Great example of two-sided form of representation

Poster by Chips Mackinolty for NT Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority.

Features image and paintings of late W. Rubuntja, who employed both traditional and introduced cultural codes to depict country.

Dual forms of social organisation - some useful anthropological quotes.

While the actual lived experiences of First Peoples provide valuable examples of forms of dual organisations, something of that wisdom can be found translated into the work of some modern anthropologists.

There are a few useful quotes which i share with interested readers.

Modern anthropologists of the Dutch Leiden orientation, working within the former Dutch colonial possessions (now Indonesia and Papua) found the role of dual organisation particularly striking. They may well be the European experts in such matters. Some more from them later.

The foremost modern anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, who had spent some time in South America, also turned his mind to such matters.

He has a chapter called “Dual Organisations” in his 1949 work which was translated into English in 1967 “The Elementary Structures of Kinship”.

In that chapter he teases out a few aspects which are relevant here:

 “… the one common characteristic of moieties is that there are two of them, and the duality is called upon to play highly varying roles as the circumstances require. Sometimes it governs marriages, economic exchanges and ritual, and sometimes some of these and sometimes only sporting contests. There would appear to be as many different institutions as there are distinguishable modalities.” (page 75)

“To understand their common basis, inquiry must be directed to certain fundamental structures of the human mind, rather than to some privileged region of the world or to a certain period in the history of civilisation.” (page 75)

“These facts tally with others which might have been added in revealing dual organization less as in institution with certain precise and identifiable features than as a method for solving multiple problems.” (page 82, emphasis added.)

  

“A probably unilateral analysis of dual organisation has all too often propounded the principle of reciprocity as its main cause and result … However, we should not forget that a moiety system can express not only mechanisms of reciprocity but also relations of subordination. However, the principle of reciprocity is at play even in these relations of subordination; this is because subordination itself is reciprocal: the moiety who wins the top spot on one plane concedes it to the opposing moiety in another.” (page ?, quoted in his later work (English trans 1995) “The Story of Lynx” at page 237. emphasis added)

These quotes provide us with some motifs for what follows. Levi-Strauss also touches, in passing, on the modern two-party system as an indication of dualism  - which i will not quote as i hope to return to it later.

For those who wish to read more from Levi-Strauss on this topic, one of his main papers is “Do Dual Organisations exist?” which is included in Structural Anthropology (Vol 1) p 132-163. He wrote this in relation to the work of Dutch anthropology.

No doubt Levi-Strauss’ trailblazing study of American mythology contains other important material. He specifically takes the topic up again in the final chapter of “The Story of Lynx” reacting, in part, to “The Attraction of Opposites. Thought and Society in the Dualistic Mode” 1989 edited by D. Maybury-Lewis and U. Almagor.

Check out:

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=x-WilndJnoEC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Australia's Westminster system - transformational change

 WESTMINSTER SYSTEM – NO CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE

There is a slowly growing awareness that our present political system is unable to address the increasingly urgent issues of climate change in a timely manner.

One of the reasons civilisations collapse is that the elite leaders lose touch with reality. This is compounded when everyday people maintain their faith in the elite leaders for far too long.

We may be heading into this pattern now.

The appearance of ‘success’ of the Westminster system has long been unwritten by the ability to turn a blind eye to its shortcomings and real costs.

The suffering of Australia’s First Peoples over the last two centuries is one example of its failing and of the real costs.  The well-being of people and country has been subject to a massive shock as a result of the form of colonisation by a European power.

Reforming the means by which life is presently governed in Australia is a difficult challenge. Getting Constitutional recognition of Australia’s First Peoples as First Peoples is in the “too hard” basket.

So too is the much simpler (from a cross-cultural perspective) challenge of gaining Constitutional recognition of local government, let alone reform of local government to genuinely empower and engage with people in community.

Sartre’s ‘practico-inert’ holds sway at every level  - amongst bureaucrats, mainstream politicians, suburban households, media commentators.  Resistance to intelligent and timely change is empowered by the established status-quo.

A simple change of government within the present political process – or even PM Rudd’s ideas on reforming the Australian Labor Party – will not provide us with the means we require to seriously address pressing social and ecological problems.

