The Reenchantment of the World

by Morris Berman

  The image of the vortex -- what would later be called, in cybernetic terminology, the concept of circuitry -- was, like the argument of the primacy of form over matter, essential to Bateson's repudiation of chromosome theory. If an organism is an integral whole, a system rather than a mere assemblage of "characters," variation is a phenomenon that has serious consequences, for it must precipitate a coordinate change throughout the entire organism. In the nineteenth century, the French physiologist Claude Bernard had spoken of the 'milieu int&eacue;rieur' (internal environment) of an organism -- an environment that Walter Cannon, in "The Wisdom of the Body" (1932), saw as being maintained by a process he called "homeostasis." This notion was William Bateson's central holistic principle. He wrote to his sister Anna in 1888:

  I believe now that it is an axiomatic truth that no variation, however small, can occur in any part without other variation occurring in correlation to it in all other parts; or, rather, that no system, in which a variation of one part had occurred without such correlated variation in all other parts, could continue to be a system.

  Initial variation thus acts as an environmental change, setting off a chain reaction throughout the "circuit" or "vortex." Some time must elapse before the organism is once again a system. As Gregory Bateson would argue years later, any system, whether a society, culture, organism, or ecosystem, which manages to maintain itself is rational from its own point of view; even insanity obeys a "logic" of self-preservation. As the years went by, William Bateson became increasingly convinced that the interrelations of the parts of a system were subject to geometric control just as concentric waves in a pool, and that the key to the laws of form involved finding the "accommodatory mechanism," or homeostatic prinople. Furthermore, he guessed that this "mechanism," which he believed coordinated the organism as a whole, would be a periodic phenomenon, like a wave. During the mid-1920s, the father began to draw the son into his research. They coauthored an article in which this "undulatory hypothesis" was extended to the study of partridges in an attempt to explain how rhythmical banding develops and spreads over the organism, even down to the tips of the feathers. The "analogy with the propagation of wave-motion must, in part, at least," wrote the authors, "be a true guide."8 Whether this hypothesis is valid or not, it is clear that the concepts and methodology developed by his father formed the matrix of Gregory's early scientific experience. "I picked up a vague mystical feeling," wrote the latter in 1940,

  that we must look for the same sort of processes in all fields of natural phenomena -- that we might expect to find the same sort of laws at work in the structure of a crystal as in the structure of society, or that the segmentation of an earthworm might really be comparable to the process by which basalt pillars are formed. >>Fractal geometry

  Above all, it was William Bateson's attitude toward reason itself which shaped so much of Gregory's scientific and emotional consciousness. Reason, writes Coleman, was for William not the mere Newtonian shuffling of atomic sense impressions but "the intuitive grasp of essential relations." He saw the vortex atom, or any such scientific model, in the same way he saw an oriental print. It had conceptual wholeness. It inspired the imagination to an understanding not attainable by rational calculation. William Bateson saw this sort of intuitive insight as evidence for the view that there was a limit to the truth of any scientific explanation, and that there was a deeper level of reality (Mind) which lay beyond its reach. This notion of necessary epistemological incompleteness, that the Mind can never know itself, is perhaps the crux of Gregory Bateson's whole metaphysics. And if this is the rock on which modern science has finally foundered, it has also proven to be, in Gregory Bateson's hands, the foundation on which a new science might be built.9

  To turn, then, to Gregory's work, we can summarize his intellectual development as follows. In the 1920s he studied biology and anthropology, roughly following in his father's footsteps at Cambridge. The 1930s were devoted to anthropological fieldwork, first among the Iatmul people of New Guinea, which resulted in the publication of Naven (1936), then among the Balinese, where he collaborated with his then wife, Margaret Mead. Bateson served with the American Office of Strategic Services during the War, and then took part in the postwar Macy Conferences at which modern cybernefic theory was formulated. Soon after he coauthored "Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry" (1951) with psychiatrist Jurgen Ruesch, and spent roughly the next decade as an ethnologist at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, California. It was here that he had an opportunity to work with alcoholics and schizophrenics, applying the concepts of cybernetic theory to these "diseases" and generating a novel approach to both of them. This work, as well as his work on interspecies communication during the 1960s, eventually enabled him to elaborate a new theory of learning. Finally, the 1970s were characterized primarily by the attempt to integrate the insights from his previous investigations with a revision of Darwinian theory, a new approach to the problem of evolution resulting in the publication of "Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity" (1979). With this work Bateson had come full circle, returning to his original interest in biology after having completed one of the most creative intellectual journeys ever undertaken by a single individual. For the purposes of exposition, I shall devote the present chapter to the work in anthropology, ethnology, learning theory, and abnormal psychology, deal with Batesonian epistemology and its ethical implications in Chapter 8, and devote part of Chapter 9 to a critique of Batesonian holism as a future metaphysics.10

