David L Thomas
Tue, 10 Aug 1999 21:48:16 -0700
MD Natives, Sometime after 1974; "When the question arose of what would be the subject of a second book there was no question about what it would be. ... Phaedrus just wanted to talk about Indians." But, " Phaedrus saw..that..the..field [anthropology]..rigged and stacked in such a way that everything he had to say about Indians would be unacceptable...[he] hit an invisible wall of prejudice..Later as his Metaphysics of Quality matured, he developed a name for the wall..He called it a "cultural immune system." >From this came his conclusion on page 42 of Lila " The Indians were the originators of the American style of life. The American personality is a mixture of European and Indian values." " And as Phaedrus'studies got deeper and deeper he saw that it was to this conflict between European and Indian values, between freedom and order, that his study should be directed." During the next 17 years while "Lila" was being written and published others were slowly digging the chinks out of that wall. So now as the millennium closes books by Jack Weatherford,an anthropologist at Macalester College who has long been fascinated by the worldwide impact of Native American knowledge, Bruce Johansen,Professor of Communication and Native American Studies University of Nebraska at Omaha,and others have documented and expanded this argument. Weatherford expands Pirsig's assertion that "The American personality is a mixture of European and Indian values" to a global perspective maintaining that Indians supplied the silver for money that made capitalism possible, incentives for industrialization and corporations, supplied the plant that are now 3/5 of current world food crops, agricultural technology and other "gifts" that sparked a global political, economic, heath, and culinary revolution that shaped and is still shaping cultures worldwide. Although Pirsig maintains "When you see this you begin to see a lot of things that have never been explained before" (Lila p 42), as one views the patterns following the European "discovery" of the Americas from this broader perspective it raises as many questions about the MoQ as it answers. If life, under the MoQ, is evolving towards good and "its only perceived good is freedom and its only perceived evil is static quality itself-any pattern of one-sided fixed values that tries to contain and kill the ongoing free force of life." then how is it, at the current juncture, that it appears that the native Indians cultures were subjected to one-sided fixed European values that contained and killed, to a substantial degree, the ongoing free force of their lives, and this is "GOOD"? Or is it that 1500 years ago the native cultures, from Terra Del Fuego to the Bering Straits, were so static as to be evil and the dynamic events of "discovery" led to the destruction of of these static patterns and, this is "GOOD"? Or, were the native American and European cultures were so static as to be evil and the dynamic events of "discovery" led to the destruction and subsequent rebuilding of static patterns worldwide, and this is "GOOD"? And if this is so; why does it appear that the Indians got and continue to get the short end of the both the "freedom" and "good" stick? "The idea that " all men are created equal" is a gift to the world from the American Indians. Europeans..only transmitted [this] as a doctrine that they sometimes followed and sometimes did not. Phaedrus thought the Indians haven't yet lost this one. They havn't won it either, he realized; the fight isn't over. It's still the central internal conflict in America today." Lila p 48 Now is this all just more revisionist history in the vein of the "Judgement at the Smithsonian" thread? And if not; How does one square the moral aspects of the MoQ with the last 1500 years of history in the Americas? As the old Indian said to the tenderfoot's,"Know How, wanna know why." Happy trails, Dave ***********HOME STUDY COURSE********************** I've just finished "Indian Givers" and done a brief web search on Northern Light for "Jack Weatherford" Those interested in this issue might want to check out some of the following: Books by Jack Weatherford Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America Savages and Civilization: Who Will Survive? Books by Bruce E. Johansen Forgotten Founders Website bibliography on contribution of Indian cultures. http://www.ratical.com/many_worlds/6Nations/index.html Columbus and the Beginning of the World, Robert Royal First Things May 1999 http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9905/royal.html The Crimes of Christopher Columbus, Dinesh D'Souza, First Things November 1995 http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9511/dsouza.html MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]