Oct 2, 2015 06:00 PM
http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/fantasy-a...y-auid-579
EXCERPT: [...] 1981, while I was living among the Pirahãs, near the mouth of the Maici River, in the center of the Amazonian rain forest [...] Some twenty Pirahã men, women, and children, their numbers growing by the second, were gesticulating and yelling, some crying in fear, at a spot on the bank across the river.
I asked what they were pointing at. A man looked at me incredulously, demanding "Don't you see it? It is a kaoáíbogi ('fastmouth' – a jungle entity separate from humans but like them in many ways). I looked again. And again. I asked again. The response was "The fast-mouth is there right now!"
In the thirty-five years that have ensued since that tropical morning, I have come to realise the power of culture to affect our perceptions. As we develop cognitively and physically in a particular context, our apperceptions – physical and mental experiences that affect our development – also develop. Our senses, memories, values, knowledge structures, and social roles are shaped both by those apperceptions and by our conversations with those around us – people for the most part who share most of these shaping experiences and development with us.
Fantasy and reality then become the labels we attach to our experiences. [...] For many westerners, these entities [...like those of the Pirahãs] are fictions [...] nice stories, but unreal. But for others, coming from different apperceptional histories and varied cultures [...] there is no reason not to attribute reality to glimpses, interpretations, hallucinations, dreams, and so on. [...] For example, Pirahã classify their environment along the following lines...
EXCERPT: [...] 1981, while I was living among the Pirahãs, near the mouth of the Maici River, in the center of the Amazonian rain forest [...] Some twenty Pirahã men, women, and children, their numbers growing by the second, were gesticulating and yelling, some crying in fear, at a spot on the bank across the river.
I asked what they were pointing at. A man looked at me incredulously, demanding "Don't you see it? It is a kaoáíbogi ('fastmouth' – a jungle entity separate from humans but like them in many ways). I looked again. And again. I asked again. The response was "The fast-mouth is there right now!"
In the thirty-five years that have ensued since that tropical morning, I have come to realise the power of culture to affect our perceptions. As we develop cognitively and physically in a particular context, our apperceptions – physical and mental experiences that affect our development – also develop. Our senses, memories, values, knowledge structures, and social roles are shaped both by those apperceptions and by our conversations with those around us – people for the most part who share most of these shaping experiences and development with us.
Fantasy and reality then become the labels we attach to our experiences. [...] For many westerners, these entities [...like those of the Pirahãs] are fictions [...] nice stories, but unreal. But for others, coming from different apperceptional histories and varied cultures [...] there is no reason not to attribute reality to glimpses, interpretations, hallucinations, dreams, and so on. [...] For example, Pirahã classify their environment along the following lines...