Taurus Cross Quarter 24 (3)

Doing the Natural

In a lecture entitled “What is art actually for?”, Brian Eno said something interesting about hair styles. He proposed that there must have been a time before homo sapiens began to style their hair (by cutting, shaping, ornamenting, etc.). At that time there was no such thing as a “hair style”. But once ANYONE began to style their hair, everyone, even those who left their hair “un-styled” now possessed this thing called a “hair style”. We might call it the “natural” style of wearing ones hair.

We could say the same thing about “life style”. It would be strange to say that sparrows, for example, have a life style. This is because all sparrows have, more or less, the same way of life. Presumably this is a way which is furnished to them by genetics as optimal for the kind of creature they are. We could say the same of nearly all “wild” plants or animals. The way they live is more or less dictated by the ecological niche they fill. Not so for humans. We have a long history of shaping the environment to suit our ideas of what we consider optimal. These ideas range from simple notions; how cold, warm, wet, dry, etc. we would like to be, to complex ideas about what we would like our environment to look like and which of the many approaches to life made possible by our cultural and technology are most proper to human beings. A paradox presents itself here: the most natural thing that human beings do is consciously (or not) alter nature. So far as we know, no other creature, even highly intelligent ones like dolphins, are faced with this paradox.

Many people, especially those who are likely to read a blog such as this, are concerned with living in a way that is more “natural”. This is usually expressed as an attempt to adopt conventions around things like diet, exercise, attitudes to work, rest and community etc. which are perceived to be more in line with the way humans were “meant to live”. We might look to more agriculturally oriented societies, “indigenous’ cultures or even the paleolithic. We might adopt cultural and spiritual practices perceived to be in line with our “highest good”. Some of us might even look toward some sort of techno-Utopian vision of a completely planned and managed society. What all such gestures have in common is that they arise from how we imagine it would be to adopt such a life style. If there is any way for humans to be which could properly be called natural, once any of us decides to live in another way, the natural choice becomes just another choice. As was said about hair style, once anyone does anything that departs from the necessity of being what ever sort of creature they are, all of the “natural” behaviors of that creature become just one of many potential life styles. Nature, what ever she may be, becomes a “cultural product’.

None of this is to suggest that there are not ways of life which are more or less conducive to human thriving (although even this concept is open to broad interpretation), rather, it is to suggest that what is considered optimal might vary so widely from person to person as to make general claims all but meaningless. In any event, it is only in retrospect that we can talk about thriving. You might think that a paleo diet, Orthodox Christianity or anything else might best suit you, but it is only after you have committed, that you know for sure. Even then, other people’s mileage might vary significantly.

Sometimes we like to look to other animals for examples of how to live. In recent years, the bonobo has garnered some interest in this regard. Bonobos live in a highly social and gleefully promiscuous life. Conflicts are kept to a minimum by the free sharing of food, grooming and sexual play (this has made the bonobo a kind of poster species for polyamorists). But can we properly call this a life style. Bonobos do what they do because it facilitates the health and fertility of their species. This way of life was not arrived at, so far as can be supposed, by a reasoned assessment of the best possible life for a bonobo. They have lives but not life style in the same way that humans have always had hair but not always hair styles. Doing something with style implies a willful and intentional choice about how a thing is to be done. It further implies that some other choice could have been made. This may be a privilege (or curse) that falls upon the shoulders of human beings more than any other creature and opens an unbridgeable gap between us and what ever we call “nature”.

We fill this gap with story. From The Serpent in Eden and Prometheus stealing Fire from the Gods to notions of extra terrestrial or extra dimensional beings “seeding” the human race with intelligence, we have narrativized our apparent separation from nature. Even existentialist philosophy is an example of such story telling.

Sometimes we try to identify some historical “event” to account for why we find it so difficult to feel at home in our world. Anarcho primitivism suggests that it was the advent of agriculture and the surplus (including surplus population) it made possible which is responsible for the “break” from nature that haunts us. But it might just as easily be blamed on stone tools, the domestication of Fire or putting on close. What all candidates for the agent of our “fall” have in common is that they shift the human species from a state of dependence on nature to one of negotiation with (or domination over) her. But what if the gap we fill with story is not a gap at all?

