| Topic: |
Science > Philosophy |
| User: |
"Immortalist" |
| Date: |
14 May 2006 11:11:22 AM |
| Object: |
The Witch & The Witch Hunt (of terrorists?) |
Marvin Harris explained the witch craze of Europe as a response to the
conditions of the time.
Feudalism had collapsed; capitalism had not yet become established.
There were revolutionary religious movements all across Europe. [which
ultimately led to the Protestent Reformation] "One way to get rid of
the troublemaking alienated poor," he tells us (1974:229) "was to
enlist their aid in the Holy Wars, or Crusades, aimed at recapturing
Jerusalem from Islam." Sound familiar from today's (October 11,
2002) news?
But in those days, these military efforts were less well organized.
They tended to backfire and become revolutionary, aimed at the rulers
who set them in motion.
Witches to the rescue.
Witches? "What happened?" Harris asks, not "what did people think
happened?" In his straightforward way he challenges us to sort out
realities from the fantasies of the various participants. ...the poor
came to believe that they were being victimized by witches and devils
instead of princes and popes.
.... Did the price of bread go up, taxes soar, wages fall, jobs grow
scarce? It was the work of witches (1974:123).
The state wasn't responsible for the economic crisis that befell the
continent. Witches were.
The state would aid the church in helping to defend people against
these enemies. Was a rapacious nobility to blame? No! It was witches.
The church and state protected people against an "enemy who was
omnipresent but difficult to detect," (1974:238).
The ruling class, Marvin Harris explained, perpetuated a witch mania to
disperse and fragment people, demobilize the poor, increase their
social distance, fill them with mutual suspicions, make people fearful,
heighten peoples' insecurity, and to make people feel helpless and
dependent on the governing classes to protect them.
In so doing, it drew the poor further and further away from confronting
the ecclesiastical and secular establishment with demands for the
redistribution of wealth and the leveling of rank... It was the magic
bullet of society's privileged and powerful classes. That was its
secret. (1974:240).
Today people worry about the efficient uses of energy, the oil
business, and the relationship of big oil to big government. The stock
market crashes and sends the economy into a tailspin as business
empires built on bogus accounting practices collapse. In the collapse,
people worry about the increasing poverty and joblessness that stalk
them. Insurance companies increase co-payments for healthcare to insure
their profitability. People begin to think they should be grateful for
a minimum wage job as low paying jobs replace well paying ones. People
fret over concentrations of wealth and worry about connections between
barons of business and political elites. What's the solution?
Is a rapacious business/government nobility to blame? No! It must
be....witches? That won't play in today's secular society.
Communists? All gone. What can business and state protect people
against? An "enemy who was omnipresent but difficult to detect,"
(1974:238). A war on terrorism just fits the bill.
http://www.sfaa.net/newsletter/Newsletter1102/css/Newsletter1102_3.htm
Mary Nelson (1989), suggests that social change in the roles of women
can be a source of antagonism towards women. For instance, the
Inquisition occurred in Europe during a time when women were entering
new
forms of employment. Hundreds of thousands of women, particularly
those
who were not following the traditional gender roles of women, were
accused
of witchcraft and put to death--a practice that came to an end soon
after
men as well as women became potential targets of witchcraft
accusations.
http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/Syllabi/Sexuality/human-sexuality+gender
Torture and Death for Accused Witches
By Jennifer Milanese
Long before the famed Salem Witch Trials, thousands upon thousands of
men, women, and even children were being tortured and massacred
throughout Europe. These horrible acts were even condoned by the
churches. Towards the end of the thirteenth century witchcraft was
proclaimed an act punishable by death. But death did not come easy to
those accused.
All across Europe fingers began to fly. Accusations were made, and the
guilty party was often tortured and made to confess to witchcraft and
evil deeds. No evidence was needed to convict. Europe became obsessed
with ridding themselves of witches. Witch hunters popped up all
throughout the Continent. Books were published on the subject, perhaps
the best known was " The Malleus Maleficarum." It was a guidebook on
how what to look for in a witch and how to successfully kill them.
France and Germany were especially known for their gruesome
punishments.
As the need to punish and kill witches grew, dozens and dozens of
torture tools and methods were developed. One such item was the
bootikens. These were boots that went from the person's ankles to
knees. Wedges were hammered up the length of the boot into the person's
leg, breaking and crushing bones as it went. Another tool used was
called The Pear. It was a pear shaped apparatus that was often inserted
into orifices. It was then expanded by way of a screw. It was often
expanded enough until it tore and mangled which ever orifice it had
been inserted in. Death would follow shortly, from either blood loss or
infection. It was usually equipped with sharp spikes at the end so that
a person could also be stabbed with it, usually in the neck. Another
device known as Turcas was used to tear the fingernails out. This was
followed by sticking pins or needles into the raw and exposed skin of
the fingers.
Using red hot pincers against a witch's body was also a favorite. Often
a pincer was used to tear off pieces of flesh and in some cases
inserted into vaginas and rectums. Many times a person would be
stripped naked, horse whipped, and then would have the pincers used on
them. Women sometimes had their breasts torn off with hot pincers to
further humiliate them.
Crushing a witch was often used both to kill and force a confession.
The accused would be made to lie on the ground or a table and usually a
board was placed on top of them. As they lay there being questioned
they would slowly place large rocks upon the board. They would add more
and more until the person confessed and then, once having a confession,
would add more until the person was no longer able to breathe. It was a
slow and painful death.
A variation on crushing was stoning. Stoning allowed a mob of people to
gather around the accused and pelt them with stones until the person
was killed. Depending on the situation a person could be battered for
minutes or hours before succumbing to death. Stonings were not always
organized events, in some communities a mob would develop before the
so-called witch could be tried.
Another method used to gain a confession was called the Strappado. In
this case, the persons wrists were bound behind their back with a rope.
