Apple computer, plasma TV, cell phones, satellites, the Internet, and much much more! What a great civilization, this must be the best situation humans can live in, right? Actually no, humans have lived in this "modern" society for all our lives, people are used to live this way, if you take a single thing away, our lives will be disastrous. There are many ways to live life, and this is only one of them. There are other ways like living in the mountains at a few thousand feet, living in your own world, seperated from the other humans, and live a non-polluting life, you can go and achieve enlightenment, there are many ways to live. But they don't get to do anything, right? Again, no. Our cities, cars, and all the other objects that humans have created seems all good and great now, but it's only temporary. The groups of people who seperates themselves from all these stuff are the ones that do things that help in the long run, and anthropologist Wade Davis said that "If you took all the genius that allowed us to put a man on the moon, and applied it to the understanding of the ocean, you will get polynesia." We don't know more things than the people that lives in the polynesia, we just know different things. The people who live in the polynesia has a great civilization as well, same with the people in Tibet, they think in a way we don't know how, they can go inside the dark for their life long retreat for 55 years, and when the person comes out, you don't see a crazy person, but a person more clear than a pool of water in a mountain stream. No matter what we know or believe in, biologists have proven that we are all the same, we are all humans.
There are many unique cultures and languages in the world, but we are losing them each passing day. There are roughly 6000 languages in the world, but there are only half of the languages are being taught to the children, and the children are unable to pass it on. Every two weeks, there will be a person with a language which no one else can speak pass away, bringing the culture and the language with them. Another reason is because of the "modern" people, they think they are superior because they know how to program a computer system, they think they are better because they drive cars and use cell phones. They don't think much about other people elsewhere, the people who are doing nothing to pollute the planet we all live on. They assume that the world should just have a few of the most spoken languages because the rest aren't important. Most of the people don't really care or know about the dying cultures and languages. The disappearing languages and cultures are still actually very important.
We shouldn't just ignore the minorities, we should help them and try to get the languages and the cultures to go on, every culture and language is just as important as the other. There are things the people who lives in the polynesia can do, and we can't even imagine it. These are people that even today can name 250 stars in the night sky. These are people who can sense the distance of an island beyond the visible horizon, simply by watching the waves of the sea. Their knowledge of the sea is simply incredible. There are people in the amazon who went monkey hunting, and Phil Borges who was with them at the time said that the people can see things he couldn't see, smell things he couldn't smell, and hear things he couldn't hear. To us, it may seem like they are just randomly shooting darts in the air, but they are actaully shooting them at the monkeys. There are Tibetian buddists that are trying to understand the nature of existence. Buddaism is the imperial observation of the mind. The Tibetian buddaists have four nobel truths: 1. All life is suffering. 2. The cause of suffering is ignorance. 3. Ignorance can be over come. 4. The deniniation of a contemplative practice that not only had the possibility of a transformation of the human heart but had 25,000 years of empirical evidence that such a transformation was a certainty. The first one doesn't mean that life is negative, it just means that things happen. The second one means that the Budda meant that clinging to the illusion of life as static and predictable. These are things we should all learn, it's like a different way of seeing life, it must be very good truths, the people who believes it knows how to face life in reality. There are much more incredible things that these people can do, so it's very important to keep them here.
I would be willing to exchange places for a while, I don't think I can stay forever, because I am polluted by the society today, all the technology in everyday life. We should not forget these dying cultures and languages, we should try to protect them. The cultures and languages will never come back once it's gone, it has come, and we have to protect it. After all, no matter what, we all all brothers and sisters, we all share the same intellectual acuity, we are all humans.
3 comments:
I agree with your point about the "modern" people thinking they are superior. Also, the point about how some think that we only need a few languages in the world because the rest aren't important is valid. I think this is why we want to assimilate minority cultures. Maybe it's to prove we are superior? Maybe we think that if everyone speaks our language, then we are obviously the people who are the best. I think we are too proud in some ways to realize that every language is special and it is these languages and cultures that make our world diverse.
Max, this is such a thoughtful post. You clearly were able to take the information presented and make it your own. I hope that throughout the year we can keep pushing one another to question the way "we" live, and if it "has to" be this way. Maybe you should look at a summer experience of living with an indigenous group somewhere. Wouldn't that be amazing?!
Great post, Max. I like how you integrate your thoughts on human culture with your responses to Wade Davis' observations about the disappearing ethnosphere. Very insightful comments.
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