What an awful night. The air was hot and muggy as soup, and sleep wouldn't come. Nerves were alive as if before a race or public speech. Too much tea during the day? For whatever reason, after an hour and a half, I simply got up, popped a beer, and sat down at my computer-Kindle reader to finish the short book I had recently bought, Anthrotheology, by Heather Lynn. The ending could not have come at a more propitious time.
In her book, Lynn gives us a quick run-down of civilization and theology from primordial times to the Renaissance, to show us how abstract thought has carried us on to a confusing duality, removing us from immediate experience, which has caused us again and again to make symbols and religions to try to bridge this divide and make us whole again. In good structuralist mode, she claims, often with good reason, that these symbols and religions have almost always been co-opted by a power elite, causing the individual to become a mere pawn in a social game run by and for the privileged.
She maps it out like this: after our our language and images, made to reunite us with "being," are taken over by those other than ourselves (and this can be at any level of organization, from the most primitive of tribes to the most complex state), they are used to alter the landscape, both culturally and physically, in their own image. This may involve only the formation of simple totems, taboos or magical practices, or it may involve the creation of a complex religion that insinuates itself in all aspects of our lives. This drives the material culture, from artisan work to masonry to trade to farming, to such an extent that it seems to most that the culture IS the world. In this world, we become trapped both by our very thoughts (which are made of words) and images, as well as the physical outcome of these thoughts - our cities, our industry, our jobs. We cannot think our way out, as our thoughts have been captured; and we cannot work our way out, as it seems that the only way to make a living is from the cultural matrix of jobs and commerce. We become stuck, and if we are not in the top echelons, we feel helpless. Ennui and cynicism fills us - just as the leaders would want from potential dissidents. In other words, we become the miserable people once described as living "lives of quiet desperation."
Her aim is to point to the now-obvious solution: free your mind! She cites an Amazon tribe called the Piraha whose language is the most primitive in the world. They believe in nothing that is not before them; they have no religion and little abstract abilities, such as music or art; and, according to her, they live lives of Zen happiness, of Adam and Eve in the Garden before the knowledge of good and evil.
What she describes is, in a way, similar to what this blog was based on: to clear the fog of daily chatter from the mind to find the "quiet voice," that which is beyond time and social construct. However, there are differences in her vision, ones that are hard to articulate for obvious reasons (articulation, recall, is controlled by social power). Still: the Piraha, as she describes them, do not seem to live the lives of advanced consciousness. They do not gain knowledge from the plants and animals as others of their cultural level do, nor do they seem informed by a greater unity in the cosmos. Rather, they seem like children who have not grown to their potential. Immature. They have not, in other words, walked the walk that potentially makes adults whole.
That argument might continue for pages, but I move on to the next, something more practical: clearing the mind is not child's play. Reading Carl Jung's own internal struggle with the unconscious, we become aware that this aspect of our lives is a beast with incredible power. It is more than the sum of socially controlled symbols. It is more than anything we can normally know, and certainly more than we can control or eliminate.
My own fitful attempts at sleep last night serve as an example: In a dream, I am walking the filthy and dangerous beaches of Haiti, worried that I do not have any money or any hope. I meet two women who know someone in my professional field in Colombia, and somehow hope returns; I am going back with them for fieldwork. While all of this is explainable from my circumstances, what is not is the feeling portrayed through the images, feelings so strong that they overwhelm ordinary waking sensibilities. What is this that lies behind the images? They are sensations that border on the terrifying, that border on the edge of the cosmos. Here is no bland opportunity for "retaking" my life, but rather the revelation of a life that lives beyond my daily life, that makes its home in a land that I purposefully avoid.
