The main line of the story of "Snake Embrace" was led by the German anthropologist Matius at the beginning of the 20th century under the leadership of the Amazonian wizard to find Yakuna (the main ingredient of Ayahuasca) for treatment. 30 years later, Evans once again Looking for the two things constituted by the Yakuna, they followed the same wizard Karamakad, and they walked the same route, and they strung together the same period of history: indigenous civilizations invaded by whites (resource plundering, resource plundering, The process of destruction under colonial rule, mission, knowledge popularization).
I would like to discuss the suspicious points attributed to the collision of the two worldviews during this process: Who is closer to the universe?
Let's start with nothingness.
The Western civilization represented by Matius and Evans imported to the Amazon two contradictory concepts: on the one hand, reason and civilization represented by scientific knowledge (Matius’ compass), on the other hand, represented by Christianity. Faith in God and salvation (crazy missionary). These two concepts are strangely mixed, forming a strange system of Western civilization. If death is used to express nothingness, Westerners are closer to nothingness when it comes to understanding the universe: When the journey of Matius was about to break out in World War I, the journey of Evans was in full swing during World War II, behind these two people , Countless people are dying all over the world.
Reaching the universe through science? Science is shaping a huge war. Reaching the universe through religion? The missionaries are going crazy (Spanish priests abused orphans of rubber workers on the grounds of redemption. 40 years later, these orphans became superstitious followers of a Portuguese religious fanatic who claimed to be the son of Jesus). What does science bring to Amazon? Let the indigenous people become slaves in the rubber war, and let the Kovano people lose and forget their own traditions. What does religion bring to Amazon? Let the orphans of the Amazon become guilty pagans, let them become madmen who believe in Christ, and even eat human flesh.
Westerners understand the universe with physics and doctrine, which are plausible and credible concepts, but they point to death and nothingness.
The Amazon natives represented by the wizard Kalamakkad originally understood the universe through the Lord of the Ayahuasca. The Lord of the Ayahuasca is a nihilistic existence, created by the gods imagined by the indigenous people who drink the ayahuasca water with hallucinogenic effects. This nihilistic god is just a channel for the formation of a cosmological outlook. It is not important in itself. The important point is that the indigenous people trust the body and senses, that is, use "self" as a portal to approach the universe. To understand the universe with the law of nothingness and the real people, they have obtained a harmonious and harmonious living relationship with nature. They achieved the effective rules of survival by means of nothingness.
Karamarcade warned Matius not to have sex with a woman before Moonrise, and not to eat fish until he got permission. This is the mysterious rule of the indigenous people. The rules are actually not mysterious, they include survival experience and accurate perception of the unknown. But Matius finally lost his patience in the unknowable, breaking the precepts, its meaning is: a general narrowness of the civilized world, that is, not believing in the unknown-civilization makes human beings forget their own ignorance and the vastness of the universe.
This narrow conceit is really ridiculous. Therefore, Karamakad laughed more than once. His laugh came from the funny and ridiculous feelings of Matius's ideas, not from happiness.
By the river, Evans said: "I am a scientist, I only know the facts, I cannot be guided by my dreams."
Karamakad: "How many banks are there on this river?"
Evans: "Two. This one And another. One plus one equals two."
Karamakad: "How did you know?"
Evans: "Because this is a fact, one plus one equals two."
Karamakad: "You are wrong. This There are three, five, and thousands of banks in a river. Children understand... We learn from dreams, but they are all real. They are more real than you said."
Evans took out the map, Kalama Card tore down the map and threw it into the river, saying, "What do you see? The world is so huge, but you choose to look at this piece of paper. This world can talk, I know to listen and listen to the music of our ancestors. This is what you seek The Tao. To listen to the truth, you can’t just use your ears."
The Karamakads follow the Lord of the Ayahuasca, follow the dream, and they even solve a problem that physics cannot solve: the perception of time. In Karamarcade’s concept, time is not linear. Mattius and Evans’ matters are the same thing. Just as they walked on the same route, they can also use this identity to laugh out loud. Laklit. There is no contradiction in their universe, so they are closer to the universe.
During the trip, Karamakad repeatedly advised the two scientists to throw away their luggage. Matius did not throw away their luggage from start to finish, so even if he drank the wisteria water, there was no effect. Evans threw it away, and finally, after inhaling the last flower of Yakuna, he entered the illusion about the universe.
Is it an illusion or the truth? Karamakad eventually disappeared. Has he ever existed? Will entanglement in existence itself lead to more nothingness? Wait, all these questions have been enough for the civilized world in which we are happy and living in, thinking about it for a long time. And the natives of the Amazon have already had answers in the identity of time and in dreams.
PS: Another fact worthy of Karamakad’s laughter is that the prototype of Evans in the movie is Richard Evans Schultz, an American botanist who returned to Amazon during World War II and was employed by a rubber company. Finding a new way out for the supply of rubber in Southeast Asia, which was cut off by Japan due to the Pearl Harbor incident in the United States, and discovered as many as 3,500 rubber varieties. He was an important figure in the rubber plunder war.
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