Indigenous Cultures - The future of our planet

Indigenous Cultures

The future of our planet depends on saving both the remaining biologically diverse ecosystems and the cultural, credible diversity of the tribal peoples of the world. The ancient cultures of native peoples, threatened by modern assimilation, are the only known, proven time-tested models for the sustainable consumption of the Earth’s threatened natural resources.

Native Planet hopes that you enjoy our cultural documentaries that will show you the fascinating world of indigenous peoples and their unique cultures—and why the preservation of their tribal lifeways is essential to a world where life is sustainable and both cultural diversity and biological diversity flourish.

www.nativeplanet.org/indigenous/indigenous.shtml

The progress of any civilization brings certain drawbacks. With the advancements of modern society, there also comes the destruction of prior cultures. Societies that are primitive in some technological aspects are being eradicated by our advancing world. A typical case of this takeover involves much destruction. There are two points at the heart of these happenings: the reasons for intervention and the reasons for development.

The beginning of modern civilization brought many new ways of living to the world. Tribal societies existed for a very long time before any of this, but with these new advancements came the need not only to survive, but to for power and dominion over others. With their basic needs met, humans strove to create a better way of life by thinking of and creating more advanced tools and social structures. This is what brought the caveman of ages past to become the businessman of today.

From a world view, certain societies advanced in different ways than others. However, it has always been the most destructive society that has had the power to take over others, thus the wars of conquest which parallel the rise of civilization. As the world settled into the framework of countries, nations, and societies, a rigid structure formed, dividing technologically advanced cultures from others: highly economically developed countries are first-world countries, second-world countries are lower in world power, and third-world countries are poor, under developed, usually colonized, that is, invaded, nations. The so-called fourth world, the tribal societies that used to occupy the entire planet, are now literally an endangered culture.

Since the time of Columbus, exploration has come from the need of some societies for room for progress for their own advancement. The intervention and exploitation of native territories has an almost mindless inconsideration for other cultures. The advancing and invading culture's morals, religion, and social structure are assumed to be the universally correct way to live, so these are enforced upon the natives.

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It's obvious that it costs a lot of money and energy to produce all the food we need to maintain our population at six billion. But there is an additional, hidden cost that has to be counted in life forms. Put plainly, in order to maintain the biomass that is tied up in the six billion of us, we have to gobble up 200 species a day--in addition to all the food we produce in the ordinary way. We need the biomass of those 200 species to maintain this biomass, the biomass that is in us. And when we've gobbled up those species, they're gone. Extinct. Vanished forever.

In other words, maintaining a population of six billion humans costs the world 200 species a day. If this were something that was going to stop next week or next month, that would be okay. But the unfortunate fact is that it's not. It's something that's going to go on happening every day, day after day after day--and that's what makes it unsustainable, by definition. That kind of cataclysmic destruction cannot be sustained.

The extraordinary thing that is going to happen in the next two or three decades is not that the human race is going to become extinct. The extraordinary thing that's going to happen in the next two or three decades is that a great second renaissance is going to occur. A great and astounding renaissance.

Nothing less than that is going to save us.
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To describe tribal peoples as socialists makes as much sense to me as describing them as Republicans or Libertarians. Socialism is (to quote from The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia) "a general term for the political and economic theory that advocates collective or government ownership and management of the means of production and distribution of goods." "Means of production" and "distribution of goods" are concepts that arose during the Industrial Revolution and have no sensible application to tribal life. Tribal peoples didn’t have factories where they produced sandals, axe heads, and spear points that were then transported to points of distribution where people with money bought them. "Goods" were not "distributed." If you wanted something, you went and got it. The "goods" of life (whether it was food, wood, stones, or what have you) were not owned "collectively" or by the tribal government. No one owned them, just as no one owned the air or the water or the sunlight.

Species don’t evolve as individual organisms that then by chance come together in a social organization. Rather, they evolve in social organizations--flocks, hives, packs, pods, and so on--and these sustain the individuals. If the social organization of a species doesn’t work, then the species disappears. The social organization humans evolved in is the tribe, which worked for them for millions of years (and still works wherever it hasn’t been destroyed by the people of our culture). By contrast, not a single social organization subsequently invented by the people of our culture has managed to survive for more than a few hundred years (and that only in the midst of wholesale crime, crisis, oppression, corruption, and poverty). In Beyond Civilization (and elsewhere) I’ve tried to point out that many of the benefits of tribalism are still readily available to us individually--and these have nothing whatever to do with socialism.

