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1c0b820
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If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite - the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singulary generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment - is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most im..
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diversity
culture
survival
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Wade Davis |
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f3a79fd
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Cultural survival is not about preservation, sequestering indigenous peoples in enclaves like some sort of zoological specimens. Change itself does note destroy a culture. All societies are constantly evolving. Indeed a culture survives when it has enough confidence in its past and enough say in its future to maintain its spirit and essence through all the changes it will inevitably undergo.
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future
past
misattributed
david-marbury-lewis
evolve
culture
survival
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Wade Davis |
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9ae31c1
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Risk discomfort and solitude for understanding.
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Wade Davis |
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cbe9f7b
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Culture is not trivial. It is not a decoration or artifice, the songs we sing or even the prayers we chant. It is a blanket of comfort that gives meaning to lives. It is a body of knowledge that allows the individual to make sense out of the infinite sensations of consciousness, to find meaning and order in a universe that ultimately has neither. Culture is a body of laws and traditions, a moral and ethical code that insulates a people from..
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culture
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Wade Davis |
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a9e4cac
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The world can only appear monochromatic to those who persist in interpreting what they experience through the lens of a single cultural paradigm, their own. For those with the eyes to see and the heart to feel, it remains a rich and complex topography of the spirit.
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Wade Davis |
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77d2b56
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In the West we cling to the past like limpets. In Haiti the present is the axis of all life. As in Africa, past and future are but distant measures of the present, and memories are as meaningless as promises.
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present
memories
past
west
promises
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Wade Davis |
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cc82af0
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Only, in Haiti, I realized, is it possible to drink rum and haggle with a god.
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haggle
rum
haiti
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Wade Davis |
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92160c8
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Sensitivity to nature is not an innate attribute of indigenous peoples. It is a consequence of adaptive choices that have resulted in the development of highly specialized peripheral skills. but those choices in turn spring from a comprehensive view of nature and the universe in which man and woman are perceived as but elements inextricably linked to the whole.
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Wade Davis |
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71ac2be
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The full measure of a culture embraces both the actions of a people and the quality of their aspirations, the nature of the metaphors that propel their lives. And no description of a people can be complete without reference to the character of their homeland, the ecological and geographical matrix in which they have determined to live out their destiny. Just as a landscape defines character, culture springs from a spirit of place.
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culture
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Wade Davis |
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66e716e
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I want to lose all harshness of jagged nerves, to be above all gentle. I feel we have achieved victory for that almost more than anything-to be able to cultivate gentleness. George Malory to his wife Ruth at the end of the Great War
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Wade Davis |
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8bf85d7
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In my humble opinion," (Ghandi) told the court, "non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good." --
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Wade Davis |
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e065eff
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during his four-day vision quest, the Indian built a sweat lodge of willow and hides, fasted, cleansed himself with sage and cedar, and endured the heat of the fire until his spirit was released to soar over a field of snakes. His ordeal ended when a vision of his mother appeared and told him to go back home because he had forgotten his pipe.
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Wade Davis |
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e442049
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Let him who thinks war is a glorious, golden thing, who loves to roll forth stirring words of exhortation, invoking honour and praise and valour and love of country ... Let him but look at a little pile of sodden grey rags that cover half a skull and a shin-bone and what might have been its ribs, or at this skeleton lying on its side, resting half crouching as it fell, perfect that it is headless, and with the tattered clothing still draped..
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war
wisdom
reflection
introspection
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Wade Davis |
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8b47cbf
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A simple intuition, a single observation, can open vistas of unimagined potential. Once caught in the web of an idea, the researcher is happily doomed, for the outcome is always uncertain, and the resolution of the mystery may take years to unfold. Such was the case in my encounter with the magic toads of the Americas.
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research
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Wade Davis |
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67924d9
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There is no doubt that we are a very cruel people,' Winston Churchill wrote home from the front. 'Severity always,' went the British motto, 'justice when possible.
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winston-churchill
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Wade Davis |
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9e4f708
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Social mores, he argued, rules of protocol, concepts of rectitude and honor had no objective basis. They were only reflections of public and private fears.
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reflection
human-nature
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Wade Davis |
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17b2c2d
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They brought their whole intellectual energy to bear on their relationships; they wanted to know not only that they loved people but how and why they loved them, to understand the mechanism of their likings, the springs that prompted thought and emotion; to come to terms with themselves and with one another; to know where they were going and why.
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relationships
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Wade Davis |
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1d87042
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She had a hundred precocious ideas, and some were good and true, but they could never be hers until she found them alone, for ideas are but words unless they are sown in experience.
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inspiration
ideas
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Wade Davis |
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4cb3135
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Death's power lies in fear, which flourishes in the imagination and the unknown.
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Wade Davis |
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e6f85f4
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What is even more astonishing is that the entire science of wayfinding is based on dead reckoning. You only know where you are by knowing precisely where you have been and how you got to where you are.
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travel
history
science
culture
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Wade Davis |
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a986d57
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It was more than love at first sight. For Mallory it was as if a dam had burst and the impounded emotions of a young lifetime had found immediate release.
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relationships
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Wade Davis |
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66730f5
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Every effort should be made, he argued, to understand the perspective of the other, to learn the way they perceive the world, and if at all possible, the very nature of their thoughts. This demanded, by definition, a willingness to step back from the constraints of one's own prejudices and preconceptions. This
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Wade Davis |
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1d7b644
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Schultes was a naive photographer. For him a beautiful image was one of something beautiful.
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Wade Davis |
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a1d05cb
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Marsh had travelled on foot to the source of the Nile and once stood down a charging rhinoceros by intrepidly opening a pink umbrella in its face.
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Wade Davis |
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881b950
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For the people of the village every activity was an affirmation of continuity. At dawn the first of the family to go outside formally greeted the sun.
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Wade Davis |
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fc7b035
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a young Harvard student, traveled west to Oklahoma to live among the Kiowa and participate in the solemn rites of the peyote cult. In one photograph the land appears as a blur of dust, the sky fading to gray, the air darkened by soil worked loose by the wind, the farmhouses
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Wade Davis |