breyburn: 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: