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<body> <p ALIGN="CENTER">A GENERAL THEORY OF HUMANOLOGY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">ABSTRACT</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>"Humanology" is a systematic synthesis between an ongoing question and answer dialectic between scientific Anthropology and anti-scientific Anthropology. In my mind it is simply 'a-scientific".</p> <p>The generalistic doctrine of humanological relativism provides an alternative contextual frame of reference and a pretextual idiom for the dialectics of 'Humanology". The doctrine of " Cultural Relativism" has been eschewed by both philosophers and scientists alike. For good reason it has never been formally elaborated as a theory.</p> <p>Metaphorical symbolism comprehends reflexively the "before unapprehended relations" between symbols. It is a "reduplicative" metaphor for the metaphor of symbolic human reality--the <u>mise en abyme</u> of human consciousness which nevertheless constitutes the paradoxical ground of being.</p> <p>Metalogical Mythology is both beyond logic and a "metaphysics" for logic. While mythology is categorically beyond the purview of objective comprehension by scientific rationality, scientific rationalism is not beyond the metalogical purview of mythological comprehension.</p> <p>Science has become the grand imperative in our Modern Age of progressive development--so that we refer to a predominating configuration of the stereotypical scientific personality. Humanology provides an alternative.</p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">TABLE OF CONTENTS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>CHAPTER PAGE</p> <p>1 CONTEXT AND PRETEXT 1</p> <p>II THESIS 38</p> <p>III ANTITHESIS 65</p> <p>IV SYNTHESIS 91</p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">A General Theory of Humanology</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Toward a Universal Metalogic of Human Reality</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>This is a fantastical creation of my own mind--an unconventional juxtaposition and informal manipulation of many basic concepts central to a rational coherence of the Academic discipline of Anthropology.</p> <p>It is written with the bias that socio-cultural anthropology has fallen victim to its own scientific rationality--that it is slowly choking, asphyxiating through its own self banalization within Academia, even before its own time, its own "coming of age", its own maturation. This is an attempt to provide a systematically formulated alternative framework; a new synthesis compounded from a dialectic between anthropology and anti-anthropological conceptions.</p> <p>The justification and rationalization for this work lies in itself as an end in itself, providing a heuristic alternative. The provision of alternative frameworks of consciousness and conceptioning is necessary and indispensable for broadening our human reality and for our collective capacity for creating viable alternatives within our common reality. This is an especially relevant necessity in our modern age foreshadowed as it has become by apocalyptic visions of global crises of nuclear holocaust, over population and undernutrition, world wide power differentials and class inequalities, between the "First", "Second", "Third", and "Fourth" Worlds, and global eco-systems climax signaled by the toxic pollution of the polar ice caps, the death of the oceans, the devastation of the tropical rain forests, international deployment of nuclear energy technology, etc. etc. It is no overestimation to claim that human civilization has pushed itself to the edge of species suicide as well as the inexorable extinction of the biosphere. In response to this seemingly incurable plight, a heightened sensitivity and new awareness of the dilemmas and consequences involved, and a new world wide collective consciousness of need for a new order of human civilization, has been gradually arising, and aspiring more and more to make itself heard, understood, and felt upon the world stage.</p> <p>This quasi-formal exercise in general anthropological theorization is as useful and valuable a contribution to such new world revolution of human civilization as any rigorously controlled methodological contribution of empirical research of any narrowly focused, hypothetically delimited, precisely definitive scope. As a theoretical exercise in independent, critical thinking, this work can have no better justification.</p> <p>I wish to acknowledge the support and assistance of Drs. Richard See, Corinne Wood, Wayne Untereiner, Mikel Garcia, David Depew, and Marlene Dobkin de Rios, all of whom helped me to "see" human reality a little better than before, and, especially Dr. Jacob Pandian, who has unwittingly become my Academic mentor.</p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">CHAPTER I</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Context and Pretext</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Toward a General Theory of Humanological Relativism</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>Relativity is defined as "the condition or quality of being relative". <u>(American Heritage Dict. 1983)</u> Relative is defined as "1. Relevant; connected; related. 2. Considered in comparison to or dependent in something else. 3. <u>Gram</u>. Referring to or qualifying an antecedent." <u>(American Heritage Dict. 1983)</u> More precisely, relativity is defined as "1. The condition, fact, or quality of being relative. 2. The close dependence of one occurrence, value, quality, etc. on another. 3. In philosophy, the theory that all knowledge is relative to the mind, or that things can be known only through their effects on the mind, and that consequently there can be no knowledge of reality as it is in itself." <u>(Webster's Dict. [unabridged] 1983)</u> Relative is also more precisely defined as "1. related to the other; dependent upon or referring to each other…. 2. Having to do with; pertinent; relevant;…. 3. Regarded in relation to something else…. 4. Involving or expressing relations; meaningful only in relationship…. 5. In grammar, (a) designating a word that introduces a subordinate clause and refers to an antecedent…. (b) Introduced by such a word…." <u>(Webster's Dict. [unabridged] 1983)</u> All of these definitions reveal two important and interrelated insights--first, all of the defined connotations are variation of the same general meaning of the notion of "relative', even the reference to its proper grammatical employment, and, secondly, these variations of general meaning expresses a common theme of <u>relation</u> or <u>relationship</u>, and <u>relatedness</u> between the known and the knower, i.e., of knowledge in general. What these definitions collectively express is a general relativity of human understanding of reality, with the implication that relativity <u>is a universal condition of this reality</u>.</p> <p>Furthermore, these meanings express that this universal condition is a <u>human condition</u> of relatedness to <u>human reality</u> through <u>relative knowledge</u>. A "relativist' is defined as a person "who believes in relativism" or as one who " believes in relativity". Relativity is clearly a matter of belief, as such it is both scientifically untenable and philosophically tautological, even solipsistic. No amount of empirical evidence or rational reason, no matter how extensively consistent or intensively coherent, can either prove or falsify the belief in relativity. Even more, once one takes a "leap of faith" and commits oneself to an existential choice to believe or not to believe in relativism, than one either enters a conceptual, notional realm of universal human relativity from which there is no escape, in which 'everything is relative" or else one arbitrarily excludes oneself from such a version of human reality, and instead must declare that "nothing is relative" or that "everything is non-relative" which logically results in the deductive imperative "<u>everything is absolute</u>". Either way, there is no escaping from the mental mazeway, whether by its acceptance or rejection, presented by the possibility of universal human relativity.</p> <p>Relativism is defined as "the theory of ethics or knowledge, which maintains that the basis of judgment is relative, differing according to events, persons, etc." <u>(Webster's Dict. [unabridged] 1983)</u> The following Chapter is a systematic attempt to define the theoretical framework of a <u>general theory of humanological relativism</u>, which is <u>universal in human reality</u>. To date, there has been no such systematic formulation of Relativism, and therefore the general notion of Relativity remains very misrepresented and misconceived in the literature upon related topics. Coming under the purview of this General theory of <u>universal humanological relativism</u> are many applied versions differentiated as "historical relativism", "meta-ethical relativism", "epistemological relativism", "psychological relativism (egoism)", "linguistic relativism", "philosophical relativism" and finally and most importantly, "cultural relativism". From the viewpoint of this theory of "General Relativism" all of these diverse topics are but thematic variations comprised within a single theoretical, general framework--the differences in kind are not so important as their common kinship under the odd job label of "Relativism". Relativism is a coherent belief system, until now only implicit and largely presupposed, which in its consistent explication entails teleological realization or actualization as a behavioral system, or an <u>Ideology</u>.</p> <p>This theory of General Relativism provides a formal framework, within which to focus critical attention upon some of its more particular features and important implications for the understanding of culture and history, of symbols and symbolism, and of mythology as an inherent "metalogical" mode of the Human Mind. As a framework, this theory provides both a context and a pretext within which to frame and understand these particular topics. As a context, it is appropriate to refer to <u>relational contextuality</u> or <u>contextual human reality</u>, which describes the basic <u>rational structure</u> or <u>structural understanding</u>, of human reality, or more precisely, of human <u>interrelatedness</u> and <u>interrelationship </u>within this reality. It is <u>pretextual</u> in that it makes explicit what was formerly implicit, presumed true or false, presuppositious, tacit and a priori to any of its topical subjects. Through its formal conceptualization and definitive operationalization of its key terms, it provides a <u>rationalistic idiom</u> for the discussion of human relativity and human reality. As an idiom it is conceptually circumscribed, hence its possibility for an infinitude of alternative interpretation. As an rationalistic idiom it is simultaneously circular and yet also comprehensive in its encompassment of human reality.</p> <p>In its operational definition there have been so far become evident certain key terms. The theory is termed "Humanological" Relativism for the obvious, self evident reason that in its discussion there is no simple or clean separation of the quality of <u>humanness</u> and of <u>human relatedness</u> in the <u>conceptual understanding</u>, or <u>conceptuality</u>, of "<u>human relatedness</u>" in the <u>conceptual understanding</u> or <u>conceptuality</u> of "human" relativity of "human reality". There is neither any clean separation of the meanings of "human relativity" or "human reality"; understanding and definition of one automatically implies the other. More precisely "human relativity" preconditions and provides the conceptual basis of understanding "human reality"--and its meaning is intrinsic, inseparable from the meaning of "human reality". The belief system implied by the term "General Relativism" automatically acknowledges this "a priori" a fact of human interrelatedness between the "relativity" of knowledge about human reality and human reality itself. Another key term is the adjectival "Universal". Both human relativity and human reality, and the "humanological relativism" which their interrelationship acknowledges, are referred to as <u>universal</u> in the sense that there really can be no going outside of human reality, or the human relativity of human reality, or for that matter, outside of "humanness" in relation to reality--for wherever we may choose to escape to, we are still within its universal boundaries. Human universality, universal human reality, universal human relativity are convenient expressions expressing both the bounds and boundarilessness of human reality, human relativity or humanological relativism. Similar to terms like "Perfection" or "Truth" or "Eternity" or "Infinity" it is more properly called a "summarizing metaphor" or a "rational ideal" which manages to somehow accomplish the impossible--the combination of opposites in a single word, the resolution of inimical paradoxes, the synthesis of antithetical meanings.</p> <p>It may be well argued that the expression "universal relativity" is an inherent self-contradiction of opposite meanings, and therefore a "non-sequitor". The paradoxical power and difficulty of its formal understanding lies in its metaphorical combination of contrasts which are common sensically, logically inimicable. Simply stated what the metaphor "universal relativity" expresses is the notion that everything, humanly identifiable, distinguishable, isolatable, within reality is in some way relative to that human understanding, as well as being relative to reality itself. There is nothing, which can be humanly understood as such, in whatever form, which is not part of this relative universe of human reality. "Relative universality" expresses as well this inescapable, intrinsic condition of human reality. But there is the more syntactical and semantical argument that the term "universal" implies a condition or meaning or sense of "absoluteness" or of being "absolute" which is inherent to its definition, and referential meaning, and therefore it is self contradiction to include it with its opposite, relativism, with its logical connotation that "nothing is absolute" or "everything is relative". But the argument, when more precisely delineated, is that universal relativism acknowledges every possibility, however remote or improbable, as a undivorcible part of human reality, even if only as the remotest of possibilities. Even absolute ideals like "universality" itself, are possible within a relativistic context, existing as possibilities however remote and unlikely. There is another way of understanding this central characteristic of universality:</p> <p><font SIZE="2">I believe there is only <u>one </u>reality, and therefore there might only be <u>one true cognitive map</u> of that reality no matter how many alternative symbol systems and schemes of organization we choose to interpret it in. No matter what names we choose to use in carving reality, whatever peculiar distinctions or inferences we wish to emphasize, ultimately we must be brought back to the beginning precept--we are inevitably dealing with one and the same reality. This might seem absolutist, but I wish at the outset to qualify it rather as being absolutely <u>relativistic</u> in the conception of "truth". The problem of this truth I will return to at the end of this discussion--suffice it to make this initial distinction between <u>truth </u>and <u>reality</u> as a necessary point of entry into what otherwise I believe to be a closed "self contained" system of philosophical conceptioning which is inherently circular and cyclical in nature.</p> <p>Believing is only one reality, it is appropriate to proffer a tentative and simplistic definition of that reality, which can be subsequently modified and elaborated and scrutinized in detail and refinement in the remainder of this preliminary discourse. Definition of reality, then, is the primary problem of this philosophical concatenation. Yet already I have implicitly defined reality in its singularity, which I can re-explain by describing reality as being <u>universal </u>and our map of that reality is concomitant <u>comprehensive</u>. This definition poses a basic paradox in the definition of reality. The way we define reality is dependent upon the way we come to know and understand reality. To understand universality our knowledge must be comprehensive. Ultimately reality and our map of that reality, though essentially different, are at the same time one and the same thing. Restated the definition of reality poses this essential dilemma--<u>reality</u> is a comprehensive conception of the universal, which also has an inextricably <u>human meaning</u>. We cannot separate reality from our epistemological knowing of that reality in our definition. This human quality about reality poses a special problem in the definition of reality, one which I call the <u>universal human dilemma</u>.</p> <p>Reality and human existence are inseparable in the definition of reality. The human cannot directly conceive of the totality of reality in and of itself, as separate from human existence. We can never ever step completely outside of the trees to see the whole forest. We can <u>never</u> have a <u>completely objective</u> perspective of reality, we are ourselves trees in the forest. We cannot ever be completely objective in our evaluation of our existence or of our reality. We cannot never transcend our own subjectivity enough to understand ourselves or our reality in our scientific sense that a botanist seeks to know a tree. Here is the heart of our fundamental dilemma of understanding. (Lewis 1983, unpublished manuscript, pages 2-3)</p> <p></font>General relativism admits of the basic belief that "in human reality, since it is universal and relative at the same time, everything and everything that is humanly imaginable is possible, only if the possibility exists within a hazy incoherent dream or as some absolute ideal, or even as an 'impossibility' but also cautions with the scientific rejoinder, 'since all things are relative, it follows that some things may be more possible, or probable, than others'." What this "universalistic relativism" accomplishes is the creation of a conceptual framework which is open ended, unbounded and all encompassing, yet circumscribed and "comprehended" within such key terms as relativity, universality or humanology.</p> <p>It can be reasonably well demonstrated that while relativism allows for the possibility of universals and absolutes, on the other hand absolutistic thinking, the logical consequence of a denial of the relativistic doctrine, systematically excludes the possibility of relativity, and therefore can be described as more "close ended" and bounded in its delineation of "absolutes". Absolutistic thinking is inherently more circumscribed than is relativistic thinking. In a sense both absolutistic and relativistic thought can be modeled as opposite extremes of a single continuum of human conceptual reality or "conceptuality" but in another sense relativism is to be seem as a broader based framework within which to conceptualize about human reality. This is both the strength and weakness of the general notion of relativity, as in its complexity it has the possibility of more sophisticated and accurate models of reality, and yet because it tends to defy simplistic understanding of reality, in its intrinsic specification of contexts and interrelationships, it lacks wide appeal to a mass audience of many who crave simplistic understanding of reality. Absolutistic thinking, on the other hand, has the attractiveness of parsimony and simplicity.</p> <p>An absolutist is defined as "one who favors absolutism" and "absolutism" is defined "1. The quality of being absolute or certain" which implies the preoccupation with the need for absolute certainty about our knowing if reality, a preoccupation which led Descartes to his famous philosophical aphorism "<u>Cognito Ergo Sun</u>". Absolute is defined as "1. Literally, in a general sense, free or independent of anything extraneous. 2. Complete in itself; whole. 3. Unconditional….4. existing independent of any other cause….5. unlimited by extraneous power or control. 6. Not relative….7. free from imperfections; perfect. 8. Actual; real; as an <u>absolute</u> truth. 9. In grammar, (a) independent; as the <u>absolute</u> case: applied to a word or member of a sentence not immediately dependent on the other parts of the sentence in government; (b) used without an explicitly object: said of a verb; (c) with the noun understood: said of a pronoun or an adjective…." (<u>Webster's Dict. [unabridged] 1983</u>) Absolutistic doctrine has a long, well developed (unlike relativistic doctrine, which is comparatively unelaborated, except in certain "oriental" philosophical religious doctrines) tradition in Western philosophy which stretch all the way back to and stems from Platonic Rational idealism, which posits that there exist in reality absolute, perfect forms, independent of and a priori to their realization by human knowledge, which can only crudely approximate these forms. The exact definition of this ideal reality varies with the particular philosopher, from Cartesian Geometry to Kant's Noumena, but the underlying idiom is the presupposition of a Monosenic, Monotypic, and Monothetic Label, like Art or Aesthetics or Beauty with an upper case letter, or "Ethics" with a capital "E" as something existing independently of the ethical or relatively unethical behavior of human beings. The quest for the mind then is the quest for a single, monosemic, monothematic definition of the meaning "meaning of High Art" or of "Good" or "Truth" preferably summarizable in one concise statement, and encompassing all phenomena which comes within the purview of the presupposed heading. This in turn leads to a search for absolute, "universals" or "universal principles of Laws" which determine the relationships between discrete "absolute" atomistic entities. It leads to a formal theoretical orientation which is directly contraposed to General Relativism, and is referred to as Absolute, or Universal Determinism, "the doctrine that everything is entirely determined by a sequence of causes" through which we are lead to search for ever elusive final, or ultimate causes, primary, unilineal, and analytically describable. Analytical causality defines the interrelatedness which characteristically structures modes of human understanding which form a conceptual universe of Determinism--Rational Idealism--Absolutism which is dialectically contrapuntal to the relativistic doctrine composed of Humanological Relativism--Universal Relativity--Universal Human Reality--Possibilism and Probabalism. Both conceptual "complexes" are in a sense antithetical answers to the question whether "universal human reality is relative or absolute in human understanding". As mentioned before, the former alternative, though more seemingly parsimonious, is also more restrictive and simplistic from a rational standpoint:</p> <p><font SIZE="2">In short, anything designed "universal"; (1) can only be done so by relative comparison to what is not universal, (2) necessitates expansion of its definition in order to encompass an ever increasing range of variations and the theoretical ignorance of these variations, (3) as a general rule must always exclude inevitable exceptions in order to remain rationally coherent, i.e. the principle of parsimony, (4) implies inevitably either an absolutistic all inclusive standard or else an atomistic exclusivity. As a device of conceptual organization one wonders whether universality/particularity is more revealing about our own preferred prejudices and value systems of a defensive rationalization than about anything humanly realistic. In short, as useful a simplifying device as it might first appear, it is always only relative to the meaning we arbitrarily and customarily assign to it, and it might be better if it were discarded in lieu of some more accurate and relativistic model of describing human reality</font>.<font SIZE="2"> There is no such "thing" within a universalistic context of human relativism, as an a priori universal, "absolute" which is independent of our posteriori, after the fact of the recognition, label and definition of its human meaning.</p> <p>In our theory building we have an important choice, we can either delight in diversity and multiply complexity in congruence with the detailed "facts" or else we can opt for simplicity and seek to impose some primary standard of uniformity in the authoritative guise of "universality". We soon reach a point at which we must opt either for empirical accuracy and consistency or else rational parsimony and coherence--then we are allowed to proceed only in either direction, towards accuracy at the sacrifice of parsimony, or towards parsimony at the cost of accuracy. Our quest for universality/particularity is founded upon a belief in the existence of an ultimate essential uniformity of relationship between all human beings, pervading all reality and causally explaining all behavioral phenomena. But even in the barest essentials universality/particularity still implies relationship and relativity. The problem is more of a theoretical difficulty of simultaneously accounting for similarities and differences between human beings and their phenomenological realities. We all have fingerprints, faces, similar components of our bodies, and yet these "things" are all uniquely different in variation. In other words, in ultimately defining "universal" human reality we can either say it is essentially one and the same for all human beings for all times, or else that it is essentially different and variable for each and every human being. The theoretical difficulty is to reconcile these seemingly inimical and paradoxical differences and similarities in human reality--an impossible feat if we hang on to the notions of universality and particularity within an absolutistic framework of understanding, but <u>possible</u> within a relativistic context. (Lewis 1985 [unpublished])</p> </font> <p>There can be little wonder why traditional Western "Rationalistic" Philosophy has so adamantly attacked the undefined doctrine of Relativism and yet has consistently ignored or failed its formal, rational development as an independent doctrine, aside from the noteworthy exceptions of Spinoza and Hume and Sartre. An unidentified doctrine, only tacitly regarded or presumed, is that much more indefensible and vulnerable to the kind of metaphysical assaults Western rationalistic discourse regularly, customarily takes. Development of a well-defined and coherent Relativistic doctrine represents a principle threat to the very most basic tenets upon which Western philosophical Rationalism is founded.</p> <p>The Doctrine of Relativism has been loosely espoused within the paradigm of Western Rationalism takes three forms, psychological, philosophical and anthropological. Psychological "egoism" as it is called is a form of solipsism which has developed around rather modern psychological conceptioning of human reality, and from attempts to use this from of conceptioning to derive ethical systems of human behavior. Psychological egoism states that people tend to do what pleases them or is in their own interest. On the other hand, what is termed "ethical egoism" is the belief "that the only moral valid standard is the obligation to promote one's own well being above everyone else's". The main criticism of egoism is that its proponents confuse <u>selfish</u> motivations with <u>self-motivation</u>, and that the two forms are not necessarily synonymous or even coincidental. A more elaborate form of psychological relativism is to found in Satre's notion of an existential dilemma and the need to make an existential choice based upon rational evaluation of the circumstances attending these dilemmas. Each individual must make his/her own choice and ultimately make a moral commitment, or leap of faith. In this version, there are no final reasons or grounding for morality, only choices particular to the life situation of each individual.</p> <p>Philosophical relativism has come under concerted attack by Western Philosophy itself, because of its "anti-rationalistic" orientation. There is epistemological relativism already defined as the relativity of knowledge, and then there is ethical relativism, more accurately divided between metaethical and normative relativism. Metaethical relativism denies any valid universal basis by which to construct any and all ethical systems. Normative, or prescriptive ethics lies in the differences to be fond within competing or alternative ethical theories and within the operation of moral systems within different social contexts.</p> <p>Of most importance to our understanding is what I refer to as the anthropological forms of relativism. "Historical particularism, linguistic relativism, and cultural relativism". In a sense Historical particularism, which specifies contexts of period and place in the understanding of human reality, is an elaborated, social version of psychological relativism. Likewise, linguistic relativism contains the basic theoretical components of epistemological relativism, while cultural relativity contains within its purview certain presuppositions which are metaethical and ethical in character. It must be emphasized that these typological categories are rational constructs as they have been generally employed within the Western Rationalistic framework, which generally criticizes and attempts to invalidate, or falsify its different forms. Within an alternative framework of General Humanological Relativism, all these "forms" of relativism are to be considered but diverse manifestations of a central, core philosophical/anthropological set of relationships. Elements of each form of relativism may be found contained within, underlying, or in one way or another relating to all the other forms of relativism.</p> <p>The largest rationalistic error is the philosophical criticism of anthropological relativism has been the misconception of the relativists position as a brand of historical, linguistic or cultural <u>determinism</u>, that a particular history, language or culture forms absolute and insurmountable boundaries which social circumscribe all of the common members of a group, and which isolate them from ever knowing or relating to any other people. This misconception of relativism is tantamount to a rationalistic projection by an absolutistic, deterministic closed minded mentality which does not acknowledge its own weaknesses.<font SIZE="2"></p> <p>This is the kind of patterning of institutions which we find in all their many different phases….Patterning, however, is not a straight jacket; it is not even a high wall that bars wandering in adjacent cultural fields. It is, as we have noted, a model. It constitutes a pattern in the technical sense of the term, but with its outlines and contours flexible and alterable, permitting experience to fall into meaningful forms despite the changes that continuously mark its expression. (Herskovits 1947, page 207)</p> <p></font>The two leading proponents who best elaborated the theoretical doctrine associated with "cultural relativism" are Ruth Benedict ("Anthropology and the Abnormal" 1932 and "Patterns of Culture" 1934) and Melville J. Herskovits ("Man and His Works" 1947, "Cultural Anthropology" 1955, "Cultural Dynamics" [posthumous] 1964). In general this "culture and personality" position regarded all human behavior as relative to the specific historical/cultural contexts in which it occurs and "states positively that no forms of behavior is abnormal in all cultures". Singer (1961) has most succinctly summarized Ruth Benedict's central thesis:</p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <font SIZE="2"> <p>In every culture there is a wide range of individual temperament types (genetically and constitutionally determined) which recur universally.</p> <p>Every culture, however, permits only a limited number of types to flourish, and they are those that fits its dominant configuration.</p> <p>The vast majority of individuals in any society will confirm to the dominant types of that society, since their temperaments will be sufficiently plastic to the molding force of the society. These will be the "normal" personality types.</p> <p>A minority of individuals in every society will not "fit" the dominant types, either because their temperament types are too deviant from the ruling types or because they are "insufficiently endowed". There will be the "deviants" and "abnormals".</p> <p>The classification and distribution of "normal" and "abnormal" personality types of relative to the configuration of particular cultures which define the criteria of "normality" and "abnormality".</p> </font> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>According to Ruth Benedict, cross cultural surveys demonstrate that culturally integrated modes of behavior and adaptation widely vary in a range of different eco niches and historical circumstances, and together form a relatively broad spectrum of alternative variations far beyond the widest ranges of any specific culture bound formula. Our contemporary, modern version of "Western Civilization" becomes not only a necessary pinnacle of human achievement but only one entry in a long series of possible of cultural configurations of behavior patterning. Our customary categories of normality and abnormality, which if not explicitly well defined, are at least tacitly presumed to be compara-absolute and universal, become questioningly suspect of ethno-centric culture bias when considered within the framework of this wider "transcultural" spectrum. Our is not the only civilization possible, and even though we may wish to deem it the best, nevertheless the fact remains that the total spectrum of possible human behavioral variations is just to large to be fully encompassed by any single instance of cultural configuration relative in space and time. The dynamic aspect of adaptation, determination, and evolution of cultural patterning, and the essentially unpredictable character of human behavior renders a virtual infinitude of possible cultural configurations. Any psychology claiming universality of its definitions of "normality" and "abnormality" is necessarily in error. The comprehensivity and relativity of the sources of these definitions must always be taken into account. Normality/abnormality is, according to Benedict, a value-laden dichotomy, and only by understanding the inevitability of intrusion of cultural values upon the definition of this dichotomy "can we ever hope to hypothesize a validly scientific and humanistic universal norm of human behavior". According to Benedict, …."the concept of the normal is properly a variant of the concept of the good…."