Still trying to work out if being White British means I have a natural mystical connection to the land and spirituality.
Sure. To the land of Britain. Read up on the Druids and go dance around Stonehenge or something.
I have a soft spot for Wicca despite knowing it was mostly made up by white British people. Because it’s a deliberate mindful attempt to recapture the old ties between white British people and their land and ancestors that lie underneath sixteen hundred years of Christianity. And that’s worth doing.
Being alive for the sake of being alive doesn’t do much to reduce infant and maternal mortality rates. Those are down from pre-industrial levels because incredibly smart people have worked incredibly hard over the last few hundred years.
Yeah, I’m inclined to generally agree with this; what she left out is that now most people can live past 30 now and not die from a bacterial infection after scraping their leg.
I would add that the ideal is likely somewhere in the middle between the extremes of “living off the land and using every part of the bison” and “grinding away your soul until you collapse on the Walmart floor.” Both are too far towards their respective ends of the spectrum.
Europeans fucked everyone in the ass.
I hate doing 9-5 and hate myself. FML
Bro Europeans aren’t responsible for everything. If todays folks in your country wanted to do things differently then nothings stopping you
Gotta blame whitey somehow
Bruh we started it now we need to finish it.
If todays folks in your country wanted to do things differently then nothings stopping you
US “anti-authoritarian” interventionalism has entered the chat. Just look at Vietnam, the Philippines, Hawai’i and Latin America.
nothings stopping you
“To be is to do” -Socrates
“To do is to be” -Jean-Paul Sartre
“Do be do be do” -Frank Sinatra
Baby shark do do do do do do…
Sorry don’t hate me
“DO THE DEW” -Mountain Dew
LOL I don’t question why we’re here, but since we are, it’s nice to be a part of society where I can learn to be really good at 1 thing, and then do that 1 thing, get compensated for it, and then pay others to do things for me that they’re good at. Work is cool.
If you want to live in the woods and “be beautiful and strange” and learn to do everything yourself without anyone teaching you, by all means, feel free to exit society.
I feel like the caption doesn’t summarize the spirit of the quote. The indigenous folks cooked, told stories, made art, danced, fell in love, made enemies, had sports, and formed various unique cultures. There’s a lot of “doing” in a that. For me this reads as you don’t need to grind to make other people wealthy and collect a lot of plastic bullshit that Instagram convinced you was necessary for happiness. But like we’re all slowly, collectively realizing this right?
I hope we are. Based off some shit lords in here, I’m having my doubts.
Don’t lose heart. The kids already think Facebook is lame, X killed itself, most folks on the street have heard “if you aren’t buying anything you’re the product”, influencers are as frequently pitied as admired. I see glimmers of the needed changes in these things.
We also do all that, the problem is that it’s all commodified, advertised, ultracompetitive, conspicuous and repackaged, like we need to relate to each other and nature through something that has come out of a factory or a pr firm. There are ways to escape this, but it comes at a social cost, but it gets better if you find others.
It’s always “western culture” being compared to a vague “indigenous culture” in these posts.
As a not very well-traveled American, I definitely read this as the US and our indigenous peoples. I suppose only the speaker truly knows who they were referencing. Or it’s intentionally vague to be relatable…
To me, the quote is another way of saying our ‘purpose’ is to be sensory organs for the universe: life is how the universe experiences itself.
The more you do, the more richly you contribute to that experience, but the caption’s take is also valid in that ‘being’ also contributes, if that makes sense.
(Disclaimer: I may be slightly high.)
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I hear you, though the universe experiencing itself is due for reconsideration after I’m slightly high…
So like, is there some place I can go too live like that? One that isn’t private property or owned by the government, etc? I live in a place that is mostly open, mountainous areas, but they’re surrounded by barbed wire and 2nd Degree Tresspassing is a felony.
Not anymore because colonialism has essentially destroyed that way of life in its entirety.
