306 deep freedomTh e radical protection of apostasy that these arguments and propos-
als express may seem too extreme to be compatible with the stability of
a po liti cal order and with the cohesion of a society. In fact, a regime
that cannot withstand such a challenge and prosper in the midst of its
unarmed internal enemies is not worth saving. In committing our-
selves to the protection of apostasy we make a double bet. We gamble
that dissent and innovation go hand in hand and that innovation is the
most important condition of worldly success. We also venture that, once
enjoyed, the benefi ts of a greater freedom, developed for the sake of a
greater life, will prove to be irresistible.
Here is an example of the content and the complications of the com-
mitment to safeguard apostasy from the non- neutral ideals animating
the order of a free society. It is the example of the Indian tribes that
continue to live, sparsely, in the Brazilian Amazon, now in this fi rst
half of the twenty- fi rst century, in widely diff ering degrees of assimila-
tion and isolation.
Th e state reserves large tracts of land to the Indian peoples. In the
name, however, of the preservation of their cultures, they are regularly
denied economic and educational opportunity; its forceful provision by
the central government is feared as a threat to their collective identities.
Th e administration of policy toward the Indians has traditionally
been assigned to anthropologists, who have succeeded the priests of
earlier historical periods as the chief specialists in Indian matters and
the most committed non- Indian defenders of Indian interests.
Th e main line of anthropology represents a heresy within the civili-
zation of the West: a tendency of thought in confl ict with the major
assumptions of the struggle with the world. According to this heresy,
the chief protagonists in world history are not individuals; they are
cultures or ga nized as distinct forms of life and of consciousness. Th e
identity of the individual and his supreme moral interests are insepa-
rable, according to this view, from the preservation of these cultures.
Th e Indians— say these heretics— subscribe to a theology of imma-
nence and to a pragmatics of suffi ciency. Th e theology of immanence is
another name for paganism: the worship of a natural world that both
terrifi es and entrances us. Th e pragmatics of suffi ciency is the disposi-
tion to work only as much as is necessary to ensure a customary stan-
dard of life, with no impulse toward relentless accumulation and no