</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>It is a point that has been made more often in relation to ethics than in relation to psychiatry. We do not longer make the mistake of deriving the morality of our own locality and decade directly from the inevitable constitution of human nature. We do not elevate it to the dignity of a first principle. We recognize that morality differed in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits. Mankind has always preferred to say "it is morally good" rather than "it is habitual" and the fact of this preference is enough for a critical science of ethics. But historically the two phrases are synonymous….</p> <p>….Just as we have been handicapped in dealing with ethical problems so long as we held to an absolute definition of morality, so too in dealing with the problems of abnormality we are handicapped so long as we identify our local normalities with the universal sanities.</p> </font> <p>While Benedict's brand of cultural relativism has been referred to as psychological and as :ethical" relativism by Elvin Hatch (<u>Culture and Morality 1983</u>), Herskovits version would be more loosely described as a variant of the "historical relativist" position. Herskovits entire theory of "Cultural Dynamics" as his central thesis is explaining how and why cultures change, presupposes a very general and somewhat vague conceptioning of "Cultural Relativism". Herskovits broadly interpreted cultural relativism as "in essence an approach to the question of the nature and role of values in culture". (1964, page 49) "<u>Judgments are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation.</u>" Therefore, "evaluations are <u>relative</u> to the cultural background out of which they arise". (1964, page 48)</p> <p><font SIZE="2">As method, relativism encompasses the principle of our science that, in studying a culture, one seeks to attain as great a degree of objectivity as possible, that one does not judge the modes of behavior one is describing, or seek to change them. Rather, one seeks to understand the sanctions of behavior in terms of the established relationships within the culture itself, and refrains from making interpretations that arise from a preconceived frame of reference. Relativism as philosophy concerns the nature of cultural values, and beyond this, the implications of an epistemology that derives from a recognition of the force of enculturative conditioning in shaping thought and behavior. Its practical aspects involve the application--the practice--of the philosophical principles derived from this method, to the wider cross-cultural scene.</p> </font> <p>Elvin Hatch, in his work <u>Culture and Morality</u>, erroneously misinterpreted the Relativistic doctrine as it was propounded by both Benedict and particularly, Herskovits. Hatch mistakenly accuses Herskovits of deriving "an <u>ought </u>from an <u>is</u>"….in his view, it is an indisputable fact turned up by anthropological study that peoples across the world have widely diverse value systems. Therefore, there are no absolute standards or fixed values. "Evaluations are <u>relative</u> to the cultural background out of which they arise." (1993, page 3) If one closely rereads the above passages by Herskovits, then it becomes quite clear that in no way does Herskovits imply that "there are no absolute standards or fixed values". If anyone has derived an ought from an is, it is Hatch, and not Herskovits, which draws the conclusion from Herskovits actually had to say is quite different. It is a significance difference which needs reiteration--"<u>one seeks to understand the sanctions of behavior in terms of the established relationships within the culture itself, and refrains from making interpretations that arise from a preconceived frame of reference.</u>" Hatch himself notes how, "Almost without exception, the philosophers are disapproving, for usually they mention ethical relativism only to criticize it while in the course of a arguing some other ethical theory." (1983, page 63) Hatch goes on to misinterpret what he considers to be "historical relativism" as the doctrine that because each culture is unique, and no regularities or generalities are to be derived from cross cultural comparison, anthropology therefore is relative to the historical context of a particular culture. Cross-cultural comparison, in order to be scientifically valid, require valid categories of thought, "which transcend a given tradition and which apply to cultures in general." Yet the only categories we may have are relative to our own particular cultural context are therefore not validly applicable to other cultural contexts. Our own interpretations will change as our own culture's institutions and history changes along with our "categories of thought". "In the area of human affairs, no objective, detached observation is possible." He also distinguishes a form of methodological relativism, which may hold without necessarily believing in cultural relativism, as "the thesis that one should to shed one's own cultural point of view in visiting another culture in order to avoid misunderstanding what is being studied--one's own perspective may get in the way of accuracy and should be held in abeyance until the research is finished." This is quite similar to Herskovits interpretation, although quite a bit narrower. He also distinguishes the "functionalists" version of ethical relativism--that social institutions normally exist for good reason and "have unintended and beneficial effects" but this position " leads to the approval of practices that are patently inhumane.</p> <p>Yet another seemingly devastating, yet entirely innocuous criticism against the general relativistic orientation issues from within the anthropological paradigm itself and concerns the theoretical nature of the debate as opposed to the normative and metaethical implications. In this misinterpretation, relativistic doctrine is "diametrically opposed to comparative, cross cultural theory and methodology. Relativism implies cross-cultural comparison, if its "methodological thesis" is distinguished from the "ideological thesis" an analytical dichotomy. The relativist doctrine claims that the unique "flavor" or "genius" of a culture is distinct, yet one can only prove or test this hypothesis by comparison with other culture. Even more, there are degrees of distinctiveness. "If a phenomenon were <u>wholly</u> unique, we could not possibly comprehend it. We are able to understand any phenomenon only because it bears some similarities to things we already know. According to this misinterpretation, Relativism holds that cultures are functionally integrated and therefore can only be understood in holistic terms of its own "pattern, order and meaning are violated if elements are abstracted for purposes of comparison." (Kaplan and Manners) "The cultural circle is self contained." On the other hand, comparativists, while supposedly acknowledging differences of culture, as well as the functional integrity of each culture, but recognizes "that some parts are more interrelated than others" and that cross cultural comparison is "not only nonrapacious, but is methodologically legitimate, heuristically suggestive, and scientifically fruitful". A comparativist is more apt to accept both the doctrine of the "psychic unity of mankind" as well as the comparatability of similar cultural components. Accordingly, "the relativist is concerned overwhelmingly with the differences. The comparativist is interested in the similarities as well as the differences." The relativist is supposed to be aesthetically offended by the comparativists neglect of the unique, inherent qualities of cultural context, and the comparativist is offended scientifically by the relativists obsession with differences"--For while he knows that no two objects or events in nature are exactly alike, taxonomies, typologies, and processes are defined and ordered through selection from the less relevant and irrelevant." ( ) While scientific investigation requires removal from its context, the question becomes "to know how much of the phenomenon's context one must take it when one isolates it conceptually for purposes of analysis or study."</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Clearly, relativism is a useful reminder that in studying culture's other than our own we must try not to be swayed by our cultural preconceptions. Looked at in this way, relativism is a methodological precept, not an ideological position. If there are differences among anthropologists with regard to the ideological of relativity, all anthropologists accept the methodological version. But, like Einstein (who actually was an anti-relativist) we must take a relativistic stand only to enable us to surmount it. To hold consistently and implacably to a relativist stance would undermine the whole anthropological enterprise. It would automatically destroy the cross cultural relevance of all accumulated anthropological knowledge. That is, all such knowledge--including the doctrine of cultural relativism itself--would be relative to the culture in which it originated or developed. And we would thus end up with an Eskimo anthropology, a Trobriand anthropology, a Nuer anthropology and so on--with a series of cultural configurations, each of which is defined as unique and therefore not comparable. (Manners and Kaplan)</p> </font> <p>The foregoing criticism against the general relativist stand is in the first placed based upon a false opposition between relativism and comparison. What is apparent as an opposition is, more accurately, a superficial analytical dichotomization. "There are degrees of distinctiveness" and "the Orwellian modifier that some parts are more interrelated than others" is actually more of a relativistic doctrine than strictly comparative. Indeed, there is nothing intrinsic to the relativist doctrine which necessarily or sufficiently precludes or prohibits the possibility of comparison. While I would agree with the statement that "as one looks more closely at the relativist comparativist issue in anthropology, one sees that relativism implies comparison", I would take issue with the statement that the "relativist is concerned overwhelmingly with the differences." Though this would seem like a moot point, I would more likely reverse the order and claim that it is the relativist who is more interested in both the differences/similarities than the so called but fictitious comparativist.</p> <p>Yet another erroneous criticism of General relativism issues from the ethical philosophers themselves. The doctrine of relativism in general threatens their concerted quest for a rationalistic, absolutistic, and universal theoretical system of metaethics as being "an unattainable ideal". "Yet one main goal of general normative ethics is to outline a system of moral norms applicable to everyone, independent of special contexts." Philosophers find relativism "unconvincing" because it is "irrelevant" to their central, absolutistic goal, "and because the counter arguments appear to be at least as good as the arguments defending relativism. Furthermore, there are so many different notions subsumed under the rubric of relativism that the arguments often seem undirected and confused." So much for the philosophical maxim, "divide and conquer". According to this misinterpretation, cultural relativism is:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>This view is put forward on general theoretical grounds as the thesis that all moral standards are mere reflections of mores or folkways--i.e., behaviors customarily approved within a particular culture. From this perspective, a moral standard is simply a historical product sanctioned by custom. Psychological and historical versions of this thesis hold that the moral beliefs of individuals vary on the basis of historical, environmental and familial differences. It is now a generally accepted psychological fact that moral beliefs, including our sense of conscience, are not innate and so must somehow be learned in a social context. Moreover, the evolution and transformation of these beliefs, over time, either in cultures or in individuals, can often be reconstructed by historians. The weight of anthropological, psychological and historical evidence thus conspires to suggest that moral beliefs are relative to groups or individuals and that there are no universal norms, let alone universally <u>valid</u> ones….</p> <p></font>Thus the moral philosophers suspect a conspiracy of empirical evidence behind the usurpation of their traditional prerogative of absolutistic metaethics. Even they admit that the power of "Suggestion" is enough to undermine their rationalistic sense of universal order. Their arguments in defense of their metaethical position is to advance arguments, equally if not more suspect, of a "universal structure" of human nature, or a psychic unity of humankind, or a "deep structure" or "at least a universal set of human needs, exist that leads to the adoption of similar or even identical principles of all cultures". Furthermore, they advance even the more suspicious argument that even though there might be cultural or individual variations of beliefs and values, this "reveals nothing about whether people <u>ultimately</u> or <u>fundamentally </u>disagree about moral standards". This counter argument is faulty for denying the very empirical base, of cross cultural comparison of beliefs and values, in order to create an "independent yet unprovable ideal conceptioning of meta choice".</p> <p><font SIZE="2">Even if individuals in the same culture or persons from different cultures do not actually agree on the same ultimate norm or set of norms, it does not follow that there is no ultimate norm or set of norms in which everyone ought to believe….Given anthropological data, one might be skeptical that there could be a compelling argument in favor of one system of either religion or morality. But nothing more than skepticism seems justified by the facts adduced by anthropology, and this judgment would hold even if <u>fundamental</u> conflicts of belief were discovered. Skepticism of course presents serious issues, but alone, it does not support relativism.</p> </font> <p>Western philosophers have a curious habit of unconsciously creating logic where there really is none--theirs is a lawyer's defense in a court of law, equivocating over technicalities. This philosophical argument against relativism misinterprets cultural relativism as a form of "normative relativism" that "anything is right or wrong whenever some individual or some group sincerely <u>thinks</u> it is right or wrong" and "a person ought to obey a particular constitution because most people in that society believe it is morally right to do so". These are known as individual normative relativism and group normative relativism respectively. "What does not seem attractive is to mix the two norms of normative relativism, for individual beliefs too often conflict with group beliefs." The ultimate arguments against this version of relativism as it is interpreted by the philosophers is that the relativist's doctrine of normative relativism implies or leads logically to seemingly universal norms of tolerance, or of equality, or at most a live and let live non-involvement or at most a proscription of physical coercion, then the whole position is internally inconsistent:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>The proposition that we ought to tolerate the views of others, or that it is right not to interfere with others, is precluded by the very strictures of the theory. Such a proposition bears all the marks of a <u>non-relative</u> account of moral rightness, one based on, but not reducible to, the cross cultural findings of anthropologists. If there can be relativity of belief in the case of every other ethical issue, then there certainly can be relativity over whether the practices of another society or person are to be tolerated. Alternatively, if the relativist holds that a principle of tolerance is demanded by "morality itself" then other fundamental normative propositions surely cannot be excluded from similar standing in the purportedly relativist theory. Indeed, we may suspect that something like a (universal) principle of respect for person underlies and gives moral force to the normative relativist's appeal for tolerance and respect. But if this moral principle is recognized as valid, it can of course be employed as an instrument for criticizing such cultural practices as the denial of human rights to minorities and such beliefs as that of racial superiority. A moral commitment to tolerance of other practices and beliefs thus leads inexorably to the abandonment of normative relativism.</p> </font> <p>All these misinterpretations and faulty criticisms have a common ground in a closed minded projection of a rationalistic world view which cannot conceive of a human universe in other than absolutistic terms. The basis for the obvious rejection of cultural relativism in the face of rather bald anthropological evidence to the contrary is an implicit rationalism which seeks to rip ethical considerations out of the empirical ground of a cultural and historical context on the basis that these contexts should at least be, by their own opinion, irrelevant considerations. Metaethical conceptioning is idealistically universal in character, and therefore the problematical issues of context are considered "irrelevant".</p> <p>The problem with this criticism is not a problem intrinsic to the doctrine of general humanological relativism itself, but it is rather a problem of <u>interpretation</u> (and <u>misinterpretation</u>) of what relativism actually means and implies. To reiterate, relativism has not as yet, to date, been a systematically formulated doctrine of comprehending reality, thus it has been very vulnerable to projective prejudice by rationalistically oriented critics. Humanological relativism is the doctrine of knowing human reality, of comprehending and interpreting this reality in terms of human interrelationships within it--it is a theoretical doctrine of understanding human relativity which neither precludes the possibility of universals or evaluations are rooted in, and not apart from, the empirical context in which they are to be found, in which they are made meaningful. Both Benedict and Herskovits have been blamed for both failing to allow for the possibility of cross cultural comparison or universal principles, and for failing to be "pure relativists" simply because they both held out for the possibility of just such universals. What is actually the case is that both recognized nothing intrinsically incompatible within the doctrine of relativism with the possibility of cross cultural comparison or universal principles. They only sought to provide the means through relativism by which we might arrive at a more empirically valid understanding of such universals. It is interesting to note in this regard that Herskovits notion of cultural relativism, though founded upon the basis of inimical cultural/historical differences, is not synonymous with "cultural determinism", that such differences are absolute and preclude scientific understanding, moral evaluation or cross cultural comparison--but rather, Herskovits posits a common universality underlying the continuous variability. This is a universality which can be scientifically comprehended when the principles underlying the processes of cultural change (Cultural Dynamics) have been clearly elucidated by scientific analysis of the variances of the forms of cultural aspects in the particularistic contexts of cultural/historical research.</p> <p><font SIZE="2">….To say that there is no absolute criterion of values and morals, or even, psychologically, of time or space, does not mean that such criteria, in differing <u>forms</u> do not comprise universals in human culture. Morality is a universal, and so is enjoyment of beauty, and some standard of truth. The many forms these concepts take are but products of the particular historical experience of the societies which manifest the,. In each, criteria are subject to continuous questioning, continuous change….(Herskovits 1964, page 62)</p> <p>It is a philosophy based on the facts that throw into bold relief the hard core of <u>similarities</u> between cultures that have been consistently overlooked in favor of the emphasis laid on cultural differences. These facts show that every society has values and imposes restraints that cannot be dismissed, even though they differ from one's own. Cultural relativism, which stresses the universals in human experience as against ethnocentric concepts of absolute values, in no wise gives over the restraints that every system of ethics of exercises over those who live in accordance with it. To recognize that right, and justice, and beauty may have as many manifestations as there are cultures is to express tolerance, not nihilism. As anthropology's greatest contribution, this position puts man yet another step on his quest of what he ought to be, in the light of the facts, as we know them, about what is his unity, no less than in his diversity, he is. (Herskovits 1964, page 245)</p> </font> <p>A central analytical dichotomy underlies the metaethical rationalism of the philosophers. This is the dichotomy between an <u>is</u> statement and an <u>ought </u>statement, or more descriptively an "analytic/synthetic" dichotomy between, on one hand, "purely" descriptive or factual statements, and on the other hand, evaluative or prescriptive statements which are not factual but judgmental. This dichotomy allows the rationalist mentality to set in motion a syllogistic reasoning processes which allows deduction of evaluative conclusions from factual and evaluative premises. In a sense, rationalists philosophers generate ought after and ultimately attempts to derive the rudimentary, possibly universal "meaning structure" which underlies all language, thought and culture. Basically it ask the questions of how much does language influence culture, and how is language related to the world view of those who speak it. The classical anthropological example of Eskimo snow terminology, like the demonstration of the cultural relativity of Eskimo geronticide and female infanticide, is used to demonstrate one extreme theoretical position of this "world view" problem, which is commonly referred to as the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" and refers to what is generally called the "theory of Linguistic Determinism". Edward Sapir (Conceptual Categories in Primitive Languages 1931) points out that language, "defines experience for us by reason of its formal completeness and because of our unconscious projection of its implicit expectations into experience" (page 578). This statement counters universalistic notions that "reality is the same for all human beings" and has been interpreted to mean that "people who speak different languages segment their world differently. Sapir viewed the relationship between language and culture as different from this relationship between language and thought. He insisted (Language 1921) that language and culture are independent of one another without any causal interrelationship. "Culture is <u>what </u>society thinks and does and language is <u>how</u> people think." (1921: 218) Language is related to thought in that "language is primarily a pre-rational foundation. It humbly works up to the thought that is latent in, that may eventually be read into, its classifications and its forms; it is not, as is generally but naively assumed, the final label put upon the finished thought". (page 150) (Carol Eastman 1975, pages 75-76)</p> <p>Whorf's view is essentially the same as Sapir's ( ) on the basis of a single is and ought, while they sharply criticize relativists from deriving an ought from an is, What relativists actually do is not strictly dichotomize epistemological reality between purely factual and purely evaluative statements--rather they recognize and acknowledge the excluded middle ground in which a statement of fact is often colored by evaluative connotations, and in affect, there can be no completely objective "neutral" statements without some connotations. On the other hand, they recognize that all evaluative statements must contain some basis in reality in order to be valid. It is not true that relativists commit the logical fallacy of deriving an ought from an is, it is rather they are playing by a different kind of "metalogic" which never dichotomizes oughts and is's in the first place. The problems surrounding relativist doctrine are not those extrinsically ascribed to it by the many critics of relativism. The problem is rather one of interpretation. It is not that relativists refrain from or are not allowed by their philosophical orientation to make generalizations which might have universal validity--as mentioned at the start universality is an intrinsic component of relativism--it is rather that the form of these generalizations is entirely different than those regularly recognized by rationalists--generating a completely different, and irreconcilable mode of interpretation which is based upon human interrelatedness in human reality. Considering these matters of alternative methodologies or modes of knowing and comprehending human reality, the relativist, on the one hand, and the rationalist-determinists on the other, broaches another brand of relativism which has become known as "linguistic relativism".</p> <p>Linguistic relativism deals with the "world view" problem, involving the nature of the interrelationships between language, culture and thought. Consideration of Thinking in Primitive Communities (1936) that a person's language determines how a person will segment his reality:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>The forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systemizations of his own language--shown readily enough by a candid comparison and contrast with other languages, especially those of different linguistic family. His thinking itself is in a language--in English, in Sanskrit, in Chinese. And, every language is a vast pattern system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicated but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomenon, channels his reasoning and builds the house of his consciousness. (Carol 1956: 252)</p> </font> <p>The hypothesis of linguistic determinism may be summarized in saying that each language embodies a particular world view which it reinforces and sustains. "The speakers of a language agree to perceive and think of the world in a certain way--not in the only way possible." (Eastman 1975, page 78) Reality can be variously structured--different languages operating with different structures. The "Theory of Linguistic Relativity" entails a slight modification in that instead of "structurally determining" our reality, languages simply make it "easier to conceptualize the world in a certain way than in other possible ways, while the same sort of conceptioning may be more difficult in terms of another language. While it is possible to "think" out of a language, the native language we are "brought up with" acquires a tremendous degree of apparent "concreteness". This relativist modification was proposed by the psychologist Roger Brown who stated that "some people <u>need</u> more than one label for certain things because they require additional distinctions within the labeled category in order to carry out certain functions." A perceptual category which is used by people more often than others is a category which is more "available" than one less frequently employed. "One categorizes the world by using his language according to his need."</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Linguistic relativity holds that where there are differences of language there will also be differences of thought, that language and thought covary. Determinism goes beyond this to require that the prior existence of some language pattern is either necessary or sufficient to produce some thought pattern. (Brown 1958: 280)</p> <p></font>There is some confusion between the notional terms of Determinism and Relativism. Often times the notion of cultural or linguistic determinism is confused with the notion of cultural or linguistic relativism. This misunderstanding of general notions leads to a misconception of relativistic theory as being somehow culturally or linguistically determinative--that a culture and a language determined in an absolutistic way the individual reality and personality if the participant actor. Nothing could be more mistaken, as in actuality relativism is a contra-distinction of the notion of general determinism. While Determinism stipulates the directions of causality between thought, language and culture, relativism undermines the philosophical necessity of establishing analytical causality and instead postulates a processuality of interrelationship between opposed or differentiated domains of human reality, namely language, thought and culture.</p> <p>The problem of understanding the doctrine of general humanological relativism is a problem of interpretation, of comprehending an alternative, metalogical form of "knowing" of human reality in contextual and pretextual terms which are every whit as generalisable and universalistic as any comparable rationalistic terminology. I have already mentioned the interrelatedness between humanology, human relativity and human reality, and this quality of <u>interrelatedness </u>is what gives relativistic comprehension its distinctive, heuristic edge over rationalism. There is also the key operating metaphor of universal contextuality--that ultimately everything is reality to every thing else in a Grand Web of Life. The proper interpretation of cultural relativity requires an appropriate context. This dictum should read like a general anthropological precept…."Cultural relativity demands a context!" Relativity depends, indeed, <u>demands</u> a context. <u>Relativity is context</u>. What is more, relativity is context dependent, but relative generality is the other side of the coin of the Relativistic doctrine--Relative generality, our theoretical generalizations derived from the structural conception of relativity, represents the relative independence from specific contexts derived from the flexibility and relative openness of alternative interpretations. The theoretical objective of general relativity is relative independence, or empirical distance, based upon multi-focal and multi-dimensional breadth of context dependent interpretations. From this standpoint, it seems paradoxical to say first that relativity is context dependent and then is context independent, and this paradoxically lies at the heart of the meaningfulness of such a general conceptualization--the root of the dialectical tension of myth and meaning in human reality.</p> <p>Traditional Western philosophers has found the general problem of relativity a much too paradoxical issue to be comfortably fit within its general paradigmatic framework. It is not because of some kind of inherent self contradiction in the conceptioning of cultural relativity which makes this so but is rather because paradigmatic academic philosophy is fundamentally Platonic in orientation and operates under an altogether anti-thetical epistemological framework and so has been consistently interpreted as intrinsically impossible, unphilosophical, anti-rational or plain irrational, or just plain "irrelevant" to philosophical inquiry. It seems to inevitably lead philosophical dialogue down a cul-de-sac of empirical dilemma destructive of its rational fabric. But the fault is to found in the limiting anti-contextual framework of western traditional philosophy. Philosophy is ethnocentric (probably egocentric) in its rationalistic orientation. It cannot deal with the problem of relativity because it focuses monosemically and monothetically upon rationalistic ideals divorcible from contextual reality, upon universal meanings and upon absolutistic notions of final, conclusive truth.</p> <p>As a theoretical problematic the idea of relativity is actually an alternative epistemological modality to the traditional rationalistic paradigm in describing and understanding human reality. Only with the relatively recent rise of existentialism within philosophy has this alternative conceptual framework begun to be explored. We speak of a movement between general relativity and relative generality, but we do not leave the encompassing realm of relativity and generality as a context dependent/independent mode of discourse. Relativity is indeed an alternative episteme based upon empirical and existential experience and is actually inclusive and more comprehensive a framework for understanding human reality than is rationality. Relativity even encompasses rationality. We cannot escape this relativism of contexts. It is both a structural organizational principle for general theory and a contextual principle of description.