Wow! Incredibly enlightening! I have been in a book club reading the histories of Native American ways and slavery from Africa to America. We have all been searching for an answer as to how and why our white culture is in such disconnect of every living being compared to the tribal ways of the Natives. Your article is the answers to our question! It’s like you knew we were searching! I can’t wait to share this at our next meeting! I will be sure to to tell them this came from you! Thank you so much!
Considerable experience with newborn animals has made this Hartmannista strongly on the side of nature over nurture. Not to mention my birth-family experience. Sadly, I think the "authoritarianism" complex of intolerance and violence is in the DNA. I suspect it may even be somewhat (?) concentrated in the DNA of N. Europeans who came to America. Hello, religious fanatics? To be fair, ghastly warfare between the Native American tribes was anodyne before the Europeans just overwhelmed. I think it's pretty well established that the Navajo are Athabascan conquerors of the Puebloans. So maybe humans are all driven to destruction.
Beautifully written truth-telling. When we construct a thing - be it a building, a thought, or a society - the most crucial element of its longevity is the integrity of its foundation. All that follows is dependent upon this fundamental grounding.
In this regard, Thom has earned the honor of bomoh. He has brought us truth, compassion, and wisdom. His writing is a brilliant translation of the complex into the parlance of everyday-speak. I thank you, Thom, for remaining a humble and imperative guide amidst an ocean of untruths and great-forgettings.
For those looking for a definition of "bomoh", you can find its essence in Robert Wolff's "Original Wisdom" - a book which so deeply illustrates the foundations of our humanness.
Further understanding of Thom's post can be attained from "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" (Thom Hartmann) and "Ishmael" (Daniel Quinn). Though not formally recognized as companion writings, these two books are most certainly such.
Another Hartmann mind-bender. Yes, this explains almost every contemporary conflict. Let's lobby for "critical human theory" to be in every public school curriculum. (Parochial and "Christian" schools will not appreciate what Thom has to say.)
But a query: the indiginous cultures Thom describes might be called "spontaneous" cultures, developing intramurally and slowly without the external imposition of ideology. They got right the relationship to the earth, but they were tribal, and tribalism bred conflict. (Cf. Trumpers and the rest of us.) Not to the degree that Dominator cultures engage in conflict, but history tells us inter-tribal warfare was common, and some Native American tribes enslaved members of others.
But thanks, Tom, for an insightful article. If the first step in solving a problem is defining it, this is huge. I'll forward it to some people working hard on climate change, and this will be of great value to them.
Just made a comment including recognition of the indigenous conflict; then read yours. A query: can the race unify to prioritize global survival over the other part of congenital tradition; competition and greed? Born to a mother who was born a Bircher and died a Birther, I am not an optimist
Even compared to Thom’s other works, this one stands out as something everyone should read (especially those of us who belong to the post-Reagan tribes or cults). As John has pointed out, indigenous peoples engaged in war behaviors, but I would suggest that conflicts between tribes didn't necessarily occur because they had tribal cultures. Instead, I believe that war happened between tribes during times of hardship, and only as a last resort (just like present day citizens who are poor and turn to crime to provide for their families). Any culture that learned the power of planning 7 generations in the future surely saw that war was stupid and not sustainable (assuming they wanted their tribes to remain going concerns).
I will be sharing this article with family and friends not only because Thom tells some great stories, he has also written a most provocative and fascinating perspective on the history of civilization. What he described is exactly why our citizens’ rights and our communities’ interests are so screwed up. End corporate personhood before it ends us.
Oh dear, Dave. I love your sweet romanticism about "the noble savage." We're in a "both are true" conundrum. An instinct for harmony with nature and perpetual blood-feud with fellow humans. Ripped from tomorrow's headlines, but without the harmony with nature part. Thom seems to be an optimist that the human race can reconcile these issues. Me; not so hopeful.
Actually, intertribal conflict that resulted in death was quite rare, outside of times of famine, like the mini-climate-disruption 900 years ago that drove Deni people down into Pueblo people's territory, provoking the Apache-Hopi wars. The Iroquis developed what we call LaCrosse as a way of resolving conflict - there's a painting in the halls of Congress of 10,000 people engaged in a multi-tribe "game," for example. And even in "war," the concept of "counting coup" was how score was kept to determine the winner in a "war." A "coup" was when you drew blood, but did not kill somebody. Killing was verboten. But when you were scratched enough to bleed you had to leave the "war" and your side lost a point. Genocidal warfare is almost entirely an "innovation" of people who had embraced farming like Europeans and some Asians, thus the land defined who/where a people were.
