhere. All the eye can see is the rocks on the beach, the vast plain of water, and a beautifully colored sky with a sliver of the sun peeking above the horizon. Unfortunately, we are not in the middle of nowhere, a glance over my shoulder and there are cars driving along a busy road. A look down the beach will reveal one of the largest shipyards in the world. We counted nine contours of planes flying overhead. So while it was nice to imagine, even if only for a second, that it was just us and nature, the truth is we where in the midst of man’s development.
The second note worthy event was the bombardment of hundreds of seagulls. Several yards in front of us in the water a fish or something had died and the gulls were fighting for a piece of the meat. They where swarming and squawking all around us, I felt like I was in a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. It was a crazy sensation being in the middle of their struggle to feed themselves and survive. Groups of about fifty birds would dive bomb all at once forcing the group of fifty already on the fish to move. I had never seen anything like it.

Kelly Moody- Do we now consider man unnatural?

I bought a bottle of this water, "Fiji Water" that is apparently supposed to be better than other water because of where it comes from. They advertise on the fact that the water 'has never been touched by man' until you open it yourself and take a drink. that makes me think: what value have we put on the human touch? Maybe we are even subconsciously aware of our effect on our world and that it is mostly a negative effect, therefore bottled water such as "Fiji Water" that has never been contaminated by man sells more than other water that could be filtered or manipulated by man by chemicals to get its purity. It goes to show that we still innately appreciate the value of an ecological system void of our involvement in it, void of our abuses on it because of our spiritual disconnectedness to it. Where the water comes from--is like an Eden, that we all can participate in by drinking the water. People buy it because it is somehow more special, more holy than water than has been touched by man. Maybe that is our spiritual connection to the ecosystem now--the holy and sacred is a place that hasn't been affected by man yet, we may not feel that connection with our immediate world because of the kind of culture we have created, because of the way we see the world now that has been shaped by man. So we get it shipped from a land far away, while we can still ignore the problems of our immediate world by indulging in something that we don't have to sacrifice for.

Also on the bottle: "Fiji's water aquifer is in a virgin ecosystem at the edge of a primitive rain forest, thousands of miles from the nearest industrialized continent..."

The terminology there is interesting, the emphasis in the advertisement is on the purity of the water because man is nowhere near it. The poison of humanity is not around so it gives people enough initiative to want to buy and drink it. (But i was also thinking here, how could this be possible? In order to even bottle this water at all there needed by be some kind of industry. though man doesn't directly touch the water..so they say..it still has to have the capability of mass production, and that means industry.)
We could all participate in the 'spiritual union with the untouched Eden that Fiji water comes from, but taste wise, can you really tell much of a difference between Fiji water and any other water? That's what makes it spiritual(though we'd like to blame it on consumer fads and popular culture, but all of that is fueled by our value of this world untouched by man), the fact that we would spend more money to buy a bottle of water "untouched by man until you drink it" versus Dasani or any other water that could cheaper, tastes the same, but doesn't come from the same place.
Also i thought this quote by Daniel Quinn was interesting:
"...Some heavy lines have grown up in recent decades around the concept of "natural." Natural foods are good foods, foods that come to us, as it were, directly from nature, without the addition of artificial colors or preservatives. This notion has been extended in all sorts of directions. Clothes made from "natural" fibers contribute to a more "natural" lifestyle. Shampoos made from "natural" ingredients are presumably better for your hair than shampoos made from ingredients synthesized in a laboratory. Thinking along these lines has produced, by a kind of sympathetic magic, the notion that everything man made is unnatural, and therefore unhealthy and quite possibly evil. If something comes to us from bees or sheep or flowers, it's natural and okay, but if it comes to us from humans it's unnatural and noxious. Humanity has gradually come to be perceived as ITSELF unnatural--as somehow no longer belonging to nature. When a beaver fells a tree, this is a "natural" event. When a man fells a tree, this is an unnatural event--perverted, unholy." (www.ishmael.org, from one of his speeches)

Myths - Christopher Carter

I suppose this blog is starting off with random posts, so i'll go with Monday's class, just like Amy did.

