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The soul animates us
regardless of whether you think it is in here
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or you see it out there the soul is a perspective
the soul is a perspective that animates us
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in this beautiful city here manaus in this
beautiful university you have these mighty
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rivers huge rivers coming down from all directions
and they have dissolved the shadows of the
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whole rainforest you could look in and you
can see reflections because it is the nature
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of the soul to reflect on things because of
his perspective and the tons and tons of water
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moving at great speed coming to my house going
down down into you see huge the biggest river
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on earth it has sea creatures living in the
dolphins and it's like a river that is an
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ocean this river called ocean it is dissolved
the perspectives of all the trees of the jaguars
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with the tapir it has dissolved the perspective
of the giant's law even if it is not there
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that he's dissolved all of the perspectives
of the many people that live there with their
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all their diversity of insight and all that
perspective all that soul that flows down
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to my house
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[Music]
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um
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[Music]
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[Music]
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at some point in your life you and i made
a decision you made a decision to have a vocation
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or a profession rather than just to live as
an ordinary person or working person
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that decision was made to have something meaningful
to do in your life so that your life would
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have meaning in the city you know i i do not
look to the river and to the people of the
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river i'm trapped in the city look to look
into the other side you know yes yes you are
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trapped in your own routines what is going
on here in the house what is going on here
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in the university where people are putting
together modern technology modern scientific
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research modern knowledge and modern life
ways with the traditional ones
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i'm
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bringing a gift for my friend i'm bringing
a gift from my brother that i've been shaming
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my sponsor an economy is nothing unless it
has life and it there must be something that
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vitalizes the money that brings the money
to life
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uh a person in the same way or a culture or
a university or a nation needs to be vitalized
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i am not talking about investment i am talking
about invention but i'm not talking about
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investment here i have to talk about invention
because i wrote the intervention culture but
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that's that's okay um i'm talking about something
that we do not often think about when we think
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about the health of the nation or the life
of a region such as amazonia we do not often
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think about the question what gives life to
it what animates it and gives it soul
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[Music]
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[Music]
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[Music]
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uh [Music]
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but there is always an edge in a nation or
a country uh where it grows that is the growing
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edge for your country and for my country uh
in the 19th century that edge was the frontier
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that was the place where all these people
you don't like the cowboys and the gauchos
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all these kind of people they went out into
the wild part of the country and uh pursued
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their they mine sometimes gold they they extracted
resources they extracted food they would live
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lives of adventure and who would think that
that adventure was the meaning but that's
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how it turned out in the literature you see
these were the edge of the country that gave
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it growth and life and vitality they brought
it to life bad stuff yeah doxycycline doesn't
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help
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and they would fill me with all kinds of antibiotics
and you know the stuff would go away for a
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while then i go back to the bushes and come
back
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again
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you have something like that in brazil now
so what i'm asking is what else can we do
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now there's no longer a frontier but now this
frontier is internal well that's what you
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are doing here turning this edge of growth
into their own plurality their own diversity
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of life ways and people and this is the word
that we are so grateful for eduardo rivera's
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perspective perspective he called our our
science anthropology i call it the invention
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of culture he calls it perspectivism i think
his way is better that's why i'm in brazil
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i think this is that brazil has certainly
done a great thing for world anthropology
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by introducing this concept to us
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what you are doing here with this program
and bringing the modern uh and the technological
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the modern brazil together with its cultural
diversity not from the past but from the present
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its cultural diversity as it exists is vitalizing
the spirit of the whole nation are the resources
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the people are the resources the people are
always the resources the people are the resources
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and their perspectives are the resources
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what is the human self i am an anthropologist
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so perhaps i would say the human soul is a
perspective a soul is a perspective isn't
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it
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people talk about losing soul and when you
lose your soul you are disoriented you don't
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know where to go you don't know how to get
back home uh you've lost something but you
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don't know what you have lost losing your
soul is like when you take a walk in the woods
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or you take a walk in the city and you can't
find your way back because you don't know
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where you are losing your soul is losing your
perspective on where you are and on who you
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are we can assume maybe as a hypothesis that
the soul the human soul that which vitalized
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is a perspective this is a very interesting
thing to think about because we can use that