</p> <p>Relativity is the epistemological basis for a descriptive understanding of human reality--a pretext for humanology. To the extent that anthropology deals with human reality in some "objective" manner it can claim the title of science. To the extent that it becomes rationalistic it becomes ideology. Anthropology is a descriptive science with the concept of relativism at its base. A rationalistic interpretation of relativity has no option but to view it as a self contradictory, yet confuses, form of ideology. As a science, anthropology is concerned with the "relativity of knowledge" and must feign at least a guarded neutrality of any kind of ideological commitment. The concept of cultural relativity is necessarily a first principle in anthropological theory and methodology. The conception of cultural relativity is not necessarily inherently conservative in its moral implications. Like any other abstract conceptual system its meaning is intrinsically neutral with regard to possible extrinsic behavioral and rationalistic determinations in existential human reality. Like any other conceptual device it can be used to conservative ends as well as to liberal one, but such use is always extrinsic to its implicit meanings. It may well predispose one to conservative conclusions like maintaining the status quo, but similar over constriction of meaning of any like conception can have a similar result. Relativity is not absolute. To decry absolute relativity is self contradictory and anathema to the inherent value of relativity and to decry the paradox of tolerance of evil and destruction is merely to interpret its meaning within a comparatively narrow, rationalistic framework of understanding human reality.</p> <p>In concluding this introductory chapter upon relativism, it is important to consider some of the possible meta-ethical considerations which a doctrine of general humanological relativism might imply or give rise to. Herskovits recognized a logical and historical eventuality, a "necessity" of the development of a new moral universe of evaluating human interrelationships within a framework of relativistic understanding:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>In these terms, the three aspects of cultural relativism can be regarded as representing a logical sequence which, in a broad sense, the historical development of the idea has also followed. That is, the methodological aspect, whereby the data from which the epistemological proposition flow are gathered, ordered and assessed, came first. For it is difficult to conceive of a systematic theory of cultural relativism--as against a generalized idea of live and let live--without the preexistence of the massive ethnographic documentation gathered by anthropologists concerning the similarities and differences between cultures the world over. Out of this data came the philosophical position, and with the philosophical position came speculation as to implications for conduct. (1964)</p> </font> <p>Noted previously has been the thesis that Eastern philosophy has a more systematically elucidated a doctrine of universal relativism as compared to Western rationalism. It is in this eastward direction that may be found some outlines of an alternative moral order adduceable from the relativistic framework of understanding human reality, one which is quite outside western rationalism. In this regard we may look especially to some of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism, especially the practice of Zen, and the attainment of satori, or enlightenment, as well as to Taoism, "the Way". In general eastern philosophies are called religious philosophies because the philosophical, conceptual components are frequently indistinguishable from the religious components. These philosophies commonly did not make a strict dichotomy between preaching and knowing and the practice of the faith and the paths toward knowing--belief and behavior constituted an uninterrupted continuum a great Cycle of living in a relativistic manner.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Indian philosophers have always insisted that practice is the ultimate test of truth. Philosophical visions must be put into practice and life lived according to the ideals of the vision. The quality of the live lived according to these ideals is the ultimate test of any vision. The better life becomes, the closer the vision approaches complete truth.</p> <p>The criteria for determining the quality of life are, in turn, derived from the basic impetus for philosophy; the drive to eliminate suffering. The vision that makes possible a life devoid of suffering is properly called a true philosophy. Degrees of philosophic truth are determined according to the degree of alleviation of suffering. But in a positive way, views are true according to the extent they improve the quality of life. (Koller 1970, page 12)</p> </font> <p>There is concomitant to this paradigmatic rootedness of a philosophical validation to existential reality, an orientation towards an extreme subjectivism, a kind of extreme relativism, which promotes an openness of a synthesizing attitude:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>The emphasis on the subjective, in both senses of that expression, tends to promote a synthetic attitude. The relevant philosophical criteria are not quantitative and public. They belong to subject as subject. Therefore it is impossible for one person to subscribe to one philosophy as alone being true and to regard the others as completely false. Truth in philosophy depends on the human subject, and another's experience can be known only as object. There is no knowing--according to ordinary ways of knowing, at least--the other as subject. Consequently, there is no rejecting the other's experience as inadequate or unsatisfactory. Recognition of this has led to a tolerant synthetic attitude which is commonly expressed by saying that while it may be that no vision, by itself, is absolutely true and complete, nevertheless, each vision contains some glimpse of the truth, and by assuming the viewpoints and experiences assumed by the various visions one comes closer to the absolute truth and the complete vision. Philosophical progress is not made by proceeding from falsehood to truth, but by proceeding from partial to more complete truth. (Koller 1970, page 13)</p> </font> <p>The subjectivism of this philosophical orientation gives rise to a theory of suffering of self as the source of unhappiness--of the attachment of false self, in ignorance, to undue craving to "things". Underlying this is a theory of "dependent origination" in which everything is dependent upon everything else--there is no "straight line causality"--"whatever creates is also created, and the process of creating and being created go on simultaneously without beginning or end." Nothing is solely "other created" but everything is mutually self creating. Ordinary notions of space and time are ruled out by this line of thought. Space and time fall into the category of abstractions rather than of realities. Reality is a continuous process, of becoming never completed--there are not "beings" or "things" existing independently of reality except as abstractions. Therefore:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>….adequate definitions are impossible. If the universe is though to consist of things, relatively complete and independent, it is possible to adequately define the things making up the universe. But when the universe is considered to be of the nature of process, definitions are not possible, for whatever might be defined would belong to past stages of the process and never to the present reality of the process. Koller 1970, page 128)</p> </font> <p>Yet another set of relativistic convictions expresses in Buddhist thinking lies with the denial of the self as the source of causality. It denies the false self that is derived through ego attachment to the desires which are the causes of suffering. This self is one which is created through the illusion of ignorance. Ignorance and projection are the key elements to a psychological understanding of prejudice which in turn underlies defensive systems of rationalization. Ultimately, rationality based upon the definition of the self in terms of ultimate causality as a projection upon "objective" reality is derived from a relative condition of ignorance. Nothing is more relative a state of being than ignorance; out of tuneness, apathy, antipathetic discordance with reality, a form of repression and neglect upon which aggression and destructive impulses feed. The worst thing about ignorance is that it is a condition which cannot know itself--being dependent upon a relative state of enlightenment in order to reflect upon oneself. Just as with the relativistic conceptioning of the self, so also was there expressed in Buddhist though a well worked out metaphysical doctrine about the relativistic nature of reality. Unlike the doctrine of the self, this other orientation is a comment upon the rationalistic attempt to define causality in the relationship of the self to reality:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Thus, even though it is Nagarjuna's view that clinging is the cause of conflict and suffering, and even though his dialectic is aimed at showing the futility of clinging to various conceptions of reality because of the complete relativity of all conceptual systems, still, in consistency with this relativity, he does not cling to relativity either. That is, it is considered to be just as perverse to regard relativity as the truth about reality as it is to consider any other view as the truth about reality. In fact, Nagarjuna says, "but if people then begin to cling to this very concept of Relativity, they must be called irreclaimable". (Koller 1970, page 169)</p> <p>….It is temptingly easy for man to mistake the world he has created in his knowledge which is merely a world of names and forms, for reality itself. When he succumbs to the temptation he fixes on the name and form of self, that he has created in his knowledge, as his own self. He identifies his own being with this construction of name and form. Then the real self, burdened by the ignorance resulting from mistaking the self of the real world, gets overlooked in the struggle that ensues between the false self of name and form and the false world of name and form. The resulting bifurcation, which underlies this inauthentic existence, in this inauthentic world, is responsible for the disease--the <u>Dukkha</u>--that Buddhism wishes to overcome.</p> <p>Distinguishing between reality and the views of reality, Nagarjuna apparently desired to show the dangers inherent in regarding anyone view of reality as being absolutely true. Views are conceptual constructions of name and form, and to claim any view as absolutely true is to refuse to recognize the insights of other views, and thus to rule out possible avenues of illumination. (Koller 1970, pages 167-8)</p> </font> <p>There is much, much ore to be learned about the relativistic doctrine from the eastern religious philosophies. Rationalist's notion of a noumenal reality a thing in itself, as the ultimate ground, is itself directly unknowable and only hypothetically presupposed to be true, similar to hypothetical "deep structures" and "collective unconsciousness" remain mysterious and wholly without explanatory powers. This is not surprising to Yogacara thinkers. "The whole concept of noumenal reality, which is the final result of the intellectual search of the underlying principles of ultimate reality, is simply an abstraction arrived at to solve a problem arising out of the ignorance of the limitations of the viewpoint assumed by reason." (Koller 1970, page 88)</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>The religious philosophical teachings of Buddhism outlined in the preceding pages have left their mark of much of Asian civilization. Buddhism, much more so than most religions has permeated the cultures with which it has been associated. Consequently, in Ceylon, Burma, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, where Theravada Buddhism has held sway, and in Tibet, China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam, where Mahayan Buddhism has been influential, we find rather distinctive Buddhist cultural traits. Prominent among these cultural characteristics are the following (1) emphasis on the dignity of man, (2) an attitude of non-attachment, (3) tolerance, (4) a spirit of compassion and non-violence, (5) an inclination to meditation and (6) a practical orientation. (Koller 1970, page 191)</p> <p> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER">CHAPTER II</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Thesis</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Toward a General Theory of Metaphorical Symbolism</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <font SIZE="2"> <p ALIGN="CENTER">The wild geese fly across the long sky above</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Their image is reflected upon the chilly water below.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">The geese do not mean to cast their image on the water</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Nor does the water mean to hold the image of the geese.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">From: "To a Louse: On Seeing One On a Lady's Bonnet At Church"</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">By Robert Burns</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">O wad some power the giftie gie us</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">To see oursel's as ithers see us!</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">It wad frae monie a blunder free us,</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">And foolish notion:</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">What airs in dress an'gait wad lea'v us,</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">And ev'n devotion!</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font> <p>A "symbol" is defined as "1. Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention<font SIZE="2">. </font>2. A printed or written sign used to represent an operation, element, quantity, quality, or relation, as in mathematics or music." [Gk. <u>Sumbolon</u>, token for identification] (<u>American Heritage Dict</u>. 1983) or it is defined--[Fr. <u>Symbole</u>; L. <u>symbolum</u>; Gr. <u>Symbolon</u>, a token, pledge, a sign by which one infers a thing, from <u>symballein</u>, to throw together, compare; <u>syn</u>, together and <u>ballein</u>, to throw] 1. Something that stands for or represents another thing; especially an object used to represent something abstract; an emblem. 2. A written or printed mark, letter, abbreviation, etc. standing for an object, quality, process, quantity, etc. 3. In psychoanalysis, an act or object representing an unconscious desire that has been repressed. 4. In theology, an abstract or compendium, creed, or a summary of the articles of religion. <u>Syn</u>--type, sign, image, emblem, representation. (<u>Websters Dict.</u> [unabridged] 1983) Similarly we may define "symbolism" as "the representation of things by means of symbols" (<u>American Heritage Dict.</u> 1983) or as "1. The representation of things by use of symbols, especially in fine art or literature. 2. A system of symbols. 3. A symbolic meaning. 4. A group of symbolists, as in art or literature. 5. The theories or practices of such a group." (<u>Websters Dict.</u> [unabridged] 19983) We may similarly refer to symbolic, symbolical, symbolically, symbolicalness, symbolics, symbolist, symbolistic, symboloistical, symbolization, symbolize, symbolizer, symbological, symbologist and symbology, which is defined as "1. The study or interpretation of symbols. 2. Representation or expression by means of symbols; symbolism. 3. A system of symbols." ( <u>Websters Dict.</u> [unabridged] 1983)</p> <p>Likewise, "metaphor" is defined as "a figure of speech in which a term that ordinarily designates an object or idea is used to designate a dissimilar object or idea in order to suggest comparison or analogy…. [Gk. <u>Metaphora]" </u>(<u>American Heritage Dict.</u> 1983) and as "[L. <u>metaphora</u>; Gr. <u>Metaphora</u>, a transferring to one word the sense of another, from <u>metapherin</u>; <u>meta</u>, over, and <u>pherein</u>, to bear.] a figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another, different thing by being spoken of an if it were that other; implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily used of one thing is applied to another…., distinguished from <u>similie</u>, <u>to mix metaphors</u>, to use two or more inconsistent metaphors in a single expression." (<u>Websters Dict.</u> [unabridged] 1983). "Metaphorical" or "metaphoric" means "of or relating to metaphor; comprising a metaphor or containing metaphors; figurative; not literal…." (ibid) There is also metaphorically, metaphoricalness and metaphorist.</p> <p>To write 'metaphorical symbolism" is something akin to "mixed metaphor" but more like "power politics". It is difficult to say exactly which term, "metaphorical" or "symbolism" is the more general class. The expression metaphorical symbolism is used here to suggest more than just a class of such entities--but to emphasis the point that all symbols are by their intrinsic nature "metaphorical" and thus to emphasize as well the "something standing for something else function of symbols". Further, metaphorical symbols expresses, or stand for, a characteristic feature of human interrelatedness to reality--human beings define meaning, express significance, relate in reality through the use of metaphorical symbolisms. In a sense, it is apropos to refer to human reality, or of human relativity within reality, as irreducibly metaphorical, or symbolic, in nature.</p> <p>But the expression, "metaphorical symbolism" implies yet another important characteristic of human reality, or of human relativity--that ultimately the structure of human interrelatedness is expressed through <u>reflexivity</u> of meaning through metaphorical symbolism. Metaphorical symbolisms function reflexively--and reflexiveness is the principle structure of human reality. Furthermore both metaphorical symbolism and reflexivity, as basic features of human reality, also share in the universality of human reality. The <u>reflexivity of meaning expressed through metaphorical symbolisms is the basic structure of human interrelatedness within the universal human reality, and is also the basic structure of our comprehension of that reality through humanological relativism.</p> </u> <p>Reflexive has a strictly grammatical definition--1. Reflex. 2. Reflective. 3. In grammar, (a) expressing an action turned back upon the subject; designating a verb whose subject and direct object are identical…(b) designating the pronoun used as the direct object of such a verb…reflexively is "in a reflective manner" and reflexiveness expresses the state or quality of being reflexive, reflexivity the condition or quality of being reflexive. Akin to reflexiveness is reflectiveness, or the state or quality of being reflective which may be defined as "(a) taking cognizance of the operations of the mind; capable of exercising though or judgment; (b) exercising thought or reflection; meditative, thoughtful. Reflection expresses, among other meanings "the fixing of the mind on some subject; serious thought; contemplation or the result of such thought; an idea or conclusion, especially if expressed in words." (<u>Websters Dict.</u> [unabridged] 1983)</p> <p>Here reflexiveness expresses both its grammatical connotations as well as the connotation of reflectiveness and reflection--especially the <u>apperceptive</u> aspect of "the consciousness of mind of its own consciousness; self reflective perception applied to metaphysical ends. Reality, inescapably human, universal, relative, symbolic, and metaphorical, also has an inherently reflexive quality which is mediated through metaphors (symbolic metaphors, metaphoric symbols, metaphors, and symbols are here considered interchangeable in usage) As such human always evinces a quality of "turning back upon itself" and of "being aware, or conscious of itself". "Reflexiveness" then is the ground of being in human reality--the ultimate meaning of this reality. But it is an ever receding ground in its inherent "recursiveness" or reduplicative" character--the well spring of infinite imagination and the abyss of infinite regress--in short a <u>mise en abyme</u>:</p> <p><font SIZE="2">The paradox of the <u>mise en abyme</u> is the following: without the production of some scheme, some "icon", there can be no glimpse of the abyss,, no vertigo of the underlying nothingness. Any such schema, however, both opens the chasm, creates it or reveals it, and at the same time fills it up, covers it over by naming it, gives the groundless a ground,, the bottomless a bottom. Any such schema almost instantaneously becomes a trivial mechanism, an artifice. It becomes something merely made, confected, therefore all too human and rational….(Miller, ?????)</p> <p></font>Reflexiveness in its "reduplicative" character implies both a kind of "regenerativeness" of meaning expresses through metaphorical symbolism and a fundamental paradox in that this regenerativeness has the potential for both infinite regress and for infinite development of meaning in reality, and of human interrelatedness within reality.</p> <p><font SIZE="2">Though reflexivity takes on different shades of meaning in various disciplines and contexts, a core is detectable. Reflexive, as we use it, describes the capacity of any system of signification to turn back upon itself, to make itself its own object by referring to itself; subject and object fuse. A long tradition exists in which thought has been distinguished from unconsidered experience: where life is not merely lived naively without being pondered but regarded with detachment, creating an awareness that finally separates the one who lives from his history, society, from other people. Within the self, detachment occurs between self and experience, self and other, witness and actor, hero and hero's story. We become at once both subject and object. Reflexive knowledge, then, contains not only messages, but also information as to how it came into being, the process by which it was obtained. It demonstrates the human capacity to generate second order symbols or meta levels--significations about signification. The withdrawal from the world, a bending back toward thought process itself, is necessary for what we consider a fully reflexive mode of thought. To paraphrase Babcock (1980), in order to know itself, to constitute itself, as an object for itself, the self must be absent from itself, it must be a sign. Once this operation of consciousness has been made, consciousness itself is altered; a person or society thinks about itself differently merely by seeing itself in this light. (Ruby 1982, page 3)</p> </font> <p>In describing the ultimate ground of being, the structure of the meaning of human reality, it would appear as if reality then is only mentalistic illusion,, and therefore without "real" meaning or "relevant" or "meaningful" meaning. And yet, because we never step outside of human reality, except through physical death, we can never know for sure that the illusions of our life are really so. Meaning is self evident in human reality. It is also self justifying in its essential humanness. Reality, whether reflexive, relative, or illusion is universal, and therefore is "self contained" and "enough in and of itself". Hereupon we have stumbled, in our "House of Mirrors" upon the very touchstone of human existence, or of human "being"--that the meaningfulness of human reality is an end in and itself, requiring nothing extrinsic to its own being for substantiation or definition. It is the deluded and absurd Rationalist, the Don Quixote, who searches for ultimate meaning or purpose of life beyond, or outside of itself.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Existentialism postulates a very pessimistic presumption about human existence--that life is essentially meaningless. This meaninglessness renders absurd the whole human drama. But in my own life, in my anthropological quest for pan-sophistical understanding about human existence and reality, I have inevitably found this existentialist premise to be quite empirically invalid and rationally self contradictory. Even if all we have is the illusion of meaning, mythological in truth and not more, or that we are merely actors in an existential drama--involved in the tragic comic enactment of our lives--then this is all we have any ways and so is meaningful enough in itself. To say that life is meaningless is to express a failure to achieve some tacit purpose for that life, to compare the intrinsic value of living with some extrinsic standard. It is to make existence merely the meaningless means to some other purpose beyond life itself rather than to say simply life is a meaningful end in itself. Such questioning of the greater reason or purposefulness of meaning is a self denial of the intrinsic meaningfulness of existence itself. There is no rational or behavioral need to look for purposeful meaning beyond or outside of existence itself. Meaning can not be ever be adequately divorced or separated from human existence--such a feat is impossible except for the blind philosophical fool who takes a leap of faith and convinces himself that what is isn't and what isn't really is and so on and on reduction ad absurdum ad infinitum. Indeed meaning inheres intrinsically in human reality--it is human reality, and as much as this reality is rationally and behaviorally purposive, so meaning too is rationally and behaviorally purposive. Meaning is human rationality and behavior. Meaning is mythological.</p> <p>I have arrived at a theoretically important and personally profound conclusion concerning the4 meaning of existence and the "purpose" of human existence. Whether it is the quest for happiness, for aesthetic or religious fulfillment, for self awareness, for wealth, for sex, for prestige, for truth, for destruction, for eternity, or immortality, for El Dorado or for the fountain of youth or for paradise or heaven or hell, or for just a little bit of socio-economic status and modicum of security, such a purposeful quest for meaning is what it means to be human and alive and the <u>purpose</u> of <u>human existence is the quest for ever greater meaningfulness of reality</u>, whatever its relative and relevant form or function. Meaning is like a golden thread coursing through all the weave of existence, composing the fabric of the many part and pieces--underlying the reasons and purpose and grand truths of life. This might sound a bit grandiloquent and reductionist and tautologically oversimplified, but to say meaning alone is not enough. What is the interesting and relevant theme is the translation of meaning to and from the many diverse forms of expression it can take in human behavior. (Lewis 1984 [unpublished manuscript] pages 112-113)</p> </font> <p>Reflexive meaning is the ground of being in human reality--it is the essence of what we come to know of ourselves and our world. It is also an extremely relative, and highly personal affair--meaningfulness being differently interpreted by different people. There is no absolute fixed measure or atomistic element of meaning--no life force or pleasure principle or eros which composes the many variants. "Meaning" expresses a theme of relativistic understanding of human reality--a universal theme of comprehension of which there are infinite permutations. In its reflexive regenerativity, meaning is also not static or unchanging--it is fluid, dynamic, ever changing. <u>Human beings are actively or passively engaged in making their own meaning systems, in a continuous process of creation and recreation of metaphorical symbolisms.</u> Human beings, however unwittingly, fashion, weave, construct, create their meaning systems through the manipulation, construction, creations of significant metaphorical symbolisms. Because reality is fluid and dynamic, ever changing--human beings are engaged in continuously refashioning or recreating their meaning systems to preserve and maintain a sense of existential coherence and continuity. Human beings who fail in this process of meaning creation and recreation inexorably suffer meaningless--psychological anomie--which eventually destroys them, spiritually if not physically. There is more than a little implication in this for psychological theory of health and abnormality.</p> <p>In its reduplicativeness, the reflexive meaning of metaphorical symbolism is also of an irreducible, universal, <u>paradoxical</u> nature. <u>There is an inherent paradoxicalness of the reflexive meaning of human reality.</u> In the process of creation and recreation of human meaning, as mentioned before, there is the dual possibility of meaning loss in infinite regress, and of meaning gain in a regenerative growth. These express the antithetical possibilities of progress and regress, construction and destruction, creation and death, inherent without meaning. The paradoxicalness within meaning arises from the forever momentary <u>indeterminacy</u> of these possibilities--the relative uncertainty of which direction the meaning of will change toward. This inherent and universal quality of paradoxicalness of human reality--expressed as "paradoxicality"--is the source of chronic anxiety about life, a pan human nervous condition, an all pervasive Cartesian uncertainty, an expectant anticipation for the chance, the unknown and unknowable, from which we all seek to escape but from which there is no escape. The quality of "paradoxicality" is also expressed as a quality of "liminality"--the sense of disordered confusion, of communitas and anti-structure, of "betwixtness and betweeness"--a sort of simultaneously being nothing and something, meaningful and meaningless, of being "nowhere and somewhere" or an identity of "nothingness and somethingness" as well as giving rise to the condition of "antinomality" of our own most fundamental knowledge, a background condition of our common human experience creating an irreducible uncertainty in our relative knowledge of human reality--the background texture of our knowledge, an unresolvable sort of internal psychic conflict "generated by a proposition that suggests its contradictory (or the domain of its contraries) as strongly as its own affirmation, at the moment of its affirmation."</p> <p><font SIZE="2">In the experience of the four irreducible qualities of human existence--those qualities of paradoxicality, antinomality, liminality and anxiety--as we are thrown back upon ourselves in confrontation with these realities we have two fundamental alternatives. We can accept these qualities for what they really are and strive to incorporate them into our lives in a <u>meaningful</u> manner--creatively allowing them to serve a "negative" motivation, or else we can continue to function in denial and inspite of these qualities trying to reduce their effect by escaping from them or trying to eliminate them by cognitive closure--eventuating in <u>a meaningful</u> behavior and destructiveness. Creativity is the constructive, active utilization of these irreducible qualities of existence.</p> <p>These irreconcilable qualities are at the heart of both rational creativity and behavior irrationality--an endemic human weakness to affect behavioral closure (whether cognitive, emotive, or active) within the restricted confines of a limited and closed <u>system </u>of behavior. "So long as it gives the promise of relieving the pains of cognitive uncertainty. We are all vulnerable to the claims of simplistic, reductive, hypergeneral or in other ways ontology distorting frames, so long as they have the appearance of "systemacity". (Lewis 1983 {unpublished manuscript] page 140)</p> </font> <p>The source of the qualities of regenerativity and paradoxicality rooted in the reflexive meaning of human reality lies in human self consciousness, or self awareness, in recognition (or "re-cognition") of the self within the framework of knowing, of meaning of universal human reality. This recognition of reflexive meaning is not only an <u>act of consciousness</u> but it is an <u>act of conscious willpower</u>--ignorance is its counterpart. Psychological therapy and religious enlightenment have their central strength in this function of recognition of reflexive meaning. This recognition is called self reflection, similar to and contained within the reflexive meaning of human reality.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>"Reflective" is a related but distinguishable term, referring also to a kind of thinking about ourselves, showing ourselves to ourselves, but without the requirement of explicit awareness of the implications of our display. Without the acute understanding, the detachment from the process in which one is engaged, reflexivity does not occur. Merely holding up a single mirror is not adequate to achieve this attitude. The mirrors must be doubled, creating the endless regress of possibilities, opening out into infinity, dissolving the clear boundaries of a "real world". Babcock refers to this as "identity with a difference". (ibid: 2)</p> <p>Narcissus tragedy then is that he is not narcissistic enough, or rather that he does not reflect long enough to effect a transformation. He is reflective, but he is not reflexive--that is, he is conscious of himself as an other, but he is not conscious of being self conscious of himself as an other and hence not able to detach himself from, understand, survive or even laugh at the initial experience of alienation. (Ruby 1982, page 3)</p> </font> <p>As an act of conscious willpower, our self reflective recognition of the reflexive meaning of human reality creates both the regenerativity and the paradoxicality of this meaning. We then enter a mazeway of relative meanings which we can no longer escape. Human consciousness then can be said to be metaphorical and symbolic, and is an act of willpower in recognition of the reflexive character of meaning. The importance of willpower, of essential <u>arbitrariness</u>, in the meaningful creation of our metaphorical symbolisms of human reality, cannot be over emphasized. It is the <u>ignorance</u> of this willful consciousness which leads us into the abyss of darkness and meaning. It is the difference between a blind leap of faith and a self willed jump. The paradoxicalty of this fundamental meaning of human reality is part of what has been referred to in the previous chapter as the "Universal Human Dilemma".