10/16 Philosophy of Money and Banking

Texts for this class

(1) HR6550 Bill to Reform the Banking Industry
(2) "Beyond Greed & Scarcity: An Interview with Bernard Litaer"

Recommended 

10/9 Ethics & Worldview of Traditional Societies

Texts for class
1. Interview with Helena Norberg-Hodge
2. Four Arrows, "The Continuing Saga of Anti-Indianism in America"
3. Clare Brant, "Native Ethics & Principles"

Other documents for your interest
4. Chief Seattle's speech to Chief Washington
5. Justin Vood Good, "Walking in Beauty: Why Higher Education should be Indigenized"
6. J. Good "Indigenized Education teaches Democracy" 
7. Peaceful Societies database
8. Iroquois Confederacy: Oldest participatory democracy in the world.

Ask of Me and I shall Give to thee the Heathen as Thine Inheritance and the Uttermost parts of the Earth for Thy Possession. -Psalms 2:8

Final Notes for PH1104

Dear Philosophers,

Congratulations on all of your hard work this semester. I invite you to take time to acknowledge your efforts and I salute your choice to pursue education and mental liberation. Below are some things I wanted to share with you.

1. First, Jen and I wanted to extend a warm invitation for you to visit us at our center, The Sanctuary at Shepardfields in East Haddam. We do host a weekly meditation group including a discussion group on the practice of forgiveness via A Course in Miracles, most Sundays from 3-5 PM. We are also having our first larger event, a Tiny Hermitage Open House on June 15th. If you’d like to be included on our email list, please email us at info@oursanctuary.org.   

2. On the topic of capitalism versus socialism, there was recently an epic debate between two famous public intellectuals: Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian philosopher and Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. Their discussion on the theme of capitalism, socialism and human happiness, is generating much discussion and offers a very deep analysis of these questions. 

In a recent book Zizek lays out what he takes to be our basic political choice: “Cynical conformism tells us that emancipatory ideals of more equality, democracy and solidarity are boing and even dangerous, leading to a grey, over regulated society, and that our true and only paradise is the existing ‘corrupted’ capitalist universe. Radical emancipatory engagement starts from the premise that it is the capitalist dynamics which are boring, offering more of the same in the guise of constant change, and that the struggle for emancipation is still the most daring of all ventures. Our goal is to argue for the second option.”
    (Slavoj Zizek, Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism)

3. Secondly, a topic that I was thinking of including in our class but did not get to: the topic of extraterrestrial visitation. This may not seem like a serious topic for philosophy, but I assure you it is. In fact, the advent of this new reality is creating the newest branch of philosophy, called “exo-philosophy.” I teach one of the very first academic classes in the US dedicated to this topic, which you can check out here. 

If you want to delve into some reliable documents, you can visit a recent blog post from another class I teach here. 

4. Finally, I made use of many fantastic books while teaching this semester. If you would like to pursue further any of the topics we looked at, I could recommend any of the following books.

I thoroughly enjoyed teach/learning with you this semester and wish you the best in your pursuits! 

Sincerely Yours, Justin

Books I used this semester while teaching the class that I found useful and inspiring

Anarchism and Direct Democracy

David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement

David Graeber, The Debt: The First 5000 Years

Mass Incarceration and Prison Abolition

Danielle Sered, Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and The Road to Repair

Emily Bazelon, Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration

Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

George Jackson, Soledad Brothers: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

Abolition Now: Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex

Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice

Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy.

David Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide

White Supremacy and Structural Racism

Angel Davis, Freedom Is A Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement

Patrice Khan-Cullors & Asha Bandele, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

Robin Diangelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro

Edward Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas

Ta Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power

The Deep State

David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government

Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton

Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK

Haitian Revolution

C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

Jacob Carruthers, The Irritated Genie: An Essay on the Haitian Revolution

Notes on Gnostic Ethics, Restorative Justice, Forgiveness & Interbeing

§1. From Marianne Williamson’s 2020 Presidential Campaign Website

“American politics today is disconnected from the heart. Our economic system is disconnected from the heart. Our criminal justice system is disconnected from the heart. Our educational system is disconnected from the heart. Our national security agenda is disconnected from the heart. And where there is no heart, there is no wisdom.”

