Ethnosphere and Cultural Diversity
Old Ways and Ethnographic Research
Living amongst those who remember old ways allows feeling the past in the wind, stones, and plants.
Examples:
Jaguar shamans journeying beyond the Milky Way.
Inuit elders' myths resonating with meaning.
Buddhists in the Himalaya pursuing the breath of the Dharma.
Central revelation of anthropology: the world is just one model of reality based on adaptive choices.
Shared adaptive imperatives: birth, raising children, initiation rites, dealing with death.
Universal expressions: singing, dancing, art, but with unique cultural cadences.
Examples of diverse cultures:
Penan in Borneo.
Voodoo acolytes in Haiti.
Warriors in the Kaisut Desert of Northern Kenya.
Curandero in the Andes.
Caravansari in the Sahara.
Yak herders on Everest (Choma Lungma).
All cultures offer different ways of being, thinking, and orienting oneself in the world.
Ethnosphere
Myriad cultures form a web of spiritual and cultural life (ethnosphere).
Ethnosphere: the sum total of all thoughts, dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, and intuitions brought into being by human imagination since the dawn of consciousness.
The ethnosphere is humanity's legacy, a symbol of potential.
The ethnosphere is being eroded at a greater rate than the biosphere.
Language loss is a critical indicator of cultural diversity loss.
When each person was born, there were 6,000 languages.
A language is not just vocabulary or grammar but also a vehicle for a culture's soul, described as "an old-growth forest of the mind."
Half of the 6,000 languages are no longer taught to children and are effectively dead.
The plight of being the last speaker of a language, unable to pass on ancestral wisdom, is a dreadful fate.
An elder dies every two weeks, carrying the last syllables of an ancient tongue to the grave.
Different Ways of Being
Barasana of Northwest Amazon:
People of the Anaconda, mythologically from the Milk River via sacred snakes.
Do not distinguish blue from green cognitively, equating heavens with the forest canopy.
Practice linguistic exogamy (marrying someone speaking a different language).
Longhouses with six or seven languages, where people learn by listening.
Warani of Northeastern Ecuador:
First peaceful contact in 1958.
Misunderstanding of two-dimensional photos led to the spearing of five missionaries.
High mortality rate due to interpersonal spearing (54%).
Astonishing knowledge of the forest (e.g., smelling animal urine at 40 paces).
Voodoo in Haiti:
Not black magic, but a complex metaphysical worldview derived from Sub-Saharan African religious ideas.
Living relationship between the living and the dead; spirits invoked to displace souls.
Acolytes become gods temporarily.
Demonstrations of mind over body, such as handling burning embers.
COGI of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Northern Colombia:
Descendants of the ancient Tirona civilization.
Never conquered by the Spanish; ruled by a ritual priesthood.
Acolytes taken at ages 3-4 and sequestered for 18 years (two nine-year periods).
Enculturation into values maintaining cosmic/ecological balance through prayers.
At age 18, they witness a sunrise and affirm the beauty and their role in protecting the world.
Call themselves the elder brothers, believing younger brothers (outsiders) are destroying the world.
Indigenous People and Landscape
Indigenous people are neither noble savages nor sentimental.
They have a traditional mystique of Earth based on the idea that Earth is breathed into being by human consciousness.
A child raised to believe a mountain is a spirit (Apu) will have a different relationship to it than one raised to see it as a pile of rock for mining.
The metaphor defines the relationship between the individual and the natural world.
Ayahuasca
Most powerful psychoactive preparation of the shaman's repertoire.
Made from two sources:
Woody liana containing beta carbolines (harmine, harmoline), which are mildly hallucinogenic and MAO inhibitors, .
Leaves of a shrub called Cycotria viridis, containing tryptamines (dimethyltryptamine, five methoxydimethyltryptamine) similar to brain serotonin.
Tryptamines cannot be taken orally because they are denatured by monoamine oxidase (MAO) in the human gut.
Beta carbolines in the liana act as MAO inhibitors, allowing oral ingestion of tryptamines.
The combination creates a biochemical synergy.
The Kofan tribe distinguishes 17 varieties of Ayahuasca, each singing in a different key on the night of a full moon.
Cultural and Biological Diversity
The 20th century will be remembered for the destruction of biological and cultural diversity.
The problem is not change or technology but power and domination.
Cultures are being driven out of existence by forces beyond their control.
Examples:
Deforestation in the homeland of the Penan.
Disease entities following gold discovery among the Yanomami.
Political domination in Tibet.
Genocide (physical extinction) is universally condemned, but ethnocide (destruction of a way of life) is often celebrated as development.
The pain of Tibet is immense, with sacred monuments destroyed and people killed.
Choice and the Future
The choice is between a monochromatic world of monotony and a polychromatic world of diversity.
Margaret Mead feared the reduction of human imagination to a narrow modality of thought.
Human species has been around for 600,000 years, agriculture for 10,000 years, and the modern industrial world for 300 years.
Myriad cultures offer 10,000 different voices on the meaning of being human.
Ensure all peoples and gardens flourish.
Nunavut: The Canadian government in April of 1999 gave back total control of the Inuit, an area of land larger than California and Texas put together.
Resilience and Hope
Story of an Inuit man's grandfather who resisted forced settlement and created a knife from frozen feces.
Symbol of the resilience of the Inuit and all indigenous people.
The Canadian government returned control of a large area of land to the Inuit (Nunavut).
Remote reaches are homelands of somebody and represent branches of human imagination.
The dreams of these children become part of the geography of hope.
Storytelling and Change
Politicians and polemics are not as persuasive as storytelling.
National Geographic aims to tell stories that dazzle and inspire appreciation for cultural diversity.
Goal: to promote a multicultural, pluralistic world where the wisdom of all peoples contributes to collective well-being.