</p> <p><font SIZE="2">The universal human dilemma is that in order to define reality, one must draw a <u>line</u> (an empirically nonexistent abstract ideational conception--as demonstrated by "Zeno's arrow") by which reality can be divided into two parts, and these two parts, are then contrasted and compared and it is in the primary <u>conscious analytic</u> division and subsequent <u>synthetic</u> relationship between the two parts by which reality gains uniquely human meaning and definition. The dilemma is that once we dissect reality by drawing the line we destroy the synergistic quality and ontological character which gives human existence meaning. Our reality thus becomes falsely separated from our existence and we alienate ourselves from our reality in a pseudo objectivity.</p> <p>It is important to emphasize the importance of <u>arbitrariness</u> of our analytic logic; that the first line drawn, after which many more can be subsequently made accordingly, is principally arbitrary. The cosmic egg of reality may be initially divided in which ever manner we choose, and subsequent subdivisions depend upon the analytic logic we choose to employ, but are determined in part by previous and initial divisions.</p> <p>It is impossible to over emphasize the importance of the first analytic division in determining the character of the conceptual system, and the fact that it is an <u>independent</u> and <u>arbitrary act of will</u>. It is the ignorance of the crucial influence of willpower that is the undoing of the human sciences and which undermines every tautological edifice of scientific theorization of human behavior. The element of prediction which is the <u>cause</u> of control in our inter-subjective physical reality becomes the <u>effect</u> of control in our objective human reality. The "science" of economics in our country is basically a study of capitalism. It is taught to be a workable truth after the fact of its uncontested functional reality within our own system. The science of economics in the USSR is a study of communism, because communism in that country is made a reality uncontested by any alternative within. The "truth" of both these alternative "sciences of economics" was not existent a priori in theory before their functional realization and human demonstration in the same way as the human notion of the planets about the sun might be postulated to be. The truths were arbitrarily formulated a posteriori to the fact of their <u>willful</u> demonstration. The same is so with Freudian psychoanalytical theory and experimental psychology. (Lewis 1983 [unpublished manuscript] pages 3-4)</p> </font> <p>It is possible that recognition of the essentially reflexive meaningfulness of human reality forms the basis of Zen teachings of sudden enlightenment, of "satori" and also of similar Taoist teachings. These "religious philosophies" are doctrines of humanological relativism par excellent. "Zen might be called the inner art and design of the Orient"….it has been described as: "A special teaching without scriptures, beyond words and letters, pointing to the mid-essence of man, seeing directly into one's nature, attaining enlightenment."</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>….Zen presupposes that the ordinary person is caught up in a maze of crisscrossing ideas, theories, reflections, prejudices, feelings and emotions such that his every experience is cut up into a variety of segments. These segments are then taken as parts of experience which can be synthesized into a whole. Thus the ordinary person does not really experience reality, but only the network of ideas and feelings he has about reality. These ideas and feelings always stand between the individual and the reality he confronts, mediating the experience….</p> <p>The enlightenment (satori) at which Zen requires going beyond all distinctions, including the distinction between <u>is</u> and <u>is not</u>, upon which all thought systems rest. Consequently, no statement is possible of what enlightenment is, except negatively, by way of pointing out what it is not. But even this presupposes <u>is</u> and <u>is not</u> and fails to produce much understanding of this important aspect of Zen. Short of practicing Zen and achieving some measure of enlightenment, perhaps the only way to get a feeling for the experience of <u>satori</u> is to talk with or read the biographies of people who have achieved <u>satori</u>….(Koller 1970, pages 184-185)</p> </font> <p>Zen Koans, exercises in sudden enlightenment, center around and incorporate the reflexive principle of the human meaning of reality, and stress the need for recognition and then "non-recognition"--a kind of direct <u>involvement</u> with human meaning, without cognitive alienation, but nevertheless an <u>involvement with a "reflective difference"</u>. So far there has been a common, implicit theme in this discussion of a "symmetry" of meaning, of a virtual kind of "synonymy" of reflexive understanding. This is expressed by an equivalence of the terms used, such that universality is embodied in reflective recognition, reflexive, meaning, metaphorical symbolism, paradoxically, in relativism, human reality, human relativity, etc. There is expressed a loose kind of symmetrical association, such that relativity is reality is human is the meaning of being human is metaphorical is symbolic is reflexive is paradoxical is universal so on and on. This expresses a principle I have named <u>holothetic unity</u>--expressing the universality of the reality, embedded in the very most essential weave, fabric of this reality, sharing all the qualities of meaning, relativity, reflexivity, etc. There is a single unity of human reality, nothing excluded. The wholeness, comprehensive integrity of this reality is the overarching and underlying theme of this work. This single reality has no ends, bounds, no beginnings nor endings. It is the Grand Web of Meaning of Human Being, which is dynamically continuous. This principle of unity is best expresses by the "Tao":</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>As the absolutely first principle of existence, <u>Tao</u> is completely without characteristics. It is itself uncharacterized, being the very source and condition of all characteristics. In this sense is nonbeing. But it is simply nothing, for it is the source of everything. It is a priori to all living things, giving them life and function, constituting the oneness underlying all the diversity and multiplicity of the world. Lao Tze says, "The <u>Tao</u> that can be told of is not the eternal <u>Tao</u>; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the named is the mother of all things."</p> <p>The reason <u>Tao</u> cannot be named is that it is without divisions, distinctions, or characteristics. It is unified, like an uncarved block, being without change, knowing neither beginning nor end. But is <u>Tao</u> cannot be named, what is named, what is named by "Tao"? Lao Tze's point in saying that the <u>Tao</u> is beyond all names is that the fundamental source and principle cannot be named, for it is the very source of names and descriptions. Consequently, "Tao" is a non-name; it does not refer to any one thing. Rather it points to what which enables things to be what they are; it is that which gives them existence and allows them to pass into nonexistence. When it is said that <u>Tao</u> is the source of all being and non-being, the word <u>Tao</u> functions very much like the word "that" when it is said the "that" from which being and non-being proceed:</p> <p>The importance of <u>Tao</u> lies in the recognition that there is something which is prior and anterior to the various particular things that exist in the world, something which gives unity to all the existing things and which determines the very existence and function of everything that exists. What that something is cannot, of course, be said, for whatever can be talked about is limited and determined, for it is the very condition of limits and determinations. (Koller 1970, page 236)</p> </font> <p>Just as "Tao" is the name for the nameless source of all names, the best and worst possible expression for the holothetic principle, so have the names recurrently employed in this work, "reflexivity", "metaphor", symbol", "relativity", human "reality", "universality", to be considered as distinctive metaphors which distinguish certain qualitative facets of the whole, various manifestations of the holothetic principle, variants of a common theme. Such "holothetic" understanding of human reality properly proceeds from the recognition of the wholeness, the completeness, the ultimate unity of human reality, the Great Web of Meaning, and then proceeds to distinguish, cognitively isolate its many, various parts. There is implied in this an overarching theme of universal <u>integrity</u> of the whole of the human reality, reflected by and expressed within the integrity of its various manifestations and "parts". So also there is not separating human reality from the reflexive human understanding of that reality. Knowing and known, subject and object cannot be dichotomized in human reality without destroying the fundamental, universal holothetic integrity. The completeness of human reality translates into "comprehensiveness" of its understanding. The grand "interelatedness" of human reality, its integrity, is known through the doctrine of humanological relativism. Zen Buddhists and Taoists alike eschewed the use of names, words, thoughts, and ideas to give form and meaning to this integrity of human reality. Indeed, once we begin our analytical line drawing, our dichotomization, segmentation and compartmentalization of reality into many different parts, we can proceed to delineate whole, complex "thought structures" which rational destroy the integrity of human reality through its isolation of "independent" ideals and ideas. The integrity of the whole of human reality I will designate arbitrarily as Mother Nature--universal, complete all encompassing. It must be remembered that there is no necessary, intrinsic reason why the use of words and names, to define symbolically our knowing of human reality, of Mother Nature, should always be destructive of its original integrity, of our involvement with nature. Words are key metaphors of human reality. "In the beginning was the word…." or "In the beginning there was thought woman…." The use of words and their language have become the predominant and primary idiom, medium of meaning and knowing of human reality, such that it is next to impossible to imagine human reality or even to experience human reality, outside the medium of words and language. That this can be accomplished is adequately demonstrated by the intelligence of most species of animals that do not use language. Words, as our primary symbolic metaphors, mediate our process of knowing reality, and are ultimately a part of and embedded, rooted in the same Mother Nature which they seek to describe. For that matter, all symbolic metaphors are ultimately, no matter how alienated and indirectly, derive from Mother Nature. There is no inherent reason that our meaning systems must in any way be separated or alienated from the Mother Nature from which they ultimately originated and to which they finally refer.</p> <p>But it is possible, through the arbitrary, willful act of conscious analysis, to use words to rationally dichotomize and thus destroy the intrinsic holothetic integrity of human reality. The use of analytic logic, two value logic based upon the principles of non-contradiction and excluded middle, is a methodology which creates a false "ideal" reality separate from, and only deterministically related to Mother Nature. On the other hand, there is an alternative logical method, a synthetic approach to comprehending, which remains rooted to and incorporates the holothetic integrity of human reality. The alternative systems of thinking and writing about human reality will be more fully dealt with in the third chapter of this work (indeed delineation of the alternative form of "logical consciousness" is the main rational for this work) suffice it to note that such a distinction in human thought processes can and has been made.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>The key or master symbol of meaning in existence is the word as metaphor. Without language human beings would have no culture and no civilization; language is the principle symboling system of humanity. Meaning is principally interpreted symbolically; conceptual, logical, rational, mythological, abstracted from and rooted to irreducible precepts. The word as metaphor functions as analogy, with generalizable meaning relating and tying together diverse and differing and seemingly separate and unrelated concepts and precepts, bridging the differences and resolving the tension, imposing frames of reference out of original context, upon new subjects. Metaphor suggests new possibilities of meanings, expanding meaningfulness qualitatively beyond a mere one to one mathematical correspondence between a name and its immediate empirical referents. Symboling systems of rationalization, helping to reintegrate the disparate and analytically dichotomized fragments of reality, function as myths. All of our systems of rationalization about reality are mythological including science. Myth as metaphorical meaning sets the tragic comic human stage for the dramatic enactment of all human behavior. (Lewis 1984, page 116)</p> </font> <p>Any symbolic metaphor provides a conceptually definitive frame of reference serving to dichotomously separate and distinguish aspects of reality--internal/external, subjective/objective, figure/ground. "Outer forms frame inner meanings". One may refer to alternative symbolic functions, like "Dominart Symbol", "Master Symbol", "Key Symbol", or "Summarizing Metaphor" or "Elaborating Metaphor", but the primary function of all metaphorical symbols is to serve as a frame of reference for the conveyance of human meaning. In order to do so, any symbol must have a primary referent which serves as a "signifier" or a "denotation" which is derived from Mother Nature. To reiterate, all symbols are ultimately derived from and refer to nature, no matter how abstractedly or indirectly. This primary referent may be simple or complex, either taken directly from empirical, perceptual reality or else composed of many diverse elements drawn directly from or abstracted indirectly from Mother Nature. This primary referent serves as a <u>significant marker</u> in that it embodies, incorporates relatively significant meaning which is <u>recognizable</u>, however unconsciously or structurally or concretely by the knower. The act of recognition is a form of humanological involvement, an expression of the interrelatedness of human reality, bringing meaning to human reality.</p> <p>The symbolic metaphor is applied, or recognized and created within a universal reality of human meaning which is both continuous and ever changing--a dynamic continuum which forms both a relational context which is all encompassing and within which symbols are created, destroyed and recreated, reconstituted with new meanings and new relationships. Meaning is derived from the human interrelatedness with symbolic metaphors. The act of recognition of a symbolic metaphor as a frame of reference, is properly known as the function of <u>identification. </u>The marker or primary referent serves as a cognitive, symbolic boundary which identifies meaningful differences--defining the identity of human meaning. Identification is a process of differentiation of meaning inside and outside of the boundary of the symbolic marker. Differences between relationships, "things" or meanings outside of the boundary and inside of the boundary are emphasized as relatively significant, while the similarities are de-emphasized as relatively insignificant. Attention is focused upon the figure in the foreground, outlined by the symbolic frame of reference, while the background is ignored. Furthermore, differences within the boundaries of the symbolic marker become emphasized, the similarities are ignored, while the similarities outside of the boundary are emphasized to the ignorance of the differences.</p> <p>Humans create their meaningful reality through the process of symbolic identification. Furthermore, as frames of reference, metaphorical symbols also function as symbolic mirrors of meaning, as a vehicle of both subjective reflection and of objective projection, of the self. Identification within human reality is properly a process of self identification through the reflective/projective process of human interrelationship. Symbolic identification expressed as a process of interrelationship between external differences/internal similarities and between subjective reflection/objective projection, define the secondary referents of symbols and metaphors. The primary symbolic referent serves as a metaphorical mediator, a medium of expression, a frame of reference for the identification and recognition of the relationships of secondary reference.</p> <p>Of course, there is more than one symbol, or one kind of metaphor, and in the human process of creation and recreation of meaningful symbolic metaphors many are created, used simultaneously and destroyed. Symbols are arranged into groups which form <u>symbolism</u>, which provide a sense of order, of coherence upon a certain aspect or facet of human reality. Symbols are related to each other in these groups of symbolism, and in their interrelationships together form tertiary referents which are at best abstract and generalized meaning systems. Symbolisms are linked together in a similar process of combination and recombination to form <u>symbolic chains, </u>which are in turn interlinked with other symbolic chains to form <u>symbolic complexes</u> which form a coherent world view and sense of rational order--the "Web of Meaning" of human reality. Symbols, Symbolisms, Symbolic Chains, and Symbolic Complexes are all share similar principles of "accretion of meaning"--centripedally gravitating many relative meanings to their centers, of "mechanical aggregation" of similar meanings, of organization by analogical association. The structure of organization of symbolic complexes is somewhat loose and cyclical, accommodation of many likenesses and similarities of meanings. The interconnections within symbolic complexes are variable and change historically over time and place. There are few sharp boundaries lines within this symbolic universe where one symbol begins and another leaves off--the boundary marking functions of the primary referents tend to blend, merge and become confused--everything appears to be metaphorically connected to everything else. There is almost a kind of simple, mechanical solidarity of such a complex which is accounted for by its loose, connotative character, and by its open ended, unexcluded middle ground of analogical similarities, interrelations, with continuous shades and blendings of meaning. This is compared to a more rationally organized internal structure which might have what is termed an "organissmic solidarity" which is based upon a strict causal and analytical framework, with hierarchical abstract organization and the employment of "propositional" as opposed to "appositional" reasoning. There is no beginning and no real ending of ending this symbolic complex--it is an entangled web--a morass of interconnections of meanings and relationships diffusing off to open ended infinity. It is rather a great circle of meaning, of illusion, and deception as well as conception. It can be entered virtually at any one of its nodes of symbolisms, with only the promise of pursuing one's own tail (and tale) and finishing where one began. The chain is not so much a monofilament of interlocking links, it is rather "chain mail"--a fabric of interwoven symbolic links, an armor which has been folded upon itself like a ball.</p> <p>The structure taken by symbolic complexes is <u>crystallitic</u>, manifest is a myriad multifaceted interrelationships, meanings and identifications, in a kind of <u>holothetic multidimensionality</u>. Just as there are many more than one symbol or one kind of metaphor, there are many meanings which can be attached to or associated with a single symbol. Symbols are multidimensional in their referents--often times embodying many contradictory meanings or contraposed lines of thought. Indeed, the primary function of a symbol, as a primary referent, is the mediation of differences, the resolution of opposites. Symbols have many different possible functions, as well, continuously operating, whether explicit or otherwise, upon several "levels" or in different "modes" of meaning simultaneously--whether psychological or social, manifest or latent, concrete or metaphysical--in all our forms of behavior, whether cognitive, emotive or active. Just as symbols have a virtual infinitude of meanings, they have, in their holothetic multidimensionality which is expressive of the integrity of whole symbolic universe of human reality, so they have a multiple variety of possible interpretations. The crystallitic structure of symbol systems, operating upon principles like analogical association, symmetry, or sympathy, are characterized as holothetically multidimensional in that it resembles a symbolic crystal, or translucent jewel which captures the light upon its many multifaceted dimensions and reflects this like a kaleidoscope "Hall of Mirrors". He holothetic multidimensionality creates symbolic realism of meaning in human reality.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Together, the synthetic integration of the subjective and objective domains might be interpreted symbolically as being <u>holothetic</u> in structure, and it is expressed essentially in <u>holographic </u>symbolism--which is symbolic realism or realistic symbolism. It is the mentalistic functioning of the mind; intellection, the meaning of reality. What is reality? Reality is holothetic in its human meaning; such that any conceptual subsystem which touts any degree of completeness in truth about reality is "totipotent"--holothetic in character--a rough, self contained "complete" picture of the "whole" reality. The integrity of reality is in a sense contained in a grain of sand. (Lewis 1983, page 18)</p> </font> <p>It makes sense to define human reality as symbolic, such that one may define the universal meaning of a human being as a symbolic creature.. We live embedded within a symbolic universe. Mention of a holothetic multidimensionality, of symbolic complexes, and crystallictic structure, leads us to consider the process of symbolic identification as a possible form of <u>symbolic integration of human reality</u>, and in this regard we may refer to relative notions of <u>context dependency/independency</u> and the complementary notion of relative <u>diffusion of contexts. </u>Likewise we may refer to notions of <u>symbolic concreteness and concretization</u> and to <u>symbolic abstractedness and abstraction</u> as well as to <u>symbolic simplification and symbolic sophistication</u>. It must be reiterated that these are all relative terms. Previously I have mentioned the importance of the <u>relative significance</u> of a symbol as a primary marker/referent. Relative significance is the measure of the contextual and direct meaningfulness of a symbol. This meaningfulness is not only expressed in conscious terms of identification, but also in structural and other forms of expression. A <u>sign</u> is a primary symbol, the signification of which is directly attached to its primary referent. In a sense, sign, signification, and significance is the <u>concrete</u> level of symbolic meaning. This level of relative concreteness is also a primary level of symbolic simplicity. <u>A sign is a concrete, simple, primary symbol. </u>Significance and signification are likewise concrete and relatively simple. A sign carries a direct concrete meaning, or a <u>message</u> and signs are coordinated into groups and chains and complexes which form networks and systems of <u>communication</u> with a relatively context dependent, fixed, content of meaning which is referred to as <u>information</u>. Informational networks are relatively disambiguous and are wholly binary and analytical in operation. Relative context dependency means that the information "carried upon the marker" is strictly denotation, concisely definitive, monosemic, monothetic and monothematic in interpretation. The most perfect systems of signs developed by humankind are mathematical in nature, yet even these incorporate certain seemingly insoluble dilemmas. But mathematical systems are not the only kind--logical positivists have for some time now sought to turn rational philosophy into just such an elaborate game of signs, as have empirical positivists with science.</p> <p>Then there is the level of secondary, intermediate symbols, symbols proper, which are usually, customarily organized into quasi formal "disciplines" (all of the Traditional Academic "--ologies") based upon rather strict formularies of hermeneutical exegesis. The dictionary is the epitomy of this level of secondary symbols--as language, and its grammatical formalization, are the principle kinds of symbols occurring at this level. Each symbol, as a work, is well defined, within the principles of a grammatical structure--with all the commonly recognized, sanctioned variations of meaning, or connotations, listed. This is a level of intermediacy in relative terms of concreteness/abstraction, simplicity/sophistication and especially in terms of context dependency/independency. Having all the appearances of "systemacity" and hence of rational coherence, communication which is flexible in interpretation is the optimum function of this "system" of secondary symbolization. At this levels symbols cannot be completely divorced from their primary referents, but the level of secondary referents is given the center of attention, instead.</p> <p>There is, then, to be expected a tertiary level of symbolization--this is not the level of the symbol proper but the levels of "symbolic organization" or the <u>groupings of symbols</u>, first at the level of <u>symbolism</u>, and so on up the chain to <u>symbolic complexes</u> and beyond. No longer fixed or centered by their primary referents, tertiary symbols become <u>context independent</u>, relatively speaking, and the principles of association between symbols, of symbolic interrelationships, become the focal points of meaningful interpretation. There occurs at this level a <u>diffusion of relational contexts</u>, the boundaries defined at the second level disappear and the functioning of symbols becomes preeminently one of subjective reflection/objective projection. The process of identification becomes indirect, symbolic reality is no longer concrete or even concrete bound but is abstract, and symbols arrange themselves into quite sophisticated systems, rather complexes of conglomerations. At this level are to be found examples of mythology, poetry and literature, art and music. At this level looseness and flexibility of context gives way to the crystallitic structure of symbolic interrelationships.</p> <p>Organization of the presentation of primary, secondary and tertiary levels of metaphorical symbols might be taken to imply some kind of developmental sequence in the symbolic integration of human reality. Mathematicians would surely rage at being called "concrete thinkers" when their systems of "calculus" are the most sophisticated and abstract symbols systems ever created by humankind, and logicians would surely laugh quite loquaciously at the misplaced illogic of all this concrete thinking. But concrete is used not to mean either empirical rootedness nor logical primitiveness, nor is "simplicity" meant to imply "simple mindedness". Surely even the most concrete and simple systems of symbolization have a knack for complicating themselves to astronomical, immeasurable proportions, and even the most "sophisticated" of haiku poems can have the most primitive, empirically rooted, simple minded similitudes,, and yet remain quite profound. But the main point of this thesis is offering a sensible reason while the small human mind can still accomplish things which the most "sophisticated" of computers still cannot do even with difficulty. Sign systems can accomplish certain mentalistic feats far easier and better than can the most sophisticated of poetics, and yet even the most simplistic of fables can express with clarity and utmost concision the most profound wisdoms knowable to humankind. But as Socrates correctly demonstrated even the most uneducated Slave boy can logically comprehend the proof of the Pythagorean theorem if given the opportunity to think clearly enough, and modern mathematicians have demonstrated that the Theory of Relativity can be explained by the use of the Pythagorean theorem. All of this goes to show that even the slowest and dullest witted of boys, if given enough time and the appropriate circumstances, like little Albert Einstein can solve the grandest puzzles of the Universe--but none of this goes one step further towards resolving a dilemma like--"The Man from Crete said all Cretans are Liars"--or the following Zen Koan:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p ALIGN="CENTER">The Gateless Gate</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">An instant realization sees endless time.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Endless time as one moment.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">When one comprehends the endless moment</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">He realizes the person who us seeing it.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font> <p>The question of a possible developmental sequence in the symbolic integration of human reality necessarily turns upon the notion of relative context dependency/independency and the related notion of relative diffusion or fixation of contexts. This whole issue refers us to the idea of "stimulus generalization" which might be more aptly called "symbolic generalization". What is at issue here is not a matter of absolute values--a complex polynomical within an algebraic equation may have an infinitude of possible real values depending upon the particular assignation, but its <u>relative significance, </u>within that context of that particular equation, can have one a single, fixed relational meaning. It cannot have the multidimensionality within its context, for instance, a particular symbol may have infinite interpretations contained within a single sentence of the <u>Tao Te Ching</u>--say perhaps the symbolic metaphor of "the rough, uncarved block". Context dependency/independency does not imply a variability of values assignable to its meaning within a specific context, but rather a <u>relative </u>or <u>relational </u>variability within the same context. Independence of context refers instead to a infinite multidimensionality of interpretation of relationships within a single, fixed contextual relationship. Diffusion of contexts refers to the relative unfixed nature, the relative looseness or even dissolution of the boundaries of meaning imposed by the primary frame of reference. In this regard symbolic concreteness refers to the relatively fixed nature of the significant relationships involved in a symbolic system. We may refer to symbolic dependency and symbolic fixation as the relative inability to provide a flexible or broad range of possible relational interpretations for the meaning of a symbolic metaphor. Poorly developed symbolic integration of reality will be manifest by a high level of symbolic integration of reality will be manifest by a high level of symbolic fixation upon "concrete contexts" and a relative inflexible level of "context dependency" for the interpretation of a symbol. We may thus refer to a kind of "symbolic dependency" which is the relative inability to interpret beyond the primary level of signification. On the other hand, when we refer to symbolic generalization we are referring to the development of the ability to interpret metaphorically the symbolic meaning system beyond the primary signification, and even beyond the immediate secondary context, in the consideration of its abstract interrelatedness to other symbolic systems. The implications of the development if this capacity for relative "Symbolic generalization"--"thinking beyond contexts" in relational terms, for the symbolic integration of human reality, will be more thoroughly explored and elucidated in the fourth chapter.