The rope was then hoisted over a ceiling beam. The rope was pulled
until the person was suspended in the air and then they were viciously
dropped. This was repeated until the persons shoulders became
dislocated.
From country to country, the methods varied. But no matter where you
were, if you were accused you were in for pain, humiliation, and
ultimate suffering.
http://home.comcast.net/~burokerl/torture_and_death_for_accused_witches.htm
The Interrogations
Interrogations were considered essential for learning how witchcraft
was practised and how the demons acted, but the questions were
predetermined. These are some of the questions:
Why did you become a witch, since when, and how?
What have you done as a witch?
What was the name of your master demon?
What type of oath did you make to him and how?
Who was your incubus (succubus in case of men)?
How is the phallus of your incubus (or the vagina of your succubus)?
How is the Devil's phallus?
How is the sperm of the demons?
What type of sexual practices did you have with demons?
Who else was present at the Sabbaths you attended?
What did you eat there?
How was the dance during the Sabbath?
How were the ceremonies celebrated there?
What harms have you caused to people and/or animals?
Which herbs have you used to do that? What other elements?
Do you change your shape into that of an animal?
Why does the Devil knock at your door by night?
What do you do to fly?
Who are your accomplices?
And so on. These questions are based not on skepticism but on the
presumed guilt of the accused.
The authors of the Malleus Maleficarum seemed to have been particularly
interested on the demons' genitalia and the type of sexual
relationships they could have with humans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials
Extracts from THE HAMMER OF WITCHES [Malleus maleficarum], 1486
Even with the papal bull the German inquisitors found their preparation
incomplete. Soon after their return from Rome they set about compiling
a handbook - an exposition of witchcraft and a code of procedure for
detection and punishment of witches. Completed in 1486, it was called
the Hammer of Witches.
The method of beginning an examination by torture is as follows: First,
the jailers prepare the implements of torture, then they strip the
prisoner (if it be a woman, she has already been stripped by other
women, upright and of good report). This stripping is lest some means
of witchcraft may have been sewed into the clothing-such as often,
taught by the Devil, they prepare from the bodies of unbaptized
infants, [murdered] that they may forfeit salvation. And when the
implements of torture have been prepared, the judge, both in person and
through other good men zealous in the faith, tries to persuade the
prisoner to confess the truth freely; but, if he will not confess, he
bid attendants make the prisoner fast to the strappado or some other
implement of torture. The attendants obey forthwith, yet with feigned
agitation. Then, at the prayer of some of those present, the prisoner
is loosed again and is taken aside and once more persuaded to confess,
being led to believe that he will in that case not be put to death.
Here it may be asked whether the judge, in the case of a prisoner much
defamed, convicted both by witnesses and by proofs, nothing being
lacking but his own confession, can properly lead him to hope that his
life will be spared when, even if he confess his crime, he will be
punished with death.
It must be answered that opinions vary. Some hold that even a witch of
ill repute, against whom the evidence justifies violent suspicion, and
who, as a ringleader of the witches, is accounted very dangerous, may
be assured her life, and condemned instead to perpetual imprisonment on
bread and water, in case she "I give sure and convincing testimony
against other witches; yet this penalty of perpetual imprisonment must
not be announced to her, but only that her life will be spared, and
that she will be punished in some other fashion, perhaps by exile. And
doubtless such notorious witches, especially those who prepare
witch-potions or who by magical methods cure those bewitched, would be
peculiarly suited to be thus preserved, in order to aid the bewitched
or to accuse other witches, were it not that their accusations cannot
be trusted, since the Devil is a liar, unless confirmed by proofs and
witnesses.
Others hold, as to this point, that for a time the promise made to the
witch sentenced to imprisonment is to be kept, but that after a time
she should be burned.
A third view is, that the judge may safely promise witches to spare
their lives, if only he will later excuse himself from pronouncing the
sentence and will let another do this in his place....
But if, neither by threats nor by promises such as these, the witch can
be induced to speak the truth, then thejailers must carry out the
sentence, and torture the prisoner according to the accepted methods,
with more or less of severity as the delinquent's crime may demand.
And, while he is being tortured, he must be questioned on the articles
of accusation, and this frequently and persistently, beginning with the
lighter charges-for he will more readily confess the lighter than the
heavier. And, while this is being done, the notary must write down
everything in his record of the trial - how the prisoner is tortured,
on what points he is questioned and how he answers.
And note that, if he confesses under the torture, he must afterward be
conducted to another place, that he may confirm it and certify that it
was not due alone to the force of the torture.
But, if the prisoner will not confess the truth satisfactorily, other
sorts of tortures must be placed before him, with the statement that
unless he will confess the truth, he must endure these also. But, if
not even thus he can be brought into terror and to the truth, then the
next day or the next but one is to be set for a continuation of the
tortures - not a repetition, for it must not be repeated unless new
evidences produced.
The judge must then address to the prisoners the following sentence:
We, the judge, etc., do assign to you, such and such a day for the
continuation of the tortures, that from your own mouth the truth may be
heard, and that the whole may be recorded by the notary.
And during the interval, before the day assigned, the judge, in person
or through approved men, must in the manner above described try to
persuade the prisoner to confess, promising her (if there is aught to
be gained by this promise) that her life shall be spared.
The judge shall see to it, moreover, that throughout this interval
guards are constantly with the prisoner, so that she may not be I
alone; because she will be visited by the De and tempted into suicide.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/witches1.html
Almost a generation ago the study of European witchcraft was
revolutionized by a "paradigm shift," as Wolfgang Behringer has termed
it, that involved the adoption of anthropological and sociological
methodologies, a greater attention to archival sources, and an interest
in focusing on history "from below."
