Beyond Survival with Les Stroud - The Devil Dancers Of Sri Lanka (Part 2/5)

[McNistor]

This ancient traditions bore me to tears. I'd like to ask Les - or anybody else for that matter - why is it a bad thing for these old tribal civilizations to disappear? We humans, as a specie, need to look up to stars and leave the past behind. These old ways of life will disappear one way or another, nothing lasts forever.

[evilmick66]

@McNistor Traditional practices contain valuable information that connects us with our history and national/ethnic/human identity. It is a good thing to move forward, but we must never forget where we came from and how a long way we came. Events from the past teaches us how to act in the present.

We're pretty much spoiled rotten by our modern priviledges. If all our technology were to all of a sudden stop working, which culture or lifestyle do you think would fare better?

[McNistor]

@evilmick66 I don't say lets forget about them. My point is why should we strive to keep them. Let them become history and then learn about them, not practice them.

[evilmick66]

@McNistor Learning isn't always good enough. It's better to actually experience it. not just through reinactments, but from the real thing. Facts always get distorted or forgotten.

It's especially necessary in the hypothetical event I mentioned about a failure in our modern technology. We'd have to look to the "primitives" for guidance. My fear is that we'll become so out of hand with our advancements that individual humans will no longer be adaptable to primal living when it's needed.

[LAnKAnBoY91]

and thank you very much for uploading this (=

[LAnKAnBoY91]

(4) other than that, i feel that this is the way a foreigner would interpret the process of the devil dance and the rest of the details which he tells the audience about the dance are mostly true. im glad as a sri lankan that this ritual was documented, (no one has done so before) and described by a westerners point of veiw as best as possible but i say again, none of these traditions are in decline at the moment before or after the tsunami.

[LAnKAnBoY91]

(3) as for devil dancing, it did indeed originate from the south both thats not where it sticks to. any place on the island where there is a predominant sinhala buddhist population there will always be a devil dance or "thovila" as we call it. its not dying out either. and neither have there been any human sacrifices involved in this ritual (its supposed to cure a person from an illness whether mental or physical, not kill someone else in the process)

[LAnKAnBoY91]

wat viral fire is saying is that the way les stroud describes sri lankan devil dancing and stick fishing isnt exactly true. in the case of stick fishing,

its certainly not dying out, i myself have seen fishermen from ages of 16 to 50 waiting perched just a few yards out the coasts all around sri lanka. we do this because its alot cheaper and less risky than obtaining a boat, net and crew just to catch certain varieties of fish which can be caught without going too far off into sea

[LAnKAnBoY91]

and just like they say homegrown vegetables are better than the ones u buy from a supermarket, sri lankans tend to beleive that large fish caught by a stick fisher has a better quality than one which was caught along with others in a net, of course this claim is almost close to a superstition but because many sri lankans beleive it stick fishing does not decline along the generations, at least not anytime soon. it is considered an important part of sri lankan culture thats not meant to die out

[Metroid23456]

NO STROUD, YOU ARE THE DEMONS.

[stroudmears]

@viralfire interesting. Can you give some examples?

[Northall2319]

@viralfire you smell like curry