Hi everyone!
Thanks, Thiago! It's a relief to move from the abstract to the tangible.
I tried the website you mentioned, and had to change it slightly to access it. Here's the address that worked for me:
http://www.socioambiental.org/povind/english/index.html
I've just read the excerpts from Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, "Arawete', Povo do Ipixuna", CEDI/ISA, 1992 that are posted at (http://www.socioambiental.org/povind/english/povos/arawete/index.html). You led me to it when you said this:
> "Social and economic life of the Arawete' thrives to a binary pace: forest and village, hunting and farming, rain and drought, scattering and concentrating."
I'm following a hunch that SOM-mind, the fully-developed form of intellect that dominates the intellectual level in its current state, is only the latest form of intellect, and that there are other, more primitive forms that are difficult to observe. Is it because
* they have been brought into the service of higher intellect?
Or maybe because
* they are now hidden in our modern social level?
The description of the Arawete has some similarities to this description of a particular type of pr
imitive cognition, called MYTHIC understanding, associated with societies of oral language users,
and also characteristic of children ages 5-10.
According to Merlin Donald and Kieren Egan, Mythic understanding is abstract thinking characterized
by dualism and binary structuring--security/danger, wildness/cultivation, life/death, nature/cultu
re, obedience/disobedience, human/animal, good/bad. This is the understanding that is active when
children want fairy-tale stories. "Why should binary structuring be a necessary consequence of la
nguage development? Because logically, we express...elementary differentiation in the form of cont
radictories, A and not-A, and it is certainly true that the ability to distinguish, together with t
he ability to perceive resemblances, is basic to all cognitive processes. " Mythic understanding m
akes use of metaphor, rhythm and narrative (story-telling).
(I've posted a little on this at http://members.iglou.com/hettingr/pirsig/CognitiveTools.html)
I'll stop here, and see if anyone else sees any parallels. I think there's pay dirt here.
Cheers,
Maggie
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