§2. Revenge is not Justice. 

A retributive-punishing system is rooted in the mistake of using emotional pain as a basis for public policy. This system does too much punishing (i.e. the mass incarceration phenomenon) and not enough protecting and “making right.” (e.g. Out of 1000 people who rape, 200 are reported, 20 are moved forward to trial, less 5 are convicted, out of those 1 ends up behind bars, while 83% get away with murder.) (Ref.)

§3. Restorative Justice  

Based on an old, commonsense view of wrongdoing as a violation of people and interpersonal relationships. All indigenous cultures use restorative practices, as do many families. Whereas criminal justice sees humans as separate, autonomous beings, restorative justice sees individuals as part of an interconnected web of relationships. People who are harmed are centered in terms of the their harm being seen and valued and addressed, bystanders are called in to encircle the person, the person who harmed is called in to take accountability for what was done.

§4. Two different views of justice

Criminal Justice	Restorative Justice
Crime is a violation of the law and state	Crime is a violation of people and relationships
Violations create guilt	Violations create obligations
Justice requires the state to determine blame (guilt) and impose pain (punishment)	Justice involves victims, offenders, and community members in an effort to repair the harm and ‘put things right’
Central focus: offenders getting what they deserve.	Central focus: victim needs and offender responsibility for repairing harm.

§5. Three different questions

Criminal Justice	Restorative Justice
What laws have been broken?	Who has been harmed?
Who did it?	What are their needs?
What do they deserve?	Whose obligations are these?

(These charts from Howard Zehr, The Little Book of Restorative Justice) 

Common Justice in Brooklyn NY as a model of using restorative practices to deal with violent crime.

§6. Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ (All Are Related) - Lakota prayer. 

Are we separate from each other or are we inter-related and inter-connected? The concept of interrelatedness is key to understanding why needs, roles and obligations are so essential to restorative justice. “In this worldview, the problem of crime - and wrongdoing in general - is that it represents a wound in the community, a tear in the web of relationships. Crime represents damaged relationships. In fact, damaged relationships are both a cause and an effect of a crime. Many traditions have a saying that a harm to one is a harm to all.” (Howard Zehr, The Little Book of Restorative Justice (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2015), 29.) 

§7. The Meaning of Forgiveness as a Spiritual Path and Method for Philosophical Liberation

“The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.” Each human being is a strand in an interconnected web of relationships (an expression of Love) which perceives itself as separate and autonomous (an Ego, a ball of fear). 

§8. The Ego - Principle of Self-denial or Self-hatred, an image which replaces, and needs to suppress our awareness of, our true Self. “The ego is the mind’s belief that it is completely on its own.” “The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching.” “The ego literally lives by comparisons. Equality is beyond its grasp. The ego never gives out of abundance, because it was made as a substitute for it.” Narcissism as a form of self-hatred. (From A Course in Miracles)

§9. Two basic emotions of Love versus Fear, corresponding to two systems of thought, two perceptions of reality (fear-based view that we are all separate from each other versus the love-based view that we are all One.) The Ego is sustained by fear, and is dissolved by love, oneness, the fading of the illusion of separation.

§10. Forgiveness Practice (The Six Steps to Freedom derived from the Choose Again model, as created by Diederik Wolsak 

1. I am upset. Step 1 in the conflict/upset resolution dance is to acknowledge, own, that I am in conflict or upset. The conflict serves a purpose and will lead to a joining if resolved.

2. It is about me. The conflict is not about the other person. (In comes the little voice, “yea, right” ). The conflict is never about anyone but me. Trust this step even if you don’t believe it yet. Without this step, peace and joining will not happen. It is about me. Ok, ok, so it’s about me. I know that blaming anyone for the conflict will not get me what I really want and that is: to be happy.

