Saturday, August 22, 2009

the dying shamans of japan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/asia/21japan.html?_r=1&ref=asia

I have always been fascinated by the Shaman figure and the power they have on their people. Intriguing how the shaman occurs through out the world in all cultures – native American, aboriginal Australian, south-east asian, Chinese, Japanese and of course – Indic. The shaman is a community’s link to universal spirituality. He is also the medium for remembering our ancestors and the associated piety.

Sad to see this tradition dying out in Japan – this is the cost of being in a highly semitized, connected, mono-cultural world.

Sudhir Kakkar has analysed the healing traditions of the Shamans in India. Today they are called ignorant and marginalised–replaced by half-baked psychotherapists who are just as ignorant themselves. Contrary of received wisdom psychoanalysis is not an exact science.

11 comments:

non-carborundum said...

Ghost Writer,

I appreciate your concern that semitic thinking is infecting the world. But the main objection to semitic thinking is that it is so completely at odds with rational thinking and modern science - semites views on evolution, life, origin of the universe etc. for instance.

Core Hindu principles are not at odds with modern science. But if we only promote superstition and strange and arcane rituals like Ojha healing, then we are no better than the semites.

AA said...

I do not think that Ghost Writer's point is to assert that one form of knowledge is superior to another one. Surely, witchcraft, shamanism, etc have their downside. But so does modern science. Rather the need is to recognize alternative forms of knowledge or "truths", if you may. And, of course, this is the core principle of Sanatan Dharm.

Sameer said...

Wishing all a Happy Ganesh Chaturthi...

Ghost Writer said...

@ Non Carborundum

the problem lies in the premise of your question specially the "promote superstition" bit.
I would suggest you read Kakkar's book to see how the ojha/shaman is actually a psychologist, but in a culturally sensitive sense. - i.e. these practices are grounded in giving mentally disturbed patients a form of therapy that is base don thei culture. what seems ignorant witchcraft is actually a system of healing developed over eons.

non-carborundum said...

Ghost Writer

Then whatever in that that has a scientific basis should be incorporated into psychotherapy etc, just as some aspects of Ayurveda are acknowledged in allopathy also. If that is what you're saying then I agree.

But we do tend to get unnecessarily jingoistic about our traditional systems sometimes. For example, I know of more than one case of persons trying to manage diabetes through yoga, ayurveda etc instead of taking the proper medication, with disastrous consequences. I think we cannot replace allopathy, modern psychotherapy etc with traditional systems. We can adopt some of the features of these systems as supplements as long as there is no conflict.

nizhal yoddha said...

i think allopathy is failing -- look at the ill-health epidemic in america. the holistic perspective *is* important, and it is probably much better to control diabetes through a combination of stress reduction, exercise, diet and behavior modification rather than to pot some pills, for instance.

the pills typically have serious side-effects which the cartesian westerners cannot foresee, because they are reductionist and end up treating symptoms.

perhaps a integrative mechanism is good wherein you use allopathy where it is useful: eg. with acute illness (like infections), ayurveda in its metier, ie. chronic illnesses, and homeo in its domain, ie. children's diseases. this is what my extended family has used (one of my cousins has an ayurvedic hospital, my sister is an allopathic doctor, etc.) and it may be a good idea.

Julian said...

Diabetes has no cure, not type 1 or type 2, for the former you need insulin shots & pills for the latter usually but you can add some herbal cures to help manage it better along with regular exercise, fenugreek is a well known ingredient that reduces your blood glucose levels.

Shahryar said...

Marcia Angell has been a stern critic of U.S. health care in general and the pharmaceutical industry in particular. She is scathing on the topic of how clinical trials are conducted in America:

Many drugs that are assumed to be effective are probably little better than placebos, but there is no way to know because negative results are hidden.... Because favorable results were published and unfavorable results buried ... the public and the medical profession believed these drugs were potent.... Clinical trials are also biased through designs for research that are chosen to yield favorable results for sponsors. For example, the sponsor's drug may be compared with another drug administered at a dose so low that the sponsor's drug looks more powerful. Or a drug that is likely to be used by older people will be tested in young people, so that side effects are less likely to emerge. A common form of bias stems from the standard practice of comparing a new drug with a placebo, when the relevant question is how it compares with an existing drug. In short, it is often possible to make clinical trials come out pretty much any way you want, which is why it's so important that investigators be truly disinterested in the outcome of their work.... It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Angell, Marcia (2009), "Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption", New York Review of Books, Vol 56, No 1; 15 January 2009

non-carborundum said...

Shahryar - the problem then is corruption and not the discipline itself. BTW, are all Ayurvedic and Homeopathic formulations required to be tested in double-blind trials? I ask sincerely; I don't know.

Harish - diabetes has no cure yet, but stem cell therapy might give us a cure. Also, both types of diabetes can be managed very well with medication. Of course, exercise and diet control do help. Some natural remedies do exist as well, for instance oats or isabgol might serve to delay the release of sugar in the blood. But none of this will make too much of a difference if blood glucose levels breach say, 400.

Rajeev - if allopathy is failing then that is that. There is no other equally good option. The holistic perspective is no doubt important, prevention is better than cure, diet and exercise are crucial etc. Drugs without effects also have no side-effects. You mentioned "homeo"- I presume Homeopathy. Homeopathy is bunkum. Ambrose Bierce rightly called homeopaths the humorists of the medical profession. The basic premise of homeopathy is that if you take the cause of the disease in extreme diluted form, then it acts as a cure. Homeopathic drug manufacturers dilute the "active ingredient" to such a degree that there is not likely to be a single molecule left!

witan said...

Recommended reading for "advocates of homoeopathy":
http://www.homeoint.org/cazalet/holmes/index.htm “Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions”; By Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes
This essay was presented as two lectures to the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in 1842. The author achieved prominence as a physician, poet, and humorist. His son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., became a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/homeo.html Homeopathy: The Ultimate Fake | Stephen Barrett, M.D.

http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/full/20/11/1755 (The FASEB Journal. 2006;20:1755-1758.)
© 2006 FASEB “Homeopathy: Holmes, Hogwarts, and the Prince of Wales”
Gerald Weissmann, Editor-in-Chief
Do you think I don’t understand the hydrostatic paradox of controversy? If you had a bent tube, one arm of which was the size of a pipe-stem and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Thus discussion equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, and the fools know it. O. W. Holmes. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1)

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/10/homeopathy_deconstructed_in_the_faseb_jo.php
“Homeopathy deconstructed in the FASEB Journal”
Posted on: October 19, 2006 8:31 AM, by Orac
“Do you think I don’t understand the hydrostatic paradox of controversy? If you had a bent tube, one arm of which was the size of a pipe-stem and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Thus discussion equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, and the fools know it.”--- This analogy applies to so many things, not just homeopathy. Heck, Deepak Chopra is living proof of the truth of this statement. So are “intelligent design” creationists. (I’m going to have to remember this quote and use it in the future—liberally.) But advocates of homeopathy prove it perhaps better than any other purveyors of woo, as FASEB Editor-in-Chief Gerald Weissmann understands.

nizhal yoddha said...

it's unfair to beat up on homeo. the reason is the placebo effect. 80% of healing is self-induced, which is why i am skeptical of allopathy's powerful drugs. if a person believes they have taken a medicine that will cure them, they often do get better, especially in the case of children. this is why the sugar pills of homeo are generally a good idea for kids, whether or not the 'magic ingredient' exists.