New Agers

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Regarding the New Agers and Native Americans. Just a side point.
Consider how it feels to be an anthropologist and have
anthropology represented to other people by the likes of J.
Phillipe Rushton or Roger Pearson (Mr. Pioneer Fund) as in his
book "Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academia." It's a little
disconcerting to me. Nothing particularly that you can do about
it except explain that anthropology is not the bastion of racism.

Or consider the mutated version of what used to be anthropology's
core concept of culture in Thomas Sowell's "Race and Culture."

You cannot control what other people do with a little knowledge
and their own intentions. There is no 'rightness" or "wrongness"
about it, just makes for interesting social stuff.

As far as New Agers go, there will always be Rich People with
more money than good sense, especially Rich Americans struggling
with the endemic American Pioneer-Frontier fantasy (e.g. Theodore
Roosevelt) who think they can buy/posess/acquire everything
including something as ephemeral as wisdom. Just because Rich
People say they have possessed the wisdom of the ancients they
way they possess antique cars and Louie the Umpteenth chairs does
not make it so. It is just a bunch of Rich People looking for
some "static universal" that explains/justifies/perpetuates their
special status. And besides, they bought up all the current
governments so where do you go? Buy up the past.

Vance Geiger
geiger@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu

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