  As Bateson explains, certain biological analogies he learned in the 1920s, and his fathers approach to the natural world, led to his study of the Iatmul people of New Guinea. Bateson's investigation focused on the transvestite ceremony known as "naven," but the nature of the ceremony itself proved to be much less important than the fact that the investigation uncovered, in Bateson's eyes, the nature of scientific explanation itself, and ended in the formulation of a model that might explain the essential character of all mental interaction. Since this model and the methodology that generated it contain the seeds of many of Bateson's later theories of social and natural phenomena, it is important to examine his investigation of naven in some detail.11

  Naven is a ritual performed by the Iatmul in which the men dress like women and vice versa, and then act out certain roles normally associated with the opposite sex. The occasions for naven are the achievements of the 'laua,' or sisters child, and the celebration itself is the responsibility of the 'wau,' or mother's brother. Hence the essential relationship is between uncle and niece or nephew, but naven is in fact performed by "classificatory" 'waus,' not by the actual maternal uncle. "Classificatory" 'waus' are relatives related to the 'laua' in a matrilinear way, for example, the great-uncle or male relatives who are in a type of brother-in-law relationship to the father of the 'laua.'

  There is a whole list of standard cultural acts that call for naven, acts which are most important when performed by a boy or girl for the first time. These include (for a boy) the killing of an enemy or foreigner; the killing of certain animals, or the planting of certain plants; using certain types of tools or musical instruments; traveling to another village and returning; marriage; possession by a shamanic spirit, and so on. For a girl the list includes catching fish, cooking sago, or bearing a child, among other instances.

  In the ceremony itself, the classificatory 'waus' put on bedraggled female costumes, take the name of "mother," and then go searching for their "child," the 'laua.' The ritual pantomime might consist of dressing and acting like decrepit widows, and deliberately stumbling about, while the children of the village follow with peals of laughter. When women play a part, the (classificatory) aunts may beat their nephew or niece when his or her achievements are being celebrated. Unlike the men, the women do not dress in filthy garments, but put on the most fashionable male attire. They may paint their faces white with sulfur -- the privilege of men who have committed homicide -- and carry male ornaments. They are referred to by male family terminology (father,
eider brother, etc.), and affect the bravado commonly associated with male behavior among the Iatmul, while the men act in a self-humiliating manner. The ceremony may also include a pantomime reversal of overt sexual activity. Bateson observed one ceremony in which the 'mbora,' or 'wau's' wife, dressed as a male and simulated the actions of copulation with her husband, taking the male-superior role; Sometimes the 'wau' will pantomime giving birth to me 'laua.'

  From a Western point of view the whole ceremony, with its deliberate confusion of sexual roles and attire, seems totally incomprehensible. What could the Iatmul possibly think they are doing? In trying to answer this, Bateson followed his hunch that the difference between the radial and transverse segmentation of the zoological world had a social analogue. It turned out that the larger Iatmul villages were unstable, always on the point of fissioning along patrilineal lines: father broke away and took his son with him. Unlike the Western situation in which the break is essentially heretical -- an ideological difference -- the Iatmul situation is schismatic. The breakaway group forms another colony, but with the same set of norms as the parent community. The Western model of heresy is similar to metamerism or dynamic asymmetry, whereas the Iatmul model is analogous to radial segmentation, in which the successive units are repetitive.

  The problem of social fission, said Bateson, becomes clearer when we realize that the analogy can be stretched to a comparison of how social control is exerted. The mind's eye might conceive of a radially symmetrical animal as being centrifugal, without any controlling center, since the emphasis in the pattern seems to be in the surrounding segments. The Iatmul are similarly centrifugal, because they have no law, no central established authority that imposes sanctions in the name of the whole community. Offences always take place between two segments, and social sanctions are "lateral" as well. Western society, on the other hand, emphasizes the state versus the citizen. If I rob my neighbor he may be angry, but it is "the Law" that goes after me and takes action against me. If he should attempt a lateral sanction and decide to take the law into his own hands, he might find himself in as much trouble as I am. Because of this high degree of centralization, Western societies can accommodate a new group with new norms only if it is relatively unobtrusive about its existence. Should it advertise its difference from the center, or assault it, that center will launch a determined counterattack. Iatmul society has no such center, and no such rigidly defined norms. Norms for the Iatmul are seen as conventions to be broken -- if one wields sufficient personal power. And since male charisma, so essential to Iatmul sexual ethos, is very much admired, the communities are always on the verge of fissioning along patrilineal lines.

  It is thus clear that, in social terms, the naven ceremony makes perfect sense. If schisms occur patrilineally, anything that strengthens affinal ties (those that result from marriage) reduces the chances of schismatic break. The affinal links are the weak points in the whole Iatmul social organization, and thus the naven ceremonies, which reinforce and even exaggerate these links, serve to shore up community integration. In fact, without the naven ceremonies, Iatmul villages could not be as large as they are.

