Saturday, May 31, 2008

Tribal Meddling from Rousseau to Gobineau

Anthropologists' fingers must be just itching to get some ideological spin on this unique opportunity: the discovery of a virgin Amazonian tribe!

The BBC's commentator Fiona Watson, from "Survival International" activist group for the preservation of indigenous tribal peoples (note the collective) doesn't bode well in that respect.

Men flexing bows and a woman who doesn't; females weaving cotton into small skirts as the men are hunting animals; males aggressively body painted with urucum whereas women use genipapo; a black figure not carrying a bow is suggestive of female gender ...?

What's this neo-sexism in a group for racial and cultural isolationism? Whatever happened to sexual equality and multiculturalism? Aren't all races, cultures, men and women 'identical'?

Hadn't behaviorists (the materialist approach to psychology) figured out long ago that gender related games are just socially acquired preferences? That these were forced upon societies by the white, male dominated power structure? That the conclusion was warranted that we might just as well switch tasks, the females of the species doing jobs that require spacial insight, while the males provide communal and domestic 'care'?

Only yesterday I was informed by a feminist there are 'any number of genders!' One wonders what happened to all these?

Since I haven't heard anyone apologizing for the abominations of cultural goulash, the psychological emasculation of boys, and the transformation of girls into sexual-predatory barracudas, we must assume the dogma still stands!

Is "Survival International" sure their spokesperson enjoyed proper conditioning in critical theory and instruction in gender and racial identity?

The Pragmatist approach of activism which is hell-bent on result by whatever means "to raise awareness and money" (whatever for?) would arouse hope to the contrary! Wow, "there are so many different ways" one can meddle in complete strangers' lives, "all of them making a real difference!" But then J.G. Von Herder (1744-1803) proponent "Survival International" is a surprising organization in many respects, the bookshop for the first time in two hundred years giving evidence that "Progress can Kill."

From Rousseau (1712-1778) to Gobineau (1816-1882), in the absence of objective standards (reason, for example) a learning curve - even of sorts - remains sadly beyond the subjectivist's grasp.

- Caption: Tehamana Has Many Ancestors (Merahi metua no Tehamana, 1893)
by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), painted on his first journey to Tahiti in 1891 -

The fact that this tribe chose isolation did not stop the activists from the Brazilian government’s National Indian Foundation from distributing these films worldwide. They deliberately violated this tribe’s privacy because they wanted to use these Indians to prove that logging can be harmful to indigenous people. (...) >>>

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