Politics Among the Apes
Apes
have hierarchy, with a tension between authority and individuality.
Apes are capable of understanding basic forms of owning. Consider the
case (from an old Anthropology class of mine) of the female chimpanzee
ignoring another male chimpanzee trying to give her a banana for sex,
and how the female only snatches the banana for herself when the male
ape gets bored and goes out of sight so that there is no expected
reciprocity. Apes are also capable of lying, which is important for
politics, of course. In one of the most fascinating stories of ape
behavior I have heard, researchers documented that a young male baboon
made the mistake of trying to force himself sexually on a high ranking
female baboon of his tribe. When the female screeched, the rest of the
tribe began chasing the young male along the ground floor. Suddenly,
the young male turned and gave the call for leopard. The chasers dashed
up into the trees and out of sight, while the young male stood,
watching them leave, on the ground in no danger from any leopard. The
researchers concluded that they had witnessed and documented an ape
lying to save his own skin. Thus, we can assume, humans have been lying
since before they were human.
The Positives and Negatives of Human Thought
Human
thought, and thus the human world, is dominated by pairs of opposites.
It is often useful to think of these opposites in terms of positive and
negative. Good is positive, while bad is negative. Happy is positive,
while sad is negative. Being is positive, while non-being is negative.
Full is positive, while empty is negative.
Notice
that "positive" does not always mean happy or good and "negative" does
not always mean sad or bad. When we say "order" and "chaos", closure
(stability) sounds good and openness (instability) sounds bad. However,
when we say "freedom" and "restraint", openness (unconstrained) sounds
good and closure (constrained) sounds bad. When we want stability or
order, openness is bad ("chaos"). When we want to be free and
unconstrained, openness is good ("freedom"). A person, place or thing
can be positive in some ways and negative in others. It depends on
context, position and location.
Human
thought has its own special pairs of opposites. The most basic is
belief (positive) and doubt (negative). Doubt is a question or
questioning, while belief is an answer or answering. In politics,
conservatives lean towards believing and affirming the institution
(often looking to the stability of the past) while progressives lean
towards doubting and questioning the institution (often looking to the
openness of the future). In systems of thought, dogmatists or
positivists lean towards answers and affirming the truths of the system
("There are certain facts, morals and truths.") while skeptics lean
towards questions and doubting the truths of the system ("Are there
certain facts, morals and truths?"). According to Hegel, one of my
favorite philosophers, human thought is an endless battle between
positivism and skepticism. This battle is also a symbiotic evolution
requiring both sides.
When
we look at the history of human thought, from its origins in shamanism
to its evolution and specialization with religion, philosophy, art and
science, we can see that both positivism and skepticism play necessary
roles. Without a base that is assumed and unquestioned, nothing new can
be produced. However, without reaching for the new and questioning the
old there is no growth to improve and fit new circumstances. The great
thinkers in human thought, across all systems, incorporate the old while
bringing us the new. Often they are called heretics in their time and
only canonized after they are safely dead because they have to question
the very system that they stand for.
What is philosophy?
Philosophy
has been called "thinking about thinking", questioning and answering
the very process of questioning and answering itself. The ancient Greek
philosophers (such as Plato and Aristotle, who we will study later)
questioned their traditions and brought new answers by questioning the
human mind and society. While these Greek thinkers should be read and
admired, they were not the first or only ancient thinkers to ask
abstract questions about thought itself.
The Greek word "philosophy" means "love of wisdom". What is wisdom?
German
Philosophers such as Kant and Hegel tell us that there are dueling
parts of our individual mind that fight and cooperate on the individual
level just as positivism and skepticism fight and cooperate on the
social level. These two parts are understanding and reason, and these
correspond to knowledge and wisdom. Understanding tries to hold things
set and steady (the conservative force) while reason tries to challenge
and rearrange things (the progressive force). Knowledge is a set
understanding, while wisdom is the ability to reason. All systems of
thought use both understanding and reason to produce both knowledge and
wisdom.