3. Feel the feeling. How do I feel? It is surprising to see how hard it is to really know how I am feeling. This is where commitment to honesty is essential. I have to know how I feel in order to go to:

4. Remember when I felt this way before. How is that feeling familiar? Now I have to become a detective. I am looking for the source of this feeling. When did I first feel this way? Go back as far as I can in my memory. And after a little searching I’ll remember an incident when someone said or did something that made me feel that way. Now follows:

5. Establish what my judgement of myself was in that moment? What was my perception? How did  I interpret the situation? What was my judgment of myself in that situation? What did it say about me that that person acted or spoke that way? I’m not important. I’m not supported. I’m ignored. I’m not heard. I’m inadequate. What kind of person deserves to feel this way?

6. Embrace the Truth about me. Now I must shift my old perception. Who was the “i” that made that judgement about myself in that moment (eg.- I’m ignored)? Was it the real “I” or the false “i”? If it was the false “I”, the conclusion I made about myself in that moment was also false. My judgment of myself in that moment was wrong. It said nothing about me. Whatever happened way back when was not about me. Who I am is unchanged and unchangeable. The belief I formed about who I am is wrong and doesn’t serve me. It is easy to forgive myself for believing a falsity about myself.  

“Forgive me for believing I was _______. Forgive me for believing I am ______.” You name it; most of us have at least one of more of these limiting beliefs. So there it is. Now, I’M FREE.

4/30 Gnostic Ethics, Restorative Justice, Forgiveness & Interbeing

Sources for this class

1. Marianne Williamson on forgiveness (and A Course in Miracles) and her 2020 campaign position on criminal justice

2. Howard Zehr on RJ (co-founder of modern restorative justice movement)

3. Primer on Restorative Justice from Center for Justice and Reconciliation

4. Common Justice, a truly ground-breaking organization, the only one in the country using restorative justice to deal with violent crime as an alternative to incarceration.

5. Charles Eisenstein on Interbeing

6. Twelve Principles of Attitudinal Healing (Jerry Jamplolsky)

The essence of our being is love.
Health is inner peace. Healing is letting go of fear.
Giving and receiving are the same.
We can let go of the past and of the future.
Now is the only time there is and each instant is for giving.
We can learn to love ourselves and others by forgiving rather than judging.
We can become love finders rather than fault finders.
We can choose and direct ourselves to be peaceful inside regardless of what is happening outside.
We are students and teachers to each other.
We can focus on the whole of life rather than the fragments.
Since love is eternal, death need not be viewed as fearful.
We can always perceive ourselves and others as either extending love or giving a call for help.

Final Paper Topics

Due: Friday, May 10th
Length: 6 pages
Format: Argumentative, posing a thesis or question and offering sustained argument.
References: Use at least two sources from class and two outside sources.
Submit: Via email to justin@oursanctuary.org

1. Neolithic Economist Marshal Sahlins argued that hunter-gatherers remain the ‘original affluent society’ in the sense that their needs were easily met. Are these undeveloped peoples really wealthier than modern individuals? In your answer, explain what you mean by ‘wealth.’

2. Does evil exist? If so, what is it? If not, why should we deny its reality?

3. Do the activities of the CIA and the American Deep State contradict the belief that the US government is the leading edge of freedom and democracy? If not, in what sense are they consistent with that description?

4. In what sense is Climate Change an ethical question? How can it be understood as a question in distributive justice? What are our ethical obligations, and to whom do we owe them, regarding climate change and global ecocide generally?

5. Does climate change and related environmental challenges facing the human race require merely better energy technologies, or do these challenges call for a new ethics? If the latter, what ethical principles are required?

6. Does the present carry obligations towards the future? If so, how do we quantify the duties that presently existing peoples have to future generations?

7. In his essay “Buddhist Economics,” E. F. Schumacher argues that modern economics denies the inherent value of work. What have been the implications of this for how modern economies are structured and what might we do to create a system which values people?

