The video “A Poor Man Shames Us All”, from Millennium series, starts off by asking the viewer questions like , “Are the things you own more important than the person you are?” and “Why is it for so many of us, that things are more precious than people?”. The narrator's’, David Maybury-Lewis, main goal in this video was to seek tribal wisdom for the modern world. He talks about how in our modern societies; things have become more important than people, while in tribal societies; people and relationships are more important than things.
First, we visit the life of a city sanitation worker, Joe Rivera. He sees that many people buy things they don’t have a need for, just for show, and many times those things get disposed of without being used at all. Joe Rivera consideres himself wealthy because of his health, employment status, and having a family that he loves, and not in his material possessions. To him, his family is the most valuable thing in his life. Rivera tells us “There is something wrong when we don't …show more content…
One man, Lendi-Batu, a ritual speaker, sets out a task before himself to give his father a second burial. The tribal man says that even though he didn’t grow up with his father, he still owes this ritual to his father because he is the one who gave him his hands and feet. In their tribal culture this means to bury him under a stone. This ritual is not easy because the twenty-five ton stone has to be cut, lifted, and dragged by four- hundred men. The ritual speaker and his brothers will give all of their material possessions away to everyone who helps, and then they will be rich in people and their father will be proud. In this tribe, they have a practice of each generation leaving debts among each other so that the next generations will have debts to bind. Their society is based on an exchange of knowledge, labor, and
First, we visit the life of a city sanitation worker, Joe Rivera. He sees that many people buy things they don’t have a need for, just for show, and many times those things get disposed of without being used at all. Joe Rivera consideres himself wealthy because of his health, employment status, and having a family that he loves, and not in his material possessions. To him, his family is the most valuable thing in his life. Rivera tells us “There is something wrong when we don't …show more content…
One man, Lendi-Batu, a ritual speaker, sets out a task before himself to give his father a second burial. The tribal man says that even though he didn’t grow up with his father, he still owes this ritual to his father because he is the one who gave him his hands and feet. In their tribal culture this means to bury him under a stone. This ritual is not easy because the twenty-five ton stone has to be cut, lifted, and dragged by four- hundred men. The ritual speaker and his brothers will give all of their material possessions away to everyone who helps, and then they will be rich in people and their father will be proud. In this tribe, they have a practice of each generation leaving debts among each other so that the next generations will have debts to bind. Their society is based on an exchange of knowledge, labor, and