I've done a lot of studying' up on this; certainly aware of the coup-counting tradition. Strong impression that the advent of horse-based culture was major disruption, including a lot more violence.
That came with Europeans (who brought the horses); by then Native Americans had reached the point where they had three choices: run away, submit, or fight back and become their oppressors. Some tribes chose the latter and internalized the Wetiko (Lakota for "cannibal") worldview of the Europeans. But read Peter Farb's "Man's Rise to Civilization" or Chris Ryan's "Civilized to Death" and you see the incredible cultural damage their encounters with Europeans did...
Daphne, I love it when you love my "sweet romanticism,” and as I look over these Hartmann Report replies, congratulations for running the table (in record time). I enjoyed them all if only because I learned things. I, too, am not so sanguine about the future of civilization, mostly because of what I’ve learned from Thom over the years. However, one thing that he has stressed repeatedly is that just because the likelihood of avoiding the last tipping point into the 6th Mass Extinction is getting worse, hope and action are the logical responses (and we need to use best practice-based solutions to fix what ails us). I believe that above all priorities of our government we need a critical mass of citizens who learned to have a passion for learning and are good at it. Those of us who have already learned to be bad at learning AND crave inclusion in their tribes/cults are much more likely to make crappy and very expensive decisions that the rest of us pay for. We need a role model education system to fight the stupidities foisted upon us by the oligarchs and other rich sociopaths that control our government. This is another way of describing what the whole article is about, i.e., humans do what they have learned to do, (and I think (but can’t prove) those who learned to be bad learners are more likely to be assholes). America needs enough citizens who are serious about preserving the most important function of any culture and in the 21st Century that should be role model teaching and learning. Unfortunately, such an education system is the oligarchs worst nightmare so without the end of corporate personhood, the proper investment in role model education is highly unlikely. It’s a conundrum of epic proportions and never underestimate the powers of mutation and neuroplasticity.
Is this a good time to ask about the thousand-year history of Crete whose history is abbreviated by the tale of Heraclese and the minotaur? Just asking about the details, I suppose.
You're under-crediting the ancientness of Crete/Mycenean culture by a few thousand. Yes, very interesting. I'm a web idiot, but I have an idea that looking for this with "Ancient Aliens" would catch you up on current info. I have a book: you know, paper! somewhere about "the decipherment of Linear-B." Have fun!
Thom, this understanding is hugely important to help all peoples realize that each culture has journeyed a very long and difficult road. With this understanding and acknowledgement of the past the healing can begin leading to an age of reunion...for all humanity. I look forward to our conversation on Front and Center with Steve Bhaerman.
Off Sicily are the Aeolian Islands of which Lipardi is the main one. Here is a fine museum showing the pre-Roman history of the group. Over 3000 years there were 10 invasions of the islands; each time another people conquered and mixed with the old, creating a new culture that was in turn overthrown. There is nothing new here and I doubt if there's a square meter of habitable land on Earth that hasn't been taken by one group from another. The real difference is that the Europeans did it on such a massive and arrogant scale, refusing to learn very much from those they conquered and insisting they were the only ones with "the truth". While Europe was mired in poverty and filth there were glittering civilizations around the world, yet even today one would barely know that from any introductory history taught in the West. Using the poison of racism, their technology, capitalism and a militant faith were equated with progress. While material levels increased and many people ultimately lived better and longer the Earth paid the price for the reckless damage inflicted on it. Those caught in the way, including the powerless in developed economies were treated barely any better than those in foreign places where the harm could be hidden. In fact Americans workers today are seeing their standard of living go down as this process comes home. Clearly changes will have to occur, if only because the planet can't take this system much longer. How that can be done without slipping into general poverty and dictatorship is perhaps the most important challenge facing the human race.
In someways I think culture starts with family and the bonds we make. It doesn't matter what a family looks like but if they are present. Strong family makes a strong society. In these native cultures it seems there is always a connection to every generation in the family. Something we have lost in our me culture.
Golly, but sometimes family is wrong, wrong, wrong! I grew up in the unkind bosom of a textbook authoritarian family-from-hell. In my late thirties, John Dean's book "Conservatives Without Conscience" saved my sanity as I struggled with the nastiness and crazy-making. Ugh. A person has to choose to bond with what is good.
I agree. I also grew up in an alcoholic family. And trying to navigate the world without the skills a family can provide is arduous and lonely. As a "culture" we are kinder to our pets then our next door neighbor. Family doesn't have to be the one you were born with. Without a sustainable culture we are lost in a wilderness.
