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Primitive Mentality - Lucien Levy-Bruhl

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Books

Published: 30 January 2023

Hits: 743

"To them the things which are unseen cannot be distinguished from the things which are seen. The beings of the unseen world are no less directly present than those of the other; they are more active and more formidable. Consequently that world occupies their minds more entirely than this one, and it diverts their minds from reflecting, even to a slight extent, upon the data which we call objective."

Now this, merely an introduction and a chapter in, is proving an excellent read. To summarize, it's an attempt by the author to reconcile Western, or European "Civilized" thought with the differences observed in more "Primitive" cultures, such as the North American Indian, the Australian Bushmen, The various tribes of Africa and the Congo, and with too many other examples to name.

The book - 100 years old, and last republished in the 1960's, wouldn't fly today, and even in his lifetime the author suffered substantial backlash as to his Eurocentric views, his concentration on the "Magical Thinking" aspect of them, and his labeling of them as "Primitive", which has acquired a lot of pejorative connotations since this was first written.

This is - to be expected, a somewhat inadvertent racism to the book, and even in the topic, which does not devalue it in any ways. If not writing of the differences from the European POV - then who others? Perhaps, if the Chinese were more colonial, we might have some intriguing references comparing the thought patterns to theirs, but we don't. And the implicit racism derives from the fact that we have no recent references to "Primitive Tribes of White People", which is unfortunate but needs be worked with.

On that note, the fact that civilization in any number of respects has declined greatly in the past 100 years will soon provide countless "tribes" - soccer stadiums, mega-churches, filled with people well on their way towards similar plateau's of thought and enlightenment. 

The most noteworthy things I've noticed so far into it:

- The Spiritual Problem, which did not exist to the Primitive Man, who existed in a one-ness with nature and with a pantheon or plethora of Gods and Spirits, in relation to man but always above it. 

- The Universality of these beliefs - where, in absence of "organized" religion or spirituality most "Primitive" peoples default to this standard of thinking. This despite them being separated by continents, oceans, and thousands of miles.

- Causality: that nothing happens by accident, that everything is the action of good or malign spirits, wizards and witches, that if a crocodile or lion should come and eat someone it is invariably the result of an evil agent, for why did eat that person and not another person, and everyone knows that crocodiles and lions are harmless(!!!), and so it goes until a human agency is found and reprimanded or found accountable. (Note that many of us - myself included - do this still today, we accord too little room for chance in our lives.). This of course leads to a curious thing in that nobody, for example, dies of accident, natural causes or old age, always it is the result of an enchantment, witch or wizard, and so there is no reasonable precautions are taken against what might be regarded as entirely predictable and dire outcomes.

Now - all this and only one chapter in. All of which are substantiated by innumerable examples told from hundreds of sources 'round the world. Unfortunately, the sources again are all largely European. 

More: Wikipedia on Lucien Lévy-Bruhl : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucien_L%C3%A9vy-Bruhl

His influence on Carl Jung: https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2021/04/08/carl-jung-lucien-levy-bruhl-and-participation-mystique/#.Y9atDXaIbIV

And his place in the "Bicameral Mind" theory: https://www.julianjaynes.org/jjsforum/viewtopic.php?t=15

Worth noting that the quality and intelligence behind the book is amply displayed in the many intelligent discussions surrounding it. 

Art of the Yoni

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Other

Published: 30 January 2023

Hits: 576

Now I've seen more of these than I ever wanted to, no kidding, Georgia O'Keefe covered it thoroughly and very nicely, thank-you-very-much, and unless you're bringing something new to the game I'm pretty sure I don't want to see it.

We get a lot of this style of art through the thrift shop, only it's rare that it comes with an "Artist's Statement".

But it's got me thinking, I mean, I wonder if I could make a living drawing crudely symbolic dick picks? I mean, just do an endless series in a variety of styles, claim that I was the ambassador of Male Sexuality, Virility, etc, what have you...

Nope. While it's one thing for a "woman" to own her sexuality, if a man should try to own his he's considered "juvenile" and "puerile". 

Rightly so. 

"Ooooooohhhhh
Dolores won't you show us...
More of your clitoris...
Don't think you can ignore us..."

I priced it affordable. Maybe I should pick it up and bring it as a visual prop to the next poetry slam... 

Rational Wiki

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Link of the day

Published: 29 January 2023

Hits: 759

Now, I stumbled upon this while looking up something called "ORMUS" that Christopher had told me about while out for coffee, and ...

Well, lets go back a bit...

The conversation had turned to "Coast to Coast AM", which was/is(??), for those who don't know, the default AM radio station for cross-country middle-of-the-night road trips in the latter part of the 20th/earlier part of the 21st century. 

I mean, it was interesting. A proper whorehouse of uncritical thinking, it's format a guest, call in with questions, then an open mic where anyone across the USA or World even could call in and share their first-hand accounts of Bigfoot, UFO's, cryptids, time travelers, fairies, you name it, chances are they were waiting on the phone to talk to Art Bell or George Noory.

Which made for interesting road trips...

And anyways Chris was telling me about ORMUS, which apparently was advertised on the show and was some sort of miraculous panacea, and I made a note to look it up, and - getting past all of the fluff-trying-to sell you these other quack remedies and some tea tree oil found the skinny on it.

Which I'll share with you here:

ORMUS 

(Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements) and m-state materials, is a fictitious group of substances exhibiting many miraculous properties, such as healing powers and superconductivity at room temperature. They were supposedly discovered in 1975 by David Hudson, a cotton farmer from Arizona.

• Cure all forms of disease, including cancer and AIDS
• Correct errors in the DNA
• Act as a superconductor
• Emit gamma radiation
• Partially levitate in the Earth's magnetic field
• Read a person's mind
• Have a "weigh-ability" different from mass, which probably means an inertial mass different from the gravitational mass
• Be fused into a transparent glass
• Act as a flash powder, causing "explosions of light"
• Make severed cat tails grow back

 I could go on but you should read the article yourself: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/ORMUS

Now, you'll probably notice that while the site is set up to look like Wikipedia, the writing style is not, and it's far, far more humorous. With a writing style closer to "Cracked Magazine's" editorial standards it's doing a fine job of poking fun at those people who really should know better, and a lot who do know better but are making a killing off of those too lazy to ask questions.

The "Penis Enlargement" is a great article, and from there I jumped link to link to arrive at "Alpha Course" and from there it was a natural to end up at "Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ", which, at maybe a mere 10 pages or so, is the best written refutation (not critical - in the sense of the religion, merely in terms of the evidence supporting it) I've read yet on the topic. 

Now, this site is a goldmine - I'm pretty sure I've discovered it before, but didn't explore it as thoroughly as I should, you can find a short list of the topics they address here: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki:Contents and visit the main page here: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page.

It really should never have come to this, but there's been such a demise as of late of critical thinking that it has, it really has.