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[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

It's in our nature to be influenced and redirected. That is not our inherent nature, and if you believe that it is, you open yourself up to more of the same. Does it work for you?

[–]Comatoast 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I won't disagree with you. We're very easily led and manipulated to conform to group standards. However, it is in our nature to protect ourselves from potential threats. How a threat is seen can be linked with how a culture is set up to deal with outsiders, but a tribe that ignores the necessity of territory protection wouldn't likely have lasted very long as a tribe in the first place due to other tribes with their own ideals for what they want for their people. Think about starvation, and what may have been done in times of strife. If an outside tribe has food, but refuses to trade for it out of lack of enough of their own resources, there could potentially be a violent situation that arises. We're above animals within the sphere of complex thought, but that just gives more context to what drives us.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm an expert on these matters, and until we've got a time machine and a reliable way to observe those various tribes of the Americas we can only rely on the information that is already available.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is a much more mature way of viewing the history than what Chipit and others are doing. You are right, we can only look at the sources and attempt to discern truth. None of us were there, but that doesn't mean we should immediately believe the BS the missionaries and priests wrote about them.