What Makes Aboriginal Sacred Sites?

[The Cool Thatguy]

You know what Mecca really needs? A big fucking mall! Lets build it on the Masjid al-Haram!

Actually...

http://www.cracked.com/article_20230...places_p2.html

[jackolover]

You're not. Not close in the least.

Since what you present to be saying would be uncut 100% hogwash. Why should you rephrase what I said into something entirely different?

What I said boils down to this: "Even if the West wouldn't be perfect than any wrongdoing is still gonna be wrongdoing, by and of itself."

Are you really here for answers and insights, or are you more like one of those goalpost-bending straw-manly intent-on-ostracising word-fumblers? I hope not. (And yes I understand there to being quite a bit of words to that question.)

I sure hope not. I honestly misinterpreted your phrasing. Maybe there were a few full stops missing in your posts.

Shouldn't That read, " Even if the west wouldn't be perfect, wrongdoing is still gonna be wrongdoing, by and of itself"?

[jackolover]

I don't know where you're getting the "advanced technological society" thing. That's on an intellectual plane with Von Dannikenism, claiming that archaic peoples only keep perpetuating their rituals because of some outside influence. The idea that people would only perpetuate rituals because they used to do the same thing in ancient Atlantis can make a good STAR TREK episode, but it's no good as anthropology.

There are a multitude of solid theories out there about how rituals evolve, some sociological (Durkheim), some anthropological (Malinowski), some psychological (Jung). There's no one meta-theory that explains everything to everyone's satisfaction, so there's no easy answer to your question about how sacredness evolves. I'll just say that whenever any people perpetuate a sacred ritual, they do so because it contains emotional satisfaction for the participants AT THE TIME, rather than because they're mechanically following the models of the past.

Since I've included Jung in my list, I'll rush to head off the usual canard some Jung-haters expouse: that he thought his archetypes "controlled" humans like unto the "outside influence" theories I just rejected. That's not what he said at all. He only said that he considered the archetypes of the collective unconscious as basically "homogenous" for all humanity in terms of their being expressive modes, but that in conscious terms humans remained as heterogenous as the bloody snowflakes.

I can't see how an immediate satisfaction of the participates also include an ancient landscape involved in that. Why should a prayer for instance have to include Mt Rushmore?

[Puma]

I can't see how an immediate satisfaction of the participates also include an ancient landscape involved in that. Why should a prayer for instance have to include Mt Rushmore?

Because that is where the god lives? because it is something unique the god made?

you need to stop thinking like a 20th century white man of Euro-Christian descent or go take some cultural anthropology courses to truly begin to understand the connection between man and land beyond an economic one.

[finfangfool]

Think of it like a graveyard or a church. I'm an atheist, but I have no trouble at all seeing why people would have a problem with certain behavior in those areas. When I read about minerals being discovered in an area where there's a graveyard and companies paying the relatives/town to move those caskets/headstones/bodies to another location so they can mine or drill there something strikes me as very wrong, even though logically speaking I understand that they're just objects at this point and could be removed or destroyed without any real world consequences (aside from the feelings of the relatives of the dead). If something like this were put to a vote in my town I'd vote No. I'd probably be in a picket line somewhere.

Irrational, but there it is. When you have cultural ties to an area dating back centuries or millenia (and in the case of some of the groups we're talking about, you've probably dealt with defiling of other places you considered holy for centuries already), then I can absolutely see why it would be offensive to suggest destroying a holy site to make a temporary, fleeting profit for a company that's not exactly going to go out of business if they add this to their already rather large list of drilling/mining sites.

[Kees_L]

I sure hope not. I honestly misinterpreted your phrasing. Maybe there were a few full stops missing in your posts.

Shouldn't That read, " Even if the west wouldn't be perfect, wrongdoing is still gonna be wrongdoing, by and of itself"?

Yes, bang on. I must immediately rectify and cease any of my growing grouchiness from my earlier post on this particular matter towards you:

whatever our viewpoints would be on the topic, you carefully and gracefully tried and succeeded in unravelling what I was trying to say,

for which I can only commend you. I sincerely mean that.

