The final goal ... is to grasp the native's point of view, _x000D_ his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world.
Interpretation
Understanding a different culture involves seeing the world through its people's eyes and appreciating their perspective.
This quote by Bronislaw Malinowski emphasizes the importance of empathy and cultural relativism in anthropology. It suggests that to truly understand another culture, one must adopt their viewpoint, comprehend their relationship with life, and recognize how they interpret their world, which can lead to greater insight and respect for diversity.
In practice
In a discussion about cultural anthropology, this quote highlights the need for cultural understanding.
Coastal sailing as long as it is perfectly safe and easy commands no magic. Overseas expeditions are invariably bound up with ceremonies and ritual. Man resorts to magic only where chance and circumstances are not fully controlled by knowledge.
Magic enables man to carry out with confidence his important tasks, to maintain his poise and his mental integrity in fits of anger, in the throes of hate, of unrequited love, of despair and anxiety. The function of magic is to ritualize man's optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear. Magic expresses the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism.
The anthropologist must relinquish his comfortable position in the long chair on the veranda of the missionary compound, Government station, or planter's bungalow, where, armed with pencil and notebook and at times with a whisky and soda, he has been accustomed to collect statements from informants.... He must go out into the villages, and see the natives at work in gardens, on the beach, in the jungle; he must sail with them to distant sandbanks and to foreign tribes.
There are no peoples however primitive without religion and magic. Nor are there, it must be added at one, any savage races lacking in either the scientific attitude, or in science, though this lack has been frequently attributed to them.
We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.
We know of no spectacle more ridiculous—or more contemptible—than that of the religious reactionaries who dare to re-write the history of our republic. Or who try to do so. Is it possible that, in their vanity and stupidity, they suppose that they can erase the name of Thomas Jefferson and replace it with the name of some faith-based mediocrity whose name is already obscure? If so, we cheerfully resolve to mock them, and to give them the lie in their teeth.
Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.
The goal of life is not the earning of money, but the service of God.p.114
If we must accept fate we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character.
The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive ... the values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well balanced as well as carefully patroled.
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