Entry Two

Chapter 1

“But those are the feelings of outsiders, of those who do not belong to the forest. If you are of the forest it is a very different place. What seems to other people to be eternal and depressing gloom becomes a cool, restful, shady world with light filtering in… through the tree tops hat meet high overhead and shut out the direct sunlight—the sunlight that dries up the non-forest world of the outsiders and makes it hot and dusty and dirty.”

“The world of the forest is a closed, possessive world, hostile to all who do not understand it.” Villagers live on plantations clearings “cut from forest” with the forest all around them. Their life is the planation, the food comes from it. The forest for them is a place of evil. “They are outsiders..

Pygmies “know the secret language that is denied all outsiders and without which life in the forest is an impossibility.”

“The BaMbuti roam the forest at will, in small isolated bands or hunting groups. They have no fear, because for them there is no danger. For them there is little hardship, so they have no need for belief in evil spirits. For them it is a good world.”

The quotes above relate to the influence of biology, experience and culture on the brain’s interpretation of meaning and context. Because the BaMbuti reside in the forest, they have biologically adapted to living in it and using it to get their resources. Therefore they have created a context in which the forest as good, because it needs to be good in order for them to survive there…

There is a time when the Pygmies take the author (Mr. Colin) and make him “of the forest.” They do this by cutting slits in his forehead and filling them with ash made from plants (plants being a part of the forest). This event reflects the cognition and the values of the pygmies: the forest is highly valued, the conception that they are “of the forest”, and the expression of marking this conception on their bodies as a symbol.

Brief Paragraph:

From this chapter we see the need for an insider’s view of the culture, and the value of first-hand observations for accurate analysis. An outsider to the forest would not be able have a full understanding of the world of the Pygmies and therefore would not be able to make a legitimate analysis of their culture. That is why the Particularist’s emphasis on gathering data and personal observations of cultures in their own cultural context would lead to the most accurate analysis and therefore would be the theoretical framework I would use to analyze this culture.