Posted on 04/16/2009 9:05:38 AM PDT by AreaMan
Hmmm. True, but usually you don’t hear the voices until you try to stop. And then there’s the spiders, too...
This reads like a fiction ala Margaret Mead. I’ll wait for a more authoritative source.
No, I think the take-home message is that atheism (except for spirits in the rocks) is superior to our puny Bible. We, too, could aspire to the heights of their enviable “civilization.” If only we weren’t so backwards.
Precisely. This IS modern liberalism. God is dead, but we believe in spirits. Do what feels good. Shared misery of living in the now.
Not a word about child rearing. I’ll bet that’s illuminating. And of course, the educated ‘missionary’ that’s been there for 30 years - he’s been converted.
If it isn’t good for me, then its no good. Rather than create habitation that protects you, and your children, from snakes, you don’t sleep.
This is proof Darwin’s an idiot. These people should be extinct. They literally don’t have the sense that God gave the snakes that kill them from time to time.
“Sexual mores are governed by common sense rather than stricture”
The writer seems to have a very shallow understanding of cultures and societies. It was the introduction of “stricture”, monogamy, ceremony and rules that brought animal-like sexual behavior that helped society greatly advance. “Common sense” sexual behavior is actually high risk for disease and increases risk to children as well as puts the female in a risky, uncertain position of having to take care of self and child. Jealousies and competition for mates would reduce effort devoted to other productive activities. It is just one of the reasons that a society has stayed small and not progressed over the course of several thousand years during which nearly all other human societies have grown, developed and thrived.
Some successful culture, huh.
...And the language comes in three forms — regular (for social discourse occasions) plus Humming speech (for the dating rituals) and Yelling speech (for marriage, after dating)...
And, I'll bet, here's why he converted...
Sexual mores are governed by common sense rather than stricture
I’ve just finished a book by the Peruvian writer Vargas Llosa titled “The Story Teller” about such a tribe. There are some 30 tribes in the Peruvian jungle speaking their own languages.
For two generations hundreds of evangelical missionaries from the USA have lived with these tribes for the purpose of learning their languages, creating dictionaries and grammars, and translating the Bible into each language. Everett is at the quirky end of the curve. Most of these missionaries are dedicated people whose own faith is secure.
These indigenous languages are especially interesting in how they handle time. The tribe Vargas Llosa wrote about conflated the present and past tenses. Others seem to reverse present and future in a strange way that produces great patience.
It is
That's precisely why I always have a sandwich handy.
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You’re welcome! The culture of the South American riberenos is pretty basic (according to P.J. O’Rourke, as well as the author under discussion presently), but they’re eons ahead of these natives.
Exactly ... non-survival of the non-fittest in action, no matter how attractive it might be to some giddy Western males. (Until they catch the Crud, of course.)
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