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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 39 to 63 of 78. Go back in thread:
Posted by HomelyCygnet on August 22, 2013, at 9:18:38
In reply to Re: Against Sorcerors » HomelyCygnet, posted by sigismund on August 12, 2013, at 17:50:37
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/photogalleries/mummy-pictures/photo2.html
The word Amerindian makes me grumpy. Amerigo Vespucci was Italian and the Indians are in India.
Who do you think braided the girl's hair? Her mother?
Posted by HomelyCygnet on August 22, 2013, at 9:41:39
In reply to Re: Against Sorcerors » sigismund, posted by HomelyCygnet on August 22, 2013, at 9:18:38
The Inca children were drugged with coca leaves and alcohol before the sacrifice.
In America poor children are often drugged to make them eligible for financial benefits by enhancing their claim to be "mentally disabled".
Their own parents collude in this and the doctors who are available to the poor.
Of course children that are quirky or hurt or different or creative or defiant are often drugged too, sacrificed in a way to the idea of normal promoted by Big Pharma, the DSM etc etc etc
> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/photogalleries/mummy-pictures/photo2.html
>
> The word Amerindian makes me grumpy. Amerigo Vespucci was Italian and the Indians are in India.
> Who do you think braided the girl's hair? Her mother?
>
>
>
Posted by homelycygnet on August 25, 2013, at 16:16:31
In reply to Re: Against Sorcerors » HomelyCygnet, posted by sigismund on August 12, 2013, at 17:50:37
we're beggin you please please please no mas
Thanking you in advance
Cygi
Posted by sigismund on August 25, 2013, at 17:54:00
In reply to Pleaaaaaase put down the white mans burden » sigismund, posted by homelycygnet on August 25, 2013, at 16:16:31
I gather you are off?
I agree it is not nice to talk about Lou in front of him, though there are reasons for that (other than scapegoating!).
Drawing back to fit more into the frame makes many things clearer.
I'm enjoying this now....
"From the Ruins of Empire" by Pankaj Mishra.
Posted by HomelyCygnet on October 3, 2013, at 10:29:45
In reply to Re: Pleaaaaaase put down the white mans burden » homelycygnet, posted by sigismund on August 25, 2013, at 17:54:00
The Aztecs responded to their increasing problems of food supply by intensifying agricultural production with a variety of ingenious techniques, including the reclamation of soil from marsh and lake bottoms in the chinampa, or floating garden, method. Unfortunately, their ingenuity could not correct their lack of a suitable domesticable herbivore that could provide animal protein and fats. Hence, the ecological situation of the Aztecs and their Mesoamerican neighbors was unique among the world's major civilizations. I have recently proposed the theory that large-scale cannibalism, disguised as sacrifice, was the natural consequence of these ecological circumstances.
The contrast between Mesoamerica and the Andes, in terms of the existence of domesticated herbivores, was also reflected in the numbers of human victims sacrificed in the two areas. In the huge Andean Inca empire, the other major political entity in the New world at the time of the conquest, annual human sacrifices apparently amounted to a few hundred at most. Among the Aztecs, the numbers were incomparably greater. The commonly mentioned figure of 20,000, however, is unreliable. For example, one sixteenth-century account states that 20,000 were sacrificed yearly in the capital city alone, another reports this as 20,000 infants, and a third claims the same number as being slaughtered throughout the Aztec empire on a single particular day. The most famous specific sacrifice took place in 1487 at the dedication of the main pyramid in Tenochtitlán. Here, too, figures vary: one source states 20,000, another 72,344, and several give 80,400.In 1946 Sherburne Cook, a demographer specializing in American Indian populations, estimated an over-all annual mean of 15,000 victims in a central Mexican population reckoned at two million. Later, however, he and his colleague Woodrow Borah revised his estimate of the total central Mexican population upward to 25 million. Recently, Borah, possibly the leading authority on the demography of Mexico at the time of the conquest, has also revised the estimated number of persons sacrificed in central Mexico in the fifteenth century to 250,000 per year, equivalent to one percent of the total population. According to Borah, this figure is consistent with the sacrifice of an estimated 1,000 to 3,000 persons yearly at the largest of the thousands of temples scattered throughout the Aztec Triple Alliance. The numbers, of course, were fewer at the lesser temples, and may have shaded down to zero at the smallest.
