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Post by timothylane on Dec 7, 2019 10:05:50 GMT -8
Remember, the Japanese called their World War II realm the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and rejoiced that at last the people of this area would be free of the white man's control. Needless to say, there was no prosperity shared with the conquered people (and one wonders how much the ordinary Japanese would have gotten if they had pulled it off). And -- as that hints -- they treated their new subjects even worse than the Europeans (and Americans and Australians) did.
Moses sounds interesting. He has some nice goals by our standards, but I suspect it was all a fantasy. The notion of the dead returning with their new white skins certainly suggests this. Where did he think all the shopping malls (and the stores to fill them, and the goods to fill the stores, and for that matter the customers to buy things) would come from?
I wonder if they have those today even in Port Moresby or Rabaul or Lae.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 7, 2019 10:25:01 GMT -8
Shall we put that in the “Be careful what you wish for” category?
The Mayans and others were living proof that the jungle could be turned into a productive and prosperous region. And unless they were energized by the Democrat Party zeitgeist of “waging war on this and that,” one could at least suppose that such a transformation needn’t be unique to a barbarous and war-like people.
While Westerners wring their hands over the destruction of the Amazon rainforest (and I have feelings both ways), they are replaceing a pretty much useless jungle (from the human perspective) to more productive cultivation — even if there is a valid critique of their often quite destructive slash-and-burn techniques. But perhaps it’s either that or waiting for help from NGOs and for one’s ancestors to become undead and fly back to your homeland with white skin and money.
Is there some deep irony here that the commercial culture Moses and others are striving for has culminated in a company named “Amazon”?
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Post by lynda on Dec 7, 2019 14:43:54 GMT -8
"...large freshwater crocodiles"
....taste like chicken.
I don't see a problem here, just opportunities. Food, shoes, bags, entertainment...!
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Post by timothylane on Dec 7, 2019 14:55:08 GMT -8
When I attended Magicon in Orlando in 1992, I did a lot of sightseeing in the area. One of the visits was to a zoo of alligators. (There were two, Gatorland Zoo and Gatorworld, and I'm not sure which I visited.) It had a small snack bar that included alligator ribs, which I naturally tried. It also had alligator wrestling and a gator jumparoo (which showed that the gator/croc jumping up to bite off the villain's hand near the end of Romancing the Stone was quite feasible).
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 7, 2019 15:57:42 GMT -8
Alligator ribs. Sounds delightful.
The real problem with crocodiles is that they are "semiaquatic." We don't mind sharks being sharks. But if they were to start walking on land, we'd have a problem with that.
This is why we don't have them in the northwest...thank goodness. And from what I understand, they eat about anything, including Darwinism. To the best of my understanding, crocodiles have remained unchanged since their inception. They ate the idea of incrementalism and spit out the bones of natural selection.
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 7, 2019 21:57:39 GMT -8
In December 1982 or 1983, I saw a program which went into the history of one of the first (maybe the first) teams of white men to visit Papua New Guinea. I think it was in the early 1910s or 1920s. As I recall, they were Australians, but I don't recall why they went to New Guinea. They might have been geologists.
In the TV program they interviewed an old New Guinean who had seen the Australians when they first came. He had been a child or young man at the time.
According to what I recall of the interview, the old man said that he and his fellows natives had never seen white people and thought that they were some type of god. He and others would watch the Australians from a distance and try to figure out exactly what they were and what they were doing in New Guinea. There was an almost overwhelming curiosity.
After a while, they saw one of the Australians take a crap and after he left they went up to it. I remember the old man saying that he picked up a piece of it and smelled it and said to himself or the others with him something like, "Hmm, they crap like us and it stinks like ours, so maybe they aren't gods after all."
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Post by timothylane on Dec 8, 2019 6:42:41 GMT -8
Words such as rich and super-rich don't have universal meanings. By native Papuan standards, every white man they've ever seen is fabulously wealthy. Even the ones they don't see may be better off, with only a few exceptions. Even the homeless crapping on the streets of Scat Francisco and other Left Coast pestholes may be wealthier than the typical Papuan villager.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 10:41:56 GMT -8
LOL. That’s a good story. And as I continue to read this book, it seems likely that the combination of white skin and high technology/luxury goods was an overwhelming image to natives anywhere in the world. Perhaps no wonder the British could rule so much of the planet with so few men. “White privilege” seems not to be something the British claimed as much as the natives were quick to bestow on them.
This book continues to be highly politically incorrect in this regard. In fact, it’s unlikely any modern so-called anthropologist (they’re not anthropologists anymore) would comment on such things said out of the mouths of the natives.
But this guy is old-school anthropologist. He writes:
Give the guy credit for being fully aware, articulate, and intellectually honest. Such traits have been driven out of the university by the Marxists, anthropological or otherwise.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 10:49:05 GMT -8
This book does have that feel, although it's likely the vagrants in Scat Francisco eat better. I just finished the chapter where he describes the food he ate. It’s really disgusting. All of it, not just some of it. I don’t know how he survived.
