The Reenchantment of the World (46 page)

mimesis
is not barbaric in a bicameral, or totally
primary-process world, as Julian Jaynes has demonstrated.49 The problem
arises when worlds collide. As Reich realized, industrial democracy
is dry tinder for fascism and the irrational precisely because it
is so sterile, so Eros-denying, and because it has been with us now
for centuries. Neither in society nor in a single individual can one
suddenly remove such fantastic blockage and expect the reaction to
be one of smooth and sensible readjustment. We thus confront a choice
that must be made and yet cannot be made: the awakening of an entire
civilization to its repressed archaic knowledge. It is not likely that
the mental world view of Cartesian deutero-learning, which includes
traditions such as social democracy, secular humanlsm, and enlightened
(or vulgar) Marxism, can make this choice in an intelligent way,
because these traditions insist that Mind, or Being, is an obscurantist
concept. But as one atypical observer, Ernst Bloch, pointed out in 1931,
the Left in Germany was ignoring developments occurring in primitive and
utopian trends, thereby leaving a whole territory free for the Nazis to
occupy. so Repression works only up to a point; utopian longings stir
even in the most subjugated individual, and fascism recognizes those
longings and manipulates them to its advantage. As indicated above,
the celebration of nature versus artifice is a central tenet of fascist
ideology.* The revolt of "natural man" versus technology, the destruction
of spontaneity, and the domination of nature are all foolishly ignored
by mainstream or "progressive" politics; but when these issues do become
central, politics can take on frightening dimensions. "In this light,"
writes Max Horkheimer, "we might describe fascism as a satanic synthesis
of reason and nature -- the very opposite of that reconciliation of the
two poles that philosophy has always dreamed of."51
>> * "Blut und Boden"

 

 

Nevertheless, I believe our evolution toward Learning III is inevitable,
and if so, the real question becomes: What is a safe context for
it? What institutional structures would be beneficial to its healthy
flowering? To some extent, this question has already been answered in
our earlier discussion of planetary culture. A decentralized set of
autonomous regions is the very opposite of the rootless, mass society
that makes Learning III such volatile stuff. Self-determination, strong
local community ties, neighborhood spirit -- all of these would break
down the globalist monolith and thus serve to contain any revival of the
archaic which threatened to turn into a mass movement. The whole process
of balkanization has its problems, of course, but I doubt that global
totalitarian
mimesis
is one of them. The Third Reich, for example,
was hostile to regional sentiment. It was a nation-state ultimately made
possible by Bismarck's forced unification of the small German states,
and it countered regional sentiments with its policy of Lebensraum,
which aimed to force neighboring territories into a centralized, German
world-order. By itself, decentralization cannot eliminate guruism, but
it can certainly limit its influence. A rooted society is protection
not only against alienation -- which is the product of the attempt to
control everything -- but also against its opposite, which involves the
complete loss of control.

 

 

What shall such a society be rooted in? Traditionally, regional or
community politics was the politics of ethnicity. One had loyalty to
one's clan, kinship system, race, or language group. It is doubtful
that the ethnic model can work anymore in a world that has seen several
centuries of global communication and fairly violent culture contact. And
this may be all to the good, for regional ethnicity can easily turn
into a provincial type of ethnic chauvinism, which finally results in a
narrowing
of human possibilities. Cosmopolitanism is still a fine ideal,
and thus the need is not merely for rootedness, but for a rootedness that
also encourages planetary interdependence and cultural exchange. Given
the disruption of familial and local bonds over the last few centuries,
many people in Western industrial societies now seek new sources of
communitarianism which do not also threaten to close off their mental
horizons. There are no easy answers forthcoming, and there may be no
way out of this dilemma. 'In situ' cultures are not congenial with the
"Gutenberg galaxy."

 

 

The irreconcilability of planetary versus globalist world views, or what
has been termed ecosystem versus biospheric cultures, has of late been
elaborated upon by ecologist Raymond Dasmann.52 The former depend on the
local ecosystem for food and materials, and environmental protection is
guaranteed through religious belief and social custom. Such people, the
American Indians for example, have (or had) awesome in-place skills. They
know the local animal species, the meaning of the slightest shift in the
wind, and have a rich lore of herbs and their preparation. Their lives
are tailored to an optimum relationship with their particular region,
or what Peter Berg terms
bio
region, in which "culture is integrated
with nature at the level of the
particular ecosystem
and employs for
its cognition a body of metaphor drawn from and structured in relation
to that ecosystem."53 Recent research indicates that historically,
such people lived relatively abundant lives, and did so with far
less work than we do today.54 Biospheric people, on the other hand,
take the entire globe as their province, drawing on vast networks of
trade and communication. There is nothing place-specific about their
knowledge, and they can do whatever they want to any particular region
they choose. Whereas ecosystem people might deal with water shortages
by building rooftop collectors and storage tanks, attending to the
local vegetation, and maybe holding a rain dance or two (all at trivial
economic and ecological expense), biospheric people build giant dams and
canal systems that disrupt the environment and cost millions. As we know,
in order for biospheric people to have what they want, ecosystem people
must sell out or, as is more typically the case, be wiped out. But the
truth, says Dasmann, is that the biospheric people are ultimately the
losers in this global shell game, because their "victory" involves the
loss of a vast network of skills and habits that have enabled man to
sustain himself on the planet for millennia. The economies of biospheric
societies are not sustainable and are now in chaos, argues Dasmann;
American resource policies are an example for the rest of the world of
what
not
to do. "I would propose," he concludes, "that the future
belongs to those who can regain, at a higher level, the old sense of
balance and belonging between man and nature." Rootedness, in short,
must become biotic, not merely ethnic, and Dasmann has constructed a map
of the "biotic provinces of the world," showing what political boundaries
would be like if they followed the lines of natural geography and species
density variation.55 The bioregional model of Berg and Dasmann is posited
on the distinction between occupying a region and inhabiting it; or,
for us now,
re
inhabiting it. "
Reinhabitation
," write Berg and Dasmann,