A CALL FOR TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE

Within the general ‘business as normal’ clamor, however, a call for transformational change can be detected.

There may be, too, a growing sense of unease at a less conscious level. Life sends its messages irrespective of what mainstream politicians and the mainstream media say.

It is not a matter of making hay while the sun shines, but of ensuring that those paddocks of drying grass do not burn up in an overheating world, nor the precious topsoil washed away with another global warming deluge.

But it does seem that it will take an increased crisis – reaching some threshold - before there is real movement towards genuinely transformational change. 

One of the roles of conceptual craftspeople during this period is to explore options for such transformation. These may help guide change as it unfolds - by seeing opportunities where others see threats.

The line i investigate is one which draws its inspiration from the Ways of Australia’s First Peoples. Such a project has been delayed for over 200 years.

Modern Western understanding is, i believe, blind to these Ways.  In the same way, modern Western understanding is blind to present and past non-agrarian Ways of life.

Just as our modern understanding prevents us from a proper evaluation of that part of our heritage wrongly categorised as “Palaeolithic” - so too our modern understanding prevents us from a proper evaluation of the Ways of contemporary First Peoples (who are a long way from our imaginary ‘Palaeolithic’).

We can no longer rely on modern European masters alone for the task of reconnecting our collective decision-making process to our true surroundings. Modern life has become ‘unearthed’.

Fashioning new eyes is a task which – while making full use of the best of a European tradition – now needs to be carried out in acts of cultural partnership with First Peoples.

A key lesson in this process is the need to prevent a concentration of power which is part of the Westminster system (as presently constituted).

The Westminster system results in one-sided forms of representation., and lurches from crisis to crisis. Is has become a straight jacket, overly constructing - with its one size fits all approach to who we are and where we fit into life. 

Well-governed life requires systems which have two-sided forms of representation, and produce stability and balance. We need to take off our European over-selves and learn more about these forms of reason. We will not learn from Europe/

Life’s masters of two-sided forms of representation are the senior law people of Australia’s First Peoples.

But their voices have been - and remain - systematically excluded from Anglo-Australian Parliaments for far too long. They are the last to be heard. We need new ears as well as new eyes.

Changing the Constitution of the Australian Parliament not only requires a critical mass for a peoples movement - it requires some real understanding of why Australian life will benefit from incorporating some of wisdom which has informed First Peoples Ways 'since the beginning'.

Therein lies our true Australian genesis.

Cooling down an overheating world.

The presumption that other Ways of Being have been superseded by modern Western civilisation is not one which is necessarily endorsed by life itself.

If the forms of society which underwrote the industrial revolution can be characterised as 'hot' societies, then it may be time to return to a cooler mode of Being.

The Ways of Australia's First Peoples can be seen as being concerned with maintaining the privileged position our form of life already enjoys, rather than seeking to improve on an eternal life design.

It may well be, as our planet begins to run a dangerous temperature, that other Ways have been slowly reclaiming back to their fold a more fundamental human inheritance.

For a very long period before the advent of neolithic transformations, my view is that we interpreted experience by means of systems of complementary opposition. Our cosmos, including ourselves, had two interrelated parts. Think yin-and-yang.

Better still, think Wurlurru and Kingili as found with Warumungu First Peoples in Central Australia, as this is a much richer source of food for thought. It is as though Australia’s First Peoples have kept faith with our original Ways.

Working backwards from what is know of extant Ways of life, we can gain not only a clearer view of what life was like in non-agrarian times, but also form a means of critiquing dominant Ways in our own times.

Myths abound of what life had to be like before the advent of farming, villages, and horticulture. Even modern professional anthropologists operate with conceptual devices which recapitulate neolithic myths.

“The Paleolithic” was – we are led to believe – characterised by small groups of hunter-gatherers living a ‘brutish’ life only a notch or so above that we ascribe to animals. Some myths depict people as eating rotten wood or even stones prior to the advent of horticulture.

This false depiction of viable alternatives serves to reinforce the choices which have been made by certain groups when they moved away from previous Ways of Being.

The picture of “non-agrarian” alternatives, based on working backwards from what is known, appears to be entirely different to that of the small bands of cave dwellers etc. Far more likely, there were forms of globalism based around some sense of a commonality of Being.

