While it might seem like Abram is getting a little loose with his terminology when he says mountains have thought, our goal this week is to take seriously his attempt to make sense of the phenomenal world, paying particular attention to his treatment of animals in this world. As always, post your questions and answers in the comments section.
As a reminder, this week we'll have a visit from Ernestine Hayes to discuss indigenous perspectives, we'll work through Abram's account, and, with any luck, we'll return to Derrida for the last 60 minutes of the evening. You should also begin to formulate paper topics, as the April 22nd deadline is fast approaching.
kevin m.
Abram's is a subjective rendering of the phenomenal experience. His view would be diametrically opposed to objectivism. Abram's is the only view with which humans can actively empathize with other humans, or animals.
ReplyDeleteAbram's view is also appropriately tailored to a question in last class, that of intrinsic rights. Intrinsic rights are not quantitative, they can not be proven using science. Intrinsic rights are qualitative, opinion based, and thus should be grouped with Abram's view.
This is my concern over the evolution of the human mindset towards a more scientific mode of thinking. Academia is great, science is wonderful, but without subjective experience there are no universal rights, no reverence for the sanctity of human life.
It was interestingly coincidental that just after reading Abram's work I saw an ad for Dan Brown's newest thriller-gone-movie, the acting being pioneered by actor/activist Tom Hanks (not trully an activist, though he often plays in movies that convey a significant idea to the public, i.e. "Charlie Wilson's War", "The Da Vinci Code"). The movie, so far as I can tell, portrays a war waged between the Vatican papacy (religious supporters) and the illuminati (a supposed group dedicated to the pursuit of science that was systematically hunted down by the Vatican in millenia past). I feel the relation between our discussion and the movie is relevant. Abram portrays a subjective world, one that is not easily paraphrased in objective terms. It is through this subjective rendering that we can empathize with animals.
A move towards scientific thinking, while beneficial in many aspects, is harmful in others, particularly in relation to animal rights. The move towards a more scientific view of the world indicates a move towards a more utilitarian, mechanistic understanding of our phenomenological experience.
The human species, at least those of us in the U.S., are in a hybridized state of mind. We, in large part, adhere to religious perspectives or spiritual tendencies; we also cling to the methodology of scientific thinking. This hybridized state of mind and the dichotomy therein can possibly be symbolized by Dan Brown's movie.
The question that I have, as a subjectively experiencing human, is: Are there universal truths supporting the sanctity of life to be found in advanced scientific modes of thinking? If not, what, then, happens if we move towards purely scientifically oriented thinking?
What will happen to our view on the animal and natural world if we become an exclusively scientific society?
I've heard the name Terrence Mckenna mentioned in our class discussions before, though I think at the time it was a bit out of place.
ReplyDeleteMckenna was one of those thinkers who had some good ideas, but the majority of his dialogue was so bizarre you'd rather not be associated with it. I'm going to introduce his name here because, as of our current reading, his ideas are now pertinent.
I originally heard about Terrence Mckenna via Rupert Sheldrake. Sheldrake is a former biochemist and plant physiologist, he popularized the Morphogenetic Field Theory (an evolutionary means of creation). Sheldrake was part of a trio of thinkers who regularly gave public trialogues, the members were: Rupert Sheldrake, Terrence Mckenna (philosopher, ethnobotanist, writer), and Ralph Abraham (Mathemetician).
Mckenna specialized in the study of Shamanism. His views reiterate a lot of what was said in Abram's text, though Mckenna delivered it in a much more palatable manner. I'm including a link to two of Mckenna's many speeches, the majority of the first speech focuses on aboriginal cultures, particularly their use of shamans. There is a section in the middle that the viewer may want to skip 4:30 to 5:36 where he begins to ramble about hallucenogenic drug use. It's a good selection except for the unusual music and imagery - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c8an2XZ3MU
Another of Mckenna's speeches, even more relevant to Shamanism (and without bad music) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_qx5Pd9Z-M
A lot of what Mckenna preaches is drug related, and a large component of the 'Mckenna fan' subculture is comprised of people who are entheusiastic about what Mckenna says simply for the drug references. My interest in Mckenna is opposite to that subculture, I value Mckenna's non-drug related speeches more than those that are 'pharmacological'. I hope that those of you who watch these videos see the value that his non-drug related philosophical analyses have. Anyways, he has some contributory statements on Shamanism, check the links.
