SACRED AND PROFANE VIOLENCE, PART 2

Will and Willingness. —Some one brought a
youth to a wise man, and said, " See, this is one
who is being corrupted by women!" The wise
man shook his head and smiled. " It is men," he
called out, "who corrupt women; and everything
that women lack should be atoned for and improved
in men,— for man creates for himself the ideal of
woman, and woman moulds herself according to
this ideal."—" You are too tender-hearted towards
women," said one of the bystanders, " you do not
know them ! " The wise man answered : " Man's
attribute is will, woman's attribute is willingness,—
such is the law of the sexes, verily 1 a hard law for
woman ! All human beings are innocent of their
existence, women, however, are doubly innocent;
who could have enough of salve and gentleness for
them ! "—"What about salve ! What about gentle-
ness ! " called out another person in the crowd, " we
must educate women better ! "— " We must educate
men better," said the wise man, and made a sign
to the youth to follow him.— The youth, however,
did not follow him. -- Nietzsche, THE GAY SCIENCE.

My re-interpretation of Nietzsche's "will and willingness" would not quite fall into the trap of viewing men as entirely active and women as entirely passive. Yet Nietzsche's dichotomy does apply in a more specific biological sense: male humans are biologically positioned to specialize in violence (a rough analogue to Nietzsche's "will") , and female humans are biological positioned to specialize in sexuality (an analogue to "willingness," up to a point).

I specify "humans" here since my main concern is human expression of its own propensities and limitations. Yet the biology doesn't start with human beings, but applies to the majority of humankind's nearest simian relations. With some exceptions, the so-called "great apes" follow the example set by a majority of birds and other mammals in that most male apes possess greater size, about 25 percent larger than the females. This gives the biggest ones a generally greater capacity for imposing their will, either on females or on other males. Meanwhile our nearest DNA-relations, the common chimpanzees, seem to have stolen a march on their earlier relatives by becoming experts in sexual promiscuity, in a "willingness" to indulge in sex for purposes not entirely defined by procreation. (Their relatives, the so-called "bonobo" or "pygmy chimps," go even farther, as noted here.)

Classical evolution's explanation for such modifications is that they just happened, either by random gene selection or equally random mutation, and were then preserved because they proved useful, or at least not a hindrance, either to immediate survival of the organism or general survival of its species. I've touched on the evolutionary theories of Stuart A. Kauffman in a four-part essay series, beginning here, which suggest that there may an element of "choice" in such modifications, perhaps one rooted in the quantum mechanics rather than classical physics. On this basis I would suggest that some modifications may not be entirely random: that they are prompted by a species' need for that modification, even though the species cannot cognitively know how to articulate that need before it is fulfilled, nor can they keep the modification from having all manner of unanticipated consequences.

If there is any truth to the idea of a "non-conscious modification," then male animals' acquisition of greater size and physical strength is a direct consequence of the males' desire to achieve dominance, both over other males and over females. This would be the logical counterpart of a theory that is taken much more seriously by evolutionary biologists: that "woman made herself." To be sure this theory is only applied to human females: to my knowledge there is no consensus that female primates were responsible for the intensification of their species' sexual nature. However, as far as I know all biologists credence the notion that at some point the human female perfected what Lynn Margulies called an "anatomy of deception"-- banishing outward signs of estrus, which in my opinion would have preceded the actual cessation of estrus. There is no universally accepted theory as to how or why this occurred, though the most popular idea seems to be that the human female gained power by making herself more unpredictable-- that any male desirous of fathering progeny might have to devote more time and attention to a given female in order to be sure of producing said progeny.

While no one can prove, with the data beloved by empiricists, that "men are the masters of violence, and women the mistresses of sex." the dichotomy nevertheless informs the basis of much human culture, even if one need not quite view woman's "willingness" as being something as passive and "moulded according to an ideal" as Nietzsche does. Additionally, the dichotomy, while biologically and culturally dominant, is not determinative of the full range of male and female capacities. I have suggested the potential for a *bouleversment* of gender-roles in WHAT WOMEN WILL PT. 3, where I spoke of these reversed roles as "the Compassionate Man and the Barbarous Woman." While I don't renounce anything I said in that essay, for the purpose of further examining the role of sexuality and violence in fiction, I'll come at the same topic from a slightly different angle in Part 3.

FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF FUR

Once again those titans of terror-analysis, CWRM and Groovy Age's Curt Purcell seem poised to join in blogforsaken combat over the true meaning of terror.

