46. Lucien Goldmann, Immanuel Kant, trans. Robert Black (London: New Left Books, 1971; orig, German publ. 1945, rev. ed. [French] 1967), p. 122; reprinted with permission of the publisher.
47. William Irwin Thompson, "Notes on an Emerging Planet," in Michael Katz et al., eds., Earth's Answer (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 211.
48. Ibid., p. 213. I have fudged a bit here; Thompson is referring not to his own statement, but to that of Jonas Salk in his book, The Survival of the Wisest. Unfortunately, there is not much difference between the two. Thompson's own statement necessarily involves a distinction between shepherds and flocks, which he does not seem to see.
49. Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976).
50. Bruce Brown, Marx, Freud, and the Critique of Everyday Life (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), p. 17.
51. Horkhelmer, Eclipse of Reason, pp. 122-23.
52. See the two articles by Dasmann in The Ecologist for 1976, cited in note 6 to this chapter.
53. Gorsline and House, Future Primitive. Berg defines a bioregion as "a geographical area united by particular natural characteristics (plants, animals, soils, watersheds, climate) and by human influences that bear on the region" (personal communication).
54. Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1972).
55. Robert Curry discusses the map in "Rainhabiting the Earth: Life Support and the Future Primitive," Truck, no. 18 (1978), pp. 17-40. The map is reproduced on page 190 of the same issue, and was originally part of Occasional Paper no. 9 of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (Morges, Switzerland). Curry's article may also be found in John Carins, ed., The Recovery of Damaged Ecosystems (Blacksburg, Va.: Virginia Polytechnic University Press, 1976).
56. Berg and Dasmann, Reinhabiting California, pp. 217-18.
57. Ibid., p. 217.
58. Mander, Four Arguments, pp. 104-5. Blake was making the same point when he wrote: "Earth and all you behold: tho' it appears without, it is within."
Although this distinction between nature-based religions and guruism is crucial, ecology is probably not by itself a sufficient guarantee against fascism, as Daniel Cohn-Bendit points out in a recent interview in Le Sauvage (No. 57, septembre 1978, p. 11). In June 1978, he notes, one Hamburg ecological party was openly fascist, taking the line of "Blood and Soil," and combining its anti-nuclear stance with a platform that was antigay, antifeminist, antiSemitic, etc., and highly nationalistic. Although, as I have indicated, regionalism is intrinsically opposed to nationalism, in practice the line gets somewhat slippery. This was certainly the case in France, where regionalist proponents such as Charles Maurras wound up supporting the Vichy government.
59. Gorsline and House, Future Primitive.
60. Wilden, System and Structure, pp. 21, 25; Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Phase," trans. Jean Roussel, New Left Review, no. 51 (1968; orig. French version 1949), pp. 71-77.
61. Robert BIy, "I Came Out of the Mother Naked," in Sleepers Joining Hands (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 29-50.
62. Homer, The Odyssey, Book XI.
63. Rebel in the Soul was translated most recently by Bika Reed (New York: Inner Traditions International, 1978), and excerpts are reprinted here with the permission of the publisher. The first translation into a European language was into German by A. Erman in 1896, and there have been a number of others, for example, John A. Wilson's translation, "A Dispute Over Suicide," in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3d ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969; orig. publ. 1950), pp. 405-7, or Hans Goedicke, The Report About the Dispute of a Man with his Ba (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970).
Julian Jaynes discusses the document on pp. 193-94 of Origins of Consciousness, arguing that its language is not what the translators took it to be, namely genuine self-dialogue. Thus he writes that "all translations of this astounding text are full of modern mental impositions," whereas what is really going on is auditory hallucination. Though it is true that there are as many translations as there are translators, I believe Jaynes is somewhat confused. He argues that the voice of the soul here cannot be a modern one, in that bicameral consciousness mandates that we translate it as auditory hallucination; yet he also argues that the document dates from a period of societal breakdown, and that it was in such periods that bicameral consciousness also broke down and ego consciousness emerged. But this means precisely that gods, or auditory hallucinations, are converted into selves, or interior voices. For this reason, I think we can take the contemporary translations as accurate.
64. Paul Shepard, The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, pp. 125, 283.
Glossary
Alembic: Egg-shaped glass container with a tube extending from the top. A standard piece of alchemical laboratory equipment in which many of the essential operations of alchemy, especially distillation, took place.
Analogue knowledge: Also called iconic communication. The range of nonverbal (excepting poetry), affective communication and perception by which we come to know the world, including fantasy, dreams, art, body language, gesture, and intonation. Contrasted with 'Digital knowledge,' which is verbal-rational and abstract. Cf. Dialectical reason, Kinesics, Primary process.
