"And yet, although Jefferson called this doctrine of social equality
"self-evident," it is not at all self-evident. ...There's no nation in Europe
that doesn't trace its history to a time when it was "self-evident" that all
men are created unequal. ...The idea that 'all men are created equal" is a gift
to the world from the American Indian."
-end of Ch. 3, Lila
"Phaedrus had found a small dog-eared Yankee magazine, thumbed through it, and
stopped on a brief account by Cathie Slater Spence entitled, "In Search of the
April Fool."
It was about a child prodigy who had possibly the highest intelligence
ever observed, and who in his later life went nowhere. ...[Dan] Mahony has
spent the last ten years looking into Sidis's work. in one dusty attic, he
found a bulky manuscript called 'The Tribes and the States' in which Sidis
argues persuasively that the New England political system was profoundly
influenced by the democratic federation of the Penacook Indians."
-end of Ch. 4, Lila
"There are certain definite departures from the common and well-known points of
view regarding America and its past that the reader will notice. At the
opening, it is obvious that the beginnings of American history are sought not
in Europe but here in America, among the peoples who originally inhabited this
country, and the characteristics of the various parts of the country are
treated as directly traceable to the varying characteristics and customs of the
early tribes in the same regions. The tribes of Indians are considered, not as
savages or barbarians who created nothing of importance, but as the real
founders of the best and most important parts of modern American institutions:
federation, democracy, postal service, written constitutions, the idea of
individual rights, are among the many things which, according to this version
of history, modern America owes to its red predecessors. And, as a corollary,
the coming of the white people to America, which, from the standard point of
view, starting American history in Europe, was a series of discoveries, is here
treated as a series of invasions from Europe by a barbarous people who
understood nothing of American institutions, but who, in the very process of
overrunning the continent, acquired, at least partially, many of the ways of
doing things that they found on this side of the ocean, and civilized
themselves, and even their original home countries, in the process."
-EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
The Tribes and the States
W. J. Sidis
http://www.sidis.net/TSIntro.htm
"But, among the Penacook peoples, there was nothing known which could even
remotely correspond to, or give an inkling of, any division of caste, class, or
rank―probably the only completely democratic governments that ever existed in
the history of the world. This was a true democracy and equality which might
well prepare their country (now known as New England) for being, at all times
down to the present, the cradle of the spirit of liberty....We have seen that
the nations of the northeastern part of North America had attained a degree of
liberty and democracy such as no other people have ever reached, and which was
most irreconcilably opposed to the monarchical and aristocratic institutions
brought from Europe by the white invaders. ...An Onondaga by the name of
Daganoweda, living near where is at present located the city of Syracuse, had
noticed this everlasting alternation of peace and war, and thought something
ought to be done about it. His habits of dreaming and meditating, and doing
nothing had resulted in his being looked down on as a dreamer, if not slightly
insane; but still he persisted with his dreaming. As he meditated over the fact
that the frequent peace conferences could stop wars, but that the wars returned
when the peace conferences went home, he thought that those five neighboring
and related nations, which should by rights be brothers instead of enemies,
could possibly be kept at peace if only the peace conference could be made a
permanent organization.
This idea is a simple one after it has been in practice four hundred
years; but only a visionary like Daganoweda could have originated a plan which,
at the time, seemed so impossible and bizarre. And this idea was a step in
advance such as would be difficult to parallel in the entire world's history of
social and civil organization. Daganoweda's plan―the permanent peace conference
governing the relations of several independent units―has since come to be known
as Federation, and its importance can hardly be exaggerated. It was distinctly
American in origin, and America has always remained its home, attempts at
imitating it elsewhere having almost invariably been unsuccessful."
-excerpted from Ch. 2 and 4
The Tribes and the States
W. J. Sidis
http://www.sidis.net/TSContents.htm
On Jan 30, 2010, at 8:42 AM, John Carl wrote:
>
> I think your definition of level is off. Bottom-up creation doesn't make
> any sense. Take the founders of America - as a society. The social
> patterns created were a reflection of intellectual ideas. It's not like a
> bunch of people showed up on New England's shore and said, "hey, let's try
> the idea of freedom". What happened was that the people who had in their
> being an intellectual pattern of a free society had to take that idea over
> the sea and make it happen.
>
> Likewise, biologically babies come from a social arrangement and inorganic
> matter is reformulated and patterned creatively by life. I know it's been
> taught in schools and on this forum that complexity arises from randomness,
> but I'm hoping that some people can see the ridiculousness of the MorOnist
> cult and rise above by getting pulled from above.
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