 

 

means learning to live-in-place in an area that has been disrupted
and injured through past exploitation. It involves becoming native
to a place through becoming aware of the particular ecological
relationships that operate within and around it. It means
understanding activities and evolving social behavior that will
enrich the life of that place, restore its life-supporting systems,
and establish an ecologically and socially sustainable pattern of
existence within it. Simply stated it involves becoming fully alive
in and with a place. It involves applying for membership in a biotic
community and ceasing to be its exploiter.56

 

 

It is a fine vision, and the authors may be right when they argue that
"living-in place . . . may be the only way in which a truly civilized
existence can be maintained .57 But whether the rootless, urbanized
people of Europe and North America can now create a source of identity
around biotic provinces and bioregional loyalties that were largely
obliterated centuries ago is an open question.

 

 

And yet, what other choice do we have? Learning III will continue to
gain momentum, and the most crucial political issue of the twenty-first
century may be how to provide it with a proper context. As we noted
earlier, Learning III has been tapped in all traditional cultures by
certain techniques of initiation. That this process did not get out of
hand was not only a function of having a small-scale, decentralized way of
life. We saw that in organizations such as 'est,' once a floating reality
is obtained the initiators, or gurus, implant their own reality in the
person, usually the worship of the guru and his organization. Now it is
clearly the case that all tribal, 'in situ' cultures have their shamans,
and the initiation process led by the shaman is also designed to break
down Learning II. But in a world that is rooted in bioregional realities,
such as these cultures are, the process does not lead to transference and
blind obedience to authority. What develops in the Learning III process
is not adoration of the shaman, but of the mystery he makes manifest:
the God within, and the ecosystem that reflects it. This was the final
lesson Carlos Castaneda learned in his initiation at the hands of Don
Juan, and it is the message of all nature-based religions.58 It generates
what social critics Jerry Gorsline and Linn House describe as "a science
of the concrete, where nature is the model for culture because the mind
has been nourished and weaned on nature."59 In short, it is my guess
that preservation of this planet may be the best guideline for all our
politics, the best context for all our encounters with Mind or Being. The
health of the planet, if it can be successfully defended against the
continuing momentum of industrial socialism and capitalism, may thus be
the ultimate safety valve in the emergence of a new consciousness. And
it is only in such a world, I believe, that the Cartesian paradigm can
be safely discarded, and human beings begin living the lives they were
meant to live all along: their own.

 

 

 

 

Regardless of its duration as a political entity, every civilization,
like every person, is a message -- makes a single statement to the rest
of the world. Western industrial society will probably be remembered
for the power, and the failure, of the Cartesian paradigm.

 

 

When I was a boy, the Cartesian paradigm seemed infallible to most
Westerners, successful without parallel in the history of the human
intellect. This way of life was celebrated in space programs, rapid
technological innovation of all sorts, and books with titles such as
"The Endless Frontier" and "The Edge of Objectivity." By the mid-1960s,
it was becoming clear to many that science was, in fact, an ideology;
and from that point it was a short step to the recognition that it was
not a very healthy ideology at that.

 

 

It is very likely that the next few decades will involve a period of
increasing shift toward holism, Batesonian or otherwise. As scientific
civilization enters its period of decline in earnest, more and more people
will search for a new paradigm, and will undoubtedly find it in various
versions of holistic thinking. If we are lucky, by 2200 A.D. the old
paradigm may well be a curiosity, a relic of a civilization that seems
millennia away. Jung, Reich, and Bateson especially, have each helped
to point the way to a reenchanted world in which we can believe. Once
again, the secular would be the handmaiden of the sacred, but with at
least some ego-consciousness left intact. Yet from the vantage point
of an extended time scale, one wonders if an ancillary arrangement
will be enough. The period from Homer to the present is not even 3,000
years -- a mere blink of the eye in anthropological terms; the last four
hundred years may prove to be only the most aggravated phase of a single
evolutionary episode. If so, the next phase in our evolution, that of
self-conscious
mimesis
, may actually be a transitional
one. Reenchanting the world, even non-animistically, may ultimately
necessitate the end
of ego-consciousness altogether. The French psychiatrist Jacques Lacan
has argued that the ego is a paranoid construct, founded on the logic of
opposition and identity of self and other. He adds that all such logic,
which is peculiar to the West, requires boundaries, whereas the truth is
that perception, being analogue in nature, has no intrinsic boundaries.60
As our epistemology becomes less digital and more analogue, boundaries
will begin to lose definition. Ego, character armor, "secondary process"
will start to melt. We may then begin to move back to what Robert Bly
calls "Great Mother culture," to cosmic anonymity, a totally mimetic
world.61

 

 

If such is indeed our fate, it is nevertheless the case that the
transformation will not happen overnight. As I have suggested above,
a too rapid devolution would probably spell untold disaster. If we are
lucky, the interim period will involve a revival of the unconscious, and
the development of relational or holistic perception, but with enough
awareness of the subject/object distinction so as to prevent untoward
events. We shall need to keep our wits about us, in short, and that means
the retention of some ego-consciousness. But ultimately, ego-consciousness
may not be viable for our continuation on this planet. The end of
alienation may lie not in the reform of the ego, or in complementing it
with primary process, but in its abolition.