8. Do the ethical principles of indigenous cultures differ significantly from the ethics of modern societies? If so, what are the relevant differences and which principles ought we to choose for our current circumstances?

9. The ethical principles of indigenous cultures, for example as described by Mohawk philosopher Clare Brant, reflect the different social and economic structures of traditional societies. How do these ethical principles rest on, and support these more traditional social and economic structures?

10. In her study of Ladakh, Helena Norberg Hodge argues that the root of all our key social and environmental problems is the global economy. Is she correct? If so, why? If not, why not? Explain and analyze her arguments.

11. Are human societies becoming less violent or more violent? Explore and analyze the relevant arguments for and against, including Four Arrow’s article from our class discussion.

12. In her study of dominator systems and partnership societies, Riane Eisler draws a distinction between two kinds of hierarchy: hierarchies of power, and hierarchies of actualization. What is the relevant difference between these two structures and how does the distinction help us understand the solution to equality between genders and/or classes?

13. Prison abolitionists argue for a restorative approach to justice to replace the adversarial model of justice currently institutionalized in what Mariame Kaba calls our “criminal punishment system.” How does this restorative model differ from our current carceral approach? What are some of the practices? What is its view of human relationship?

14. Are humans separate from each other or are they spiritually interconnected and inter-existent? What are the moral and social ramifications for how we answer this question?

15. Does civilization inevitably bring with it social inequality, violence and domination?

16. Have men always dominated western culture? If not, what evidence suggests the contrary?

17. Are Neolithic figurines evidence of a fertility cult or do they have a deeper meaningfor how we understand the possibilities for human culture?

18. What problems might be solved by adopting a new social guidance system based on partnership rather than domination?

19. Make up your own question but be sure to check it with me first.

20. What is forgiveness, and is it possible?

Good Luck Mighty Companion!

4/25 Dominator Systems / Partnership Solutions

Reading for this class
1. Finish Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade

Recommended
2. Interview with Ruth Gilmore on Restorative Justice
3. Chris Hayes Interview with Mariame Kaba

4/16 Introduction to Riane Eisler's Study of Partnership Societies

With Special Guest Philosopher Jen Taylor

Reading for this class
Riane Eisler, The Chalice & The Blade, Introduction & Chapters 1-4.

Notes on Anti-Indianism in recent American Scholarship

§1. Four Arrows (Cherokee Philosopher) exposes anti-Indianism “so as to encourage more people to awaken to the perspectives about life that guided human behaviors for most of our history, before “God moved indoors,” to quote my old friend, Sam Keen”

§2. “The grim prognosis for life on this planet is the consequence of a few centuries of forgetting what traditional societies knew, and the surviving ones still recognize. We must nurture and preserve our common possession, the traditional commons, for future generations, and this must be one of our highest values, or we are all doomed. To regain this sensibility from those who have preserved it we must pay careful attention to their understanding and practices.” (Noam Chomsky, 2013)

A. The “Dances-with-wolves” approach to Native American history

§3. The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend (2013) by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, given positive reviews by such prestigious and progressive publications as Salon and the Boston Globe which refer to the book’s “exceptional fairness and accuracy,” is a straight-forward example of gross anti-Indian bias, racism and fundamental misunderstandings about indigenous society and worldview and “the continued demeaning of Native Peoples, an approach that prioritizes Euro-centric people and values and ignores or dismisses the present by romanticizing or distorting the past.” (5)

§4. Red Cloud (Maȟpíya Lúta in Lakota, 1822-1909), Leader of the Oglala Lakota band, led successful military campaigns against the US army during Red Cloud’s War (1866-1868) in Wyoming and Montana, culminating in the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) which established the Great Sioux Reservation including Sioux ownership of the Black Hills, and set aside additional lands as unceded Indian territory in areas of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska, and possibly Montana. The treaty formed the basis of the 1980 Supreme Court case, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, in which the court ruled that tribal lands covered under the treaty had been taken illegally by the US government, and the tribe was owed compensation plus interest. As of 2018 this amounted to more than $1 billion. The Sioux have refused the payment, demanding instead the return of their land.

