[Arlo]
I'd agree. You know much more about Indian history and religion than
I do, so I am unable to really argue with what you've said. I also,
typically, do not like a "monolithic" approach to discussing Indians,
but I tend to do this as well, mostly to save time and in cases where
nuance or particularities are not critical. (I usually read Pirsig's
"Indian" as "Plains Indian" ("These included the Blackfoot, Arapaho,
Assiniboine, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Lakota,
Lipan, Plains Apache (or Kiowa Apache), Plains Cree, Sarsi, Shoshone,
and Tonkawa." - Wikipedia).)
[Case]
Excellent point. There were hundreds of tribes spread across a continent
with vast differences in terrain and resources. It is foolish to think these
cultures were of one mind. Actually when looking up the manito I was
surprised that it had the geographic coverage that it did. I apparently
comes from woodlands tribes in the northern Midwest and is found in the
Plain Cree through a fairly elaborate network of historical transference.
[Arlo]
I think Pirsig's points about the Indians can be summarized as such
(add any you feel I missed).
American culture is a synthesis of European and Indian values.
Peyote, like the hippie LSD or Zen's meditation, is a
de-hallucinogenic which opens the mind to DQ.
Indians, like Zen, consider the "true nature of reality to be undivided".
Indian "engagement" parallels Rte, ritual, where subject and object
are not apart, this extends to speaking as well as acting.
The most important idea of the Indians was "freedom from a social
hierarchy".
A crisis of modern American is the tension between "freedom" (Indian)
and "order" (European).
I'm not sure how many of these necessitate each other. Do you think
Pirsig got any of them right?
[Case]
Certainly Americans were influenced by native peoples how much influence
seems an open question but one I applaud Pirsig for raising. Using of
hallucinogens in a religious context is common throughout the world. One
might even be so crass as to note that Christian communion centers on
sipping wine.
I think where Pirsig ran into trouble was that even if Native Americans were
united in seeing the world as undivided, they were still pantheists. They
did not dismiss the notion of God and they seemed to have whole pantheons of
lesser deities and spirits.
As for the social hierarchies, I am not sure about this one either. A
culture needs to have a bit more of a cosmopolitan character to evolve
social hierarchies. I do think the meritocracy is a bit harder to work
around when you really are out in the wild and if you don't work you die. So
in those conditions freedom from social hierarchy is not really an option.
Crisis in modern America? What crisis? Whatever the crisis is I would be
wary of any attempt to oversimplify it. Still I like Pirsig's notion though
more for aesthetic reasons than rational ones.
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