The
Greek philosophers were known for wisdom, for questioning the ways that
individuals and societies can have knowledge, beliefs and answers. Were
the Greeks the first or only ancient people to have philosophers? In
Radin’s book, Primitive Man as Philosopher, he argues that all societies
(paying particular attention to North American tribes and African
tribes) have a small number of individuals who are radical questioners
and pioneers in innovation and individual thought. In Miguel
Leon-Pontilla's book Aztec Thought and Culture, he argues that the Aztec
and Mayan poets questioned their societies and systems of knowledge,
asking open ended questions such as "Do we know the gods exist?", "Is
there an afterlife, like the ancestors said there is?", and "Can we ever
know these things?". Indeed, when we look at ancient cultures we find
both questioning and answering, knowledge as well as wisdom, in ancient
Greece and everywhere else. No society would survive without pushing in
both directions.
“Shaman”
is a word from an old Turkish-Siberian dialect that means “one who
knows”. Consider that a “scientist” is “one who sees” from the Latin
root. The Shaman is the expert of the tribe, the one who not only holds
the traditions of knowledge but who seeks new answers to problems. The
shaman is both the preserver of the old and the seeker of the new.
It
is quite amazing to consider that shamanism is the original human
culture, found from Africa to Europe to the Americas to small islands in
the pacific. While it is always different in each place, the
similarities are quite profound.
In
tribal culture, traditional knowledge is often kept and passed on in
the form of stories or narratives. These stories explain the world and
help people with their problems. There are, however, times when an
answer must be sought for a problem. To do this, the shaman goes on a
quest (both physical and mental) for the solution and new knowledge
needed to solve the problem. Often the shaman is selected as a youth who
has gone through a near death experience (sickness, struck by
lightning, attacked but survives). The shaman is thought to have an
affinity for seeking into the unknown because they are already
experienced in the unknown.
Ancient World Cosmology
Many
ancient cultures (including the Babylonians, the Persians, the
Egyptians, the Indians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, and even
the Hawaiians) have a very similar cosmology. Cosmology is the term used
to cover the ancient study of the world, which included physics,
psychology, biology, medicine, philosophy, religion and most areas of
study all together as a single study by the educated and the wise.
The
world was thought to be like a big person (making the individual person
a microcosm or mini-cosmos within the larger cosmos or world). The
elements, including fire, air, earth and water stacked from lightest on
the top (fire and air) to heaviest on the bottom (earth and water). This
was not only observed in nature (star fire above, winds next, then
earth above water) but also in humans (the mind is fire and visions of
light, which heats and activates the breath in speech like orders and
commands, and the water in the lower regions and functions of the body
which often was identified with chaos). Order and reason were identified
with the higher elements (fire and air, mind and breath) and chaos and
desire were identified with the lower elements (earth and water, flesh
and fluid). When the stack of elements is in order the cosmos and the
individual are in order, and when the stack of elements are out of order
the cosmos and individual are out of order. The higher elements were
believed to be eternal just as the cosmos itself and Being are eternal,
and the lower elements were believed to be temporary like the
individuals and beings are temporary.
One
can find in religion and philosophy in ancient cultures (including
Christianity, Buddhism, Indian Philosophy, Greek Philosophy and Chinese
Philosophy) the same message repeated again and again: reason and the
mind must be placed above and in charge of desire and the body. The
eternal way of things is to be placed above the temporary ways and
wants. This gains the individual wisdom, reason and insight into the
workings of the cosmos. When the lower elements are in charge, there is
ignorance and destruction. This framework is important for understanding
each individual system of ancient thought as well as their overall
similarities and differences.
The Problem of the One and the Many
One
early philosophical puzzle was the problem of the One and the Many:
this reality is one thing, but also many things. Shamans in many
different cultures had visions of an All Tree or Tree of Life, the one
yet many of all things. All or Being itself is the trunk, and the many
things and species of the world are the branches or the fruit. One of
the recurrent philosophical insights we will see in India, Greece and
China is that it takes wisdom to see that the many things are all one
reality and the one reality is seen from many perspectives.
Notice
that the problem of the one and the many has political implications.
