Practices like the potlatch tell me otherwise, in addition to the general mistakes of treating hundreds of tribes as a single cultural group.
Hantlers explains why things are the way they are on reservations
- Thread starter One Brow
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Practices like the potlatch tell me otherwise, in addition to the general mistakes of treating hundreds of tribes as a single cultural group.
Are you suggesting that in the various native American cultures before the Europeans arrived, the cultures did not view having larger houses and better food as desirable? I'll grant there were no cars and trucks.I'm not an expert, but that does not fit into what very little I know of Native American culture, and fits into the Noble Savage stereotype a little too neatly.
I was asking a question.
You're the one stereotyping every culture as having the same inherent desires. Why do you believe that Native Americans would not have differing motivations than the Western culture which you're trying to typecast everyone as?
Hantlers
Well-Known Member
Basic human nature tells me that as a man, I wouldn't want my significant other (soon to be wife) to be sleeping with another man. Yet somehow this idea made sense to you. For all I know, it made you happy that your wife was sleeping with another man.
That's why your basic human nature argument is stupid. People aren't always going to follow 'basic human nature'.
You should look into cuckolding. Some men don't have a problem with their significant others sleeping with another man. It's actually a turn on.
the basic premise behind the potlatch is to share the wealth. What's your point?
Are you having a bad day, Moe?
Hantlers
Well-Known Member
I'm aware of what it is, but I wouldn't consider it common. I wouldn't say that it follows basic human nature.
No, not particularly. Are you?
I took it as a question with a point.
From what I can tell, the desire for status, tasty food, etc. are not just universal to humans, but to all primates and many other types of mammals. It's possible some cultures downplay this tendency. I've said a few times that I don't know enough to say with certainty. If you have example of actual cultural dynamics at play in certain tribes/regions, as opposed to generic statements, I'm open to hear them.
One of things we Europeans do is romanticize other cultures as being "more spiritual" or "more connect to the earth". This is part of the Noble Savage stereotype. So, when I see or think of a certain group as being more noble or less interested in material things, I remind myself to question if that particular thought process is in play.
Some primates are more monogamous, some are more polyamorous. This varies by both species and individual. There's no particular reason to think humans would only be one way or the other.
No, the basic premise is to humiliate your guests by giving them much more than they could give you in return, and it is oftentimes accompanied by additional destruction of what you can't give away; the more ostentatiously, the better. Sharing the wealth is one reason some people think it developed/persisted, but it's not the primary cultural force behind potlatch.
and from what I understand (NOT from personal experience btw) men (unless they're gay) don't have a problem with their significant other fooling around with another woman - it's quite a turn on. Or so it seems from popular culture.
What the hell is this topic about? And why did One Brow start a thread telling us what Hantlers thinks? Perplexing.
that's not the way I understand it; you may have a different interpretation of the practice.
It comes from another thread where Hantlers made a reference to his dealings with Native Americans.
This started as One Brow's attempt at a "gotcha" thread.
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I promised to separate this conversation from the Bundy thread so I started this one. Hantlers claimed that Native Americans on reservations were demotivated from success by too many government handouts, and I wanted to see if he could explain that, given that all those handouts means they are still living in poverty. So far, no explanation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
Of course, it also says:
So, if you have a few sources which describe the potlatch as primarily communal, rather than primarily for status, I would certainly be willing to adjust my opinion.
It's no surprise that Stoked sees a request to justify one's opinions as a ""gotcha" thread'.
It's no surprise you made one.
Doesn't that answer itself?
I haven't read the whole thread here, but it looks like a wide-open opportunity to demonstrate alternative forms of elitism. . . . lol
intellectual elitism not excluded. . . .
OB, some of us are actually very long-suffering souls when it comes to just enduring the way other people are. Did it never occur to you that it might seem to some that starting a thread on another person might make them feel like they are being hounded, stalked, ridiculed, and mocked, however subtly? Can you take a suggestion to rename the thread and take Hantlers out of the title? But who knows, maybe he likes the attention or something. . . . so don't do it just on my say-so. . . .and maybe you have already make some fine appropriate acknowledgement of your sensitivity to the concern. . .
And who am I to criticize you, I could see where you could feel much the same, if not more "hounded, stalked, ridiculed, and mocked" by me, even for just saying this.
One of the roots to my generally adverse reaction to progressivism, particularly when the methodology includes empowering government force to advance the causes, is just that air of superiority. As you may have already noted, I consider the high ideals behind governmental do-gooderism to mean, essentially, that us less-enlightened folk are being rounded up and put on some form of reservation where we can be efficiently rendered dependent and subservient.
In regard to Potlatch, it's similar to many cultural symbolisms. Amazing to me that the feudal Lords of Canadian progress objected to it in any way, except that it constituted a competitive power system that effectively undercut their own Lordly ways of maintaining power.
I have lived near reservations and been able to observe how the Reservation system works, and I adamantly insist that is what "The Great Society" did to the black folk who were sucked in to welfare dependency.
And it does the exact same thing for all other people, which is why I see the need for a restoration of American principles of self-determination economically, which is linked to the need for people to have more access to the land and the resources that can be drawn from it, to the exclusion of cartelists who are using environmentalism to strengthen their monopoly positions on supplies of everything.
you might notice how in some aspects I do have a common idea with "marxism": I just know people need property rights, and I know socialism is an attack on actual property rights. . . and that our particular set of very wealthy "robber barons" have co-opted socialism as a tool for exerting their own control, tax-exept, of our government as well as all of the natural resources on planet earth. The answer is not their little "false flag of social justice", but a return to the roots of American principles......freedom and actual equal rights for people who are in fact the managers of their own government.
