The facets of thought I believe are found universally across all cultures are intuition, counter-intuition, rationality, and irrationality. None of these are exclusive to indigenous peoples or imperial citizens, industrialized or non-industrialized denizens, scientists, shaman, gurus, yogis, teachers, students, vegetalistas, witches, priests, police officers, kings, or bankers. Individuals can behave and make decisions around one of these facets of thought, all of them, or none of them. There is no such thing as a scientific culture or a shamanic culture. The language most developed for discussing the phenomena of human cognition in universally applicable ways is most likely not any European language, but Sanskrit, which also is not perfectly accurate for describing the diversity of techniques used to achieve different goals. Again, I am not at all alone in thinking this way, and I do not mean to subtract from anyones experiences by saying that shamanism really is not a useful word at all. There are some people I respect very much who use this word, but many more words are necessary for further discussion. There is a rich and diverse tradition dedicated just to coming up with terminology and case-specific examples for this discussion: Cognitive Anthropology. This does not mean I think anthropologists have a monopoly on shamanism; it means that I have an incredible amount of respect for the individuals who have devoted their lives to it. Thanks for hearing me out. Best wishes, and happy 2015! jam
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 23:27:17 +0000
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