For a long time, I have joked (mostly to myself, because now we are in education desolation): Don't make me mad, because I am still P'...d-off over the Cathars, and that was 900 years ago! Simon de Montfort sent to the Pope: "How shall I know which to burn?" and the Pope sent back: "Burn them all; God will know his own." Apocryphal? Certainly true to type. It's hardly news that what is handed down to us from the god of the Old Testament is heavy on holy hell. So inexpressibly sad that such massive effort has been put into extinguishing the glimmers of revolutionary kindness that yet show up in hints in the New T. But your diatribe, Thom, connects the eradication of culture to the eradication of some instinctive harmony with the necessary source of life itself: the fantastically unlikely planet, hanging by a thread in a goldilocks zone rationality would decree impossible, functioning according to rules that homo NOT sapiens seems to have a primary drive to barely comprehend only with a goal to exploit.
I'm a long-time "student" of the feminist histories of ancient beliefs that the earth was our "mother" and powers of life-and-death originated with female energies. This explanation to Native Americans of White/European inclinations to appropriate their practices is a wonderful "path" if you will on that road. Among the critical queries, in my humble opinion: what happened when the ice-age proximate human groups that were surviving by domesticating herd animals migrated southward? It's proposed that the western hemisphere's First People were some of those people. Another suggestion has been that some domesticators of herds moved south to where "the cradle of civilization" may have included people who had learned how to gather vegetation and, then, how to plant and harvest. Was Gilgamesh the first of the male sacred figures? Didn't that parallel the addition of male consorts to the assorted great goddesses: Isis, Astarte, Hera, Persephone, Diana, Hecate, Kali, Demeter and Inana?
You've made clear the urgency of humanity's grasp of the histories of our varied cultures. For instance, one newer query might be, " what happened among the tribes of Africa that resulted in wars among those who were captured by their enemies and sold to the British East India Company in the early 17th century to be sold to the early colonists of the western hemisphere, including Jamestown."
Quite a response to the purveyors of the notion that we humans are rightly the masters of our beloved, sacred planet.
Ah, Walt. So glad I read to the bottom! I humbly re-phrase: can the world survive individual cultures? I fear that the genotype is so hardwired to differentiate by phenotype that we are going to "go down in flames." The new organizing principle of America seems to be: "I hate, therefore I am." And that's pretty much a retrace to the norm. It's the fleeting ideal of tolerance that was anomalous.
Wow! Incredibly enlightening! I have been in a book club reading the histories of Native American ways and slavery from Africa to America. We have all been searching for an answer as to how and why our white culture is in such disconnect of every living being compared to the tribal ways of the Natives. Your article is the answers to our question! It’s like you knew we were searching! I can’t wait to share this at our next meeting! I will be sure to to tell them this came from you! Thank you so much!
Considerable experience with newborn animals has made this Hartmannista strongly on the side of nature over nurture. Not to mention my birth-family experience. Sadly, I think the "authoritarianism" complex of intolerance and violence is in the DNA. I suspect it may even be somewhat (?) concentrated in the DNA of N. Europeans who came to America. Hello, religious fanatics? To be fair, ghastly warfare between the Native American tribes was anodyne before the Europeans just overwhelmed. I think it's pretty well established that the Navajo are Athabascan conquerors of the Puebloans. So maybe humans are all driven to destruction.
Beautifully written truth-telling. When we construct a thing - be it a building, a thought, or a society - the most crucial element of its longevity is the integrity of its foundation. All that follows is dependent upon this fundamental grounding.
In this regard, Thom has earned the honor of bomoh. He has brought us truth, compassion, and wisdom. His writing is a brilliant translation of the complex into the parlance of everyday-speak. I thank you, Thom, for remaining a humble and imperative guide amidst an ocean of untruths and great-forgettings.
For those looking for a definition of "bomoh", you can find its essence in Robert Wolff's "Original Wisdom" - a book which so deeply illustrates the foundations of our humanness.
Further understanding of Thom's post can be attained from "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" (Thom Hartmann) and "Ishmael" (Daniel Quinn). Though not formally recognized as companion writings, these two books are most certainly such.
Another Hartmann mind-bender. Yes, this explains almost every contemporary conflict. Let's lobby for "critical human theory" to be in every public school curriculum. (Parochial and "Christian" schools will not appreciate what Thom has to say.)
But a query: the indiginous cultures Thom describes might be called "spontaneous" cultures, developing intramurally and slowly without the external imposition of ideology. They got right the relationship to the earth, but they were tribal, and tribalism bred conflict. (Cf. Trumpers and the rest of us.) Not to the degree that Dominator cultures engage in conflict, but history tells us inter-tribal warfare was common, and some Native American tribes enslaved members of others.
But thanks, Tom, for an insightful article. If the first step in solving a problem is defining it, this is huge. I'll forward it to some people working hard on climate change, and this will be of great value to them.
Just made a comment including recognition of the indigenous conflict; then read yours. A query: can the race unify to prioritize global survival over the other part of congenital tradition; competition and greed? Born to a mother who was born a Bircher and died a Birther, I am not an optimist
Even compared to Thom’s other works, this one stands out as something everyone should read (especially those of us who belong to the post-Reagan tribes or cults). As John has pointed out, indigenous peoples engaged in war behaviors, but I would suggest that conflicts between tribes didn't necessarily occur because they had tribal cultures. Instead, I believe that war happened between tribes during times of hardship, and only as a last resort (just like present day citizens who are poor and turn to crime to provide for their families). Any culture that learned the power of planning 7 generations in the future surely saw that war was stupid and not sustainable (assuming they wanted their tribes to remain going concerns).
I will be sharing this article with family and friends not only because Thom tells some great stories, he has also written a most provocative and fascinating perspective on the history of civilization. What he described is exactly why our citizens’ rights and our communities’ interests are so screwed up. End corporate personhood before it ends us.
Oh dear, Dave. I love your sweet romanticism about "the noble savage." We're in a "both are true" conundrum. An instinct for harmony with nature and perpetual blood-feud with fellow humans. Ripped from tomorrow's headlines, but without the harmony with nature part. Thom seems to be an optimist that the human race can reconcile these issues. Me; not so hopeful.
Actually, intertribal conflict that resulted in death was quite rare, outside of times of famine, like the mini-climate-disruption 900 years ago that drove Deni people down into Pueblo people's territory, provoking the Apache-Hopi wars. The Iroquis developed what we call LaCrosse as a way of resolving conflict - there's a painting in the halls of Congress of 10,000 people engaged in a multi-tribe "game," for example. And even in "war," the concept of "counting coup" was how score was kept to determine the winner in a "war." A "coup" was when you drew blood, but did not kill somebody. Killing was verboten. But when you were scratched enough to bleed you had to leave the "war" and your side lost a point. Genocidal warfare is almost entirely an "innovation" of people who had embraced farming like Europeans and some Asians, thus the land defined who/where a people were.
I've done a lot of studying' up on this; certainly aware of the coup-counting tradition. Strong impression that the advent of horse-based culture was major disruption, including a lot more violence.
That came with Europeans (who brought the horses); by then Native Americans had reached the point where they had three choices: run away, submit, or fight back and become their oppressors. Some tribes chose the latter and internalized the Wetiko (Lakota for "cannibal") worldview of the Europeans. But read Peter Farb's "Man's Rise to Civilization" or Chris Ryan's "Civilized to Death" and you see the incredible cultural damage their encounters with Europeans did...
Daphne, I love it when you love my "sweet romanticism,” and as I look over these Hartmann Report replies, congratulations for running the table (in record time). I enjoyed them all if only because I learned things. I, too, am not so sanguine about the future of civilization, mostly because of what I’ve learned from Thom over the years. However, one thing that he has stressed repeatedly is that just because the likelihood of avoiding the last tipping point into the 6th Mass Extinction is getting worse, hope and action are the logical responses (and we need to use best practice-based solutions to fix what ails us). I believe that above all priorities of our government we need a critical mass of citizens who learned to have a passion for learning and are good at it. Those of us who have already learned to be bad at learning AND crave inclusion in their tribes/cults are much more likely to make crappy and very expensive decisions that the rest of us pay for. We need a role model education system to fight the stupidities foisted upon us by the oligarchs and other rich sociopaths that control our government. This is another way of describing what the whole article is about, i.e., humans do what they have learned to do, (and I think (but can’t prove) those who learned to be bad learners are more likely to be assholes). America needs enough citizens who are serious about preserving the most important function of any culture and in the 21st Century that should be role model teaching and learning. Unfortunately, such an education system is the oligarchs worst nightmare so without the end of corporate personhood, the proper investment in role model education is highly unlikely. It’s a conundrum of epic proportions and never underestimate the powers of mutation and neuroplasticity.
Is this a good time to ask about the thousand-year history of Crete whose history is abbreviated by the tale of Heraclese and the minotaur? Just asking about the details, I suppose.
You're under-crediting the ancientness of Crete/Mycenean culture by a few thousand. Yes, very interesting. I'm a web idiot, but I have an idea that looking for this with "Ancient Aliens" would catch you up on current info. I have a book: you know, paper! somewhere about "the decipherment of Linear-B." Have fun!
Julia, can' help, I'm afraid. You're better informed on Crete than I am, by a light year.
