Moving from dominating to relating - 21st century regional context

Treating other people as objects is part of the system of attitudes which makes up imperialism.

No doubt imperialism is only one instance of social formations in which one group – as a means of attaining and maintaining positions of power – treat other people as objects.

Pierre Clastres reminds us that genocide and ethnocide are extensions of practices first of all applied ‘at home’. The emergence of European kingdoms and modern nation-states are the results of bloody struggles. With the move to over-running life overseas, the system of attitudes transcends the ‘boundaries’ which otherwise demark ‘home’.

The treatment of other people as objects can be seen very clearly in the Anglo-Australian treatment of Australian First Peoples, from the earliest times of colonization and through to the present day with the continuation of the Northern Territory ‘intervention’.

A culturally one-sided imperial will is forcefully imposed on the lives of First Peoples by non-indigenous politicians who have no personal understanding of the Ways of First Peoples and no professional qualifications which would make good this deficit.

Governor Macquarie is a classic example from earlier times -  and  P.M. Howard, Minister Brough, P.M. Gillard and Minister Macklin serve as more recent examples from both sides of Anglo-Australian politics.

In the absence of any form of indigenous representation, non-indigenous politicians simply impose their own world-view and values upon the whole of Australian life  - as ‘one nation’- as though the introduced system of order is, somehow, preordained to apply in all cases and in all instances.

They are culturally blind when it comes to recognizing the realities of the original cultures of this country.

The ability of the Westminster system (as presently constituted) to call on experts to advise governments about such matters is a proven failure in Australia.

The old fashioned approach, belonging to European imperialism and colonialism, seeks to manipulate and dominate life.

It is the antithesis of relating.

My hope for the survival of First Peoples as First Peoples is that a future scholar, with an understanding of Foucault’s notion of an episteme, will be able to look back at Australian life and identify the period in which an epistemic shift occurred – when the old methods of non-indigenous Australians shifted from the attempts to dominate First Peoples and finally accepted the need to learn how to relate.

There is a profound difference between these two modes of Being. A shift from heavy to light – from life as something a drill sergeant would appreciate to life as a flowing dance.

What I wonder about, though, is how this change will come about since Anglo-Australians (at least, those who aspire to attain the apparent strategic heights) show little inclination in this direction. The present systems for ‘advancement’ and promotion in Australia reward those who subscribe to a particular world-view, and that world-view is not one which owes anything to the wisdom inscribed in the Ways of  First Peoples.

EASTERN ENGAGEMENTS?

There is a possibility that, as Anglo-Australia Inc seeks to engage more with Asian countries, the cultural arrogance which underwrites the prior and deep seated view of “Australia for the White Man” will run into serious problems.

In a changing regional context and a changing global economic context, the ability for a small number of Anglo-Australians to maintain their outdated worldview may be seriously challenged.

If Europe is facing major problems and there is a change of policy in the United States about how to best protect its interests, the need for Anglo-Australians to adapt to their real surroundings could see a rapid acceleration in changes in the selection process for key positions.

Those who have abilities for cross-cultural relating, especially with cultures which place great value on respect and the need for mutually acceptable processes, may find themselves in demand, while the managers of yore are retired to the backroom to sort out inanimate objects of one kind or another, provided these low level tasks have not been replaced by less-expensive-to-maintain automaton.

One possibly fly in the ointment for such a vision is just what kind of personality is going to be associated with the rise of significant Asian neighbours.  They too may be dominated by those who treat people as objects, rather than fully alive Being - by the view that the bottom line is not well-being for the whole of life by acts of balanced exchange but the means by which other people's surplus energies can be 'legally' stolen by unfair trade.

The struggles of the 21^st century to heal Australian life may well include forming alliances with those who, having initially embraced Western Ways without realizing the true costs of doing so, then seek to regain some degree of balance as a result of the workings of a living praxis.