The fundamental tribal transaction (as described in the essay "Talk About Wealth!" on the website) is "Give support-Get Support" (as opposed to the fundamental capitalist transaction: "Make Products-Get Products"). I have a very tribal relationship with my publisher, which works to our mutual benefit. My wife has a very tribal relationship with the woman who acts as her artist’s representative, which works to their mutual benefit. We have a very tribal relationship with our webmaster, Alan Thornhill, which works to our mutual benefit. But we don’t have a "socialist" relationship with these people (whatever that might be); it has nothing to do with collective ownership and management of anything but only with giving and getting support. We have played important roles in sustaining these people--and they’ve played important roles in sustaining us, and that’s what tribalism is all about.

If you absolutely must relate tribalism to socialism, then it would be reasonable to say that socialism learned some lessons from tribalism (its sense of egalitarianism, for example); to suggest that tribalism learned some lessons from socialism just makes no sense to me; it’s like saying that birds learned some flying lessons from the Wright Brothers.
www.ishmael.org/Interaction/QandA/Detail.CFM?Record=590

The silly notion of “purity” that could never work in a truly primitive life aside, this is largely true. Most of the great movements in history were essentially primitivists; Jesus, Martin Luther, and many, many others held essentially primitivist views, and sought to push back the overwhelming, dehumanizing complexity of civilization back. Today, we know that civilization is defined by its unhealthy relationship with complexity,46 and that complexity is subject to diminishing returns.47 In that pattern, civilization damns itself to collapse. Primitivism makes sense of that pattern, and offers hope for the future by throwing light on just how dehumanizing civilization is.

Those who beat the drum most loudly against the “Noble Savage” are also those with the most religious zeal—not necessarily in Christianity or any other conventional religion, but in progress.48 A fine example can be found in Bruce Thornton’s Plagues of the Mind:



What is most interesting here is that in this volume dedicated to seperating “good knowledge” form “bad knowledge,” Thornton preaches so dogmatically about how important it is to never question the importance of civilization. We must ignore the fact that is has increased the level of violence in our world from an occasional and limited affair to an ubiquitous way of life, the way it has decimated the living world and brought on a new mass extinction, the way it has institutionalized deceit, treachery and alienation, and the way it has even broken us down as human beings, stripped us of our health, our senses, and ultimately, even our personhood and dignity. This must never be questioned, Thornton urges. We must not doubt civilization; we must maintain our faith.

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www.ishmael.org/Education/Parables/Rapanah.shtml

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There is a sense in which I am the "discoverer" of Leaver culture, the first to recognize that Leaver peoples are something more than merely "primitive," that they possess a secret that kept them alive through three million years and that will keep US alive -- if only we'll listen to it.

New Age hucksters have a different interest in Leaver peoples. They want to plunder them for their Tava stones -- their sweat lodges, their medicine wheels, their shamanic rituals, and so on. Once they have these, they throw away the rest -- they've got what they came for. There are plenty of people who want the Tava stones, as these hucksters know, people who care nothing about the Rapanah or their wisdom. They're hungry for novelties and especially for "comforting" novelties, novelties that make them feel more "spiritual" and less empty. May they live long and prosper.

The ultimate point of this parable, I suppose, is that not all explorers are looking for the same thing.

www.ishmael.org/Education/Parables/Rapanah.shtml

The point I'm trying to make in all my work is this: "If we want to survive on this planet, we must listen to what our neighbors in the community of life have to tell us." Thus it made sense for the teacher in Ishmael to be one of those neighbors---a nonhuman. Among those neighbors none is more impressive and authoritative than a gorilla (which is why I chose to make Ishmael a gorilla rather than, say, a parrot or a salmon).

For anyone interested in studying this question more deeply, I highly recommend the monograph "Apes of the Imagination: A Bibliography" by Marion W. Copeland.