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Good morning. ‘I’m a celebrity explorer, get me out of here’. That might have been the headline a few days ago, when the seemingly lost explorer Benedict Allen was helicoptered to safety from a remote part of Papua New Guinea. Naturally enough some people asked whether this was a PR stunt. Also, naturally enough, some have attacked the whole idea of the privileged white man discovering lost tribes of scary-looking natives - it’s a colonial hang-over that bolsters racist stereotypes, they say. It sums up that age-old sin - primitivism. Which means finding an exotic thrill in a non-European form of culture - a thrill that can’t be untangled from the will to master this other culture. In his twenties Allen lived with a tribe in Papua New Guinea and underwent the male initiation rite in which his skin was scarified - cut in order to leave a pattern of permanent scars. It’s a bit further than the average cultural tourist is willing to go. But is it any more authentic? Some would say that it’s meaningless to claim to be in touch with the warrior spirit of a tribe, unless you stay with them for good, and fight in their wars. I’m not so sure. I think that despite all the potential for political incorrectness, and sheer absurdity, a fascination with very different ways of life is a natural human thing. Many of us feel the urge to step away from our gadgets and sample forms of culture that seem more simple, more vital. We shouldn’t be too ashamed of this, even if it involves an interest in a culture that’s not our own. Look at how Picasso drew on African sculpture, for example. You could call it cultural appropriation, but you’d have to be pretty blinkered to object to it. Or look at how white lads from art colleges took their cue from black Blues musicians and created much of rock music. Religion evolves through cultural appropriation, and often the allure of the exotic is involved - as in the craze for Eastern spirituality in the sixties, which lives on in hipsters’ passion for yoga. There’s even a sort of exoticism in what many of us less hip folk do on Sunday mornings - chanting strange ancient phrases, telling stone-age stories, performing a ritual in which we eat the flesh and drink the blood of our god. No, it’s not very dangerous - the main danger is that you’ll be cornered at coffee by a tough old lady who signs you up to run the tombola. But on the other hand there is a certain danger, and a certain thrill, in taking religion seriously. Many believers find that there is an absoluteness here, and a gravity, and a potential for joy, that makes other cultural expressions feel conventional, pedestrian, mapped out, tame.