bodvar:
>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.
I think "spirit" in this case is, as you said, much closer to native
american indian definition than to ours. It is not a immaterial part of
something that has died but a being as real as the trees, the animals and
ourselves. It is mainly a translation problem, since there's no word for
it either in portuguese or in english (an in no other language I speak).
It is a complex and very individual concept, one of the most recognisable
evidences of the brazilian indian world view.
When one gets more familiar with their myths, it is easy to see that
they are conceptually very close to greek stories in the sense that the
hybris componnent is regarded as normal, so it is common to see the hero
of some saga killing his parents or friends just after saving the whole
tribe from destruction. I see this as a step closer to accepting DQ in
One of the first toughts that came to my mind while reading ZMM was that
the chasm Pirsig was talking about was pretty much the same discussed by
Nietszche, the Apolo/Dyonisios division. If we accept this, I think it is
necessary to refine the reason why the Anhanga is regarded as "evil", and
doing so get to the core of this, the mechanics of this societies.
The medieval dread of chaos is a direct result of the nietszchean
division, and the way I've described the Anhanga makes the two things
look very similar. I could only see this after reading Bodvar's answer,
and the concept is more complicated than that. This happens due to the
great difference of mythology between tribes (even when the terms are
similar concepts are different) and the radical changes in indian
imaginary caused by the catholic colonization. Many myths have lost their
original meaning and form, the early stories are translated by jesuit
priests that knew litlle of the language and analysed everything their
way. So the Anhanga appears as "god of nightmares" in one text, "god of
jungle hunting in other" and " shadow, spirit". In all versions, though,
he acts more or less the way I described later.
The real point in this discussion, the one that strikes me as crucial,
is that the fear is not directly related to chaos or chaotic behavior
itself, but comes from particular consequences of it. That is the main
difference between this and the medieval definition, so we get to a very
simple and organic statement which is : evil is what harms you. Since
dying is not harmful, only a natural part of one's existence, dying is
not evil.
That implies in a really dinamic and practical understanding of things,
especially if compared to ours. The unity that exists behind everytyhing,
as stated by Bodvar, is not homogen and oriented towards something. As in
greek mythology things simply exist and act the way they are supposed and
want to. It is much more encompassing than catholicism in a practical
way, since everything fits naturally into the scheme, but loose if seen
as a cosmic play.
The "problem of evil" is inexistent without the subject/object
differentiation, this may seem contradictory to Maggie's mythic
understanding societies description since it would be obvious to include
good/evil in the dichotomy list. But since it's called "mythic
understanding" I suppose that we need to look at the particular myth
mechanics to see how it adapts itself to this case. I also think that the
model Maggie found is the closest to what we are trying to understand
here, it is the general category in which it falls according to that
theory but we're sticking too much to the site's definition of Arawete'
life and forgetting larger patterns. I hope someone comes with an answer
to that question, till then I'll read the book on which the site's text
is based and try to absorb something that points towards an interesting
direction.
[]'s
thiago
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