| Lévi-Strauss passed away... a month shy of his 101st b'day | 7 comments |
 3 Nov 2009 @ 22:04, by Max SandorA great man has passed away last Saturday, a man who was able to see through the facades of today's societies and perceive the truths and structures within 'indigineous' social structures, blazing the path for what emerges now in Brazil as the potential of 'Ponto Zero', a new encounter of 'indigineous' people with the 'Western' people, trying to find a symbiosis between a technologized world and the fullfillness of living in harmony with nature. He set himself the best memorial for himself in his masterpiece "Tristes Tropiques". impossible, it seems, to add another laudatio. Born in 1908 in France, he went to Brazil as a professor in 1935 and found the dedication of his lifetime, studying indigneous cultures in remote areas of the Mato Grosso and the Amazon rainforest. Lévi-Strauss used tribal customs and myths to show that human behaviour is based on logical systems which may vary from society to society, but possesses a common substructure, argueing that linguistics, communications and mathematical logic can be tapped to reveal fundamental social systems. At first his approach may seem akin to Joseph Campbell's vision of 'the power of myth' but upon closer inspection, Lévi-Strauss arrives in a completely different way to a vey similar result, fortifying both Campbell's and his own work. During his last years, sadly enough, he became so disenchanted with our current civilization that he refused to talk in public, a circumstance one must respect even though it's a shame... he would have many, many things to say, things that few dare to even think about, and he would have found at least some open ears. Mankind has to say good-bye to one of his best ever... |