The questions of the human capacity for survival versus the survival of the capability to be human are uniquely intertwined in such a way that the human experience as an animal and a visceral being are convoluted into an elementary understanding of any capacity for life. In Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous, he claims that "All of the early writing systems of our species remain tied to the mysteries of a more-than-human world" (22). Early writing systems employed symbolic representations of the world in such a way that one symbol meant many things and referenced the natural world surrounding the people. Beginning with the Hebrew aleph-beth, however, humans engineered a way to slowly separate written language from a world full of mystery and otherly presence to one that humans were at its center.
This world view has yet to impart itself upon the Aboriginees of Australia. The few tribes left preserve their place in the natural world and continue worshiping the old gods. They continue their ancient arts and songs, as well as rituals that are slowly dying with each member of the elders' passing. The Aboriginees represent a way of life that is unencumbered by the quest for knowledge, and show the benefits of one that focuses on the affective nature of life. Without written language and the search for something more than a "primitive" way of life, indigenous cultures appreciate their environment and the traditions that connect them beyond their immediate surroundings.
Technological advances, the most basic being the invention of written word, have brought humanity out of the cave and into the twelve story buildings, but what of the connections to the more-than-human existence? In our haste to mold the planet rather than merge our destiny with our wills directed at the manifesting, we have compromised the human ability to be affected as emotionally as we are cognitively. In what contemporary voices call simple pleasures are those that impart the most experience upon a single human soul. By climbing farther and farther away from the "very innocent planet, except for those big brains" (Vonnegut 9), we build our own Tower of Babel, hoping to glimpse not the old deities, but ourselves counted among them. With the fall of our buildings we create not a fall from Grace, but a regression, like the Biblical tale, in which what held people together must come apart to reclaim the roots of humanity. This vice is that of written language, which preserves the Tale of Babel in the aleph-beth.
I have a question, although it is not about your main point.
ReplyDeleteYou say the Australian aborigines are unencumbered by a quest for knowledge. I would argue, however, that there is always a quest for knowledge in that humans are always trying to discover a deeper meaning.
If the aborigines were to slowly learn the ways of more technological advances, do you think they would deny them? Obviously, they would not have much use for an iPod, but if a pair of shoes made their feet hurt less, would they accept them? Humans are always searching for better, regardless of culture. Isn't this quest for knowledge unavoidable? If the aborigines had more years to develop on their own, they could reach the point we are at now.
The very nature of our individualist society today is all because of the ancient Isrealite, having been banished from the Promised Land. Had they not been banished, they very well would have never seen the need to develop the Aleph-bet, which in turn would have changed a great many more things, etc, etc, and we might be living now in the same sort of half mystical mystery of life which our ultimately distant ancestors once did. Had the tower of Babel never been built at all!
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