Native American Wisdom
 

Hi, I found this site :
http://www.greatdreams.com/wisdom.htm

They were real people, we are poor compared to them

Look what we the civilized people do in our quest to consume :
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.p...s/article/2962
That is 1927, imagine now. We must take from nature what we need, when you start to take more than you need with the purpose of selling it, you start to destroy everything. Others will buy it even if it's not essential for them, and you will turn nature into money for real.
Right now we have to keep doing that because that is our system. No destruction of the environment - no jobs. Everything looks clean in Europe now, no problem the destruction is happening in the third world countries

Look at the article above, we will destroy ourselves because of our greed. We live like a swarm of locusts and we do not form a real community. Each man for himself. That is why I say they were better than us

you may be but i´m just fine, thanks ;)

Truer words were never spoken.

Why?

The whole "noble savage" thing is a bit overblown, IMO. People are people, no matter their ethnic background.

If I said "whites are better than blacks" I'd probably get banned.

The great thing about philosphies is that they make life look so simple and the path to happiness so obvious.

In reality things are much more complex.

Many tribes lived in a permanent state of warfare with their neighbors. There are cases of genocide as well. And the Native American hunted several species into extinction.

Also, you should know by now that you should do more to start conversations. This is little more than a site plug as it is and belongs more in "Found On The Net" than it does here.

I didn't know that. Which species?

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The ground sloth. All the species of the mammoth. The Ancient Bison. The giant hutia. All hunted by you-know-who. They're no better or worse than the rest of us. Just the same.

I think the point that pai mei was trying to make is that Native Americans lived in harmony with nature. They didn't pollute the land, air, & water that they needed for survival. They may have had tribal wars but they didnt nuke each other or continuously invent new ways of killing each other.

Just watch the evening news and then tell me our way is better.

Wrong I say. The bison disappeared because of the white man. What you talk there is ancient times, at least the Indians were polite enough do die if they hunted the bison to extinction
http://www.mongabay.com/images/exter..._pile-1870.jpg

I dont think there is any real evidence to support this claim. Its also been theorized that the changing climate played a critical role in these species extinction.

Ancient Bison there, genius. It's a different species than what you're referring to.

And baiting a mod that's already told you that your thread doesn't meet the standard for discussion probably wasn't a smart choice, especially when you don't add to it.

Sure, but it's also been theorized that ancient humans - the ancestors of Native Americans - hunted them to extinction, either in conjunction with or independent of the ecological changes.

No actually, there is a ton of evidence to suggest that man was largely responsible for this. There had been many climatic shifts, some very extreme, prior to the arrival of the first Americans. The mammoths, big cats, and so on survived these climate changes. Yet within a few hundred years of man's arrival, the American mega-fauna was gone.

The same thing happened in Australia, Madagascar, and various islands all over the world. Native Americans, Aboriginals, Polynesians - they've all hunted species to extinction, many of them have brought ecological catastrophes upon themselves.

Tim Flannery is one author who writes on this subject.

Then he should have said that. As it stands, he's made no point. Just posted a wall of text.

As far as they didn't pollute? Really? Because I have a neighbor from my childhood that's made quite a living out of their garbage dumps and graffiti. Both of those qualify as pollution. They may not have polluted on the SCALE that we do, but they most definitely polluted.

In re: killing each other, allow me to introduce you to the Aztecs, who founded an entire civilization on killing and enslaving each other. And the Cherokee weren't quite as bloodthirsty, but they worked the same way.

And the Mayan & Aztec civilizations are now gone: one theory is that the enslaved population revolted against the rich hierarchy who was ill prepared for changes in climate resulting in crop failures and lack of fresh water. Along with the Spanish conquistadors seeking riches........

Odd how history tends to repeat itself.........

So we agree that Native Americans weren't any different than we are except for the scale of technology? Cool.

I did add , see the post I wrote before the one with the bison photograph

Next time add it to your OP, or risk having your thread closed. Again, you know better. Your "addition" shouldn't come in Post #7. It should be in Post #1. Do I really have to go through the trouble of showing you the Thread Primer for 5th or 6th time or should we just expect low quality OP's out of you?

Ok I moved it to the first post. Here is what I found today, all is not lost if there are humans like this :)
http://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bicycles/
http://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bi...cycle_many.jpg
http://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bi...cycle_many.jpg
http://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bi...cycle_many.jpg

No primitive culture were different than we are, they all tried to use the easy way, get as much as possible to secure surviving. Our Problem today is, that our impact is much bigger than it was back then. The Polynesians killed the Birds of a bunch of island, we can do much worse.The solution is not to go back to some "golden primitive age" but to think about new ways of living and new technology.

