The question of what is reality -- of what is really real -- is one of the oldest questions facing humanity. What is the reality of the world around us? What is the reality of our own individual existence?
In western civilization we spend a lot of time considering the nature of objective reality but we tend to take individual existence for granted. As Popeye the Sailorman said: "I yam what I yam."
Our philosophers spend a great deal of time attempting to correlate individual existence with the objective reality around us, of course, but the reality of individual existence is rarely questioned. Descartes decided that we exist because we think. (Cogito ergo sum.) Erich Fromm said that we exist because we love (because we are in a loving relationship with another being). Jean Paul Sartres decided that we exist -- period -- and then begin creating the essence of our being.
All of them, in their own way, were probably correct, but they did not address perhaps the greatest question of all: do we indeed exist as individual, separate beings? That is, is the assumption of the individual as the focus of identity valid at all?
Language not only serves as a means of communication between and among humans, it also (as Marshall McLuhan pointed out) can be and most certainly is a prison. It limits our reality. We tend to be aware only of that portion of our reality that can be described by words. Let me give you a couple of examples.
We have only one word in English for that white frozen stuff that sometimes falls from the sky in the winter: snow. (Sleet and hail are entirely different substances.) When I lived in far northern Montana many years ago, I became aware of a wide variety in the essence of snow. From the heavy, wet clumps of snow that often fell in late spring to the tiny, icy cymbals that popped into the air with the sound of bells on cold cold mornings in mid-winter, there were a number of different types of snow.
But there is only one word in English so we see only one form of snow. I'm told the Innuit of Alaska have two dozen different words for different types of snow. Their reality is different from ours.
Similarly, we recognize only two forms of camel, the camel and the dromedary. One hump or two. That's it. Ogden Nash described the difference in his small poem:
The camel has a single hump;
the dromedary two.
Or is it the other way around?
I'm never quite sure, are you?
It is, by the way, the other way round. The famous camel on Camels cigarettes is really a dromedary.
Arabs have more than a dozen words for different types of camel. Their reality is different from ours.
Instead of being only a medium of communication, our words become the medium in which we live (in the same sense that agar is a medium for the growth of bacteria.) As Marshall McLuhan pointed out, we are never aware of the media in which we live.
A fish is not aware that it lives in water. Water is the medium in which it lives and it takes the water for granted.
The human medium is language and we are not usually aware of the limitations of that language because we take language for granted.
This "taking language for granted" is usually called an assumption. We assume a described reality to be real because it is described.
When an assumption becomes a pattern for reality, scholars refer to it as a paradigm (the classical pronunciation, though it is now considered chic to pronounce it para-dime). Paradigm is of Greek origin and originally meant simply a pattern (i.e. a pattern for mathematical precision or an example of provable reality.)
Paradigms are unquestioned assumptions about the nature of reality. We know them to be true because, well, they always have been true.
To question paradigms is considered, by most people, to be a waste of time. As the Fundamentalist bumper sticker says: God said it. I believe it. That settles it. Or as the Baptist lady once said: If the King James version of the Bible was good enough for Paul and Silas, it's good enough for me.
Ignorance is founded upon paradigmatic reality.
Here are some paradigms of our society:
Men are tough and never cry. Women are weak and cry easily.
Children don't understand things the way adults do and their feelings don't really count.
Older people have poor memory and (let's see, I guess I've forgotten what else they say about us old people!)
Because we accept them as true, they have become a reality for us and we tend to act accordingly.
Other paradigms: diseases are caused by invasions of germs . . . mental illness is caused by imbalance of brain chemicals . . . poor people are poor because they are lazy.
And: competition is the most efficient means of human interaction and efficiency is the goal of all human labor.
None of these are intrinsically correct, except as they are created by the telling of them.
The paradigm I wish to talk about this morning, however, is the prevailing assumption of modern culture: that my identity is focused entirely on my individuality. . . . that I am essentially a separate, alien entity alone in the universe. . . . that the reality of who I am is solely based on my apartness.
This is so deeply ingrained an assumption that even to question it seems folly to most people today. But it wasn't always thus. The cult of the individual is a relatively modern invention and many people around the world still function as if it were not a reality at all.
When people from other cultures are brought into contact with European civilizations, there is inevitably a disruption of reality for them. We say (quoting another western paradigm) that these are "primitive" peoples brought into the "modern" world. We tend to see such conflicts as "backwards people being dragged into the twentieth century." Our weltanschauung or world-view is so firmly intrenched into our paradigmatic reality that we imagine our way to be the only valid and valuable way to relate to the universe. We see "exporting western technology" as our "manifest destiny." We want to bring the rest of the world "up to our standard of living."
But the problem other peoples have when they encounter our culture is not the problem of a lesser culture meeting a better one, but simply of one set of assumptions colliding with another set of assumptions.
When Europeans first invaded this continent, they discovered a highly complex civilization of Native Americans. One Native American paradigm was that the earth belonged to everyone. Individual ownership of the land was a concept unthinkable to the first Americans. When Europeans "bought" land for ridiculous sums of money, they thought the Indians were incredibly naive and ignorant. The Native Americans thought the Europeans were foolish indeed to be making such gifts for a simple right that everyone enjoyed -- the right to walk upon the land.