WHO WILL WIN?


Well, anyone with a functioning brain will probably "win" just from watching the intellectual interactions of the "fight." It's sad that so little discussion on this level ever appears on comics-blogs, including that that sell themselves as bastions of critical awareness.

The current argument begins with CWRM's post on a C.S. Lewis essay about the distinctions between "fear" and "dread," which can be read here. CWRM draws on Lewis' illustration, in which he sees "fear" as arising from a knowable threat, like a tiger, while "dread," which is "a different kind" of fear, arises from something not fully knowable, like a ghost. CWRM, who has as Curt points out raised some doubts about the commensurability of archaic and modern emotional states, says to this:

Aside from being an unexpected, but lucid voice in the on-going discussion about the varieties of horror, I also find Lewis's insights interesting for calling into question the common "just so" story that horror, as we now conceive of the emotion that fuels of genre entertainments, has some clear lineage to the psychological lives of ancient ancestors. While he doesn't doubt that our ancestors lived in demon-haunted worlds, he raises the question of whether one could conceive of supernatural forces when one hadn't conceived of a "natural" world. If everything is supernatural, isn't that your natural? And, if that's so, is the uncanny a fear of relatively recent vintage (in terms of the hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution)?

The question as to whether primitive man did or did not conceive of a difference between "natural" and "supernatural" is a vexing one, but though I like Lewis' distinction I don't agree with his logic, for I tend to think that primitive man made such a distinction. I don't think Early Man had more than the most rudimentary version of modern science-based rationales, but as I pointed out in my attack on Steven Grant's distortion of Joseph Campbell, there are many things that primitive man would've witnessed that didn't need mythic explanations. My chosen example was that of the river: whereas one can't see the operations of the sun or moon up close, water flowing on the ground is at least as understandable as a baby's crawl. We perhaps don't know conclusively that primitive man deified rivers, but we know that by the time we get to ancient Sumer, people are mythifying rivers as being the flowing pee-streams of Enki, among other conceits.

So I think it possible that Early Man could have had a rough division separating the profane and the everyday (the world of the tiger) from the world of the sacred and numinous (the world of the ghost). And one of my proofs for that opinion is that something like it seems to crop up in a few of mankind's evolutionary predecessors.

In PHILOSOPHY IN A NEW KEY philosopher Susanne K. Langer recounts the early findings of the primatologists of her time, particularly the 1931 study of Winthrop Kellogg, THE APE AND THE CHILD, in which behaviorist Kellogg attempted to determine the limits of nature and nurture by raising a chimp like a human baby in his own home. Langer says:

"Gua, the little chimpanzee who was given the benefits of a human nursery, showed some very remarkable reactions to objects that certainly had no direct associations with her past experiences," such as toadstools, of which "she stood in "mortal fear."

In related experiments by other primatologists, it was found that "one subject in every three or four" showed this intense aversion to toadstools. Langer says:

"Some are sensitive to the sight, and the rest are not; to some of them it seems to convey something-- to others it is just a thing, a toadstool or what you will."

In my article on horror comics I noted that for a horror comic to be horrifying one had to be "receptive," and this would seem to be even more the case for anthropoids who, lacking language, cannot form more than the most rudimentary associative linkages.

Now, I don't know how modern primatologists would rate the findings of Kellogg or any of the other early authorities Langer cites. But this online article by Frans de Waal (whom, oddly enough, I just finished writing about here) suggests that there's still considerable debate in modern primatology as to the precise degree to which animals have cognitive abilities. Thus I'm going to go on the theory that Kellogg's findings are probably still relevant.

Now, we're no nearer knowing what makes apes react in fear to toadstools, any more than we know what if anything struck terror in the hearts of Early Man. But these early findings on the existence of irrational "ape fear" (so to speak) would seem to support the notion that fear can arise in animals without its connoting danger, as in Lewis' example of the tiger. The toadstools, then, would seem to connote for the apes something that Wolfgang Kohler calls an "aesthetic fright," even coming from creatures who could not frame anything resembling an aesthetic statement.

I tend to see early primitives as having at least as much cognitive ability as their ancestors, and so I don't favor the notion that they looked at tigers and ghosts as the same sort of unknowable or even supernaturally-tinged phenomena. A tiger might be some tribe's totem, but it might not be the totem for every tribe, and to the ones that didn't worship the beast, it was perhaps just that, a beast. A ghost, however, should have been somewhat of a metaphenomenon to any member of any tribe, given that it didn't eat and poop the way other animals did.

