Okay .. It is 1200 AD .. The Europeans have not arrived in the New World .. And you are the "chief" of a tribe in the Great Plains .. You will stay chief, only as long as you make decisionsthat serve the tribe well- mess up- then in council they will replace you with someone better qualified ..Now be the "scientific materialist" mindset you are now .. Okay, the tribe's "buffalo shaman" comes to you to advise you .. That job is his, with the same risks yours has .. but he has successfully been predicting buffalo migrations four years now- you are a new chief .. His qualifications are vision pits, visits to burial ground ... guidance from ghosts of buffalo shamans before him ... He tells you,"I had a dream last night that our Buffalo brother will be moving a hundred miles North ..
These buffalo are your tribes habitat,sustenance, clothing and tools .. Moving the tribe is a serious undertaking, a wrong decision could subject them to much hardship .. So ,do you chief trust your shaman's
2006-09-09 08:00:16 · 14 answers · asked by gmonkai 4 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
intuitions and spiritual perceptions?
2006-09-09 08:01:04 · update #1
Do you give the order? ... Will you have the tribe begin moving North tomorrow?
2006-09-09 08:02:20 · update #2
I'm really enjoying these answers .. there is no wrong or right answer in my opinion .. I am just enjoying seeing how different people approach this ..:D
2006-09-09 08:11:22 · update #3
Perhaps I should add 1) in this life, I often side with the scientific materialists in forums like this one ... but 2) I believe that the inner "science" of a shaman tradition can be even more valid than "scientific materialism- afterall almost every bit of pharmacology that we possess owes to varied forms of shamanism and medicinemen ...
2006-09-09 08:15:26 · update #4
"The scouts" habit is a bit of a cheat established in here .. for a materialist crutch ..lol .. but I will allow them .. ha ha ... I am the Bison shaman in this allegory .. :D
2006-09-09 08:32:06 · update #5
I'm enjoying all of these .. they are genuine and honest.. but fine myself favoring picard's succinct answer so far ... what is "functioning" outside the "norms" of his understanding .. is maybe giving him a slight uneasiness .. but he remains openminded to it .. with- if it isn't broke- why fix it ... I think him staying chief for awhile has a strong chance .. whether anyone wants this job is not relevant- as the council can set it on your shoulders if they see you "fit" ..
2006-09-09 08:49:33 · update #6
Ooooh!..Student of Life .. you rock! .. the openmindedness.. such an excellent answer!!
2006-09-09 08:51:17 · update #7
especially since yours came in before I had lauded picard's "openmindedness" .. duly noted!
2006-09-09 08:53:19 · update #8
Ichi- that is an excelent inversion question...if he is a lizard shaman .. I'll consider him as heretical as a ginger person ..lol .. Gandreal , so funny!..Yes,you have a point, we are procrastinating in our logics here!
2006-09-09 10:42:21 · update #9
Marx and Engels advised me to give all of you- as no one has been mean yet, a rating point ..lol .. how egalitarianally beneficent of me, eh? :D
2006-09-09 10:44:43 · update #10
Pragmatist Lois Loan.. is utilising all the angles here!
2006-09-09 17:07:26 · update #11
Linty seems to possess a rare equal regard for introverted and extroverted sciences ..My job to pick here is gonna be a monster..lol
2006-09-10 12:59:50 · update #12
Very apt, lola ... I suspect there is some amazing shamanism in your climes... an oddity I have noted- is that when the mainstream cultures look at these traditions.. inevitably they highlight the "extreme sorcerers"-outside actual shaman traditions(albeit these can have a "current") .. voodoo "zombee phenomenon" is a Carribean example... Works about real pharmacologists(scientists) who learned to fully respect the traditions they were studying exist... but one has to be resourceful to find these accounts .. the materialist is often dismissive of the genres as "chemical mysticism" .. cases exist though where the chemicals played no part though ..
2006-09-11 08:25:17 · update #13
lola.. boring lil ole me has no tatooes... but an old friend visiting Thailand recently .. I told him , if you see a shaman wise in "chi meridian" stuff giving tatooes based on it .. give it a strong consideration ... I studied Tai Chi from a Korean teacher fifteen years ago .. I like standing calisthenic meditations of other forms I have studied, and the jatha yoga too ... But Thai Chi has something really interesting and marvelous and indescribeable that at times it "triggers"...
2006-09-11 08:30:53 · update #14
ya quacks on the tourist routes especially...my friend did not encounter anything else..because he wasn't in Thailand long ... However his journeys in Peru went much deeper into jungles ..for medicine traditions..
2006-09-11 11:09:56 · update #15
That is alot of stuff there .. I want to say "cool stuff" in exuberance for it .. but it obcourse has that menacing side there to ..My understanding is that Indonesia is rich in varied traditions too-which is not too far from you either
2006-09-11 11:12:35 · update #16
Geez, fun question,....is this like a quiz or sumthing?
Well, my dear gmonkai, as you know i am neither an agnostic nor athiest , but can i just butt in here a lil please, i promise i won't be too annoying , that kind of behaviour is reserved exclusively for my neighbours.
My answer is yes the buffallo man gets the vote but only after much study and scrutiny of his true abilities. I wouldn't have a real choice in making this decision taking into consideration what's at stake is beyond personal losses. We have a community to save here for god's sake!!! for the love of mankind yes i would listen to the buffolo man even if he is smelly and hasn't taken his shower in days !!!!