[Gothos]

I can't see how an immediate satisfaction of the participates also include an ancient landscape involved in that. Why should a prayer for instance have to include Mt Rushmore?

Here's just one (but not the only) possible reason for tribal cultures to value a particular landscape: if they happen to have buried their ancestors there. I'm not stating that this was the first association with the earth that caused human beings to value it, though the earth as receiver of the dead looms large in mythology.

The sense of connection to the past is a consistent trope in tribal societies. Some writers have chosen to see it as their being enslaved by the dead past-- particularly materialistic types-- but I think it has more to do with humans possessing a power of memory and reflection superior to other animals, a power which leads to their need to explain their existence. The mere copying of habitual patterns doesn't confer any sense of this groundedness.

[jackolover]

Because that is where the god lives? because it is something unique the god made?

you need to stop thinking like a 20th century white man of Euro-Christian descent or go take some cultural anthropology courses to truly begin to understand the connection between man and land beyond an economic one.

That's my whole point. What your saying is "It's too bad you don't know", which leaves me nowhere. Thanks

[jackolover]

Think of it like a graveyard or a church. I'm an atheist, but I have no trouble at all seeing why people would have a problem with certain behavior in those areas. When I read about minerals being discovered in an area where there's a graveyard and companies paying the relatives/town to move those caskets/headstones/bodies to another location so they can mine or drill there something strikes me as very wrong, even though logically speaking I understand that they're just objects at this point and could be removed or destroyed without any real world consequences (aside from the feelings of the relatives of the dead). If something like this were put to a vote in my town I'd vote No. I'd probably be in a picket line somewhere.

Irrational, but there it is. When you have cultural ties to an area dating back centuries or millenia (and in the case of some of the groups we're talking about, you've probably dealt with defiling of other places you considered holy for centuries already), then I can absolutely see why it would be offensive to suggest destroying a holy site to make a temporary, fleeting profit for a company that's not exactly going to go out of business if they add this to their already rather large list of drilling/mining sites.

But the holy site is the whole country throbbing with sacredness, not just a few graves, in the Aboriginal example.

The problem is the attribution of a god to a hill or a lake or rocks. To me, the Aboriginal tradition has the people and the Landscape emerging from the spirit world, at the same time. But that's not possible, because the first humans, as genealogy has found, emerged in Africa, so if the Aborigines should have any sacred land it's in Africa. When they came to Australia 40,000 years ago it was virgin land and they had no connection to it.

[jackolover]

Yes, bang on. I must immediately rectify and cease any of my growing grouchiness from my earlier post on this particular matter towards you:

whatever our viewpoints would be on the topic, you carefully and gracefully tried and succeeded in unravelling what I was trying to say,

for which I can only commend you. I sincerely mean that.

I sometimes surprise myself.

[jackolover]

Here's just one (but not the only) possible reason for tribal cultures to value a particular landscape: if they happen to have buried their ancestors there. I'm not stating that this was the first association with the earth that caused human beings to value it, though the earth as receiver of the dead looms large in mythology.

The sense of connection to the past is a consistent trope in tribal societies. Some writers have chosen to see it as their being enslaved by the dead past-- particularly materialistic types-- but I think it has more to do with humans possessing a power of memory and reflection superior to other animals, a power which leads to their need to explain their existence. The mere copying of habitual patterns doesn't confer any sense of this groundedness.

Look, I'll give you a story. I'm not immune to this idea of connection to land either.

When I was a kid I stood on a piece of land in a swamp near the coast and I was possessed by a spirit I later identified as the Aboriginal ancestors who inhabited that coastline. Some 20 years later I took a road trip around Australia and got to a place up North around Fitzroy River. When I drove into this particular area, there was a rise, and like 20 years earlier, I was drawn to it and when I got out of the car I was possessed of a spirit from that area as well. Very freaky. So I went on to Kununura and aske an Aboriginal Man in the information center what land I just drove through because I felt a spirit, and he asked me was it a good spirit or a bad spirit. I said it wasn't either. Then he told me it was woman country and men should not go in there.