And this goes a long way toward explaining why I think that the worlds of archaic and modern man are basically commensurable, whether or not one cares to explore that aspect of horror or not.

INCEST WE TRUST PART 6

For the time being I'm mostly finished with the topic of incest in literary works, though I imagine it'll come up again, given that I stated that it was the best possible symbol of the transgressive nature of sex. However, while on this topical roll I couldn't pass over the chance to do a "compare-and-contrast" between this series and Charles Reece's AMOEBLOG article here.

Reece's 2008 article cites the two main influences on the "centrality of incest" theme I first contrasted with one another here: Freud and Levi-Strauss. However, Reece's essay isn't related to whether or not the two scholars were right or wrong about the centrality issue. Rather, Reece is concerned with the aspect of the "ick factor," the reason why the notion of incest seems almost universally condemned in most human cultures (as Twitchell also avers). Like Twitchell, Reece doesn't concern himself nearly as much as I do with the reasons why condemnation is so often linked with fascination, however.

The centerpiece of Reece's argument stems in large part from the "social intuitionism" of academic psychologist Jonathan Haidt. I find appealing certain aspects of Haidt, who argues that much of what we consider "moral" stems not from reason but from emotional intuitions as to what is improper. Reece says:

Citing a 1991 study of chimpanzees by Frans de Waal, Jonathan Haidt follows a Darwinian line of reasoning about the incest taboo, namely that it's built on deep-seated biological inhibitions which make it feel icky, even though we don't know explicitly why. While all species follow certain descriptive rules of behavior, primates actually turn those descriptive rules into prescriptive ones by threat of force. Thus, de Waal found that an adult chimp might interact with a baby chimp in an inappropriate way (e.g., like an incestuous adult human), but other chimps will go Bronson on him for doing so. That's morality by way of evolution. Haidt refers to this moral view as social intuitionism

Now, I'm at a disadvantage here in not having read any works by Haidt or de Waal, though I did run through a de Waal interview here and a Haidt interview here. But my first reaction to the citation of this one example of chimp-molestation is that by itself it can't be extrapolated into a general "rule against incest." By itself it might validate the notion that lower animals have a sense of "inequity aversion,". One might hazard that the "Charles Bronson apes" may be offended that the baby chimp is being forced into the relationship, not by the incest as such.

Are animals averse to incest? In the cited interview de Waal states that they, like humans, are subject to the "Westermarck effect," in which long propinquity discourages passion. Levi-Strauss seemed to feel that animals were far less discriminating than man, since man's societal prohibition of incest put him apart from the animal kingdom. Who's right? A reading of de Waal's work on the bonobo chimps might tell me if de Waal thinks that the bonobos deserve their reputation for flagrant incest or not, if I ever find time to read it. But is de Waal the final authority?

Fundamentally I agree with Haidt's concept: much of what we consider reasoned morality is born of taste, sentiment and "intuition." But social intuitionism by itself doesn't explain that "fascination" of which I spoke above.

Being influenced by Jung, my own "intuition" tells me to suspect any credo that reads a fantasy as a displacement for "something else." Reece starts his essay talking about the Greek gods (even as Twitchell does), noting that the gods constantly indulged in the very vice that should be repellent to most of their worshippers. Twitchell suggested that the lascivious freedom of the gods was meant to contrast with the dutiful lot of humankind, and Charles Reece seems to be writing in the same vein, though by essay's end he's addressing the example of "cinematic gods:"

Thus, Freud was on to something regarding fantasies. Whether they're about deities or sublimely beautiful actresses, they serve as an originary, primitive defining moment for the social laws that develop in order to protect us from ourselves. I'm guessing that the more beautiful the actress willing to make out with her equally beautiful sibling for the artistic ideal, and the less problem we all have with it, the more entrenched the incest taboo becomes.

I've said before that I think Bataille is more right than Freud. Where Freud thinks the taboo is there to prevent the transgression, Bataille "intuits" that the taboo and its transgression are joined in an interpenetrating dynamic, in which one cannot do without the other. I believe that this dynamic also underlines all of human art, which depends on depicting the conflict of wills, or of icons symbolizing the aspects of differing wills (I'm thinking of abstract artists like Kandinsky here). Thus I would not say that any gods, theological or cinematic, exist PRIMARILY to promote any taboo. Their primary function is to depict the pleasures of transgression, as well as, in a secondary sense, both the pain and pleasure of reining those desires in.