Life was connected by extensive networks along which messages of one form or another could – and did – flow.

Our cosmologies enabled us with systems of signification which took in the whole of life, including where we – as part of the larger whole - fit into life.

Any attempt to insist on a single universal characteristic of our cosmos is unbalanced. “The Universe” consists of two complementary opposite hemispheres in my way of thinking.

Underlying this means of thinking is a realisation that mental operations of an entirely abstract kind systematically exclude parts of life which are not only of value, but which part of a truly vital mix.

Rather than seeking to treat those parts as being of no significance – a waste produce to be dumped and forgotten – a better means of thinking requires us to find the counterbalancing location for that which would otherwise be excluded in order to privilege one part.

This two-sided means of relating with life is more stable – if less spectacular - than that resulting from excursions into one-sided abstraction.

Our Being was signified according to cosmologies characterised by systems of complementary opposition.

These systems were not static in the sense of everything being in perfect balance.  There was a dynamic asymmetry – such as is found in the opposition between passive and active.

The multiple dimensions of life as mapped by these cosmologies may attribute a relative superiority to one value – active, for example, vis-à-vis passive.

But these dimensions are mapped as part of a complex configuration – marked by complementary opposition (that is, as having two hemispheres). The superior pole of one dimension in one hemisphere is counterbalanced by a superior pole on another dimension which is located in the opposite hemisphere.

Ethnographic literature provides examples from the lives of First Peoples which demonstrate the degree of care which is taken to ensure that life’s relationships are kept in the proper balance.  And these life relationships extend beyond human-to-human relationships.

Any attempt to privilege one – beyond a relative superiority – would require the downgrading and demotion of the other.

For example, the masters of fire may be associated with Wurlurru and the masters of water with Kingili. Both parts are necessary for a full life. Neither alone can provide a full life.

In Warumungu wirnkara (Dreaming) narratives, fire was obtained from 'on high' by one part of humanity (Wurlurru) and  then given to the other half (Kingili). Rainmakers tend to found amongst the Kingili side of life, and they seek to ensure rain falls where required. Both Dreaming narratives envisage the two extremes - a massive conflagration and a massive flood. By attending to their respective and interrelated cosmic maintenance duties, both extremes are avoided.

If modern Western life is cast, due to the industrial revolution, in the role of the masters of fire, then what we require to heal our planet is not more of the same from that side of life, but the return of a counterbalancing part of life which has been excluded or marginalised for too long.

Life as a cosmic balancing act - moderating overvaluation

“The myths show that when the relative superiority of one value over the other gives way to an absolute superiority of one value, this means the end of society.” (Pouwer, 1992:96)

I am using the above quote as a guiding reminder of what i want to explore - the idea that well-governed life is marked by a dynamic form of balance between two complementary halves, neither of which should be allowed to dominate the other. 

And i am making use of my understanding of the Ways of Australia's original peoples as evidence of how this  works in lived practice. 

When – for whatever reason -  the relative superiority of one value threatened to move towards an absolute form of superiority, corrective mechanisms of one sort or another would operate to bring the distortion back into its proper relationship within a whole.

These mechanisms range from healing rituals; exchange transactions; to acts of low intensity violence (such as when one group engages in combat with another to make good a perceived wrong). 

The usual definitions of violence do not include attempts at self-privileging over-valuation of one aspect of life over others. But such acts may be seen as a form of violence against good order for those who take seriously - as Australia's First Peoples clearly do - the realisation that life is a cosmic balancing act.

It is interesting to read the views of an exceptional psychologist, Liam Hudson, who touches on this matter in his 1972 book “The Cult of the Fact”. Hudson considers the classification of Western forms of knowledge into 'hard' and 'soft'.

"Schemes constructed, like Brown's, in binary terms - whether explicit, as with Eros and Thanatos; or implicit, as in scientists' use of hard and soft - are bound in practice to be simple. On the other hand, they offer, historically, an impressive pedigree; and they are widely if not universally employed. They are also important, as Marcuse has argued, prophylactically. Pathological states seem to ensue whenever one value - Progress, Science, Democracy, Power, Race, Love - is pursued to the exclusion of all others. To negate one value with its antithesis is at least to cast matters back into a state of equilibrium. Even so, the elements of such binary schemes need not be treated as eternally fixed: still less the nature of the relation between them."