A surprising cultural landscape in Australia's high country - Easter 2012

Discovering a surprising cultural landscape in Australia's high country - a personal account.
From one of my other blogs

Part 1. http://japaljari.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/messages-from-our-surroundings-mount-kosciuszko-easter-2012/

Part 2. http://japaljari.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/messages-from-our-surroundings-part-two/

Part 3. http://japaljari.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/messages-from-our-surroundings-mt-kosciuszko-trip-easter-2012-final/

cheers
Bruce Reyburn May 2012

The view from life's nadir

In his 2011 book “ Hiroshima Nagasaki” Paul Ham juxtaposes a point life arrived at in 1945, where United States President Harry Truman is part of a process which readies itself to drop the first atomic bomb on a human population. Ham writes:

“The remaining questions were: when, how and where (that is, which Japanese targets). Truman was expected not to meddle in or obstruct the process; rather to listen, understand and wave the juggernaut on, a role he performed as exactingly as the military-industrial complex expected of the man who had led the Truman Committee. ‘The final decision,’ the President later wrote in his memoirs , ‘of where and when to use the atomic bomb was up to me. Let there be no mistake about it. I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt it should be used.’”

Ham continues:

“How mankind arrived at the creation of such a weapon is an epic scientific and industrial story, which began with a hypothesis about the constitution of matter, by an ancient Greek 2500 years ago. The philosopher Democritus coined the word atomos to describe solid, indivisible, unchanging particles that, he supposed, constituted the building blocks of matter.” (Ham 2011:88)

We too should pause at this juncture of life on this planet.

The question we must pose is “How on earth did life arrive at this point, where one man, the President of the United States, was in a position to decide the fate of 100,000 people going about their daily business (even though that business was embedded in a country at war)?”

Rather than looking at the origins of atomic theory, our inquiry must be directed at the social origins of systems of power which – as Ham makes clear in regard to the use of fire bombing of cities – eventually numb us to the next acts of mass homicide.

It is very telling that, when the scientific experts who were necessary to create the nuclear explosive device campaigned to invoke other social considerations in its use, and to share scientific knowledge to create a world based on trust, they were marginalised, ignored, told that they had no place in politics.

“Einstein’s reply to Truman naively presumed that the bomb might end wars of ‘nationalism’ and clearly misjudged the enduring power of the idea of the sovereign state. ‘The most important things we intellectuals can do’ Einstein wrote, ‘is to emphasize over and over again the establishment of a solidly built world-government and the abolition of war preparations (including all kind of military secrecy) by the single states.” (Ham 2011:493-494)

“In sum 155 Manhattan project scientists registered their moral opposition to dropping the bomb without warning a Japanese city. These dissenting voices – many of whom worked in the lab that had built the bomb – so irritated the White House that Truman issued a press statement about the merits of the weapon ‘because so many fake scientists were telling crazy tales about it.” (Ham 2011:314)

By allowing the masters of war to define the situation, the logic of the situation justifies more mass homicide. (Paul Ham makes reference to an essay - “The Construction of Conventional Wisdom” by Uday Mohan and Sanho Tree. An essay which may be worth tracking down.)

Those scientists (who accept the division of labour as defined by the modern nation-state) have failed to transcend their own conditioning and be part of a transformation of life which would re-integrate human cosmology with a well-tempered cosmos.

We need to achieve a form of planetary sense of Being so that when we consider destroying other forms of life we are checked by the understanding at all life is one – we are the horror life encounters when we are also cast in the position of victim.

But a planetary sense of Being may not be the single world government which Einstein invokes. Rather than concentrating power in few privileged places, we need new arrangements which re-centre Being everywhere.

Life in ‘paleolithic’ times seems to have been informed by a global wisdom of this kind. And it is also marked by means which prevent concentrated forms of power.

Moiety systems, based of forms of complementary opposition in which two halves are required for life to be whole, work to ensure that relative differences are not allowed to become absolute differences (as found on both side of modern wars where the enemy are demonised).

There can be no legitimate monopoly of coercive power (of the kind associated with the modern nation state) within such complementary opposite moiety systems.

When one moiety presumes that it is absolutely superior to the other part of life, all manner of destructive games come into play in order to attempt to coerce life to confirm to that unearthed vision.

Enter - an Anglo- Australian theme - One nation, one people etc

The present situation in Australia provides the perfect context for considering these matters if we are to avoid a purely abstract discussion of little immediate relevance.

