[Xmca-l] Re: Heartening news in Kerala

Sun May 17 11:56:00 PDT 2020

Hi Annalisa. I seems then to come down to a belief in - a matter of faith where Druids are  concerned; which I think makes me  agnostic? Or perhaps, better, that nothing follows from their existence or otherwise, it is all just a matter of belief. You are quite welcome to the Wittgenstein quotes, I though you would appreciate them, -so here is another 'if Frazer's explanations did not in the final analysis appeal to a tendency in ourselves, then they would not really be explanations'

Salut

David.
________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
Sent: 17 May 2020 17:35
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heartening news in Kerala

Hi David,

It's not about a wish. Do you wish that Ancient Egyptians existed? You are the one who seems to object to the idea of Druids existing or not. You picked them out of all the other ancient cultures that I mentioned. So the problem seems to be in you, not me. It was your objection.

And your quotes of W, seem to also support what I've said. So thanks for that.

Though I would add that to know an oak tree is to love an oak tree, as a community of life was surely non-trivial in those times. I hope that to be true even today. 🙂

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of WEBSTER, DAVID S. <d.s.webster@durham.ac.uk>
Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2020 3:19 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heartening news in Kerala

  [EXTERNAL]

Perhaps the problem I am having is I can't see why you wish to have Druids exist. Or rather what function or significance  their existence has for you. I'm missing something here, though I am certainly not saying Druids or something like them could not exist. After all, we have today out own mystics, and poets and purveyors of incantations, and sacrifice-based religions - and the Druids were implicated on this count as well.

 Apropos Wittgenstein on Frazer 'It was not a trivial reason, for in reality there can be no reason, that prompted certain races of mankind to venerate the oak tree, but only the fact that they and the oak were united in a community of life, and that they arose together not by chance but rather like the flea and the dog (If fleas developed a right, it would be based on the dog).' And ' but what I see in those stories is nevertheless acquired by the evidence, including such evidence as does not appear to be directly connected with them, - through the thoughts of man and his past, through all the strange things I see, and have seen and heard about, in myself and others.'

Regards

David
________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
Sent: 16 May 2020 19:43
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heartening news in Kerala

Hi David, and venerable others,

Forgive me for my meager straws. All you are saying is that because something is not verifiable (with authority) it can't exist. Is that not so? That makes no sense to me.

We know that the Druids existed, and we know from observations of another culture (the Romans) that they were important to their people, they were considered the holders of wisdom, and that they were masters of language (poetry and storytelling). I'm not sure what it means to say any of this is impossible to assert just because we cannot decode this from archeological findings. Nothing can ever be precise even with the most data because then one could argue about interpretation of that data. It is the simplest thing to poke a stick in the spokes and doesn't require any interpretation.

True, Merlin and Arthur are legends (i.e. Le Mort d'Arthur) but these stories did not erupt spontaneously like a science fiction story in the 1960s. (Although one could argue that Star Trek is a fanciful futuristic rendering of human culture when the model of the United Nation was an aspiration, coming out of the two world wars.) Stories, legends, mythologies, and so on come from somewhere. They live on because they resonate within. The knowing or assertion of a precise genesis in some ways become moot, because such stories are beginningless. Then it becomes a matter of function. How do the stories work.

By coincidence (or synchronicity) I've just began reading the recent release of Hau's book "Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazier's Golden Bough." I wonder whether the topic of that book has a topical thread to offer here. I not yet read Philosophical Investigations to fully understand Wittgenstein's concept of language games, but W's Remarks certainly seem to fascinate anthropologists, since they are tasked to make sense of human culture, which includes ritual. I can't speak with any authority (actually I never try to speak with authority), as I've just cracked it, but one of the first discussions pertains to swapping one symbol for another symbol (symbolism) as opposed to explanation.

I wonder if this might be the crux of our own debate, in terms of style.

Meaning can be conveyed both ways. Perhaps it has to do with intuition vs rational, and which of these paths one wishes to travel, either by preference or habit.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of WEBSTER, DAVID S. <d.s.webster@durham.ac.uk>
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2020 2:06 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heartening news in Kerala

  [EXTERNAL]

Morning Annalisa, Sorry, but I think you are clutching at a very few straws in the wind when it comes to Druids, and even more so with Arthur and Merlin, whose canonical form originates with high medieval romance fiction, e.g. Geoffrey of Monmouth's (1095-1155) History of the Kings of Britton (1136) and which starts, no less, from the arrival of refugees from the sack of Troy. The problem with folk stories is they are just that, folk stories, and which folks are at issue. Britton (The Isles of the Mighty!), and from well before the Romans  was often settled from elsewhere in continental Europe (as witness by step-change in material culture). As for the autochthonic Brits circa the last, ice age (12-13000 yrs ago) and who, for obvious reasons, were also incomers, well, who knows.

