Christianity

[Harry Baird]

I might die...

Indigenous Australians often went "walkabout". They could survive perfectly well on their own, as educated by the older generation. They generally came back, though, because they loved their communities. I briefly lived in a largely indigenous Australian community, and I saw no evidence that they generally were at all worried that "the elders will cut me off." They are genuinely a relationally-based culture. They genuinely love their families and relatives.

[henry quirk]

They generally came back, though, because they loved their communities.

Or they were taught they ought to.

They genuinely love their families and relatives.

I love mine. Doesn't mean I give a piss about the greater community.

I mean, I get it: you got 50 to 200 people livin' together you got that kume-bye-ya juice flowin', that one for all, all for one mind set. All I'm sayin' is: they got paid, each and everyone.

[Harry Baird]

All I'm sayin' is: they got paid, each and everyone.

Hmm? I mean, everybody by dint of the organisation of a tribal society has their needs met and more, but that's very different to payment in a financial sense - to the capacity to profit and accrue economic capital. And, as I pointed out, they all had the skills to survive on their own, which they often enough did by "going walkabout", so they weren't forced to live in the tribe. They simply preferred to do so (and still do!).

[henry quirk]

All I'm sayin' is: they got paid, each and everyone.

Hmm? I mean, everybody by dint of the organisation of a tribal society has their needs met and more, but that's very different to payment in a financial sense - to the capacity to profit and accrue economic capital. And, as I pointed out, they all had the skills to survive on their own, which they often enough did by "going walkabout", so they weren't forced to live in the tribe. They simply preferred to do so (and still do!).

If you say so.

[Immanuel Can]

Such tribal societies were/are based on every individual contributing for the benefit of every other individual without having to be paid in money for their contributions.

They didn't have money, Harry...that's why. A monetary system tends to develop as society goes beyond the primitive. But I doubt you'd want to say that their trading in pelts or scalps would be an advance over paper dollars.

As individuals, no doubt, they had/have the same flaws as the rest of us. As a society and culture, however, they didn't contaminate their own beds such that they suffocated in their own waste, as the famous (purported) Native American observation of white man's culture quite fairly goes.

There weren't enough of them, or enough technological advancement among them, for them even to have the chance. They had neither nations nor cities. But it wasn't because they virtuously realized the axioms of global conservationism. They had no such concept. In fact, you'll find that it's very hard for a primitive tribe to be concerned with much beyond survival. That tends to take all the concern they have.

Indigenous Australians (culturally) see/saw themselves as custodians of the natural world.

I find this implausible, in view of other tribal people around the world, with which I am much more familar. If they had any such special virtue, they were the only tribalists who did, it seems.

But if you have their writings to that effect, or their Greenpeace membership cards, I'll look at them.

The extent to which indigenous Australians were amenable to Christian evangelism is, I suggest, that to which Christ's message of unconditional love for one's fellows resonated with them in a social and cultural sense, because, in that sense, they already practised it - at least to a much better approximation than did their colonisers.

There is some truth to that. Lamin Saneh points out that a lot of the Biblical narrative rests on agrarian and local parables and situations, so that more primitive people have some particular affinity with certain narratives that can exceed that which "sophisticated" Westerners may have. And that played well in Africa. Fair enough.

But these ancient tribes also had no literacy, and were generally polytheistic and highly superstitious, in the worst sense of that word; so it was a bit of a trade-off, I would say. An openness to the gospel is a very good thing; but to spend countless hundreds or thousands of years enslaved to the spirits and demons, and under the thumb of the local witch-doctor is one heck of a price to pay for a little extra openness.

I don't think "love for one's fellows" is a strong value beyond the single tribe. In fact, tribal life tends to be marked by extreme xenophobia and hatred of every tribe that could compete for precious resources. They murder and enslave each other without compunction, in ordinary cases. Global goodwill is not their strong suit. In fact, the overwhelmingly normal response of a tribe to the arrival of an "other" is to throw a spear at him, so it's always dangerous to enter a tribe's territory.

No human group has a special monopoly on "love for one's fellow man," it's true. Even today's Globalists have far too little of that. But tribal groups tend to see the only "real men" as being the men (and usually not even really the women) of their own tribe.

