Peter Farb: Quotes about the trip

“The members of a society do not make conscious choices in arriving at a particular way of life. Rather, they make unconscious adaptations.... they know only that a particular choice works, even though it may appear bizarre to an outsider.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968), p. 13

Life , Way

“The more simple the society, the more leisured its way of life.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968), p. 29

Life , Way

“By the seventeenth century, observers had reached the firm conclusion that American Indians were in no way inferior to Whites, and many writers took special pains to salute the Noble Red Man.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: By the seventeenth century, observers had reached the firm conclusion that American Indians were in no way inferior to Whites, and many writers took special pains to salute the Noble Red Man. The Jesuit missionary Bressani... reported that the inhabitants "are hardly barbarous, save in name.... marvelous faculty for remembering places, and for describing them to one another."... can recall things that a White "could not rehearse without writing." Another Jesuit enthusiastically corroborates... "nearly all show more intelligence in their business, speeches, courtesies, intercourse, tricks and subtleties, than do the shrewdest citizens and merchants in France."

Pain , Way

“Hopi culture… instead thinks… The span of time the growing takes is not the important thing, but rather the way in which the event of growth follows the event of planting. The Hopi is concerned that the sequence of events in the construction of a building be in the correct order, not that it takes a certain amount of time to complete the job.”

Peter Farb

Word Play (1974)
Context: Whorf asked... Do the Hopi and European cultures... conceptualize reality in different ways? And his answer was that they do. Whereas European cultures are organized in terms of space and time, the Hopi culture, Whorf believed, emphasizes events. To speakers of European languages, time is a commodity that occurs between fixed points and can be measured. Time is said to be wasted or saved... their economic systems emphasize wages paid for the amount of time worked, rent for the time a dwelling is occupied, interest for the time money is loaned. Hopi culture... instead thinks... The span of time the growing takes is not the important thing, but rather the way in which the event of growth follows the event of planting. The Hopi is concerned that the sequence of events in the construction of a building be in the correct order, not that it takes a certain amount of time to complete the job.

Way , Thinking , Time

“For a tribe to endure, it must find some way to achieve internal unity—and that way usually is external strife.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: For a tribe to endure, it must find some way to achieve internal unity—and that way usually is external strife. The tribe exists at all times in a state of mobilization for war against its neighbors. The slightest incident, or often merely a desire to increase prestige, is enough to set off a skirmish, and in such circumstances hatred against external enemies must be unremitting.<!-- p. 97

Way

“We are in the habit of thinking in terms of great leaders largely because the leaders themselves want it that way.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: We are in the habit of thinking in terms of great leaders largely because the leaders themselves want it that way. The pharaohs ordered that a record of their accomplishments be carved on stone; medieval nobles subsidized troubadours to sing their praises; today's world leaders have large staffs of public-relations consultants. No culture can be explained in terms of one or more leaders...<!-- p. 93

Way , Thinking

“An unusual manifestation of it is when the whole dominant culture takes up the ways of the conquered.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: Voluntary assimilation, known as Indianization in the Americas, is one response that has occurred at other places and in other times when two cultures collided. An unusual manifestation of it is when the whole dominant culture takes up the ways of the conquered. That does not happen very often, but it did occur when the Hyksos conquered Egypt about 1700 B. C. and when the Romans conquered the Greeks in the second century B. C.

Way

“All routinized religions today (including the Native American Church, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) are successful descendents of what originated as messianic movements—that is, the vision of a new way of life for a culture under extreme stress.”

Peter Farb

p, 125
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Life , Religion , Way , Success

“If you read Peter Farb's book, Man's Rise of Civilization, he goes through all these different cultures at first contact, and they very often figure out in very different ways, but typically the things that were in common among them, were that the idea of the accumulation of private property beyond your needs was considered a mental illness.”

Peter Farb

Thom Hartmann, in the documentary film "I Am" written, directed, and narrated by Tom Shadyac
Disputed

Books , Way , Idea , Reading

“To say that the invention "was in the air" or "the times were ripe for it" are just other ways of stating that the inventors did not do the inventing, but that the cultures did.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)