Animism: Belief that everything, including what we commonly regard as inert material objects, is alive, possesses an indwelling spirit.
Archaic tradition: Used in this work interchangeably with the following terms: esoteric tradition, sympathy/antipathy theory, Hermetic tradition, Homeric or pre-Homeric mentality, mimesis (qv), animism (qv), totemism, participation, original participation, gnosticism, doctrine of signatures, and participating consciousness.
Strictly speaking, these terms are not identical. For example, the Hermetic tradition includes alchemy, which was probably not practiced during the pre-Homeric period, and which certainly postdates animism and totemism. Nor is all participating consciousness necessarily original (animistic).
However, common to all these terms is the notion that in a literal or figurative sense, everything in the universe is alive and interrelated, and that we know the world through direct identification with it, or immersion in its phenomena (subject/object merger). The archaic tradition, however, is not one of pure phenomenology, for its assumes the existence of natural laws or relationships that human beings can learn as a science. Among the most ancient of these sciences is totemism, the perceptible manifestation of indwelling spirits by icons or carved images. The medieval science of these correspondences -- whereby plants, animals, minerals, parts of the body, and so on were seen as consciously displaying the influence of particular stars or planets -- was called the doctrine of signatures. Sympathetic magic was also based on the theory that certain things naturally went with (were sympathetic to) certain other things.
Atomism: The doctrine, which includes material atomism, that any phenomenon or object is no greater or less than the sum of its parts. It assumes a phenomenon is explained when it has been broken down into its constituent parts, which can then (at least theoretically) be reassembled. Contrasted with Holism (qv).
Cartesian paradigm: Dominant mode of consciousness in the West from the seventeenth century to the present. Defines as real that which can be analyzed or explained by the scientific method, a set of procedures combining experiment, quantification, atomism (qv), and the mechanical philosophy. The world is seen as a vast collection of matter and motion, obeying mathematical laws.
Circuitry: In cybernetic theory, the interrelation of parts, or of message exchange. The principle of circuitry holds that no variation can occur in one part of the system or circuit without setting off a chain reaction that is felt at every other point.
Coding: The programming or standardization of a person by his or her culture into its ethos (qv) and eidos; also, the program or mode of organization of the culture at large. See
also Learning II, Tacit knowing, Gestalt, Paradigm. In cybernetic theory, coding refers to the translation of information into a set of symbols for meaningful communication.
Context: Stated or unstated set of rules within which an event or relationship takes place.
Cybernetics: Study of human control functions and the machines designed to replace them. More broadly, the science of messages, information exchange and communication.
Deutero-learning: see Learning II.
Developmentals: Incomplete psychic structures, such as ego and language, that are innate in the human being in embryonic or potential form. In order to be realized, their program of biological development must interact with particular social or cultural experiences at a specific stage in the life cycle.
Dialectical reason: Mode of analysis that sees things and their opposites as related. In this view, love and hate, or resistance and attachment, are not opposites but two sides of the same coin. The logic of dreams, or primary process (qv), is dialectical.
Digital knowledge: see Analogue knowledge.
Eidos: see Ethos.
Entropy: Measure of randomness, or disorganization. The opposite is negative entropy, or information. A system is said to have meaning when it gives us information, and it has such meaning when pattern, or redundancy, is present.
Epistemology: Branch of philosophy that attempts to determine the nature of knowing, or what the human mind can legitimately hope to discover about the objective world. The study of how the mind knows what it knows.
Ethos: Overall emotional tone of a culture; its affective paradigm (qv), or system of sentiments, as opposed to the 'Eidos,' which is its cognitive paradigm, or intellectual world view. Eidos thus refers to the reality system of a culture, whereas ethos approximates the "etiquette," or norms of cultural behavior.
Fact-value distinction: Consciousness of the modern scientific era, according to which the good and the true are not necessarily related; value or meaning cannot be derived from data or empirical knowledge.
Feedback: In cybernetic theory, the use of part or all of the output of a system (e.g., a system of temperature control in a house) as input for another phase. Negative or self-corrective feedback, which is obtained by feeding the results of past actions back into a system, enables the system to maintain homeostasis (qv); such a situation is also called optimization. In a runaway situation, the feedback is positive, or escalating, building to a climax over time. In this situation the system is attempting to maximize certain variables rather than optimize them. Cf. Circuitry.
Figuration: Formation of mental pictures or images from the data of pure sensations. If I smell coffee and the picture of a cup of coffee suddenly comes to mind, I can be said to have figurated it.