It seems clear that humanity has always had a sense of the “Spirit world”. One of the most enduring speculations about cave paintings such as those found at Lascaux is that they served spiritual or magical ends. Were these paintings made as ways of propitiating animal spirits or spells meant to bring them into the hunters path? Similar speculations surround tiny figurines found in archaeological digs, especially the “Venus” figurines which seem to celebrate the fertility of the female body. Evidence of musical instruments, many similar to those used by hunter/gatherer cultures extant today, further suggest a spiritual dimension to the lives of primitive humans. It seems that we have always reached beyond the immediately given to some imaginal space. Those individuals with a special talent for reaching into this space have always sought ways to make it available to others through painting, sculpture, music, story telling and bodily adornment. And then there are all the incidents of using “plant medicines” to gain access to these far realms of consciousness. Why should we assume that these things are something we just started doing at some point with no antecedent. Maybe such behaviors are just as “natural” for us as the flight of birds or swimming of fish.

If you have followed my work for a while, you will already know that I take the position that magik is simply our birth right. It is almost cliche to point out that everything we have created, from stone tools to space craft, began as a thought in someone’s head. This is one way of making the argument that everything in our world originates in some immaterial realm of pure thought, a notion which is central to hermeticism for example. There are many ways to think about the nature of this realm and what access to it entails. But it is difficult to deny the basic premise. We are speaking of imagination here. It is our ability to imagine something which is not present and, combining this with things we already know about the world, CREATE.

This tendency to tell stories which, in turn shape our lives and world is, I believe, the most profoundly NATURAL thing we do. How is it then, that this story telling becomes the vector that seems to divide us from the “rest” of nature? It has to do with our relationship to that which our stories are about.

For most of our time here on earth we have lived at the mercy of nature, in a state of dependence. The fact that we survived at all was proof that nature, although at times demanding, was, in the end, merciful. Our earliest stories seem to have revolved around how the community of creatures around us asked us for things. Rituals, songs, offerings were the ways in which we showed our gratitude to the creatures and processes which sustained our lives. In return, these creatures yielded up their very bodies in service to our lives. And so we told a story in which our gratitude was mandatory lest our neighbor creatures turned their backs on us.

These are not the kinds of stories that we in the modern world have grown up with. Many of us learned that the world was a “fallen” place, corrupted by the machinations of malevolent “spirits”. Alternatively, we may have learned that the world was a deposit of “raw material”, which lay at our disposal. Such stories incline many of us to view the world with suspicion or indifference. How we moved from a sense of gratitude to one of indifference or even hostility to the non human world is itself the subject of numerous stories. These stories are told in the idioms of archaeology and anthropology, history and political theory. They go something like this:

A long time ago, some people began to herd animals rather than hunt them. Some of these people also learned that if you put the fruit of some plant in the ground, other fruits of the same kind grew there. The easy availability of food led to population growth. These things had a synergistic relationship; the more food, the more people, the more people the more planting and herding, the more planting and herding, the more people. Those ancient humans who found themselves swept up in this process grew prosperous in comparison to the human population of the planet as a whole.

Of course all of this herding and planting meant that it was impractical to wander around as much as had been the habit of their ancestors. Thus settlements formed. These settlements became increasingly stratified to meet the increasingly complex needs of producing tools, storing and distributing produce and eventually protecting these stores.

For the first time in human history, these early settlements found themselves in possession of more resources than could be immediately used. For as long as anyone could remember, life had been literally hand to mouth and day to day. Sometimes hunters found no game, sometimes the earth did not yield her bounty. Life was hard during such times. Now, with more than enough of everything, people were freed from the fear of privation. Of course, having so much came with the desire to keep it.

New problems emerged. Cultivated fields meant more than enough food for birds and insects as well as people. Pastures filled with placid domesticated herds were attractive feeding grounds for wild predators. Finally and most tragically, other PEOPLE became suspect. This new settled life required much planning and toil and everyone needed to do their part. But perhaps not every one did. What RIGHT had such people to the fruits of their neighbor’s labor. Further, not all humans were settled. What inconvenience and possible danger was to be expected from “outsiders”. Thus arose the need for law and military defense.

And yet another problem presented itself – when people settle in a place for a long time, they deplete the resources of that place, making it necessary to seek “greener pastures”. Thus the idea of expanding territory and securing routes from the hinter lands to the hart lands. Military defense had to mature into military expedition.