These enormous numbers call for consideration of what the Aztecs did with the bodies after the sacrifices. Evidence of Aztec cannibalism has been largely ignored or consciously or unconsciously covered up. For example, the major twentieth-century books on the Aztecs barely mention it; others bypass the subject completely. Probably some modern Mexicans and anthropologists have been embarrassed by the topic: the former partly for nationalistic reasons; the latter partly out of a desire to portray native peoples in the best possible light. Ironically, both these attitudes may represent European ethnocentrism regarding cannibalism -- a viewpoint to be expected from a culture that has had relatively abundant livestock for meat and milk.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/aztecs/sacrifice.htmAaahh the view from 1977! I googled the man who wrote it and he seems to be claiming to be an expert in shamanism. Thirty percent of Ameranglos claim to have Amerindian blood. Could he be one of them do you suppose?
As always
HomelyCygnet
AmerveganPS Of course I hope it's not necessary to say I don't stand by his numbers or anything else.
Posted by sigismund on October 4, 2013, at 14:46:20
In reply to Ameranglican ethnocentricism » sigismund, posted by HomelyCygnet on October 3, 2013, at 10:29:45
>Thirty percent of Ameranglos claim to have Amerindian blood.
This would not happen here, mutatis mutandis. But then the ideology changed over time. The Spanish were not racist as were the British in Australia. I suppose the US is somewhere in between.
I found the wearing by the warrior of the flayed skin of the victim as he goes around feasting and distributing body parts interesting. For about 5 days continuous perhaps. As you say, the Andean cultures were not so enthusiastic about sacrifice. I found that culture very warm in comparison to my own. A religion with sacrifice as the instrument of redemption......let me start again......it is easy enough to see the Holocaust as the action providing access to a belief system, fruit at the alter of the Fuhrer's genius, it seems so sacrilegious to even say what for a big enough minority was the case......but many Marxist Leninist governments were the same, utopian in nature with sacrifice required, as one might think of the wars then and since. There was an American theologian here talking about culture and bellicosity, I can only recall him talking about sacrifice and the need to make sure it was worthwhile. I don't know who he was, but not Spong. Need I add that Australia has been involved in every war since the Boer war. But the US was doing interesting things back then that I will have to read about.
Posted by Dr. Bob on October 5, 2013, at 15:51:46
In reply to Re: Ameranglican ethnocentricism » HomelyCygnet, posted by sigismund on October 4, 2013, at 14:46:20
> the Andean cultures were not so enthusiastic about sacrifice. I found that culture very warm in comparison to my own. A religion with sacrifice as the instrument of redemption......let me start again......it is easy enough to see the Holocaust as the action providing access to a belief system, fruit at the alter of the Fuhrer's genius, it seems so sacrilegious to even say what for a big enough minority was the case......but many Marxist Leninist governments were the same, utopian in nature with sacrifice required, as one might think of the wars then and since. There was an American theologian here talking about culture and bellicosity, I can only recall him talking about sacrifice and the need to make sure it was worthwhile.
Thanks for posting that. You got me thinking about the culture here, where a cygnet is ready to sacrifice himself and the community often seems ready to sacrifice Lou.
Do you see a connection between sacrifice and redemption? And between redemption and sin?
How is conflict handled in the Andean cultures?
Bob
Posted by sigismund on October 5, 2013, at 18:39:41
In reply to Re: sacrifice, posted by Dr. Bob on October 5, 2013, at 15:51:46
>Do you see a connection between sacrifice and redemption? And between redemption and sin?
Well, there is a question and a half! I might try to come back to that later.
>How is conflict handled in the Andean cultures?
What I really noticed was that people did not seem concerned with what other people thought. I walked past a couple of siblings (I think) the other day here and they were doing the predictable thing of arguing about 'what it is'. (It's this! No, it's that!)
Firstly I noticed the greater than usual for us physical contact between babies, kids and parents. They just touch each other a lot. And so kids seem unusually friendly to me. And this extends to a kind of cultural gentleness. When there is conflict, I imagine it to be real violent conflict or more likely simply not acknowledged, not referred to, not acted on. Here people define themselves by their opinions. I will put a link to another post I did following this.