Liam Hudson, The Cult of the Fact. 1972:91. Hudson's reference is to Norman Brown  "Life Against Death" - concerning Freud and life and death instincts, more on that in a moment. Also referred to is Herbert Marcus “Eros and Civilisation”.

My anthropological mentor Jan Pouwer was very much concerned with configurations. “Relative position” was a phrase we heard from him in his lectures many times. For example:

“ ... it is in my opinion not the elements that matter but the relative position of the elements, a well known structuralist tenet.” (Pouwer 1992:90)

and, in relation to cross-cultural studies of space, for example, and in light of Hudson’s example above (Eros and Thanatos; Soft and Hard science):

“I would suggest that both in science and folk systems space is never a fixed entity but always a matter of relative position, though in different systems of conceptualization.” (Pouwer 1992:93)

It is easy to invoke the notion of a configuration and less easy, i find, to map one out in any meaningful sketch. Life itself has been busy on this front, as the great variety of different forms of social life demonstrate.

Freud found two aspects of experience – Life and Death - which may be found worldwide. Different attitudes to life and death are certainly important markers to different Ways and different religions.

Hudson (page 90_ mentions this in his examination of the discipline and practice of modern psychology.

  

"Brown presents Eros and Thanatos not solely as impulses or well-springs, but as a shorthand for our two modes of address to the world around us; the modes whereby we act on our surroundings, and thereby construct our sense of who we are. Eros he conceives of as the impulse to have access to someone else's mind, to share their experience; Thanatos as the urge to control, to turn our knowledge into some lifeless thing. Eros seeks 'to preserve and enrich life'; Thanatos, 'to return life to the peace of death'."

One consequence of Hudson’s exploration, if it had been taken on board, would have been to remove privileges which accrue to psychologists when they – using an ‘objective’ cover – align with a thin concept of life rather than the confoundingly rich mix which it always is.

   

I find it instructive to add to Hudson another quote from Pouwer, whose interest in configurations extended to a ‘structural history’ which would be able – using sound methods, he always insisted – to sketch differing configurations and compare and contrast them.

This notion is key to my present work as i argue that our orthodox means of relating have been systematically transformed from ‘two-hemispheres’ grounded in balanced reciprocity and into a top-down arrangement.

In his last work, 2010,  Pouwer spelled out a little more on his configurative approach:

“By ‘configuration’ I mean a process that turns elements into components arranged and imbued with meaning by a central orientation. Similar or even identical elements in different configurations may have different meanings or functions. Both configuration and orientation are conceived of as always being on the move, never closed, always open to change, ambivalence and contradiction. A configurational approach assumes a central orientation that permeates a particular society and culture.”  (Pouwer 2010:6-7)

But what are we to make of the ‘central orientation’ which has to play such an important role in Pouwer’s structural-configurational approach?

How do we come up with a meaningful sketch of a social group which is better than another self-projection on the often chaotic impressions we may form of other peoples Ways?

--------------

Ref Jan Pouwer 2010:

Gender, ritual and social formation in West Papua; A configurational analysis comparing Kamoro and Asmat

Copy at http://www.oapen.org/search?keyword=Pouwer 

For more on Jan Pouwer see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Pouwer

Towards Restoring an Original Australian Orthodoxy

BASIC POSITION - LIFE IS PAIR-SHAPED

My basis premise in this work can be stated very simply – the orthodox well-balanced form of human life is pair-shaped.

That is, using the terminology of modern anthropology, well-governed social life – as a reflection of dualism as a total social fact – is and was made up of two moieties.

Two halves which – always kept safe from the threat of one being confused for the other – together made the only possible complete whole.

My inspiration for this comes from the early evidence of the original forms of social and cultural organisation of Australia’s First Peoples.

The Eaglehawk and Crow moieties of South- Eastern Australia where very well known at the end of the 19^th century. See reference to Mathew at end of this piece.

Similar moiety arrangements were documented over large parts of Australia. Due to the particular way modern anthropology unfolded in Australia in the 20^th century, there was little appreciation of the role of complementary opposition vis-à-vis making sense of First Peoples Ways. Now is the time to make good for that shortcoming.

Some of these original arrangements were subject to higher levels of articulation as part of a process in Australian life which reflects a particular kind of experimentation. This form of experimentation has remained under-appreciated by modern minds and largely dismissed.

Without exploring the more elabourate arrangements, the basic foundations consist of two complementary opposite parts to life. This results in very different notions of adequacy, in regard to forms of representation, than to those of modern biologists, naturalists etc.

This original Australian orthodoxy is not a result of a mindless process of following a static model. There is a dynamic balancing act in play.  Privileges are kept in balance between life’s two parts. Power is never allowed to concentrate on one side at the expense of the other.

While ‘hot’ societies (using Levi-Strauss’ distinction) seek to harness change, ‘cold’ societies seek to maintain position. Both systems involve dynamic processes.

A useful comparison in regard two complementary opposite componets is with the human brain itself. Two hemispheres are necessary for the whole brainer. By contrast, and as we will see, full-life becomes ‘half-brained’ when one hemisphere attempts to assert dominance over the other, and the other cedes more ground than is healthy.

When one moiety shifts from a counterbalancing position and proclaims itself to be ‘on top’ of the other – privileged at the cost of the other part - there is a move from well-governed life to mal-governed life. Much of known history consists of the history of mal-governed life.

Borrowing an insight from another context, and taking as our perspective that of an original Australian orthodoxy, much of what we have become accustomed to take for granted can be seen in another light.

"The myths show that when the relative superiority of one value over the other gives way to an absolute superiority of one value, this means the end of society.” (in Pouwer, 1992:96)

The expression ‘the end of society’ does not signify the end of life – but the end of a well-formed society. The attempt to universalise one side of a duality results in the beginning of a gross distortion.  The values clustered around one pole proclaim that they, and only they, are the measure of all things.

When this is combined with one-sided notions of legitimacy in the use of a monopolised force, great damage is done to life. States which insist the only duty is to that of the State represent an extreme version of this process. The position in this work is there can never be a ‘legitimate’ monopoly on the use of force.

Any attempted monopolisation of force is illegitimate as measured by life-based perspectives and not those of modern nation-states or other non-dual forms of social life.

I understand that the term ‘Gleichschtung’ (forced sameness-making?) refers to the standardisation of political etc institutions among authoritarian states.  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung )

Gleishschtung is the antithesis of what i mean by “Becoming Otherwise” – of opening up spaces in our lives which enable First Peoples to be – as First Peoples (and not as refashioned into modern Western specifications).

(More to follow - July 2013)

 ---------------------------

Jan Pouwer reference: "Fizzy; Fuzzy: FAS? A review article." Canberra Anthropology 15(1) 1992:87-105

For a classic study of Eaglehawk and Crow, see John Mathew 1899

“Eaglehawk and Crow: A Study of the Australian Aborigines, Including an Inquiry Into Their Origin and a Survey of Australian Languages”

one online version at

http://archive.org/stream/eaglehawkandcro00mathgoog/eaglehawkandcro00mathgoog_djvu.txt

Darwin, Thatcher, and elite State funeral rituals

My interest in State funerals as modern nation-state rituals began when i was investigating the rise of a new elite in relation to new forms of representation (aka 'secularism') and the cult of Darwinism.

There are significant similarities and differences between the final rites of passage for Charles Darwin and Margaret Thatcher, both of whom were given elaborate funerals.

Darwinism and Thatcherism both place a false emphasis on the importance of 'the individual' in comparison with the importance of the wider social collectivity.

In Darwin's case, he was happy (by all accounts) to be interred at the small country location of Downe, where he lived for so many years. After his death his body was effectively snatched by other members of a newly emerging elite and elevated to high status by a State funeral and interment in Westminster Abbey.

For a man who did so much to disprove established religious dogma, burial in Westminster Abbey demonstrated the lack of any similar sacred ceremonies for the secular set. They had to 'borrow' forms of bestowing prestige from the very establishment they were undermining when they replaced rights by birth by a restricted notion of meritocracy.

Darwin's treatment, as a member of a wealthy new class, was very different to that of working class Wallace (who is acknowledged to have co-established a theory of natural selection). Wallace was, i read, invited to Darwin's funeral as an afterthought.

Anyway, the other members of the newly rising elite managed to cement their place in the social order by bestowing the highest form of prestige on their cult hero, Charles Darwin, despite his wishes in the matter.

By contrast, the Ceremonial funeral for Margaret Thatcher was very clearly something which she had given considerable thought to, and planned to bypass the role of Parliament by aiming for a Ceremonial funeral.  A Ceremonial funeral, requiring consent only from the Queen,  is a notch down from a State funeral, which requires the approval of Parliament.

By comparison with Darwin, there was no need for the members of her elite to snatch the body from the family and local people.

But like the case with Darwin, the elite sought to bestow the highest form of prestige upon their cult hero - and, by extension, upon her methods and upon their own position in the social order.

They did not steal a body, they stole the whole State ritual apparatus.

Princes Diana, Queen Mother ... Margaret Thatcher?

The Ceremonial funeral for Margaret Thatcher is an example of shameless expropriation of a ritual reserved for people who were respected and/or loved across a wide segment of society.

Lacking genuine endorsement from the population at large, and knowing that a State funeral would encounter problems in Parliament, an elite raided the treasury of ritual respectability and attached it to someone who was their champion, but never that of all of those in whose name they presume to rule.

The Guardian reported that a Ceremonial funeral is:

"One rung below a state funeral – normally accorded to sovereigns, although Winston Churchill and the Duke of Wellington were granted the honour – a ceremonial funeral requires the consent of the Queen, which has been given."

Of three notable Ceremonial funerals in the United Kingdom in recent times, two were for much loved members of the Royal Family, Princess Diana and the Queen Mother.



The third  member of the series, Margaret Thatcher, took public delight in engaging in a form of civil warfare, directed against working class people within the country.

Her name is synonymous with "divisive" and her methods of government are of the worst kind. Using uncivil methods, her strident use of power was used to forcefully resolve major problems. The better alternatives were consensus and agreement.

Her legacy is one of lasting bitterness amongst a significant section of British society. While the funeral was taking place in London, her effigy was being burnt elsewhere.

The late futurist Robert Theobald wrote about the need to find better ways than those which, for example, left so much bitterness after the civil war in the United States.

His hopes, which I endorse, were for the 21st Century to be the Healing Century.

By providing the equivalent of a State funeral for Margaret Thatcher it is as though her last act was to steal an honour which should only be awarded by the whole nation acting as one, and that was not the legacy of how she operated.

Net result - the Queen, who not only consented to the great honour of a Ceremonial funeral but who broke with tradition by attending the funeral, has clearly demonstrated her alliance with the one side of British life.

This gives a Royal imprimatur to an event which was always known to be something which would open deep wounds inflicted on British life by Thatcher and her ilk.  The Queen - whose role in a Constitutional Monarchy is to prop up the pretences necessary for good social order - has arguably failed in her duty by doing this.

Net result - the value of a Ceremonial funeral was lowered a notch - those who divide a nation now qualify.

Net result - those who sought this honour for their champion have reopened deep wounds and must now accept the true social costs of that funeral.

A much better outcome from the death of Margaret Thatcher would have been to use the occasion as an opportunity to bury the hatchet as well. Such is the character of the British people i am sure that, if presented with an opportunity for a healing event, they would have embraced it.

But the ruling elite chose the other option - to use a very expensive form of 'perfume' to try to disguise a form of metaphorical stench - that of high-handed forms of governance which fail to properly value the place in life of all members of society.

For people like me, who see the challenge before us as finding a new sense of identity  which will dissolve (and not smash) the modern nation-state, all of this points to an ongoing form of financial and symbolic bankruptcy for European ways of life (which have been in serious trouble since the 1600s).

With European life in the midst of the latest major crisis, after the Thatcher Ceremonial funeral, we can only wonder "What next?"

Thatcher serenade - some rough music.

For all those whose voices were silenced,  lives lost or damaged, marginalised, destroyed by Thatcher and her ilk, some rough music to counterbalance the songs of praise from that establishment.

"Rough music, also known as ran-tan or ran-tanning, is an English folk custom, a practice in which a raucous punishment is dramatically enacted to humiliate one or more people who have violated, in a domestic or public context, standards commonly upheld within the community." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_music)

No respectability for murderous regimes

The State funeral for former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is a major secular ritual designed to bestow the highest form of respectability upon her.

It goes without saying that this is a ritual of a modern nation-state.

The relationship between Margaret Thatcher and the Chilean Dictator Pinochet is merely one argument as to why such a State funeral is inappropriate. There are many other reasons, all well vented.

We must pause to remember the many everyday people, like you and me, who were brutally and savagely killed by the regime embodied in the man Margaret Thatcher publicly embraced.

These brutal killers only succeed when we, the living, remain silent - especially when they seek to cloak themselves in that very important social good - respectability.

They are never respectable.

We must never be silent.

When bells chime for such State sanctioned rituals, it is not surprising that there is a spontaneous peoples chorus of another kind.

In the spirit of the Chilean people whose lives were taken by Pinochet, and with respect for their families, we say that the State funeral for Margaret Thatcher is also another nail in the coffin for the form of nation-state which is hosting it.

There can be no respectability for such a system.

--------------------------------------------

Post-script.

It appears that the Thatcher funeral is not technically a State funeral, but a notch down as a Ceremonial funeral, which is approved by the Queen and not by Parliament.

A chorus of  that other BBC banned song "God Save the Queen and ..."  from the Sex Pistols may be appropriate at this juncture.

Interesting to note that someone who used Parliament to promote a particularly divisive agenda had to by-pass Parliament in order to continue to privilege that agenda posthumously.

A Ceremonial funeral - still a State ritual -  bestows enormous respectability on Thatcher and her methods.

Good account of the difference at

 http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2013/0416/State-funerals-ceremonial-funerals-and-Margaret-Thatcher

GUT FEELINGS - AN AGE-OLD APP – FREE!

Preloaded and no need to download. But – to attain more complete full-being - you will have to activate and learn to listen and act on messages from this source.

ENABLING CULTURES VERSUS CULTURES OF CONFUSION

There are cultures that enable and cultures that confuse. I have had this realisation before, of course, but I was reminded of it once again by the nonsense of celebrating a spring festival of renewal (Easter) as we – in the Southern Hemisphere - go into autumn. 

No wonder we are confused! Our minds are dominated by cultural forms which (may) make sense in Europe but they are seriously out of kilter where we live.

Modern Western commerce, as is well known by readers of Marx, aligns with a culture which thrives on our confusion about who we are and where we fit into life.

Mainstream thinkers are not fashioning the means by which we can find clarity amongst the incessant spin which comes from right, left and centre.

Our heads are constantly turning as we try to make some sense out of it all.

I don’t think this confusion is accidental and part of some grand life design. Rather, it suits certain interests to have us confused so they can exploit our life energies.

Modern culture can be seen as both a big control trip and a means of manipulation.

An enabling culture is one that assists us to connect with our surroundings.

Examples of these can be found from ‘small-scale’ societies around the world, as studied by modern anthropologists.

One feature of such enabling cultures is that – through serious practices which are dismissed by modern thinkers -  they seek to inform people at a gut level, so that group decision-making is both intellectual and visceral.

The role of a finely tuned gut – informed by all manner of myths, rituals and other practices – has not received much attention in modern Western intellectual traditions. It tends to employ a notion of ‘mind’ which coexists with ‘brain’. Cognitive studies have provided some useful insights into how we operate – but less so when it comes to how we are systematically manipulated by ‘clever’ others.

And yet we all have a good understanding of the role of ‘gut feelings’ as a means of providing a means of navigating our way through life.

Ignoring such a source of messages can be at your own peril.

It may be useful to invoke the notion of ‘gut’ as a shorthand for ‘core of Being’.

Perhaps we store certain levels of important life information in our guts. I don’t know. Perhaps this sort of information is ‘positional’ rather than that which may be more easily articulated.

The notion of a ‘doctor’ of some kind – located in the gut – may be usefully borrowed from indigenous sources – as when worms in the stomach of a wallaby are called ‘doctors’ because they tell the wallaby when to move on. (Source - W. Nelson Juppurula).

Our gut-centred Doctors tell us when we need to move on, but how often do we seriously listen to them?

TRANSLATE GUT INTO WORDS AND ACTIONS

One of the roles of a writer – as a conceptual craftsperson attempting to put life matters into words as a step toward action  – requires a sense of being able to detect subtle messages from such unlikely sources and to use that ‘feeling’ to inform what is written.

In an age when we are subjected to all manner of information from all manner of sources, we must remember to listen to our gut-level messages. They tend to be well informed.

It goes without saying that, at this time at least, there is no means for others to make a profit out of our personal gut messages.

For this reason alone, and in order to promote technologically based services which can reap financial returns for others, we will not be being subjected to mainstream messages which encourage us to be guided by our gut instincts.

You do not need technology to be able to better detect your gut messages. You need a little stillness in your activities – away from e-communication for a while is good too.

Restoring a degree of sanity to a mad world – rushing headlong as though momentum alone will be enough to leap the ever growing yarning abyss of the unfolding disaster – requires us to find spaces in our lives for long enough to get in touch with better selves.

This may come in small insights which are difficult to hold for long, let alone sort out the larger problems of how to put them into practice. It ain’t easy.

And, as we get in touch with our better selves,  we feel the need to find ways by which we can relate with our kindred other-selves.

FOR EXAMPLE – GUT FEELING – POLITICAL PARTIES AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA GENERATE NOISE

One thing I have noticed in my own life is that I tend to be dismissive of my own hard-gained insights since they are not those which resonate with the megabuzz of dominating systems.

I think it best if this megabuzz is recognised as confusing noise rather than some kind of fundamentally important information relevant to how we live our lives.

As it is, when we regard these mainstream sources as being somehow ‘authoritative’ in ways our gut instincts are not, we accept something which diminishes us.

Here is a gut feeling which I have worked up:

Who cares if Rudd or Gillard or Abbott or Turnbull is Prime Minister – these people never represent us. They cannot.

They belong to political parties and alliances which systematically expropriate democracy in order to run with an entirely different agenda.

The real lesson to be learnt from the ease with which PM Howard took us into war in Iraq and, more recently, the overthrow of Rudd as Prime Minister is that the wishes of the wider community in such matters are of no account. We just make up the numbers – extras in the fantasy of others.

Rather than seeking to restore Kevin Rudd (in order to preserve our mistaken idea of how democracy works) we should be recognising that the system, as presently constituted, does not represent us.

Such a realisation is necessary if we are to ever than the next step which is to move towards discussion (and, later, action) of what would be required for a system which would represent us.

We need be talking about a system of life governance which is grounded in our local communities so that, for example  – instead of electing members of political parties – we send representative delegates from our communities to Canberra (or wherever) and they report back to us for further instructions.

NEW FORMS OF REPRESENTATION REQUIRED

I don’ t hear this kind of reform talk in the mainstream media. They are, by and large, content to run with party media stunts and their own ‘normalised’ commentary about a polarised game of political football between two players.

Noise tends to win out over insights, and the latter are put to one side to allow the incessant mindless chatter of other scores to fill vitally important space.

Our hard-won insights are previous embers which are to be treasured.

One challenge for us-kind is to work on fashioning forms of representation which enable us as down-to-earth-Beings who can respectfully relate to our surroundings, secure in the knowledge that – by ensuring the whole of life is maintained in best possible condition – so too will our form of life be endlessly reproduced.

That is, not as members of a modern nation-state; not as those who have a secular understanding of life as found in modern science; not as members of the present major religions.

Something both old and new is afoot as life seeks a form fitting for this planet.

Those of us who can learn to listen to our gut-centered messages now need to stop being dominated by voices which insist they – and they alone – are born to rule. They typically just make a mockery of life.

And we need to fashion new forms of representation which do real justice to the miracle of life on this planet.

Instead of looking to a Westminster parent and sundry colonial offspring for inspiration, as various forms of global crisis deepen we do well - now - to look at proven Ways of Being as found among First Peoples.