</p> <p>In concluding this chapter it is worthwhile to consider the possibility of creating the same meaning systems upon different levels of symbolic integration--that it is possible to say the same thing in a well developed signification system, like a mathematical formula expressing the energy relationships between human beings and a particular ecological adaptation, and the same fundamental wisdom which has found its expression in "concrete" metaphorical terms of folk poetry. The question such a comparison suggests its whether or not the "concrete logic" developed within a particular cultural ecological context and expressed by the indigenous system of symbolism,, through many generations of ecological adaptation and cultural development, be adequately understood and expressed through a rigid scientific system of signification. In other words, can logic ever penetrated customary old common sense, rooted as it is in a vast cultural complex:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>….We shall use both a mathematical statement and the most abridged form of poetry that we know, namely a haiku like statement. Both convey complex ideas simply. The two kind of summaries differ in their mode of forming a symbol. A mathematical symbol raises the level of generalization through a greater abstraction….thereby eliminating all but the essentials. A poetic symbol often reduces the level of abstraction toward greater concreteness. The resulting image also stands for the whole….A further contrast arises; in mathematics the forming of an equation consists in balancing symbols about the fixed "equals" sign; in poetry the making of a haiku like statement, after the relevant symbols have been found, calls for selecting appropriate middle terms to join the symbols. Thus both mathematics and poetry should enable us to recapitulate briefly and lucidly.</p> <p>….Our statement then reads:</p> <p>Societal input of energy = F pt/L</p> <p>In addition….we write</p> <p>Societal input of energy = F Cmpt/L</p> <p>Thereby it may be said: The societal input of energy into a given ecological holding is a function of the social organization and the mode of cultivation by a particular working unit of population tilling throughout a given crop season in fields of a certain size. Yet such a generalization obscures our major point: Each mode of cultivation is a appropriate to a sense of varying population with differing economic command and varying availability of land. While shifting cultivation best fits among scattered people, transplanting presumes many people working small holdings, while broadcasting from an intermediate step between the two.</p> <p>Somewhat the same statement can also be made in far fewer syllables:</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Shifting Cultivation</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Sun again; the rain</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Erased my foot print</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">In the powdered ash</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Broadcasting</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">The gray rising flood</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Has smoothed</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">The furrows of my plow</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Transplanting</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">From dyked fields</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Empty straws have sent</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Their tribute to our village</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Their Separate Ways</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Eyes of plowmen</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Cannot see clouds</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Wedged between the hills.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">(Hanks 1973)</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font> <p>Looseness of metaphor and polythematic interpretation does not necessarily or automatically preclude the possibility of parsimony of expressive communication. This is what real Human Intelligence is really about. A haiku poem can be every whit as revealing as a mathematical equation, to one who knows how to read it. It remains doubtful whether the theory of General Relativity can ever be used to explain the Great Cycle of the <u>Tao Te Ching</u> although the <u>Tao Te Ching</u> has been employed in the explanation of physics, or that the fundamental land of Thermodynamics will ever explain the spiritual vitality of <u>Tao</u>.</p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">CHAPTER III</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Antithesis</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Toward a General Theory of Metalogical Mythology</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>LIV</p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>Zeno once proved that flat footed Achilles was forever doomed to chase the tired tortoise. Modern mathematicians have lifted that old sentence by forever banishing the infinitesimal and fashioning a logic for infinity peculiarly its own.</p> <p>This domain for thinking stipulates that individual elements in something like a straight line, which posses continuity, are infinitely more abundant than those in something like the realm of rational numbers, which does not: that the number of odd integers is the same as the number of odd plus even integers; that there are just as many points in lines of various lengths; that an infinite set stays the same despite much thinking; and that there are correspondences among continua. And the mind boggling goes infinitely on.</p> <p>(Siu 1974, page 16)</p> <p>Two Wild Geese</p> <p>There: wild geese, swimming side by side,</p> <p>Staring up at the sky!</p> <p>White feathers against a deep blue,</p> <p>Red feet burning in green waves.</p> <p>Lie Chieu and Do Phap Thuan</p> <p>Home</p> <p>No color or complexion distinguishes the way</p> <p>Still its message flares up everywhere:</p> <p>Of the thousands of worlds, numerous as grains of sand</p> <p>Which is not home?</p> <p>Thuong Chieu</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> </font> <p>"Metalogical" is succinctly defined thus: "1. Beyond the scope of logic; not determinable by logic. 2. Relating to the metaphysics of logic." All these connotations relating to logic and meta-logic are appropriate to this chapter. It is an attempt to go beyond the rational metaphysics of logic by the use of a meta-logic which is determinable by rational logic.</p> <p>Mythology is defined as "the study of myths" and more elaborately as "[LL. <u>Mythologia</u>; Gr. <u>Mythologia</u>, a telling of tales or legends, legendary lore; <u>mythos</u>, myth and -<u>logia</u>, from <u>legein</u>, to speak] 1. The science or study of myths or legends; that branch of science which investigates the meaning of myths and the relationship between the myths of different countries of peoples….Parts of <u>mythology</u> are religious, parts of <u>mythology</u> are historical, parts of <u>mythology</u> are poetical, but <u>mythology</u> as a whole is neither religion nor history, nor philosophy, nor poetry. It comprehends all these together under that peculiar form of expression which is natural and intelligible at a certain stage, or at certain recurring stages in the development of thought and speech,, but which, after becoming traditional, becomes frequently unnatural and unintelligible. --Max Muller…." (<u>Websters Dict</u>. 1983) Similarly, "Myth" is defined as "1. a traditional story presenting supernatural beings, ancestors or heroes that serve as primordial types in a primitive view of the world. 2. a fictitious or imaginary story, person or thing. 3. A false belief. [Gk. <u>Muthos</u>]" or alternatively as "[LL. <u>Mythos</u>; Gr. <u>Mythos</u>, word, speech, story, legend.]" 1. A traditional story of unknown authorship, ostensibly with a historical basis, but serving usually to explain some phenomenon of nature, the origin of man, or the customs, institutions, religious rites, etc. of a people: myths usually involve the exploits of gods and heroes….4. any imaginary person or thing spoken of as though existing." There are many interpretations of mythology, professing to explain the origins and purpose or functions of myth. The definition of mythology can also be expanded upon until its corpus constitutes virtually the entire body of rational understanding of humankind. It is not the purpose of this chapter to explain all the many hows and whys of mythology, but it does aim to demonstrate the way in which its meaning functions as a key metaphor (a metaphor within a metaphor, so to speak) or more precisely as an operational metaphor, for the relative comprehension of the symbolic integration of human reality.</p> <p>The combination of "metalogical mythology" is meant to suggest three interrelated aspects; that the study of mythology lies beyond the purview of formal logic, but involves the metaphysics of logic, that the study of meta-logic is mythological in character, as is the metaphysics of logic, and thirdly that the use of both terms in combination implies an inherent reflexivity between the meanings of both.</p> <p>Symbolic integration and symbolic generalization function beyond the purview of logic in the stricter sense, but this might not necessarily mean that there is not a "meta-logic" to the functioning of symbolic integration and generalization. On the other hand, it may be found that logic functions within the purview of the meta-logic of symbolic integration and symbolic generalization. It is taken as valid that formal logic operates exclusively or primarily upon the primary level of context dependent symbolization, and that, on the other hand mythology normally functions upon the so called tertiary level of symbolic integration, then it seems the case that mythology is a form of relationally understanding human reality which is as well beyond the purview of formal logic. But if mythology is not only metalogical but incorporates as well a kind of "metaphysics of logic" then it is possible to employ this metalogical metaphysics in relating mythology and logic.</p> <p>In the consideration of the metalogical connections between logic and mythology, the question arises as to whether logic as a complex system of primary symbols does not "combine" to form a kind of symbolic integration and generalization of reality, and if so, what marks off this primary kind of symbol system from the symbolic integration and combination into "symbolic complexes" upon the tertiary level of "contest independent" symbolic metaphors. Primary symbols systems such as logic do constitute <u>complex systems</u> of symbolization in an analogous manner that tertiary symbols important distinctions which can be made. Remaining context dependent but "value independent" (the generalization or abstraction of "absolute" values assignable to the signs--"variables") such systems of primary symbols build themselves by the use of arbitrary rules, usually limited in number, of relationship, which are generalistic, and which are "propositional" in defining the possible number of permutations and recombinations of relationships which are allowable. Thus such sign systems are able to be constructed in a quite elaborate manner based upon a limited number of relational rules which serve the function of "context--generalization". The rules must be quite strict and limited, or else the structure of the system would soon break down under the weight of its own complication. What we have is a "grammar" which can be seen to be "generative". We have the application of <u>artificial intelligence</u> as opposed to <u>natural intelligence</u> which functions under the looser inherent rules of the tertiary, context dependent level of symbolization. The problem is well illustrated by the forlorn attempts to fit a "prescriptive" or even a "descriptive" transformational "grammar" to the definition of natural language system, arising as it does within a general cultural/historical context.</p> <p>At this point we are lead to consider what this "looser, more natural" form of intelligence and tertiary functions of symbolic combination might consist of--in other words we are faced with a need to describe the "logic" or more accurately "meta-logic" which might be intrinsic to the nature of symbolic integration and generalization, and thus discover a "logic" behind mythologization. What we are searching for is a form of "symbology" in the form of natural rules of symbolic combination and interrelation.</p> <p>There is yet another approach toward the comprehension of this problem--if it can be demonstrated that systems of primary and secondary symbolization which I will call "rational systems" or "systems of rationalization" fall well within the purview of interpretation, or of relational comprehension, then it is nevertheless possible to use an understanding of rationality which is metalogical to arrive at the "natural grammar"--more appropriately known as "structural grammar" underlying symbolic generalization and symbolic integration of reality, and by logical deduction, metalogical mythology. In order to accomplish this, it is first necessary to understand the structure of rationality, but what is and is not--and as a symbolic system to outline its contextual scope as it has been historically developed. But first we must refer back to the notion of structure itself.</p> <p>Structure is defined as "1. Something made up of parts that are put together in a particular way. 2. The way in which parts are arranged or put together to form a whole. 3. Something constructed….[Lat. <u>Structus</u>, p.p. of <u>struere</u>.]" (<u>American heritage Dict</u>. 1983) or as "[Fr. <u>Structure</u>; L. <u>structura</u>, a building, from <u>structus</u>, pp. of <u>struere</u>, to heap together, arrange.] 1. The act of building; construction. [Obs.] 2. Manner of building or constructing; form, make construction. 3. Something built or constructed….4. the arrangement or interrelation of all the parts of a whole; manner or organization or construction….5. something composed of parts…." (Websters Dict. [unabridged] 1983) Likewise we may refer to "structural" as "pertaining to structure; having or characterized by structure", to "structuralism" as "a movement for determining and analyzing the basic, relativity stable structural elements of a system, especially in the behavioral sciences" to a "structuralist" as "a follower or advocate of structural principles, as in the analysis or application of social, economic, or linguistic theory", or to ""structuralize"--"to form or organize into a structure" and particularly, "structural linguistics" as "language study based on the assumptions that a language is a coherent system of formal signs and that the task of linguistic study is to inquire into the nature of those signs and their peculiar systematic arrangement, without reference to historical antecedents or comparison with other languages." (<u>Websters Dict</u>. [unabridged] 1983)</p> <p>Two important features of "structure" are to be inferred from the preceding definitions. The first is that structure implies relationship or "interrelatedness" between "parts" or "components" and that "structuralism" is a form of relativism which seeks to understand the nature of these relations, which is rooted in the holothetic principle of comprehending the structural relations of the "whole"--of how the parts interrelate and integrate in order to form the whole. Beyond the importance of relationships, structuralism also looks for <u>relevan</u>t or <u>relatively meaningful</u> relations, or perhaps <u>significant relations</u>, which are generalizable from the many parts and which underlie the whole. We may thus refer to a symbolic structuralist as attempting to understand the "general structure" of a symbolic system, of its relevant interrelationships which are generalizable as rules of relations, thus defining the structural process of symbolic generalization and symbolic integration of human reality. To search for generalizable, essential structural relationships falls well within the purview of the doctrine of humanological relativism, but to limit such a comprehension to sign systems, to the level of primary symbols, such as the structural linguists are purported to do, to necessarily restrict structural generalization to the level of primary referents, restricting the rules of relationship to the grammar of an artificial intelligence. As demonstrated in the conclusion of the last chapter, such restriction of significance can be used to understand complex, sophisticated natural systems of symbolization, such as language or mythology, but the interpretations generated will be necessarily limited, rationally circumscribed and inflexible. In this regard it must be noted that the system of structural analysis of myth devised by Levi Strauss is an artificially contrived system of signification which "works" because of the open interpretability of the mythological subject matter it deals with--mythology allowing itself by virtue of its generability to be interpreted by virtually any well worked out system of signification, but there is nothing intrinsically necessary or sufficient which makes Levi Strauss's system of signification the best possible, much less the a priori, symbol universal symbolic structure of all mythology. In this regard any claim of semiological structuralism to universality is after the fact of their contribed applicability and from the standpoint of comprehending "natural structure" entirely bogus.</p> <p>Symbolic structuralism connotes that the general relativistic effort to comprehend the "general structure" of "interrelatedness" by which symbols are generalized from their contexts, combined into "symbolisms", "chains" and "complexes" in order to achieve symbolic integration of reality. More formally, we are searching for a "general theory" of relativistic comprehension, for generalizable "rules of relationship" by which to comprehend the so called "crystallitic" structure of symbolic reality, or of "metalogical mythology" as a special case of reality. Speaking of formal theory, or of "rules of relationship" or of "general structure" necessarily leads to a need for understanding the meaning of rationality as just such formal systems of theoretization which has been historically derived.</p> <p>Rational is defined as "1. Having or using the ability to reason. 2. Of or pertaining to reason. 3. Of sound mind; sane….[Lat. <u>Rationalis</u>] (<u>American Heritage Dict</u>. 1983)" or as "1. Of, based on, or derived from reasoning; 2. Able to reason; reasoning; 3. Showing reason; not foolish or silly; sensible;….(<u>Websters Dict</u>. 1983). "Rationale" is defined "1. The fundamental reason for something. 2. An exposition of underlying principles or beliefs." (<u>American Heritage Dict</u>. 1983). "Rationalism" is defined as "the theory that the exercise of reason provides the only valid basis for action as the only authority in determining one's opinions or course of action. 2. In philosophy, the theory that the reason or intellect, is the true source of knowledge, rather than the senses. 3. In theology, the doctrine that rejects revelation and the supernatural, and makes reason the whole source of knowledge." (<u>Websters Dict</u>. [unabridged] 1983). A rationalist is "one who believes in or practices rationalism", rationalistically is "in a rationalistic manner". Rationality is defined as "the quality or condition of being rational" and as "the power or faculty of reasoning; possession of reason; reasonableness;" and rationalize is "1. To interpret or explain from a rational standpoint. 2. To cause to appear reasonable or rational. 3. To devise reasonable but untrue explanations for (e.g. one's behavior)" or 1. To make rational; to make conform to reason. 2. To explain or interpret on rational grounds….5. in psychology, to device superficially rational, or plausible, explanations or excuses for (one's acts, beliefs, desires, etc.) usually without being aware that these are not the real motives." (<u>Websters Dict. </u>1983) To rationalize is to "think in a rational or rationalistic manner" or to "rationalize one's acts, beliefs, etc." A rationalizer is "one who rationalizes", rationally is "in a rational manner; reasonably", and rationalness is "the state of being rational or consistent with reason."</p> <p>Definition of rationality depends upon the definition of reason--"1. An explanation or justification of an act, idea, etc., 2. A cause, a motive. 3. The ability to think, form judgments, draw conclusions, etc. 4. Sound thought or judgment; good sense. 5. Normal mental powers; a sound mind; sanity. 6. In logic, one of the premises of an argument, especially the minor" or "to think coherently and logically; to draw inferences or conclusions from facts known or assumed. To argue or talk in a logical way" or "to analyze; to think logically about; to think out systematically. 2. To argue, to discuss. 3. To support, justify, etc. with reasons. 4. To persuade or bring by reasoning." (Websters<u> Dict</u>. 1983) or "1. The basis or motive for an action, decision, feeling, or belief. 2. An underlying fact or cause that provides logical sense for a premise or occurrence. 3. The capacity for rational thought, inference, or discrimination. 4. A normal mental state; sanity, --v. 1. To use the faculty of reason; think logically. 2. To talk or argue logically and persuasively. 3. To determine or conclude by logical thinking." (<u>American Heritage Dict</u>. 1983) There is reasonability, reasonable, reasonableness, reasonably, reasoner, reasoning, reasonist, which is an absolute term for a "rationalist" and there is even "reasonless". The important point of the above definitions is the close connection with the meaning of logic or logicalness. Reason, and by implication rationality and rationalism, is to be seen as a form of logical symbol system at the secondary level of symbolic integration, imply secondary symbols, a looser form of contextual, relational interpretation nevertheless rooted to and dependent upon logical symbols at the primary level, which is more precisely called "ratiocination"--"1. The act or process of reasoning, or of deducing consequences from premises. 2. In instance of reasoning"--or "ratiocinate"--"to reason; especially to reason using formal logic" or "to reason methodically and rationally." From this it can be inferred that "rationality" functions upon the levels of secondary symbolization, with greater interpretability of relations within context, but nonetheless tied to the primary level of logical signification, and thus is context dependent. "Rationalistic" symbol systems, "systems of rationalization" and "rationalism" in general can be shown to operate structurally upon this secondary symbolic level.</p> <p>Rationality, as a formal system of symbolic generalization, of theoretization, employs the strict rules of logic and reason, but must employ them in a more generalized form in order to fit broader, more general contextual relationships. The basic "rules" while still being artificial, must be made more "natural" by their general contextual applicability. Speaking of the rules of logic leads us back to reconsider the meaning of logic more fully. It is defined as "1. The study of the principles of reasoning. 2. Valid reasoning, esp. as distinguished from invalid or irrational argumentation [Gk. <u>Logos</u>, reason]" (<u>American Heritage Dict</u>. 1983) or as "[L. <u>logica</u>; Gr. <u>Logike</u>, logic, f. of <u>logikos</u>, pertaining to speech, reason, from <u>logos</u>, speech, reason.] 1. The science of correct reasoning; the science which deals with the criteria of valid thought….3. Correct reasoning; valid induction or deduction. 4. Way of reasoning, whether correct or incorrect….5. The system of principles underlying any act or science. 6. Necessary connection or outcome as through the working of cause and effect; (<u>Websters Dict</u>. [unabridged] 1983) The rules of logic and of reasoning are what are formally recognized as correct. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to go at length into a detailed description of these rules, here it simply need to be stated that there are only a handful of fundamental principles upon which these rules are based--these principles determine the resulting formal structure which rationalistic comprehension of human reality takes. The first principle is that of identity, or of symmetry, and the principle of noncontradiction of opposites, True is True and False is False but True cannot also be False and False cannot be True. The ultimate determination of truth value of any statement might, within this system of rationalization be more appropriately referred to a statistical problem of probability employing the principles of syllogistic induction. The important point is to recognize from these principles the operation of "binary" coding, of an irreducible "two value" logical system which is based upon the principle of logical disjunction (either T or F) but not upon a principle of logical conjunction (both T and F)--any statement made must be either true or false, but not both true and false. This is formally referred to as the principle of the "excluded middle ground". What this basic system of formal logic accomplishes is a <u>dichotomization of reality along the lines of truth and falsehood</u>--as such it is referred to as "analytic logic"--"analysis" being a "separation of a whole into constituents with a view to its examination and interpretation" or "1. A separating or breaking up any whole into its parts so as to find out their nature, proportion, function, relationship, etc.….6. In logic, the tracing of things to their source; the resolving of knowledge into its original principles. Syn…."a dissection" [Gr. <u>Analysis</u>, dissolving, a resolution of a whole into parts; <u>ana</u> up, back, and <u>lysis</u>, a loosing, from <u>lyein</u>, to loose.] (<u>Websters Dict</u>. [unabridged] 1983) In this binary system there is another basic dichotomy which proceeds from the first which proceeds from the first law of identity and noncontradiction, and is referred to as the analytic/synthetic dichotomy. An analytical statement expresses the basic principles of identity and noncontradiction (a is a, a is not a non-a) even in more elaborated forms of association. The synthetic statement is the truth value of a statement, derived from its inductive validation. Where analytic statements are referred to as descriptive and factual, synthetic statements are called evaluative, prescriptive. In the sense that synthetic statements proceed from analytic statements, there is what is known as an "a priori/a posteriori" dichotomy. From this is derived the principal mode of logical rationality--syllogistic reasoning--or the hypothetical, deductive syllogism, or "deduction" in short. The basis of deduction is the conditional statement (If A then….) which is the direct embodiment of causality in synthetic relationships, with an antecedent and a consequent. The condition is employed in syllogistic form as "modus ponens" (If T, then not F, T, therefore not F). The result of this syllogistic process, which can be strung together into nice elaborated chains of reasoning, is a sense of <u>a priori analytical dichotomization and a posteriori synthetic causality</u> (or "determination"). In this rule of reason there is an on going process of analytic question, and then synthetic answer--a binary process of posing a question in terms of opposites, and then answering the question in terms of validation or falsification. From this it can be readily recognized that traditional <u>two value</u> logic is simply the formally elaborated system of signification of what is known as <u>dialectical</u> discourse. Dialectics is defined as "[Me. <u>Dialatick; </u>Ofr. <u>Dialetique</u>; L. <u>dialectica</u> (<u>ars</u>); Gr. <u>Dialetike</u> (<u>techne</u>), the dialectic (<u>art</u>), from <u>dialektikos</u>, dialect]. 1. The art of practice of examining opinions or ideas logically, often by the method of question and answer, so as to determine their validity; dialectics. 2. Logical argumentation. 3. The method of logic used by Hegel and adapted by Marx to his materialistic philosophy; it is based on the concept of the contradiction of opposites (<u>thesis</u> and <u>antithesis</u>) and their continual resolution (<u>synthesis</u>). (<u>Websters Dict</u>. 1983)</p> <p>What can be inferred from the foregoing description of the basic principles beneath formal logic and underlying rationalism is that syllogistic deduction is the primary signification system, the relational structural rules, operating upon the level of primary symbolization. Rationality translates this syllogistic reasoning process into a more general formula of dialectical discourse--of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, by which to describe the more general structure upon the level of secondary symbolization. The basic dialectic can be found to be the generalized structure of symbolic rationalism, or symbolic rationalization. Question arises as to whether this mode of thinking might not be a universal mode of relational grammar upon the primary and secondary levels of symbolization. It is possible to transcribe mathematical logic into semantic/syntactic logic, and vice versa describe mathematical equations in terms of logical syllogism and logical positivists have long been attempting to create a single symbolic language and grammar, for all of the diverse domains of rationality, in an attempt to bring rational coherence to reality. It remains a possibility that there might ultimately be only one, irreducible, formal system of rules of relationships operating upon the primary level of symbolic integration, and that from this one, final methodology, there might be derivable only one dialectical method of rationalization upon the secondary level of symbolization, but the question will probably remain forever unanswerable. Even if such a monothematic system were discovered (or invented) its creators would be hard pressed indeed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there might not be another, even more basic alternative.</p> <p>The important remains that the fundamental structural rules of relationships, in the form of dialectical discourse, have been found to be underlying Rationalism, derived from formal logical principles. The question remaining to be answered is what are the rules of symbolic generalization and integration which operate from the secondary to the tertiary level of symbolic generalization. In order to answer this it is important to reiterate the meanings of "metalogical"--as being both beyond the purview of logic and as being a "metaphysics" of logic. It is with the understanding of both meanings that we are to approach the understanding of a symbolic structure prevailing upon the third level of symbolic integration. In the first instance it is to be understood that in the context independence of the third level, the "crystallitic structure" of the third level of integration is not like formal syllogistic or even dialectical reasoning, except by showing what it isn't and what it is independent from, suggesting the possibility of what it might be like. In the second instance the examination of the meaning of "metaphysical" and of its corollary "epistemological" are in order to arrive at a form of symbolic rationality, or "symbology" which may nevertheless be employed as an alternative interpretation of the symbolic structure of rationality and by implication, logic.</p> <p>"Epistemology" is defined as "[Gr). <u>Episteme</u>, knowledge and <u>logos</u> discourse] the theory or science that investigates the origin, nature methods and limits of knowledge." (<u>Websters Dict</u>. 1983) Metaphysics is defined as "the branch of philosophy that systematically investigates first causes and the nature of ultimate reality. [Med. Lat. <u>Metaphysica</u>, the title of Aristotle's treatise on the subject.]" (<u>American Heritage Dict.</u> 1983) and as "[ML. <u>Metaphysica</u>, neut. pl.; Gr. <u>Meta ta physika</u>, after those things relating to external nature, after physics; <u>meta</u>, after, and <u>physika</u>, physics.] 1. The branch of philosophy that deals with first principles and seeks to explain the nature of being or reality (<u>ontology)</u> and of the origin and structure of the world (<u>cosmology</u>). 2. Speculative philosophy in general.3. The theory or principles (of some branch of knowledge). 4. Popularly, any very subtle, perplexing or difficult reasoning. 5. Occult lore [Archaic]." (<u>Websters Dict</u>. 1983) Metaphysical is defined as "based on speculative or abstract reasoning, abstruse" or as "of the nature of being or essential reality" or "very abstract, abstruse, or subtle", "based on abstract reasoning" or "beyond the physical or material; incorporeal, supernatural or transcendental". In a sense both epistemology and metaphysics as traditional disciplines of Philosophy, are like two sides of the same philosophical coin, the one side turned inwards towards subjective understanding of reality, the other turned outward towards objective comprehension of reality. This basic "subjective/objective" dichotomy forms the basic dialectica of philosophy, and gives rise to another "synthetic" dialectic of a "mind/body" dichotomy. As mentioned in the second chapter, "subjective reflection/objective projection" is the principle from of relationships which is to found in the context independence of the third level of symbolic integration. This single point has important ramifications for understanding the "metalogical" "metaphysics" behind the comprehension of the structural relationships at the third level of symbolic generalization. Philosophy "the love of wisdom or knowledge" is the embodiment of both epistemological and metaphysical principles. Defined as "a study of the processes governing thought and conduct theory or investigation of the principles or laws that regulate the universe and underlie all knowledge and reality….". It is the Mother of all formal systems of symbolic rationalization, of formal rationalism in general, and has as its basis the ultimate ontological question--the meaning of "God". Philosophy began with the ontological argument of the "a priori existence of God based upon the widespread existence of the idea of God" has as its primary symbol "ontologism"--the doctrine "that the knowledge of God is immediate and intuitive, ad that all other knowledge springs from it, and is most generally involved with solving the basic ontological problem of the nature of being or reality"--"The science of <u>ontology</u> comprehends investigations of every real existence, either beyond the sphere of the present world or in any other way incapable of being the direct object of consciousness, which can be deduced immediately from the possession of certain feelings or principles or faculties of the human soul.