Culture & Perception

David · 22nd August 2018, 04:55 PM

Ariel, if you have not read "Visible and Invisible Realms: Power, Magic, and Colonial Conquest in Bali" by Margret Wiener i would highly recommend you give it a go. One thing that becomes really clear throughout is that the Dutch colonists inability to understand the Balinese culture and modalities of thought was indeed disastrous. Though much has changed in our information age and you may wish to believe that in the 21st century the ways in which this culture processes information has been overcome by our own Western methods i believe you may find you are mistaken.

David · 22nd August 2018, 11:50 PM

And just to bring all things back to the keris, which is, i believe we can all agree, the context for what we discuss here, the point Alan is making about understanding the keris, and by extension the system of tangguh, is not only dependent upon understanding the Javanese culture and mindset, but also understanding it as it existed many centuries ago. While it is not doubt true that the world view of many Javanese has been affected and perhaps changed by the dominance of a more Western world view, the keris developed in pre-colonial Jawa and while the tangguh system certainly came along a bit later it was still at a time long before European influences had the chance to Westernize people in the area. I still believe that the general world view of the Javanese people is strongly influenced by the culture of their past at least as much as by the influx of Western thoughts and ideas in the 20th and 21st centuries.

22nd August 2018, 04:55 PM	#1
David Keris forum moderator Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Nova Scotia Posts: 7,250	Ariel, if you have not read "Visible and Invisible Realms: Power, Magic, and Colonial Conquest in Bali" by Margret Wiener i would highly recommend you give it a go. One thing that becomes really clear throughout is that the Dutch colonists inability to understand the Balinese culture and modalities of thought was indeed disastrous. Though much has changed in our information age and you may wish to believe that in the 21st century the ways in which this culture processes information has been overcome by our own Western methods i believe you may find you are mistaken.

22nd August 2018, 11:50 PM	#2
David Keris forum moderator Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Nova Scotia Posts: 7,250	And just to bring all things back to the keris, which is, i believe we can all agree, the context for what we discuss here, the point Alan is making about understanding the keris, and by extension the system of tangguh, is not only dependent upon understanding the Javanese culture and mindset, but also understanding it as it existed many centuries ago. While it is not doubt true that the world view of many Javanese has been affected and perhaps changed by the dominance of a more Western world view, the keris developed in pre-colonial Jawa and while the tangguh system certainly came along a bit later it was still at a time long before European influences had the chance to Westernize people in the area. I still believe that the general world view of the Javanese people is strongly influenced by the culture of their past at least as much as by the influx of Western thoughts and ideas in the 20th and 21st centuries.