[FRIAM] Trump as a victim

[David Eric Smith]

On Oct 7, 2020, at 12:58 PM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
> 
> I’d say if there is some kind of communication that can occur (verbal or non-verbal) that entity has higher status than those than cannot engage in communication.  
> 
There ia a fun example of this from ethnography, which I used to open a talk at the ABQ museum of natural history many years ago, to introduce the diorama that the NM Highlands Media Arts kids had created for Origin of Life.

I will get all the diacritics wrong below, but indulge me.  The motif was self/other distinctions, and how they have come from human habit also to put unwarranted priors of separation into science.  

This is from the Ju/`hoansi of S. Africa and Namibia.  Their name for themselves is also the generic term for humans.  They have another word, /!xon, for wild and dangerous things.  Interesting thing is, what makes something a kind of /!xon is that you can’t understand its language.  Thus there are both 4-legged and 2-legged /!xon, with the Bantu herders and farmers who flooded into the region 800 years ago, as well as the Afrikaners, being the 2-legged kind.  In that set, the Ju/`hoansi rank the 4-legged /!xon a little higher than the 2-legged kind, saying of the 4-leggers “we can at least understand their language a little”.

I believe that and other such stories come from here:
https://www.amazon.com/Dobe-Hoansi-STUDIES-CULTURAL-ANTHROPOLOGY/dp/1111828776

I have a particular empathy with that story.

Eric



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