Myths are amazing. I can't think of many things that are better at passing time than reading myths. I even don't mind, as a Christian, looking at some of the teachings of the Bible as potential "myths", because no matter how real they are, they are still great stories and have great value. My favorite types of myths are the legends of Greek Mythology, because they are the most vivid stories ever told. Not only are they colorful, but they also give us explanations for everyday occurrences very similar to the stories in the Bible. It used to bother me when people would comment on the Biblical creation story, or the Parables as "myth", but it doesn't both me anymore because they are just as "mythical" as the legends of Buddha and his witnessing of the four sights.

To disagree with the last post, I think it is important to question myths all of the time. Even though they are extremely enjoyable, you can still question the fact that they actually existed, or in some cases where the "myth" is taken as truth, whether it is justified. It's natural to question when we find out that points of authority are not telling us the "whole" story. If the church told us that we can only ask God for forgiveness through them and not on our own, it would be important to question this belief, and look into the Bible to possibly find a story that can help us find out whether or not that is right. Of course, you cannot look into the Bible for an answer to everything, it's just an example.

To conclude, we shouldn't look at just one source of myths, we should look at them all. If we spend all of our time looking at just one viewpoint it would be hard to relate with anyone outside of your faith. Of course, this is what many want, but I enjoy looking at all myths, whether ancient or still practiced, to see the source of belief and practice for all people. I think it's easily possible to be constantly questioning all myths, and still believe in your own; as long as you question it as well from time to time.

Religion and Mythology --Amy Ouypron

So I really enjoyed our class lecture on Monday-- the continuation about Mythology and how it relates to our cultural perspective on the world. I think it finally clicked for me! I mean, when I was younger I had certain ideals that I took to heart. I was a Christian, I believed in Christmas, and most importantly, I had an imagination that was far more powerful than anything I was learning in school. I suppose like most people, growing older and repeatedly hearing about "evolution" and the simple rationalities of science begins to ruin that whole area of thought. It's as if your creative orb begins to implode upon itself because you're bombarded with so many questions that without even knowing it, you've become a philosopher. Even worse, once you've recognized this new "philosophical mindset" you've embarked upon (at least in my case) I began to pride myself on questioning everything until eventually the world became nothing but itself. How boring.
I think a lot of people get into a class like this one and don't really understand the actual concept (I didn't in many ways). In reality, I suppose that a philosopher is at the opposite end of the spectrum from religion with gray areas such as Buddhism in between. Anyways, my point being is that I thought it was very interesting about the idea that a philosopher questions because he is no longer experiencing "the myth." He needs to dissect and analyze his experiences in order to find an explanation and such a course of action usually becomes too common and overly abused. In fact, isn't always questioning a plain waste of time? I suppose a fine line between innate natural instincts and being a good person can often exist but wouldn't this explain why some people seem to just be simplistic and happy knowing who they are and what they believe in without having to even take into consideration the yammer of their opposition?
So my point being is, if a person should do anything each day, it is to just stop thinking so damn much and just "live."

Kelly Moody, on the note of nostalgia

After reading Kim-Chi Le's post, it also reminded me of a value I put on a place. My grandparent's farm. I am from a really rural part of southern Virginia where farming is a pretty regular practice. Well, it used to be. The government now pays the tobacco farmers millions of dollars not to farm anymore. Small family farming is not sufficient anymore, they have better ways of mass producing any product that is needed. My grandfather used to grow tobacco and I have memories as a child running around the old hand built tobacco barns full of drying tobacco leaves. I remember seeing strange faces and strange languages of people from Mexico, who came up every season in swarms to help the farmers who were loyal to them in return by giving them a free place to stay and food in exchange for work.
As well as the smells of tobacco and sounds of strange languages, I remember my grandmother's food. She grows just about everything in her gardens. It is a regular thing in my town for everyone to grow tons of food and then give the majority of it away to neighbors and friends. It is a great thing except when you'd love to have a good strawberry in December and you can't have one because it is not season, yet in the summer there are so many that you get sick of them. The summer time is the season for fruits; cantalopes and watermelons get left on our back porch on a regular basis. Nothing beats my grandmother's fruits and vegetables. She even made her own biscuits and jelly. Every time i would go to her house she would insist I eat some of her food. She would pull out mason jars of string beans, tomatos, pickles, butterbeans, and fix a big meal with homemade biscuits and always ice cream after. I am picky when i go to the grocery store, especially here in Newport News. Most of the canned vegetables taste really terrible. I grew up eating garden-grown foods and it is hard to adapt to the mass produced versions of these things. There is a certain affinity I have for the taste that comes with eating my grandmother's food, as well as the memory. There is so much more that comes with eating a bowl of my grandmother's garden grown string beans versus the canned version they sell in the grocery store. It's not the same. For someone else, the canned version is all they know. For someone else, the canned version could be the best they've ever tasted. The difference with my experience is the sense of quality i get with eating them, and the nostalgic quality of their indulgence.