Something freaky is going on in this country, and I can feel it, but I don't understand why it's related to structures other than spirits hang around structures or landscapes. Could that be it?

[Paradox]

jackolover misses it:

That's my whole point. What your saying is "It's too bad you don't know", which leaves me nowhere. Thanks

Puma SAID:

Because that is where the god lives? because it is something unique the god made?

you need to stop thinking like a 20th century white man of Euro-Christian descent or go take some cultural anthropology courses to truly begin to understand the connection between man and land beyond an economic one.

If you haven't gotten it by now, this isn't something you're going to get from a few lines in an internet post.

[Kees_L]

Look, I'll give you a story. I'm not immune to this idea of connection to land either.

When I was a kid I stood on a piece of land in a swamp near the coast and I was possessed by a spirit [snip]

Something freaky is going on in this country, and I can feel it, but I don't understand why it's related to structures other than spirits hang around structures or landscapes. Could that be it?

What is so weird with you is you constantly detach yourself from contexts or circumstances - even the ones you'd be presenting yourself!

Of course freaky things are happening, they always are, because your life or existence you constantly share with countless other factors outside of merely yourself or 'your kind' in any way.

You may think like you'd be constantly in the driver's seat of your understanding of things, but such would constantly be or prove under actual strain or influence all the time, continuously.

Because you couldn't or cannot place yourself above or outside of stuff as seeming different to yourself or either as completely in line with yourself.

You change and develop continuously, plus everything could be to, as well as how answers and questions to anything around you aren't but only ever the same perfectly, whether you'd want them to or not.

You and anything - of whatever kind or nature - share this world, regardless of how you or anyone would be liking such or not.


You describe yourself or your country or descent as being something very different from Aborigine or "sacred land type of stuff" which can only be nonsense.

Aside from the last couple of hundred years any nation or peoples only had themselves and some sticks or bits and furthermore only the knowledge of how anything familiar to them would be to seem, including how rises or shores or landscapal bits would appear to look.
This being true and fitting for any part of human race thinkable.

Why present yourself as being any different than that? Clearly the way you're presenting things would mean as to be over-estimating deemable differences?
I mean don't take it the wrong way but the things or differences you describe between yourself and others seems simplified like charicatures I'd have to say.

Which is what I meant with saying that you couldn't claim to differ from being aboriginal as much as how you appear to be. I really mean it: you are more alike to Aboriginals or Native Americans or Inuit or cavemen than not, factually both as biologically both as existentially / ideologically - despite of how any of that would seem to you as an individual.
Claiming otherwise because you'd feel apt towards working lightswitches or tv remotes would really mostly come down to being ludicrous and hollow for the most part.

Because your view of things or how things would actually work, for yourself or anything on this planet, would never or hardly need to seem or feel in line with eachother.

Think about it.
It isn't rocket science. Stop waiting for insights to come but get to opening yourself up to them.
Or how could you ever be to develop yourself or grow into maturity? Or as living together with ayone else, let alone with countless entities or outside factors as not needing to seem as anything similar to yourself?

Although I trust you'd be able to, since not only would you have to, you'd also have been doing it for as long as you did since your birth already, whether you'd have been aware of it or not. So it won't be too hard or too freaky I'm sure.

[jackolover]

What is so weird with you is you constantly detach yourself from contexts or circumstances - even the ones you'd be presenting yourself!

Of course freaky things are happening, they always are, because your life or existence you constantly share with countless other factors outside of merely yourself or 'your kind' in any way.

You may think like you'd be constantly in the driver's seat of your understanding of things, but such would constantly be or prove under actual strain or influence all the time, continuously.

Because you couldn't or cannot place yourself above or outside of stuff as seeming different to yourself or either as completely in line with yourself.

You change and develop continuously, plus everything could be to, as well as how answers and questions to anything around you aren't but only ever the same perfectly, whether you'd want them to or not.

