Peter Farb: Society

Peter Farb was American academic and writer. Explore interesting quotes on society.
Peter Farb: 184 quotes0 likes

“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

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

Peter Farb

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

“An isolated human in a simple society is usually a dead human…”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

“At various stages of evolution, the Indian cultures were presented with only a limited number of possibilities. The members of certain kinds of societies”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: At various stages of evolution, the Indian cultures were presented with only a limited number of possibilities. The members of certain kinds of societies—the small band, the large band, the tribe, the chiefdom, the state, and variations of these—tended to make characteristic choices concerning religion, law, government, and art... Such choices were not... consciously made... For a particular society, they either worked or they did not work.<!-- p. 212

“Hospitality and sharing were characteristic of all Indian societies.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: One of the things that amazed the earliest explorers, almost without exception, was the hospitality with which Indians received them. When the Indians later learned that the Whites posed a threat, their attitude changed, but the initial contacts were idyllic.... Hospitality and sharing were characteristic of all Indian societies.

“Invariably the prophet emerges from his hallucinatory vision bearing a message from the supernatural that makes certain promises: the return of the bison herds, a happy hunting ground, or peace on earth and good will to men. Whatever the specific promises, the prophet offers a new power, a revitalization of the whole society.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

“Why did transculturalization seem to operate only in one direction? Whites who had lived for a time with Indians almost never wanted to leave. But almost none of the "civilized" Indians who had been given the opportunity to savor White society chose to become a part of it. …Nor does this problem relate solely to the American Indian. Some of the first missionaries sent to the South Seas from London, in the eighteenth century, threw away their collars and married native women.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

“An incestuous marriage establishes no new bonds between unrelated groups; it is an absurd denial to the right to increase the number of people whom one can trust. Marriages in simple societies are… usually alliances between families rather than romantic arrangements between individuals.”

Peter Farb

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

“When today's remnants of Indian societies are examined closely, it is seen how well some have worked out a compromise with their White conquerors—acculturation without assimilation.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

“Why did not Indians enter White society, particularly in view of the numerous attempts by Whites to "civilize" them? The answer is that White settlers possessed no traditions and institutions comparable to the Indians' hospitality and sharing, adoption, and complete social integration. …Whites who educated Indians did so with the idea that the Indians would return to their own people as missionaries to spread the gospel, not that they might become functioning parts of White society.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

“The Hopewell fused elements of the Adena, the Archaic, and other Woodland patterns of life. Thus, it cannot technically be identified as a culture. …Rather, the Hopewell people were an amalgam of many societies whose customs varied greatly, but who were bound together by… a cult of the dead and a trade bond… a network of trade linked widely separated areas of the continent.”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

“Every Messianic movement known to history has arisen in a society that has been subjected to severe stress of contact with an alien culture—involving military defeat, epidemic, and acculturation”

Peter Farb

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)