[MD] On Indian Values (Part I?)

[Heather Perella]

Hello all,

     I've started from the very beginning of this
thread, and have many quotes from others that I
respond to.  These comments I have are from postings
that date from Arlo's first post:  
               Wed Apr 26 2006 to dmb's post of Fri
Apr 28 2006

     I'll read the rest and send out another post.


     Arlo said:  "Some people ARE superior to others.
And the mercantilists had the perfect way to divine
this superiority. Money. Wealth. Having it proves you
are superior to the lazy, stupid poor, the dregs of
life, the wastoids, the losers."

     Let us not forgot the religious aspect of wealth.
 Was it the calvinist who said G-d has already picked
the chosen people for heaven, and we know them by the
blessings G-d has given to them in the form of wealth
(many material goods and $)?  I know this was a
Protestant idea.  The puritans may have as well had
this idea in New England.  (Again, we have moved now,
but we have a lot of work to do in the house, drywall,
etc...  so I don't have more than one book out of any
boxes to source my information, but this is what I
remember, correct me if I have the incorrect dominion
within Protestant)
     As to "social superiority" this leads to bullying
or being bossy as well as wearing the expensive
monetary style of clothing to place one above another.
 I see this coming out of the 'hood' or 'ghetto' of
the Pittsburgh area where the girls I work with are
caught up on intimidating others.  They behave what I
have begun to call 'king of the hill' or one might say
'queen of the hill' - just like the child's game.
     Sometimes it gets to the point where the
administration doesn't listen to staff or supervisors
who have first-hand, day-to-day interaction with these
children.  Some of the residents don't change, and so
the program is not working for them.  They are still
threatening and lose all hope.  They say they have
nothing to lose and that's dangerous.
     Just as a girl (seventeen) who has been in all
the different units, under different staff and
supervisors still doesn't take responsibility for her
actions (sometimes behaviors that become dangerous). 
Staff has said she should have been FTAed (failure to
adjust) months ago, since she has been at the facility
for over almost two years.  Well, what happened?  Last
week she punched a staff right in the eye.  She was
sent to a more secure lock down detention center, and
might be well on her way to crime and prison after she
turns 18.  That's why FTA is here.  Some don't change,
and some get worse (some do better).
     This group home campus is very residential style.
 They do chores, the rules are strict on some units,
but these are small things.  They are here to see a
therapist and to be removed from a situation back home
that initially the law came after them for.  This
place is more for girls that have calmed down to the
point where home is their next step.  They need
restrained at times, timed-out, and such, but once
fights become continual and restraints also, then this
is not the place for them.  They need boot camp or
something that has more eyes to watch them.  These
girls are mainly at a point that hopefully it's not
too late and juvenile detention is not for them.  They
just need a more structured home life, security issues
to protect them are a concern, and there are those
some handfuls that just don't have a home to go back
to (terrible parents, etc..).  The structure is for
organization's sake so staff can properly manage or
keep an eye on the, like my unit, 9 girls: 2-3 staff
working at a time each shift.  With so many troubled
youth at one place organization and structure is a
must.  Let them have an inch and soon they take a
yard.  They will - believe me.  
     Trust is key.  If they don't trust anybody or
constantly take away trust, then the closer we have to
watch them.  The more trust worthy they become, then
as the times I have been able to go fishing with them
and let them go on their own to different parts of the
pond - i have done so without concern.  The pond is
fenced in, yet, the freedom within the pond loosens up
the tension that too much structure eventually causes.
 They do need free-time, and they need structure.  
     As Phaedrus mentioned dynamic quality needs
encased.  To me this 'encased' means the DQ in their
life needs focused, with discipline, upon a path that
is at the very least secure and healthy.  Not to
exclude the other girls, but one is all over the place
in her demeanor.  She pounces from subject to subject
with noises and laughs and complaining - constantly. 
She pesters people with the same comments and
questions over and over again, even after they have
been answered or given attention.  All that energy
focused where?  For her, on sex, cigarettes, and
complaining.  Does she have her positive moments? 
Yes, but how they disappear so quickly...   
     As Arlo mentioned:  "And as Phaedrus' studies got
deeper and deeper he saw that it was to this conflict
between European and Indian
values, between freedom and order, that his study
should be directed."  Some girls complain about not
enough free-time, and yet, once they have it the chaos
easily starts.  They have lost their own control, of
their own behaviors, and have dipped into something
easier to be as, yet, the complaining increases and
their suffering increases.  Do they notice what their
own negative behavior does to themselves?  The
suffering exhibited in their acts and attitudes
towards others?  NO, not readily.

     Arlo said:  "At the end of Lila, John (an Indian)
tells LaVerne the dog is 'a good dog', demonstrating
that he 'distinguished the dog according to its
Quality, rather than according to its substance'. 
Dusenberry, they referred to as a GOOD man, rather
than as whites would say a good MAN. Here is the final
key, the cornerstone if you will, to this discussion. 
The Indians didn't see man as an object to whom the
adjective "good" may or may not be applied."

     I still think about this and wonder if GOOD is
all that is.  That is doesn't quality, as I heard
mentioned on the MOQ.org before, have good quality and
bad quality?  Yet, to focus on the good or bad as the
adjective in this sense is to miss out on the quality
noun.  Thus, even if good or bad, it is the noun
quality that is to stabilize the understanding,
without the good or bad really overshadowing plain-old
quality.  What do others think of this?

     Scott said:  "A couple of comments. First, the
"all men are created equal" phrase stems from Locke,
with his assumption that we all start life as a tabula
rasa.  Jefferson was an admirer of Locke, and in
addition to this, borrowed from Locke the idea of
natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness (though he changed that last one: Locke said
life, liberty and estate)."

     I do know that a representative government and
much else are mirrored from the Iroquois.  Jefferson
did get many of his ideas from them in the meetings he
had with them.  Again, I know of a book at the library
that comments on what Jefferson and others had to say
about the Amerindian, especially the Iroquios
confederation, in how their ways and values influenced
the U.S. Constitution and government.  I'm going to
have to go to the library.  I know of another book as
well, that shows the influence of Amerindian
open-style spiritual practices that permeated
Christianity itself.  I know of one quote by an
Amerindian when the settlers where moving west killing
off the villages.  He said and I paraphrase, "You talk
about Christ, but we practice his way."
     Sure the Amerindian was a vicious fighter, and
torturer, yet, how many times did they come to the
peace pipe to discuss with the military officers of
the U.S. to only time after time have the promises
broken.  Mostly the elders understood what was
happening and tried to curb the conflict, their young
ones where not wise enough to see what was happening. 
Were they all happy and peaceful - no?  Was the U.S.
at that time all happy and peaceful?  Who had manifest
destiny and took the land?  The troubled communication
of an event long ago speaks from the past upon this
land, and I still hear the voice of the earth and sky
peeking through a culture that has conflict even with
its' own family values.  Destroying much in its' wake,
trying to salve a good that exists, but where is the
focus and discipline of the DQ that wildly runs free
everywhere?

     Scott said:  "One cultural difference was that by
the 19th century, Indians were still torturing their
captives "for the hell of it" (as the whites saw it --
for the Indians it was more of a social ritual, a test
of bravery), while the whites saw this as barbaric. Of
course, whites all come out of cultures that practiced
all sorts of barbarities, but by the 19th century had
begun to see such stuff *as* barbaric."

     Massacre at Sandcreek (19th century) - vagina's
on saddle horns, wore genitals around necks etc...
white men did this.  I'm sure we all agree it took
torture and pain to get this ornament.  Yet, has the
frequency of torture changed with more and more social
institutions - maybe.

     Arlo researched and I quote from him:  "Of the
Indian values unsuited for modern life, there are
non-punctuality, inattention to detail, refusal to
subordinate to authority and social equality."

     Very concise.

     Arlo said: "If I've missed something in Pirsig,
if you can find some "Indian value" that I missed,
that was part of your dismissal of Indian values as
"unfitted", please, please, please let me know."

     Platt responded:  "You missed smoking illegal
peyote..."

     I'm not into qualities that stimulate such as
peyote so I'm with Platt on this one.  Yet, I do drink
coffee - the consciousness is triggered.  I do smoke a
tobacco pipe I've made about 10 years ago still - the
consciousness is triggered.  I like an occasional
glass or two of red wine, and drink a beer or three at
times, rarely though, - the consciousness is
triggered, though.

     Platt also said and I continue:  "...taking off
for days on "vision quests..."

