[MD] Plains Talk and Pragmatism

[Matt Kundert]

One way to think about the relationship between the European West's 
relationship to other cultural manifestations, like American Indians, is 
to 1) take into account what happens when one moves from a primary 
oral culture (i.e. one which has no written symbolic manipulation) to a 
post-literacy culture; 2) use that to help explain the relationship 
between myth and history, narrative and theory; and 3) use those 
reflections to help discern what "religion" is.

My suspicion is that "anti-theism" is peculiar to the European West in 
many respects because it is a cultural manifestation only possible after 
we were able to off-load into the written text many of the noetic 
responsibilities then only capable of being held in oracular form (e.g., 
dealing with the limits of memory).  In other words, "god" and "religion" 
were very different concepts for primary oral cultures ("primitive"), and 
asking them to be against god-talk would be like asking people to be 
against education and thinking.  Doesn't make sense.

However, it might make a lot of sense for the European West.

Matt

> Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2010 12:16:42 -0800
> From: ridgecoyote at gmail.com
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: [MD] Plains Talk and Pragmatism
> 

> 
> Not one of these peoples anywhere ever, were ever, ever "anti-theistic" The
> Great Spirit WAS direct experience, to their thinking, and they were shocked
> at the attitudes of white men who came and expressed the notion that nothing
> had any value but *their* society.  That mere rocks and trees and animals
> were dead things to be rendered into profitable enterprise.
> 
> So consider the following and tell me how the MoQ could render such
> "primitive" people as foolishly theistic?  When their very lives and view
> are what is being touted here: