The Lakota way of life

Found this, from Luther Standing Bear :




They had no written language, and so they had to be always conscious about what they were doing. Always rediscovering the world because the way it worked was not written somewhere to be forgoten.

: ...The Earth People (indigenous natives) never wrote anything down, had no written language. They knew that if they wrote anything down it would be disastrous. If you write something down you don't have to remember it. And mind goes off into unconsciousness. It becomes negative, or unconscious force...
Brave Buffalo, Brule Sioux Nation (1985)

This way of life I am sure it was common in ancient times. Daniel Quinn was right. Modern people do not want to know these things, it would only show how low they are and they do not want to see. Yes I agree they were not "perfect". Who is ?

See those videos, they show the memories of Luther Standing Bear about the Lakota way of life. Modern people must know they do not need to reinvent the wheel for society to work, know that it is false to say "people are bad, can't do nothing, that's why we have to live as we do..."
But how can you reconcile these two teachings : "go get money, compete with others for survival" and "live for the good of others" ? You cannot, must get rid of the first.
Contrary to popular belief those "savages" did not have the first teaching, also they had no "money". They had only the second teaching, the good of all was also good for the individual.










[edit on 7-4-2009 by pai mei]

Originally posted by pai mei
They had no written language, and so they had to be always conscious about what they were doing. Always rediscovering the world because the way it worked was not written somewhere to be forgoten.[edit on 7-4-2009 by pai mei]

Ofcourse, if they didn't have any writing they could not know for certain what it would do to them unless it already happened once in their past.

The native american way of life was very successful (I believe they were genuinely happy) but in the long run would not work, humanity would not survive. They would simply not make it out into space which in the long run is the only way to go. The western way of life might not be perfect at all, unfair and wasteful to our environment but at least it gives a chance to colonize other planets with resources so our children can use those.

Seen from a larger picture, the model of the West means thousands of billions of people can live in this universe (possibly an infinite number once technology is advanced enough) under decent circumstances and highly developed, while the native american model would only allow a few billion to exist because they would not have the need to progress.

Observing a prisoner exchange between the Iroquois and the French in upper New York in 1699, Cadwallader Colden is blunt: “ notwithstanding the French Commissioners took all the Pains possible to carry Home the French, that were Prisoners with the Five Nations, and they had full Liberty from the Indians, few of them could be persuaded to return. “Nor, he has to admit, is this merely a reflection on the quality of French colonial life, “for the English had as much Difficulty” in persuading their redeemed to come home, despite what Colden would claim were the obvious superiority of English ways:

No Arguments, no Intreaties, nor Tears of their Friends and Relations, could persuade many of them to leave their new Indian Friends and Acquaintance; several of them that were by the Caressings of their Relations persuaded to come Home, in a little Time grew tired of our Manner of living, and run away again to the Indians, and ended their Days with them. On the other Hand, Indian Children have been carefully educated among the English, cloathed and taught, yet, I think, there is not one Instance, that any of these, after they had Liberty to go among their own People, and were come to Age, would remain with the English, but returned to their own Nations, and became as fond of the Indian Manner of Life as those that knew nothing of a civilized Manner of Living. And, he concludes, what he says of this particular prisoner exchange “has been found true on many other Occasions.”

Benjamin Franklin was even more pointed: When an Indian child is raised in white civilization, he remarks, the civilizing somehow does not stick, and at the first opportunity he will go back to his red relations, from whence there is no hope whatever of redeeming him. But when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and have lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.

There was always the great woods, and the life to be lived within it was, Crevecoeur admits, “singularly captivating,” perhaps even superior to that so boasted of by the transplanted Europeans. For, as many knew to their rueful amazement, “thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become Europeans!”

John Zerzan : Against Civilization - Readings and Reflections (1999)