I also suggest to read Jared Diamond :thumbsup:

Again, the only difference is scale of technology and efficiency. If the ancient Native Americans could have figured out a way to set up a beef processing system the likes of which exists in Midwestern America today, you better believe that they would have done it. If they had knowledge of the chemicals designed to produce higher crop yields, religion would have been altered to accomodate their use.

Humans haven't lived in "harmony" with nature since they discovered fire - and lost control of it soon afterwards.

Interesting, did not know that.

i dont see the point of this discussion to the extent that it has been derailed onto something about whether one rationality is "better" than another--i don't see what is at stake in it, why it is interesting. the euro-rationality was predicated on agricultural production and private property--capitalism came later. most native american rationalities were centered on patterns that did not include notions of private property. there are basically different sets of possibilitilies for interaction with the environment that follow from the presence or absence of private property, and both have consequences--for example, in the n.a. cases the question of scale (at the level of population, say) was settled in one direction, while the euro-rationality opened onto other possibilities of scale, eventually. once you segue into capitalism, things diverge more radically--for the n.a. groups (in general) the environment was integrated into the ways of thinking and being in the world--there was no particular separation--which is entirely logical---and for capitalism, the environment is an abstraction, land here interchangeable with land there--and this has some advantages (it enables production to unfold on a scale not possible within other relations to the environment) but also some very significant disadvantages--the rendering abstract of nature as a "resource" entails an erasure of the consequences of production--extraction of "natural resources" combined with the idea that nature is an abstraction (and an endlessly available one at that, a gift from some god) opens onto a discounting of the consequences of extraction---so if you run out of shit in one place, you just go to another--and it doesn't necessarily matter, the shambles you leave behind. this is basically different, and if you want to play the game set into motion in the op, it makes some sense to try to focus the conversation on specific aspects of difference at this kind of level rather than get locked into some bizarre-o "debate" about whether native americans or white folk are "better" one than the other.

and it is simply not the case that the history of capitalism follows necessarily from its rationality, or that the rationality is not itself the result of processes, and so a construction in a sense---so for example the single most important development under capitalism which explains the acceleration of population growth, which puts increasing pressure on production, which grinds the rationality shaping productions closer and closer to its limits, is the fixing of nitrogen and the development of nitrogen-based fertilizers--this more than the ability to move meat from one end of the country to another by rail, for example.

and this last point refers back to the problem of the thread itself--it is entirely ahistorical--but you can't talk about any of this stuff in an ahistorical manner because what it's about is nothing but history.

enough of this for the moment.

100% agree, that what I was trying to say :)
An other factor besides the scale of technology and efficiency is the sheer number of people living today.


I don't think any creature lives in "harmony" with nature, if you put 6 billion elephants in the african steppe they would trample all plants without a thought about harmony. The observed "harmony" is just an effect of natural balance and all creatures are working hard against it. We just managed to get an advantage because of our technology.

All them words of wisdom and he forgot the most important. Don't take blankets from strangers...

I'm sorry to jump in on this topic which seems a little derailed but some of the posters make good points.

The Native Americans lived in harmony with nature just like any other non industrialized society has. They did not have sufficient means to change the environment around them so they adapted to it. When they could control the circumstances they did.

The Iroquois Indians that lived (and still do) in the area that I am in cultivated quite a bit of farmland. To do this I am sure that they needed to cut down standing timber to clear crop land. Two of their most common hunting methods involved entire villages driving dear into the center of a large fence shaped like a V by using fire and loud noises where the dear were then shot. The other involved the same driving technique but into a body of water where hunters in small boats would stab them in the lungs.

Hardly the image of the loan brave silently stalking through the woods that we all grew up with.

All societies have their good points and bad. Those very same Iroquois had some ideas used in our own Constitution but they also committed genocide on the Erie tribe that proceeded them.

There's no black and white. No super villains and super heroes in the real world.

Some of you say that the native american culture is better than ours because they didn't pollute, mass murder, etc. I would disagree with this. When white man first found native peoples, they were not as advanced. This is because white tribes settled down into stationary colonies at a earlier period of time than the native americans. The natives, for a much longer period of time, lived as nomads, and the nomadic culture leaves little room for a high rate of innovation. Early white tribes had nature-oriented, mainstream-moral beliefs as well. However, you will notice that Europe and Asia is much closer to Africa, as far as linked land goes, than North and South America. I believe that if the native tribes were left to themselves for a longer period of time, they would end up much like us. They're no different than we are, save in physical appearance.