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Two thoughts on this: 1) Fascinating story. I had no idea the Ainu existed. Their way of life seems very reminiscent of the Haida and other indigenous peoples
by leroy_masochist 9y ago
Two thoughts on this:
1) Fascinating story. I had no idea the Ainu existed. Their way of life seems very reminiscent of the Haida and other indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
2) I thought the author's description of the iyomante was precious and patronizing. TLDR: according to the article, the iyomante is the ritualized slaughter of an adult bear that has been taken from its mother as an infant and raised in confined captivity. It's not a quick death, according to the article:
> At the start of the ceremony, an elder offered a prayer first to the goddess of the fire and hearth, Fuchi. The elder led the men to the bear cage. They prayed. They released the bear to exercise and play, then shot him with two blunt arrows before strangling and beheading him, freeing the spirit. People feasted, they danced, they sang. They decorated the head and an old woman recited sagas of Ainu Mosir, the floating world that rested on the back of a fish.
I get that knowing how this ceremony was carried out is extremely important anthropologically, and there's something to admire in the extent to which the Ainu were connected to the ecosystem in which they lived. That said, I thought the article really went out of its way to romanticize the captivity and torture of a non-domesticated wild animal.
- cabaalis 9y agoIt even describes it as "powerfully seductive" which is not how I felt at all about the description. It's above my paygrade to judge another culture. But I felt sorry for the poor bear.
- jacobush 9y agoThat made me laugh and still feel sorry for the bear. Best put ever... "above my paygrade to judge another culture". :-) Very Star Trek.
- bitwize 9y agoStar Trek doesn't have paygrades because Star Trek doesn't have money. Try the U.S. military, the stereotype of the corrupt commissioned officer saying things like "Askin' questions like that is above your paygrade, son."
- monknomo 9y agoI think that is probably more literal than a person should be with a simile, metaphor or poetical comparison
- flukus 9y agoThe phrase was used in the last episode of The Orville, I think we should accept that into cannon and ignore everything JJ Abrams has done. Aside from that, Star Trek has Latinum bars and Credits as the plot dictates.
- jacobush 9y agoI never heard it from that perspective - only from below, as in "I'm not paid to worry about such things". (And/or implied not qualified, which is how I read my OP-ish.)
- ironic_ali 9y agoWrong place to get a Star trek reference wrong....
- dqpb 9y agoIt's above my paygrade to judge another culture. No it's not. Being attracted or repulsed by other people's behavior is one of the most fundamental aspects of being human. Of course, if you are doing or studying anthropology, you should be as objective as possible. But in the course of just being a person, it's good to be critical, because basically everyone is doing almost everything wrong, and it's good to point that out when you see it.
- rxhernandez 9y agoIt's one of the fundamental aspects of being a toddler. Then your parents teach you to stop gagging when eating foods you find repulsive and you realize there were other qualities to that food that you can appreciate. Then your parents make you do your homework despite you putting up a resistance and you at some point realize how beneficial that homework was. Then you somehow end up in college where hopefully, in the American system at least, they teach you about other cultures and how silly it is to judge other cultures for things you've only taken a cursory glance at. That is, any group can arbitrarily make up rules and belief systems that point in any arbitrary direction. Just because you happen to be apart of a larger group, doesn't mean yours are any better than anyone elses. A simple example can be summed up with the mutilation of genitals. At a first glance an uneducated person would probably say "no, that's completely wrong, I don't care what anyone says, there is something fundamentally crazy about mutilating your genitals." An educated person would have at least taken 10 minutes to hear out that, some people are born believing their sex is incorrect and to help them live a better life they sometimes modify their genitals to match the sex they believe themselves to be.
- z0r 9y agoIs your post satirical? It is easy to over apply abstract ideals if you let yourself. One person's objection to the mistreatment of animals isn't a toddler refusing broccoli, it's a reflection of cultural value. If you weren't blinded by cognitive dissonance you'd at least recognize that feeling of disgust is no better or worse than the mistreatment (or acceptable cultural ritual) of the bear and would abstain from judging the parent posters. Fortunately the kind of apathetic moral relativism you're espousing rings hollow for most.
- dogruck 9y agoReminds me of Hopi rituals involving the capture, raising, and sacrifice of eagles. Even though it's a long tradition that's important to their culture, the reaction is always close to "wait, what, oh no why??"
- irrational 9y ago"the floating world that rested on the back of a fish" I thought it was turtles all the way down. Is the fish on the back of the topmost turtle?
- kazinator 9y agoAll Japanese are "indigenous people" of Japan, just with different amounts of migrant Chinese DNA mixed in (in a nutshell). Both the non-Ainu "regular Japanese" and the modern Ainu have indigenous common ancestors.