Unity and sameness is privileged over diversity and difference. Early
cultures did appreciate, sometimes reluctantly, individual thought and
innovation, but it was and still often is subordinated to the good of
the whole or unity of a culture. Native American, African, and Celtic
European tribes came together for meetings of many individuals and
sometimes many tribes in order to come to agreements, and consensus was
sought that balanced diverse wants and opinions. When Native Americans
took and held Alcatraz in the 60s, and there were differences of
opinions among the tribes and individuals, they told the stubborn to be
democratic and “stop being like white people”. This shows us that all
cultures value heroes and individual achievement, but they also seek to
unify the whole of society and come to common agreement and consensus.
PRIMITIVE MAN AS PHILOSOPHER by Paul Radin
Modern
Historians are supposed to look at societies other than their own free
from bias and prejudice. However, historians have so far been
prejudiced and assumed that aboriginal/tribal societies are innately
inferior. This is due to the profound differences of social customs and
because the tribes people could not stick up for themselves against the
modern historian. Romanticism also played a part in sustaining the
assumption that tribes people are simple children and savages,
unintelligent and lacking individuality. The rise of the theory of
evolution convinced many that tribes people are pre-logical and
pre-individualistic because they have not reached required stages of
social development, and this view has gained academic and scientific
credibility.
Because
of this, the most pressing need in history, sociology, psychology and
other fields is to examine and question this prejudice, particularly the
convictions that tribal people have a dead level of intelligence, that
the individual is always submerged in the group, and that there are no
thinkers or philosophers. This book particularly examines the role of
intellectuals in the earliest societies.
Every
human group has members who are different in their individuality and
who examine life and its problems with what we can call philosophy.
Languages of tribal peoples are sometimes more complex than our own and
their vocabularies are sometimes just as large. Their vocabularies
have words with the same abstract connotations as our own, but in spite
of this there are many theorists who do not believe tribal people to be
capable of abstract thought. They point out the concrete nature of
words and expressions while ignoring that our own modern languages use
similar concrete terms to express abstract thought.
The
complexity of a society has little to do with the existence of
philosophy or individual thought. Indeed, complex civilizations can
often stifle or even prohibit philosophizing and the asking of deep and
abstract questions.
Often,
academics has held to the view that the ancient Greeks and their
cultural descendants have a special kind of mentality that allowed and
still allows them to think individually, critically, and
philosophically, but it is not clear what the nature of this special
mentality is. The best way to critically examine and correct this error
is to provide examples of tribal people indulging in philosophical
speculation. Aristotle and the Greeks are called special for thinking
systematically, even though all cultures transmit their thought in
whole, unified systems. Philosophical speculation flourishes most in
times of crisis and change, as it did in the greatest periods of Greek
and Chinese philosophy.
Throughout
this book it is assumed that tribal people have the same distribution
of intelligence and ability as do modern societies. This has grown from
a hypothesis to a conviction through the direct experience of tribal
societies by the author. The object of the book is to describe tribal
society from the viewpoint of the intellectuals and thinkers of the
tribe.
The
intellectual often looks down on the practices of the ordinary people,
but the ordinary person also looks with amusement on the distance
between the real and practical world and the behavior of the scholar.
It is, however, the scholar who writes the history books and so it is
this perspective that we often encounter when reading about the past of
this and other civilizations.
When
looking at isolated practices of “magic” ritual, such as the Winnebago
Native American shooting an arrow at a trail to ensure good deer
hunting, it is often forgotten that this act does not guarantee success
and is interwoven with many practical behaviors. If one asks the tribal
individual if magic alone will bring home a deer or grow crops, they
are quite amused at the lack of understanding.
Tribal
people are in direct contact with their reality, while modern people
are removed from many aspects of their own lives. Magic was not a world
apart from physical reality, but interwoven with it such that practical
and physical situations were recognized while interpreted in
traditional ways. One does not ask for rain from a cloudless sky, nor
seek protection for actions that are impractical or dangerously stupid.
The traditional systems of thought are an aid for dealing with physical
and practical reality, not a substitute for reality. Tribal people,
like advanced modern people, do and do not understand reality and the
forces behind it, so they work in accord with systems that sometimes do
and sometimes do not work so that generally the society and individual
will be well and overcome obstacles.
