Multiple Ultimates

By: Andrew Sakach

Assigned Readings: 5

The one handout that was given to us about whether Apache sacredness was attributed to the land through the people, an argument by Sartre, or, as the author posits, is gained from the land from an innate sacredness was very interesting.

Sartre's argument is that of social construction of reality, while I believe that this theory is true for the most part it seems that there are very large forces that influence it and are believed to be 'human universals' such as contemplation of the meaning of life, death, birth, food, etc. While these things all people undergo or perceive it seems that if these 'truths' are inherent then why can't other truths be inherent from outside of ourselves in the greater reality?

The author takes the side of the Native American worldview that believes their myths are given to them as the truth and take them as such. After taking many anthropology courses I'm inclined to believe that there is no one 'ultimate truth' when going down to a societal level, even while recognizing that speaking of ultimate truth is a very... interesting subject to say the least. What I mean is that peoples conceptions of the world are not to be judged as right or wrong, they should be taken as truth when dealing with the culture and anything short of that would be comparing apples and oranges.