The Difference
I’d like to provide yet another example of the profound woundedness and intellectual dishonesty of the modern world. To do this I will do Richard Dawkins the disservice of having him wear the dunce cap for today. One of Foreign Policy Magazine’s Top 20 public intellectuals, no less!
Richard Dawkin’s book, “the Selfish Gene”, made the (supposedly) provocative proposition that genes use us as vehicles for their perpetuation. They live their lives through us, and the chemical code of their nature lives beyond us, underscoring the essentially mechanical processes of life.
A traditional faithkeeper of the Tzutujil Maya tells the story that the Gods speak Poetry, which creates all life. That you embody the eloquence of a God’s language, along with all other beings. Saying the complex poetry of your name creates you; if the gods didn’t speak, and speak beautifully, you wouldn’t live.
Two storytellers telling essentially the same story; for one, it proves his point that the world has no meaning. For the other it fills the world with abundant, singing depths.
This has caused me to remember that the “adults” of the modern culture (its top intellectuals, no less!) resemble nothing as much as a coexisting community of abused children. For the abused, no amount of discussion or reason suffices to fill the gaping maws of their rapacious intellects (the pacman-like chomping of which purposes to excuse rather than resolve the ongoing weight of their petrified hearts).
Every year I renew my resolve to save my breath for those wanting to dream a new language together. Every year this sinks down to a deeper level, and changes in emotional texture; unfortunately this year (or perhaps quite healthfully so - I don’t really need to label it one way or the other I suppose) it feels and sounds like a healthy dollop of scorn for those who think the world belongs to them, rather than seeing that they belong to the world.
Some things I no longer offer up for debate; who belongs to whom stands as one of them. Humans don’t decide what has meaning; rather, the Land decides what Humans mean.
Harumph!
September 17th, 2008 at 3:04 am
Hi Willem,
What do you think about Daniel Quinn using Richard Dawkins work on memetics in BEYOND CIVILIZATION? And have you memetics useful in your thinking?
Take care,
Curt
September 17th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Curt-
Instead of answering your question directly, I’ll try to answer the question behind your question. I suspect it may run something like, “Should we suspect the usefulness of Richard Dawkin’s ideas because he interprets their implications according to a modern mythology of meaninglessness and mechanism)?”
Does this put the question well? Indigenous peoples experience that all Story and Song live and have life. A mythology of a people constantly expands and grows, the individual stories and songs of which interbreeding and interacting like in any other ecosystem - a desert, a forest, a lake.
To me, this certainly matches up with the skeleton of the idea of memes; but Dawkin’s only sees the mechanics of the process (if even that).
The missing piece (the missing meme, perhaps
) that we need to understand the systemic process of mythology involves an understanding of its living and interacting nature. Stories don’t simply involve the transfer of data from one human to another; they involve the sharing of a living being, in a living process, like pollination, or digestion.
This kind of work, to understand how a scientist has killed what they study (killed its living nature), constantly sits in front of us. Dawkin’s doesn’t do it alone. All science forces us to push its incomplete understanding to the level of a true system science - a Mythology.
It feels to me like working at the United Nations as an e-primitive interpreter.
I hope this answered your question.
September 19th, 2008 at 3:50 am
Hi Willem,
You wrote “Instead of answering your question directly, I’ll try to answer the question behind your question. I suspect it may run something like, “Should we suspect the usefulness of Richard Dawkin’s ideas because he interprets their implications according to a modern mythology of meaninglessness and mechanism)?”
Does this put the question well?”
Hmmmmm…I guess I really didn’t care whether or not Dawkin’s interprets reality according to a modern mythology of meaninglessness and mechanism in this particular instance. I’m trying to see if using memetics as a tool to help save the world (In a Quinnian sense) is a viable option. I see you as a like mind (in a Quinnian sense) being inventive with the work that you do to help save the world. And what I’m hearing you say is that memetics is limited.
Does this make sense? Am I hearing you correctly?
Take care,
Curt
September 19th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Curt-
For reasons as stated above; but Daniel Quinn uses all kinds of tools to speak to the modern mind, tools with limited usefulness, but he uses them precisely because they communicate what he wants to say using the mythology of the modern world. Modern minds need modern mythology to initially understand any idea or information; their mythology can slowly change, but first one must meet them where they sit.
Well, in a word, yes.
It all comes down to context. I don’t say I agree with Daniel Quinn’s choice - but I do recognize it.
I personally use whatever tool I need to accomplish what I want to do, as holistically as possible. Different folks have different priorities.
Honestly you’ve hit on a complex web of issues, having to do with: what you have to say, who you want to say it to, what downsides you’ll accept depending on the tools you choose.
By making the choices I’ve made, I have accepted that I’ll probably always have a very small readership, “a niche of a niche” so to speak. Daniel Quinn certainly wants more impact than that, but then he sacrifices depth (for lack of a better word) to achieve it.
What do you think.?
yrs,
Willem
September 19th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Hello Willem,
You wrote: “What do you think.?”
—
What you said makes sense, and has given me a lot to think about.
thank you,
Curt
October 12th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
It’s amazing when you find people thinking about the same things as you are. Thank god for blogs.
Thanks Curt for mentioning “Beyond Civilization.” I really want to check it out since I too have been curious about how the theory and study of memes can change society for the better. Next year, I am planning to move to Portland to start my study of Chinese medicine, and so of course, I am interested in spreading some radical ideas about what it means to be healthy. I want to help cultivate a society where self-awareness is regarded as a value and a requisite to a good and ethical life. I want to see the disassociation of heart and mind healed. I dream of a generation that is comfortable with paradox. Can mimetics be the framework through which to approach the spread of some of these ideas? Or is there a better skillful means out there, to borrow a term from Buddhist philosophy?
But thank you Willem for raising a flag about the mechanistic roots of memes. If mechanistic thinking is at an excess, maybe a tool of a radically different nature is needed to effectively counterbalance the unhealthy effects. I’ve only recently discovered your blog, but I look forward to reading more about what you have to say about storytelling. Maybe that will be the better tool.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:38 am
To use a term from herbal medicine, I believe at the very least, Story acts as an Alterative; it brings things back into balance. Different Stories aim at achieving different things certainly, but the power of the Original Language knows no bounds!
October 18th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
And lo and behold, Oregon author Ursula Le Guin seems to have covered much of this territory in her “fantasy” book, A Wizard of Earthsea.
I just relistened to an audiobook version, and really, it stunned me…I recommend her Earthsea series highly. Especially if you yourself live near the Ocean, or in an Archipelago!
I never claimed to have any original ideas. And thank goodness for it. I just enjoy stringing brilliant old ideas together.
November 9th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
LeGuin is my favorite writer and a big inspiration in my rewilding. Her book “Always Coming Home.” was the first positive story of life post-civilization that I had read.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Yes, totally cool. Her father, Alfred Kroeber, worked with “Ishi the last Yahi” when he came out of the woods after his people had died, so she has an interesting perspective.