Gestalt: A totality of interlocking imagery or concepts having specific properties that cannot be derived from its component parts. A pattern or world view that possesses a certain unity. Cf. Holism.
Holism: Also called synergy, or the synergistic principle. Holds that a collection of entities or objects can generate a larger reality not analyzable in terms of the components themselves; that the reality of any phenomenon is usually larger then the sum of its parts.
Homeostasis: Tendency of any system to maintain or preserve itself, to return to status quo if disturbed. A homeostatic system is steady state: it seeks to optimize rather than maximize the variables within it. Cf. Circuitry, Feedback.
Iconic communication: see Analogue knowledge.
Immanence: Doctrine that God is present within the phenomena we see, rather than external to them. Pantheism, animism (qv), and Batesonian holism are all variations on this theme. Contrasted with Transcendence, which sees God in heaven, external to the phenomena around us. Cartesianism and mainstream Judeo-Christian thinking fall into this category.
Individuation: According to Carl Jung, a process of personal growth and integration whereby a person evolves his true center, or Self, as opposed to his ego. The ego, or persona, is seen as the center ofconscious life, whereas the Self is the result of bringing the conscious mind into harmony with the unconscious.
Kinesics: Study of body language and nonverbal communication, including posture, gesture, and movement, as clues to human personality and interaction.
Lapis-Christ parallel: Analogy between Christ and the work of alchemy. This was part of the claim, occasionally made in the Middle Ages, that alchemy was the inner content of Christianity, and that the manufacture of the philosopher's stone ('lapis') was equivalent to the Christ-experience.
Learning I: The simple solution of a specific problem.
Learning II: Progressive change in the rate of Learning I. Understanding the nature of the context (qv) in which the problems posed in Learning I exist; learning the rules of the game. Equivalent to paradigm (qv) formation.
Learning III: An experience in which a person suddenly realizes the arbitrary nature of his or her own paradigm (qv), or Learning II, and goes through a profound reorganization of personality as a result. This change is usually experienced as a religious conversion, and has been called by many names: "satori," God-realization, oceanic feeling, and so on.
Meristic differentiation: Repetition of like parts or segments along the axis of an animal, as in the earthworm.
Metacommunication: Communication about communication. "What is the nature of this conversation?" is a metacommunicative statement.
Metamerism: Dynamic asymmetry, or serial difference, between the successive segments of the parts of an animal; the claw of the lobster, for example. The animal displaying metamerism generally has most of its parts similar to each other, as in meristic differentiation, but with some marked by special asymmetric development.
Mimesis: Greek word for imitation, and the root of English words such as "mime" and "mimicry." More broadly, submitting to the spell of a performer, or becoming immersed in events; the state of consciousness in which the subject/object dichotomy breaks down and the person feels identified with what he or she is perceiving. Also called participating consciousness. It includes original participation, but is not necessarily animistic. See Archaic tradition.
Nonparticipating consciousness: State of mind in which the knower, or subject "in here," sees himself as radically disparate from the objects he confronts, which he sees as being "out there." In this view, the phenomena of the world remain the same whether or not we are present to observe them, and knowledge is acquired by recognizing a distance between ourselves and nature. Also called subject/object dichotomy.
Original participation: see Animism.
Paradigm: A world view or mode of perception; a model around which reality is organized. Cf. Gestalt.
Participation, or Participating consciousness: see Archaic tradition, 'Mimesis.'
Prima materia, or Materia prima: Literally, first matter. In alchemy, it was the formless substance that resulted when a metal was dissolved, and from which the alchemical work of coagulation or recrystallization was begun. In allegory or personal growth (see Individuation), the stage of chaos from which a new form or personality will eventually congeal.
Primary process: Thought patterns associated with the unconscious, such as dream imagery, as opposed to rational ego-consciousness, or secondary process. See Archaic tradition.
Principle of incompleteness: Theory that most of our knowledge of the world is tacit in nature (see Tacit knowing) and thus that it has an ineffable basis, as a result of which it cannot be described in any rationally coherent sense. Furthermore, the principle sees the process of reality itself as ontologically incomplete. This theory is directly opposed to the Cartesian paradigm which holds that the mind can know all of reality; and also to the Freudian view, that all unconscious material can and should be made conscious.
Proto-learning: see Learning I.
Radical relativism: A possible consequence of the sociology of knowledge, that if all realities or methodologies are a product of specific historical circumstances, then all truth is relative to its
individual context and there is no absolute or transcultural truth. This also implies that any given epistemology or world view is as accurate, or no less accurate, than any other.
The Reenchantment of the World Page 41