A Quote by Daniel Everett

One of the saddest things I've seen in Amazonian cultures is people who were self-sufficient and happy that now think of themselves as poor and become dissatisfied with their lives. What worries me is outsiders trying to impose their values and materialism on the Piraha.
I was lucky enough to have had great success early on in life; to have had all the things the material world can offer. And yet, I realized that what I had actually neglected was the more spiritual side of myself, which has always been there. But it's easy for us in our culture to become consumed in a sense by materialism. Now materialism is fine. We live in a material world. I'm not saying that beautiful things don't enhance our lives. But, in our culture, we're never happy.
Do not become self-sufficient . Self-sufficienc y is Satan’s net where he catches men, like poor silly fish, and destroys them. Be not self-sufficient . The way to grow strong in Christ is to become weak in yourself. God pours no power into man’s heart till man’s power is all poured out. Live, then, daily, a life of dependence on the grace of God.
I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears.
Because of the dynamics on the picket line all my life, I had these expectations of people. It was all the things that I had learned about outsiders from the time I was tiny, that they were evil, that if they were being nice to me they were trying to seduce me away from the truth.
Before, Indian people had been so defeated, they were always looking for outsiders, for the government, to somehow come in and fix things. But now, they seem to realize that they're the only ones who can save themselves.
I was brought up by a Victorian Grandmother. We were taught to work jolly hard. We were taught to prove yourself; we were taught self reliance; we were taught to live within our income. You were taught that cleanliness is next to Godliness. You were taught self respect. You were taught always to give a hand to your neighbour. You were taught tremendous pride in your country. All of these things are Victorian values. They are also perennial values. You don't hear so much about these things these days, but they were good values and they led to tremendous improvements in the standard of living.
People who read books in public places are regarded with suspicion because they appear self-sufficient. When you seem self-sufficient, other people think that you think you're better than them, and they get resentful.
Even the most self-confident people, at one point of their lives, felt like outsiders or felt like they weren't being heard or seen or witnessed in some way.
Materialism blinds us to our spiritual poverty. Jesus rebuked the Laodicean Christians because although they were materially wealthy, they were desperately poor in the things of God . Puritan Richard Baxter said, "When men prosper in the world, their minds are lifted up with their estates, and they can hardly believe that they are so ill, while they feel themselves so well."
The closed circle of materialism is clear to us now - aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit.
There are advances in technology and enabling voices, but there are issues with the stories themselves. I think people of color are still not seen as human beings. They're still associated with types, with comedy, but we're in a crisis right now, with things like Black Lives Matter. We need films that address these issues.
Our actual lives, including our values, our social relations, our self-conceptions, and many of our concepts, are pervasively shaped both by the knowledge and by the fact that we will someday die - that we are subject to extreme temporal scarcity. There is no reason to think that, if we were immortal, the same things would continue to matter to us. We have little or no idea what, if anything, would matter to immortal beings, or even how such beings would think of themselves.
The vast majority of the students I have taught have become self-sufficient and confident individuals who enjoy their lives.
We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies. We make mental provisions for the days to come, and everything turns out differently, quite differently. Sufficient unto the day. The things that have to be done must be done, and for the rest we must not allow ourselves to become infested with thousands of petty fears and worries.
It will be a great accomplishment if I become the best player in the world. But if my children can grow up with great core values and become great people and do good things and are happy, then, man, that would bring me great joy.
Being Christian towards poor people means trying to improve their lives and give them back some self-respect.
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