Critique Tribal Wisdom Essay - 855 Words

Tribal Wisdom nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;David Maybury Lewis (1992) wonders if we, as Americans, by having systematically chosen to dismiss as odd, weird, and not the right way to live; in our views of foreign tribal cultures, have been hoisted by our own petard. By using his definition of a tribal society (for which there really is no one single way of life): quot;small-scale, pre-industrial societies that live in comparative isolation and manage their affairs without central authority such as the statequot;, (p 6) he questions whether cultural roads industrialized quot;modernquot; societies have chosen have caused the serious social problems we suffer today. We are the modernists, defined by†¦show more content†¦Or if he did, he questioned the ultimate good of those positives or potential hazards. Medical advances, for example, were never mentioned as a positive that could only have come about through modern culture and its credo of achievement. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;I agreed completely, as I mentioned, with his stated ideas. His studies of tribal societies can be broken down to one basic. In modern civilizations, materialism and individuality are the valuables and in the tribal or traditional societies, people are the resources. Peoples relationships with one another and the Earth are the constant he found in primitive groups. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;He found the modern world to idealize individuality, from formal schooling to cultural experience, preaching the idea that personal achievement at any cost is the basis of life and the reward is status. Any human potential toward kindness, generosity, patience, tolerance, cooperation, compassion...are literally undervalued: any job that requires such talents usually has low pay and low prestige.quot; (p. 7). This seems so honest a comparison to me as I study the strong cooperative lifestyles of people who must live as a group in order to survive. These same people have also developed a strong bond with the land that is their economic resource. They have a respect for that which comes from the Earth by means of foraging or hunting. The tribal culture almostShow MoreRelatedPlato s Views On Art And Representation1322 Words   |  6 Pages focusing on the harm caused by writing compared to speech. In Phaedrus, Plato claims that writings are subject to be misunde rstood as the writer will not be able to defend his writing, and these writings only give the appearance of wisdom but is not actually wisdom, because one will not understand what the text means. These texts would be source of amusement rather than knowledge, as only philosophers pursue idea whereas writers just twist up and rearrange words. 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