The aboriginal Dreamtime is perceived by the modern mind, wrongly, as a prerational stage of development. What if, instead of a prerational stage, the Dreamtime is really a transrational state? An awareness of the subtle earth lines and fields, conscious interactions between human beings and seasonal cycles, reflected in astronomical movements, initiatory traditions that cultivate higher wisdom—what if human cultures before the advent of city-states and hierarchical monotheism lived within the space of this Dreamtime, a transrational state of consciousness rather than a prerational state? Something very curious that happened in Australia, about 3,000 years ago, suggests this is so.
The aborigines of Australia are noted for not developing and using tools. They have historically been nomadic gatherers shifting from region to region with the changing seasons. Archaeologists consider tool use a sign of civilization, a development out of a more primitive state. About 3,000 years ago, tool use did begin to develop among the aborigines. Artifacts survive that tell a story, one with a surprising twist. Tools and technology began to spread from group to group and then, suddenly, it stopped. The tools stopped being made. Why this odd turn of affairs? Wouldn’t any human culture welcome the develop of technology? Robert Lawlor, in his book Voices of the First Day, has suggested a plausible explanation based on his deep work with the Dreamtime denizens of Australia. Lawlor suggests that the ancient aborigines realized that tools and technology would lead them down a road to a place where the Dreamtime did not exist. Projecting meaning onto abstract artifacts, the creation of categories and labels, the whole process, would draw a veil over the grand, holistic, transrational domain of the Dreamtime. They made a rational decision to not limit their minds to the domain of material objects and their clever uses, to not leave the Dreamtime. I suspect that all human populations once lived within the Dreamtime state, what we might call a multidimensional or holistic state of being.
This fascinating scenario tells us much about the modern world’s assumptions and biases, and exposes the myth of progress—the belief that the modern world is in all ways more sophisticated and evolved than our ancient ancestors. We have our stereotypes of grunting cave dwellers that preclude us from accepting this scenario. This is, interestingly, yet another example of the power of abstract image-objects (stereotypes) to delude and occlude direct perception of reality, of the thing-in-itself. From the Dreamtime perspective of transrational consciousness, history has been regress, not progress; we kicked ourselves out of Paradise.
Driving out nature with a pitchfork is like banishing ourselves from the Dreamtime. This is the deeper meaning of the adage. It’s a declaration of a fiction, an abstraction, a lie. We do, in fact, live here on earth, within its multiple fields of energy and seasons. It is our home; we emerge from it and return to it. To have a transcendent or transrational perspective is not to deny the body of the earth and the life that it gives, but to embrace it fully and honor it with reverence. The ego resists this because it sees in it a chaos it can’t control, a future dissolution of itself that it can’t prevent, and a sovereign being much larger than itself. Resisting this at all costs, the ego envisions leaving the earth, jettisoning itself into outer space, which it believes is a further developmental step toward eternity. Nasr wrote:
The sense of domination over nature and a materialistic conception of nature on the part of modern man are combined, moreover, with a lust and sense of greed which makes an ever greater demand upon the environment. Incited by the elusive dream of economic progress, considered as an end in itself, a sense of the unlimited power of man and his possibilities is developed, together with the belief, particularly well developed in America, of boundless and illimitable possibilities within things, as if the world of forms was not finite and bound by the very limits of those forms.3
Consider the promotional campaign of NASA in the 1990s, a poster showing that well-known sequence of Darwinian evolution from hunched proto-ape to erect, well-shaven, Modern Man. The words read: “What makes us the most intelligent species on earth is knowing we must leave it to survive.”4 Sadly, such a goal of Darwinian technocracy is just one more step of abstraction away from eternity, a catchy new formulation of the same ego-based pathology that has led us, and the earth, right into the crapper.
But you cannot banish forever what is part of yourself. And time comes around in the seasons of change when the renewal of the full potential of the human mind, and human society, will be the choice made by those who are conscious.
PARTNERSHIPS AND DOMINATORS
We are told that human beings emerged from the primates some eight million years ago. Our understanding of evolution and our attitudes toward it are informed as much by vague stereotypes as by science. The image of our ancestors as grunting uni-brow ogres in caves does not reflect the truth. Human beings living during the Neolithic Magdalenian period in Europe (ca. 17,000-10,000 BC) had arts, trade, music, and burial rites.5 If language is an indication of the level of mental sophistication, why is it that the most ancient language, Sanskrit, is many times more complex than modern English? The Aztecs are frequently portrayed in the media as atavistic savages, and many unsuspecting viewers accept this portrayal without question. How is it, then, that the Aztec language, Nahuatl, is more nuanced, expressive, and adaptable than English, capable of producing meta-concept compound words running over a hundred letters?