Cliven Bundy is not such a moron as some may suppose. Simple and naive to the ways of sophisticated folks perhaps, but just bedrock right about his vision of what the Constitution originally meant, at least for the settlers. He knew how they could settle and claim any land they could put to use. He knows that all people need access to the resources of the land, and he knows even the blacks would be better off if they could have land to work with, instead of living on the government dole, which is their only option when they have no land that is theirs.
In his view, people who work for corporations are more accurately described as 'wage-slaves' working on a modern form of plantation which does not even have the same care for the worker that slave ownership once implied to a few "good" slaveholders. A cattleman like Bundy wouldn't beat his livestock, and would see that they are cared for, perhaps. Pretty sure he had no idea how bad some slaveholders were, particularly the British oligarchs who owned the slave ships before the religious principled folk of England made the "No Sugar in My Tea" campaign to publicly hold slavers in contempt and undercut their profits.
Pretty clear to me that in Bundy's view, the BLM moving him off his grazing land and cattle business is a lot like the way the native Americans were moved out of their hunting/gathering way of life so others could use the land that was once theirs. . . .
Another interesting point of view would be the Cherokee nation circa 1820-30. People who had been recognized as holding their territorial claims by early American leaders, who insisted that the American government had no jurisdiction over Cherokee lands until formally ceded by treaty. A fraudulent treaty was quickly made up, though. The Cherokee were also prospering slaveholders and plantation agriculturalists at that time, but when Andrew Jackson held the Supreme Court in contempt and sent federal troops in to round up and move the Cherokee out, the ensuing horror and inhumanity of the Trail of Tears decimated the Cherokee population. The Cherokee took their slaves with them and basically merged as a people. Most American Indians today, in fact, have some black ancestry. . .. because both were excluded by the white majority socially and economically. . . .
A side-note
intellectual elitism not excluded. . . .
OB, some of us are actually very long-suffering souls when it comes to just enduring the way other people are. Did it never occur to you that it might seem to some that starting a thread on another person might make them feel like they are being hounded, stalked, ridiculed, and mocked, however subtly? Can you take a suggestion to rename the thread and take Hantlers out of the title? But who knows, maybe he likes the attention or something. . . . so don't do it just on my say-so. . . .and maybe you have already make some fine appropriate acknowledgement of your sensitivity to the concern. . .
And who am I to criticize you, I could see where you could feel much the same, if not more "hounded, stalked, ridiculed, and mocked" by me, even for just saying this.
One of the roots to my generally adverse reaction to progressivism, particularly when the methodology includes empowering government force to advance the causes, is just that air of superiority. As you may have already noted, I consider the high ideals behind governmental do-gooderism to mean, essentially, that us less-enlightened folk are being rounded up and put on some form of reservation where we can be efficiently rendered dependent and subservient.
In regard to Potlatch, it's similar to many cultural symbolisms. Amazing to me that the feudal Lords of Canadian progress objected to it in any way, except that it constituted a competitive power system that effectively undercut their own Lordly ways of maintaining power.
I have lived near reservations and been able to observe how the Reservation system works, and I adamantly insist that is what "The Great Society" did to the black folk who were sucked in to welfare dependency.
And it does the exact same thing for all other people, which is why I see the need for a restoration of American principles of self-determination economically, which is linked to the need for people to have more access to the land and the resources that can be drawn from it, to the exclusion of cartelists who are using environmentalism to strengthen their monopoly positions on supplies of everything.
you might notice how in some aspects I do have a common idea with "marxism": I just know people need property rights, and I know socialism is an attack on actual property rights. . . and that our particular set of very wealthy "robber barons" have co-opted socialism as a tool for exerting their own control, tax-exept, of our government as well as all of the natural resources on planet earth. The answer is not their little "false flag of social justice", but a return to the roots of American principles......freedom and actual equal rights for people who are in fact the managers of their own government.
Cliven Bundy is not such a moron as some may suppose. Simple and naive to the ways of sophisticated folks perhaps, but just bedrock right about his vision of what the Constitution originally meant, at least for the settlers. He knew how they could settle and claim any land they could put to use. He knows that all people need access to the resources of the land, and he knows even the blacks would be better off if they could have land to work with, instead of living on the government dole, which is their only option when they have no land that is theirs.
In his view, people who work for corporations are more accurately described as 'wage-slaves' working on a modern form of plantation which does not even have the same care for the worker that slave ownership once implied to a few "good" slaveholders. A cattleman like Bundy wouldn't beat his livestock, and would see that they are cared for, perhaps. Pretty sure he had no idea how bad some slaveholders were, particularly the British oligarchs who owned the slave ships before the religious principled folk of England made the "No Sugar in My Tea" campaign to publicly hold slavers in contempt and undercut their profits.
Pretty clear to me that in Bundy's view, the BLM moving him off his grazing land and cattle business is a lot like the way the native Americans were moved out of their hunting/gathering way of life so others could use the land that was once theirs. . . .
Another interesting point of view would be the Cherokee nation circa 1820-30. People who had been recognized as holding their territorial claims by early American leaders, who insisted that the American government had no jurisdiction over Cherokee lands until formally ceded by treaty. A fraudulent treaty was quickly made up, though. The Cherokee were also prospering slaveholders and plantation agriculturalists at that time, but when Andrew Jackson held the Supreme Court in contempt and sent federal troops in to round up and move the Cherokee out, the ensuing horror and inhumanity of the Trail of Tears decimated the Cherokee population. The Cherokee took their slaves with them and basically merged as a people. Most American Indians today, in fact, have some black ancestry. . .. because both were excluded by the white majority socially and economically. . . .
A side-note
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