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Archive for 29/08/2011
Doing what comes naturally (again)
29/08/2011 by Ted.
Some yeas ago I had the privilege of travelling to Brazil and, courtesy of P & O, cruising up the Amazon River. During the course of the cruise passengers were invited to board a motorised canoe to explore the nearby igapo - a water-covered area of tropical rain forest - and to catch Pirhana fish. As we journeyed among the densely packed trees in our canoe we came upon a clear area and there saw, on a hill overlooking the igapo, a settlement of Brazilian Indians, men, women and children, whose bronzed skins were clad in loincloths and little else and some clutching what appeared to be spears or staffs. Alerted by the sound of our engine they watched us pass by just as we, passing by, were watching them. And as we and they watched our Brazilian guide remarked, “They are not jealous”. My knee-jerk response, seeing the little community of people standing there in the sunshine in that beautiful place, was, “No, but I am!”
I have often thought about them since then and compared what they are and have to what is going on in our country today.
It is a fact that in wherever “uncivilised” man has been discovered he is observing the same basic order for his society - an order based on the family. Invariably there is a male adult and a female adult living together and producing the next generation. Also invariably the male adult is the breadwinner responsible for begetting the necessities of life for his family, whilst the female adult has the responsibility of taking the necessities he provides and using them for the benefit of all the family members. The community of families comprising the village or tribe all corporately share an often unspoken responsibility for the welfare of the individual families and individual members of the village or tribe, providing the support and whatever is needed in times of crisis, bereavement and so on. They rejoice together, they grieve together, they suffer together. A village or tribe leader assisted by elders oversees the well-being and safety of the whole community, corrects transgressors, and safeguards the rules of behaviour essential to protect the community’s accepted and agreed way of life.
The UK tribe was governed by the same natural order of things up to around sixty years ago. From that time changes, too numerous to list here, have been introduced which have resulted in the fragmentation and destruction of this natural order. Today we are an unnatural and consequently sick nation.
Our tribal leaders are invariably self-seeking with energies and efforts reserved for the begetting of their own enrichment - not the welfare of the tribe. The family unit is considered non-essential even though what has taken its place is obviously ripping the tribe apart. With the collusion of our tribal leaders the social and sexual standards of behaviour which used to protect the family unit and the tribe in general no longer exist.
“Enlightened” tribal members argued that the pattern of life we lived by was restrictive and prevented people from doing whatever they wanted. So the pattern was discarded and allowed to be replaced by social and sexual anarchy. Seemingly, everyone is now permitted to do what seems good to them, and for them, regardless of the consequences for the rest of their fellow tribes people.
It can only get worse, for today the country is multi-racial, that is, multi-tribal. Beneath the common family pattern of each individual tribe, each sub-tribe has its own standards of accepted behaviour and norms. One sub-tribe may believe this is right and another believe it to be wrong to do it that way and so on. The country now contains a mish-mash of often conflicting norms all of which have equal value and equal validity because we have dissolved the tribal rule which once gave the standard of behaviour which applied to all who lived here - whoever they were and whichever tribe they came from. And the result of that mish-mash is seen worked out in our midst every day in confrontations, conflicts and violence.
Furthermore, perhaps worse, having allowed our own tribe’s norms to dissolve into a state of social anarchy, we see ourselves now qualified to terrorise other tribes living within their own territories and to enforce them to “better their ways” and align their culture with what we do.
Today whenever I remember the folks in that little community on the hill in the Brazilian rain forest I am glad that there are people who are still living a natural life, untroubled by all the woes and sickness of our “civilised” ways. And if I thought that they would have me I would be there like a shot.
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