A commenter sent me a link about another South American ancient civilization that has been found by flyover photos.
I am not sure I can define mantra thinking, but what occurred to me was another example of it. We keep finding dead civilizations. We keep studying each one in detail to find out What It Has To Teach Us. We never do the Mantra-like thing: We don’t step back, look at all those discoveries as trees, and see the forest.
And the forest, the big idea, the Occam’s Razor, is this:
How do we PREVENT ourselves from BECOMING a civilization whose CORPSE must be found by a uniquely advanced one in some indefinite and unlikely future? That is what dead “civilizations” have to teach us first of all.
We are actually digging around in the ruins of an old “civilization’s” corpse to find predictions of what will happen to US in 2012 A.D. It has not occurred to ONE PERSON fascinated by this to wonder why this Great Wisdom had not one word to say about the period of that civilization’s OWN TOTAL DESTRUCTION, which happened long ago.
Before he drools in awe over the Ancient Wisdom of dead societies, the Mantra Thinker asks first WHY THEY ARE DEAD.
All dead civilizations have brown skins. That is what is called an observation. Observation is he basis of Western thought.
I want to know WHY this is. Those who study the Great Dead Wisdom talk exclusively about the Wisdom, never about the Dead part.
#1 by Dave on 01/11/2010 - 9:56 am
The one part of Adam Smith’s thought that has great relevance for us today is “the invisible hand”.
“The invisible hand” is the seminal role race plays in the fortunes of society.
#2 by Al Parker on 01/11/2010 - 10:49 am
Just one more simple death-blow from Bob. However, the authors, the documentary producers, etc, do not or will not listen. Or perhaps they privately admit this, being opponents, but a critical point has not yet been reached when they can no longer ignore the contradictions. Someone with a short attention span like me will not be able to see the buildup in microscopic changes unlike Bob whose trained eyes have honed their skill over the decades.
#3 by Simmons on 01/11/2010 - 11:33 am
Because it is a field of study where lunatics go to die after they get their doctorate. Some of the worst dreck in the world ends up in anthro, and then they infect the kids and some of them never grow up.
They start with the answer and then try and fit everything to that answer. The little brown folk who live near such wreckage could care less what the crazy white people do or think as long as they bring money and shiny baubles. Polite society does its usual big momma/tender papa act, and the crazies keep on keeping on never actually having to grasp the simple reality that stares them in the face.
The day that the big momma lib and tender lovin papa conservative have to answer for being responsible for allowing such a waste created by the lunatics will be the day that said departments are reorganized and the professors reassigned to the organic vegatable farm for hard labor.
#4 by shari on 01/11/2010 - 9:52 pm
It doesn’t look as if “global warming” aka “climate change”, is going to be touted with the same assurance as it was, so who knows what else is not going to be presented the same way,before long.
#5 by Dave on 01/11/2010 - 11:06 pm
Al,
The docmentary makers, the anthropologists, and academia all follow the principle of “what you don’t know won’t hurt you” otherwise known as “idealism”.
Idealism works great as long as there is money in it and even if the money stops flowing they don’t have to raise the contradiction that nonwhite people wouldn’t even know their own history if white people never bothered to discover it for them.
The history of nonwhites has always been a big game of pretend and the only history that much of the nonwhite world has is the history that white people have fed them.
That’s part of what makes nonwhite intellectuals such a hoot. They have to surf the English Internet to find out who they are.