Individuals
have relative freedom and individuality in tribal societies. It is
possible that we view the tribal individual as an automata, with no
freedom or individuality, because modern life saturated with
technologies has turned human individuals into automata. It is a
mistake to believe that tribal people do not have variation in ritual
and belief but modern people do. There is always variations in ritual
and belief amongst any people, and modern life has in fact standardized
beliefs more than they ever have been.
When
one draws the community together and asks about the reasons behind an
aspect of culture, one will find not only variation but contradictions
and arguments. This is as true of tribal beliefs as it is of modern
academics and science. A community is always an agreement and
disagreement of beliefs and perspectives. All societies, tribal or
modern, believe that there are immutable and permanent truths, but there
is no complete agreement as to what these truths are or how they are
structured or caused. Even if there is a great deal of consensus, this
does not prevent radical variation in belief among individuals and
minority groups. If this variation is sometimes concealed, this is due
to fear of ridicule or rejection by the majority. Individuality that
contrasts with the beliefs or behavior of the majority is in danger of
being labeled a mistake or deviancy. It is always safer to either
conform to the majority or remain silent.
Individual members of any society have to balance and integrate their individuality with society.
Sometimes
it is even asserted that tribal people are so varied in belief that
they cannot form coherent systems. It is often asserted that the Greeks
and Europeans are “systematic thinkers” relative to others, but also
that they are also free and various in thinking relative to others.
With
the development of writing, a welcome oasis given the dynamic and
ever-changing world, beliefs and systems of thought were able to be
highly standardized. The written word was deified and identified with
the unchanging way of the cosmos.
HISTORY BEGINS AT SUMER by Kramer
Sumer
is the birthplace of the written word, one of the earliest city state
societies. Sumer was a city state at the mouth of the Tigris Euphrates
which was then taken over and incorporated into Babylon, which then was
taken over by Assyria, which was then taken over by Persia. These were
multicultural societies in which citizenship did not belong exclusively
to one ethnicity. The primary way that cultures were dominated was, as
it is today, not with war but with trade. War typically means efforts
to dominate through economic means have failed.
Sumer
had some of the first schools, textbooks (in science and the liberal
arts), medical texts, tax reduction, wisdom proverbs, and laments. One
excellent proverb is, “You go and carry off the enemy’s land, the enemy
comes and carries off your land”. My favorite Sumerian lament is
recorded about 3000 BCE, in which an elderly Sumerian complains that
teenagers are running around and breaking laws and having sex,
concluding that the world will certainly end soon.
Very
important for this class, in Sumer we find the first democratic
bicameral congress. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the first recorded
myths in human history, we read that Gilgamesh wants to go to war so he
appeals to the elders of the senate. The elders do not want war
because they have fragile investments in the situation, so Gilgamesh
appeals to the larger and lower house and they enthusiastically accept
his proposal. Gilgamesh, the king, must seek approval from the
community as a whole and needs the house to override the smaller but
higher senate.
MYTH TODAY by Roland Barthes
Barthes,
a French thinker and literary critic, argues that any speech can be
mythologized and through any medium. He uses the example of roses being
given as a gesture of passion to illustrate his concept of a sign, and
then describes how signs can serve myths which then become larger signs
that signify other things.
At
the barbershop one day, he is upset by the cover of Paris-Match (a
magazine much like Newsweek & Time in America). On the cover is a
young African boy in French military dress saluting. Barthes writes
that the boy is clearly being depicted saluting the French flag, and the
cover is meant to signify that France is a great empire in which all
are equal and love the empire. Barthes writes that this boy is being
made to serve his colonialist oppressors and that the image is a sign
that serves a modern myth: France stands for freedom. It is a game of
hide and seek with meaning. It is an open association or coherence that
does not demand what it means but highly suggests what it means. In
doing this, it is a deformation and distortion of the realities of
French colonial Africa. It is a gesture that is deliberately
misleading, alienating the meaning from the situation. It is an alibi
for French colonialism.
Consider
that, coupled with Radin, we may wonder whether we live in times of
less or greater mythology considering the forms of media and the
dislocation of modern society.
