Re: Fw: One Country Two worlds [more than 2...]

[Ray E. Harrell]

It is because I admire Brad that I continue this and he
may answer what I say but I can speak only from my own
perceptions in my work and life and the experience of
those perceptions.    So here goes but I cannot continue
the discussion beyond this post.

Ray

"Brad McCormick, Ed.D." wrote:

(snip) If Ray is disturbed by my denigration of
unreflected life in all its forms (what I
intentionally provocatively call: "ethnic formations"), (snip)

Actually I am disturbed by what you expressed.
As the poet Jerome Rothenberg has said on many
occasions, "there is no culture or people that has
survived by twiddling their thumbs and speaking
in half-formed thoughts."  A good case can be made
for that belief as a left over piece of 19th century
Utilitarian thought that was used to justify aggression.

Edward T. Hall had to train that attitude out of the American
Diplomats and businessmen because they were in
danger of failure in both areas.   The multi-linguistic
future on the internet puts us all in danger if we see
ourselves "above" ethnicity rather than a part of it.
 

I can only say that I hope I made it clear that  my

critique is not aimed at "primitive peoples"

but at everything which is *primitive* (i.e.,
not radically grounded in self-accountable
reflective reconstruction of all that which
merely is given) -- wherever it occurs. (snip)

Nothing is primitive in that sense.  Just relative to
its place in time/space and its growth structure.
Primitive more accurately means Primal but to
me it is a fake issue.  I never met a primitive but
I have met provincials and ignorance.
 

Neither will it do to reply to this that: "Everyone makes
mistakes."  Galilean natural science, Hegelian dialectic
and Husserlian phenomenological reflection are all
self-grounding projects for [albeit iteratively and
asymptotically] overcoming error in every aspect
of life.

The books of C. Castenada caused a stir a while back
because no one wanted to admit that the people, he
claimed taught him, existed.  Don Juan was compared
to Husserl and as one scientist said to me, "If these
people exist then we have committed a monstrous
three hundred years."    Well I believe  the books are
fake but the beginning of any young Shaman's instruction
is "be observant!" and "put your feet where no one else
has stepped."    My teachers were far more reflective,
artistic and outrageous than Castenada's stories.  They
also dealt with some of the nation's greatest scientists
both Newtonian and Quantum from a place of equals.
They were neither afraid of science nor worshiped it.
They also had a healthy believe in the evolution of
consciousness but in much too complicated a way to
consider one cultural universe more important than
another.
 

That the 17th Century Chinese recognized in
Galilean natural science "something new, because true for
everyone who took the effort to learn it", and not just
true for those childreared to believe it (--Joseph Needham),
seems to me to lead to one of two possibilities: (1) The
Chinese understood that *their own limited form of life* was
superseded by the Universality of Science, or (2) That the

Chinese are just like "The West" and so their admiration for
Science just proves they aren't "real peoples" any more
than the Jesuits who brought Galilean science
to them

Jerome Rothenberg spent several years with the Iroquois
studying the poetry contained within their everyday life and
the ceremonials.   From that point on he concluded that most
of the Indigenous people's he worked with were "Technicians
of the Sacred" and far more subtle and complicated than the
Jesuits whose rigidity made science seem both universal and
profound.    How could you compare the Chinese language
with its tones and subtleties as well as the calligraphy to such
"limited" forms as most Western languages and science?
Europe has its genius and science is just another adolescent
in its history.  Its genius is in its art.  More about that later.

Finally, there is Margaret Mead's _New Lives for Old_,
and a recent report in the NYT of one traditional culture
in Africa, where the elders have undertaken a
thoroughgoing inventory of their traditional culture,
to see what parts of it are still viable and which
are not worth preserving (e.g., ritual genital
mutilation of children).

Another shamanic rule is that one must always know
the past while living in the present and manifesting the
future.  It's in the language.  (check out Benjamin Lee
Whorf and his exploration of the Pueblo verbs).   Of
course we are not all the same.    Cherokees were
wonderful at language, science and business in the
19th century.  It was our success that created the
envy that destroyed what writers at the time were
calling an "American Athens."   I don't know much
about Africa, they have little problem speaking for
themselves these days.
 