Part of the larger shift to social, and more recently cultural,
history, it has led to the emergence of a broad consensus on many
aspects of the topic over the past three decades. The early modem
discourse on witchcraft, it is generally agreed, developed out of the
interplay of Europe's learned and popular cultures.
Individual trials, too, involved an interplay between government
officials and local communities; while some spectacular hunts may have
been driven by officials obsessed with a diabolical conspiracy, most
trials took place because of complaints brought to the authorities by
ordinary peasants and townspeople-- rumors uncovered in local or church
courts, requests that such rumors be quashe d, or outright accusations.
These complaints manifested both long-standing folk beliefs and the
hard times that stemmed from population pressures, socioeconomic
change, and the climatic downturn of the "Little Ice Age."
Once started, witch trials took on a life of their own because the
tortured testimony appeared to validate the discourse as the victims
constructed narratives corresponding to the expectations of their
interrogators.
Sometimes torture resulted in an ever-expanding chain of denunciations,
however, and as the accusations spread farther and farther from the
stereotyped suspects and closer and closer to the magistrates and their
families, the elite suffered a crisis of confidence that brought the
trial to an end. On a larger scale, a similar sort of "crisis of
confidence" is thought to have been at work as well, supported and
stimulated by growing legal concerns, religious scruples, and an
increasing propensity to medicalize the problem. The resultant decline
in prosecutions reflected not a sudden denial that witchcraft was
possible but a gradually increasing skepticism within the elite about
its power and importance. While the traditional belief in malevolent
(as opposed to diabolical) witches survived among the peasants, the
change began a more fundamental paradigm shift that set the basic
framework for educated understanding of witchcraft down to today.
http://tinyurl.com/m4hvg
Anthropology should be resolute and resourceful in responding to
competitive approaches based on irrationality, pseudoscience, and/or
anti-science.
Marvin Harris was a persistent and persuasive critic of "obscurantism,"
the term he applied to the common set of assumptions underlying
"astrology, witchcraft, messianism, hippiedom, fundamentalism, cults of
personality, nationalism, ethnocentrism, and a hundred other
contemporary modes of thought that exalt knowledge gained by
inspiration, revelation, intuition, faith, or incantation as against
knowledge obtained in conformity with scientific research principles"
(Harris 1979:316). He forcefully rebutted the challenge posed to
scientific knowledge by Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan fantasies (Harris
1979:319-324), and he warned about the moral and political dangers
inherent in the rising tide of Evangelical Protestantism and other
religious movements in the United States in the second half of the
twentieth century (Harris 1987:141-165). Marvin Harris was unhesitant
in confronting the errors of "ethnomania," or the irrational tendency
of each racial and ethnic group "to pay far more attention to its own
origins, history, heroism, suffering, and achievements than to those of
other racial and ethnic groups" (Harris 1999:111), and he took great
trouble to expose the myriad fallacies and shortcomings inherent in the
anti-science of postmodernism (e.g., Harris 1995b; 1999:153-160).
http://faculty.ircc.edu/faculty/jlett/AAA%20Paper%20on%20Harris.htm
Extended quote from Marvin Harris
http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist2/jesuspig.htm
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm
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| User: "Immortalist" |
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| Title: Re: The Witch & The Witch Hunt (of terrorists?) |
14 May 2006 11:13:08 AM |
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Return of the Witch
by Marvin Harris
http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/tbacig/cst3010/cpwwho.html
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679724680/
After being branded as superstition and suffering years of ridicule,
witchcraft has returned as a respectable source of titillation. Not
only witchcraft, but all kinds of occult and mystical specialties,
ranging from astrology to Zen and including meditation, Hare Krishna,
and the I Ching, an ancient Chinese system of magic. Catching the
spirit of the times, a textbook titled Modern Cultural Anthropology
recently won instant success by declaring: "Human freedom includes the
freedom to believe."
The unexpected resurgence of attitudes and theories long held to be
incompatible with the expansion of Western science and technology is
associated with the development of a lifestyle which has been given the
name "counter-culture." According to Theodore Roszak, one of the
movement's adult prophets, counter-culture will save the world from the
"myths of objective consciousness." It will "subvert the scientific
world view" and substitute a new culture in which the "non-intellective
capacities" will reign supreme. Charles A. Reich, another minor prophet
of recent years, speaks of a millennial state of mind which be calls
Consciousness III. To achieve Consciousness III is "to be deeply
suspicious of logic, rationality, analysis and of principles."
In the lifestyle of the counter-culture, feelings, spontaneity,
imagination are good; science, logic, objectivity are bad. Its members
boast of fleeing "objectivity" as if from a place inhabited by plague.
A central aspect of counter-culture is the belief that consciousness
controls history. People are what goes on in their minds; to make them
better, all you have to do is give them better ideas. Objective
conditions count for little. The entire world is to be altered as a
result of a "revolution in consciousness." All we need do to stop
crime, end poverty, beautify cities, eliminate war, live in peace and
harmony with ourselves and nature, is to open our minds to
Consciousness III. "Consciousness is prior to structure. . . The whole
corporate state rests on nothing but consciousness."
In the counter-culture, consciousness is stimulated and made aware of
its untapped potential. Counter-culture people take journeys--"head
trips" -- to broaden their minds. They use pot, LSD, or mushrooms -- to
get their heads together." They rap, encounter, or chant in order to
"freak out" with Jesus, Buddha, Mao Tse-tung.
The aim is to express consciousness, demonstrate consciousness, alter
consciousness, raise consciousness, expand consciousness--anything but
objectify consciousness. To the Aquarian, mind-blown, stoned,
freaked-out partisans of Consciousness ill, reason is an invention of
the military-industrial complex. it should be "offed" like any other
"pig."
Psychedelic, drugs are useful because they allow "illogical"
relationships to seem "perfectly natural." They are good because, in
Reich's words, they make "unreal what society takes most seriously:
time schedules, rational connections, competition, anger, excellence,
authority, private property, law, status, the primacy of the state."