I'll very much take a direction from ones who are able to set forth a detailed and workable plan regardless of their unscientific methods, the results are of prime importance in such dire circumstances.
btw science has skipped on much too where solid facts are concern, it is on a limp, cruising along mere speculations in the hope of proving it as legitimate, or we can term them as dogmas just like much of religion or spiritual activities.If the scientific mind decides to cut itself off from taking into account alternative voices then it would be a loss ....and vice versa to the religious peeps as well. One compliments the other or so it seems. Me coming from the east has witness innumerable evidences of the mystical practices of our local shamans ( bomoh - as they are called here) these guys can do some hot stuff trust me ......, the dark side of it or otherwise.
See , i told you , you don't wanna hear what my poor brain has to say. it's always just some long angry ranting anyway!!
:-)
EDIT
yeah...these shamans comes in all shapes and sizes though , i dunno much about them,one needs to be careful.......my grandmother had an enemy who place a spell on her and she had to exorsice it through the help of a medium. Now there are some who utilised the holy verses of the quran for their "medicinal" purposes but i do not trust em. I prefer a doctor anytime, chances are from experience they are just cuter.
There are aboriginal tribes in my country as well.......the Orang Asli they are called, well known for their supernatural "powers" and animistic beleifs .......i have lived closed to them when i was working on first job in the highlands, and yeah i had this orang asli girl who me and my friends suspect were casting love spells all over us...lol....weird evil ***** that one
....though it is a dying "art" .....discredited by the arrival of science to the remote parts in the countryside.....most are just quacks ya know. They'll suck ya dry with their exorbitant charges ...lol...
Good to know you are doing Tai Chi.......suitable for your age? ....lol.....j/k
2006-09-11 08:12:58 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
well if i mess up the worse that will happen is I will be replaced? Not having my head lopped off and put on a stick? Then I say "pack'em up boys! We're moving out!!"
If the shamen has been successfully been predicting the migrations for years I think as chief i have to go for it. I trust the shaman. I think there is a science to the shamans "work." Shouldn't a scientific mind be an open one? I don't think the shaman is much different than the scientific mind. His work isn't faith, it's working with natural laws. He touches the unknown and the laws of the universe. Something scientists (quantum physics) are uncovering now.
A science and a something spiritual deeper is that was lost to humans when the west eliminated most of the indigenous peoples.
Excellent question!!! fun 2 answer. thanks...
now answer my questions!! lol
just teasing.......but i do have 5 new ones if u get the chance:)) lol
2006-09-10 09:34:24 · answer #2 · answered by .. 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
First, I would NOT want to be the cheif. I would accept the responsibility only if there really was nobody more qualified.
The shaman was right for the past 4 years. A pretty good track record. I would move the tribe. Maybe only half to see how the buffalo hunting was. Also, maybe would be prudent to send some hunters first to see how many they could bring back before moving the whole tribe. 100 miles on horseback is only 2 days or so I think.
2006-09-09 08:06:13 · answer #3 · answered by kurticus1024 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
i don't really see any conflict here. anybody that has a "scientific" mindset should be open minded. they don't necessarily have to believe that the shaman talks to buffalo ghosts in order to recognize that he has been successful at predicting the movements of the herd. although what the shaman talks of would seem to be "unscientific," there is no disputing his success, and a truly "scientific materialist" would trust his judgment (even if they believed that what he thought were ghosts was really his unconsciousness which had registered the minor signs of an impending move.)
Like i said, i really don't see any conflict here at all. There is only a conflict if one takes the view that "scientific" reality can only be expressed in the language of modern science and not in various cultural and religious languages. If a certain civilization is able to predict the movement of the stars in the sky by using religious/mythological language, their predictions are no less accurate. Any scientist worth the title should be open-minded enough to look at results and not get blinded by language and cultural traditions.
2006-09-09 08:44:40 · answer #4 · answered by student_of_life 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The key here is this sentence: "but he has successfully been predicting buffalo migrations four years now".
Regardless of the actual mechanism involved, the empirical evidence supports the shaman.
I would remain agnostic about the source of the Shaman's success, but if I have no other source of information - and the question doesn't suggest any - I would go with the Shaman.
2006-09-09 08:09:26 · answer #5 · answered by Zhimbo 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
You are the new chief in town, you are the leader you gotta to be seen to be listening to the wisdom of others to gain the necessary respect from the council, and be also seen to creating the action of doing something about it...send scouts was a good suggestion...
I reckon that definitively strong action from a leader based on a 'secure' and trusted source in the group generally, until the chief has fully settled in to the role so to speak, would be very astute a maneuver.
how about the question the other way around though......if you were an 'Old Chief', been in the post for a while, and the old respected Shamen died - you got a new Shamen that used different methods to guide him, would you trust him?
2006-09-09 09:21:49 · answer #6 · answered by Ichi 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Based on the conditions you set, I would send out scouts to confirm the direction of the buffalo migration before deciding to move the village.
Faith is better served when it is confirmed by reality.
No, I would not make an important decision based on visions & dreams.
2006-09-09 08:08:34 · answer #7 · answered by Left the building 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
of course i would go with the shaman as he has faithfully been accurate and had a good track record. scouting out the situation to confirm is also a fabulous idea and i would have to go with that realisitically but in all honesty i think i would just believe the shaman. no reflection on religion at all. you know where i stand on that anyways.
2006-09-09 14:18:49 · answer #8 · answered by bbq 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Using a shaman as a analogy of religion - how ironic... and how appropriate.
2006-09-09 08:06:41 · answer #9 · answered by Christopher B 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
if he has been doing it for 4 years succesfully then yes and not all of it would be based on visions and dreams. some of it would have been somewhat scientific
2006-09-09 08:06:41 · answer #10 · answered by crl_hein 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