April 8, 2009
ReplyDeleteJohn S. Sonin
Eng. 418—Blog 11
Maier—Krein
The sensual world, it seems, is one devoid of language. Abram may have something to dwell-on here. Wordless communication, without assuming the point, would seem more conducive to symbiotic relations than hoping to out-guess the intention of another. Language, I’ve considered, usually enables a listener or receiver of the message to predict what word will follow, either in a speech or literature.
Though at the non-verbal level of communion, barring the randomness of a quantum reality, one somewhat feels what kind of animation will follow from that subsequent, also. Yet in a mutually agreeable communiqué, though “what follows” will either be positive or negative to the receiver, we naturally try to avoid those milieus that may discourage growth while finding those that encourage, appealing. It seems that only with language will we insist on shifting the negative to the positive. This being the case, even when interaction is tending detrimental to our well-being, will stick-it-out with hope of redirecting the intent of the message sender. Ultimately, the inter-relationship moment will be positive or negative to the receiver.
In print, we have no-way of shifting the communiqué. Verbal exchanges always have that smidgen of hope for a positive resolution if we are anticipating discouragement. We have the choice to persist with the exchange or depart. I guess it’s the same way for non-verbal interaction but as afore mentioned, barring a “quantum” shock, we naturally avoid situations that demand we are always on our guard. Fear-based living is reserved for the moments when we are “prey” and the self-preservation psyche is in gear. In a verbal world where choice and free-will avail, we need live tempered by fear for any other language user we meet.
I suppose this is no different then the flock of duck resting so serenely on the lake keeping a wingspan distance from each other, ready to take flight at any moment. But those individuals are not in fear of each other, unlike language users, like Boy Scouts, they’re just “prepared” for the unpredictable threat from something outside their pod.
Within that group, they make quack and frolic because their safety is assured by an unspoken trust. If language dependents weren’t so worried for betrayal at any moment—maybe like un-socialized adolescents and their mothers, though I worry for this bond in a Jerry Springer, George Bush reality—we, as a species, could continue or “pursuit of perfection” and avoid the “edge” of possible diminution.
Jack
ReplyDeleteDoes Juneau bring us that much closer to ‘animal awareness’?
I most certainly enjoyed the first person narrative of the first half of this piece. By introducing the topics through the stories of living with cultures much closer to nature and drawing off first hand experiences, David Abram builds massive ethos and logos points. Is there an echelon of credibility being established by the authors of these works, with dog and horse trainers now in the middle and Abram being a significant outlier?
Class discussions reveal that many of us have experienced a feeling of a heightened awareness towards nature as we compare our Juneau-developed feelings and senses with those that we have following a long stay down south. Several of us have also discussed that Juneau itself has ‘dumbed-down’ our senses after living remote, and for myself – not only living remote in Alaska but also having grown up on a large farm. Anyways, Abram’s point seems not only well founded (particularly given his living conditions and lifestyle), but also an excellent perspective to argue from as he examines what has happened to the planet in recent generations.
Perhaps Kim Elton was an excellent choice by the Obama administration to bring a ‘heightened’ Juneau awareness to policy. Without a selection from a community that finds itself so much more integrated into the natural world around it, how else could we avoid continuing down a path that Abram describes (with an excellent word choice of ‘casual’) on pgs 27 and 28 as:
“How, that is, have we become so deaf and so blind to the vital existence of other species, and to the animate landscapes they inhabit, that we now so CASUALLY bring about their destruction?”
The spider story of Abram’s for me contains one of the take home messages of this piece. We have him sitting in a cave, barred in this cell by torrents of monsoon. Layers of spider webs begin to come into focus and opens him to “a world all alive, awake, and aware.” He here is seeing through the robots of Descartes, and through Dennett’s impossible barriers of perception. Every story has a back-story and it is often as important as the actual story itself.