They are a "truth serum that repeals false consciousness." One who has
achieved Consciousness 111 "does not 'know the facts. He doesnt have to
because he still 'knows the truth that seems hidden from others."
Counter-culture celebrates the supposedly natural life of primitive
peoples. Its members wear beads, head-bands, body paint, and colorful
tattered clothing; they yearn to be a tribe. They seem to believe that
tribal peoples are non-materialistic, spontaneous, and reverently in
touch with occult sources of enchantment.
In the anthropology of counter-culture, primitive consciousness is
epitomized by the shaman, a figure who has light and power but never
pays electric bills. Shamans are admired because they are adept at
"cultivating exotic states of awareness" and at roving "among the
hidden powers of the universe." The shaman possesses
"superconsciousness." He has "eyes of fire that burn through the
ordinariness of the world and perceive the wonders and terrors beyond."
Using hallucinogens and other techniques such as self-asphyxiation, and
hypnotic drums and dance rhythms, the shaman, according to Roszak,
"cultivates his rapport with the non-intellective sources of the
personality as assiduously as any scientist trains himself to
objectivity."
There is much to be learned about the counter-culture from a
consideration of Carlos Castanedas popular hero Don Juan, a mysterious
super-conscious Yaqui Indian "man of. knowledge." Castaneda writes of
his experiences as a fledgling anthropology student who wanted to
penetrate the separate, non-ordinary reality of the shamans world. Don
Juan accepted Castaneda as an apprentice, and Castaneda set out to
write a doctoral dissertation based on Don Juans teachings. To remake
Castaneda into a "man of knowledge," Don Juan introduced the innocent
student to various hallucinogenic substances. After encountering a
transparent luminescent dog and a hundred-foot gnat, Casteneda began to
doubt that his normal reality was any more real than the nonordinary
reality to which his mentor had conducted him. At the outset, Castaneda
was intent on finding out how a "man of knowledge" conceives of the
world. But the apprentice gradually began to feel that he was learning
something about the world itself.
"It is stupid and wasteful," noted another anthropologist, Paul
Riesman, in a New York Times book review, "to think of Don Juans
knowledge--and that of other non-Western peoples--as no more than a
conception of some fixed reality. Castaneda makes it c1ear that the
teachings of Don Juan do tell us something of how the world really is."
Wrong on both counts. Castaneda does not make anything clear. And Don
Juans "separate reality" is not unfamiliar to "Western peoples."
Castanedas most famous hallucinogenic trip is very reminiscent of
matters I discussed here earlier. Don Juan and Castaneda spent several
days preparing a paste from yerba del diabla--"devils weed"--mixed with
lard and other ingredients. Under Don Juans supervision, the apprentice
spread the paste on the soles of his feet and up the insides of his
legs, reserving the largest part for his genitals. The paste bad a
suffocating, pungent smell--"like a gas of some sort." Castaneda
straightened up and started to walk, but his legs felt "rubbery and
long, extremely long."
I looked down and saw Don Juan sitting below me; way below me. The
momentum carried me forward one more step, which was even more elastic
and longer than the preceding one. And from there I soared. I remember
coming down once; then I pushed up with both feet, sprang backwards and
glided on my back. 1 saw the dark sky above me, the clouds going by me.
I jerked my body so I could look down. I saw the dark mass of the
mountains. My speed was extraordinary.
After learning how to maneuver by turning his head, Castaneda
experienced "such freedom and swiftness as he had never known before."
At last he felt obliged to descend. It was morning and he was naked and
a half-mile from where he had set out. Don Juan assured him that with
practice he would become a better flyer:
You can soar through the air for hundreds of miles to see what Is
happening at any place you want, or to deliver a fatal blow to your
enemies far away.
Castaneda asked his teacher, "Did I really fly, Don Juan?" and the
shaman replied, "Thats what you told me. Didnt you?"
Then I really didnt fly, Don Juan. I flew in my imagination~ in my mind
alone. Where was my body?
To Which Don Juan rejoined:
You dont think a man flies; and yet a brujo [witch] can move a thousand
miles in one second to see what is going on. He can deliver a blow to
his enemies long distances away. So does he or doesnt he fly?
Does this sound familiar? It should. What are Don Juan and Castaneda
debating if not the respective merits of the Canon Episcopi and
Institor and Sprengers Hammer of the Witches? Does the witch fly in
mind alone or in body also? At last, Castaneda asks Don Juan what would
happen if he tied himself to a rock with a heavy chain: "Fm afraid you
will have to fly holding the rock with its heavy chain."
As we learned from Professor Harner, European witches flew after
rubbing themselves with salves and unguents containing the
skin-penetrating alkaloid afro-pine. Professor Harner also informs us
that atrophic is an active ingredient in the Datura genus of plants,
known in the New World as Jimson weed, thorn apple, Gabriels trumpet,
mad apple,and devils weed--the last being the variety whose root made
Castaneda airborne. In fact, Harner predicted that Castaneda would fly
like a witch before Castaneda rubbed himself with devils weed.
Several years ago I ran across a reference to the use of a Datura
ointment by the Yaqui Indians of Northern Mexico, who reportedly rubbed
it on the stomach "jo see visions." I called this to the attention of
my colleague and friend, Carlos Castaneda, who was studying under a
Yaqui shaman, and asked him to find out if the Yaqui used the ointment
for flying and to determine its effects.
So shamanistic superconsciousness is the consciousness of witches
favorably regarded in a world no longer threatened by the Inquisition.
The "separate reality" previously unknown to smugly objective "Western
peoples" is so much a part of Western civilization that a scant three
hundred years ago "objectiflers" were burned at the stake for denying
that witches could fly.