--Archer Butler" (<u>Websters Dict.</u> 1983)</p> <p>To approach an understanding of metalogical mythology and its symbolic structure of integration and generalization is to understand the nature of philosophical "metaphysics". We refer to "metaphysical reality" as that reality which is encompassed by philosophical discourse--it is also known as "rational reality" or better yet "rationality" as a comprehensive symbolic complex functioning upon the secondary level of integration. This "rational complex" discernible boundaries, definitive divisions and structural relations, and formally includes even the doctrine of Humanological Relativism in as much as it can be a written doctrine expressed the "metalogic" of words. In earlier manuscripts I have gone at length into the structure of this metaphysical universe--here it is necessary to elucidate a few of its more salient points. The symbolic structure of this reality is determined by dialectical discourse, as I have mentioned already, and similar to the notion "crystallitic structure" its basic structural form, I prefer to term "<u>paradigmatic</u>". Paradigm, most simply, is a model, a pattern or an example. The structure of rationality is of the nature of a model, a pattern or an example. Our systems of rational conceptualization about reality are of an exemplary form of ideal models or patternings by which reality is given the semblance of rational coherence. There are other connotations of "paradigm"--we refer to a set of governing principles, written explicitly or tacitly presupposed and implied by our rational behavior. We speak of "Kuhnian" paradigmatics and come to realize the socio-historical processes which underlies our development of rational reality.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>The occurrence, extent and tendencies towards meaningful or a meaningful thinking will be determined to a large extent by cultural valuations, ideologies, rationales….orientation of knowledge seeking behavior dominant in a group, pervading all institutions and agencies that influence intellectual style, habit and sensibility….</p> <p>The besetting cognitive problems of a culture, subculture of an era can thus be very much a reflection of whatever factors lead to the relative valuation of meaningful and a meaningful thinking. One must even face the possibility that cultures can arise which place so limited a value on meaningful thinking that many of its members are deprived absolutely of the possibility of achieving "high" orders of meaningful thought relative to their capacities or of discriminating such states, should they occur, as in some sense valuable or even different from a meaningful thinking. I believe that something very much like such a culture has arrived and that the culture in question is the world culture of the 20<sup>th</sup> century..</p> </font> <p>Indeed rational reality begins its development with the History of Civilization--indeed it <u>is the history of civilization</u>, and as such is without prehistory. For rational understanding proper, of descriptive models of reality, begins properly with the written word, and thus with the beginning of history. The so called "evolution of civilization" refers us to the development of human rational reality. The structural importance of the "word", its writing, thinking, refinement, and sophistication, is the precursor of both human civilization as it has come to monothematically predominate in modern times, and of human rational reality as it has come to be understood. Our rationality reality has taken on the appearance of a necessary universality--even if only allowing the only alternative of "irrationality".</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Our rational reality is encompassed by the metaphorical meaning of the word. The word as metaphor is our emotional access to rational creativity. We must open up the boundaries of our definition of rationality to include more than just restricted analytical consciousness--virtually all of the alternative levels of consciousness. Language is the primary symbolization system of humanity for the expression and communication of the emotional meaning of rationality. Language is the beginning of our historical civilization. The word as metaphor is the beginning and end of both rationality and irrationality. When words become systematic substitutes for meaning then the word is no longer metaphorical and the systems of conceptualization in which they are employed become meaningful and irrational. (Lewis 1983 [unpublished manuscript] page 145)</p> </font> <p>The paradigmatic structure of rationality, in creating models and ideal-symbols, symbols which are nevertheless affixed to reality through context dependency, creates also archetypal symbols of antithetical "irrationality" as well. We have the ever present suggestion of contradictory "anti-models" inherent within our paradigmatic structure. In our rational modeling of the universe we continually dichotomize reality along rational lines.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Then, rationality can be construed as a non-real (i.e., ideal) fiction toward the absolution of all irrationality--towards a state of absolute order integrity of self/truth, or epistemological/metaphysical unity, towards which rationally creative behavior strives, and away from which irrational behavior tends to lead. Rationality is a group myth--an ideal incorporating the elements of Truth, Love, God and Self. It is the only ideal by which all human beings share in at least tacitly by their alleged membership to the human race. The difficulty of defining rationality is that it is knowable only indirectly by its attainment of lessened irrationality--it is relative to irrationality, and as such in and of itself, as an absolute form, it is inherently impossible for human beings to conceive it directly. It is noumenal and a priori to the consideration of human behavior and as such it harkens me back to the a priori concepts of metaphysical truth and epistemological self.</p> <p>These concepts are related to rationality only through the most relative of human conditions. The human problem is to push backward time and to uncover space to reveal the true meaning of rationality. I believe I have adequately demonstrated that traditional rationalism and traditional empiricism, as the best representative of the most fundamental philosophical schism which divides all of philosophy down the middle into two opposed and seemingly incompatible schools of thought, that all pervasive mind/body dichotomy, are not necessarily naturally, logically or rationally inimical to one another in my philosophy of absolute relativity. Indeed bringing together these two traditionally opposed schools of philosophy is the philosophical prerequisite to the achieving of comprehensive unity of understanding of reality by which we are then able to bring together in a rationally coherent and empirically consistent fashion all of the other diverse fields of human understanding. The contribution of Kant was to reveal to us the a priori noumenal nature of the rational reality of human existence. (Lewis 1983 [unpublished manuscript] pages 128-129)</p> </font> <p>I have proposed elsewhere an underlying "deep structure" of an "a priori <u>rationality matrix</u>", against which to reference our relative comprehension of rational reality, demonstrative of the fundamental complexity rational functioning has developed into, representing perhaps the most parsimonious possible guidelines by which our rational metaphysical reality and our empirical physical reality are both interrelated and made humanly meaningful, by which we gain rational <u>identity</u>, of a sense of order, purpose, coherence, in human existence, through the elaboration of five "paradigms", modalities of rational reality. This "rationality matrix" is <u>metalogical</u> in the elaboration of five "metaphysical paradigms" which undercut and crisscross conventional rationalisms. These five paradigms are each comprehensive in that they incorporate a complete, comprehensive rational world view and sense of fundamental order to existence, and yet are united and complementary to one another, and in relation to the whole rationality matrix are in themselves incomplete and "imperfect". These five paradigms of human rationality are Philosophy, Aesthetics, Science, Religion, and what I prefer to call Humanology, after the name humanological relativism. All five paradigms share in a single criterion of rational validation, a "fundamental truth criterion" which I have earlier identified as "<u>The willpower to believe in the relative truth of objective criterion for openness and communication</u>." This basic truth criterion is translated differently, methodologically and theoretically within each of the paradigm.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Even though each paradigm is self contained in its truth criterion and presents a unified though incomplete version of reality, each in its alternative interpretation being essentially different in form and function from the others, all four are interrelated and interdependent and altogether present a unified comprehension of reality. There is a philosophy of art and science and humanism, there is a science of philosophy, art and humanism, and there is a humanism of philosophy, art and science. This is the holothetic principle of reality. No one paradigm can adequately and completely substitute any of the other paradigms, and only when all are taken together do they form a complete totality of reality. (Lewis 1983 [unpublished manuscript] page 21)</p> </font> <p>In these "metalogical" rational modalities certain characteristic patterns, "symbolic rational associations" become evident, one important aspect of which is the general rational approach which is taken towards knowledge, understanding of reality. The deductive approach is characteristic of philosophy, induction in science, authority the primary source in religion, while intuition is the primary source of understanding of aesthetics. In humanology, relativistic/reflexive knowledge is paramount. There are many other associations to be found with these modalities, but it is beyond the scope of this work to delineate them at length.</p> <p>We have reached the point in this somewhat tedious discourse to contemplate a little upon the symbolic structure of the mythological mind, and to do so primarily from the point of view of the rational mind. The propensity of the rational human mind to draw rational lines through on going phenomenological human existence, by which to create the illusion of ideal realities, is very strong. Indeed, it makes sense to speak of a need and a capacity to draw such analytical lines by which to conceive of the rational meaning of reality. Related to the notions of "binary opposition" and of the dialectical process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, it is simply the tendency of the human mind to analyze reality in terms of difference, and to group things in terms of sympathetic or symmetrical similarities, and the resultant predisposition to dichotomize reality ion terms of antithetical ideals or extremes of conception. Apparent especially within philosophy, it is nearly universally recurrent throughout our theoretical systems of conceptualization--replete as they are with such dichotomies as "mind/body, analytical/synthetic, physical/metaphysical, subjective/objective, material/spiritual, rational/empirical, cognitive/behavioral, life/death, male/female, ends/means, etc. The symbolical generalization and integration upon the tertiary level focuses upon the notion of reflective and subjectivity and objective projection, all contexts of time and space, of place and period becoming irrelevant and "insignificant". Subjective and objective upon this level merge into one and the same thing, such that there is recognition of Truth in the Self, and of Self in Truth.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Ultimately the self and truth, as prerequisite ideal fictions to philosophical problem of the definition of the meaning of reality, are one and the same thing--the integrity of reality itself. The only difference lies in the innate, analytic synthetical a priori structuring of the human mind (the epistemological self) which <u>habitually</u> dichotomizes reality into separate and opposing forms and then reunites reality into a new integrity on a transcendent--more abstract--level. (Lewis 1983 [unpublished manuscript page 13)</p> <p>This dynamic continuum of contextual relativity is symbolically interpreted in the structural dialectical sense as being the <u>structural continuum</u> of <u>human reality</u>, with the synthetic meaning of reality being realized by <u>symbolic interpretation</u> or <u>interpretative symbolism.</p> </u> <p>Every initial conscious analytic dichotomization must be followed by a subsequent synthetic integration in order to achieve <u>symbolic realism</u>. (Lewis 1983 [unpublished manuscript] page 11)</p> </font> <p>Metalogical mythology is the natural functional structure of the human mind divorced from relational contexts. At this level of symbolic generalization the primary relational process is that of "<u>identification</u>" between the knower and the known, subject and object. The only relevant relational rules are that of similarity and differentiation. Similar things are included, dissimilar thing excluded. The excluded middle ground becomes the focus of attention. What prevails is a <u>synthetic</u> process of mind, of the comprehension of the continuity of the whole. This is a relatively loose structure of mind in which symbols are allowed to change their normal, regular context, to merge with one another, to create imaginary realities the like of which cannot be found in everyday reality. The great feat is a tremendous symbolic condensation, as well as universal extension, without the apparent loss of continuity with rational reality, without the loss of a sense of coherence and natural order. This is the world of dreams which become recreated through our aesthetic expressions and through our mythodramatical performance upon the world stage. The functioning of this process of identification occurs unconsciously on the primary and secondary levels as well as upon the tertiary level of symbolic integration. It tends to unnoticeably, unrecognizably fill in all the gaps between our rational ideals and ignorances, and smoothes out our communication of our signals, lending credibility or disbelief to the message which we transmit. It pervades every system of symbolization, giving it a sense of integrity and human reality, which humankind has ever created. Metalogical mythology <u>is our leap of faith</u> through an inherently paradoxical reality. It is properly, logically thinking, a "non-logic" or rather a temporary <u>suspension of logic</u>, in order to bridge the gaps which our rational realities, or rather "idealties" which creep in between the lines and between the pages of our day to day existence, helping to bridge the tremendous gulf between said and done, belief and behavior, politician and policy. Wherever and whenever we find ourselves believing and identifying with some "thing" wholeheartedly and unreservedly, then we must suspect the functioning of metalogical mythologization.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>All theory is mythological and rationalization--functional for resolving conflicting and tension causing dilemmas imposed by the cognitive/behavioral limitations of our rational and behavioral reality. No theory can possibly be omniscient and absolutely comprehensive. Competing theories offer varying and differing interpretations and insights into the nature of behavioral reality. We tend to impose upon our reality our mythological systems of rationalization and so interpret that reality in such a way as to be consistent and suitable for our purposive behavior. The manner in which we mythologize about reality determines our behavior, and our reality is behavioral. We become the way we think. We create our behavioral reality by our myths. Our past, present and future become mythically real. Myth becomes metaphysical reality and metaphysical reality becomes myth. But our myths impose the limitations from which we cannot but briefly escape and provide the vicarious means by which to metaphysically transcend behavioral reality. Our metaphysical paradigms, philosophical, aesthetic, scientific and humanistic are the fundamental from our mythology takes.</p> <p>I propose hypothetically that there are six dimensions of tension underlying all of our mythological theoretization--these dimensions are the fundamental dichotomies which compose the essential limitations of our rational and behavioral reality. They compose the differing interrelationships between the four metaphysical paradigms--philosophical, aesthetic, scientific and ideological. These six dimensions of metaphysical tension are what might be referred to as the mythological theory dynamics set by the interrelationship and tension of opposition and differentiation between the four metaphysical paradigms of the metaphysical matrix of rational reality. The six dimensions of dialectical tension are the six dichotomies of mind/body, nature/culture, male/female, subjective/objective, life/death, and means/ends. The tension between these dichotomies forms the mythological limitations from which we derive all of our transcendent meanings embodied as truth in our theoretical systems. These dimensions compose the mythological limitations of all theory and the transcendent synthesis of meaning constitutes the dimensions of possible freedom and truth for any theory. All theory is modeled from these limitations. All mythological, theoretical systems of behavioral rationalization about existential human reality may be reinterpreted and meaningfully reduced down to terms of these six dimensions of mythological dynamics. Any theory claiming any degree of meaningful comprehensivity of rational reality must in some manner adequately resolve the tension between these dichotomic "ideals". Theoretical truth id movement towards the meaningful resolution of the tension produced by these conflicting dichotomies. To be considered "objectively valid" empirical "evidence" must be found to corroborate or to disprove a theory, but it must be remembered that all such evidence is indirect and circumstantial to the proof of truth. (Lewis 1984 [unpublished manuscript] pages 110-111)</p> </font> <p>Mythological meta-logic is not of form of logic at all--it cannot be by the formal rational definition of logic. Rather it is a kind of "non-logic" or a suspension of logic which allows the more "primitive" pre-logical potentialities of the human mind to take control. This function of the mind has been called an alternative, "three value" logic. (T and/or F, or either T or F, or something else) but the inclusion of the "excluded middle ground" contradicts the law of non-contradiction of opposites and so therefore cannot be considered any form of logic at all. It is known as a form of <u>analogic</u>, [L. <u>analogicus</u>; Gr. <u>Analogikos</u> proportionate, analogous] having analogy; founded on analogy" which implies analogy, "1. A similarity of likeness between things in some circumstances of effects, when the thins are otherwise entirely different…5. In logic, the inference that certain admitted resemblances imply probable further similarity. 6. In linguistics, the process by which new or less familiar words, constructions or pronunciations conform with the pattern of older and more familiar (and often unrelated) ones…." (<u>Websters Dict</u>. 1983 [unabridged]) Instead of analytical dissection of reality into its component parts, there is a synthetic integration of symbolic meanings. We refer to a "synthesizing mind" which overcomes dilemmas, paradoxes, seemingly inimical conflicts of meaning. We refer to "analogism"--"[Gk. <u>Analogismis</u>, consideration; reasoning; from <u>analogizesthai</u>, to calculate, reckon, consider] investigation of things by the analogy they bear to each other."--instead of referring to deductive syllogism. We refer to a magical principle of sympathy, in which like produces like, rather than to conditional, scientific "if--then causality. Instead of propositional rules of grammatical transformation, for structural relations, we refer to apposition--"Fr. <u>apposition; L. appositus</u>, pp. of <u>apponere</u>, to place against or to] 1. An apposing or being apposed; putting side by side. 2. The position resulting from this." which is a derivative of "to appose" or "to put questions to; to examine. [Obs} 2. To put (something <u>to </u>another thing). 3. To put side by side; place opposite or near."</p> <p>History is what historians do, philosophy is what philosophers do, art is what artists do, science is what scientists do. As such all of these fields of rational pursuit are mythological. The metalogic of the historian is the myth of the relievable Past, the metalogic of the Scientist is the myth of the absolute, irreducible Atom, the metalogic of the Philosopher is the myth of the Ultimate Truth, and the Artist lives and breathes myth into the Perfect Creation. If there were no such thing as rational mythologies to make a dull life meaningful, then Historians would soon stop writing histories, scientists cease scientizing, philosophers philosophizing, artists creating. In fact, there would be no more meaning in living life, and human beings would cease to exist. But luckily, symbols will haunt us even to the grave…., and the enigmatic meanings of sagacious old metaphors will forever slip the grasp of our tongues. We do not need to worry about the Myths which create our lives, they will perchance take care of themselves. But we need to be concerned over the <u>Mythologies which we create, </u>for they might one day destroy us.</p> <p> </p> <p>CHAPTER IV</p> <p>Synthesis</p> <p>Toward a General Theory of Socio Cultural Synergism</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>I was sent to Fossoli, near Modena…on the morning of the 21<sup>st</sup> we learned that in the following day the Jews would be leaving. Our destination? Nobody knew…And night came, and it was such a night that one knew that human eyes could not witness it and survive. Everyone felt this; not one of the guards, neither Italian nor German, had the courage to come and see what men do when they know they have to die…But the mothers stayed up to prepare the food for the journey with tender care, and washed their children and packed the luggage; and at dawn the barbed wire was full of children's washing hung out in the wind to dry…would you not do the same? If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today? From <u>Survival in Auschwitz</u> by Primo Levi.</p> <p>We were separated from our parents; we knew exactly the precise moment when they were sent to the gas chambers. I believe we could even see them walk there. However none of us could cry. Something inside of us had broken, we were transformed. Yehuda Bacon, quoted in <u>Kinder in K2</u>.</p> <p> </p> <p>Man's extra somatic means of adaptation.</p> <p>The man made part of the environment, including the nonmaterial aspects, laws, beliefs, and so on.</p> <p>Knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.</p> <p>An organization of conventional understandings.</p> <p>Learned as opposed to innate behavior and products of learned behavior.</p> <p>Shared ideas and socially inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs.</p> <p>The definitions may be separated into two major categories: <u>realist</u> and <u>idealist</u>. The realist approach is through observed manifestations, behavior, and the products of behavior. The idealist approach is through the researcher's interpretations of the culture bearer's ideas of societal values and norms. In brief, by one definition, culture is observable, by the other, inferred. (Garbarino 1977, page 49)</p> </font> <p>"Culture" is defined as "1. Development of the intellect through education and training. 2. Intellectual and artistic taste and refinement. 3. The arts, beliefs, customs, institutions and all other products of human work and thought created by a people or group at a particular time. 4a. The raising of animals or growing of plants, esp. to improve stock. (b) cultivation of soil. 5. A growth or colony of microorganisms in a nutrient medium….[Lat. <u>Cultura</u>] (<u>American Heritage Dict</u>. 1983) or as "[Fr. <u>Culture</u>, from L. <u>cultura</u>, cultivation, care, from <u>cultus</u>, pp. of <u>colere</u>, to till] 1. The act or process of tilling and preparing the earth for crops; cultivation of soil. 2. The raising, improvement or development of some plant, animal, or product. 3. The growth of bacteria or other microorganisms in a specially prepared nourishing substance, as sugar. 4. A colony of microorganisms thus grown. 5. Improvement, refinement, or development by study, training, etc. 6. The training and refining of the mind, emotions, manners, taste, etc. 7. The result of this; refinement of thought, emotion, manners, taste, etc. 8. The concepts, habits, skills, art, instruments, institutions, etc. of a given people in a given period; civilization." (<u>Websters Dict. [unabridged] 1983)</p> </u> <p>"Culture" is the Myth of an anthropologist. It is the key symbolic metaphor by which the anthropologist organizes his/her comprehension of human reality--leading to attention paid to some aspects of existence and neglect of others. Moreover it provides a metalogical idiom for a particular way of discussing human reality. The myth of "culture" is the metalogic of the "eternalized present", the "fossil other", the "primitive mind", the "tribal village". Open any academic anthropology journal and the language flows thick and obscure with "professional jargot". Indeed, there are as many meanings, definitions, interpretations and formal theories of the myth of culture as there are anthropologists living that myth, and no one particular viewpoint is the best.</p> <p>More accurately, the concept of "culture" is an organizing metaphor for our metalogical meanings which are associated with it--in short all of the mythologies which compose human reality. Culture is a myth of mythology, and herein is both its reflexive strength and paradoxical weakness. "Metaphor is one, if not <u>the</u>, primary mode of human thought, for in Shelly's words, "(Metaphor) marks the before unapprehended <u>relations</u> of things and perpetuates their apprehension" (quoted in Arendt 1978: 102; emphasis added), (Wilson page 162). Culture is metaphor like what Wittgensteing has termed an "odd job" word which "refer to the relations between overtly dissimilar things among which there appear to be vague and elusive similarities". Try to put your hands upon a "thing" called culture and you will only have a slippery "complicated network of similarities of detail". Culture created a mythological illusion of being something tangible, touchable, something "real". This is the power of rational mythology to create meaning in our lives. Instead of any common trait, or complex of traits common to "culture", what is revealed are only many "family resemblances", what Rodney Needham has referred to as "polythetic" classification.</p> <p>But being a mythical illusion makes the Conception of Culture no less real as a phenomenon of our lives. The mythology which is written into the comprehension of culture is derived from the mythologies which structure and in part, determine our lives, and in the final analysis there really is no separating the conception of one Myth from the comprehension of the other, The structure and nature of culture is metaphorical and symbolic:</p> <p><font SIZE="2">We also need a name for the class of things and events that depend upon symboling considered in the context of the interrelationships among the symbolates themselves. The term "culture" has traditionally been used for this purpose. (We are speaking now of actual use, not definition or conception.) The scientific study of culture then is culturology. We define culture as <u>that class of things and events dependent upon symboling, products of symboling, considered in an extrasomatic context. </u>(White 1969a: 234) (White, Dillingham, 1973, page 29)</p> <p></font>It is the objective of this chapter to explore the idea of the "symbolic integration" as well as "symbolic integration" of "culture" in metalogical terms of its being a mythological human reality. It will be the contention that "culture" names this process of symbolic integration of human reality upon all three levels of symbolization as outlined in the previous chapters, and to demonstrate just how this symbolic integration of human "cultural" reality proceeds upon all three levels. In this effort of orchestration of many diverse themes and thoughts upon the meanings of "culture" in human reality, it is apropos to begin with a definition of culture in terms of its symbolic character:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>….A <u>culture</u> is a repertoire of symbols that has accumulated as human beings have tried to cope with their environment….However, in the process of living, the human beings who inherit access to a particular repertoire are constantly engaged in the active, self conscious construction of <u>cultural systems</u>, or organized, internally consistent sets of symbols for dealing with some aspect of the environment. To construct these symbols, they draw selectively on their culture's repertoire of symbols; they never use all the symbols available. (Pandian , page 1)</p> </font> <p>The term "socio cultural" is used to signify that "culture" is irreducibly a <u>social phenomenon</u>, as indeed it can be said that symbolic human reality is irreducibly a <u>social reality</u>. Eliminate the social context from the meaning of the culture, and isolate the identity of the individual personality from this context and you have destroyed that identity. It is the basic error of many "scientists" who attempt to reduce an explanation of symbolic human reality below the level of society in purely psychological terms. This is the essential paradox of the rational understanding of culture--analysis in terms of its individual constituents undermines the holothetic integrity if the social phenomenon, and reveals only individual actors playing individual roles. The myth of "the psychic unity of humankind" founders upon the rocks and shoals of the facts of this social reality if human culture. This essential paradox of the understanding of "culture" is an important beginning to the comprehension and comprehensiveness of its metalogical meaning. Herskovits, for whom the concept of "culture" was a predominant yet tacit organizing principle in his general theoretical scheme of "Cultural Dynamics" and who defined culture somewhat paradoxically as "<u>the man made part of the environment</u>"…."the essential nature of culture must resolve a series of seeming paradoxes that are not to be ignored"…."stated here as follows"….</p> <blockquote> <u> <p>Culture is universal in man's experience, yet each local or regional manifestation of it is unique.</p> <p>Culture is stable, yet culture is also dynamic, and manifests continuous and constant change.</p> <p>Culture fills and largely determines the course of our lives, yet rarely intrude into conscious thought. (Herskovits 1947, pages 17-18)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </blockquote> </u> <p>Herskovits recognized that culture was essential to the meaning of human existence--that it was universal--"the universality of culture is an attribute of human existence" (Herskovits 1947, page 19) and "the fact that man is often spoken of as a 'culture building animal' is a recognition of the universality of culture; that it is an attribute of all human beings, no matter where they live or how their manner of living may be ordered…." (1947, page 19). Relativism of culture and its universality in human reality are to seen as both sides of the same coin if the conception of "culture", inseparable dilemmas of one another. Herskovits fundamental explanation for the meaning of culture was a paradoxically implied "inter-integration" between human culture and human personality. Herskovits argued for the cultural integration of the personality as well as for the psychological integration of culture. On the one hand, <u>"culture is the learned portion of human behavior"</u> (page 25) while on the other hand, "culture is <u>meaningful</u>" (page 27) and "<u>Experience is culturally defined</u>" a definition which implies that culture has meaning for those who live in accordance with it…." (page 27)</p> <p>To understand culture rationally is to enter into the realm of the <u>Great Circle of Culture</u>, confronted by both the mythical illusion of its objectification as something existent, solid, finite, real, as a projection of mythological truth, as well as to encounter simultaneously its profound subjectification as an image, a patterning, an ideal fiction of the individual mind, a mythological reflection of the self. In its objectiveness we have a sense of its limited borders, its boundaries in space and time, isolating this particular village from that tribal center, this "way of life" from that. As a subjective reflection we review the many tragic comic dramas of many human beings who exit and enter the stage of culture to play their individual parts. Either way, the Circle of Culture, in its comprehensive conceptioning, is quite complete--it is Humpty Dumpty and anthropologists are all king's men and all the king's horses. Caught inexorably within its great Cycles, we cannot but help comprehend the great balance of conceptioning it requires to keep it complete. <u>The conceptioning of culture cannot adequately be divorced from its human context of meaning, its symbolic reality, and still remain viable as a scientific tool for theoretical organization and comprehension of the reality of human culture</u>.