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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous
We are not more advanced than anyone, and to believe so is petty, ignorant, prideful and selfish. In fact, most so-called 'primitives' have a culture and social structure which is MORE sophistication, MORE elaborate, and has more DEPTH than our materialistic based systems of the modern era. Further, the nuclear family is a production of the idealism and fantasy of 1950s americana, it doesn't exist here, it doesn't exist anywhere, there is only one family, the human family, there is only one society, the global society. The variations are only a matter of perspective, just like two parallel lines can be altered to appear unparallel to the eye, when they are parallel all along..
but then again, my bias is that I am an Orthodox Christian, and we see the world as one single existence, one universal family  and it is christmas |
i agree that our social structures are not 'better' than anyone elses, and what we call civilisation is tremendously violent. i was trying to make the point that to see us as the superior advanced state that those 'primitive' tribes haven't reached yet is stupid and wrong, except i would hazard against viewing such societies with rose tinted glasses, or as somehow more pure than us. i don't think they are better than us, in a very crude way our materialism does make us more advanced, our technology and medical techniques for example. but i am not saying that our materialistic societies are worth holding onto above all, but the knowledge and experience we have gathered certainly is worth saving. i agree that we should see ourselves as one and any attempt at division is false. but we should not glorify regression. we should not behave like those spanish who destroyed thousands of years of mayan culture and art and history, making it lost to the ages. they thought they were more advanced and superior. deciding to instead think that about tribal societies is just condescending and does not fix the problem. i think the internet and all the knowledge contained is a lot more useful than the specific knowledge of a tribe who have very limited means of expressing it.