I see these developments as
somewhat similar to our recently having
taught some apes to speak (ASL, etc.):

I'm not sure where you are going here but I'm not
aware of any humans that can speak "ape."    If the
ape can learn to speak human, that could represent
a profound condemnation of the potential of humans
to learn.

The
innate faculties presumably always were
there, but somehow they did not express themselves
until Western Modernity provided the
catalyst (snip)

for apes and parrots maybe but I don't understand why
humans are so species limited.   There is a good movie
with Anthony Hopkins about just this subject where
he lived with a group of Silverbacks for a couple of
years.    The problem of consciousness and the desire
to make the world conform to our reflection was well
explored by the Greek playwrites.  What a pity that the
theater is no longer required for citizens who vote.
 

I do not consider
"Western Culture" in its higher forms to be
Western but rather to be *Universal* --

There is a study by Laura Bohanan called Shakespeare
in the Bush written for the NYCity Mus of Nat History.  She
takes Hamlet to a village in Africa where she explores the
"universality" of the story with the Elders.  What she finds is
that they are as rational and as reflective as she but utterly
different.    These newer Anthropologists like Geertz, Bohanan,
the Tedlocks and Edward T. Hall appreciate the traditions of
Fraser, Mead and Milanovski but they understand them not
as definers of Universality with  the West at the pinnacle but as
way stations of information in the Western cultural evolution.
 

*Western*
culture is symbolized by such semiotic  specimens as

Superbowls, "commercial paper", and "Keep America ,
beautiful, get a haircut!" --> Yes Prof. Latour, "We
have never yet really been modern." But I say
it's time to get on with it!

Interesting,  I'm reading a book by Michael Kammen called
"American Culture, American Tastes, Social Change and the
20th Century"  (Knopf) where he makes some of these types of
judgments but my experience runs more practical and
professional.

In culture, like in science, you have 1.) theoretical R&D work
that is an exploration of values (for its own sake) in the medium.  The
pursuit of knowledge with no appreciable practical end except
truth and excellence.   You also have 2.) the commercial which is
the theoretical that has been generally simplified for the sake
of personal enjoyment.  You might call this "scale or productive
art" that can be endlessly repeated in new situations at very
low costs in skill, technology and creativity.   Where the
Theoretical is expensive and one of a kind, commercial is not
and has the possibility of high productivity and thus high
profits.

Some people break this down into Art and Craft with the
Commercial being Craft, which is the way I was taught it
in the 1950s.

The 3.) element is tradition which is the successful Theoretical
Art plus the most high complex and creative of the Commercial
Art.  It lasts and becomes a part of the tradition.  None of this is
right or wrong, it just works or it doesn't.    Tradition tends to be
made up of that which worked and still does.  Beethoven is traditional
and today so is the Beetles.  Both capture the time and place that
they were created with the Beethoven being the more complicated
and demanding if you are to understand and enjoy it.

What this all means Brad is that Art, the study of values in perceptual
modalities has often been considered Universal in the past.  But the
problem was in assigning non universal status to all of the Arts that didn't fit
the structures of that which is assigned Universality.   It became and
IMHO is still untenable.     Nothing is Universal.  Even the circle that
we see on the page is an agreement since our eyes cannot see the
same circle.    We can't even prove that the idea of the circle is the
same, only that we use the same words in describing its form.  But
when we get more complicated than a circle, say an abstraction like
a musical form, all hell breaks loose.    You said Semiotics and I take
that to mean that you understand the issue of translation involved in
moving information from one context through a medium to another
context in the present.

Often the person that is an idiot in one situation is a leader in another.
The only universal rule is, like Gunther Schuller pointed out, rules must
have a structural integrity within the universe they inhabit.  If you assign
Universality to a small segment of Western thought then you create the
perfect atmosphere for conflict since only force can make the small
push the large aside and inhabit the whole.

Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble. Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]