Non-indigenous North Americans are always attributing wise sayings to Native Americans, or to ancient Chinese proverbs. Some are said to be from Chief Seattle, others supposedly come from “Ancient Indian Lore.” This afternoon, I came across a plaque on a hiking trail with the familiar saying, “Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I will understand.” It was followed by the phrase, “Native American Saying.” Interestingly, a quick search on the internet reveals that this saying is attributed varyingly to Native Americans and to ancient Chinese proverbs.
The people who attribute these things to Native Americans apparently don’t bother to research which tribe, if any, actually said it. it just seems like something wise people of the Earth would say.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick,”
– Ancient Native American saying
This sort of superficial glorification dehumanizes Native Americans and Chinese people just as negative stereotypes do. Not every mysterious sounding soundbite has its origins in ancient or indigenous culture. On the other hand, Native American and Chinese cultures are among the oldest on Earth, so it makes sense that there would be a lot of wisdom developed by these cultures and passed down through the ages.
This is in contrast to the United States of America, a country that invented itself not too long ago and is constantly reinventing itself. Although people brought bits of wisdom from outside cultures, much of it seems to have been thrown away in the race toward modernization. The country as a whole has an amazingly short attention span, and lessons learned are quickly forgotten or twisted to fit changing political and popular sentiment. So, while in 1979, the Vietnam War was widely considered to have been a disastrous tragedy borne of imperial arrogance, in 2003, the popular “wisdom” was that we just didn’t try hard enough to win. No wonder it was so easy for the government to get us into Iraq.
This sort of rewriting of lessons can happen much faster than the span of a generation. In 2008, the war in Iraq was Bush’s terrible, unnecessary war based on lies, and in 2010 the “surge” was successful and therefore retroactively justified the war.
The Unites States is a land of competing interests constantly working to reframe public perception of reality for political advantage. The most successful efforts to shape public opinion are those that consciously try to eliminate all negative feelings about our country and ourselves. Americans don’t want to feel guilty, so we teeter back and forth between believing that all is well because we live in the best of all possible situations, and all is not well because outside forces (some of which reside within our borders) are bringing us down.
Advertisers say that a potential customer needs to be exposed to their message seven times before they will buy a product. Now, the mass media has enabled pieces of propaganda to reach people hundreds, if not thousands of times in a week. Messages with political intent are repeated with such frequency that customers are buying them at an alarming rate. In such a climate, there’s no time for wisdom to form.
Maybe that’s why kitschy wisdom attributed to ancient peoples is so attractive. Perhaps we yearn for an understanding of our world that is permanent. Perhaps we want to wake up tomorrow with the same truth that was in place when we went to bed.
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Well said. I couldn’t agree more.
As someone who studies healing ceremony with indigenous / native peoples (Q’ero of Peru, various tribes of Native Americans, Mayans in Mexico…), I find they are being generically credited with all varieties of proverbs / wisdom / musings / inventions — which harbors even more misinformation about them than existed before! The Mayan calendar is a flaming hot example of bad translation / misinformation and people just making it up. The world isn’t ending — at least, it’s not likely to end on 12-21-2012, when the Mayan calendar flips.
We are a disconnected society. We are lonely. Mostly, we feel disheartened by a lack of real culture and personal spirituality (not religion). Of course, we”re looking to the ancients for wisdom — and a sense of the longevity and stability to which ancestry alludes. Who doesn’t crave connection these days? We need it, but please add a dash of poetry and/or profundity, because U.S. culture is short on stock.
In the midst of mass idiocy, I’d rather attribute misquotes to Lao Tzu than turn on the TV. And I do it all the time. Guilty!
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Absolutely fantastic post.
Also on the list of other things that drive me crazy? Art pieces that, for instance, depict all Indians as incredibly muscular, always half-naked, and wearing elaborate ceremonial bonnets and paint AT ALL TIMES. Just saw a massive statue in Park City the other day fitting this description… huge half-naked “Indian,” out on a “hunt,” engaged in a wrestling match with a mountain lion. I stared at it in abject horror for awhile.
What really gets me is that by failing to acknowledge the truth about this sort of history — like that that muscular Indian probably would’ve looked more half-starved and perpetually cold once the westward expansion had started and the cavalry had set to killing his buffalo and burning all of his hides — really does erase it in a way that even just failing to talk about Indians entirely couldn’t do. That kind of romanticizing and fictionalizing a culture — especially when it’s a LIVING CULTURE, we didn’t quite manage to kill them all — trivializes the actual culture and history in a horrible way.
But I guess as Abraham Lincoln once famously said, “Any quote can be attributed to anyone in these modern times, because if it is on the Internet it must be true.”
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You know, a writer named David Gross on LessWrong once said one of the key indicators about trying to evade shame is by the ashamed person in question taking pride in the shame to reassure himself that there is goodness, “deep down inside.” And non-indigenous Americans likely feel shame for the history, so why not solve it with complimenting the source to prove they are aware that these people are not “savages” as first thought, but instead sagacious?
Perhaps it’s a compliment of a subtle, backhanded type to the culture, implying depth based in the expected is what defines them. Especially if it is dressed in figurative language that would seem to reflect their values.
It’s something how certain non-indigenous Americans want to be associated with wisdom that they forget to apply. Who benefits from the reputation that one soundbite brings? Who’s publicizing groundbreaking ceremonies to found that very trail?
All well worded.
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