</p> <p><font SIZE="2">Whether we analyze the objective manifestations of a culture, or approach it along the broader avenues of its fundamental sanctions and intent; whatever the terminology we may apply to clarify our data and set them in a significant conceptual context; the fact of cultural unity, of cultural integration is established. Its outer forms frame inner meanings; sanctions mold conduct; and life as a whole goes on, permitting human beings to seek and find fulfillment.</p> <p>As a scientist, the student of culture must divide his data into categories, just as the student of living organisms dissects his specimen. Culture is not an organism, so that the analogy must not be pressed to far. It is enough that the ethnologist, like the biologist in his laboratory, recognize that the subject as he studies it in several parts is not the living totality….(Herskovits 1947, page 226)</p> </font> <p>In recognizing the basic myth behind the objectification of "culture" and in recognition of its relative contextuality in human reality, Herskovits rejected the notion of "superorganic"--"above or beyond the organic"--as a fundamental metaphor for the comprehension of culture. While noting the usefulness, for certain anthropological problems, of studying culture <u>as if </u>it had an objective existence. He cautions that this "methodological need" should not "obscure the fact" that such an objectification of culture like "superorganic" is merely a conceptual construct which serves to guide our thinking and analysis of the subject:</p> <p><font SIZE="2">Must we choose the view that culture is an entity in its own right, moving irrespective of man, and the one that holds that culture is but a manifestation of the human psyche? Or is it possible to reconcile these two points of view.</p> <p>So deeply do the conditioning of the individual lodge in human behavior, so automatic are his responses, so smooth the historic line to be traced when changes in a given culture are followed over a period of years, that it is difficult not to treat culture as a thing outside man, dominating him, carrying him along whether he desires it or not to he a destiny he can neither shape nor see. It is difficult, indeed, even to speak or write of culture without implying this. Yet, as we have seen, when culture is closely analyzed, we find but a series of patterned reactions that characterize of <u>individuals</u> who constitute a given group. That is, we find <u>people</u> behaving, <u>people</u> thinking, <u>people</u> rationalizing. Under these circumstances, it becomes clear that what we do is to reify, that is, objectivity and make concrete, the discrete experiences of individuals in a group at a given time. These we gather into a totality we call their culture. And, <u>for purposes of study</u>, this is quite proper. The danger point is reached when we reify similarities in behavior that only result from the similar conditioning of a group of individuals to their common setting, into something that exists outside man, something that is <u>superorganic.</p> </u></font> <p>Whether one formally accepts it or disbelieves it, the notion of "superorganic" itself an important organizing metaphor within general theoretical anthropology, and has an interesting place in the developmental history of Anthropology as a formal theoretical paradigm. It is originally connected to Herbert Spencer's universal scheme of "inorganic, organic and superorganic (or social) evolution)" in which in all forms in the universe simplicity evolves into complexity, homogeneity into heterogeneity, and evolution could be used to explain all phenomena, including culture. He was also responsible for the "organic analogy" of culture, in which "he compared society to an organism with processes of integration, growth, differentiation, decline, and with functional interrelationships of parts in change and transformation" (Garbarino 1977, page 21). Durkheim next took up the theme of the superorganic, in that he recognized a distinct level of reality, "in shared ways and beliefs of a society". Through these shared patternings are not independent of the individual constituents of a society, their explanation could not be in individual terms. Durkheim created the "social fact", norms, common beliefs, values, expectations, rules, to be recognized by its widespread pervasiveness in human societies and by its coercive, obligatory nature. "Social facts" explain other "social facts" and cannot be analytically reduced to psychological, or other terms of explanation. Ignorance of social facts leads to <u>anomie</u>, social meaning loss, or normlessness. Social facts, for Durkheim, were the concrete units of scientific analysis:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>To explain them by psychology, biology, or environment would be the equivalent of explaining the organic phenomenon of an animal in terms of its chemical components. Social behavior to Durkheim was more than the sum of all individuals participating in society and could not be reduced to the desires and drives if those individuals; the whole could not be understood by reducing it to its parts. To do so would be reductionistic. (Garbarino 1977, page 39)</p> </font> <p>The next advocate, who dealt most directly and conscientiously with the principle of the "superorganic" was none other than the renowned Broasian cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber ("The Superorganic" 1917). His thesis was similar to Durkheim's in that social understanding was irreducible to psychological explanations. Cultural change and cultural phenomena in general were only analyzable in "terms of interacting cultural patterns and historical events" which in effect controlled individuals, and not the other way around. Accused of reifying the conception of culture, he believed that "culture was <u>primarily</u> intelligible in terms of itself, not <u>only</u> in terms of itself." And then came the infamous "neo-evolutionist" Leslie White, who propounded that "culture could be explained only in terms of culture, never by individual psychology":</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>….Psychology is an expression of culture, according to White, not its cause. Human nature is really cultural nature, and any explanation based on innate characteristics cannot be correct because such characteristics must be a constant, universal in all human and a constant cannot explain a variable; <u>culture is a variable</u>. To the Boasians (like Sapir), who cried in anguish that White had eliminated people, White said that the question of who votes, who eats, and so on is an unproductive one. Of course it is individuals and not cultures. But the debatable question is: <u>why does one group eat something loathed by another group</u>? It is because of cultural conditioning.</p> <p>To those who declared that his view was fatalistic or defeatist, White replied that he never claimed people were irrelevant; humans are prerequisite to culture. But each one is born into an ongoing cultural system and his choices are the options available within his culture. What he strives for is culturally determined but he will strive. White's attitude or philosophical position should not have antagonized the Boasians. They themselves have been classified as cultural determinists. If White had stated his position differently--if he had said merely that each human is the product of his enculturation processes--most Boasians would have found little to object to. (Garbarino 1977, pages 88-89)</p> </font> <p>Though unfortunate, there is no necessary or sufficient association between the notion of "superorganic" and the schools of "evolutionism" and "neo-evolutionism", but there is a causal connection with "determinism" which afflicted not only the "objectivists" of culture, but the extreme "subjectivists" like Ruth Benedict as well, who ended up reifying Nietschian "superman" psychological principles like Appolonian or Dionysian personality configurations to explain whole cultural sequences and who reified the stereotype "National Character" to explain history. The question of whether or not "superorganic" in culture is crucial not only for understanding culture, but for understanding the mythology of understanding culture--of anthropology itself. In a very real sense, sociologists and anthropologists and social scientists alike, by virtue of being what they are, are at least tacitly and inferentially proponents of the "superorganic" myth of culture--by fact of their mere duplicity with the conception of "culture"--otherwise they would really be only glorified social psychologists, psycho-historians, socio-biologists or "socio-chemists" or "social engineers". There is no rational way of escaping this imperative imposed by the myth of culture itself. And so the Great Circle of Culture turns upon itself.</p> <p>The question of whether or not "superorganic" is the most enlightening, and the most fundamental in the comprehension of Culture. Its answer is not in either yes or no, but in both and neither, in the in-between excluded middle ground of its mythology. The "fact" that human reality is both social and mythological poses an irreconcilable paradox. To say that human reality is categorically "social" is to automatically admit the possibility of "superorganic" "social" integration of reality, but at the same time to claim that human reality is also categorically "mythological" is automatically to refer us back to the notion of the "psychic unity of human kind" and thus by direct inference to the "psychic" integration of culture. Of course both answers are equally valid, but the question remains that what is the third alternative, if neither are absolutely correct and yet both are relatively correct, and this question refers us back to the notion of the "symbolic integration of human reality" and by inference the "symbolic integration" of human culture. In the Great Circle of Culture, the answer to the question of the "superorganic" is determined neither by the individual anthropologists choice to believe or not, nor by the issue of the individual's choice to serve in the social role of culture bearer, or to find or create alternatives. We all have these choices. The fundamental issue of the "superorganic" is that culture may or may not determine the choices we make, if we allow it to, even if by making no personal choices at all, but it is the deeper existential issue that culture at least, in its symbolic universality, <u>determines the range </u>and <u>sets the limitations </u>of options available to us, if we avail ourselves of the opportunity, through its provision of the appropriate symbolic metaphors, rational ideals, models, patterns, etc., and is thus more likely to prove the predominant influence in our lives. In short, culture provides the symbolic medium, and defines through it the dimensions of possible freedom, through which we may create, and recreate, our lives. The paradox is that the range of options allowed within a cultural context, or a continuum, is usually greater than our needs, or abilities, or choices to exploit. The metalogical relativism of the "superorganic" metaphor is that it determines the boundaries of the Great Circle of Culture, and of our symbolic universes, boundaries which are variable and different with different people and different cultural contexts. But it is the cultural context, defined here more precisely as a dynamic relational continuum, which sets the stage and provides the final, irrefutable backdrop for our individual performances. The Genius, in this regard, is the right person in the right time and the right place--a rarity to be sure.</p> <p>The question of the metaphor of "superorganic" more appropriately and innocuously refers us to a related metalogical answer of the notion of "cultural synergism"--and needs to be reconsidered in light of this alternative, mythological idiom. "Synergism" is defines "the action of two or more substances, organs, or organisms to achieve an effect of which each is individually incapable. [Gk. sunergos, working together]" (<u>American Heritage Dict.</u> 1983) or as [Mod. L. <u>synergismus</u>, from Gr. <u>synergos</u>, working together] 1. In theology, a doctrine of a faction in the Lutheran church who, about the end of the sixteenth century, denied that God was the sole agent in effecting regeneration and affirmed that man cooperated with divine grace in the accomplishment of this. 2. The simultaneous action of separate agencies which, together, have greater total effect than the sum of their individual effects: especially of drugs." (<u>Websters Dict</u>. [unabridged] 1983) There is in these definitions a subtle difference in meaning between the metaphor of "superorganic" and the conception of "synergism" as it is applied as a cultural metaphor in "cultural synergism". In terms of the definition, the separate agencies are the individual actors <u>within their relational contexts</u>, which are to be seen as <u>passive modifiers</u> of the self directed behavior of the individual actors. The result of the combined actions of these separate "agents" or "organisms" to produce a combines, magnified effect which is greater than the mere summation of their individual potentialities. There is nothing new or esoteric about this wisdom. On the other hand, "superorganic" implies that the individual "agents" are irrelevant, whether their actions are combined or not--but that the cultural/historical contexts is the active agent which works upon and molds individual actions. The operation of the superorganic whole is independent of, and determinative of, the individual constituents. "Superorganic" as "above the organic" nonetheless does not escape the reference of "organic analogy" in which individuals in their social functional roles are equated with cells of the tissue or various institutional organs which together interfunction and integrate into the total bodily organism. Now the functioning and behavior of a human being is not directly dependent upon the normal functioning of any one or any number of the individual tissue cells, which are specialized in function, except when their number becomes statistically significant, as in an infection or cancer. This is the "superorganic analogy". The metaphor of "superorganic" is properly a rational symbol, based upon the dichotomization of individual self and culture, which functions upon the secondary symbolic level. The metaphor of "cultural synergism" is metalogical and functions upon the tertiary of symbolic generalization.</p> <p>In the metalogic of cultural synergism, individual reality and social reality merge, integrate, fuse and become one and the same symbolic reality. These symbolic integration of culture, there is no more clear boundary between self, other or the greater society--there is effected a kind of communitas between subject and object, self and other, knower and known. Mythology might be called a kind of synergism of the human mind. Culture and its counterpart History, is a mythological synergism of the symbolism of Humankind. In the myth of culture, cultural synergism refers to the Great Circle which turns upon itself in repetitious patterns of regularity, a self fulfilling mythological prophecy in a cycle of thoughts, words and actions. The synergism of culture finds its expression in terms of a thematic continuity of individual actions in the eternal present, a continuity expressed in <u>dialectical </u>forms--mythological antonyms which arrange themselves in contrapuntal fashion to create a rhythmic harmony, a concord or a cacophonous discord, in the form of antithesis or a synthesis. The synergism of history repeats itself in a self fulfilling prophecy---the dramatic self actualization of the mythological themes, a "creation of historical reality" with all the power of human necessity.</p> <p><font SIZE="2">By mentioning a unique kind of synergism of History, I am not merely referring to the "superorganic" analogy which is a "logic" of misplaced concreteness. It is a relatively simple matter to look at freeways with their intricate interchange systems and to see blood veins, to look at telephone poles with their electrical high wires and to see nervous system, to look at police cars and to see white blood cells, to look at track housing complexes and to see the tissue and to imagine in all this analogy some larger than life organism, with a computer network for a brain. But any such analogy can only be carried so far before the overlay of ideas no longer neatly fits. It is easy to review History and to see the rise and fall of empires and of societies and to imagine the growth and climax of biotic cultures in the agar of a petri dish. But this is not what I mean of synergism of History.</p> <p>We are not merely witnessing the discrete succession of exits and entrances of a cast of discrete, individual actors upon the mythological stage of historical drama, but we are searching with our chronology of the "past" with our dialectical terminology, with our mythological structure, to discover, to self realize, a unity in the diversity of characterizations, a convergence in the divergencies of events, a continuity underlying the discontinuity of actions and attitudes--in short we are not merely seeing a play in performance, but we are taking part in its performance, acting out its mythological reality, from scene to scene, act to act, production to production. This is the synergism underlying the mythos of History.</p> <p>When surveying the stage, we are looking for common elements of the background, the symbolism, with which the actors pick and choose their ad lib performances, to define the complete repertory of symbols which can be combined, and recombined, in an infinite variety of ways, to recreate the performance. We are looking for the structural rules of recombination, rooted in the social context, which delimit the actors range of options. And we are looking for ways by which the actors learn, and relearn these rules of combination and recombination, culturally sanctioned and in the process of relearning redefine, restructure the rules themselves. The rules are not immutable, unchangeable, unless we make them so. They are defined by the context and boundaries of culture, they are variable with the variability of culture, and flexible within the looseness of cultural boundaries, and alterable within the variations of culture--change.</p> <p>The synergism of History and Culture confers a certain momentum to their respective Mythological and Ideological operation within the Past and the Present, or perhaps more aptly, a momentousness which works like a tidal undercurrent in determining the forward directioning of Historical and Cultural process. Historical and Cultural Process is the operation of Historical and Culture, respectively, within their contexts of Past and Present, in their mythological and ideological idioms. The momentum of this Process appears as a repetition, a recurrence, a resemblance of patterning of the dialectical themes of mythology and ideology. (Lewis 1986 [unpublished manuscript] introduction)</p> </font> <p>As the metaphor of "superorganic" refers us to formal theories of evolutionism and "neo-evolutionism", so too does the metaphor of "cultural synergism", in its metalogical idiom of cultural/historical momentum, process, patterning refer us to the notion of <u>culture change</u>, as well as to <u>cultural adaptations to change</u>, and in so doing provides us with a legitimate, generalistic framework within the purview of humanological relativism for a transcultural, pan human understanding of "cultural development" and for "<u>civilization</u>" which we would not otherwise be able to do so. The fact of change, and its universality and ubiquitousness, though simply demonstrated by the fundamental laws of entropy and thermo-dynamics must ultimately be accepted on faith as a priori givens. A rational theorem for proving this fact is beyond the scope of this work. Suffice it to say that change is the single most important contextual metaphor for the understanding of the symbolic integration of human reality and "socio cultural synergism". The notion of universal change in human reality allows us to employ the metalogic of general relativism to speak in terms of pan human, transcultural universals, structural relationships which underlie all cultures and which form the structural basis for the evolution of human civilization whichever its particular cultural guise. In elucidating a meta theory of culture change various metaphors such as "dynamic continuum", "relational structure", "levels of articulation", "culture process", "adaptation to change", "revitalization" are employed. Herskovits has most elaborately and systematically formulated a basic theory of culture change, called "cultural dynamics" tacitly premised upon the doctrine of "cultural relativism", explicitly premising <u>change</u> as the fundamental focus of the scientific validation and theoretical unification of culture theory. Change implies continuos variation of form within culture and between different cultures in time and place, which in turn presupposes a relativistic orientation based upon irreconcilable socio historical and socio cultural differences in traits and aspects. It is interesting to note here that Herskovits's notion of cultural relativism, though founded upon the basis of inimical cultural/historical differences, is not synonymous with "cultural determinism", that such differences are absolute and preclude scientific understanding--but rather, Herskovits posits a common universality underlying the continuous variability. This is a universality which can be scientifically comprehended when the principles underlying the processes of cultural change (cultural dynamics) have been clearly elucidated by scientific analysis of the variances of the forms of cultural aspects in the particularistic contexts of cultural/historical research.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Though cultural change is ubiquitous, and its analysis is thus fundamental to the study of human group life, it must not be overlooked that, as in any aspect of the study of culture, it exists in terms of setting and background and not in absolute terms, by and of itself. This is how we escape from our second apparent dilemma, and rest comfortably on both its horns. Culture is <u>both</u> stable and ever changing. <u>Cultural change can be studied only as a part of the problem of cultural stability; cultural stability can be understood only when change is measured against conservatism</u>….perhaps the most basic difficulty arises from the fact that there are no objective criteria of permanence and change….(page 20)</p> </font> <p>The essential process involved in cultural dynamics, in the "integration between culture and personality, is what Herskovits calls "conditioning"--habituation, imitation, "at best, unconscious <u>conditioning</u>, which relates this form of learning to the other types, where conscious conditioning (training) is applied." Specifically he argues for the process of enculturation as the basic principle involved--"the aspects of the learning experience which mark off man from other creatures, and by means of which, initially, and in later life, he achieves competence in his culture, may be called <u>enculturation</u>. This is in essence a process of conscious or unconscious conditioning, exercised within the limits sanctioned by a given body of custom…." (1947, page 39)</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>"However, the basic principle involved is clear: <u>The enculturation of the individual in the early years of his life is the prime mechanism making for cultural stability, while the process as it is operative on more mature folk, is highly important in inducing change."</u> (1947, page 40)</p> <p>Enculturation is thus the process which permits most behavior to be carried on <u>below the level of conscious thought</u>. (1947, page 42)</p> </font> <p>The adult version of this process, by which cultural dynamics are articulated in its various aspects, he distinguishes as "reconditioning"…"Should circumstances force readaptation, then a process a relearning, or <u>reconditioning</u>, must be gone through to accommodate one's bodily structure to the new circumstances." (page 26) What is clear is the emergence of a rational dialectic in this theory between culture change and conservatism, enculturation and "reorientation", conditioning and reconditioning, which Herskovits sufficiently synthesis into a metalogical metaphor for the understanding of "cultural dynamics".</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>We must, then draw our definition of pattern so as to reflect these two aspects of our problem. Patterned structure, regularized form, we recognize, can be described as can any structure, since all structure has form and every form has describable limits. But we also recognize that patterned behavior and sanctioned responses, learned so well as to provoke automatic reactions to the approved cultural stimuli on the part of each member of a society, are the raw stuff out of which the structured forms are made. We take both these aspects into account then, when we think of cultural patterns as <u>the designs taken by the elements of a culture which, as consensus of the individual behavior patterns manifest y the members of a society, give to this way of life coherence, continuity, and distinctive form.</u> (1947 page 202)</p> </font> <p>The patterned designs Herskovits refers to are none other than the metaphorical symbolisms sanctioned by a culture, and the integration which the learning of these patterns entails is none other than symbolic integration of culture and human reality. It is to be seen from the foregoing that the integration of culture forms the basis of our conceptual organization of that word--allowing us to speak of the theoretical unity of "culture" from which differing but interrelated facets, called "<u>cultural aspects</u>" may be legitimately inferred, and analytically studied. These aspects are the variable cultural <u>forms</u> which different cultures may take under varying socio historical circumstances. Taken together, in their appropriate socio historical contexts, these aspects form collectivities of a particular organizational structure, around which a culture is historically patterned--achieving an identifiable "<u>cultural orientation</u>".</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Let us return again for a moment to the individual in society. From his enculturative experience, he has learned a set of socially sanctioned behavior patterns which, while permitting the play of variables--minor or pronounced as in idiosyncratic behavior--yet keep his acts within the matrix of his culture….(1947, page 207)</p> <p>Because the life of every group is unified for those who live it, it is essential that we fully comprehend both the need to study how a culture is synthesized, and the usefulness of breaking down this unity into its component parts. In considering any individual way of life, we must see it in compass of the integration of the whole, a whole that is more than a sum of its parts. It is such unity that the researcher worker, in so far as he observes life as it is lived, faces as he studies any people in the field. When we analyze social human behavior, we can isolate form from meaning, action from sanction…." (1947 page 214)</p> </font> <p>The important word here is "<u>sanction"</u> by which is implied the underlying structure that the patterning of social behavior takes in a given cultural framework. Understanding the sanctioning of a given culture is the key to understanding that culture within a cross cultural framework. Sanction is the hidden but universal process by which culture achieve a patterned integrity. Thus it is by the principle of sanction that coherence is given not only to our understanding of the rudiments of culture,, but to our comprehension of the relativity of cultures as well. In place of the word evolution, with all its controversial connotations, Herskovits prefers the word development, to designate the general directions of continuous change which cultural patterns manifest. For Herskovits, change in culture is as elemental as the understanding of culture itself, indeed they are almost interchangeable. But the mechanism of change remains unchanged and unclarified.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>We cannot too often emphasize the fact--we might say the axiom--that no living culture is static. Neither smallness in numbers, nor isolation, nor simplicity of technological equipment produces complete stagnation of the life of a people. Rules of conduct may be rigid; the strictest sanctions may be invoked to enforce these rules; acquiescence in them may be unquestioning, yet the observer of a society where even the greatest degree of conservatism obtains will, over a long period of time, find that changes have taken place. They may be minute, but they will be there. (1947, page 479)</p> <p>We may say then, that the process of change in culture is universal; that the significance of change must be faced in any study of the nature of culture; and moreover, that the analysis of dynamics would patently be impossible without postulating change. This, however, does not imply that cultural change can be studied as an isolated phenomenon. It is only one side of the shield; for change by and of itself, is meaningless, until it is projected against a baseline, measured in time and intensity and in terms of its extensiveness. Above all, it must be contrasted to the phenomenon that is always opposed to it, the phenomenon of cultural stability--a phenomenon which, in its psychological aspects is called conservatism. (1947, page 483)</p> </font> <p>Yet conservatism is tagged as "<u>resistance to change</u>" and thus the explanation of cultural change dynamics) is reduced to a psychological level. "Yet the student of culture, sensitive to change, must grasp variations as well as patterns. <u>For at a given moment, the variations are the expressions of change in process</u>." Individual differences--i.e., individuality--is the basis of "<u>cultural variations</u>" which is turn the basis for "cultural dynamics". Even more explicitly, resistance to change, or psychological conservatism, is a function of primary conditioning by social sanctioning, or enculturation, by which social character is determined culturally, while variation is mainly due to secondary reconditioning which occurs in adaptation and accommodation to external changes in adult life--thus reconditioning is the central hinge for cultural dynamics--the pivot point for cultural development (evolution). Reconditioning yet related to other descriptive notions of cultural dynamics--in short the process of change by culture itself--namely <u>acculturation, diffusion, cultural reorientation, and cultural drift and historical accident</u>. These in their turn, hinge about yet another critical concept--the idea of <u>"cultural focus</u>". <u>Reinterpretation</u>, based upon cultural focus, can thus be seen to indirectly relate, yet causally be dependent upon, the notion of reconditioning.</p> <p>Herskovits systematic comprehension of culture change remains an important and profound contribution to our understanding of the myth of Culture, and yet the contribution of culture change and the mechanisms of this change, and its internal/external functioning within and without a social group, remains largely unclear and unexplained. The origins of change in the universe of human reality remains obscure--it seems the best one can do is to take it on faith as a "fact" a priori to our understanding of it. And yet change comprehends all of Mother Nature and all of Human Reality--it is universal, eternal, inexorable. All of human reality forms one vast, open ended dynamic continuum of infinite small changes and continuos, uninterrupted, changing. Within this continuum must be isolated the phenomenon called culture change, which is also, paradoxically, a universal in human reality, and which can be said to hinge upon symbol change. The question to be answered is how does the Great Circle of Culture itself turn. The isolate of discrete Culture Process is not a simple matter.