ReplyDeleteAbram traveled to Indonesia as a magician of sorts himself, to study Shamanistic manipulation of perception and ended up with a changed perspective on the natural world. He found this through watching the native magicians and after coming to a greater understanding of their relation to the natural world. He came to the conclusion that the non-human world “are purveyors of secrets carriers of intelligence that we ourselves often need,” and “Yet they still remain Other to us, inhabiting their own cultures and displaying their own rituals, never wholly fathomable.”
He has come to these beliefs, that animals and in fact the whole of the natural world can be known and has a subjective experience, through openness to the possibility. In other words by being receptive to these ideas he has found truth in them. And it is not only him that holds these beliefs, it is most indigenous cultures, indeed most who live closely to the earth and its basic functions. So my question is then, how can we discount this animism? If types of animism have been formulated since time immemorial, by humans from all over the world and with different types of relationships with the natural world, doubtlessly much more intimate that the relationships western scientists have; how can we discount animism as some silly and unfounded belief?
It seems that more and more these ideas are leaking into the general consciousness as possible realities and people are starting to adopt them.
I am not suggesting that objective science is a pile of rubbish, but that there may be a way to operate from an animistic/phenomenological and a scientific/objective world view.
David Leggitt
I agree with your post David. I feel that it's a very pompous and self-elevating assertion for modern society to claim superiority over tried and true, naturalistic lifestyles.
ReplyDeleteOur society, while it has made many progressions that would be difficult or impossible in a more aboriginal culture, has managed to wedge itself, very effectively I might add, in between a rock and a hard place.
I believe the correlate to this 'stuckness' is the very same thing which has liberated us on so many fronts: Our unnatural way of life.
Objective science can do great wonders or great harm, and in relation to the animal world, it's done little more than great harm. Before one tries to contend this point let me reiterate the mechanism by which 1/2 the world's frog population has disappeared in the last century: Science has identified a harmful fungi that has entered the world's tributary systems. This fungi has been identified as the killer of the frogs. The fungi is believed to have originated by western civilization by chemical extraction and synthesis from eastern frogs. This fungi, somehow and oddly, has entered into our water systems.
My generational peers, those of you in the class, are now faced with the responsibility of cleaning up this mess. The mess which has, historically, never occured and could not have occurred in a more naturalistic society.
So to tie this back to the reading - Abram's subjective view on the world is not, I will argue, conducive to science. This has major drawbacks, e.g. - A lack of medical breakthroughs. But in terms of our relationship to the animal kingdom, Abram's view is the most productive.
Abram's view is disconcerting to the scientific mind because while we can imagine that we know how animals think by subjective means, we can't 'prove' it scientifically (I use the term in relation to technological means, quantifying and locating concrete objects and indicators).
But now here's the real bite-out-of-the-ass of science: Scientific method is based on the premise of reproducibility of results. In other words, if someone else can do the same experiment and have similar or identical results, then it's a meaningful test. The really perplexing idea is considering the manifold similarity in subjective experiences. If someone can create a 'thought' experiment that has the exact same results as another individual, is this not science?
I think a clarification of science is needed: science deals with tangential objects, things identifiable by the five senses. This is grazed over by many explanations of science. Science needs to humble up a bit. Science can do great things, but it is nowhere near the sophistication needed to allow it to make all decisions for us.
Quantifying the animal kingdom in scientific terms will not help us create a sustainable lifestyle. We already have the numbers of declining species worldwide, we have already identified suspect causes of these declining numbers. Yet, nothing is being done. Subjective decision making is required universally, the numbers obviously aren't doing anything themselves.