In the first chapter, I cited the claim that the expansion of
"objective consciousness" inevitably results in a loss of "moral
sensibility." Counter-culture and Consciousness III represent
themselves as humanizing trends concerned with the restoration of
sentiment, compassion, love, and mutual trust in human relation-ships.
I find it difficult to reconcile this moral posture with the interest
expressed in witchcraft and shamanism.
Don Juan, for instance, can only be described as amoral. He may know
how to "rove among the hidden powers of the universe," but he is not
troubled by the difference between good and evil in the traditional
Western sense of morality. His teachings are, in fact, devoid of "moral
sensibility."
One incident in Castaneda s second book epitomizes the moral opacity of
the shaman's
super-consciousness more than any other. Having achieved fame and
fortune with The Teachings of Don Juan, Castaneda tried 'to find his
mentor to give him a copy. While waiting for Don Juan to appear,
Castaneda studied a pack of street urchins who lived by eating scraps
left on the tables in his hotel. After three days of watching the
children darting in and out "like vultures," Castaneda became "truly
despondent." Don Juan was surprised to hear this. "Do you really feel
sorry for them?" he wanted to know. Castaneda insisted that be did, and
Don Juan asked him, 'Why?"
Because I m concerned with the well-being of my fellow men. Those are
children and their world is ugly and cheap.
Castaneda does not say that he feels sorry for the children because
they are eating the scraps he has left on the table. What seems to
bother him is that their lives are "ugly and cheap." Hunger and poverty
give rise to bad thoughts, or bad dreams. Taking the cue, Don Juan
admonished his pupil for supposing that such waifs could not mature
mentally and become "men of know!edge":
Do you think that your very rich world would ever help you to become a
man of knowledge?
When Castaneda is forced to admit that his affluence hasn't helped him
to become a successful witch, Don Juan nails him:
Then how can you feel sorry for those children?. . . Any of them could
become a man of knowledge. All the men of knowledge I know were kids
like those you saw eating leftovers and licking tables.
For many members of the counter-culture, the morally most degenerate
product of the scientific world view is the technocrat the heartless,
inscrutable technician devoted to expert knowledge, but indifferent as
to who uses it and for what end. Yet Don Juan is precisely such a
technocrat. The knowledge he imparts to Castaneda carries no moral
burden. In becoming a "man of knowledge," Castaneda s main concern is
to avoid taking something that will flip him into a permanent orbit.
For all the moral concern about how Don Juan s extraordinary powers are
to be applied, Castaneda might as well have learned howto pilot a B-52.
His relationship to Don Juan unfolds in a moral wasteland in which
technology is the supreme good, even if he and his teacher eat
"buttons" instead of pressing them. I contend that it is quite
impossible to subvert objective knowledge without subverting 'the basis
of moral judgments. If we cannot know with reasonable certainty who did
what, when, and where, we can scarcely hope to render a moral account
of ourselves. Not being able to distinguish between criminal and
victim, rich and poor, exploiter and exploited, we must either advocate
the total suspension of moral judgments, or adopt the inquisitorial
position and hold people responsible for what they do in each other s
dreams.
As Time magazine reporters discovered while trying to do a story on
Carlos Castaneda, Consciousness III can cast an impenetrable fog over
the simplest human events. Invoking his freedom of belief, Castaneda
either fabricated, imagined, or hallucinated extensive portions of his
own biography:
Born in Peru, not Brazil
Date of birth 1925, not 1935
Mother died when he was 6, not 24
Father a jeweler, not a professor of literature
Studied painting and sculpture in Lima, not Milan
"To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics," said
Castaneda, "is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the
world of its magic."
According to Castaneda, Don Juan is the same way, The worlds most
famous shaman doesnt want to be photographed, tape-recorded, ir
questioned, even by his apprentice. No one except Castaneda appears to
know who Don Juan is. Castaneda freely admits: "Oh, Im a bullshitter!
Oh, how I love to throw the bull around"; at least one friend from Peru
remembers him asa"big liar."
Don Juan may not exist. Or perhaps we should say Castaneda met a Yaqui
witch in "mind" but not in "body." On the authority of the Inquisition,
this might still have resulted in an accurate account of Don Juans
teachings. Or, perhaps, Castaneda went sometimes in "imagination" and
other times in "body." These are intriguing ideas, but they can make
only an imaginary contribution to the improvement of anyones moral
sensibilities.
Counter-culture makes claims that extend far beyond the supposed
preservation of individual morality. Its advocates insist that
superconsciousness can make the world into a more friendly and more
habitable place; they see flight from objectivity as a politically
effective way to achieve an equitable distribution of wealth, recycling
of resources, abolition of impersonal bureaucracies, and the correction
of other dehumanizing aspects of modern technocratic sccieties. These
ills allegedly come from the bad ideas we have about status and work.
If we stop trying to show off, and if we stop believing that work is a
good thing in itself, revolutionary transformation will occur without
the need for anyone to get hurt. As in fairyland, "we can make a new
choice whenever we are ready to do so."
Capitalism, the corporate state, the age of science, the Protestant
ethic -- all represent types of consciousness, and they can be altered
by choosing a new consciousness. "All we have to do is close our eyes
and imagine that everyone has become a Consciousness III. The Corporate
State vanishes. . . The power of the Corporate State will be ended as
miraculously as a kiss breaks a witchs evil enchantment."
Consciousness so far out of touch with practical and mundane
constraints is, in fact, witchcraft rather than politics. People can
change their consciousness whenever they want to. But people usually
dont want to. Consciousness is adapted to practical and mundane
conditions. These conditions cannot be imagined into or out of
existence the way a shaman makes hundred-foot gnats appear and
disappear. As I pointed out earlier in the chapter on potlatch,
prestige systems are not created by vibrations from outer space. People
learn the consciousness of competitive consumerism because they are
constrained to do so by immensely powerful political and economic
forces. These forces can be modified only by practical activities aimed
at changing consciousness by changing the material conditions of
consciousness.