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same word for culture even the earliest anthropologists
they wondered what this means when people
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shamans people like that tell them that your
shadow is your soul it's the same thing as
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the soul the shadow is the same thing as the
soul when i see my shadow on the ground and
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uh that your name is the same as the soul
or if you see your reflection in the mirror
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that that is the same as your soul
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it can be the soul of a whole people or a
whole culture or what of a city uh like manaus
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uh these people out here that have lived in
this rainforest for so many thousands of years
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of giving their soul or it can be the soul
of the individual shaman that travels around
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you know to help people to change perspectives
this is another thing belongs with thinking
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about shamanism
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the theory of shamanism that it is not just
simply the
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perspective it is the change of perspective
that
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the shaman is an expert at it
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is [Music]
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[Music]
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dance [Music]
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[Music]
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is [Music] he invents a new perspective that
he gives people a perspective in which they
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can enter [Music]
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[Music]
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[Applause]
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like
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[Music]
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[Music]
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so
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[Music]
00:17:46
um [Music]
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wow [Music]
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now
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[Music] know [Music]
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[Music] uh
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[Music]
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[Music]
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[Applause]
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foreign
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okay [Music] [Applause]
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[Music]
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bye
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so [Music] [Applause] [Music] that
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perspective on perspective that way of talking
about it what you see automatically makes
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perspective more important than culture you
think this is why i welcome the insights of
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professor castro and riveros de castro because
he restored to us this notion of perspective
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i've used it today as a synonym for soul for
the human soul and for the human culture and
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also for human technology it is all of those
things together and so with confidence now
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thanks to brazil thanks to your anthropology
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foreign
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good morning
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foreign
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cool
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presence
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is
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foreign
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foreign [Music]
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[Music]
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[Music]
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[Music]
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video
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foreign [Music]
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[Music]
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today [Applause]
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okay
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[Music]
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i
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[Music]
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foreign
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foreign
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[Music]
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[Music]
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m
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[Music]
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foreign [Music] [Applause]
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[Music]
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huh
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is
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be
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um
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okay
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foreign
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is
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[Music]
00:20:38
[Music]
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is
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[Applause]
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i spoke yesterday to ehime and we exchanged
perspectives he showed me then and now you
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show me in your place in your sacred place
the perspective of these people here a few
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people here i told him
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of the perspective of another people that
i thought was like this from australia the
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aboriginal people of australia but unfortunately
i didn't bring any with me i didn't bring
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any australians with me to show you in the
way that you showed me how rich these perspectives
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are so i am bringing you as a gift to thank
you on behalf of all of us of a disc a cd
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disc with uh the recorded dreamings dances
and songs at the same time of australian aborigines
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so that if you have access to something to
play this on
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you can learn them these are danced and sung
these are
00:25:01
the perspectives of 11 animals that are make
up the dreaming time the original time of
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the australian aborigines so i shall give
this to your professor to whom i spoke yesterday
00:26:28
at such length about these people and about
his own people
00:27:35
the thought and the culture of the indigenous
people is symbolic it has real meaning and
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the meaning is often mysterious and often
beyond us to comprehend we can't understand
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it it
is too powerful and you see like many of the
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shamans like many of the meanings here in
amazonia these are incredible world views
00:29:00
they're beyond the average person they require
a lot of concentration and you have to ask
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yourself what is meaning what are we asking
about
00:29:45
what what kinds of things are
00:30:03
these people doing i think it's very important
that
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we
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as anthropologists pay attention to
00:33:21
this part of our heritage it's a very profound
heritage and it belongs to
00:35:02
all
00:35:14
of us every civilization originated with shamanism
it's the original form it's the one religion
00:38:08
that exists in
all
00:41:13
parts of the world [Music] so [Music] bye
[Music]