Where better to start than an editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald after an event in Canberra on Australia Day (26 January) 2012:

The long struggle to end inequality
Sydney Morning Hearld
January 28, 2012

Opinion

EDITORIAL

TONY ABBOTT was right: it is time to move Australia's view of indigenous affairs on from the Aboriginal tent embassy. Certainly the tent embassy was a master stroke in its day. The title ''embassy'' encapsulated brilliantly the difficulties and desires of indigenous Australians in their relationship with non-indigenous Australia. The word summed up a deep fissure in Australia's nationhood, which most non-indigenous Australians had barely thought about - that the settlement of Australia from 1788 had involved an unacknowledged confrontation between two nations which had never formally concluded.

It implied not only the existence of a separate indigenous nation but a variety of demands, in particular a treaty to settle outstanding issues and claims, including land rights. It implied, too, a demand for policies to redress indigenous disadvantage.

What the Australia Day fracas outside the restaurant in Canberra, and its aftermath, have shown is the extent to which Australia has moved on from the simplistic confrontation symbolised by the tent embassy. The embassy's supporters, stuck in the us-versus-them mentality of four decades ago, had to misrepresent Abbott's words quite extensively to fire the crowd up to action. Abbott did not call for the tent embassy to be pulled down, as was claimed. Other indigenous leaders - wiser heads whose attitudes have been formed in the more constructive atmosphere that has grown up since 1972 - rightly condemned the violence. They are confident enough of indigenous Australia's position to be able to treat national political leaders with respect.
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They know that more is to be gained from working within, than from standing outside, as the tent embassy does. Indigenous issues, like indigenous culture, are mainstream in Australia in 2012.

We do not suggest, of course, that all problems have been solved, or that everything done since 1972 in Aboriginal affairs has worked. Attempts to advance the welfare of indigenous Australians have been marked in almost equal measure by their good intentions and their lack of success. Some progress has been made but the four decades since the tents went up have been littered with failure. Progress has tended to come less through government programs than other means. Native title has been recognised, and the insulting legal basis for the Crown's claim to Australian land, terra nullius - that it belonged to no one - has been annulled. The continent's Aboriginal past has entered more and more into the cultural consciousness of non-indigenous Australians through customs such as the acknowledgement of country. Kevin Rudd's apology to indigenous Australians for past ill treatment has been accepted as a significant gesture of reconciliation.

The latest step in this direction is the mooted amendment to the constitution to remove its racist provisions, to insert others that recognise Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders as Australia's original peoples, and to acknowledge the need to secure their advancement.

About the first of these measures there can be no argument. About the second there will be general agreement. About the third, though, there may well be significant opposition which the ugly scenes in Canberra on Australia Day will probably only reinforce. The problem with the proposed changes is that, though they may outlaw racial discrimination, they appear to retain race as the basis for some form of legal distinction. Many will ask, why should indigenous advancement be mentioned in the constitution specifically? How is it distinct from the advancement of the Australian population as a whole? It is a fair point - one around which opponents will rally.

The broader difficulty is that the changes appear to assume the constitution will always be a temporary document - one intended to address the transitory concerns of a particular age and, when these are no longer current, to be amended to suit the next set of concerns. Thus its racist provisions, now completely offensive to contemporary values, addressed the political concerns of the late 19th century. But the constitution is written in the language of absolutes and, as experience has taught, extremely difficult to amend. We believe it would be unwise to amend it in ways which - however justified they may seem now - would privilege indigenous Australians in ways that are not even clear. Indeed, the mere attempt to do so may be equally disastrous. What would it say about this country if a well-intentioned but half-baked attempt to right an injustice were to fail?

Progress is certainly slow - excruciatingly so, and with many setbacks. But its glacial pace should not deceive us into thinking that indigenous disadvantage is permanent, and that Australia's first people must always be outsiders, protesting outside the door of power. Least of all should Australians be diverted into enacting a constitution that assumes the various strands of Australia's population will never be one people.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/the-long-struggle-to-end-inequality-20120127-1qlre.html#ixzz1ktEIl8Gr

Two sides of story, not one.