Regards

David
________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
Sent: 15 May 2020 21:56
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heartening news in Kerala

Hi David,

Alas that Capital H-history were only based upon the conquest of the victors. Fortunately folk stories are carried down in a verbal tradition. (Another power of speech!) We do know something of the Druids, though I agree with you, not as much as we might like.

The same can be said about the Cathars. Few know of them either, even today.

Many cultures of the past have been decimated and from that we have inherited a distorted lens by which to examine them. Poor us!

We know of the Ancient Greeks, the Ancient Egyptians too, because of someone writing it all down and the parchment and stone lasting through the ages, in some cases not that well, for us to piece together bit by bit, translate and reflect. Only to argue theories of what once was.

The Vedic culture, interestingly, is one ancient culture that has remained intact, unlike the culture of the Ancient Greeks or Ancient Egyptians.  One reason that I find it so captivating because it provides me an unadulterated view of how the ancients (of that time and place) thought. By the way, that is not to say I'm promoting caste systems, or that that it is somehow a perfect social system. The number of Sanskrit texts available is staggering, and those scholars prepared to preserve them for posterity are steadfast in their duty to pass it down, as had been done before them.

There are interesting activity triangles in the way Karma is understood that I feel is comparable to Vygotsky's theories of development of higher psychological functions.

Karma is the Sanskrit word for "action" which most people might already know. The system of karma has a qualitative function that in a simplistic way entails the old saw, "what goes around comes around," but with more nuance lays out how an individual can choose to act in order to gain a particular outcome, that has a gross and subtle result as consequence, which could also be translated as "seen" and "unseen" consequences.

I suppose the Buddha, who came along later, elected to focus on mind and its different qualities, however for the most part Buddhist vocabulary or its conceptual library is a borrowing (or anti-borrowing) from Vedic culture.

It is difficult to not think of an elephant when one has brought it up in the first place.

I find another commonality with Vygotskian-generated theories (aka CHAT) vis á vis the Vedic and Buddhist worldviews is that each has a stance of liberation as the final achievement.

Who doesn't want to be free?

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of WEBSTER, DAVID S. <d.s.webster@durham.ac.uk>
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2020 2:34 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heartening news in Kerala

  [EXTERNAL]

Druid culture? Presume you mean mid-late 1st century AD Iron Age Britain. We know a lot about the houses they lived in, the kind of weapons, pottery and cloth and art an such like, they made, their agricultural practices and diet. As for Druids, well...only such self-serving  stories the Romans chose to relate. Next to nothing about their language though; lot of speculation of course.

Regards

David
________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
Sent: 15 May 2020 19:27
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heartening news in Kerala

Hola Henry,

No worries.

As far as "Shaktism", be wary of Angli-sliced words, and what they do to the underlying meanings.

Shakti is Sanskrit to mean "power" and just like in English the word can be used in many contexts, as is the same with shakti.

For example in Vedic culture, speech is considered to have shakti. And from what little we know of Driud culture, Druids were considered masters of language and could halt wars with a speech. Merlin is a prototype, who is sometimes reduced to a magician-wizard, but certainly casting spells is another way of describing power to speech in the west, but that is perhaps a method that disempowers because to cast a spell is considered superstitious and not a valid somehow.

And yet there is a peculiar phenomenon I see in our stable genius how he will repeat over and over the same fallacy and it has an impact I would not say is far removed from casting a spell. It is a kind of shakti that he wields to detrimental effect.

Shakti can also be translated into we call in the west a "gift," such as a prodigy five-year-old pianist. But shakti is that. I feel that shakti is tied more to the person where "gift" divides seems to divide the power from the person, as if the person (exercising the gift) had no cause in its generation. This of course leads to the entire disembodied genius mythology, right? which only separates even more, rather than to unify.

As I see it, there is in our western cultural-historical progression a habit to remove the subtle from the gross, where in Vedic culture they inhabit the same loci without conflict, in fact that are considered of the same substrate: a form that matter might take is on a continuum of degree (subtle to gross). Consider how H2O can travel from gas to liquid to solid.

Perhaps this need to divide the subtle from the gross in the west is a Cartesian residue. I believe that to be the case.

At the same time in Vedic culture, shakti is considered the feminine, perhaps because it is subtle. Not sure what it means to ascribe gender to the subtle vs gross, but at the least there is poetry in it.

Really my contribution to highlight the role model of Durga is also to suggest how little we do see of the female as warrior or even less as the protective mother. Once in a while we might reference a Grizzly bear and her cubs, but it's quite peripheral when it comes to the roles of women in American culture.