Counter-cultures glad tidings of revolution by consciousness are
neither new nor revolutionary. Christianity has been trying to achieve
a revolution by consciousness for two thousand years. Who would deny
that Christian consciousness could have changed the world? Yet it was
the world that changed Christian consciousness. If everybody adopted a
peaceful, loving, generous, non-competitive lifestyle, we could have
something better than counter-culture--we could have the Kingdom of
God.
Politics conceived in the image of Consciousness III takes place in the
mind, not the body. The convenience of this form of politics to those
who already possess wealth and power should be obvious. To reflect
philosophically that poverty is, after all, a state of mind has always
been a source of comfort for those who are not poor. In this regard,
counter-culture merely brings forward in slightly modified form the
traditional contempt expressed by Christian theorists for worldly
possessions. Also traditional and within the mainstream of conservative
politics is the guarantee that nothing will happen by force.
Consciousness III will destroy the corporate state "without violence,
without seizure of political power, without overthrow of any existing
group of people." Counter-culture is sworn to attack minds, not capital
gains or depletion allowances.
By definition, counter-culture is the lifestyle of alienated
middle-class college-educated youth. Specifically excluded are those
who "continue to tend the ashes of the proletarian revolution" and "the
militant black young." The hope that counter-culture will transform
society into "something a human being can identify as home" rests on
the fact that it is a middle-class movement. What makes it so important
"is that a radical rejection of science and technological values should
appear so close to the center of our society, rather than on -the
negligible margins. It is the middle-class young who are conducting
this politics of consciousness."
Aside from the question of whether a politics of pure consciousness
should be called politics rather than witchcraft or some other form of
magic, two other dubious points should be noted. First, counter-culture
does not reject technological values in tow; second, the rejection of a
certain kind of science has always been present at the very center of
our civilization.
Counter-culture is not averse to making use of the technological
products of "objective" scientific research.
Telephones, FM stations, solid-state stereos, cheap jet ffights,
estrogen birth-control pills, and chemical hallucinogens and antidotes
are essential to the good life of Consciousness III.
Moreover, dependence on high-decibel high-fidelity music has created
the greatest degree of subordination of a popular idiom to technology
in the history of the performing arts. At least tacitly, therefore,
counterculture accepts the existence of specialists in the physical and
biological sciences whose job it is to design and maintain the
lifestyles technological infrastructure.
The most hated forms of science in the perspective of Consciousness III
are not the laboratory sciences, but those which seek to apply
laboratory standards to the study of history and lifestyles.
Counter-culture depicts the turning away from the scientific study of
lifestyles and history as if it were a departure from some deeply
ingrained pattern. But even among so-called behavioral and social
scientists, the prevailing form of knowledge is not and never has been
what the counter-culture saysit is. How can anyone react to an overdose
of the science of lifestyles when the science of lifestyles insists
that the riddles examined in the previous chapters of this book have no
scientific explanation? Extensive "objectification" in the study of
lifestyle phenomena is nothing but a myth of the social dreamwork of
the counter-culture. The prevailing consciousness among the majority of
professionals concerned with explaining lifestyle phenomena is
virtually indistinguishable from Consciousness III.
If the return of the witch involved turning the physics, chemistry, and
biology labs over to people who disdain objective evidence and rational
analysis, we would have little to fear. The exercise of the freedom of
belief in the laboratory could only be a temporary inconvenience until
the charred remains of superconscious experimenters were swept out
along with the rubble they created. Unfortunately, obscurantism applied
to lifestyles does not sell-destruct. Doctrines that prevent people
from understanding the causes of their social existence have great
social value. In a society dominated by in-equitable modes of
production and exchange, lifestyle studies that obscure and distort the
nature of the social system are far more common and more highly valued
than the mythological "objective" studies dreaded by the
counter-culture. Obscurantism applied to lifestyle studies lacks the
engineering "praxis" of the laboratory sciences. Falsifiers, mystics,
and double-talkers do not get swept out with the rubble; in fact, there
is no rubble because everything goes on just as it always did.
In previous chapters I have shown that profoundly mystified
consciousness is sometimes capable of galvanizing dissent into
effective mass movements. We have seen how successive forms of
messianism in Palestine, Europe, and Melanesia carried forward vast
revolutionary impulses aimed at more equitable distributions of wealth
and power. And we have also seen how the Renaissance Church and state
used the witch craze to enchant and befuddle the communitarian
radicals.
Where does counter-culture fit into this? Is it a conservative or a
radical force? In its own dreamwork, counter-culture identifies with
the tradition of millenariam transformation. Theodore Roszak says the
primary goal of counter-culture is to proclaim "a new heaven and a new
earth," and in its formative phase, Consciousness III brought crowds of
dissenting youth together at rock concerts and antiwar protests. But
even at the peak of its organizational efficiency, counterculture
lacked the fundamentals of messianism. It had no charismatic leaders
and it lacked a vision of a well-defined moral order. In Consciousness
III, leadership is another trick of the military-industrial complex,
and as I indicated a moment ago, a set of well-defined moral goals
cannot be reconciled with the amoral relativism of shamans like Don
Juan.
The flight from objectivity, amoral relativism and acceptance of the
omnipotence of thought speak of the witch and not the savior.
Consciousness III has all the classic symptoms of a lifestyle dreamwork
whose social function is to dissolve and fragment the energies of
dissent. This should have been clear from the great importance given to
"doing your own thing." You cant make a revolution if everybody does
his own thing. To make a revolution, everybody must do the same thing.
So, the return of the witch is not a mere inscrutable bit of whimsy.
The modern witchcraft revival has definite points of similarity with
the late medieval craze. Of course there are many important
differences. The modern witch is admired while the old witch is feared.