This last bit of the story should Sound familiar to us in our own time. It is hard to deny that a settled life style has made all of the cultural and technological advancement for the past 5,000 and especially the past 500 years, possible. New stories have grown to shape, justify and celebrate this way of being. Stories of chosen people and manifest destiny, of the sovereignty of the individual and the right to possess that which we did not create. Some of these stories are religious, some philosophical and some are scientific. As we have evolved from a position of dependence upon to mastery over the non-human (and sometimes selected segments of the human) world, our stories have shifted from narratives about benevolent nature spirits who provide us with all we need, asking only that we remember and honor them to stories of conquering gods and heroic men who subdue nature and chaos to forge an enduring way of life that profits everyone (well, everyone who matters). Eventually the very specifically scientific story of a world devoid of consciousness, subjectivity and agency gives tacit justification to these other stories by allowing us to believe that we have no moral responsibility to the non-human world because it doesn’t have the capacity to CARE what we do with or to it.

But some of us remember and a few have never forgotten the old stories in which the entire cosmos is alive with spirits. For those of us who do, we try to weave new stories (or cling to the fraying tapestry of old ones) so that we might live in some kind of peace and accord with all that is. It isn’t easy. Giving deference to others and trying to win their cooperation is a long and inefficient process. What ever judgments we may have about a dominating and instrumentalist approach to the rest of the world, we can not deny that when you don’t wait for consent, it is easier to get what you want sooner than later. This is an ugly truth but no less true for that. Those of us who seek a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship with the rest of the world, including our fellow humans, are consistently outpaced by those who do not. The plight of indigenous people the world around should amply demonstrate this fact.

But what ever the consequences of a narrative that sees the world as a passive pool of resources that might be exploited to bring about the world we prefer, we should hesitate before we say that these stories are “unnatural”. We are story tellers by nature and any story we tell is equally so. But not every story corresponds to the reality of its subject. A lie is no less a story than the truth. But the biggest lie we tell is that our stories are identical with truth. For even if they are, we can never be certain it is so. Perhaps there is another measure, a better one than truth.

As I have said elsewhere, we never really know another (barely know ourselves). What passes for knowing is a story we tell about them. This story is ultimately a story about our self – how the other makes us feel. We present this story to the other as a gift (or curse). If they like the story they might behave in a way that pleases us, if they do not, they might tell a story of us that we may not like to hear. This is all there is to a relationship. Our stories are reflections of the other as we see them. These stories might be flattering of not so. If others are flattered we have charmed them, if not they feel accursed and act accordingly.

Among the Lakota there is a story in which, ages ago, an old buffalo hears a weak voice crying in the grass lands. He searches and finds upon the ground a drying clot of blood. This clot was all there was of the people. The clot cried out to the buffalo. It was cold, hungry and weak. The buffalo told the clot of his strength, size and great power. He promised the people that he would give them his flesh and bone for strength and food, tools and shelter. He adopted the people as his little brother. This is a charming story. Long ages ago in Babylon another clot was found upon the ground. This one after the God Marduk slew Tiamat (primal mother of the world) and constructed from her corpse the material world in which we now live. As payment to the other gods for their service in the war against Tiamat, Marduk promised them important positions in the cosmic order – making The Sun to rise, bringing the rain and so on. But after the war, these other gods began to feel that Marduk had only given them endless labor. So Marduk picked up a clot of the blood of Tiamat’s general and formed a man. He breathed life into this man and promised the other gods that this man would live to serve them. This service provided the extra power to the gods to lighten the burden of their tasks. This is, in my mind, a less charming story.

The Lakota story is one of mercy and love, the Babylonian, one of matricide, trickery and servitude. But the second story is one more familiar to us in the “West”. Those stories that most of us grew up with of the world as a fallen and corrupt place dominated by tyrannical spiritual forces that seek to control us for their own ends. Or the story of the world as dead matter that we might shape into a world of our own making, are deeply woven into the Western consciousness (there is scholarship suggesting that the Babylonian story formed much of the pattern for the creation story in Genesis). A story in which the powers of the world love us and make themselves available to strengthen and preserve us elicit a sense of gratitude for all that we depend on. Those that make of us a slave and the material world a pit mine, make us uneasy, resentful and avaricious. We repeat these stories back to the surrounding world and the world responds accordingly. When we say the world is blessing it blesses us, when we say that it is accursed, it curses us, and when we say that it is simply dead it shows us death.

The natural world, that is to say, the material world, has no stories of its own. I think that the hard materialists are correct in their assumption that the world doesn’t mean anything, it simply is. It has its’ parts and processes that follow causal patterns but is going no where in particular (has no telos). This might sound strange coming from one who believes in spirit and magik. But bare with me.

