It has articles? On a side note I discovered my box of 1960's Playboys. Hoo boy.glasseye wrote:Like I used to read Playboy for the articles,
And now back to our regular programming!
It has articles? On a side note I discovered my box of 1960's Playboys. Hoo boy.glasseye wrote:Like I used to read Playboy for the articles,
Cindy wrote:glasseye wrote:OK. "nearly"
“From the moment [Europeans] encountered the native people of North America [they] classified them in order to make them sensible [and] in the process reduced them simplistically.” Indians became either “noble” or “savage,” depending upon the needs of the conquering whites, and “noble” has traditionally indicated a romanticized environmental ethic. "Like preindustrial people on other continents, some of them deforested landscapes and might have brought too many salts onto arable land . . . or helped place animal populations on the brink of extinction. The first humans in North America demonstrated all of the intelligence, self-interest, flexibility, and ability to make mistakes of human beings anywhere.” To assume otherwise is to diminish the complexity of the native experience.
I'm just sayin'.
I guess that depends, if you think everything following the industrial revolution a good thing, than sure.Amskeptic wrote:Here, let me guide your interpretations.glasseye wrote:Interesting. I'd always understood that the native Americans were pretty gentle on the land. But what do I know? I read stuff on the Internets.Cindy wrote:Quotes in passage above are from The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, by Shepard Klech III.
Each new piece of information that comes across your understanding that destroys some nice or naive inner belief, can give you both the relief that we are not as bad in the present as it feels, and they in the past were not as good as they looked. This will flatten your outlook somewhat, but it is a good thing.
Colin
I made no such assumption, no such sweeping generalization.Spezialist wrote:I guess that depends, if you think everything following the industrial revolution a good thing, than sure.Amskeptic wrote: Each new piece of information that comes across your understanding that destroys some nice or naive inner belief, can give you both the relief that we are not as bad in the present as it feels, and they in the past were not as good as they looked.
But I don't,
But we all make excuses for our existence don't we?
But I will make excuses for everyone, in kind.Amskeptic wrote:I made no such assumption, no such sweeping generalization.Spezialist wrote:I guess that depends, if you think everything following the industrial revolution a good thing, than sure.Amskeptic wrote: Each new piece of information that comes across your understanding that destroys some nice or naive inner belief, can give you both the relief that we are not as bad in the present as it feels, and they in the past were not as good as they looked.
But I don't,
But we all make excuses for our existence don't we?
I said that I like being exposed to a more realistic understanding than the simplistic.
I am Native American and did not know my tribe until I was 46 years old. So guess what? In my childhood universe, I was thanking things and talking to trees in private. I gloried in this planet and the stars. Right in the middle of striving for success family that would have liked to see me a doctor.
I have discovered that Native Americans were not ecological purity from enlightened spirituality. They found what worked. They got abused and mangled not even a reservation for them in San Juan Capistrano. They did not rise above, they drank and dissipated and I have seen some brutal trash on sacred lands.
No excuses for no one.
Colin