§5. Based on questionable scholarship by white historians who use a discredited white person’s unauthorized autobiography of Red Cloud; Uses the word “savage” repeatedly, widely used in the 19th century to describe Native peoples; Totally ignorant of the spiritual and historical meaning of the Black Hills (Paha Sapa) for the Lakota people; Dismisses Lakota tradition and history which holds that the Lakota lived in the Black Hills for centuries.

B. Lakota society was not patriarchal but rather matrilineal

§6. Calvin & Drury assert that the Lakota are not only patriarchal, but that “the “Sioux” men badly treated their woman who, according to the authors, were “closer to slaves than second-class citizens by modern standards of thinking” (p.65). But “Women controlled most of the tribe’s resources. When men married, they lived with the wife’s relatives. Women elders were highly respected and adult women had equal power in decision-making. The children belong to the mother’s clan. Today, in spite of the loss of language and culture and in spite of hundreds of years of anti-matrilineal propaganda, the Lakota women are still the backbone of the Lakota nation.” (7)

§7. “Women are missing-in-action in nearly all studies of Native America, whether historical, social or anthropological. I believe this is because westerners are still reacting to the panic that European patriarchs felt upon discovering Turtle Island chock-full of self-directed, articulate, and confident Native women, all demanding to be dealt with as equals. The initial Euro-male horror was frank and obvious in first-contact records and the recoil remains, skewing discussion.” (8)

§8. Birth of the women’s rights movement in the territory of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Peoples in 1848 by Elizabeth Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Lucretia Mott.

C. Out-of-Context Emphasis on Warfare

§9. Supports the idea that war is natural part of humanity: “by applauding the Indian’s warrior traits while also picturing them as dirty, blood-thirsty, women-dominating savages, they show that this part of human nature, i.e. being war-oriented, proves that it is a good thing modern civilization took over.” (9)

§10. The development of western civilization as sufficient justification for genocide: “We did it for civilization” (10)

§11. Atrocities of American soldiers as temporary insanities versus the Indian’s inherent procivility towards violence, recalls Charles Mill’s point from The Racial Contract: Non-Europeans as savages, who live in the ‘wild.’ The classical social contract defines human beings by negation: we are the nonsavages, the ones who made it out of the ‘state of nature.’

§12. Peace as the default condition of traditional societies: “Peaceable preindustrial (preliterate, primitive, etc.) societies constitute a nuisance to most theories of warfare and they are, with few exceptions, either denied or “explained away.”

“The Original Affluent Society” by Marshall Sahlins in Stone Age Economics

§13. “Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times…”

§14. “There are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be "easily satisfied" either by producing much or desiring little. The familiar conception, the Galbraithean way- based on the concept of market economies- states that man's wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although they can be improved. Thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that "urgent goods" become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, which states that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty - with a low standard of living. That, I think, describes the hunters. And it helps explain some of their more curious economic behaviour: their "prodigality" for example- the inclination to consume at once all stocks on hand, as if they had it made. Free from market obsessions of scarcity, hunters' economic propensities may be more consistently predicated on abundance than our own. Destutt de Tracy, "fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire" though he might have been, at least forced Marx to agree that "in poor nations the people are comfortable", whereas in rich nations, "they are generally poor”. 

Notes on Ladakh and the Ethics of Traditional Cultures

A. Thesis of Helena Norberg-Hodge’s study Ancient Futures

§1. The root of all key social and environmental problems: the global economy

climate change, loss of biodiversity and cultural diversity, shift from self-sufficient rural living to energy-intensive urbanism, communal belonging to consumerist image-making; monoculture commercialization of life promoting competition over cooperation, universalizable skills over local knowledge, individualism over community and consumerism over spirituality.