“ A probably unilateral analysis of dual organisation has all too often propounded the principle of reciprocity as the main cause and result …. However, we should not forget that a moiety system can express not only a mechanism 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 which wins the top spot in one plane concedes it to the opposing moiety in another.” (Claude Lévi-Strauss The Elementary Structures of Kinship 1969:268 - emphais added BR)

Cutting straight to the chase – our interest lies with the process by which the ‘horizontal’ arrangement between moieties (in which the top spot on one place for one moiety is balanced by a top spot on another plane to the other) is transformed into a ‘vertical’ arrangement with a supposedly upper and superior part of the life seeking to dominate the supposedly lower and inferior other parts of life.

The attempts to impose and maintain this arrangement provide go a long way to account for much of history – a history written largely from the Upper Moiety perspective.

Life’s history, however, must include a balanced account which removes such self-privileging and provides equal representation, on its own terms, to the acts of resistance to these ‘superior’ types.

Life is best represented by an approach which honours the role of complementary opposition, rather than solely that of vertical arrangements.

In order to tease some of this out, it may be useful to look at some of the issues raised in the debate between Levi-Strauss, Dutch Anthropologists of the Leiden orientation; David Maybury-Lewis; and – his most famous opponent - Jean-Paul Sartre.

That should take us some months into 2012.

A message from life's better parts

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

This quote is a good place to start as it says it all. As is often the way, some of life’s most precious insights are to be found in myth-narratives (despite the attempts of others to rewrite life’s rules to comply with narrow ambitions).

How much of history - and of present day events - can be explained by the process the myths make clear?

While I am not a modern anthropologist I approach my work from an intellectual background which was informed, in part, by the findings of modern anthropology.

It is appropriate to begin with this comment by the late Jan Pouwer on Professor Josephus Platenkamp’s paper (in Moyer and Claessen (eds) 1988 “Time past, time present, time future: essays in honour of P.E. de Josselin de Jong. Pouwer’s comment in “Fizzy: Fuzzy: FAS? A review of Leiden labour” Canberra Anthropology 15(1) 1992:87-105.))

Basically, I read that comment about the shift from relative to absolute superiority in relation to a transformation of life s lived which moves from having two complementary opposite parts of life (in dynamic balance) to systems which have one part ‘on top’ and the other parts ‘under’. From ‘horizontal’ arrangements to ‘vertical’ arrangements. Or, we can say, from earthed to unearthed Ways of Being.

The former are typified as ‘moieties’ by anthropologists, and the later cover a wide range of social and power formations in which there is an “upper” class or elite of some sort.

Jan Pouwer was my anthropological mentor, and it was his work on complementary opposition which has influenced my views over the years. It is hard to find anything he published on this theme, but it was constantly present in his lectures in New Zealand 1968-1976.

The late Claude Levi-Strauss thought that the emphasis of the Leiden school on dual organisation was a result of the area of study (or FAS – Field of Anthropological Study) they had access to as a result of the former Dutch empire in what is presently Indonesia.

Levi-Strauss himself, as the pre-eminent representative of modern anthropology, does not appear to place the same importance dual organisation as either indigenous peoples or those with close working relationships with them.

(See Jarich Oosten “A privileged field of study” 2006:para 18. www.erudit.org/revue/etudinuit/2006/v30/n2/017565ar.pdf See also Levi-Strass vis-à-vis Mayberry Lewis in the final chapter of Levi-Strauss 1995 “The Story of Lynx.”)

Irrespective of academic debates, the ‘field of study’ in the modern nation-state of Indonesia (which mapped its self-image onto the former Dutch colony) requires attention to be paid to the position of indigenous people in Papua.

Pouwer, working in New Guinea when it was under Dutch administration, found that the principle of reciprocity was a key feature of their ways of life. There is a consistent message from Papuan peoples that this is missing in the relationship imposed upon them from those who operate in the name of the modern nation-state of Indonesia.

For those of us who see the challenge as being one of reforming life (and not one of having an academic career) we have to look for ways of returning some of life’s wisdom back into our thinking and into our practices – rather than following European master narratives.

My position is also informed by my understanding of the situation of Australia’s First Peoples as captives of the modern Anglo-Australian nation-state.