Pounding parts of the sago palm into a flower that is then cooked over a fire like a tortilla doesn’t sound too bad. And it probably wasn’t. But apparently they rarely ate it this way. They instead preferred sago “pudding” which wasn’t a pudding at all. It was basically slime. The first time the author was given it (which he had to eat out of politeness) he was only barely able to keep from throwing up. He said the only positive attribute to the sago slime was that it was tasteless.
I won’t even mention the other disgusting things in case you haven’t had lunch or breakfast yet. But if you’re picturing coconut, bananas, fresh fish, and a salad made of the voluminous herbs that indeed grew in the jungle, you’d be disappointed. The natives seemed to go out of their way to be disgusting. And yet the children (the beneficiaries of some of the stuff he couldn’t bare to eat) loved it. So I guess you can get used to anything. I’m not always sure that you should though.
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Post by timothylane on Dec 8, 2019 11:05:25 GMT -8
Ghetto blacks have a history (it may be changing now) of preferring the lighter-skinned blacks to the ones who really lived up to the term "blacks". They would have preferred Colin Powell to Condi Rice. Of course, those aren't exactly natives newly exposed to the outer world. But it seems that the light skins of the Spanish also helped convince the Aztecs that Cortez might be an avatar of Quetzalcoatl. It would be interesting to find out what seems almost universally to make lighter skins better.
My suspicion is that it has to do with sun tans. In primitive societies, a tan is an indication of doing outside labor (probably very hard labor) rather than having a nice sedentary occupation. It thus would become a reverse indicator of status. Even dark-skinned tribes can get darker skins from tans. Even if nearly everyone had such a job, the near-absence of skin color would suggest a cushy life providing high status.
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 8, 2019 11:23:27 GMT -8
There is no doubt about it. Even today in Asia, light skin is preferred to dark, sun-tanned, skin. It shows one is not some peasant out in the rice paddies. In a similar way, fat people in Europe and Asia were considered to be prosperous because, until recently, most of humanity did not have the wealth to gorge themselves. They also had to work hard which tends to keep one slim.
Of course, both attitudes are changing as mankind gains wealth and free time.
I seem to recall that such myths of light skinned gods were not uncommon around the world.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 12:38:51 GMT -8
That’s the first I’ve heard of that. But it makes sense now that I hear it. How ironic that now white skin is so openly derided in Western society. You know my theory of tattoos regarding that, and this adds more credence. “People of color” are now chic. You even have politicians (and others) faking that they have native blood, etc. (I’ll leave it to you to figure out why most black women straighten their hair.)
Although fashion needs no justification (it goes crazy on its own), I still insist that the tattoo craze (at least amongst those not in the lower classes) are an attempt to “junglefy” themselves. Not the way they’d put it. But I’m very sure of this now. It’s a way to escape their now prejudicial white skin.
The chapter I just finished has to do with family life and the raising of children, particularly as it relates to the transfer of language, which is this guy’s main interest.
I will surely post some excerpts here, but I’ll try to summarize it: Trailer trash.
Okay, there. I said it. But descriptions of the ferocious mothers reminds me of the same lack of maternalism in Muslim families….which turns everyone into brutes. No wonder this was (at one time) turned outward into head-hunting and never-ending wars with neighboring tribes. They were all lashing out at something it was socially correct to lash out against.
The same thing happens to Muslims, the boys in particular. Mothers are brutal with their sons for payback at their own low status. The cycle of violence starts here in Islam with their ghastly texts giving it further legitimacy.
The author is particularly fond of this one old fellow whose father had left the island to work, got married, and did what he said was unique amongst that tribe (or probably any other): He brought his bride back to the village. They had two children. The mother was an outsider and offhand I don’t recall where she was from. But she was clearly not a monster-mother from the deep jungles of New Guinea but more maternal, for the author was astounded that the two children were gently, reasonable, calm, and just all-around good people….thanks, he assumes, to the maternal upbringing of their mother. And I don’t use “maternal” in a generic sense here, of course. I mean “gentle, nurturing, patient” etc.
By contrast, the mothers of this tribe he is describing are monsters.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 12:40:33 GMT -8
That does make perfects sense.
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Post by timothylane on Dec 8, 2019 13:09:46 GMT -8
Many have suggested that women basically have the role of civilizing men. And perhaps the reason New Guinea never developed such a civilization was that the women -- mainly mothers -- didn't do so. Should the future prospects of a culture depend on how its women treat their children, especially the boys? Of course, if we start applying this on an individual basis then we place the blame for monsters on their mothers, which is risky. What may work for a society doesn't work individually.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 15:30:46 GMT -8
What I’m reading is consistent with that. At least we can agree we’re not talking about noble savages. I like this next bit from the author. It was in the context of why they disagree about the very words in their language.
The author had noticed a beautiful rainbow in the sky one day. And he wondered what the native word was for that. He soon discovered that no one agreed on it. Indeed, it seems that people were making up their own word for “rainbow” out of thin air and reporting it as authoritative. But the author was astonished that the villagers had simply forgotten what the word was in the first place.