Although I enjoyed Abrams piece this week, I had some believability issues with the first chapter. He ends the first chapter as a self-acclaimed Dr. Doolittle of sorts. I find this hard to believe. First of all, even if he spent years living with animals in Java developing a language or system of communication and understanding with them, those animals are still in Java. His neighbor’s squirrel doesn’t speak javanese and is not going to be responsive to any human upon first contact. Besides that huge stumbling block, I did enjoy his perspectives on the importance of the balance between nature and humans. It’s becoming pretty obvious (global warming, rainforest depletion, acid rain) that we’re out of whack. But then how does that translate to cultures like the Java who are suffering the detriments to our incongruity with nature. And for those of us that do live in the West, how can we regain some of this balance short of sitting in a cave or rock for hours listening to the spiders and herons? And once again we’re back to the zoo debate... if we all went out into nature to discover nature it wouldn’t be wild nature anymore. But yet we know that zoos aren’t the best answer either. It just seems to be a catch-22 either way.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the first chapter of the Abram handout, entitled “The Ecology of Magic”, I found myself saying “Yeah, of course spiders are amazing, ants are intriguing to watch, and a condor flying right up to you would be awesome. Everyone knows this, so what’s your point?” Not until the very end did he bring me back to the stark realization: No, everyone does not know this. Having lived in a Southeast Asian country for part of my life, I’m aware of the rift Abram speaks of between Eastern and Western perspectives on the world (though I lived in a highly developed country, so the rift was probably not as drastic as in Bali).
ReplyDeleteSometimes I feel as if I was born into the cab of a giant steamroller that’s running slowly over the face of the planet, obliteration everything in its path, and I would LOVE to shut it down, but no one seems to know how to work the thing, much less explain it to me, so my only choice is to sit passively and put my hands over my eyes. But I know I’m still in the cab, and I still feel guilty every time I hear something crumble. This is my experience with Western Culture thus far in my life, and the question I want to briefly examine is WHY? Why is Western Culture so removed from our surroundings, so isolated and insensitive? Why does the average American prefer Web surfing over spider-watching, Grade A beef over moose meat, and a Spin class over a trail ride? And why is everyone so proud about this state of being?
Honestly, I believe you can find some strong indicators of how a culture was formed when you look at the doctrines of the religions that played a heavy hand in founding that culture. And if you compare the practices and beliefs of the Indonesian shaman or the Nepalese dzankris with those of a priest or a pope, you begin to see how our culture turned out so self-righteous, so suspicious, so secretive and so isolated from nature and natural instinct. Of course, talking shit on religion is “insensitive to the beliefs of others”, so I’ll stop there. Plus, I don’t know why we are how we are. That just seems like a strong possibility to me. I just want to know how many more people can write these beautiful books about how we need to be more connected to the natural world before people start caring again and things start getting done to move back to that way of life. It seems that there’s a tipping point for jadedness at which there’s no turning back to reason and we may have passed it already.
Katie
ReplyDeleteThe Abram excerpt made me think about Vladimir Nabokov. Nabokov had synaesthesia. “Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.” Reading his work always becomes physical. A lot of his urgency comes not from the meaning of words but the emotional undercurrent embodied in their sounds. Spoken language is bodily, as Abram contends. We learn words not by writing or reading but by speaking. Being severed from an oral tradition, he seems to suggest, leads us to define the nature of language as something else—perhaps something rational or symbolic. Speech is gestural to an extent but it is also symbolic. Human speech consists of an interaction between the symbolic and the sensuous attributes of language. I agree with Abram in his suggestion that we cannot consider one without the other. To consider speech as consisting only of the symbolic properties of language while ignoring the sensual qualities of sound would not lead to any thorough knowledge of language. I’m still pretty interested in Chomsky’s argument for generative grammar. So far, no one seems to have adequately addressed Chomsky’s contention that all animal language is one of two types: the selection of one of a finite number of points or a point along a limited dimension of expression. Do animals have infinite patterns, and from these infinite patterns, infinite expressions? We define language purely in terms of human language. So in the common sense of language, other animals do not have language. Perhaps Abram is suggesting that we alter the way we define language but human language, if considered to be one of many languages, is nonetheless different than ‘ape language’ or ‘jellyfish language.’ Our senses are reciprocal and so too is our language. But might this reciprocity also be with other humans? If human language began as an imitation or evocation of nature, does that mean that nature speaks through us? Also, sounds can convey emotional intensity but is this a kind of meaning? If we were to hear a story in a language we didn't understand and be moved by it, would it have communicated meaning or would the sounds have elicited an emotional response? Is there a difference?
