Tangent then.
To me (as always) it is the shaman who uses mysterious things in a
cryptic manner, and he continues to keep his victims (oops, clients...)
in ignorance about his methods. And nothing a shaman does ever 'jives'
with his, um, clients, because they don't have the foggiest notion about
what he is doing. _But they allow it_. The shaman _never_ imparts any
real knowledge of his processes, (I would say because they are false
processes to begin with), because he needs to keep everything out of
their reach.
The culture of the shaman allows his shamanism. (The shamanistic among
you will say the culture of the rational allows rationalism....) I again
claim that it is an economic niche only, and I totally realize the dire
rational stance this requires. Then again, I am (and the blame is mine)
overextending 'economics' here as well, and in defense of this, I can
only contend that to even attempt to analyze the 'magical' aspects of
shamanism (indeed of all supernatural belief entirely) is pointless. Not
that we won't keep trying.
Ultimately, I guess my mostly uneven point was to get shamanism somehow
analyzed for whatever we think a memetic purpose would be. And I was
attempting to get to some explanation for my mostly still-baking feeling
that there was limited mileage there, and that an economic analysis would
provide more depth.
And I can't for the life of me remember who started this....
*****************
Wade T. Smith
morbius@channel1.com | "There ain't nothin' you
wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god."
morbius@cyberwarped.com |
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