The material world presents itself to us as the buffalo in the Lakota story. It gives us our tools and shelter and food, its very life. It can do this because it embodies spirit. It opens itself to carry spirit, make it solid and real. It has its own inner life but this remains as obscure to us as the mind of our closest friend. And like a friend, it is friendly to us when we treat it as a friend. Even our own bodies reveal this. When we treat our body well, feed it good food, give it proper rest and work, do not burden it excessively, it allows the spirit which dwells within us to express itself and thrive. It is the same with other people. When we treat them well they are well disposed to us and lend us a share of their life force as we have lent it to them in our kind regard. It is the same with the entire world, the animals and trees, The Moon and Stars. When we treat our bodies, our friends and the larger world as a slave or a dead pile of clay, well, look around you.

All magik is based on story. The stories we tell are spells. Good magik is good because it delivers not only what we ask for, but also the extra something that allows us to continue to speak and sing and dance and make beautiful things. Bad magik might also deliver what we ask for but often at a price so high that, even getting what we ask for is a burden and a curse.

The material world is not dead. Further, we will not kill it despite our worst efforts. It gives itself to what ever we ask like that buffalo in the Lakota story. But the spirits that make their home in the nest of material reality might not want to dwell in a world slandered by the stories we tell of it. They might abandon the world as extinction and disruption of the natural harmony that sustains our lives. We might find ourselves alone in a world that has no spirit power to lend us. And if we perish, the world, the material world I mean, will go on without us and become mother to another.

The Lakota buffalo story suggests that those who told it were aware of all this. Through story, ceremony and offerings they continually “courted” the buffalo spirit that it might return with the herds every year to offer once more it’s gift of life. Likewise, when we honor what we love, what sustains us, it returns. But what does all this have to do with living “naturally”, and with hair styles.

It would be naïve, and somewhat insulting to suggest that the Lakota, or any other people who approaches the world in a spirit of reverent gratitude, are somehow more “natural’ than we. Such a notion is the basis for ideas like the “noble savage”. Like us, they were telling magikal stories designed to reinforce an attitude toward the world which would bring them what they needed - as we do. The difference is that while their magik “worked” for generations beyond living memory, ours, while bringing powerful results in the short run, increasingly seem to drive the forces – the spirits which sustain our lives, farther away with each generation. It is a matter of a more (or less) charming style.

It is difficult to know how long humanity has been telling stories, dancing and singing, creating art etc. with the intent of propitiating spiritual forces. The branches of science which concern themselves with such things have consistently pushed the date backward in time. For myself, I believe that we have been doing it for as long as we have been human. These practices are as much a part of what we are as the gills of fish or claws of cats, that is to say, it comes naturally to us. And while styles may change, style is always a part of all we do. Our hair, dress and ornamentation, the preparation of food, our residences and public spaces and the discourse that surrounds and rationalizes these things, our myths, reflect how we wish to be seen by the world around us. I have said before, everything we do with will and intent is magik. We approach the world in a certain way and hope it will respond in a way which pleases us - try to enchant the world.

Of course the world and it’s in dwelling spirits might not like our style. We might be found attractive to some forces, scary or repulsive to others. Some will become our allies, others our enemies. There is simply no style which will gain us entry into every circle, we have to decide for ourselves where we want to belong and make ourselves attractive to that place and the spirits who dwell there. The way we fit into cultures and subcultures, the way these in turn, fit into the larger political and economic structures, and the way these fit into the “natural order” of things are all a matter of style. If others like our style they might welcome us into their group. But the “group style” may find itself less welcome by the larger social context. This is how we get “culture wars”. At an even higher level which we might call ecological (although as an animist I claim that even this level is “social”) it is the same. The world might respond badly to our life style and make us feel unwelcome.

Style isn’t about truth, it is about acceptance into a larger community. If the world, I mean the non human world, doesn’t like the way we live it will let us know this by responding to our presence with indifference or hostility. We might not care, we might even relish making ourselves look powerful and intimidating (like an army or a gang). Maybe the world will by intimidated enough to just give us what we want. If images of rape and pillage come to mind here, let them come, understand what I am saying. But if we want the world to want to love us, to treat us with kind regard, we will have to dawn a style which it will find attractive.

We don’t have to. There is nothing that can compel us to present ourselves to the world in any way other that the way that seems natural to us. But nothing compels the world to like our style and meet us with a kind welcome. At every moment we must read the room and “check our hair” accordingly.