Quite clearly, in the present Australian situation one part of life (Anglo-Australia) believes it occupies a completely superior position over that of the original First Peoples.

Instead of balanced exchange relationships within the whole of life – as is the case with Australia’s First Peoples – with the arrival of dominating Europeans, believing they are born to rule in Australia, genuine social life has “ended” for the original Australians.

Absolutely superiority is presumed to be found only with introduced British cultural forms.

The 1901 Anglo-Australian Constitution (which began life as a British Act of Parliament) does not recognise Australia’s First Peoples as First Peoples, and does not acknowledge the place of their cultural practices in “Australian” social and ecological formations.

This is not past tense. In the 2012 report of Expert Panel on the recognition of indigenous Australians in the Constitution, for example, one of the recommendations is:

Executive summary
Recommendations
Recommendations for changes to the Constitution
The Panel recommends:

...

5 That a new ‘section 127A’ be inserted, along the following lines:
Section 127A Recognition of languages
(1) The national language of the Commonwealth of Australia is English.
(2) The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are the original Australian languages, a part of our national heritage.

http://www.youmeunity.org.au/uploads/assets/Expert%20Panel%20report%20-%20Executive%20Summary%20and%20Recommendations.pdf

A long campaign for the recognition of Australia’s First Peoples in the Anglo-Australian Constitution has produced a recommendation English be the only national language enshrined in the Constitution! The voices of those who speak the original languages of this country are missing from this debate. Rebalancing life has a long way to go in Australia.

The experts also found that the question of indigenous sovereignty was not to be included:

“The question of sovereignty

At consultations and in submissions to the Panel, there were numerous calls for a reappraisal of currently accepted perceptions of the historical relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians from the time of European settlement. Chapter 9 discusses one of the significant issues to have emerged during the consultation process: the aspiration of some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for recognition of their sovereign status.

The Panel has concluded that any proposal relating to constitutional recognition of the sovereign status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be highly contested by many Australians, and likely to jeopardise broad public support for the Panel’s recommendations. Such a proposal would not therefore satisfy at least two of the Panel’s principles for assessment of proposals, namely ‘contribute to a more unified and reconciled nation’, and ‘be capable of being supported by an overwhelming majority of Australians from across the political and social spectrums’. While questions relating to sovereignty are likely to continue to be the subject of debate in the community, including among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the Panel does not consider that these questions can be resolved or advanced at this time by inclusion in a constitutional referendum proposal.”

There is a notion of 'the thief's script' which has been applied to Middle East affairs. The Expert Panel has pre-empted Consitutional debate about indigenous sovereignty in order to comply with the Australian version of this script - in which an entire continent has been expropriated from the original peoples.

The surviving sovereignty of First Peoples is to be sacrificed in order to uphold the notion of a single and superior Anglo-speaking modern nation-state. Ethnocide is considered ‘normal’ in modern Australia.

European notions of sovereignty draw heavily on a one-sided and jealous notion in which only one sovereign is possible. All power is at a king of supreme apex – absolute and dominant. However, in the 21st century we can take stock of the planetary havoc wrought on life by this temporary fashion, and look for healing solutions – such as co-existing forms of sovereighty.

By looking at other forms of reason – those which have guided life outside of Europe to better balanced outcomes – we can begin to conceive of power sharing relationships based on ‘horizontal’ complementary oppositions rather exclusive ‘vertical’ hierarchies.

Based on relating rather than manipulation and control. Such is our healing challenge.

Theme for 2012 - regaining our balance

My theme on this blog for 2012 will be to do some work on what i regard as a key issue - rediscovering the importance of complementary oppostion in thought and in practice.

Part of this involves looking at how the dynamic balance of 'moiety' forms of social organisation (two counterbalanced hemispheres of life) have been replaced with an 'upper' class seeking to dominate a 'lower' class.

While the many associated forms of spin from this arrangement would have us accept this situation as 'normal' we can move to a position where we can see it as not only abnormal but a gross deformation of life.

Regaining our full well-being requires than we move beyond modern one-sided forms of representation.

I will allow comments initially and see if the spam becomes too much to manage.

cheers

Bruce Reyburn