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[Jackpine Radical]

7. Depends on your definition of "always."

The social organization & modal values of small groups, particularly "preliterate" groups, where everyone knows each other, are very different from modern western society.

They tend to be quite egalitarian, and to place the highest value on sharing of resources. People into self-aggrandizement and accumulation of property tend to find themselves ostracized.

Among the traditional Ojibwe, for example,the highest falue was "good-heartedness." A person who succeeded better than others at hunting would attribute his success to luck. However, luck was not evenly distributed; one got it as a sign of favor by his Guardian Spirit (and how one gets a Guardian Spirit is an entirely separate story). Thus you had to do things to stay in the good favor of your guardian--and what did you have to do to keep the guardian happy with you? You had to be generous to others.

They have a term--Pimadaziwin, which is sometimes translated as "the good life." I think it is roughly equivalent to the Diné (Navajo) idea of "walking in beauty. As one authority puts it, "Pimadaziwin counters such socially disapproved and collectively disruptive acts as inhospitality, stinginess, greediness, and, especially, ridicule."