• for: enthnography - Jarawa, African-Asian tribe, Alexandre Dereims, human origins - Jawara, anthropology - Jarawa, Andaman archipelago

• summary

  • An extraordinary film by filmmaker Alexandre Dereims about the isolated Jawara people, believed to be one of the first peoples to migrate out of Africa and who landed in an island off the coast of India. Their way of life has not changed for tens of thousands of years but unfortunately, is being quickly eroded by the influences of modernity.
  • This film documents the life of this ancient tribe, who until recently lived in complete isolation from modernity. Dereims illegally entered the territory to film the Jawara tribe and give them a voice in the context of the Indian governments continual exploitation of the tribe for tourism and their agenda to confiscate their land for modern development.
  • The film is a realtime record of how rapidly colonialism and the transformation of takes place. We hear the voices of the Jawara as they speak of the incremental exploitation and corruption of the modern world on their people. When we see this, we realize how little has changed since the 14th century when global colonialism began.
  • Instead of preserving the Jawara to have a living reminder of our ancient past and the wonder of human evolution, we myopically exploit them. What a sad commentary on humanity.

• new trailmark: deeper reflections

  • this trailmark is used to capture deeper reflections not captured in the initial annotation
  • this often occurs for me there next day after a night's sleep.
  • I believe it happens because the intuitive gut feeling that initially attracted me to the story is not so easily accessible. It could be complex, entangled and difficult to articulate and/or subconscious

• deeper reflections

  • our own process of cultural construction
    • the living Jawara are so valuable ethnographically and anthropologically because they are living, breathing examples of how culture constructs us -
  • adjacency between - Jawara people - Ronald Wright's computer analogy for modern humans
    • Cumulative Cultural Evolution (CCE)
      • Deep Humanity
    • adjacency statement
      • The comparison between the cultural differences between the Jawara people and we modernly enculturated humans is striking. Perhaps not as striking as feral children but still striking. It shows us how easily we ourselves could have such a different experience of life and Worldview if we were born into the Jawara tribe today.
      • As Ronald Wright noted, there is likely no difference between the human mental capacity of our 50,000 year old ancestors and ourselves
      • The significance of their existence is living proof of CCE, a profound Deep Humanity teaching about how we humans construct the meaningverse and symbolosphere so critical to intertwingled individual and collective experience of reality
      • The Jawara and other isolated ingenious progress should be treated with the greatest respect and esteem for being the living examples of our cultural evolution that teaches us the deepest lessons of what we are as humans and how culture profoundly shapes us
      • At a minimum, all the tourists the the Indian government have allowed to visit them, as well as the tourist operators should have mandatory Deep Humanity training before being allowed any contact with them in order to preserve their dignity
      • striping away all the amenities of modern life, we can see how happy they Jawara people are with so little
      • this is a lesson on recognising the wonder of simply being alive, an invaluable Deep. Humanity lesson

I learned that science and cooking is always connected. Even if we don't think about it in every day life like when water evaporates or freezes it is chemistry. But what I found most interesting that I learned is how water immobilization works, or to put it more simply the science behind Jell-O. When you add gelatin to water it traps the water molecules in place which creates the sort of liquid and solid hybrid we find with Jell-O.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Maxims and Reflections. Penguin Classics. Penguin Books, 1998.

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https://cagrimmett.com/life/2022/12/27/40-questions-for-2022/

We can also say that any human being is a also a possible reflection of our own intrinsic human nature that each of us posesses..

Each of the currently 7.8 billion people on the planet are a combination of nature and nurture. 7.8 billion different genetic expressions of the human genome and 7.8 billion different and unique environmental conditions operating on that unique expression create 7.8 billion unique forks of the human template. One fork results in a Saint, another in a ruthless warlord. Both are reflections of what is possible when unique environments interact with our basic human nature.

Prosser, A. M. B. (2020, November 10). The Pandemic and my PhD: Lessons from a Policy Research Placement with the Reset Initiative. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/jg67m

My annotations here are a record of how I'm going through this student's reflection on open education experiences while playing "open education experience bingo".

My bingo card for this learning experience record is published on my blog.

Etymology of signification: early 14c., "symbolization, representation," from Old French significacion and directly from Latin significationem (nominative significatio) "a signifying, indication, expression, sign, token, meaning, emphasis," noun of action from past participle stem of significare "make known, indicate" (see signify). From late 14c. as "meaning" (of a word, etc.).

I thought it would be interesting to look at the etymology of "signification" (as it is a main topic of this essay) because Gates has been discussing the diverging meanings of the word in different rhetorics. It is unsurprising that the etymology defined here comes from the "white rhetoric" tradition, as described by Gates. I suppose upon further search and inquiry I could possibly find the meaning of "signification" as defined within African American rhetoric, but it would require a lot of extra effort on my part. This lack of available definition demonstrates the "glossing over" of the African American culture in the United States and the general lack of knowledge and understanding on behalf of the majority of white Americans, and is a reminder of the ignorance that is very much alive in the US.

This reading has encouraged me to think a lot more on divergent cultural rhetorics and how awareness and acknowledgement of the validity of different rhetorics is crucial to any progress that is to be made in race relations in the US.