Posted on 04/26/2005 1:55:24 PM PDT by expatguy
My flight would touch down in Kuching, Sarawak on the island of Borneo early one morning less than fifty years after the last of the White Rajahs, Charles Vyner Brooke and his family had finally ceded the State to the British Crown. This would become the first of many trips to Sarawak for me where I would eventually gain a deep affection and understanding of the people there.
The very first thing I noticed about Sarawak when I first arrived was how beautiful and green everything was and how fresh the air smelled. Both Malaysia and Island of Borneo are home to the World's Oldest Rainforest said to be over 140 million years old and with evidence of a civilization going back over 40,000 years.
But interestingly enough, Borneo and Sarawak were home to something else that I found intriguing as well. For the indigenous people of Borneo, the Dayak and the Iban tribes, were once headhunters whom have in the past been described by some as the most vicious and brutal cannibals who have ever inhabited our planet.
In my many trips to Sarawak over the years, I have got to know and befriend a great many individuals of the Bidayu, Dayak and Iban tribes, the descendents of the headhunters and cannibals, many whom have for the last several generations since embraced Christianity.
During the course of a few early trips I got to know and befriended a stunningly beautiful Dayak girl named Mary who worked at the Hilton Hotel Kuching. Over the course of a few months we got to know each other quite well and she invited me one June back to her grandparents longhouse to celebrate Gawai Dayak. This was my first trip out to the countryside in Sarawak and I was quite excited and yet a bit nervous to meet her family members for the first time. When we arrived, I noticed in the longhouse along the wall up near the ceiling, human skulls. I remember whispering to her later and asking about it and having her tell me "Oh don't worry about that, you are safe here. That was during my grandfather's time, but we are civilized now!". Her grandfather later explained to me that those were the skulls of a few Japanese soldiers that he had killed towards the end of World War II and some other skulls that had been passed down through the generations.
I would stay up that first night nervously laughing and drinking copious amounts of tuak with her grandfather, father and three brothers and in my drunkenness shamefully wondering to myself if the potent tuak might accidently trigger some sort of phyletic circuitry in the brains of my hosts where they could suddenly freak out about something and lop my head off. Eventually though I passed out drunk only to woken a few hours later by a rooster's crowing.
No one had ever mentioned cannibalism that night and yet I was told later that her grandfather had in fact partaken of human flesh in the past. He had since become a Christian and had asked and prayed for forgiveness of his sins. He died a few years later and I would like to hope that he is in heaven.
Cannibalism has in the past been a big part of this culture and practiced by the natives of the region for thousands of years. It would take an English sailor and explorer in 1841 by the name of James Brooke to finally enlighten these people and make them aware of the hideously grave sin against God and nature that they were in fact committing and yet, for this he would face much resistance. While James Brooke tried his best to be sensitive to the local culture, he was viewed at the time of being intolerant and divisive of imposing his own concept of morality and Judeo-Christian beliefs on the hapless natives of Sarawak in his attempt to civilize them.
Were the natives of Borneo not civilized already? How would Sir James Brooke be viewed in light of history today? Would history be kind to him or would he be labeled a bigot and an intolerant "cannibalphobe"?
From a philosophical viewpoint, how is it that the mere thought of cannibalism can seem so utterly repulsive to our society and yet that same society can now implore of us somehow to accept the belief that two male homosexuals using their reproductive organs to impale each other's bacteria-laden gastrointestinal tracts is supposedly an act of love?
Grok?
Pinging YOU because you are cool!
Diversity and all that you know. But anyway, they are "civilized" now.
******************
I'm pretty sure that no amount of alcohol would have allowed me to sleep in that situation.
I talked with people and told them that Westernerns were horrified by the very thought of cannibalism.
I actually one time had someone defend cannibalism when he asked me if anyone had ever had to resort to homosexuality in order to survive.
To the Iban and the Dayak, Cannibalism serves a purpose other than the spiritual and religious aspects associated with it. It does in fact provide for nutrition. It gives life.
Tuak is some pretty powerful stuff. I didn't sleep that well by the way. ;-)
Jung had a theory that homosexuality. as a social phenomenon, flourishes in an urban environment, because there sexual roles are confused, because the radical individualism leave people isolated and in need. It is just one form of promiscious sex which seems to flourish wherever men and women feel rootless and conventional ways of sexual expression are not readily found. Berlin in the 1920s is a perfect example of such a climate. However, the political power of the homosexual movement is unprecedented. In Germany it was part of the Nazi movement, but this fact is largely unknown because it attracted the more agressive form of homosexuality and sadomasochism and despised the more passive type found among the intellgensia and artsy types.
How is it that Americans believe they can accept homosexuality using the arguement presented by moral relativists and then be able to reject other taboos such as cannibalism and poligamy?
Once you have accepted homosexuality and gay marriage, there are no deeper depths of debauchery and immorality. Anything and everything go. And so, What is next? I would predict polygamy myself.
I have yet to neet one single American who has not cowered in fear and knelt in reverence before the Evil Demigod of Moral Relativism and his enforcers "Diversity" and "Tolerance"
Pinging SunkenCiv for his "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list -- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities and such.
Please add me to your list as well sir.
Thanks, I missed your ping somehow. Will check this out for GGG. Thanks again.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.