Posted by sigismund on October 5, 2013, at 18:45:18
In reply to Re: sacrifice » Dr. Bob, posted by sigismund on October 5, 2013, at 18:39:41
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20120327/msgs/1046027.html
Posted by sigismund on October 5, 2013, at 20:39:38
In reply to Re: sacrifice, posted by sigismund on October 5, 2013, at 18:45:18
And then there was this. Arguedas shot himself in the head around 68 or so. Depression I guess. I fell in love with his way of putting things.
"You may be surprised if I confess to you that I am the handiwork of my stepmother. My mother died when I was two and a half. My father remarried; his new wife already had three children. I was the youngest, and as I was so small, my father left me in the house of my stepmother, who owned half the town; she had many indigenous servants and with it the traditional contempt for and lack of awareness of what an Indian was. Since I was the object of as much of her scorn and rancor as the Indians, she decided that I was to live with them in the kitchen, eating and sleeping there. My bed was a wooden trough of the kind used to knead bread.....
Resting on some sheepskins and covered with a rather dirty but very sheltering blanket, I spent the nights talking and living so well that if my stepmother had known it she would have removed me to her side......
I lived thus for many years. When my father would visit I was hauled back to the dining room, my clothes were dusted off; but Sunday passed, my father went back to the provincial capital and I to my trough, to the lice of the Indians. The Indians, particularly their women, saw me as one of them, with the difference that being white I needed even more comforting than they did, and this they gave me in full. But consolation must contain within it both sadness and power; as those tormented comforted those who suffered even more, two things were sadly driven into my nature from the time I learned to speak: the tenderness and limitless love of the Indians, the love they feel for each other and also for nature, the highlands, rivers and birds; and the hatred they felt for those who, almost as if unaware and seeming to follow an order from on high, made them suffer. My childhood went by, singed between fire and love."
Posted by Homelycygnet on October 6, 2013, at 9:35:02
In reply to Re: sacrifice, posted by Dr. Bob on October 5, 2013, at 15:51:46
Bob I hardly think asking to be blocked is equivalent to "sacrificing oneself". This is a tiny bulletin board with almost no participation. I think "culture" is a bit of a stretch to describe the interactions of such a small group of people! Get over yourself! Bye :)
> Thanks for posting that. You got me thinking about the culture here, where a cygnet is ready to sacrifice himself and the community often seems ready to sacrifice Lou.
>
> Do you see a connection between sacrifice and redemption? And between redemption and sin?
>
> How is conflict handled in the Andean cultures?
>
> Bob
Posted by sigismund on October 6, 2013, at 22:17:29
In reply to Re: sacrifice, posted by Dr. Bob on October 5, 2013, at 15:51:46
Redemption seems to be associated with cycles of violence, as in 'redemptive anti-semitism'. I don't understand it nor sacrifice (in the formal Biblical sense) to achieve it, however that may work. Same with salvation. Though in "The Crossing" I very much enjoyed the religious dialogues which are of that tradition.
If we need deliverance, it can only be from each other. Like my psych said about people 'They ruin everything'....a laugh at that is as close to it as I will get.
There have been cycles of violence on Babble too. Does it not boil down to who we are and how we feel about each other? (Why anyone would want eternal life is beyond me.)
Is Websters an American dictionary? The idea of civility previously prevailing here seems very American in nature. Whatever else it is, Australia is not a particularly civil place, kinder perhaps and less civil. Every so often an American comes here and is shocked by some issue regarding racism....it seems a bit similar......perhaps our hypocrisies are fewer or different?
So in the Andes I expect they couldn't care less what you think and they leave you alone, but if push comes to shove they kill you. Better than here (Australia) with interminable arguments about nothing that will ever make any difference.
Posted by Dr. Bob on October 7, 2013, at 2:20:12
In reply to Re: sacrifice, posted by sigismund on October 6, 2013, at 22:17:29
> If we need deliverance, it can only be from each other. Like my psych said about people 'They ruin everything'....a laugh at that is as close to it as I will get.
>
> There have been cycles of violence on Babble too. Does it not boil down to who we are and how we feel about each other?
>
> in the Andes I expect they couldn't care less what you think and they leave you alone, but if push comes to shove they kill you. Better than here (Australia) with interminable arguments about nothing that will ever make any difference.Well, killing someone is in a way sacrificing them.
Thinking more about sacrifice, wasn't it sometimes considered an honor to be the one sacrificed? To redeem the community?
I guess some people might prefer being killed to interminable arguments. I guess at Babble I've chosen interminable arguments.
There's who we are and how we feel about each other. There's also how we treat each other. What would be the equivalent here of leaving someone alone?
Bob
Posted by sigismund on October 7, 2013, at 13:11:47
In reply to Re: sacrifice, posted by Dr. Bob on October 7, 2013, at 2:20:12
>Well, killing someone is in a way sacrificing them.
S'pose
>Thinking more about sacrifice, wasn't it sometimes considered an honor to be the one sacrificed? To redeem the community?
Yes, even in Tenochtlitan (sp?) there was something of that, though it is an example at the edges. Is the American military an example?
>I guess some people might prefer being killed to interminable arguments. I guess at Babble I've chosen interminable arguments.
You have now. I don't know if it was the re-election of Bush when things went wild here (as I read once here) and you made a change before my time? But from around then people could be blocked for nothing.
>There's who we are and how we feel about each other. There's also how we treat each other. What would be the equivalent here of leaving someone alone?
Leaving someone alone is easy, being kind is easy too, being kind and good more difficult.
We don't have that much time left for stupid arguments, not me anyway. It would be hell with eternal life....they would simply never stop....which is why conversations toward the end of a person's life can acquire a new dimension, (along with the forgetfulness and repetition).
Sacrifice is a dangerous concept. Was WWI about anything? From inside, not much, from outside it looks like a struggle for supremacy among thieves. But once it starts going there has to be meaning made of the sacrifice, always at someone else's expense. I suppose you could turn it around and say that the US could have renounced imperial ambition and given its poorest health care and more instead. I can never forget HG Wells saying, when asked about the brown (not black) races, 'I assume they will just have to go'. There's a lot of those, there were 85M in the western hemisphere before Columbus, a drop in the bloody ocean, he was talking about India and China.
Posted by Homelycygnet on October 8, 2013, at 12:02:31
In reply to Re: sacrifice, posted by sigismund on October 7, 2013, at 13:11:47
Sanctify, O Lord, the sickness of your servant , that the sense of his weakness may add strength to his faith and seriousness to his repentance; and grant that he may live with you in everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
That was a horrific image of Hell. I hope you feel better. Did you run out of pain pills?
Posted by Dr. Bob on October 8, 2013, at 16:52:09
In reply to Re: sacrifice, posted by sigismund on October 7, 2013, at 13:11:47
> > Thinking more about sacrifice, wasn't it sometimes considered an honor to be the one sacrificed? To redeem the community?
>
> Yes, even in [Tenochtitlan] there was something of that, though it is an example at the edges. Is the American military an example?Good question.
1. People being willing to sacrifice themselves, but maybe emerging victorious, seems different.
2. Victory and redemption seem to be very different goals.
> > I guess some people might prefer being killed to interminable arguments. I guess at Babble I've chosen interminable arguments.
>
> You have now. I don't know if it was the re-election of Bush when things went wild here (as I read once here) and you made a change before my time? But from around then people could be blocked for nothing.Only very early on was blocking permanent = like death.
> > What would be the equivalent here of leaving someone alone?
>
> Leaving someone alone is easy, being kind is easy tooEasier said than done, if you ask me.
> Sacrifice is a dangerous concept. ... once it starts going there has to be meaning made of the sacrifice, always at someone else's expense. I suppose you could turn it around and say that the US could have renounced imperial ambition and given its poorest health care and more instead.
That's the difference between redemption and victory.
In this context, imperial ambition = changing the rules, and giving its poorest health care and more = supporting each other?
Bob
Posted by sigismund on October 8, 2013, at 17:24:10
In reply to Re: sacrifice, posted by Homelycygnet on October 8, 2013, at 12:02:31
> Did you run out of pain pills?
No no, just being judicious.
Posted by sigismund on October 8, 2013, at 17:35:27
In reply to Re: sacrifice, posted by Dr. Bob on October 8, 2013, at 16:52:09
>In this context, imperial ambition = changing the rules, and giving its poorest health care and more = supporting each other?
After the wars the ambition was composed of different things, not all bad by any means. Why can't rich allied countries (Australia, Japan, Europe) pay their way more for the defence structure? Why could not some of that money be used for health care in the US? We got the public option here soon after 72 and it has been an absolute non-drama and is accepted by both sides now.