§2. Localism:  A strategy for resistance and renewal, a “solution multiplier” which “reduces our ecological footprint, increases biodiversity, provides fuller employment, strengthens democracy and rebuilds community.” (xxi); not total communal self-reliance but rather “shortening the distance between producers and consumers whenever possible, and striking a healthier balance between local markets and a monopoly-dominated global market.” (xxi)

B. Themes from the study of indigenous societies (Helena Norbert Hodge, Ecologist)

§3. Health – holistic (restoring balance) vs reductive (controlling symptoms)

Almost everyone is fit and trim; The old are active until the day they die (37); very low stress, toxin-free, optimal diet lifestyle (39); Holistic energy medicine treats disease as imbalance; mental health issues are non-existent (41)

No sense of pride (rooted in insecurity) in the Ladakhis, e.g. the example of the man ordered around by the kids in the truck (84-85); the mindfulness of the Ladakhis (86). 

§4. Justice – restorative & DIY (focus on relationships) vs retributive, job of the state, focused on damages to individuals

Cultural focus on peace and non-violence, not expressing anger; “no fighting in the village in living memory” (46); the phenomenon of the “spontaneous intermediary” (47-48); Human scale villages (less than 100 houses), everyone knows everyone and is dedicated to “living together” (51)

§5. Social structures – egalitarian & heterarchical (matricentric) vs stratified & hierarchical (patriarchal)

Minimal disparities in wealth, 95% of population in the middle class; destroyed by monetary economy (103); Democratic/consensus politics for collective decision-making, the representative for each village council (goba) appointed by rotation. (49)

Flexible marriage relationships to fit into land constraints (from monogamy to polyandry to polygyny) (55)

No word in Ladakhi for romantic love. 

Child- rearing: unlimited and unconditional affection (66) but it does not lead to children being spoiled, just the opposite; kids with great responsibilities (66)

Parity of gender: women have lots of power (68); flexible gender roles in work and parenting

§6. Trade/Economy – gift-based, focused on group cohesion (principle of socialism) vs money-based, focused on individual consumption (capitalism)

Self-sufficient farms owned by individual families, a steady-state local economy designed to fit within the ecological limits to population growth. 

Agriculture as resilient, nature-based, self-sufficient vs “efficient”, hydrocarbon-based, and specialized for export

Private property (incl. land, houses, tools and animals) and labor which are shared. (53). But ownership in usufruct (stewardship) (58)

§7. The word "community" is derived from the Old French communité which is derived from the Latin communitas (com, "with/together" + munus, "gift"), a broad term for fellowship or organized society. 

“Community is woven from gifts. Unlike today's market system, whose built-in scarcity compels competition in which more for me is less for you, in a gift economy the opposite holds. Because people in gift culture pass on their surplus rather than accumulating it, your good fortune is my good fortune: more for you is more for me. Wealth circulates, gravitating toward the greatest need. In a gift community, people know that their gifts will eventually come back to them, albeit often in a new form. Such a community might be called a "circle of the gift.””  

Money creates separateness, can be hoarded and controlled, is quantified, promotes individualism and independence and selfish behavior. Gifting creates relationship, promotes cycling, is democratic, promotes community cohesion and self-full (vs. self-ish behavior (i.e. a more expansive experience of self.  

§8.  Worldview – spiritual with a basis in shared identity vs materialistic with a basis in separate identity

Buddhism woven into the fabric of life - the philosophy of interdependency versus individualism (75); reverence for nature, praying to the spirits of water and earth before sowing seeds. (19) Thanking animals for their lives (31)

Time: not commodified but based on natural cycles (35)

Nature as a living, conscious, sacred and intelligent being (Pachamana) vs. a non-living, non-intelligent mechanism which can be understood objectively.