     Now here is no quality time on Platt's part to
think of something worthwhile to say.  Don't you
vacation?

     Again Platt (same quote):  "...and a "dangerous
willingness to sudden and enormous violence" as
unsuited to modern American life."

     Why do we have so many criminals and jails?  They
didn't have prisons, but their village was not torn
apart limb from limb by "insiders" (criminals) on a
daily and nightly basis.

     dmb said:  "But its interesting to bring up the
original couple because the "noble savage" is to be
contrasted with "original sin". 
See, the standard view in Christian Europe was that
man is essentially evil and in need of redemption
whereas the romantic view of the noble savage asserts
the essential goodness of man. See, there is the
natural man as sinner who is tamed and civilized by
society and then there is the noble savage who lives
in nature and is therefore uncorrupted by society. As
I understand it, the idea of the "noble savage"
basically overturned the mainstream Western beliefs
about the essential nature of man and his relationship
with society."

     Now here is a comment by dmb that we can discuss
other than Platt's refusal to answer any questions or
refusal to comment on what is brought in this thread,
thus far.  Platt seems to have only these basic
conservative ideas to discuss, and somehow he fits in
his party jestering even when we are discussing
cowboys and indians.
     As to what dmb addresses above.  Yes, where is
the corruption?  The puritans came to America and
wanted to chop the trees down away from their lives. 
The owls are evil and the people who lurk the forest
are sinners.  Yet, the puritans saw the earth as
having no heaven, so any separation from the earth is
to go towards heaven.  
     As Thoreau and others have mentioned, the more
one can move into Concord and know the styles of
Paris, the more removed from the earth and into the
clouds the population of heads full of dreams become,
which is to mean closer to heaven.  The words and
thoughts of humankind leads us into a realm where
angels live and the material of trees die.  Ideals are
to be achieved by undying devotion, due to the
corruption in our bodies and earthly life. 
Universities are established, meanwhile the action of
lives written into all the great books are put on the
shelves to hinder others from doing something
themselves worth writing about in a great book of
their own.  It is in the hands in the dirt, the pond
water in the morning, and the birds tweeting that
fills the mind of wisdom on a walk.  
     The puritan and victorian all becomes a life in
the head.  Then nature becomes more pristine in time. 
Objectify not only the trees, but move into our minds
and standardize them.  Yet, still the beauty of the
forest with its' persistent way of existing even as
societies styles come and in out from year to year,
day to day the steady seasons ever free have balanced
order and freedom already, yet some still question and
don't trust what has already been figured out and put
into action by life long ago.  
     Townspeople who live in filth and disease pouring
out their windows onto the streets from their bowels. 
The toxins of the factories filling the air with a
smog that fresh mountain air becomes a heaven to move
to away from the island of Britain and away from New
York City towards what have now become National Parks.
 Much loses signs of a creation free as the wild deer
and only humankind remains, the garden he/she has
cultivated via domestication, and the forest is not
wild but shaped by the axe to turn and twist away from
his new paths called roads.  Society is in the mind of
humankind to become a creature that feeds off of the
troughs of the world that can be controlled.  
     The corruption has shifted from humankind to
nature to industrial societies back to humankind. 
Humankind is the corrupter of the environment. 
Humankind seen as not only the individual, but the
giant, society itself.  To be able to change the giant
by changing the individual takes intellect.  So the
corrupter is not just the individual and society, but
now intellect itself is failing to convince all denial
of free-thinking, free-action oriented orderly
ritualized up with the birds, to sleep with the owls
positioned with a family and neighborhood that
organization affairs with their own hands, might as
well, we have the quality time (sarcastic remark) to
move with the universe.  Yet, to move with the
universe takes us away from the orderly measurements
of the clock in which we have imagined and set in
stone.  So where is the corruption point it out.  It
is everywhere, yet, then everywhere there is no
corruption.  Arguments for or against corruption being
here or over there persist.  So we just don't get
stuck on this, and notice quality.  
     The ideal in our head.  The intellect in our
head.  Yet, what of the nature out of our head. 
Intellect is not just in our human mind.  Intellect is
the kosmos (Greek for cosmos).  It is Zen.  It is
Christ.  It is universal dharma.  It is the Medicine
Wheel of the Amerindian where the forked tree of two
branches is to not focus solely on two branches, but
two branches of one tree called life.   

     

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