The attachment i have to my grandparent's farm comes from years and years of comforting appeal to many of my senses, and the love that came with the appeal of those senses. I am automatically happy when i go see them or walk around the farm. My memories of the farm are a continuance and overlap my mother's memories. It also have value to my mom because she has memories of her own, growing up there when the world was a lot different than it is now. The place comes with many myths: the deaf horse, rescuing baby deer, the wandering mule, the sad deaths of dogs and cats, times when the 'wolves' came, the beetle years, the constant flow of cows in and out of the pastures, all having different spots, characteristics and personalities every year, even a cemetery is supposed to be somewhere out in the woods with stories of its own, stories of my grandpa's family who lived there before him, and those who lived before them. The place is sacred now because it has history, it has stories, it has my memories, and my mothers, and our value of the place is based on our knowledge of the myths that exist there, and our own personal attachments that have grown from having that place. But despite that, the feeling is real. The feeling I have when I am there is the same feeling the Aborigine's must get when they visit their holy sites. Because it's not just about spirituality, its about value. It's about how the place affects your life. In that way, the value i put on my grandparent's farm is my spirituality, is my truth. The myths that come with the place create my truth, shape my life.

LE, KIM-CHI - The place had special meaning

The place that has a special meaning to me was my native home, VIET-NAM.

I grew up in a town in Viet-Nam. The country is lush. My family lived in a beautiful place. About one mile behind my house was a street for cars, and about two miles from my house was the Mekong River. When I stood in my yard, I could see the cars run on the road and the boats sail on the river. In front of my house was a small road close to the river.

I lived in a tropical location. This climate helped us grow food easily. Vegetables grew by themselves easily. My family was comfortable living there.
We didn’t spend too much money; but we got a lot of benefit from our surroundings.

When the French took over my country, my parent’s house was used as a head quarter for about one hundred military men who were stationed there. In 1954, the French lost. They had to retreat to their country. We came back to live in the house again. But I was surprised! Why was our house so messy? The yard around our house had too much junk. I felt unhappy. My mother asked me, “I think you don’t feel good, do you?” I answered, “I wish it could stay the same. I liked it better before it changed.” My mother answered with a sweet voice. She said, “Don’t be upset any more, sweetheart. Probably, we can clean up! You are more important to me!” and I saw her eyes had turned red. I became quiet. I got nostalgic, my family was happy!
In 1979 I had left my sweet home and came to the USA. I liked living in iet-Nam and I will miss it forever. The weather was always very comfortable, and there were lots of delicious foods, and fruits. The U.S is a great country, but my roots and memories are still in Viet-Nam.

zach fauver Aborigine film

In class last Thursday we viewed a fascinating film on the Aborigines in Australia. There are very few of these people left, but the rest of society can learn a lot from the way they interact and completely depend on nature for survival. It is interesting to note the correlation between our lives and the life of the (I can not remember the birds name so I will call it the Zach bird) Zach bird. This Zach bird dedicates its life to attracting the best female mate possible. It builds an elaborate lair with decorative shells, grass and twigs. The male also puffs out his colorful feathers in order to attract the female. Zach bird goes through all this effort and show so that he can win over and reproduce with the best female possible. Now take a look at males in our society, they work hard so that they are able to afford nice things like cars and houses. They also go to the gym to improve their body and beef up their muscles. The main reason men put forth this effort to have nice things and a nice body, is to win over an attractive female so he can have a family, reproduce, and carry on his family name. Although humans and the Zach birds are completely different entities, they have dedicated their lives to the same pursuit.