You can carte blanche blame outside contact with white people and Christians for this forgetting of one’s own language. And that certainly was a catalyst for change or, more to the point, the desire for change. Apparently they may all go around in Western garb these days (as the author notes) but still adhere to the “you can take the native out of the jungle” truism. They are still living like the jungle version of trailer trash.
Anyway, here’s that quote about why there might be divergent opinions—and not just for one word but about much of the Tayap language which they apparently argue about constantly as to what is correct:
If you’re reminded of the phrase “adult children” or “uncivilized,” I’m right there with you. And the author is being a bit coy about “Western stereotypes.” Who owns the stereotype of the noble savage living communally in peace with nature? It’s not Ronald Reagan or George Washington. That may have been this guy’s bubble showing through just a bit there.
But much credit can obviously be given for his (for these days) heroic and honest scholarship.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 15:39:32 GMT -8
And when I say “jungle version of trailer trash” note that I probably can’t quote on this site verbatim the foul language that even young children use. To say that the women swear like sailors doesn’t do their crudity justice. Think of all the women being the equivalent of Madame Thénardier from Les Misérables.
There’s an entire chapter on swearing. The author boldly quotes some of this but I dare not pass it on for fear of violating the fine-print “community guidelines” that I no doubt clicked-on agreed to when I set up this forum.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 15:54:12 GMT -8
During the author’s time in the village (which has been off-and-on through the years), there were attempts at providing schooling. But it was abysmal. The author notes:
Again, the analogy of Westerners sending their children to college (at great expense) only to learn dissatisfaction with the culture perdures. In the case of Gapun, it’s reasonable for them to be dissatisfied living like uncouth savages. But it seem to me their propensity for magical thinking makes them incapable of understanding cause-and-effect in regards to economic prosperity. They seem to think that if only they had white skin, the abundance would just magically be theirs.
Or—as that Moses guy did mentioned a few posts back—if they just (as he persuaded them to do) cut down all the trees in their village (which was a main source of food), destroy their existing houses, rebuild everything along the lines of gridded residential housing (including a street down the center), add the equivalent of fences between houses (a fast-growing plant was used for this) — all of which they had seen in a photo —then they would gain the riches.
We might sympathize with this naive belief because such backward attitudes are propagated by the Democrat Party where some really do think Obama had some kind of “magic money tree” and that wealth is not something you had to create but something to be taken from others. “Soak the rich” is all one need do. Or gain white skin, which was a common belief.
It would appear that the “Christian” influence in the region was mainly Catholic—with predictable results as we see in South America. Catholics do not seemed armed as Protestant are (or even those in the Church of England) to bring real fundamental change, starting with robust infrastructure.
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Post by timothylane on Dec 8, 2019 16:04:17 GMT -8
It has been noted that these small, primitive villages are much more violent than people realize. If you have 500 people, and one person killed on average every other year, that would be the equivalent of one murder per 1000 people per year -- a very high rate. But the typical anthropologist visiting the village will probably never see one, so they think of how peaceful it is.
And that's not even including wars. Jared Diamond discussed that in one of his books. The percentage of the populations of a couple of warring tribes can be amazingly high. It turns out that calling them savages is more accurate than the politically correct will admit today.
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Post by timothylane on Dec 8, 2019 16:11:24 GMT -8
This sort of thing happened a lot in Africa. The southern tribes in German East Africa revolted some years before the war, practicing certain rituals and calling out "Maji, maji" (their word for water) to turn German bullets into water. When it didn't work, the witch doctors would insist they must have erred in performing the very complex rituals. Something similar happened in the 1964 Simba revolt in the Congo that led to the Stanleyville massacre.
For that matter, a large group of South African Xhosas once killed off all their cattle because a witch doctor insisted that this would cause the Europeans to leave or something. This proved to be a problem when the day came and all they ended up with was a lot of dead cattle (the main source of food and wealth for many Bantu tribes).
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 20:19:45 GMT -8
One can certainly argue about what is progress. Given the bloody history of “white” culture this past century, industrialization may not be the be-all, end-all of the best way to live.
In this book (so far) no one — not one amongst the villagers — is defending the traditional way of life. At every corner the author makes it plain that they want the hell out…if not geographically then at least economically.
In a nutshell, as the author concludes regarding this gist of his book (how a language disappeared):
This is not (yet) a comprehensive history of New Guinea. But the gist I’m getting is the perhaps, at most, the influence of Christianity was not the religion but simply someone coming in (with white skin) who had advanced and interesting stuff…including pictures (in books) of the outside world (often photos of Australian cities).
I get the sense this guy is at least trying to stay neutral-ish by not making a big condemnation of Christianity. He’s more of just an on-scene reporter stating dispassionately what has commenced. And certainly there were Christian missionaries and certainly (I think) they helped to put a stop to head-hunting. And this tribe when visited by the author was not in the habit of making war on nearby tribes as had been their habit, although troubles with secessionist Bougainville enforced a fifteen year hiatus by the anthropologist because New Guinea had become too dangerous.
But I get the feeling that anyone who appeared on their doorstep with advanced technology/luxury goods, white skin, and amazing photos of cities would have been the catalyst for this desire for change. In fact, it must have been a plethora of influences, WWII being no small one.
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