Reference:The Primal Religions
Reference: The World’s Religions by Huston Smith
[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]
Primal peoples are not primitive and uncivilized, much less savage. They are not backward; they are different. They are not impaired; they are apart.
As between the primal and the historical religions, time seems to be on the side of the latter, for though millions would now like to see the primal way of life continue, it seems unlikely that it will do so. “Civilization” is seductive where not imperious, and we cannot quarantine the primal peoples who remain, preserving them for anthropologists to study and the rest of us to romanticize as symbols of our lost paradise. How industrial peoples will comport themselves toward the primal in what seems to be the short time they have left on this planet will be the final topic of this chapter.
The primal culture has only a short time left on this planet.
The historical religions have largely abandoned their earlier missionary designs on “the heathen,” as they were once disparagingly referred to. If anything, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, toward romanticizing the primal. Dismayed by the relentless utilitarianism of technological society and its seeming inability to contain its power to destroy both people and planet, citifiedpeoples have come to hope that a fundamentally different way of life is possible, and they latch onto primal peoples to support that hope. Guilt enters the picture too, as the descendants of those who had power face up to the ways their forbears looked down on, despoiled, and destroyed those who lacked it. Whether things could have gone differently, given what the conquerors then understood and the seemingly irresistible disposition of those who possess power to abuse it, we shall never know. What we do know, and it is at least to our credit that we now confess it, is that there was holocaust on a global scale.
It is to our credit that we now confess that there was holocaust on a global scale.
On the positive side we can note that we now recognize that we were mistaken in our assessment of these people. Primal peoples are not primitive and uncivilized, much less savage. They are not backward; they are different. They are not impaired; they are apart. With this realization in place and disparagement of the primal behind us, we return for a moment to our current propensity to romanticize these people, for there is an aspect of that impulse that is not widely understood.
Primal peoples are not primitive and uncivilized, much less savage. They are not backward; they are different. They are not impaired; they are apart.
Disenchantment with the complexities and mistakes of industrial life, the scission between human beings and nature it has effected, and the bitter fruits that that scission has borne, have (as we were saying) produced by way of reaction the image of tribal peoples as wholly natural. We regard them as sons and daughters of the earth and sky, brothers and sisters of animals and plants, who live by nature’s ways and do not upset the delicate balances of their ecological zones; gentle hunting folk who are still in touch with the magic and myth that we ourselves so badly need. Seeing them thus, we assume that our ancestors resembled them in these respects and we celebrate them as our heroes. There is a deep, unconscious reason for this bent of thought. Every people, ourselves not excepted, needs to think well of its origins; it is part of having a healthy self-image. So modern peoples, who are no longer confident that God created them, transfer some of God’s nobility to the source from which they assume that they did derive, namely early humankind. This is the deepest impulse behind “the myth of the noble savage” that the eighteenth century invented.
Seeing them thus, we assume that our ancestors resembled them in these respects and we celebrate them as our heroes.
What may be hoped is that we are now ready to put both prejudice and idealization behind us. If we are, perhaps we can live out our numbered years of planetary partnership in mutual respect, guided by the dream of one primal spokesman that “we may be brothers after all.” If we succeed in doing this, there is still time for us to learn some things from them. For, tabling shortcomings that are not the issue here, it is not romantic to affirm what John Collier, one time United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs, said of his charges:
They had what the world has lost: the ancient, lost reverence and passion for human personality joined with the ancient, lost reverence and passion for the earth and its web of life. Since before the Stone Age they have tended that passion as a central, sacred fire. It should be our long hope to renew it in us all.
What may be hoped is that we are now ready to put both prejudice and idealization behind us.
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