If your Aborigines are different in that regard from everybody else's "first nations" or "natives," then I guess you're just very blessed. The rest of the world is not so lucky in that regard.

[Nick_A]

I pick and choose the bits of The Bible that mean something that matters to me. I especially like "In the beginning, God-----" which subjectively and creatively interpreted means "In the beginning, cosmos----".

Old traditional texts are not only what people once believed but are often , when imagination is applied to the vocabulary, what many people still believe.

Although thinking about what the mindset might have been of someone who lived in the time when the original texts of the Bible were written is interesting, I don't tend to think of it as having any useful value to me regarding my own mindset. A lot of people seem to assume wisdom into things that were written a long time ago, as if people back then were tapped into something we have since become remote from. I guess I'm not one of those people.

This is from a thread I posted on another site called "Higher and Lower Reason". If true, it means wisdom, as revealed through higher reason, is timeless. Is direct apprehension of a universal truth possible? You don't have to believe it but does it make intellectual sense to you and a possible cause of the human attraction to wisdom and why pragmatism rules the day? Is it possible that the parables in the Bible are designed to appeal to higher reason by confusing lower reason?

Lower reason is pragmatic. It is only concerned with how we have become conditioned to feel "NOW". Whether we kill or cure depends on conditioned feelings. What is normally called reason is just the egoistic response to emotion. Is man capable of more than animal reason? John Uebersax sums up the question:

The word 'reason' as used today is used ambiguous in its meaning. It may denote either of two mental faculties: a lower reason associated with discursive, linear thinking, and a higher reason associated with direct apprehension of first principles of mathematics and logic, and possibly also of moral and religious truths. These two faculties may be provisionally named Reason (higher reason) and rationality (lower reason). Common language and personal experience supply evidence of these being distinct faculties. So does classical philosophical literature, the locus classicus being Plato's Divided Line analogy. The effect of currently using a single word to denote both faculties not only produces confusion, but has had the effect of decreasing personal and cultural awareness of the higher faculty, Reason. Loss of a sense of Reason has arguably contributed to various psychological, social, moral, and spiritual problems of the modern age. This issue was also a central concern of 19th century Transcendentalists, who reacted to the radical empiricism of Locke. It would be advantageous to adopt consistent terms that make explicit a distinction between higher and lower reason. One possibility is to re-introduce the Greek philosophical terms nous and dianoia for the higher and lower reason, respectively. This discussion has certain parallels with the recent theories of McGilchrist (2009) concerning the increasingly left-brain hemisphere orientation of human culture.

[Belinda]

I pick and choose the bits of The Bible that mean something that matters to me. I especially like "In the beginning, God-----" which subjectively and creatively interpreted means "In the beginning, cosmos----".

Old traditional texts are not only what people once believed but are often , when imagination is applied to the vocabulary, what many people still believe.

Although thinking about what the mindset might have been of someone who lived in the time when the original texts of the Bible were written is interesting, I don't tend to think of it as having any useful value to me regarding my own mindset. A lot of people seem to assume wisdom into things that were written a long time ago, as if people back then were tapped into something we have since become remote from. I guess I'm not one of those people.

What ancient peoples thought a text meant and what a text means for me are not the same thing. Ancient peoples who were the authors of a text don't own the text. Even in their lifetimes they could not own a text as there were no intellectual property rights long ago.

The cultures of belief of the ancient Palestinians or Judeans are no doubt interesting however I can hardly be expected to buy into their whole culture. So I pick and choose, just as I pick and choose what modern authors mean something for me.

[Harbal]

I pick and choose, just as I pick and choose what modern authors mean something for me.

Spaeaking of (relatively) modern authors; did you read anything else by Barbara Pym?

[Belinda]

I pick and choose, just as I pick and choose what modern authors mean something for me.

Spaeaking of (relatively) modern authors; did you read anything else by Barbara Pym?

Not yet, but I have a new one, Jane and Prudence, which is a treat awaiting me when I have finished the novel I am still reading

[Nick_A]

Such tribal societies were/are based on every individual contributing for the benefit of every other individual without having to be paid in money for their contributions.