WOMEN! Amy Ouypron

Okay, this is random, so...
Last night I went to a party, which by the way is a slightly rare occasion on my part, but heck, you only live life once right? Anyways, I was just hanging out when this guy came up to me and we starting talking and he said "you know you guys run this party?" I didn't really understand what he meant, but he continued on... he explained that if there were no girls at the party, no party would exist. His rationale was that if there were no girls around, why would a bunch of random guys just get drunk and hang out all night?
Well it got me thinking... I mean that totally makes sense but if you delve just a little deeper into the issue it's almost like an epiphany--probably one that many people have come to think of, but I just finally realized!

Man needs woman. I mean, even if it was just a party with a bunch of guys sitting around drinking, I guarantee that at some point they'd be talking about women at some point in the night. It's just such an interesting thing to think about because if you look at history, there's basically a long past of women who were somewhat suppressed by male domination, with a few random queens and innately strong women running things-- Cleopatra, Kadisha, even the idea of Gaea and "Mother Earth." So as a woman, it makes me feel special on my part to think that if there were no woman in nature, what would be the point of man's existence. I mean what would come if Adam didn't have Eve or if Shiva was really only a man? We run this place because if man wants to exist in the future, it's a given that offspring are ideal.

My question is, when did women just let their powers slip? I mean I'm not really a feminist, I don't hate men, they're rather a fun and entertaining part of a well-rounded lifestyle. But look at the big picture: Women may not be so strong, they may be the "gatherers" of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but why do so many women live as if they were worth nothing without the attention of men? Why do they give in so easily to abuse or oppression in certain cultures when if anything, they should be worshiped simply because they exist? Is it that women are born simply knowing in their hearts that confrontation is a waste of energy, or do they only long to find a man who can give them meaning in their lives? Anyways, I just think about these things sometimes. As a women, I speak and say that if anything is missing from various cultures, including that of America, it is the recognition of the importance and greatness of being a woman!

Natures Beings Amy Ouypron

I"m not sure where this one will lead to... but my intentions aimed to discuss something about the National Geographic Aboriginal Tribe video...
So here's a thought: how interesting is it the fact that commercialism and the always increasing industrialization of the world is not only taking a toll on the natural environment--land, water, the ozone--which then affects the animals within that environment, but indeed influxes the extinction of certain animals and (now brace yourself) the extinction of human beings. HUMAN BEINGS! So who gives a damn? I mean a large majority of the world would look at such peoples as the Aborigines and Yanamamo and various tribes throughout Africa and Tibet as "not so human." I mean any human who only knows how to appropriately cover his privates with a thin rag and a vine simply can't understand the full aspects of being human, right? Is it Darwinism, that these tribes couldn't figure out on their own how to advance their technology and organize their governments in order to keep up with the powerful imperial-based economies of the world?
Well I watched a video in my Anthropology class about a year ago. It was a documentary about a tribe in Africa that was once a hunter-gatherer society. Then the "white man" came and thought that by invading their "barbaric" community and teaching them about working and money and buying things, he might be civilizing these rather uncivilized beings. It was one of the most depressing documentaries I had ever witnessed. Now the tribe looked rather like peasants in torn up jeans and ripped t-shirts, no more tribal beads or body paint. Now some men sat all day carving figures of animals once used for ritual worship but were now for the purpose of being sent somewhere for tourists to purchase and brag about their travels. They were more like slaves cleaning the man's house and getting paid in pennies for it.
It's a depressing reality to think of all these beautiful natural beings, so in touch with their environments, but becoming extinct like the animals that inhabit such places. But I suppose I'm just one of many others who can talk the talk but aren't sure how to walk the walk.