I truly admire the Prime Minister of New Zealand. She is certainly bursting of Durga shakti! 🙂

If only we could manage to cultivate that here on our own terra firma.

But strawberries will have to do for the time being!

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2020 12:26 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heartening news in Kerala

  [EXTERNAL]

Good Day Annalisa,
So sorry. Not the first time I have stumbled here. This one is hilarious and, of course, avoidable. I hope to do better with my next turn. Your link to the Times article is very interesting, related to David K’s list of men and women leaders in the face of COVID-19. I did look up Durga and Shaktism in Hinduism. Very interesting reflections on forms of power. Nourishing for the future has been planting strawberry plants in straw bales in our back yard.
Stay well,
Henry

On May 15, 2020, at 12:01 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu<mailto:annalisa@unm.edu>> wrote:

Hello Henry,

It was me that sent the link regarding Kerala.

And you did spell my name correctly. There is also an Annalie on the list (not moi).

I found also this link in the NYT about a similar topic:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/world/coronavirus-women-leaders.html__;!!Mih3wA!R9Gsjc9k9VeNsNM9OQ68bf58ZXyDLGKNgIbdLYRMlpV9GIHqBVFLq_6Yf4GHNf1FPDg_6g$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/world/coronavirus-women-leaders.html__;!!Mih3wA!RVgtw0w2ZOq3fsyG7Dt1MBsTOJUS_Qh1F4vKZSs-hTPaW9RthH6agfaPftMo_9ot3xGzQw$>

I will contemplate brown M&M's as well (read on into the next article below the above one).

One Indian goddess whom I've always admired is Durga, the protective-mother incarnation of Kali the consort of Shiva.

I feel as a world we could use the influence of Durga as a model to be our better selves, caring and protective is a preventative measure not a reactive one.

To nourish is to become strong.

What have you done to be nourishing today?

Kind regards,

Annalisa
________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com<mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>>
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2020 10:39 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heartening news in Kerala

  [EXTERNAL]
Hi AnnaLIE,
I apologize for getting your name wrong. There is someone who engages with the chat by the name of Annalie, and I thought it was she who had sent the link to the Guardian artilcle on Shailaja. Usually Annalisa writes very long posts, so I was pleasantly surprised by the brevity of the post. Ha!
Henry

On May 14, 2020, at 11:54 PM, Annalie Pistorius <annalie.pistorius@smu.ac.za<mailto:annalie.pistorius@smu.ac.za>> wrote:

Yes, it shows the strength of a community-based approach that is a hands-on everyone learns everything approach practical critical method. Yeah to Shailaja’s plan to upscale teacher training to health care of patients.
Annalie

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> On Behalf Of HENRY SHONERD
Sent: Friday, 15 May 2020 1:02 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Heartening news in Kerala

Wonderful article, Annalisa!
Definitely welcome good news about good leadership inthe face of COVID-19: K.K. Shailaja, health minister of the state of Kerala in India. A woman and a member of the Communist Party there. Already a celebrity because of the way she handled an even deadlier virus in 2018. From the article in the Guardian, “In a way she had been preparing for a similar outbreak all her life.” From what we have been reading for years from epidemiologists, COVID-19 is a dress rehearsal for even deadlier viruses. Kerala has the highest literacy rate, the highest life expectancy and the lowest infant mortality in India. Meanwhile, the Trump team is sending out surveys that allow people to get high scores on their hatred of socialism. Tooting my New Mexico horn, we have a woman governor that has shown great leadership in maintaining social distancing. However, our literacy is among the lowest in the country and push back from deniers and conspiracy theorists has been ugly. Infection rates have been disproportionately high among Native Americans, particularly Navajos and some Pueblos, though death rates of those infected are highest among whites.
Henry

On May 14, 2020, at 3:26 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu<mailto:annalisa@unm.edu>> wrote:

Hello fellow XMCArs,

I thought this might be some good news, given all the bad news:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/the-coronavirus-slayer-how-keralas-rock-star-health-minister-helped-save-it-from-covid-19__;!!Mih3wA!R9Gsjc9k9VeNsNM9OQ68bf58ZXyDLGKNgIbdLYRMlpV9GIHqBVFLq_6Yf4GHNf03QPk0KA$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/the-coronavirus-slayer-how-keralas-rock-star-health-minister-helped-save-it-from-covid-19__;!!Mih3wA!RAnIW6xakWlcpoAdSD60QoISzUuvaSLK2gt0Bz_1yF6CoLAllQJIymq_dnTmbsimDRDT9Q$>

Cheers,

Annalisa

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