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ARCHIVE. For a list of
all my published posts:
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Blog entries
beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews
from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the
time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the
many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who
are interested.
If you have questions
and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com
===
This post, #146, is a
recent (January, 2013) attempt on my part to provide a summary of Chapter 5 of
the Biogenetic Structuralist 1979
text, The Spectrum of Ritual, A Biogenetic Structural Analysis (Columbia University Press). The principal authors
are Eugene d'Aquili, Charles Laughlin and John McManus.
===
The main point of this
highly significance chapter is the presentation of an understanding of how and
why myth and ritual go together. It makes good sense, but it's complicated:
there are many aspects that need to be considered.
Earlier chapters describe
forms of animal ritual seen among canines, cats, monkeys and chimps. While
human ritual shares much in common with the ritual of animals, what
distinguishes human ritual is myth. There's no religious or cultic ritual that
is not set in a mythic context.
From a neurobiological
point of view, the myth-connected ("cognitive matrix") aspects of
ritual are thought to have originally evolved separately, and only later did
they become linked up with ritual behavior.
---
A basic note about animal
ritual: All animal behavior has evolved for adaptive/survival advantages.
One of animal ritual's primary functions is to overcome the normal adaptive
separation ("distancing") usually found in all animal species; its
purpose is to promote needed cooperative-communal activity. Mating is the most
obvious example.
In general,
"intra"-group distancing and aggression needs to be overcome and
would often, although not necessarily, involve "inter"-group uniting
against others-- for, for example, access to, and the exclusion of others from,
the limited resources of a specific environmental niche.
All animal and human
ritual works to overcome "intra" distancing and aggression; it does
it by influencing the brain structures of those involved-- via rhythmic repetitions.
---
A basic note about myth:
Humans, no less than other animals, are at the mercy of the forces of nature;
but we also have a drive to make sense of the world; the biogenetic
structuralists call this drive a "cognitive imperative." We need to understand reality.
"Myth," meaning
explanatory stories in the broadest sense, arises from this need to make
meaningful sense of all that threatens and which we would like to control. Via
elaborate stories, the cosmic powers and forces of nature are usually expressed
in the form of personal agents-- the "spirits" of Paleolithic
traditions, the "gods" of many religious traditions, the
"angels" of Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.
The cosmic energies are
always expressed in terms of pairs of complimentary (not mutually exclusive)
opposites or polarities. Here, too, mating is a fundamental image:
"resolution" of the tension of the opposites via their union.
---
An interesting side
note about cultural myths: For any given myth, the basic structure remains
constant over time, although the details of the myth continually grow-- until
they are exhausted. [Looks like we are at a time when many traditional
religious myth-stories have become exhausted, something which Jung was saying
around a century ago!]
---
An important note about
the polarity issues expressed via myth: The tensions of the opposites only
get resolved via existential (i.e., personal) experience of that resolution--
which is what happens in ritual.
(The ultimate pair of
opposite polarities is each vulnerable human being on one side and the ultimate
cosmic force/power/dynamis on the other. The ultimate resolution is their
coming together. [In perhaps more familiar terms, Bulgakov's human-divine
sophia and Panikkar's cosmo-the-andric unity.])
---
About myth: A major
question from a neurobiological perspective is how myth arises from (or in) the
central nervous system. Myth involves concepts, causes and polarities (i.e.,
named categories of objects, sequential linkages, and opposite di-poles).
All of these aspects of
consciousness come from the same area of the brain called the "parietal
lobe" or "inferior parietal lobe." It is "an association
area of association areas," made of the overlap of those three areas which
involve sensitivity to body, sight and sound. (Evidence for this is that
injuries to the parietal lobe prevent a person from comparing things-- such as
"smaller than", "larger than," "better than"-- or
naming the opposites of things.)
The early evolution of
this area of the brain-- of conceptualization, sequential thinking, language
and opposites-- can be "traced" (i.e., described); these authors did
this in their earlier book, Biogenetic Structuralism. The development of the parietal area in mammals
and primates is what led to the coming of "man the culture bearer."
It is the last area to
myelinate [mature in some sense] in humans, and its maturing corresponds to
some extent to the development of Piaget's "formal operations"-- the
7-year old's ability to reason logically and the adolescent's ability to think
about thinking.
The very earliest humans, Australopithecus, had a larger parietal lobe area than did the
earlier primates, and so despite having a fairly small brain that were probably
capable of abstract thought, causal and opposites thinking-- the minimum needed
not just for ritual but for culture.
Because they lacked
developed speech, however, they probably didn't have too much by way of myth or
ritual.
But homo erectus did. And those humans were strongly lead by the
"cognitive imperative"-- the universal adaptive drive [the drive to
understand for sake of survival]-- to observe and try to control the forces of
nature. Humans universally ask about an unknown stimulus, "What is
it?" Emotional-affective responses are secondary.
But if the parietal area
is chemically inhibited from functioning, the result is guilt, feelings of
unworthiness, worry about the future, sense of loss of mastery over the
environment, and thus depression. When that area's functioning is chemically
enhanced, the result is euphoria.
And so we today cannot do
otherwise than try to understand the world around us. And if we lack an
explanation, we make up one. This is where science differs from myth.
Science accepts as valid
only those explanations which are derived or inferred from observed data, but
mythological (story) explanations don't. Whenever real understanding is
lacking, our minds automatically make up explanations; they spontaneously
personify the powers of nature.
---
About ritual in
contrast to myth: Humans can't resist acting-- "doing
something"-- about every problem. "Ritual" is the name we give
to the "motorized conceptualization" of myth.
But ritual by itself
doesn't solve the problems expressed by the myths.
Myths are the stories made
up to explain problems caused by opposites (basically, the polarities of life
and death) and ritual is action stimulated by the problems.The actual (if
temporary) resolution of the tension of the opposites results from ritual's
impact on the emotions of participants.
When ritual works, it
results in a "beyond-words" (i.e., ineffable) affective experience of
unity to the group and its individuals. Ritual has been doing this for many
thousands of years, but a scientific understanding of it in terms of activities
of brain structures dates only to the late 1960s and the early 1970s, when the
so-called "non-dominant" side of the brain began to be considered of
importance.
Because the dominant side
of the brain is known to be where language, logic and abstract thought takes
place, prior to that time the non-dominant side had almost been considered a
vestigial organ. [This is yet another example of the focus on Sensing and
Thinking (matter & time) in patriarchal culture; and the long-term result
of (in the perspectives of Henri Corbin) the "loss of angels" that
took place in 13th c with the affirmation of Averroes over Ibn Sinna.]
Today (say the authors,
writing in the late 1970s), we know that that the non-dominant side is also
important. It has to do with visual-spatial relationships, perceives
wholistically, and is responsible for creativity. [In the quaternary language
used in many posts in this blog, vision and spatial relations are (Jung's)
Intuition and Feeling, energy & space (in science's basics of matter, time,
space and energy), and Black Bear of the west & Green Mouse of the south on
the Medicine Wheel. Additional names for wholistic perception and creativity
(besides Jungian Intuition) are Steven Gallegos' Imagery and H. Corbin's
Imaginality].
Wholistic perception is
especially important for this discussion of the neurobiology of myth and
ritual. The two sides of the brain are understood to operate alternatively,
flashing on and off repeatedly. The authors note that variations are what
account for personality styles-- from extremely analytic to extremely synthetic
, "scientific" to "artistic" [i.e., from Sensing-Thinking
to Intuitive-Feeling].
The two systems are either
energy-expending or energy-conserving, called "ergo-trophic" and
"tropho-trophic." The combination of these complimentary opposite
systems, when operative simultaneously (referred to as their
"tuning"), results in unitive experience.
To greatly oversimplify:
When both systems (sides of the brain) operate at max at the same time (due to
ritual rhythms, meditation, etc.), the result is those experiences
traditionally described as the oceanic feeling, the conjunction of opposites,
the marriage of heaven and earth, and mystical (meaning "beyond
words" and "difficult to talk about") experience.
It's the maximum
functioning of both the Intuitive-Feeling side of the brain and the
Sensing-Thinking side together. (And so is, indeed, "difficult to talk
about"!)
---
The long term practice of
meditation results in similar experiences; a very interesting distinction is
made between the similar experiences which result from meditation in contrast
to those from ritual: The meditation-sourced experience persists much longer
while the ritual-based experience is more fleeting (but may be repeatedly experienced
in a short amount of time).
Also especially
significant is the fact that ritual works more easily for people in general
than does meditation experience-- which may take years of highly disciplined
practice.
In either case, however,
the result is not only a sense of union of opposites but also of harmony with
the universe and a lack of fear of death. And, the authors observe, it is no
wonder that ritual is such a universally pervasive human activity. No culture
lacks it.
[From a very basic religious-spiritual
perspective, this sense of union of opposites, harmony with the universe and a
lack of fear of death resulting from meditation and ritual is the source of
that basic trust in reality which is the original meaning of
"faith"-- before it came to mean intellectual assent to conceptual
statements.]
---
The authors' sum:
1) We humans need
explanations of our problems and so construct them ("myths").
2) We, like all
animals, attempt to solve our problems-- to master the environment-- by motor
actions (including ritual).
3) Ritual works as
one of the few mechanisms that can solve the ultimate polarity problems.
4) Ritual takes
different forms in different contexts, but is so important to society's
well-being that it is unlikely ever to lapse into oblivion.
The authors also add a
fifth point: that ritual also helps to 'structure' (produce) ordered authority
and things like the distribution of necessities in times of scarcity. These
sociological 'uses' of ritual are discussed in four later chapters.
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1 comment:
Thanks for this great summary, i'm trying to find this article in university libraries in finland, but didn´t remember the books name. So i happened to find your blog. Thank you :)
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