(C) Native Ethics & Principles (Clare Brant, Mohawk Philosopher)

§10. The Ethic of Non-Interference • That is the principle that one Indian will never tell another Indian what to do. It is considered rude behaviour to give instructions or orders to another Native person. That’s quite different from the white society. Two white men at a cocktail party – say they’re standing there side by side – and if one of them announces he wishes to buy a pear tree another white man will immediately suggest that he buy a peach tree instead. In the white society the one who can out-advise the other is one up, and the loser is expected to take his defeat with good grace. Now in the Indian society, this is not permitted. Advising or instructing, or ordering or persuading, is always considered bad form or behaviour.

§11. The Anger Must Not Be Shown Principle • This also is a very widespead and very widely practised behaviour. It seems to have had its origin again in the Aboriginal society, in which there were shamans and witches about all over the place. And one dared not show one’s temper because these shamans and witches could cast a spell on you, put the bothers on you if you insulted or offended them, or showed them your temper.

§12. The Indian Concept of Time • Time is, to an Indian, something which must be used and enjoyed. One does not move onto something else until one has finished what one is doing. It seems to have had its origin – again I have to say “seems to” because we don’t have precise information – in that activities of Indians used to be regulated by the seasons, by the sun, and by the migratory patterns of birds and animals; a changing food supply, absence of electricity and hydro power, so they had to be dependent upon the seasons and nature to supply them with food, with light and all kinds of things. And having learned to live in harmony with nature and relevance to these things, the concept of “doing things when the time is right” came into play – which is still in play today. 

§13. Principle that Everything Is Shared • All the assets and resources of a community or of a family, or of the extended family, are shared and one is supposed to take no more than what one needs from the environment, than one needs to survive. To take more to waste is bad. To take more than one’s fair share or more than what one actually needs to survive is considered greedy and wasteful. This is one of the greatest of all the Native ethics and it’s universal. It could have had its origin in the need to show hospitality to wandering hunters even though there was not much food in the village. The hunters from another group, another family, or another clan, must be fed in order that they would take food back to their own people. That may have been the origin of it. But the principle is survival of the whole group over individual prosperity and individuality. This is the principle of Marxism, the principle of all socialism, and alleged to be the principle of Christianity as well. The Native people do not use it as a political ideology or as a religion; it is acted out as the way Native people live. The ethic of sharing has its corollaries, which are equality and democracy.

5. The Attitude to Gratitude • Gratitude among Native people is very rarely shown; it’s very rarely verbalized. One is not rewarded for being a good teacher, doctor, farmer, fisherman, hunter, because that is what you are supposed to be. If you are trained to be a nurse you should be a good one. To be less than perfect would be a bad thing for you to be. You would not be developing the best part. So that if you do a good job, that’s fine, you are not going to be thanked for it. To be thanked for it would be superfluous because doing a good job has its own intrinsic reward. Gratitude eventually is shown at the end of a long life. If one keeps one’s nose clean and does a good job, and one is perceived and regarded as a wise and venerable person, this is the greatest reward of all. 

7. Now the Teaching; Shaping Vs. Modeling • This is a more technical kind of thing. The white people use this method of teaching their children – it’s called ‘shaping’. Whereas the Indians use ‘modelling’. Shaping is B.F. Skinner’s ‘Operant Conditioning”, if you want to look into that one. Say a white person is teaching a white kid how to dress – he uses the shaping method, one way being “rewarding successive approximations” of the behaviour he wants. When we asked Josh, a reknowned hunter, how his father taught him to hunt. He said, “He didn’t teach me.” Well, that’s ridiculous, everybody has to be taught everything. The people and father in the hunting modelled hunting behaviour, and then suddenly, “Okay, you’re ready to do it, and you can do it forever.”

9. The Dependence-Independence Ethic • It might seem that because the Indian people live on welfare that they are very dependent people. This is again the furthest thing from the truth. Native people are the most independent minded people I’ve ever seen. One is expected to look after oneself, take one’s own council and not be told what to do by other people; make up your own mind about everything, listen to advice but not follow it very precisely, incorporate it into what you know is right, and go on from there.