The antarctic maybe? There isn’t much land that isn’t claimed by some group of people
Sounds like communism talk
/s
Oh yeah cheers Melanie.
Good thought, wrong sub.
Looking for the correct sub for this kind of content. Have a link?
Yeah this ain’t a meme
I’m alive for a purpose. That purpose is to play Red Alert 2
With Yuris Revenge expansion. Mental Omega isn’t half bad either.
Mental Omega is lovely. I enjoy it
Some indigenous cultures never invented writing and are hunter gathers. They don’t have time to engage in any sort of philosophy. There’s no basis for them to even describe these ideas.
It’s not better. It’s not different. It’s underdeveloped.
Spoken like a true colonist.
Imagine behaving like this with the one life you have
Thinking about the language needed to express philosophical ideas and how language can impact your ability to form complex arguments is probably not the best use of my time. It’s pretty interesting though and I enjoy it so it’s not exactly a waste.
Yea fr, the only species that can even entertain the idea of “just being” are humans, it’s not part of the natural world whatsoever, it also comes at the expense of other humans who are actually supporting the society.
What…
I am quite confused on the people here on lemmy. On the one hand, the consensus is ‘capitalism bad’ (presumably because people work themselves to death with little to show for it). On the other hand, this post seems to be somewhat populated by people that are against the whole idea of ‘just being’ vs ‘doing’. So, what would one conclude from this?
I hate capitalism but I do feel like people get carried away blaming everything bad on capitalism, slavery and authoritarianism were present in pretty much all the cultures around before capitalism even existed and the indigenous cultures of pretty much everywhere had class and caste systems often based on religious power which itself was based on violence.
It’s so reductive to say ‘oh these people weren’t building factories so their lives were just sitting around in the sun doing whatever makes them happy’ but life in a tribe was every bit as rich and complex as modern life - generally without the luxury of being able to choose your life path, certainly for women and minorities.
Capitalism and the influence it has over people creates some fucking morons?
A fine assessment, good chap.
I think it’s weird how we use terms like indigenous culture. Western culture is indigenous to the west.
It’s weird how the whole noble savage myth just keeps on trucking
Frankly if argue that grouping all the different varied cultures under the simple term “western culture” is equally reductive and unproductive. There is no single “Western Culture” just as there’s no single “indigenous culture”
And that is fair and correct.
Western culture is indigenous to the west.
Europe’s culture has developed from Christian Roman culture after the Roman Empire conquered most of the continent. The indiginous cultures and religions of mainland Europe were destroyed by the Romans and the Roman-influenced kingdoms springing up after Romes demise.
The culture resulting from that was exported to Britain with the Norman conquest, and that new British culture was exported to the US and other “Western” nations through colonialism.The indiginous “western” culture doesn’t exist anymore.
Don’t spread bad history. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Huh guess my culture doesn’t exist I’ll be sure to tell everyone on the reservation.
You give the Romans way too much credit. They didn’t even manage to export their style of music and had their tradition supplanted by the rest of Europe: Previously they were part of the Mediterranean tradition (which nowadays people recognise as oriental, definitely a misnomer), have a listen. Nowadays they have just as much as an allergy to flourishes as much of the rest of the continent (modulo Greece but also Spain, also at least parts of the Balkan)
…and this is just to serve as an example.
The indiginous cultures and religions of mainland Europe were destroyed by the Romans and the Roman-influenced kingdoms springing up after Romes demise.
Okay, by that reasoning then the indigenous cultures of Australia, the Americas, the Caribbean, Pacific islands, etc were destroyed by European empires/colonization and thus also don’t exist anymore.
White savior complex is alive and well
So I guess the white savior can stop saving, the noble savage can stop being noble and we can all chill, just like the meme suggests.
“Western culture” isn’t even universal in Europe. Sami and several peoples around Russia are quite distinct from anything rooted in the Roman empire. Many of them don’t subscribe to any of the Abrahamic faiths, while others only converted to Christianity in the last few hundred years.