We are told that human beings are basically male dominated, hierarchical, and aggressively territorial, just like our closest genetic cousins, the primates. We see our own civilization’s propensity for endless war in the violence and alpha-male dominance observed in chimpanzee populations. It seems to be an obvious fact of nature that we would retain instincts and behaviors forged through millions of years of evolutionary biology. Our institutions and foreign policies are indeed oriented toward the chimp goal of dominance and setting up control hierarchies. Chimpocracy (primate politics) reigns in religion, business, families, and politics. Domination is a core principle at work on every level of our civilization. Why is this? Is it really because such behavior is hardwired into our genes, courtesy of our close cousins the chimps?
Certainly there are, and have been, populations of human beings who live peacefully and cooperatively among themselves and their neighbors. The Australian aborigines, as mentioned, rejected warfare and tool use to remain living in the seasonally shifting unity consciousness of the Dreamtime. Why does it thus seem we are fated to be, on the whole, aggressive dominators? Is it evolutionary fate, or a choice? Is it our nature or our training? Individual human beings and small groups are certainly capable of compassion, caring, egalitarian sharing, and mutually beneficial problem solving. Why, then, are our largest and most prominent social institutions compelled to abide by the driving force of aggressive imperialism, self-interest, and territorial resource domination?
Social historian Riane Eisler studied and wrote a great deal about the development of dominator styles of culture in her book The Chalice and the Blade. She found that history, as commonly understood, begins with the advent of the dominator style and the subsequent control of resources with the development of city-states in the Middle East. But this particular mode of culture is not the norm; it does not faithfully represent the larger span of Homo sapiens’ presence on the planet, which stretches back some 200,000 years.
Prior to the advent of “the dominator mode” in about 5000 BC, there was a lot going on. This earlier phase was simply labeled “prehistory” and until the work of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas wasn’t acknowledged or explored by historians because the cultural groups in that period behaved very differently from the later dominator cultures. Eisler called these cultures “partnership” cultures, and in many ways they exhibited traits and behaviors the very opposite of the dominator cultures. An emphasis on peaceful relations, cooperative strategies, expressive art, pottery, painting, poetry, mutually beneficial trade, religious rituals at birth and death, even early script has been identified. A pantheon of animal,
sky, and earth deities centering on the archetype of the Great Mother as a transformational mystery is a key to understanding these early partnership cultures.
Eisler observes that the partnership style is evident in human societies for the great majority of the human presence on this planet. The dominator style that has typified the recent 5,000 years, increasingly and globally so into modern times, is an exception. Or, let us say, it’s not the only option. These two different cultural styles represent two poles of behavior that human beings are capable of expressing and formalizing into the defining institutions and attitudes of entire civilizations. The partnership style tends to organize around reverence and awe for the principle of an ever-renewing Great Mother—Nature in all its multiple aspects, experienced as a sacred unity. Human beings in this mind-set perceive themselves as participating in the great mystery play of life and being. The dominator style, on the other hand, is organized around male gods and rulers, man-made laws wielding punitive control, and hierarchies of power structure. In this mind-set, nature is artificially divided up into separate conceptual parts that can be owned and controlled. In this view, separate states of being and the different domains of nature are not perceived from the larger perspective of a unifying whole. An abstract division has taken place and the sense of the whole has been lost. This is, again, humanity ejecting itself from Eden, from the Dreamtime.
Although gender is evident in these two styles, Eisler takes the high road and her terminology, partnership and dominator, is intended to remove gender from the equation. This is an important distinction. A common mistake in understanding these ideas is to think the choice is between patriarchy and matriarchy, in which matriarchy is simply the old male power structure and tendency to dominance wearing a dress. The partnership mode, however, is fundamentally different from the dominance mode. Compared to the dominator mode, it is far more compassionate, humane, relational, communicative, integrative, and selfless.
If we remember our previous discussion of the dialectic between Seven Macaw and One Hunahpu in The Popol Vuh, we might begin to suspect what these two modes of culture are really about. Seven Macaw is about ego and gives rise to the modern crisis that is fueled by a narcissistic pathology. One Hunahpu represents the consciousness renewed by reconnection with the source and mystery of life, consciousness returned to right relationship with the One, the whole. The return of the partnership style, after the demise of Seven Macaw, is one manifestation of the second part of the Maya prophecy for 2012. But it requires that human beings choose to make it happen, choose to sacrifice the illusions of pathological ego dominance, and work to remake themselves as well as the world at large.
A lingering question remains: Why do these two tendencies in human beings exist?
DIVEST THE CHIMP, AWAKEN THE BONOBO
Let us return to the chimps. Not too long ago, evolutionary biologists considered the savannah baboon to be the closest living cousin of human beings. That primate had adapted to the same ecological conditions that prehumans faced when they descended out of the trees and entered the plains and savannahs. The search for the common ancestor, the point at which human beings diverged, was loaded with mystique and meaning. Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the taxonomic categorizing of genus, species, and subspecies into related family branches, dictated that the primates were our closest living ancestors.