Similarly, the Native American paradigm relating to personal property was that all objects of useful purpose belonged to the tribe or clan, not to the individual. When an Indian found a useful tool lying unused, he or she would simply take it if there was an immediate use for it. To Europeans, this was theft, because the European paradigm dictated a sacred right of property ownership to the individual -- a paradigm still in force among ourselves.
Such conflicts are still taking place. National Public Radio reported yesterday about a group of Vietnamese brought into the States after that war was over. One Montagnard father was thrown into prison for taking his own daughter from a California hospital "against medical advice." Their reality was that modern medicine was killing their daughter. Our reality is that the physician knows best.
The Native American paradigm relating to identity was simple: we are first members of our clan and only after clan identification can we be considered as individuals. That is: our intrinsic identity is as one part of a larger whole, not as a whole unto ourselves.
This was also true of our Celtic ancestors. The clan was the focus of identity. I am (for example) first a member of the otter clan. Second, I am a Goidel (or Goedelic Celt). Third, I am a human being. Fourth, I am a member of the animal world. Fifth, I am a part of the larger world of trees and hills and stars and moon. And only then, once I have recognized my identity with all of creation, can I consider myself as an entity.
The difference between that ancient way of conceiving of the self is simple but profoundly important in the way we relate to the world around us. I am one with all around me, not a one unto myself.
The identity of the individual with the clan was not, as modern mythology would have it, a means of competition between clans. Examples of the Iks, a psychotic culture in the Melanesians, are often quoted by anthropologists as proof that early cultures were competitive and self-destructive. These peoples fight constantly among themselves, practice a sociopathic individuality and seem to hate each other intensely. Linguistic studies of the Iks, however, reveal words in their language which are derived from Medieval Arabic cultures. They are not a "primitive" tribe at all, but (like most such peoples) a "throw-back" society once far more advanced technologically but now caught in a cultural time- warp.
Studies of truly ancient cultures by such scholars as Marija Gimbutas (who studied the "Old Europe" sites in Anatolia which date from 20 thousand to four thousand B.C.E.) reveal such cultures to have been non-competitive, peaceful and artistic civilizations which experienced commerce and intercommunication over most of the globe.
The concept of the individual did not exist for most of human history, and when it appeared it marked the end of the peaceful human civilization when lasted nearly 20 thousand years.
Take Crete, for example, the last of the so-called Goddess cultures to fall to the forces of the dark side of human nature. Although art was an important part of ancient Minoan culture, no piece of art has been discovered which was signed with the name of an individual. Art was created for the purpose of community, not for the self-aggrandizement. So it was throughout the pre-patriarchal societies.
The change came with the advent of the warrior cults, which over-ran all the peaceful civilizations of the world in the period from the fourth to the middle of the second millennia before the common era.
Based on nomadic systems created through over-population, these warrior cults could function only if people could be made to forget their oneness with each other. The myth of the individual was invented to induce ordinary humans to become willing servants and slaves of the ruling warrior class.
You are not a part of the family, the clan, the tribe, these new male priests taught, you are an individual standing alone in the world. And as such, you need the power of belonging to an armed band in order to survive.
Modern civilization is based upon this same assumption. We give up our inherent rights as human beings to an armed police force so it will "protect" us from other armed thugs who operate by the same rules as the police.
We meekly submit to the "right" of Wayne Huizenga and other robber barons to own large hunks of Mother Earth and pollute the hell out of it to the detriment of ourselves and our children's children because he as an individual has the right to do whatever he wants and we as individuals have no standing against him.
We send our children to fight and die in distant overseas places to protect the right of robber barons to get the oil they want so they can continue victimizing us and the people we care for.
All these things we do because we have "bought into" the paradigm of individuality that they want us to believe in.
We need to accept a new paradigm for identity. We have to learn that we do not exist solely as individuals unrelated to other people and to the world around us.
We need to return to a realization that the clan is indeed our focus of identity.
I do not exist if you do not exist. I am a part of who you are and you are a part of who I am.
An entirely new way of seeing the world is created when we begin to accept this ancient paradigm, this way of seeing ourselves.
As an individual who stands apart from others, I have no standing in law when the law relates to other people. But as a member of a clan, I am responsible for whatever happens to every other member of the clan. I have a right and a responsibility, in other words, to consider the needs of every other person within my clan.
Technology, however, has made the clan far greater than it was in ancient times. When a day's journey was about ten miles, most of the important reality could be contained within the confines of the otter clan or the bear clan or the clan of the tortoise. Today, an astronaut circles the globe in a matter of minutes and you could get on an SST today and be back here tomorrow after having circumnavigated the earth.
My clan today is not the otter clan, but it must include the otter if it is to include all the reality necessary for my continued existence.
We need to change our assumption about the focus of our own identity, and realize the intrinsic truth that we are of necessity one with everything that lives on this great blue marble.
When I say "I" I must include all the other "I's" that exist.
Martin Buber pointed out that the first statement of "I am" also created the reality of "you are." To define ourselves as unique and alone is to define all else in nature as separate and alien from ourselves. The concept of individuality creates alienation and mutual destruction.
We need to return to an understanding of the unity of all creation. To do so, we must change our assumptions about who we are.
John Lennon wrote:
Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people
Living for today . . .
Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too.
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace . . .
Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world . . .
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.
Blessed Be!