Post #14616 by bigbrotiki on Sat, Nov 23, 2002 9:49 AM

Bong, you are on the right track there, man. To me Tiki is a form of ancestor worship. In this culture, in this day and age, we have very little respect and concern left for our elders. To native cultures in Polynesia the ancestors were godlike, and there must have been some ancient wisdom in that that we are now lacking.
Through the big generation gap of the 60s and 70s, (which killed Tiki style when it was just at it's peak), and the Me-generation of the 80s, we have severed the bond, but with reappreciating and understanding and LIKING what our fathers and grandfathers were into, and finding it in ourselves, we move a little closer again.

When beginning my resaerch in the early 90s, many of the oldtimers I encountered were grumpy and downright suspicious to my interest, having been abandoned and laughed at by their own children. Nowadays there seems to be a softening of that.

When we learn to understand and appreciate our fathers, so will we understand and appreciate ourselves more....

Also, Bong, remember what Karl Woermann said about Tikis:
"Anybody who has ever seen them is thereafter haunted as if by a feverish dream!"

And also, I have found that in these matters (love for "things") women, who are supposedly the romantics in the male/female dualism, are much more pragmatic and hardcore than us male romantic idealists.