@Ionus,
Ionus wrote:
I was privy to an interview with some PNG natives who saw their first white man before WWII. They followed them and dug up their ****.....smelling it they determined that if it looks like a man, walks like a man and shits like a man it must be a man so they threw out the theory they had been working on that white men were gods. But they were very impressed with white man magic. They considered them to have great power over spirits.
What setonhishat said about Arthur Clark is true from the perspective of the less advanced culture, and from the point of view of the more advanced want of technology has often been confused with lack of intelligence... It often took greater ingenuity and intelligence, and certainly a more managed society to survive the want of technology, and as Nietzsche noted: might makes dull...My paraphrase... The strong are inclined to use their strength, and the powerless are more inclined to think, and for primitives, the desire for power based upon the feelings of a hopeless powerlessness invited magic into their thinking... It is like Dumbo's magic feather... Life is frightening, and sometimes all that is needed is a brave face, and courage, and whether that comes from the white magic of religion or black magic in the forces of nature, it serves that purpose... Magic is the technology of the past... In magic, alchemy for example, is the beginnings of science ... Consider ritual, for example... What good would reason alone do if people found ritual impossible??? What experiment would be possible if people could not reproduce the same conditions exactly with a ritualistic certainty... Ritual used to attend every action of every primitive with the hope of recreating the past in the future... We are still the same... We find it nearly impossible to change established behavior, and ritualistic and magical behavior is a sign of neurosis, but we are all a little neurotic... It may be repressed, but it is a sign of the time...
