Re: Re[2]: Mutant Message (was Re: Re Look out! long hair gun loon!)
michael k teehan (miketeehan@worldnet.att.net)
Sat, 20 Dec 1997 06:19:54 -0500
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> From: Guru George <gurugeorge@sugarland.idiscover.co.uk>
> To: extropians@extropy.com
> Subject: Re[2]: Mutant Message (was Re: Re Look out! long hair gun loon!)
> Date: Saturday, December 20, 1997 8:39 AM
>
>
>
> On Fri, 19 Dec 1997 19:23:50 -0500
> Michael Lorrey <retroman@together.net> wrote:
>
> >Damien Broderick wrote:
> >>
> >> >Have you ever read any books written by
> >> >people who have actually gotten to spend time with aborigines, who
have
> >> >closely studied their culture? If you have you'd find that the
aborigines
> >> >are actually a very peaceful, intelligent, and wise people. May I
suggest
> >> >Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan.
> >>
> >> The first point has some merit. Sadly, be warned that the book you
cite is
> >> a brainless fabrication, a New Age hoax. (I gather that the
publisher,
> >> following its debunking, now reprints it as a `novel'.)
> >>
> >
> >Thanks Damien. SOunds like another case of the famous Maya fraud of the
> >30's, where socialist/communist sympathizing archaeologists from British
> >and American Ivy League schools developed the preposterous and
> >completely unsupported, and eventually debunked theories that the Maya
> >civilization was a socialist paradise of peaceful, communistic, unarmed
> >innocent heathens.
> >
> >As it turns out, nothing could have been further from the truth.
> >Following a successful harvest, the preist/god/king typically had a
> >ceremony in which he sought the advice of the gods/ancestors, etc. by
> >piercing his penis with a series of sharpened splinters from different
> >trees. The pattern of splattered blood that formed supposedly told him
> >what the gods wanted, or that the hallucinogenic state the preist was in
> >gave him the illusion he was talking to the gods. In any event, the
> >message almost invariably was this: GO TO WAR.
> >
> [snip]
>
> There is also the famous case of Margaret Mead more or less making up a
> whole load of shit that influenced (especially leftist) sociology for
> years in her book "Coming of Age in Samoa".
>
> She painted a picture of Samoans as Noble Savages, the whole shebang
> (especially in regard to sexual freedom); actually, Samoans are if
> anything even *more* taboo-ridden than we are.
>
> Recently, one of her then-adolescent informers (now a grand dame in
> Samoan society) owned up to having teased Mead a *lot* in the course of
> her researches for the book!
>
> (Sorry I can't remember references, but it's quite a well known case in
> sociology.)
>
> Guru George