Both Lynn and I see a new Edenic potential in the movement of world culture, but I do not share her view that this can be seized in a comfortably therapeutic manner. The power is too strong. And in that, she misunderstands the potential of religion. While many, perhaps most, have been used to manipulate the masses, the symbols, including words, at base speak to this great power underneath that is well beyond our normal control. Rather than becoming children again, we must become more adult - understanding and superseding the power of our "parents" to find the greater meaning that was behind their advice in our formative years. We should not turn our backs on such knowledge, but rather dig deeper into it to find the hidden pearl. True religion at base is not a jail cell, but a key to liberation. The "quiet voice" is not the answer in itself, but the place from which the holy symbols which we have been given become clear - leading to the voice beyond voices. FK
In her book, Lynn gives us a quick run-down of civilization and theology from primordial times to the Renaissance, to show us how abstract thought has carried us on to a confusing duality, removing us from immediate experience, which has caused us again and again to make symbols and religions to try to bridge this divide and make us whole again. In good structuralist mode, she claims, often with good reason, that these symbols and religions have almost always been co-opted by a power elite, causing the individual to become a mere pawn in a social game run by and for the privileged.
She maps it out like this: after our our language and images, made to reunite us with "being," are taken over by those other than ourselves (and this can be at any level of organization, from the most primitive of tribes to the most complex state), they are used to alter the landscape, both culturally and physically, in their own image. This may involve only the formation of simple totems, taboos or magical practices, or it may involve the creation of a complex religion that insinuates itself in all aspects of our lives. This drives the material culture, from artisan work to masonry to trade to farming, to such an extent that it seems to most that the culture IS the world. In this world, we become trapped both by our very thoughts (which are made of words) and images, as well as the physical outcome of these thoughts - our cities, our industry, our jobs. We cannot think our way out, as our thoughts have been captured; and we cannot work our way out, as it seems that the only way to make a living is from the cultural matrix of jobs and commerce. We become stuck, and if we are not in the top echelons, we feel helpless. Ennui and cynicism fills us - just as the leaders would want from potential dissidents. In other words, we become the miserable people once described as living "lives of quiet desperation."
Her aim is to point to the now-obvious solution: free your mind! She cites an Amazon tribe called the Piraha whose language is the most primitive in the world. They believe in nothing that is not before them; they have no religion and little abstract abilities, such as music or art; and, according to her, they live lives of Zen happiness, of Adam and Eve in the Garden before the knowledge of good and evil.
What she describes is, in a way, similar to what this blog was based on: to clear the fog of daily chatter from the mind to find the "quiet voice," that which is beyond time and social construct. However, there are differences in her vision, ones that are hard to articulate for obvious reasons (articulation, recall, is controlled by social power). Still: the Piraha, as she describes them, do not seem to live the lives of advanced consciousness. They do not gain knowledge from the plants and animals as others of their cultural level do, nor do they seem informed by a greater unity in the cosmos. Rather, they seem like children who have not grown to their potential. Immature. They have not, in other words, walked the walk that potentially makes adults whole.
That argument might continue for pages, but I move on to the next, something more practical: clearing the mind is not child's play. Reading Carl Jung's own internal struggle with the unconscious, we become aware that this aspect of our lives is a beast with incredible power. It is more than the sum of socially controlled symbols. It is more than anything we can normally know, and certainly more than we can control or eliminate.
My own fitful attempts at sleep last night serve as an example: In a dream, I am walking the filthy and dangerous beaches of Haiti, worried that I do not have any money or any hope. I meet two women who know someone in my professional field in Colombia, and somehow hope returns; I am going back with them for fieldwork. While all of this is explainable from my circumstances, what is not is the feeling portrayed through the images, feelings so strong that they overwhelm ordinary waking sensibilities. What is this that lies behind the images? They are sensations that border on the terrifying, that border on the edge of the cosmos. Here is no bland opportunity for "retaking" my life, but rather the revelation of a life that lives beyond my daily life, that makes its home in a land that I purposefully avoid.
Both Lynn and I see a new Edenic potential in the movement of world culture, but I do not share her view that this can be seized in a comfortably therapeutic manner. The power is too strong. And in that, she misunderstands the potential of religion. While many, perhaps most, have been used to manipulate the masses, the symbols, including words, at base speak to this great power underneath that is well beyond our normal control. Rather than becoming children again, we must become more adult - understanding and superseding the power of our "parents" to find the greater meaning that was behind their advice in our formative years. We should not turn our backs on such knowledge, but rather dig deeper into it to find the hidden pearl. True religion at base is not a jail cell, but a key to liberation. The "quiet voice" is not the answer in itself, but the place from which the holy symbols which we have been given become clear - leading to the voice beyond voices. FK
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