ritual evolutionism

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Phrases & ideas snipped from one of Mr. Snower's messages that may evoke
responses:

<snip Adrienne's msg>
> The present day survivals of the taboo phenomenon are....the refuge of
those who cannot cope with their contemporary culture--a moribund
regression into the past, rather than a creative response to the present.
Not so, the original tatoos.

<elisions mine>
<snip>

>these are the vestigial remnants of a vital past. True, these remnants
reveal themselves frequently in the sub-culture; but it is misleading to use
the term 'origins.'...

<more snips>

> I was trying to say Western culture is more, not less, sophisticated, than
some others in this regard, and as a result the tatoo data are more
condensed and less
ceremonial than in those cultures where the data are closer in form to that
long ago era when tatoo was, far from sub-culture, the most sophisticated,
avant-garde, thing going.

<etc.>

>how do those avant-garde days survive, even to this day, if only as a
bankrupt refuge?


Umm. Oh. Ah...is flabbergasted a strong word?

Regards from a Western sophisticate,

HJMartin

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