Why is this posted to memes? This sounds like a good way to live life. Stop chasing that next big promotion, or whatever status symbol you think will make you successful.
You can be successful in helping others and live one of the most fulfilling lives without needing to be rich*
*Disclaimer:
This tends to be a lot more difficult when you're born poor. If this is the case, try finding someone who isn't, who is trying to live a fulfilling life.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
"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.
Is it underdeveloped though? They're certainly not the ones driving us toward the 6th mass extinction and potentially an uninhabitable earth (for humans)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not really, the point is that you don't have to work yourself to the bone, or always be trying to climb that next rung in the company ladder to validate your existence. Your existence doesn't need to be validated by metrics based in money.
Just existing and living your life is okay. That's not something to sneer at. Rather, you should ask yourself why you are so triggered by that idea.
Problem is not everyone interprets it that way. Some people take it as an excuse to sit on their ass smoking weed and playing video games all day while they leech off someone that's too kind to kick them to the curb.
How on earth do you make the jump from "some indigenous cultures believe this cool thing" to "fetishizing indigenous cultures as these perfect things"
Like, I don't think they're saying it's true because some indigenous cultures believe it - and those specific indigenous cultures are to be trusted as a moral authority.
They're just saying that some cultures believe this thing and they agree with that belief.
I guess I can't know for sure what she meant without being able to ask her, but there's no reason to assume she was making an extremely weird claim when that obviously isn't necessarily true.
But I guess if you are willing to jump to that conclusion, you will see claims like that everywhere, and maybe that makes it seem like a safe assumption that that is what she's saying.
(When I say "maybe," I really do mean maybe. I'm not under the impression that I know everything about you, lol. I'm just exploring a possibility that there's no real way for me to ever confirm or falsify. Just thinking out loud for curiosity's sake.)