  Bateson's explanation of the social meaning of naven is brilliant, but the real inspiration here lies in the fact that he never took his own explanation seriously. Given that naven serves the function indicated, can anyone really believe that the powerful emotive energy evident in the ceremonies is explicable in sociological terms? Would anyone seriously wish to assert that transvestism and ritual copulation are performed for the express purpose of preventing social fission? Bateson was aware that this type of explanation lacked an understanding of the motives of its participants, and he realized that the clue to such motives lay in the "ethos" of the culture, its overall emotional climate. If one wanted the ethos, which was as much a matter of value as it was of fact, one would have to formulate a new definition of scientific methodology. The strictly functional/analytical approach is correct in some rational or pragmatic sense, but it misses the whole point. As his father had once written, it was easier for a scientist to solve a difficulty than to feel it. Gregory had found a situation in which feeling and solving were two sides of the same coin.

  What to use as a model? As much as Bateson was impressed by the analytical work of famous contemporaries such as Bronislaw Malinowski and Edward Evans-Pritchard, his real mentor was the great anthropologist Ruth Benedict, whose concept of "configuration" pretty much corresponded to what he was to call the sum of ethos and "eidos." Ethos was the general emotional tone of a culture, eidos the underlying cognitive ("logical") system that a culture possessed. The "concepts," wrote Bateson,

  are in all cases based upon an holistic rather than a crudely analytic study of the culture. The thesis is that when a culture is considered as a whole certain emphases emerge built up from the juxtaposition of the diverse traits of which the culture is composed.12

  Hence the abstract property, the "feel" or ethos, arose from the arrangement of concrete elements. It could not be located in the same way that the elements could, for it was of what he would later call a higher "logical type" than they. A different juxtaposition would necessarily mean a different culture, even if all the elements were identical. In this way, said Bateson, we can state that a culture affects the psychology of its individuals without also stating that a Hegelian 'Zeitgeist,' or Jungian "group mind," is somehow at work. Following the example of Ruth Benedict, he continued,

  I shall speak of culture as standardising the psychology of the individuals. This indeed is probably one of the fundamental axioms of the holistic approach in all the sciences: that the object studied -- be it an animal, a plant or a community -- is composed of units, whose properties are in some way standardised by their position in the whole organisation. . . . Culture will affect their scale of values. It will affect the manner in which their instincts are organised into sentiments to respond differently to the various stimuli of life.

  As Bateson admitted, the method was deliberately circular: you determined the system of sentiments normal to the culture (the ethos), then invoked it as an explanation for institutions and behavior. Such circularity, he held, should not be a problem, because it could be avoided only by taking a functional, or sociological, view of the system, and this told you nothing about the motives of individuals. If you wished to know motives, you had to put yourself inside the system, and to do this was inevitably to plunge into circularity. There was nothing mysterious about this situation, as even Gödel's theorem showed. Our behavior was no less real for being self-validating.

  What, then, would constitute an adequate analysis of Iatmul ethos, and what might this analysis tell us about their reasons for performing naven? Much of the ethos of both Western and Asian societies arises out of social differentiation, especially that between classes or castes. How one behaves in the presence of another, the emotional tone one adopts, is at least partly conditioned by relative social position, the importance of which varies from one society to the next. In Iatmul culture, on the other hand, there are no social classes and differentiation occurs according to sexuality. Hence, Bateson's chapters on Iatmul ethos are necessarily discussions of sexual ethos.13 He asks: How do the men act with each other, how do the women act with each other, and how do the two sexes act in mixed company?

  The dominant characteristic of male behavior in public situations, whether in mixed or all-male company, is pride. For Iatmul men life is virtually a theatrical performance, and activities performed in the ceremonial house incline toward the spectacular and the violent. The house is both a place of ritual and a place for debating and brawling, but it is this latter aspect that largely prevails. As Bateson notes, in the Iatmul mind the ceremonial house is "hot," pervaded by "a mixture of pride and histrionic self-consciousness." Entry into the house is marked by some bit of theater: the man coming into public view will swagger or react with buffoonery. Just as the society has no law or central authority, it has no hierarchy of power, no chieftains. What it
has, instead, is a "continual emphasis on self-assertion." Standing is attained by way of the achievements of war, shamanism, esoteric knowledge, and also by playing up to the public.

  This behavior is especially marked during public debates that seek to resolve some point of conflict. "The speakers," writes Bateson, "work themselves up to a high pitch of superficial excitement, all the time tempering their violence with histrionic gesture and alternating in their tone between harshness and buffoonery." A speaker might threaten to rape members of the opposition, for example, and pantomime his threat with an obscene dance. When some speaker finally manages an insult too great for the opposition to tolerate (usually by making fun of their totemic ancestors), a brawl erupts which may lead to heavy injuries, and eventually to feuds that involve killing by sorcery.