Among the primates are several species that also bear close relations to human behavior, and behavior was indeed considered to be a relevant indicator. With the work of Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, in the 1970s the chimpanzees became the preferred model. Traits not observed in the baboons were present among the chimps, including pack hunting, tool use, food sharing, power politics, and primitive warfare. This occurred before the breakthrough perspectives of Marija Gimbutas and Riane Eisler were given credence, when male aggression and dominance were assumed to be defining, hardwired characteristics of human societies. This trait is observed in both baboons and chimpanzees, so the assumption of male superiority among all of the common human ancestors was not threatened. Indeed, the chimps provided classic examples of male power politics.
The chimps received support from advances in DNA testing, in which it was determined that they shared 98 percent of the genetic heritage of human beings—as close as a fox is to a dog. But another primate was lingering on the sidelines, one that was causing hushed whispers among the pri matologists. The bonobo is as closely related to human beings as the chimps are, but their social behavior is markedly different.
Frans de Waal has pioneered a clear understanding of this new kid on the primate block, after years of observing bonobo groups. The results are startling and upset cherished notions of human nature. The bonobo species is best characterized as female-centered, egalitarian, and peace-loving, one that substitutes sexual contact for aggression as a means of conflict resolution. De Waal framed the larger sociological implications of his findings in an article he wrote for Scientific American: “At a juncture in history during which women are seeking equality with men, science arrives with a belated gift to the feminist movement. Male-biased evolutionary scenarios—Man the Hunter, Man the Toolmaker, and so on—are being challenged by the discovery that females play a central, perhaps even dominant, role in the social life of one of our nearest relatives… the bonobo.”6
Bonobos are roughly the same size as chimpanzees. It is an entirely distinct species within the same genus as the chimpanzees. The role of sex in bonobo social relations is central, whereas in other species sex is a distinct, circumscribed behavior. Like human females, the bonobo female remains sexually active continuously. Bonobos engage in virtually every type of partner combination, and engage in sexual contact much more frequently than do other primates. The behavioral separation between sex and reproduction is a unique trait that bonobos share with humans.
Although engaging in sex for reasons other than reproduction is a defining human behavior, there are some people, mainly religious fundamentalists, who decry this practice as amoral. Such puritans are usually very well connected with the political and corporate culture of the Seven Macaws, who seek to control humanity. For them, the freedom of choice, personal empow erment, and fulfillment that are practiced in a sexually diverse culture are dangerous.
In physique, the bonobos are observed to be much more graceful than the chimps. They have a flatter, more open face than the chimps, with a higher forehead, making them look more like humans. In our own biased aesthetics, they look to us more intelligent than the chimps. Whereas bonobos in captivity can use tools, in the wild they tend not to. Instead they spend time in creative play, food gathering, and sharing tempered with frequent sexual exchanges. These exchanges should not be viewed as a type of excessive pathology, for they serve a purpose. They establish nonviolent, readily accessible, mutually beneficial reciprocity as a means of conflict resolution and social cohesion. We might say it is a nonmaterial currency that has value in establishing a pact of egalitarian partnership. It is practiced in the atmosphere of nonpossessiveness and nonaggression, constantly shifting and being renegotiated. It is not simply a utilitarian adaptive strategy in the Dar winist reductive sense—often it is simply part of the play that maintains affection and relationship.
Bonobos evince a greater emotional sensitivity than the chimps and a surprisingly wide spectrum of emotional responses and expressions. Young bonobos make “funny faces” in long pantomimes, alone or while tickling each other, and are more controlled in expressing emotions than the chimps. Joy, sorrow, excitement, and anger, and surprisingly human nuanced combinations occur during a typical day. Bonobos also are very imaginative. De Waal observed captive bonobos engaging in a “blindman’s bluff” game, in which the eyes are covered with a hand or leaf and the bonobo stumbles around, bumping into others, navigating the unknown space as if with the inner eye. De Waal writes that they seem to be “imposing a rule on themselves, such as ‘I cannot look until I lose my balance.’ Other apes and monkeys also indulge
in this game, but I have never seen it performed with such dedication and concentration as by the bonobos.”7
Although it may seem laughable to say it in such blunt terms, the bonobo prefers love, not war. Earlier we discussed the difference between partnership and dominator modes of culture. I believe it is possible and appropriate to emphasize the connection between the bonobo style of society and the ancient human partnership society identified by Riane Eisler. If we are committed to the myth of progress—the idea that the modern world and modern humans are more advanced than in former times—we must ask ourselves how the modern fixation with the dominator mode is more advanced than the egalitarian partnership focus of “prehistory.” Clearly, the assumptions of our mainstream anthropologists and historians are flawed, and this problem must be explained. The chimp example of aggression being hardwired into our humanness is challenged by the gentle bonobo, who is as much a part of our genetic heritage as the chimps. The image of the club-wielding Neander thal, so ingrained into the collective imagination, is a joke, a propaganda stunt designed to buttress a kind of social Darwinism that justifies Seven Macaw’s dominance fetish.
The 2012 Story Page 37