I have just spent three days in the central Australian desert around Ayers' rock. This rock, the biggest in the world, is the center of the Anangu culture. The culture itself is a collection of stories that encompasses the entire knowledge of its people. It is therefore deadly important that those stories, transmitted by word of mouth, are not distorted. As a result, all these stories have features of the rock for basis. The medium is the message.
The sun setting on Uluru
And the moon rising
The disappointing part is that the Aborigene only accept to tell us about a simplified version of their stories. My own culture being conversely about the full disclosure and sharing of knowledge, I find this most frustrating. On the plus side, I am free to fill in the blanks. As I had 5 hours to kill on the way back to Alice Springs, my mind oblidged.
I discovered by accident that in the aboriginal tradition, people are expected to go on a walkabout - that is, wander in the wild for a few months. This is a rite of passage. It has also been a famous source for culture clash: Settlers would see their aborigene employees disappear and come back 6 months later. As no more information is provided, I was free to draw a parallel with my own story.
The Aborigenes don't want people to climb the rock. They point out, correctly, that the ascent is very dangerous. Also, their culture forces them to hurt themselves every time they feel sorry. So far there has been 36 deaths and many more wounded. One can understand their reluctance. We can not trust if this is the real reason. Yet, respecting those people's creed is good enough for me and so I didn't climb.
Some people did. In my opinion, they should be allowed to. If, in order to be a real man, you feel you need to be an asshole with an absolute disregard for other people's point of view, if you need to risk your life needlessly for climbing a mere 300m and peering over a dry wasteland, by all means go and give natural selection a chance!
It's part of the process.
My own story includes goofing in front of sacred
sites with people I barely know at 5am.
The Aborigenes don't want people to climb the rock. They point out, correctly, that the ascent is very dangerous. Also, their culture forces them to hurt themselves every time they feel sorry. So far there has been 36 deaths and many more wounded. One can understand their reluctance. We can not trust if this is the real reason. Yet, respecting those people's creed is good enough for me and so I didn't climb.
Some people did. In my opinion, they should be allowed to. If, in order to be a real man, you feel you need to be an asshole with an absolute disregard for other people's point of view, if you need to risk your life needlessly for climbing a mere 300m and peering over a dry wasteland, by all means go and give natural selection a chance!
It's part of the process.
""My own story includes goofing [...] with people I barely know at 5am."
ReplyDeleteHow different is this from Berlin !