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE STORM

I mentioned in the essay "Myths of Sociology" that I have a problem with thinkers who reduce every aspect of mankind to sociological parameters, as do many anthropologists and social scientists. And while I hardly want to find myself going to the opposite extreme of Rousseau, who liked to define mankind as utterly independent of society, it should be made clear that "mankind" and "society" are not coterminous concepts.

Take religion. (Please.)

I have no opposition to the notion that religion evolved out of contingent factors, but I part company with many prominent anthropologists-- notably, Claude Levi-Strauss-- in seeing religion's as having evolved out of predominantly social factors. This is where a knowledge of Campbell's "four functions" of myth may prove a useful corrective, even when applied to the beings from which humans themselves evolved. Of course, anything one speculates about the early origins of human culture or those damn dirty ancestors is necessarily a heuristic assumption, based on fragmentary evidence of archaic times and backward extrapolations from our present reality.

The aspect of present reality to which I'd call attention is an anecdote from Jane Goodall related in her book on the chimpanzees of Gombe, IN THE SHADOW OF A MAN. In SHADOW, Goodall relates that during a particularly fierce thunderstorm that struck over the heads of a tribe of chimps, some of these anthropoids were submissively terrified while others ran up and down the hills, hooting and waving sticks at the storm, as if the storm were an enemy to be repelled.

Now, let us make the heuristic assumption that something like this happened in the days before hominids evolved, when chimps were the highest form of life. We do not necessarily have to suppose that early hominids inherited this pattern of behavior from their nonhuman brethren; only that big-brained species may be more capable in general of forming at least rudimentary concepts of unseen enemies, which in humans would then be articulated as gods, spirits or what have you.

Now, the notion that religion might ultimately stem from some combination of "challenge patterns" and "abasement patterns" is not original with me. It can be asserted that other animals lower on the "brain-chain" may well sometimes reflexively fall into "fight or flight" patterns when faced with unknown phenomena, but I would be surprised if there was any evidence of their conceptualizing the unknown phenomena. Of course the skeptic will point out that it's still dicey as to what extent chimpanzees can form concepts, though we know that at very least they can conceive of tool-using ("It is easier to dig up an anthill with a stick than with my fingers.")

What I wish to make clear with this heuristic example is that IF religion had its own beginnings as a set of "challenge/abasement patterns" in reaction to unknown phenomena, then this would challenge the notion of religion's origins as a sociological phenomenon. Challenge and abasement patterns are intrinsically biological responses keyed to promote the survival of the individual. They are not keyed to help the society, as one can say that "a protective response toward children" IS a pattern to aid society. Challenge and abasement indirectly help the individual survive in society, but there is no automatic benefit to society thereby, and indeed, depending on the individual, the survival of that individual may be a burden to his society.

Ironically, of the three functions Campbell sets down, the sociological is the weakest link, so to speak. One may characterize the chimps' reaction as a purely somatic response to the excitation of the storm, which would fit broadly within the category Campbell calls "cosmological." One may characterize it as "psychological," insofar as the reaction involves individual psych0logies (i.e., some chimps challenge the storm but others don't). Or, given that the imagined author of the storm's flashing and booming may be the ancestor of Old Yahweh himself, one could also see the reaction as belonging to the matrix of the "metaphysical."

We do not know the beginnings of Beginning, but one chooses to entertain this heuristic example (the sociologically-inclined, of course, will not) as forming at least part of the foundations of that Beginning, then one must concede that religion could not have been conceived simply to bind people closer together, or for the priesthood to keep the people buffaloed, as in scenarios popular with everyone from Ayn Rand to Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Religion then would proceed from individuals first-- albeit as an "intersubjective" spirit, to flagrantly borrow Husserl's term-- and then society would cope with the religious tendency in the form of rituals and other paraphernalia. Only the existence of an intersubjective tendency to believe in invisible spirits would thus be able to convince the "laity" of primitive societies to do all sorts of things contrary to their immediate interests, such as the sacrifice of time, hard work, and perhaps other creature's lives.

We're a long way now from Rand's goofy notion of primitives falling down in fear before the ravings of an epileptic priest, so-- let's stay as far away from that notion as possible.