</p> <p>As Herskovits noted, change is a relative phenomenon which can only be comprehended in relation to its opposite, non-change (stasis, stability, permanence, etc.). Change/non-change is a rational metaphor for direction (and by implication, reason, purpose, objective) or "directionality" of reality, which in human reality is always "future oriented" or "forward oriented". This forward directed futureward orientation is a projection of the reflection of the past, a sense of continuity/discontinuity, of change/stability from the past, in the present and into the future. The metalogic of change/stability refers us back to the basic relational notions of symbolic <u>identification</u>, that of internal/external similarities and differences and subjective/objective reflection and projection. Applied to "culture change" our rational error in thinking the myth of Culture is our presupposed conception of absolute fixed boundaries which demarcate a culture unity, and isolate and separate it into geophysical space and historically, from other cultures. The notion of the socio cultural group boundary is at best a reflection of our own age of "modern" nation states that perpetuate their static boundaries and cultural differences and similarities at the risk of upsetting a delicate balance of terror and by the millenarian apocalyptic vision of holocaust. The notion of <u>boundary identification</u> in symbolic reality is essential to understanding the symbolic integration of individual in society and of culture itself. Boundary identification is a relative phenomenon, different for different people and groups of people, being defined by a passage of being and transformation of being from one state to another through symbolic integration. Boundaries through symbolic identification provides us with a sense of continuity between the past and future, a sense of permanance and order in the present. They are our symbolic comprehension of differences/similarities through reflection and projection. We <u>internalize similarities through symbolic reflection, and externalize differences through projection</u>. It is our means of maintaining a sense of coherent individual identity, or personality through maintenance of social symbolic boundaries (i.e., social identity through social differences) and symbolic cultural identity through group identity and in-group, out-group boundaries. The boundaries themselves are relative and change over time--it requiring more energy to perpetuate or maintain boundaries in the face of external changes than it is worth. Boundaries are fluid and dynamic over time and are rarely solid and fixed, finite. They are symbolic, and their thresholds for crossing depend upon the degree of symbolism they incorporate in complexity and integration. There is no such thing as a cultural isolate as a whole not in contextual relations with other cultures. There are ranges between cultures of symbolic transformation--rites of passage which surround and protect and confer power upon a cultural group. There are cultural levels of articulation, "sub-cultural groups", cultural groups, and supra cultural groupings, all varying in size and composition over time.</p> <p>Change can be defined by symbolic differentials over time; stability as symbolic similarities over time. It is a matter of relative continuity/discontinuity of change/stability over time, maintained through symbolic boundary indentification either personal or cultural. Personal and cultural process can be defined as adaptations to change over time to maintain or recreate symbolic boundary identifications. Adaptation to change, either by accommodation or adjustment of externalized differences, "changes" over time, for the continuity or change of personal or cultural identity--a symbolic sense of coherence, continuity, distinctiveness, meaning--in short symbolic integration of reality through symbolic identification. We may refer in this regard, depending upon the particular point of view, to any change as being either "mal-adaptive" or "pro adaptive" and in this sense "dysfunctional" or "eu-functional" to the symbolic integrity of the individual or society. <u>Culture</u>, by this sense<font SIZE="2">, </font>can be defined as <u>an adaptational mechanism of symbolic group identification to inevitable changes over time</u>.</p> <p>Consideration of culture change in relation to symbolic boundary identification and of culture as a symbolic mechanism of group adaptation to change--"cultural synergism"--leads to consideration of another important metaphor, the metaphor of <u>"power"</u>. Power is defined as "1. The ability or capacity to act or perform effectively. 2. A specific capacity, or aptitude….3. Strength or force capable of being exerted; might. 4. The Ability or capacity to exercise control; authority. 5. A nation having influence or control over others. 6. Physical strength. 7. The rate at which work is done, commonly measured in units such as the watt or horsepower. 8. Electricity….[Ofr. <u>Poeir</u>, to be able] (<u>American Heritage Dict</u>. 1983) or as "[Ofr. <u>Pooir</u>; Fr.<u>pouvoir</u>, from an old infinitive <u>podir</u>, from LL. <u>Potere</u>, to be able, used for L. <u>posse</u>, to be able, from <u>potis</u>, able and <u>esse</u> to be.] 1. Ability to do; capacity to act; capability of performing or producing….2. A specific ability or faculty….3. Great ability to do, act or affect strongly; vigor; force; strength. 4. (a) the ability to control others; authority; sway; influence. (b) legal ability or authority. (c) a document giving it. 5. Physical force or energy; as, electric <u>power. </u>6. The capacity to exert physical force or energy, usually in terms of the rate or results of its use….7. A person taking or thing having great influence over other nations….8. A nation, especially one possessed of influence over other nations….9. National might or political strength. 10. A spirit or divinity….11. An armed force; army; navy. [Archaic] 12. A large number or quantity (of something specified). [Colloq.]….in mathematics….in optics….in theology….in mechanics….<u>collateral power</u>….etc., etc…." (<u>Websters Dict. [unabridged] 1983</u>. The metalogical metaphor of power within the doctrine of humanological relativism comprehends all these connotations of the meanings of power.</p> <p>The metalogical metaphor of "power" is <u>the capacity to change or to control change through symbolic mediation of human reality</u>. There is <u>dependent</u> forms of power which are primarily context dependent, relational within a socio cultural context, through authority, sanction, proscription or prohibition, privilege, license and there are <u>independent</u> forms of power which are primarily personal symbolic mediation through access to alternative states of consciousness, or moderation of ego being modalites. The two forms of power are symbolic integrated in cultural synergism. Power is symbolic mediation, or control over symbolic integration of human reality--it does not matter whether it is expressed in real terms of destructive, coercive force, in social terms of differential access to basic and valued resources, or socio economic status, or in a more ideal form of officious touting and flouting of the Holy Cross or the ostentatious display of the biggest or most yams or the conspicuous consumption of the most copper crests, blankets or slaves.</p> <p>The notion of power is of central importance to the humanological relativistic comprehension of cross cultural and pan human relational phenomenon. The grand ethical philosophers who equivocate and over the correct meta ethical theory in a domestic court of rational law, wholly ignore or eschew the ages old Machiavellian imperative that "might makes right"--if their ethical systems were really so absolute and non-relative then why is there so much pan human neglect of these theories and so much international strife and warfare. The <u>relativity of ethics</u> is the <u>relativity of power</u>, however it may be expressed. Power is a metalogical metaphor which allows us to think of the relativity of ethics in terms of the relativity of power between cultural groupings. Rare do losers in battle survive to tell their side of the ethical conflict of values--usually we are left with only the victors values. This is by no means necessarily a pessimistic interpretation of human reality, but in light of recent events, WW1, WW2, and impending global nuclear holocaust it is a realistic assessment of the cultural relativism of values.</p> <p>The notion of the relativism of power leads us back to the notion of symbolic boundary identification and the symbolic processes of internal reflection of similarities and the external projection of differences in the maintenance of these boundaries. In general internal reflection takes the symbolic form of religious sanctification of common symbolic forms within a group which give a sense of meaning and integrity to a group--while external projection takes the form of political symbolism of power in terms of boundary maintenance. In the symbolic integration of culture it makes sense then to refer to the symbolic authority of religious and political power in their respective functions of reflective internalization of similarities and in terms of projective externalization of differences, in the symbolic boundary identification of a group culture. Dr. Jacob Pandian elaborated this essential theme:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>I have defined ethnicity as a conglomeration of religious and political symbols which embody the cognitive and emotive cultural boundaries of a group. The symbols serve as vehicles for the conception and dramatization of the biological/cultural heritage of a group. The religious and political symbols exist in a dialectical relationship, and are transformed and synthesized when used to conceptualize and dramatize group identity. (page 6)</p> </font> <p>According to Dr. Pandian, symbols of boundary maintenance exist in a dialectical relationship which may possibly be the "opposition and synthesis of the symbolic representation of the male and female…" (page 9) Depending upon cultural focus, there will result certain combinations of these political and religious symbols. These symbol, however synthesized, facilitate conceptioning of group heritage which in turn facilitates "certain kinds or types of boundary maintenance". "Many of the symbols are "sacred" in the sense that they are endowed by the believers with a mystical power, having non-empirical as well as empirical referents and the attributes of diverse domains of experience." (page 11)</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Every group, with its distinctive way of life, is faced with the problem of preserving that way of life, of protecting it from major changes that can occur within or without. Every group must evolve symbols of protection and perpetuation. These are political symbols. The political symbols become vehicles for mobilizing people to defend or protect what would be defined as national or state boundaries.</p> <p>Since humans live in a symbolic universe they are constantly objectifying, or creating order or models of reality, to deal with subjective experiences. Religion offers an arena in which these objectifications of the subjective experiences of suffering, disorder and uncertainty can be shared and accepted by the group without empirical verification. Every group develops religious symbols by which its distinctive way of life is sanctified….Every group passes on the symbols of justification of its way of life as the only true way, thus helping each new generation to acquire and recreate the style of life of the group. (page 14)</p> </font> <p>We have reached the point of needing to address directly the metalogical conceptualization of the symbolic integration and symbolic generalization of "culture" in relation to power as the primary symbolic mediation of this process of "socio cultural synergism" through symbolic boundary identification. So far we have begged the central, crucial question of the symbolic integration of culture, impinging as it does upon the metaphor of power in "cultural synergism". Basically, the symbolic integration of culture follows the same lines as the symbolic generalization of human reality as outlined in the second chapter of this work. The first, primary level of cultural symbolic integration is essentially communicational in nature. It consists of the elaboration of communication networks along lines of systems of signification and corresponds to what has been referred to as concrete level of socio structural communication. This level consists of the level of ritual religious behavioral adaptations within a social structure. The secondary level of symbolic integration of reality corresponds with the secondary level of symbolic generalization, and incorporates rational system of conceptualization and theoretization, systems of "rationalization" operating primarily upon the cognitive level of human functioning, and corresponding to formal ideological systems and systems of conceptualization within a culture. Where as information was the primary medium of symbolization upon the first level, rational understanding, or <u>reason</u> is the primary meaning system upon this secondary level. The first level is to be seen as thetic and basic in human comprehension and integration of human reality, and culture integration--the second level is <u>antithetical</u>, dialectical, rationalizing. The third level composes mythological <u>meaning</u> systems which operate primarily upon the emotional plane of human existence--it is symbolically synthetic in that it mediates between the thetic informational level and the anti-thetic rational level of symbolization about human reality.</p> <p>Power as symbolic mediation is expressed upon these three levels in terms of differential <u>levels of articulation</u> within <u>relational power structures</u>. There are three levels of articulation corresponding to the three levels of symbolic integration of reality. These three levels correspond to a basic class structure of all human societies, the lower, the middle, and upper classes. The lower class functions upon the primary level of behavioral, concrete, informational of power articulation, the middle class functions upon the secondary level of rational/ideological articulation of power, and the upper class functions upon the emotive, metalogical plane of articulation--the political religious leaders and myth makers. Relational power structures are relative to the differentials of symbolic boundary identities between individuals and between groups. They will be variable over time working at different points upon different planes of articulation of power. Relational power structures, however they are symbolically identified, or culturally defined, are universal to all cultural groupings, no matter the size or complexity. They interconnect all persons in all cultural groupings, and all groupings, not only to one another, but to the larger eco systems context of Mother Nature as well. Analytically, these relational power structures can be understood primarily in value terms of socio economic, socio religious and socio political structures. A conceptual framework for understanding these structures has been elaborated elucidated in an early, unpublished manuscript. (1983)</p> <p><u>"Cultural groupings"</u>, large or small, simple or complex, are nodal concentrations of local complexity within the overarching, worldwide, relational power structure. Cultural groupings are variable in extent of complexity and intent of development--they are clusterings of symbolic aggregations, upon all three levels of articulation and symbolic cultural integration--about a particular center, a cultural matrix, which forms what has been termed a "cultural core". This cultural grouping upon all three levels of symbolic integration forms definition of a "core culture" which has distinctive trait complexes, and forms what is termed "cultural complexes" which function upon the three levels of integration. A cultural complex is the symbolic embodiment of the core structural power relations about which a grouping identifies. This complex is to be analyzed upon three levels of its symbolic integration with reality, which are superimposed upon one another within the same complex. These cultural complexes exhibit a relative measure of cultural synergism to the extent that they are able to continuously perpetuate its distinctive symbolic boundary identities in relation to the rest of the relational power structure. In the face of external pressures of change its boundaries may fracture or slowly dissolve, its symbolic elements and human constituents re-aggregating about another "center".</p> <p>Herein lies an alternative metalogical framework for the understanding of culture change phenomenon, as well as the rudiments of a theory of progressive "socio cultural synergism" . The structural interstices, the relational power connections between cultural groupings about different cultural complexes, defined in terms of relative power differentials, have been termed by words like "cultural diffusion"--"<u>achieved cultural transmission</u>"--"geographical social mobility and migration", culture contact or "acculturation"--"<u>cultural transmission in process</u>" and "historical accident".</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Contact, therefore, can result in minimum borrowing, with or without external pressure, or it can range to almost complete acceptance of the ways of life of another people. In any given case, the aspects of culture that are transmitted, or the transfer of the sanctions of an older custom to a new cultural form are the result of particular historical circumstances which influence the psychological motivations underlying the selectivity that comes into play. (Herskovits 1947, page 539)</p> </font> <p>A cultural grouping exhibits a particular contextual <u>center of balance</u> about its central cultural complex, which functions as a center of gravity within the continuum of the relational power structure, and which confers upon it a certain "snowballing" momentum which gives it its directionality of "socio cultural synergism". The central cultural complex is the center of attention of important cultural symbolizations, around which a cultural ethos, and world view are oriented. This is the general directionality which Herskovits called cultural focus":</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p><u>Cultural focus</u> designates the tendency of every culture to exhibit greater complexity, greater variation in the institutions of some of its aspects than in others. So striking is this tendency to develop certain phases of life, while others remain in the background, so to speak, that in the shorthand of shorthand of the disciplines that study human societies these focal aspects are often used to characterize whole cultures. (1947, page 542)</p> </font> <p>For Herskovits, cultural focus is the basis for understanding the process of culture change. It is a hypothesis similar to the age area principle developed and validated for the study of culture trait and linguistic transmission. "The greatest variation in form is to found in the aspect of a culture that is focal to the interests of a people. This variation, by implication, suggests that the focal aspect has undergone the greater changes than other elements.…(1947, page 550) Variation in form in the focal area of a culture is marked by <u>reinterpretation</u>--the "process by which old meanings are ascribed to new elements or by which new values change the cultural significance of old forms"--which functions internally from "generation to generation" as well as 'in integrating a borrowed element into a receiving culture."</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>….The hypothesis of cultural focus refers the dynamics of culture to the only instruments which change in culture can be achieved--the individuals who compose a society where a way of life is undergoing change. It is people who believe in one way at one historic period and in another way at a later time. The emphasis they lay on the sanctions, the values, the goals that comprise the motivating drives to their behavior gives meaning to what they do at a given moment. We must thus turn to these changing emphasis and drives if we are to comprehend more adequately the changes in the artifacts, the institutions, the organized systems of belief that characterize a culture at a given time, and mark it off from what it was at a different time or from the other cultures that exist coterminously with it. (1947, page 543)</p> </font> <p>A cultural complex will exhibit a "drift" of gradual change, developmental or otherwise, through history, as it borrows, accretes, or modifies its symbolic forms. Drift is a "natural" process of culture change based upon variation of symbolic forms. Herskovits defined "<u>cultural drift</u>" as "<u>the process of cumulative variations</u>".</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>The concept of drift, the piling up of minor variations that are in accord with pre-existing tendencies, must be considered as associated with the idea of cultural focus. We have advanced the hypothesis that because there is a lively interest in the focal aspect of a culture, change is more likely to occur in the institutions lying here than in those found in other of its aspects. Granting that change is not haphazard, but directional, then the increased range of variation in the focal aspect of a culture would not only continuously tend to produce a wider range of variants in line with the direction in which the institutions were moving, but would also make for more decided change than in other aspects. If, further, the focal aspect was the one which gave a culture its "flavor", then the outstanding changes that marked the development of cultures in terms of the succession of focal interests manifested by it over long periods could be referred to the fact that drift is not a simple unilinear phenomena. This would further reflect the fact that the broad stream which comprises any culture has varied currents, of which now some, now others will be the more rapid. (1947, page 584)</p> </font> <p>Matteo Bartoli first propounded the age area principle. Bonfante an Sebeok expounded this principle in paradigmatic outline form in 1944. Basically, they said that "1. Isolated areas….conserve older linguistic features than others. 2. Lateral areas preserve older linguistic features than central areas….3. Of two forms, the older one is spread over the larger area, the innovation over the lesser area….4. Of two forms, the older one is preserved in a territory later occupied or colonial." (1944: 383-385) The crux of this principle is the area of greatest variation, innovation, and "culture contact" is the area designated as "central" and so exhibits the greatest degree of cultural change.</p> <p>What is suggested by this theoretical model is an alternative framework for cultural development or "evolution". From this metalogical perspective evolution is to be looked upon from the perspective of the total framework of a dynamic continuum of a relational structure which is both supra cultural and synergistic (but not necessarily "super organic" inclusive of the developmental sequences of all "sub-cultural groupings" down to the individual. This is a model of "evolutionary development" which is manifested in the cosmo graphical patterning of the stars, as well as in the patterning of speciation of biological life forms on earth, but which is in no way associated with the Darwinian model of "natural selection" based upon the rule of "survival of the fittest".</p> <p>Any natural grouping is defined by its most inclusive boundaries of a "lowest common denominator"--in biological groupings this is in terms of the genetic boundaries of a process referred to as speciation. These boundaries are not fixed, but fluctuating. We refer to a relative center of balance of interrelations within all members of a group, as well as to its periphery. This center of balance exhibits a central gravitational "pull" which is expressed in terms of the "totipotency" of all the possible, potential relationships within the grouping over time. We refer to a periphery surrounding and isolating this center of balance. The same is as true for the human species as for any other biological grouping. This center exhibits a synergistic momentum which carries it forward through time in a kind of dynamic equilibrium. The center, at any given point in time the "mainstream" range of a grouping, exhibits both the greatest continuity of stability and the greatest potentiality for variations of form. The development indeed follows a course from simple to complex, homogenous to heterogeneous, as the number of variations and differences within a grouping become greater than the number of similarities which conferred stability to the structure. The overall structure grows in complexity until it fractures internally from its own accumulated weight of variations. The result of the fracturing is an "atomization" which features a return to a lesser-complicated state and a restoration of dynamic equilibrium, or "homeorhesis". Instead of growth, movement towards extensive and intensive complexity, there is a reversal of the movement in which "sub-groupings" or "groupings within groupings" are throwing off, rejecting, ejecting, excluding, projecting or destroying differences to resurrect an equilibrium of similarities and restore a center of balance. What is depicted has been called a model of "punctuated equilibrium" in which there is an " accordion" process of cyclical expansion and growth to certain contextually and structurally defined limits, and then reduction, "atomization" once the threshold of the group boundaries are crossed. This model has been developed for human populations which undergo stress, and has been referred to by A.F.C. Wallace in terms of alternating social states of "relaxation and mobilization" and has been noted by Marshall Sahlins in his "Little Man, Big Man, Chief" in his comparison of Polynesian and Melanesian social structures. There is an implicit "totipotency" in the structural relations of any group, potential limitations of the synergistic power of any group, which determines the scope and limits of growth and development of that group. The paradox of any synergistic grouping is that there is incorporated into its mainstream both the potential for greatest change through variation and for the stability through dynamic equilibrium.</p> <p>In "evolutionary" terms development of complexity is a direct outcome of cumulative variations--groups of an expressed totipotency growing to their limitations of development, then fracturing into smaller, more stabile groupings each incorporating new centers of balance in their structural relationships, each incorporating a new and modified synergistic totipotency for further growth and development, until again fracturing and repeating the process with even more "sub-groupings" of new expresses potentialities. Thus as the total number of "forms" grows, in terms of "population" of basic organismic units, there is a continual process of grouping and sub-grouping towards even greater variety. There is nothing anti-entropic about this--it is a natural outcome of natural changes.</p> <p>Referring to the notion of the "evolution" of human civilization, this model operates in exactly the same manner as with biological speciation. Human civilization is a relative term which refers to the relative level of sophistication and complexity of the "mainstream" of the human species. We refer to particular instances of this overall process of the "mainstream" in terms of historically isolated "Vietnamese Civilization, Chinese Civilization, Indian Civilization, French or English Civilization, American Civilization, and in larger sub-groupings of Western Civilization, Eastern Civilization, or European Civilization, or East Asian Civilization. Within these sub-groupings we recognize particular process of civilization--"Vietnamization, Sinization, Americanization, Europeanization, Indianization. Civilization, furthermore, is to be understood in the metalogical idiom of relational power structures within the total context of human civilization. Within the total context, there are many various sub-groupings, some more interconnected and interrelated than others which are relatively isolated. At any one point in time, tracing the lineaments of structural interrelationships within the whole continuum, there can be identified "cultural complexes" processing a center of gravity and a particular patterning of structural growth--as a whole there is a predominating "mainstream" of these balancing structural relationships against which all sub-groupings are to be referenced. This mainstream will exhibit a patterning of growth and reduction in the same manner described for biological speciation above. At any one point in time, any one period of its history, it expresses a relative totipotency of its synergism in terms of its relational structure, which determines the finite range of variation possible and the development scope and hence its adaptive stability and internal equilibrium. In reference to cultural sub-groupings of this "mainstream of human civilization", this mainstream cultural complex is always "supra cultural" in context to which all cultural "sub-groupings" are referenced, and in the matrix or context of a particular cultural "sub-grouping", of its particular symbolic cultural complex, there are any number and variety of "sub-cultural" groupings dependent upon the scope and complexity of its structural totipotency. Thus it can be seen that within each and ever human being exists the totipotent seeds for a whole culture, and within each and every culture are the totipotent seeds for human civilization.</p> <p>In terms of cultural groupings this rise of civilization expresses itself in terms of the complication of the secondary level of civilization--the growth and development of a mediating "middle class". The secondary level of articulation in the middle class is the heart of human civilization--it is the motor which drives its repetitive, cyclical patterning. It turns the Great Circle of Culture. The language of a cultural group is primary mechanism, its symbolic system upon the secondary level, of symbolic boundary identification. This can be seen even in the development of highly professional jargon, like in academic anthropology, which serves to demarcate the "boundaries" of awareness and admission of the in-group. The elaboration of language systems upon the secondary level of rational symbolism allows for the development of a middle class which forms the mediating mechanism for myth and reality, for civilization.</p> <p>The synergistic process of this middle center level in a cultural grouping in its elaboration of variations and crystallization into a parasitic relationship with the lower and upper classes. From its own ranks prophets issue with a new vocabulary, a new Master plan, a "new maze-way" which revitalizes the social structure. Cultural groups can be seen to drift along in its accumulation of a variation of a common theme, drifting toward an inevitable Historical Accident--abrupt innovations that arise from within a culture or result from the contact of peoples….Thus the model of punctuated equilibrium can be seen to be in full operation in the center of any cultural grouping, which through its primary medium of a language operating upon the structural level of articulation of the middle class in primarily second level system of rational symbolization, continuously generates variations, from the ground up, which eventually leads to its bogging down under its own weight, and then revitalization of its crystallized social symbolic structure, and so on and so on, in each round sowing the seeds for its evolution of civilization.</p> <p>The neo-evolutionists have hypothesized the measurable "Erg" as the mythical quantum of cultural evolution, the prime mover of Human Civilization. But it has become quite obvious to any one not altogether blind, ignorant, or plain stupid, of the current state of Modern Human Civilization, that there is something radically wrong with our "energy formula" if it eventuates in inevitable consequences of Nuclear Holocaust and Global Climax. Somewhere in the long sequence of events of our evolution of civilization something must have gone wrong, a stage of cultural development at which Human Civilization turned against the Great Circle of Mother Nature and is ending up destroying her in order to dominate her. Solutions suggest themselves. Indeed, this whole work was conceived and written in a very deep seated belief that there is something profoundly wrong with our Civilization, something rooted in its very mythological structure. Indeed ours is a mythical prophecy of Oedipus, a millenarian vision of apocalypse which is in the process of self fulfillment, as we have fixated at the level of the third chakra. This work has been long in conception in the revolutionary spirit of "Mazeway reformulation" of our basic mythologies. The possibility that our Energy Consumption Civilization is not the only possible, or even naturally necessary alternative, or even the most reasonable, suggests itself. Our capacity to realize alternative human civilizations in the future will be a direct consequence of our ability to create alternative mythologies in the present.</p> <p>In concluding this overwrought work, its realization is yet incomplete. Many possibilities for an alternative doctrine of humanological relativism suggest themselves--in terms of new methodologies for the study and comprehension of human reality, new values for the improvement of the quality of human life in a more natural ecological framework. This is not a theory requiring proof or disprove by being taken to the field or the laboratory for scientific testing. It is rather a self recognized Mythology about Mythology. Its value will be measured by its heuristic potential demonstrated by generating alternative interpretations and theories about our Human reality. It is out of respect for this reality that it was written.</p> <font SIZE="2"></font> <p align="center"> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> s="na";c="na";j="na";f=""+escape(document.referrer) </script> <script language="javascript1.2" type="text/javascript"> s=screen.width;v=navigator.appName if (v != "Netscape") {c=screen.colorDepth} else {c=screen.pixelDepth} j=navigator.javaEnabled() </script> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> function pr(n) {document.write(n,"\n");} NS2Ch=0 if (navigator.appName == "Netscape" && navigator.appVersion.charAt(0) == "2") {NS2Ch=1} if (NS2Ch == 0) { r="&size="+s+"&colors="+c+"&referer="+f+"&java="+j+"" pr("<A HREF=\"http://www.TheCounter.com\" TARGET=\"_top\"><IMG"+ " BORDER=0 SRC=\"http://c1.thecounter.com/id=515383"+r+"\"><\/A>")} </script> <NOSCRIPT> <a HREF="http://www.TheCounter.com" TARGET="_top"><img SRC="http://c1.thecounter.com/id=515383" ALT="TC" BORDER="0" width="88" height="31"></a> </NOSCRIPT>  </body>