No one in the counter-culture wants to burn anyone either for believing
or disbelieving in witches; Reich and Roszak are not Institor and
Sprenger; and the counter-culture fortunately has no commitment to any
specific body of dogma. Yet we are left with the fact that the
counter-culture and the Inquisition stand shoulder to shoulder on the
issue of the witchs ffight. Within counter-cultures freedom to believe,
witches are once more as believable as anything else. This belief, for
all its playful innocence, makes a definite contribution to the
consolidation or stabilization of contemporary inequalities. Millions
of educated youth seriously believe that the proposal to kiss away the
corporate state as if it were an "evil enchantment" is no less
effective or realistic than any other form of political consciousness.
Like its medieval predecessor, our modern witch fad blunts and
befuddles the forces of dissent. Like the rest of the counter-culture,
it postpones the development of a rational set of political
commitments. And that is why it is so popular among the more affluent
segments of our population. That Is why the witch has returned.
Epilogue
If the witch is here, can the savior be far behind?
A case has been made by Norman Cohn in his book The Pursuit of the
Millenium for linking the messianic movements that preceded the
Protestant Reformation with the secular convulsions of the twentieth
century. Despite their contempt for the specific myths and legends of
JudeO-Christian messianism, the lifestyle consciousness of figures like
Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini arose from a set of practical and mundane
conditions similar to those responsible for the rise of such religious
saviors as John of Leyden, M=FCntzer, and even--I would add--Manahem,
Bar Kochva, and Yali. Secular, atheistic military messiahs share with
their religious predecessors a "boundless, millennial promise made with
boundless, prophet-like conviction." Like the Judeo-Christian saviors,
they claim to be personally charged with the mission of bringing
history to a preordained consummation. For Hitler it was to be the
Thousand Year Reich purified of the polypus of the Jews and other
in-dwelling witches and devils; for Lenin, it was to be the Communist
Jerusalem whose motto was that of the first Christian commune: "And all
that believed were together and had all things in common." Or as
Trotsky put it: "Let the priests of all religious confessions tell of a
paradise in the world beyond--we say we will create a true paradise for
men on this earth." For the alienated, insecure, marginal, pauperized,
bedeviled, and bewitched masses, the secular messiah promises
redemption and fulfillment on a cosmic scale. Not only a chance to
improve ones everyday existence, but total involvement in a mission of
"stupendous, unique importance."
Measured by the grandiose visions of military-messianic consciousness,
counter-culture appears to be a relatively harmless affirmation of the
futility of political struggle, either of the right, left, or center.
But complacency is an apt response to Consciousness UI only in, the
short run and in the absence of any well-formed dis-. cipline capable
of explaining the causal processes of history.
The intended "subversion of the scientific world view" is npt dangerous
because it actually threatens any part of the technological
infrastructure of our civilization. Counter-culture enthusiasts are as
dependent upon higher energy transport, solid-state electronics, and
the mass production of textiles and food as the rest of us, and they
lack both the will and the knowledge necessary for a reversion to more
primitive forms of production and communication. At any rate, there is
nothing to fear from any sect, class, or nation that fails to
participate in the further advance of nuclear, cybernetic, and
biophysical technology. Such groups will inevitably suffer the fate of
the other Stone Age peoples of the twentieth century. They may survive,
but only precariously and at the sufferance of immensely more powerful
neighbors--on reservations or in communes protected for their value as
tourist attractions. To regress to more primitive stages of technology,
or even to hold the line at what the industrial powers now possess,
cannot but appear as the most ludicrous and harebrained of proposals to
the majority of mankind that grows daily more determined to improve
their lives by breaking the Euro-American and Japanese monopoly on
science and technology. A million chanting Reichs and Roszaks affect
the advance and spread of science and technology about as much as the
chirping of a single vagrant cricket affects the operation of an
automated blast furnace. The threat of counter-culture lies elsewhere.
The gurus of Consciousness III cannot conceivably halt or slow down the
advance of technology; but they can increase the level of popular
befuddlement concerning how that technology is to be made to reduce
rather than intensify inequities and exploitation, how it is to be made
to serve humane and constructive purposes rather than cause terror and
destruction. The deepening confusion, psychic involution, and amorality
epitomized in the return of the witch carry with them for anyone aware
of the history of our civilization the imminent threat of the return of
the messiah. Disdain of reason, evidence, and objectivity --
super-consciousness and its heady freedom of belie -- are steadily
stripping an entire generation of the intellectual means of resisting
the next call for a "final and decisive- struggle" to achieve
redemption and salvation on a cosmic scale.
Head trips and freak-outs cannot alter the material -basis of
exploitation and alienation. Consciousness III will change nothing that
is fundamental or causative in the structure of capitalism or
imperialism. What lies ahead, therefore, is not a do-it-yourself
utopia, but some new and more malignant form of military messianism,
brought on by the -antics of a middle class that tried to tame its
generals with telepathic messages and that thought it could humanize
the greatest concentration of corporate wealth the world has ever seen
by going barefoot and eating unhomogenized peanut butter.
As I said at the beginning of this book, the most pernicious
fabrication perpetrated in the name of freedom to believe is the
contention that we are menaced by an overdose of "objectivity" about
the causes of our own lifestyles. The lifestyle of groups such as the
Yanomanio and Maring make clear what uttter nonsense it is to suppose
that scientific objectivity is humanitys original sin. It is evident
from the history of Europe alone that the maiming, drawing and
quartering, racking, hanging, drowning, crucifying, and burning of
innocent people long antedate the rise of modem science and technology.
