Hullo Roger and Mary,
Excuse me for butting in on your debate, but I just want to make the point
that there is no necessary correlation between the 'level' of a society and
the potential for intellectual value to reside in that society, and in the
individuals who comprise it.
I don't have references at present, but one of the prominent anthropologists
who studied central desert Aboriginal tribes here in Australia is on record
as saying that the intellectual edifice their cultures represented, with
complex interrelationships between family, clan, moiety, land ownership and
mapping, and the associated avoidance relationships, all connected through
intricate 'stories' of ancestral heroes, totems, and highly developed art
forms, which in some cases function similarly to written language in our
culture, (for example, land boundaries are 'sung' in ceremonial corroboree);
all this, he claims, puts the intellectual level of these bearers of culture
into an elite. He likens this to an intellectual wonder of the world.
Although I have spent some time with Aboriginal people and lived five years
in a traditional aboriginal community at Aurukun in Queensland, I feel I
have no competence to either confirm or deny his claim. I know other people
with more experience than I, who tend to agree with him. In view of the
recent suggestion from Wim to Jonathan that a fifth level of the MOQ, if it
existed, would probably be centred "a concept like selfless awareness", I am
inclined, from personal experience, to suspect that many aboriginal people
have a very special ability to relate in a way that seems to me to fit with
such a level. Wouldn't it be ironic if these modern hunter/gatherers were
indeed both our intellectual and mystic superiors?
I am well aware of the common temptation to create an image of the 'noble
savage' that bears very little relationship to reality. Roger is quite
correct in his assertions relating to mortality from homicide, life
expectancies, and so on, in hunter gatherer societies. It's not much fun
being a hunter gatherer, at that level, though the amount of leisure time
available, especially in good seasons, may be a factor in the development of
a higher intellectual culture.
Regards,
John B
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