Thiago, Mary & Maggie
Thanks to Mary (>>) for responding so quickly, I have become a sloth
(must be the age?) and thanks to Thiago (>) for the input to Maggie's
thread on "evil" in other cultures.
> >Welcome to the Squad. I'm very interested in hearing your analysis
> >of Brazilian native tribes. Please feel free to post your ideas.
...............
> We have about 210 indigenous tribes which represents more or less
> 280 thousand people, all these tribes are in different degrees of contact
> with our civilization and most of them lives in preserved areas. They're
> technically classified by language, first into two great different
> branches (macro-ge and tupi) and then into several, almost individual
> dialects. Actually there are 170 of these dialects, but it is estimated
> that when our colonizators arrived there were about 1000.................
..........snip .........
Welcome Thiago.
Highly interesting. Everything. What you tell applies well to what we
are discussing. Language - equally versatile and "rich" - seems to
be common for all humanity however remote and/or "backward". So is a
mythology: an explanation of origin of [their] world and their own
ancestry and destiny Exactly this point (the origin of the world) I
would have liked to know the said tribes' version of creation and
ultimate end. Of course, they may well harbour an eternal cycle
cosmology.
As Maggie's starting point was "evil", your rendition of the
natives' attitude to the evil spirit was most intriguing. "A force
uncontrolled by any law.....not the harm it does, but the potential
it has for doing it because he can do anything he wants". Sounds
much like the Medieval dread of chaos, but may also apply to the
Devil. However, if there's nothing resembling the almighty and
benevolent God then Anhanga must be part of the cosmic play, much
like the goddess of destruction of Hinduism, so there's no "problem
of evil".
One more thing. The term "spirit" evokes - with us - a notion of a
ghost, but as you said (in connection with cannibalism) that is not
the correct interpretation. Same problem as with the Native
American (?) who becomes "Great Spirit" translated to English
with its heavy SOM overtones. These are subtle matters, but regarding
Maggie's original post I think it shows that the natural
(Biological) sequence of life and death is not seen as EVIL -
possibly not even premature death by illness or accident ? IMHO this
is a result of their non-SOM metaphysics, according to which there
is a unity behind it all.
> Their behavior can't be classified as SOM oriented but there are
> clearly some aspects of it in their culture, it could be interesting to
> analise this more deeply and try to define how their society mechanics
> work, if someone needs data to try to understand this I can post some
> urls later. I'm talking with a friend of mine responsible for this area
> in the University of Sao Paulo anthropology course and should have some
> interesting things to say in the next few days.
Yes, Thiago, do that and let us have more info - or links to such.
If I receive an answer from "my" professor I'll let you all know.
Bodvar
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