redguru said:
I disagree wholeheartedly, your criteria is entirely subjective. The entire purpose of our existence is to evolve into a more viable species. The useful lifespan of most aboriginal groups remained stagnant for millenia. The American Indians had no changes in musical or decorative art and only a couple of tribes even had begun a written language. The Northern and Southwestern tribes that were less nomadic had no changes in architecture in the same period. Dress, cooking methodology and utensils and weaponry also unchanged. Religious pantheons remained the same except when tribes remained in contact with other tribes.
And I disagree with you. I see a species that is paving over and destroying, with chemicals, pollution, and wholesale destruction without regard the only home it has. At the rate things are going it will not be very pretty in a few hundred years. Between chemical pollution of the land/air/water, EMF pollution, and agricultural soil depletion, SOMETHING is going to give.
... and just because something doesn't change doesn't mean that it is without value! That mentality is why we stuff our old people into nursing homes instead of keeping them around and learning something from them.
Evolving into a more viable species has nothing to do with technological advancement, it has to do with spiritual growth, and in that regard there is more room to do that within cultures that allow freedom of the individual, time for contemplation and, literally, space. The high stress, high pressure 40+ hour a work week we live in now is doing nothing but being conducive to weird disease, depression, sleep disorders, sexual dysfunction and GI problems.
And most humans, plopped out into the wilds, they could be ARMED to the teeth, they'll still die, very quickly. That to me is not indicative of growth or success of an animal. It won't MAKE IT in it's own environment?! WTF IS that? Without direct medical intervention how many people would even be alive right now? We are plagued by MORE disease of a chronic, degenerative, autoimmune type than ever before, and not only are we plagued by it, we live and reproduce with it, bypassing natural selection that would normally maintain the strength of the species.
The heavier we rely on technology, the further I see human beings, as viable animals, sliding DOWN the evolutionary scale. Spiritually bankrupt and physically bereft, a crippled species permanently WELDED to its machines that only places value on it's almighty god $$$. I simply don't see that as being healthy or natural or successful. Our pervasive culture of More/Better/Faster/Louder doesn't make it better, it just makes it smelly, rude and self indulgent.
The dance, music, clothing, art, etc. of the ancient cultures, all that was a part of WHO they were, tradition and ritual, there was stories and histories RIGHT there, and because it was seen as being without value then it is STILL perceived as having no value.
Yes, it's far better to have these brief, one day plastic holidays that consist of spending and acquiring MORE, screw tradition, screw ritual give me my gifts and let me get back to work to make more money ...
I'm so disgusted with modern man I can't even work up a decent spit over it. But to make such a ... damned ignorant comment as saying that the culture/tradition/beliefs of the American Indian were STAGNANT?! When the MOTHERFUCKING CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES is based on the Constitution of the IROQUOIS which was developed BEFORE any European contact?! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE, THAT is not a STAGNANT dead culture!
They were democrats before WE were democrats! (our Deist forefathers just had the sense to borrow something that worked).
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