Perhaps the most significant thing that I have noticed about myself in the last year is how undeniably Midwestern I am. I find seemingly every piece that I write and every view I hold relates to some characteristic of Chicago or downstate Illinois or Iowa. Coincidently, my realization that I am indelibly marked with Midwestern traits came at the same time that I developed an interest in anthropology and read Thomas F. Thornton’s Being and Place among the Tlingit. These things combined to garner an interest deep inside me in how the place we live in shapes of views of the world around us. In this manner, I often echo Jack in wondering how my time in Juneau has shaped my subjective views about animals.
ReplyDeleteHowever, similar as my views on subjectivity are to Abram’s, I am having trouble reconciling his thoughts with my own. It seems to me that he takes from his own experience with a select group of magicians that live on the outskirts of rural villages in Indonesia and Nepal and extrapolates into these larger East v. West, Modern Culture v. Scientific Culture contrasts. But is a small group of magicians in Indonesia really a fair representation of Eastern thought? Given his emphasis on subjectivity, I don’t see how these narrow experiences could ever be fair sample to contrast with Western Philosophy.
Furthermore, I think that the limitations inherent in the experiences he references are too large of barriers for Abram’s call to be applicable for society in general. He tells us “perhaps we may make our stand along the edge of that civilization, like a magician, or like a person who, having lived among another tribe, can no longer wholly return to his own” (28). That may be a good personal means to get in touch with animals, but Abram himself recognizes that the value in where the magicians live comes out of them being between the humans and the non-humans. How can this be a call for the larger population? There necessarily has to be a human civilization if we are to live between the humans and non-humans.
I think that there is an underlying assumption here, too, that it is somehow better to have this developed bond with animals than to merely be part of the human civilization. I struggle with this. As a cultural relativist, I am more interested in identifying characteristics of specific cultures than I am in saying some traits are better than others. However, when one lifestyle causes those people to be “so deaf, dumb, and blind to the vital existence of other species, and to the animate landscapes they inhabit, that we now so casually bring about their destruction,” I become sympathetic to the view that perhaps the lifestyle that Abram advocates for is in some sense ‘better’ because it does not have these implications.
This is all the further I am able to get. I see what Abram is advocating for and I understand why the lifestyle he advocates for may solve some of the problems that ‘modern’ living may cause, but IT’S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Metropolises are a fact of life. Despite the way Abram paints the landscape of America, the landscapes are alive in cities too, full of smells and sounds as overwhelming as those in the landscape of the Others. Human civilization can exist on its own, and it’s not all that bad.
It’s the idea of animal rights that gets to me. I think that Abram is right – inherent in our trend toward consolidated human society is a lessening in our awareness of animals, and often times a subsequent ‘mistreatment’ of animals (I am reminded here of the Thomas Pynchon quote that I will end this post with).
I don’t see any clear answer, though. We can’t all live on the edges of society, and, given the lifestyle implied in the ridiculous increase of the human population in the last century or so, our modern view of animals really seems to be the only sensible one. Given the following quote, I don’t want this to be the conclusion that I come to, but I did not find a viable alternative in Abram.
“Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity — most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to being with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.”
- Thomas Pynchon –
Robert Locke
ReplyDeleteDavid Abram’s, The Spell of the Sensuous, was a much better read then the last paper. I must say that I truly enjoyed the “others” concept of the nature of the animal. It is nice to see that some cultures see a greater connection between the shamanism of humanity and the power that the belief that animal powers have over people.
The concept of shamanism is quite old and the need for the shaman or shamanists to hold a little fear over the others in the village help the shaman to maintain his or her preserved supernatural powers and a greater understanding of their world and how animals are needed to help guide and support humans. I know this is a little off topic, but I would like to know a little more about how totems would fit into this class. I am sure that I could do a little anthropological research and find out. Would animal totems be a good topic for the final paper?
Good post Keith. But i'd like to take this opportunity to point out your reception of Abram's call for living on the edge of civilization.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be viewing his call for change strictly in terms of locality. This may indeed be how he intended us to recieve his 'call'. But this isn't how I read his statement. I read it as a symbolic representation of the mindset he'd like us to attain.
I'm not sure which way he actually intended, but if he did use it as a reference to location then yes, I agree that it makes no sense.