They didn't have money, Harry...that's why. A monetary system tends to develop as society goes beyond the primitive. But I doubt you'd want to say that their trading in pelts or scalps would be an advance over paper dollars.

As individuals, no doubt, they had/have the same flaws as the rest of us. As a society and culture, however, they didn't contaminate their own beds such that they suffocated in their own waste, as the famous (purported) Native American observation of white man's culture quite fairly goes.

There weren't enough of them, or enough technological advancement among them, for them even to have the chance. They had neither nations nor cities. But it wasn't because they virtuously realized the axioms of global conservationism. They had no such concept. In fact, you'll find that it's very hard for a primitive tribe to be concerned with much beyond survival. That tends to take all the concern they have.

Indigenous Australians (culturally) see/saw themselves as custodians of the natural world.

I find this implausible, in view of other tribal people around the world, with which I am much more familar. If they had any such special virtue, they were the only tribalists who did, it seems.

But if you have their writings to that effect, or their Greenpeace membership cards, I'll look at them.

The extent to which indigenous Australians were amenable to Christian evangelism is, I suggest, that to which Christ's message of unconditional love for one's fellows resonated with them in a social and cultural sense, because, in that sense, they already practised it - at least to a much better approximation than did their colonisers.

There is some truth to that. Lamin Saneh points out that a lot of the Biblical narrative rests on agrarian and local parables and situations, so that more primitive people have some particular affinity with certain narratives that can exceed that which "sophisticated" Westerners may have. And that played well in Africa. Fair enough.

But these ancient tribes also had no literacy, and were generally polytheistic and highly superstitious, in the worst sense of that word; so it was a bit of a trade-off, I would say. An openness to the gospel is a very good thing; but to spend countless hundreds or thousands of years enslaved to the spirits and demons, and under the thumb of the local witch-doctor is one heck of a price to pay for a little extra openness.

I don't think "love for one's fellows" is a strong value beyond the single tribe. In fact, tribal life tends to be marked by extreme xenophobia and hatred of every tribe that could compete for precious resources. They murder and enslave each other without compunction, in ordinary cases. Global goodwill is not their strong suit. In fact, the overwhelmingly normal response of a tribe to the arrival of an "other" is to throw a spear at him, so it's always dangerous to enter a tribe's territory.

No human group has a special monopoly on "love for one's fellow man," it's true. Even today's Globalists have far too little of that. But tribal groups tend to see the only "real men" as being the men (and usually not even really the women) of their own tribe.

If your Aborigines are different in that regard from everybody else's "first nations" or "natives," then I guess you're just very blessed. The rest of the world is not so lucky in that regard.

I have not researched anything on the beliefs of the Aborigines but according to this article they accepted the one God and the need for meaning this belief provides. If they did, why not a respect for Man as well with less of a reliance on negative emotions to bolster our ego? Anyhow they are a more complex people than we give them credit for

https://www.alislam.org/library/books/r ... ion_2.html

[Harbal]

Not yet, but I have a new one, Jane and Prudence, which is a treat awaiting me

I'm so glad that I played a small part in your introduction to Barbara Pym. It makes me feel that, at last, I have done some good in the world.

[Immanuel Can]

Not yet, but I have a new one, Jane and Prudence, which is a treat awaiting me

I'm so glad that I played a small part in your introduction to Barbara Pym. It makes me feel that, at last, I have done some good in the world.

"Jane and Prudence" sounds like an Austen title.

[Harbal]

"Jane and Prudence" sounds like an Austen title.

Well Barbera Pym has been described as a modern Jane Austen, so maybe that isn't so surprising. I've not read any Austen, so I can't say, but I do intend to read something one day.

[Immanuel Can]

"Jane and Prudence" sounds like an Austen title.

Well Barbera Pym has been described as a modern Jane Austen, so maybe that isn't so surprising. I've not read any Austen, so I can't say, but I do intend to read something one day.

There are a couple of not-too-bad movie versions of Austen's books, too, if you're hesitant about reading one of her tomes. They're certainly good enough to give you a sense of the flavour of her writing. As a straight read, she can be a little demanding for modern tastes.

A few years ago, I was in Old Blighty; and I dropped by the Austen homestead in Winchester. She wasn't home, but they had a very nice museum.