That’s a group I don’t know much about. I only heard about them more recently.
That’s definitely one of the opinions of all time.
Is it underdeveloped though? They’re certainly not the ones driving us toward the 6th mass extinction and potentially an uninhabitable earth (for humans)
Yes it’s undeveloped
That’s not what you said, you said underdeveloped, two very different things.
Okay sorry I think it’s underdeveloped and undeveloped. Primitive, lesser, inferior, etc.
Ah okay, so you’re bigoted, at least you admit it.
Yes, I admit it. I’m not going to play intellectually dishonest games with you or pretend I’m something I’m not.
That’s good because I think you’re a shitty excuse for a human being.
I bet you’re an authority on things that are underdeveloped…
Thanks! Yeah I see a lot of people acting like impoverished tribal cultures are as cultured and complex as ancient and beautiful cultures like the middle east, Persia, China, Greece, etc. It’s simply not true.
wooooosh
I like little boobs
Wow, least racist comment I have seen. Bravo.
Read up on Boasian anthropology and it states that no cultures are inherently better or worse than another. How is the culture of Christian Europeans killing and enslaving hunter gatherers, who haven’t made written records, better? Many oral records also turned out to be just as accurate, provided they have been corroborated by scientific evidence. Many tribes have knowledge and wisdom unknown or unthought of by arrogant civilised and pampered individuals. An American Christian missionary was de-converted when a Praha tribe member from Brazil asked him if he had seen Jesus. When he replied “no”, the tribe member quipped why would he believe Jesus is god if the missionary had not even seen him? The tribe’s philosophy live in the moment, unlike the Western society always thinking of the future and past, striving for status symbol and material wealth. The Praha tribe may not have running water or huge houses, but they live their life carefree.
You think playing Civilizations game with its oversimplified digirtal cartoon tech tree makes you an expert on anthropology to judge others. No, it just makes you a donkey’s cunt for doing so.
Read up on Boasian anthropology and it states that no cultures are inherently better or worse than another.
Ok, I disagree. Thanks Franz Boas.
The Western capitalist and individualistic value of material consumption is totally not destroying the collective humanity by the result of environmental destruction in pursuit of profit. A totally superior culture indeed. Amirite?
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Their validity, or even their level of quality as a culture, is not necessarily measured by their ability to invent writing. We are not automatically better than them just because of that, and we certainly don’t have the right to pass them off as savages.
They don’t have time to engage in any sort of philosophy.
They did. Columbus made contact with a very sophisticated culture that was soon wiped out by disease, and effectively entered a dark age from which it never recovered.
We normally divide human philosophy into Western and Eastern types. There’s some evidence that on the American continents, there was a third independently developed branch of philosophy. It was all but lost, with only oral retellings remaining.
Holy shit does this instance have a mod? What a fucking shit show over such a positive picture.
Happy indigenous people day.
I already banned people in this thread, but I didn’t remove the comments as they were part of a discussion that was at least in part not total trolling.
I noticed! Sorry I doubted your work. I think Jerboa was failing to block people properly as well.
That’s a rather empty way to live one’s life. While purpose isn’t an objective mandate from the heavens, it can be found within oneself, and struggling towards that ideal is where human beauty truly lies.
Struggling, eh?
I for one loathe your world of eternal unnecessary struggle.
That is fine - not everyone is willing or able to attempt building a future. I, for one, wish for a permanent universal mark that our species at one point was intelligent.
Well struggling to support billionaires’ insane greed is not a mark of intelligence…
Literally nobody said it was.
It is the current global struggle, what you’re talking about is a niche side-thing as a justification for struggle in general.
?
What is that even supposed to mean?
The current global struggle is to enrich the few, 8+ hours a day, every day. It is a struggle to maximize production and marketing of garbage
It is not a struggle to improve the world…
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