Thom, this understanding is hugely important to help all peoples realize that each culture has journeyed a very long and difficult road. With this understanding and acknowledgement of the past the healing can begin leading to an age of reunion...for all humanity. I look forward to our conversation on Front and Center with Steve Bhaerman.
Off Sicily are the Aeolian Islands of which Lipardi is the main one. Here is a fine museum showing the pre-Roman history of the group. Over 3000 years there were 10 invasions of the islands; each time another people conquered and mixed with the old, creating a new culture that was in turn overthrown. There is nothing new here and I doubt if there's a square meter of habitable land on Earth that hasn't been taken by one group from another. The real difference is that the Europeans did it on such a massive and arrogant scale, refusing to learn very much from those they conquered and insisting they were the only ones with "the truth". While Europe was mired in poverty and filth there were glittering civilizations around the world, yet even today one would barely know that from any introductory history taught in the West. Using the poison of racism, their technology, capitalism and a militant faith were equated with progress. While material levels increased and many people ultimately lived better and longer the Earth paid the price for the reckless damage inflicted on it. Those caught in the way, including the powerless in developed economies were treated barely any better than those in foreign places where the harm could be hidden. In fact Americans workers today are seeing their standard of living go down as this process comes home. Clearly changes will have to occur, if only because the planet can't take this system much longer. How that can be done without slipping into general poverty and dictatorship is perhaps the most important challenge facing the human race.
Wholehearted endorsement! Said it all, doc!
In someways I think culture starts with family and the bonds we make. It doesn't matter what a family looks like but if they are present. Strong family makes a strong society. In these native cultures it seems there is always a connection to every generation in the family. Something we have lost in our me culture.
Golly, but sometimes family is wrong, wrong, wrong! I grew up in the unkind bosom of a textbook authoritarian family-from-hell. In my late thirties, John Dean's book "Conservatives Without Conscience" saved my sanity as I struggled with the nastiness and crazy-making. Ugh. A person has to choose to bond with what is good.
I agree. I also grew up in an alcoholic family. And trying to navigate the world without the skills a family can provide is arduous and lonely. As a "culture" we are kinder to our pets then our next door neighbor. Family doesn't have to be the one you were born with. Without a sustainable culture we are lost in a wilderness.
For a long time, I have joked (mostly to myself, because now we are in education desolation): Don't make me mad, because I am still P'...d-off over the Cathars, and that was 900 years ago! Simon de Montfort sent to the Pope: "How shall I know which to burn?" and the Pope sent back: "Burn them all; God will know his own." Apocryphal? Certainly true to type. It's hardly news that what is handed down to us from the god of the Old Testament is heavy on holy hell. So inexpressibly sad that such massive effort has been put into extinguishing the glimmers of revolutionary kindness that yet show up in hints in the New T. But your diatribe, Thom, connects the eradication of culture to the eradication of some instinctive harmony with the necessary source of life itself: the fantastically unlikely planet, hanging by a thread in a goldilocks zone rationality would decree impossible, functioning according to rules that homo NOT sapiens seems to have a primary drive to barely comprehend only with a goal to exploit.
I'm a long-time "student" of the feminist histories of ancient beliefs that the earth was our "mother" and powers of life-and-death originated with female energies. This explanation to Native Americans of White/European inclinations to appropriate their practices is a wonderful "path" if you will on that road. Among the critical queries, in my humble opinion: what happened when the ice-age proximate human groups that were surviving by domesticating herd animals migrated southward? It's proposed that the western hemisphere's First People were some of those people. Another suggestion has been that some domesticators of herds moved south to where "the cradle of civilization" may have included people who had learned how to gather vegetation and, then, how to plant and harvest. Was Gilgamesh the first of the male sacred figures? Didn't that parallel the addition of male consorts to the assorted great goddesses: Isis, Astarte, Hera, Persephone, Diana, Hecate, Kali, Demeter and Inana?
You've made clear the urgency of humanity's grasp of the histories of our varied cultures. For instance, one newer query might be, " what happened among the tribes of Africa that resulted in wars among those who were captured by their enemies and sold to the British East India Company in the early 17th century to be sold to the early colonists of the western hemisphere, including Jamestown."
Quite a response to the purveyors of the notion that we humans are rightly the masters of our beloved, sacred planet.
Quite a paradigm shift!
Can individual cultures survive in a global world? Should they?
Ah, Walt. So glad I read to the bottom! I humbly re-phrase: can the world survive individual cultures? I fear that the genotype is so hardwired to differentiate by phenotype that we are going to "go down in flames." The new organizing principle of America seems to be: "I hate, therefore I am." And that's pretty much a retrace to the norm. It's the fleeting ideal of tolerance that was anomalous.