[Harry Baird]

Such tribal societies were/are based on every individual contributing for the benefit of every other individual without having to be paid in money for their contributions.

They didn't have money, Harry...that's why.

But that's circular: "They didn't use money because they didn't have it, and thus they didn't use it, and that's because they didn't have it, and thus they didn't use it", etc etc.

They didn't have money because they didn't need nor want it. Their way worked fine for them.

As individuals, no doubt, they had/have the same flaws as the rest of us. As a society and culture, however, they didn't contaminate their own beds such that they suffocated in their own waste, as the famous (purported) Native American observation of white man's culture quite fairly goes.

There weren't enough of them, or enough technological advancement among them, for them even to have the chance.

There was plenty of technological advancement among them - but working with natural materials, not artificial ones; hence, a sustainable approach. I really love this example from Bruce Pascoe's eye-opening book Dark Emu: Black Seeds (yes, I do occasionally read a good book...):

In subsequent days, the two young colonials observed substantial weirs built all through the river system, and speculated about who might have built them. As they were the first Europeans in the area, they conceded that they were probably built by the ‘blacks’.

Later, they witnessed the people fishing with canoes, lines, and nets. The purpose of the weirs gradually became clear. They were made by damming the stream behind large earthen platforms into which channels were let, in order to direct fish as required. On one particular day, Kirby noticed a man by one of these weirs. He wrote:

[A] black would sit near the opening and just behind him a tough stick about ten feet long was stuck in the ground with the thick end down. To the thin end of this rod was attached a line with a noose at the other end; a wooden peg was fixed under the water at the opening in the fence to which this noose was caught, and when the fish made a dart to go through the opening he was caught by the gills, his force undid the loop from the peg, and the spring of the stick threw the fish over the head of the black, who would then in a most lazy manner reach back his hand, undo the fish, and set the loop again around the peg.

How did Kirby interpret this activity? After describing the operation in such detail, and appearing to approve of its efficiency, he wrote, ‘I have often heard of the indolence of the blacks and soon came to the conclusion after watching a blackfellow catch fish in such a lazy way, that what I had heard was perfectly true.’

Kirby’s preconceptions of what he was going to find on this frontier are so powerful that he skews his detailed observations to that prejudice. The activity he witnessed was, in fact, a piece of ingenious engineering.

Indigenous Australians (culturally) see/saw themselves as custodians of the natural world.

I find this implausible

Oh well, it's common knowledge in Australia. Indigenous Australians see themselves as belonging to the land, rather than the land as belonging to them. I understand that this is common among indigenous cultures. If your experience is different, then maybe it's a post-colonial experience with traumatised peoples whose basic way of life has been denied them, so you're not seeing them in their original state.

Finally, regarding "primitive", there's another great quote which I think comes from the same book as above, but I can't find it at the moment. In any case, the gist of it was that one of the colonists observed that the indigenous peoples of the land had so little work to do to meet their needs that they often spent their time sitting around having a good old chinwag in the middle of the day. Again, this was seen from the colonial perspective as "lazy", but how many of us in our "sophisticated" modern culture would dearly love to have so little work to do - without compromising our capacity to survive - that we could sit around chatting, rather than running through the brutal rat-race which so often is the working world?

Given this, and given that the indigenous were plenty tech-savvy, just sustainably so, whereas we are destroying the planet with our technology, is it really all that clear who the savages and who the civilised are?

I don't think "love for one's fellows" is a strong value beyond the single tribe. In fact, tribal life tends to be marked by extreme xenophobia and hatred of every tribe that could compete for precious resources. They murder and enslave each other without compunction, in ordinary cases. Global goodwill is not their strong suit. In fact, the overwhelmingly normal response of a tribe to the arrival of an "other" is to throw a spear at him, so it's always dangerous to enter a tribe's territory.

I'm not an expert on all of this, but I do know that there were protocols between indigenous Australian clans for trade, intermarriage, and even entering onto another clan's land. They also held various inter-clan festivals and corroborees. Your suggestion, then, seems very misplaced to me, which is not to say that there weren't some clans who seem to have been more feared (and rightly so) than others, just that, as a generalisation, it is false.