#primitive

The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past. ↗

— Isaiah Berlin

#certainties #childhood #craving #desire #eternal

It was both fascinating and appalling to learn that chimpanzees were capable of hostile and territorial behavior that was not unlike certain forms of primitive human warfare. ↗

— Jane Goodall

#behavior #both #capable #certain #fascinating

I had been afraid of the primitive, had wanted it broken gently, but here it came on us in a breath, as we stumbled up through the dung and the cramped and stinking huts to our lampless sleeping place among the rats. It was the worst one need fear, and it was bearable because it was inescapable. ↗

— Graham Greene

#primitive #travel #experience

The Dalmatian breed of dog has many primitive characteristics. ↗

— Louis Leakey

#characteristics #dog #many #primitive

The Senate is the last primitive society in the world. We still worship the elders of the tribe and honor the territorial imperative. ↗

— Eugene McCarthy

#honor #imperative #last #primitive #senate

Men were primitive in the eyes of angel beings as men are primitive in the eyes of wilier races. ↗

— Toba Beta

#angel #primitive-men #wilier-races #men

By what criteria can one decide which of a person's countless beliefs are primitive? The essential factor is that they are taken for granted: a person's primitive beliefs represent the basic truths he holds about physical reality, social reality, and himself and his own nature. Like all beliefs, conscious or unconscious, they have a personal aspect: they are rooted in the individual's experience and in the evidence of his senses. Like all beliefs, they also have a social aspect: with regard to every belief a person forms, he also forms some notion of how many other people have the experience and the knowledge necessary to share it with him, and of how close the agreement is among this group. Unlike other beliefs, however, primitive beliefs are normally not open to discussion or controversy. Either they do not come up in conversation because everyone shares them and everyone takes them for granted, or, if they do come up, they are virtually unassailable by outside forces. The criterion of social support is totally rejected; it is as if the individual said: "Nobody else could possibly know or have experienced what I have." Or, to quote a popular refrain: "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen."  A person's primitive beliefs thus lie at the very core of his total system of beliefs, and they represent the subsystem in which he has the heaviest emotional commitment. ↗

— Milton Rokeach

#primitive #social-psychology #the-problem-of-identity #experience

Shows were very different then - even as the headliner we did a very short set by today's standards and sound systems were really primitive. But the girls made it all worthwhile! ↗

— Peter Asher

#different #even #made #primitive #really

Deep down, the US, with its space, its technological refinement, its bluff good conscience, even in those spaces which it opens up for simulation, is the only remaining primitive society. ↗

— Jean Baudrillard

#conscience #deep #deep down #down #even

It seems to me monstrous that anyone should believe that the jazz rhythm expresses America. Jazz rhythm expresses the primitive savage. ↗

— Isadora Duncan

#anyone #believe #expresses #jazz #me