As for kindness, I am unhappy if I am not. Not always a good thing.
Posted by Homelycygnet on October 8, 2013, at 19:17:16
In reply to Re: sacrifice » Dr. Bob, posted by sigismund on October 8, 2013, at 17:35:27
I don't think you are kind. I like you but I think your exploitation of thirdworld people for your own emotional gratification is deplorable. You are destroying someone else's culture while touristing about spreading the culture you find so much pleasure in holding in contempt. And you're patronising sentimentality is not kindness it's consumption. But I am glad you are not dying I was freaked out this morning. At least the days of people posting suicide threats on Babble is over right?
Please lobby bob for permanent voluntary blocks. I think his pride in his "empire" makes it impossibe for him to realize that for some of us blocks aren't deaths, they are freedom! The advantage of voluntary blocks over simply staying away is that a block is at least a statement of repudiation for the "empire". As long as there is a possibility of posting there is an element of membership. It's like a club you can't get out of. If you join a book club and it evolves into the Hitler youth and they won't take you off the membership rolls etc etc etc.
I've always been kind too. We just have differnet definitions.
> As for kindness, I am unhappy if I am not. Not always a good thing.
>
>
Posted by sigismund on October 9, 2013, at 1:31:09
In reply to delusions of kindness » sigismund, posted by Homelycygnet on October 8, 2013, at 19:17:16
Well, you might be right (at the beginning of your post). I don't know. I was happy there.
I hope you didn't feel it was a suicide threat. I can't remember what I said exactly. I am just heading into the zone where people die.
Still, I don't agree. Though, you could argue, I should learn an Aboriginal language. They really are in danger of dying out. We are who we are. I am through with trying to change myself.
I was of two minds about my post about Lou. On the one hand I had been reading this for 6 months and I said what I thought. On the other, as you were perhaps implying, a part of me felt it was cowardly and contemptible.
> while touristing about spreading the culture you find so much pleasure in holding in contempt. And you're patronising sentimentality is not kindness it's consumption
You could be right. In part.
Posted by sigismund on October 9, 2013, at 3:16:28
In reply to Re: delusions of kindness » Homelycygnet, posted by sigismund on October 9, 2013, at 1:31:09
I don't think I said I was kind. I said that being kind is easy, and that I am happy when I am kind. I am too angry and contemptuous to be kind very often, but being kind fits with my basic nature. And isn't that true of most of us? That we are happiest giving and receiving kindnesses?
My best time there was sharing the things I love about our culture, like listening to 'Closing Time' or (oddly enough) 'Cygnet Committee' over and over again. I felt blessed.
Posted by HomelyCygnet on October 9, 2013, at 8:42:43
In reply to Re: delusions of kindness, posted by sigismund on October 9, 2013, at 3:16:28
Posted by Phillipa on October 9, 2013, at 19:58:57
In reply to Re: delusions of kindness, posted by sigismund on October 9, 2013, at 3:16:28
Sigi I find you very kind and thoughtful. PJ
Posted by sigismund on October 9, 2013, at 20:06:26
In reply to I'm kind of a duckwit sometimes (nm) » sigismund, posted by HomelyCygnet on October 9, 2013, at 8:42:43
Just to clarify kind being easy.
When one is naturally kind it *is* easy.
And
There was a woman on TV. She had taken in a kid 3 years old, she fostered him and eventually adopted him and now he is almost 20. He had been terribly abused, just shockingly. And she said 'When you see the difference you can make, it is so easy'. She didn't mean the experience was easy. She must have meant that the decision to endure and partake of all the difficulties was easy to make, that she was glad she did it and would do it again.
I meant it like that. Parents know this anyway, unless they are selfish, over-entitled or whatever.
Posted by sigismund on October 9, 2013, at 20:17:28
In reply to Re: delusions of kindness » sigismund, posted by Phillipa on October 9, 2013, at 19:58:57
Well often PJ I feel like Mary McCarthy (mutatis mutandis) saying "Every word he says is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'", and the best that could be said about that is that it gives you something to chew on.
But that is part of therapy isn't it? Learning how to be more truthful? Really I don't know anything, just make it up as I go along.
But that is no problem....one of my favourite Leonard Cohen lines is......
'But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay
I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the USA.'It's the 'I'm junk' I love. Very Toaist.
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