You and anything - of whatever kind or nature - share this world, regardless of how you or anyone would be liking such or not.


You describe yourself or your country or descent as being something very different from Aborigine or "sacred land type of stuff" which can only be nonsense.

Aside from the last couple of hundred years any nation or peoples only had themselves and some sticks or bits and furthermore only the knowledge of how anything familiar to them would be to seem, including how rises or shores or landscapal bits would appear to look.
This being true and fitting for any part of human race thinkable.

Why present yourself as being any different than that? Clearly the way you're presenting things would mean as to be over-estimating deemable differences?
I mean don't take it the wrong way but the things or differences you describe between yourself and others seems simplified like charicatures I'd have to say.

Which is what I meant with saying that you couldn't claim to differ from being aboriginal as much as how you appear to be. I really mean it: you are more alike to Aboriginals or Native Americans or Inuit or cavemen than not, factually both as biologically both as existentially / ideologically - despite of how any of that would seem to you as an individual.
Claiming otherwise because you'd feel apt towards working lightswitches or tv remotes would really mostly come down to being ludicrous and hollow for the most part.

Because your view of things or how things would actually work, for yourself or anything on this planet, would never or hardly need to seem or feel in line with eachother.

Think about it.
It isn't rocket science. Stop waiting for insights to come but get to opening yourself up to them.
Or how could you ever be to develop yourself or grow into maturity? Or as living together with ayone else, let alone with countless entities or outside factors as not needing to seem as anything similar to yourself?

Although I trust you'd be able to, since not only would you have to, you'd also have been doing it for as long as you did since your birth already, whether you'd have been aware of it or not. So it won't be too hard or too freaky I'm sure.

Yes, I realize I am no different to the Australian Aborigine, even though my genes come from Europe.

I saw a program on the evolution of modern man through gene sampling of all races and back tracking where we all came from. Seems that without a doubt, we all came from Africa, and went out of there around 50,000 years ago. Apparently around 25,000 years ago an ice age warmed for a few thousand years, and a vast empire arose in central Asia. It's from this empire in Asia that the Euopeans migrated from. It's from this Asian Empire the Aborigines and the Americans migrated from.

So I am well aware that all people's are the same and linked to the one Central Asia Empire they all migrated from, eons ago. That's not my situation, that I am not aware of the connections between all of us, as my example must show I have affinity to the spirits around my country. My non-understanding is still that landscapes are attached to these sacred sites. And while the Europeans may have lost that landscape to God attachment, it doesn't mean it wasn't there once upon a time. It's just that it's been exorcized out of our experience.

[renne]

When they came to Australia 40,000 years ago it was virgin land and they had no connection to it.

wait, so you're saying that despite being here for 40,000 years, indigenous australians have no right to a spiritual connection to the land because they didn't originate on this continent? then what right do the rest of us have to bulldoze their sacred sites or shit all over them as unimportant since white people have only been here a couple of centuries?

also ascribing the facets of what you understand as religion (most likely revolving around a monotheistic religion of codified belief and worship systems) to the dreamtime will always lead to this kind of lack of understanding, because it's not a singular god attributed to a hill or a lake or rocks. just because it's not relevant to you, doesn't mean that it should automatically be irrelevant to all others.

i feel like you're also completely discounting that the belief system of indigenous australians was passed down orally. it's not like they had books of their stories dating back 40,00 years or could boot up the internet for the latest comprehensive research covering every aspect of their history. it was a completely different way of living to what we know. so the dreamtime is just as valid a belief system as any religion. i'm an atheist, so i personally find the idea of believing in an all-seeing, all-judging god ludicrous, but if that is what people want to believe in to get themselves through the day, who am i to say otherwise? i certainly wouldn't endorse dropping a great open cut mine right into the middle of one of their sacred sites, just because it was the sacred site for something i didn't personally believe in. (and if we go back to the 40,000 years, at least the indigenous australians have been here that long; aren't most religious sites in say, christianity, limited to 2000 odd years?)