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 Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2007 3:02 pm
Last night I was reading this excerpt from Marvin Harris's "Our Kind" (1989) that talked about the ethic of gratitude.
He basically talks about this anthropologist's experience with the Semai of central Malaysia. Richard Lee, the anthropologist, said that if you said "thank you" to anyone in the group for anything, they would be deeply offended. he found out that this was because the society depended upon generosity and sharing so much that for someone to be surprised by another's generosity is like saying that person isn't generous all the time to begin with. Lee basically states that they explained to him that you both calculated the worth of what they gave you, and that you didn't expect them to be generous.
Hunter-gathering societies such as the Semai depend upon sharing and extreme generosity for their survival. They also have constant ego deflation to keep anyone from thinking they're better than anyone else or to prevent anyone from attempting to gain any sort of power over anyone else. Part of that is in never saying "thank you," so to never make anyone feel like they're ESPECIALLY generous compared to anyone else.
Lee also details something he tried with the tribe. He went and bought a super fat cow to bring to the Semai as a gift. When he brought it, everyone in the tribe said they would eat it all and still starve, even though it was obvious they wouldn't. They said this deliberately, as a member of the society later explained, so that Lee wouldn't think he was in any way better than anyone else.
I was just curious what you all thought about that, because this is often how the most egalitarian societies are. This isn't necessarily strict, it's just a way that these societies have kept people from asserting power over other people for more than 2 million years.
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Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 8:54 pm
they are certainly a very interesting people, key reasoning is that emotion, passion, and ego are the scources of violence, irrationality, and abbhorred lust. anything that could at all inflate the ego is the first step to a disruption of their peaceful systems. it is very much simmilar to the structure of buddhist Dharma concepts, that emotions, passions, and ego are the inherent scource of violence, irrationality, lust, and ignorance thus leading to suffering. this is very exciting to me and im very happy to have these people brought to my attention. it is a real possitive re-assurance that anarchy can exist, and that non-violence is practical, and existant.
and it appears that they have no hierarchial power system, something more of a communalism, completely unstructured by officials, or organized law or rule. obviously there is still structure, holding the taboo of violence, ego and excessive emotion but this culture is still profoundly revolutionary. Its amazing to have seen this information, as a self proclaimed anthropologist, humanitarian, buddhist, and anarchist. way to go semai.
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Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 9:21 pm
I am surpriced too, never thought of sucha genious plan to go over those feelings, but I must say that for difficult it sounds I prefer to know my demons and protect the people I care of them than prevent them to get bigger, I think the constant fight of "self good and evil" is something that everyone has to accept and to choose wheter side is better for the rest.
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