“There are deep-set assumptions embedded in much western thought: * that there is a linear progression to the history of culture * that there is a movement from ‘primitive’ to ‘civilized’ ((1/n) of a long quote thread, cont'd below - )
* and in that movement, western views - presently, science-based atheism - sit right at the top. They're seen as ‘more mature’ or 'fundamentally right' than whatever came before. These views are, of course, deeply rooted in colonialism.
Both western religion and western science were steeped in these views during the colonial era, and it still informs how we view other cultures and their traditions.
Anthropologists have now debunked the notion that there is anything resembling linear progress when its comes to culture. The human brain has been the human brain for over 35,000 years. 'Human genius' has been 'human genius' across the spectrum of knowledge, culture, and belief.
“Other cultures aren’t failed attempts at being us. If you apply the same genius and effort that it took to put a man on the moon to interacting with the ocean, you get the Polynesian navigators. If you apply it to the study of consciousness, you get the tantric meditators.
For one worldview to claim superiority is simply wrong.”
When we dismiss indigenous cultures that have existed for tens of thousands of years, we're saying: if we have technological advancement, or the ability split an atom or send a man into space, then we must be 'fundamentally right.'
If we're carving up the world more efficiently than our stone-tooled ancestors, well, we must be more right than they were.
But in a world where we're faced with the implication of environmental implication of western technological advancement without respect for nature, it is becoming harder and harder to claim 'rightness'.
One could easily look at the cultures that have survived 50,000 uninterrupted years on this planet, and say, for example, that they have a better claim to say what's 'right' than the brash young upstarts that are burning the whole thing to the ground within a few hundred."