Some of the specific forms of inequity and alienation characteristic of
industrial society are clearly products of the specific tools and
techniques made available by advances in the natural and behavioral
sciences. But none of the pathologies of contemporary life can be
blamed on an overdose of scientific objectivity concerning the causes
of lifestyle phenomena. Scientific objectivity about the fundamental
causes of racism is not what keeps our ethnics at each others throats,
overturns school buses, and blocks the construction of apartments for
underprivileged families. Scientific objectivity is not the cause of
male, female, or homosexual chauvinism. It was not an overdose of
scientific objectivity about lifestyles that produced the lopsided
priorities that favor moon landings and missiles over hospitals and
houses. Nor is it an overdose of scientific objectivity about
lifestyles that has created the population crisis. And what has
scientific objectivity got to do with the infinite itch of consumerism,
conspicuous consumption, conspicuous waste, built-in obsolescence,
status hunger, the TV wasteland, and all the other weird driving forces
of our competitive capitalist economy? Was it a lack of freedom of
belief that led to the looting of minerals, forests, and soils, to the
sewers running in the sky and the tarpits on the beaches? What was
rational, reasonable, "objective," or "scientific" about all that? How
does an overdose of objectivity about lifestyles explain a war that
three Presidents couldnt give a rational reason for fighting but also
couldnt stop?
One might as well believe that objectivity was the commanding lifestyle
of Germany in 1932, that the A=B1yan beast cult of blond manhood,
anathematization oQthe Semites, gypsies, and Slavs, worship of the
fatherland, and the Wagnerian chanting, goose-stepping and Sieg-Heiling
in front of der Fuhrer all resulted from the atrophy of the
"non-intellective capacities" and feelings of the German people. Ditto
Stalinism with its Uncle Joe cult, genuflections before the corpse of
Lenin, Kremlin intrigues, Siberian slave camps, and party-line
dogmatism.
Of course we have our Strangelove zero-sum-game specialists, would-be
super-objectiflers who objectify human life by counting corpses and
computerizing death. But the moral flaw of such technologists and their
political handlers is a shortage of scientific objectivity about the-
causes of lifestyle differences, not a surplus. The moral collapse of
Vietnam was scarcely caused by an overdose of objective consciousness
about what we were doing. It consisted of the failure to expand
consciousness beyond mere instrumental tasks to the practical and banal
significance of our national goals and policies. We kept the war going
in Vietnam because our consciousness was mystified by symbols of
patriotism, dreams of glory, unyielding pride, and visions of empire.
In mood we were exactly what the counter-culture people want us to
become. We imagined we were menaced by slant-eyed devils and worthless
little ye!low men; we enthralled ourselves with visions of our own
ineffable majesty. In short, we were stoned.
I see no reason why the further indulgence of involuted, ethnocentric,
irrational, and subjective modes of consciousness should result in
anything markedly different from what we have always had: witches and
messiahs. We dont need more weird vibrations, bigger psychotropic
cults, and zanier head trips. I make no claim for the millenarian
splendors that will come from a better understanding of the causes of
lifestyle phenomena. Yet there is a sound basis for assuming that by
struggling to demystify our ordinary consciousness we shall improve the
prospects for peace and economic and political justice. If this
potential change of odds in our favor be ever so slight, I think, we
must regard the expansion of scientific objectivity into the domain of
lifestyle riddles as a moral imperative. Its the only thing thats never
been tried.
http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/tbacig/cst3010/cpwwho.html
Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches:
The Riddles of Culture
by Marvin Harris=20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679724680/
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| User: "Immortalist" |
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| Title: Re: The Witch & The Witch Hunt (of terrorists?) |
14 May 2006 11:41:50 AM |
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The cult of messiahs connects with the European witch craze of the 16th
and 17th centuries, when 500,000 people were convicted of witchcraft
and burned to death. There are two witchcraft riddles: why anyone
should believe that witches fly through the air on broomsticks and why
such a notion should have become so popular when it did. "Confessions"
of alleged witches were obtained under torture.
People were tortured into confessing their own guilt and the identity
of other victims. Torture was used this way in Europe only after 1480.
In 1000 C.E. it was forbidden to believe that witch flights really took
place (the sabbath was supposed to be a figment of the imagination);
after 1480, it was forbidden to believe that they did not take place.
The Church first authorized the use of torture in the 13th century as a
means for the Inquisition to combat heresy. By the late 15th century,
it became accepted that a new kind of witch had emerged that actually
could fly to sabbaths. Harris supports the view that sabbath meetings
involved hallucinogenic experiences, through the application of
ointments that contained atropine, a powerful alkaloid that is
absorbable through the skin. The people involved - the real "trippers"
- would have hardly been touched by the Inquisition.
Harris' explanation of the witchcraft craze is that it was largely
created and sustained by the governing classes as a means of
suppressing the wave of Christian military-messianic uprisings that
emerged in Europe between the 13th and the 17th centuries. Harris
argues that the witch mania shifted responsibility for the crisis of
late medieval society - which led to the Reformation - from both Church
and state to imaginary demons: the poor came to believe that they were
being victimized by witches and devils instead of princes and popes.
The Church and state were not only exonerated, but also made
indispensable. The witch mania was radical messianism in reverse. The
military-messianic movements brought the poor and the dispossessed
together, diminished social distances, and gave them a sense of a
collective mission. The witchcraft craze, on the other hand, made
people suspicious of each other, and dispersed and fragmented the
latent energies of protest.
After being branded as superstition, witchcraft has returned as "a
respectable source of titillation." Harris' analysis of the
"counter-culture" of the 1960s and 1970s, although insightful, seems
less relevant than his account of other lifestyles mostly because of
how dated the ideas of counter-culture seem today. Harris's criticism
of Carlos Castaneda's counter-culture anthropology focuses on the
unreliability of Castaneda's methods and in the moral ambiguity of his
teacher, Don Juan, the "moral opacity of the shaman's
superconsciousness."
http://www.ishkbooks.com/cultural_materialism_riddles.pdf
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