The internet has lots of disturbing things on it. But this has to be right at the top of the list:
The Tradition of Infanticide
The tradition is based on beliefs that babies with any sort of physical defect have no souls and that others, such as twins or triplets, are also "cursed".
The Brazilian authorities turn a blind eye to infanticide, out of respect for the tribal culture.
Imagine if these Aboriginal Brazilians wrote a bible today. It might even resemble the Old Testament. God was OK with stonings and murder and sacrifice. The New Testament was definitely OK with Jesus sacrificing himself.
But this goes back to the fact that we evolved a susceptibility to believe in the supernatural.
Man is superstitious by nature. Our ancestors, who probably resembled the tribe in the film, couldn't explain lightning, so they had to make up supernatural causes and buy into them, in order to not go crazy. Faced with self awareness and knowledge of mortality, all sorts of weird ideas could then be put into cultural rituals to appease their God or Gods, and avoid death for at least a while, or make sure that they'll be taken care of after they die.
Surely, their God is not the Abrahamic God, yet they still have a concept of a God who can curse them and give them bad luck if they don't perform rituals that they obviously made up....well they had to make them up, unless one believes that God went to Brazil and gave them the go ahead to bury babies.
Can you believe that this stuff still goes on in the year of 2008? I do. After all, even in a progressive province like Ontario, we still have prayer in the Legislature.
Sure Jaajoe, I've read the reviews, and Ravi is out to lunch as is every Christian apologetic who tries to philosophize that atheism makes no sense and that God must exist.
ReplyDeleteJust more crapola by another idiot who denies evolution among other things.
I hope this video puts an end to the romantic myth of the "noble savage".
ReplyDeleteI recall watching an old PBS documentary (it must've been from the 70's/80's) where an American anthropologist spent years with a South American tribe, learning their language, creating maps and family trees, working and hunting with the tribe etc. etc.
ReplyDeleteWhen he eventually left a shaman who was his guardian/chaperon said "that the American was a great man, a good man and we almost consider him human."
Almost equal...
I've always looked at tribes like this. That was all of us one day. The only reason we got past the burying babies phase was because of a variety of very good environmental factors in Eurasia that allowed us to develop a modern civilization. Ritual infanticide was the first form of birth control and was regularly, though often secretively, used to control population growth even in Abrahamic societies until fairly recently. That said, as horrible as it is, as long as they don't want to interact with our civilization they can live however they want.
ReplyDeleteI mean, if this tribe takes aid, or education, or allows missionaries, or uses guns or any other tech, they have to use our rules and we should intervene. But as long as they distance themselves from our society and live apart from us, we should let them be. Attempting to force our rules of morality on tribal groups has never worked out well.
Morals are bullshit. My aesthetic preference would be for modern folk to leave tribal people alone. they're interesting.
ReplyDeleteHere is the link to the site where the docuDRAMA footage was taken. The footage is a dramatization--NOT REAL.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to put that near the video on your page. You might also want to include the link:
http://www.hakani.org/en/default.asp
Thank. They are good actors. Maybe they have a career in Hollywood in the near future.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think a cameraman wouldn't intervene.
It isn't like it was a baby deer or something like that.