Three Cultures

There are three forms of culture: worldly culture, the mere acquisition of information; religious culture, following rules; elite culture, self-development.

     [Ali Hujwiri, Revelation of the Veiled]

I’ve used this quote as an epigram before; I saw it many, many years ago, used for the same purpose in Idries Shah’s, The Sufis, and it made an impression on me even then—pre-Information Age and all of that—because it refers to information and, in part, inverts the order of layers within a culture. In the modern view “self actualization,” as the last level is called in modernese (by Abraham Maslow discussing hierarchies of needs), is till at the top, but religious culture is viewed as something we’ve progressed beyond to reach the current pinnacle of secular civilization.

Hujwiri, a Sufi teacher, lived a long time ago—990-1077—and clearly had a very sophisticated view of culture, as expressed when he described the basic level as engaged in seeking information. That’s all that’s really possible—at the worldly level. What comes above it transcends “the world” as we usually understand it.

Got to thinking about this today as I was pondering Yeat’s poem, The Second Coming, in which appear those famous words, “the center cannot hold.” Yeats (1865-1939) belongs to elite culture if anybody does; and beyond most poets he was interested in matters mystical. And he saw the problem, to be sure. Worldly culture, even when he wrote that poem, in 1920, was already overwhelming the second layer for many people: religious culture. Yeats saw that as a great disaster because he saw no hope. The Second Coming he darkly foresaw was that of something beastly:

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

Well, perhaps he failed to look far enough ahead—or his mysticism wasn’t deep enough. What he describes slouching towards Bethlehem to be born was modernity itself, not that which will follow its falling apart.

All this then led to another thought. If we look at Hujwiri’s categories, what seems to be clear is that the bottom and the top layers are always present—unless some plague or atomic war sends us back to hunting and gathering again; even that would leave one in place. Organized societies are a kind of necessary foundation for anything higher—except the elite culture at the very top. The elite culture is also always there; it springs from individual endowments. On this view, anyway, the middle layer, religious culture, is the most important. It provides social cohesion and is the vehicle by which masses of people can raise themselves, with the help of teachings and obedience (a despised word in this day) to realize transcendence—which is Job 1 in Sufi thought.

Kneeling Before Physics

I’ve argued elsewhere more than once (i.e., on Ghulf Genes) that we are “heading back,” thus that we are—culturally—on our way back from the summit of Mount Matter to climb again Mount Spirit. On the way there, thus at present, we’re in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I find it fascinating that these days those who newly discover that the transcendental order must be real after all—and wish to persuade others of this fact—almost reflexively reach for their proofs in physics. The chosen methodology has little to do with the facts of the matter but everything to do with human nature. To persuade others you need Authority; and these days physics has authority. Einstein is the word that equals wise today—and the atomic bomb made the biggest thunder ever over Japan just a few decades back. If physics is the orthodox religion of modernity, quantum physics is its mysticism, hence the best pool of proof of all.

I was reminded of this forcefully reading a book by Pim Van Lommel on the near-death experience. Lommel is a cardiologist and, these days, a leading figure in NDE studies. The book is Consciousness Beyond Life. It’s a mixed sort of product, stunningly excellent in parts. But it fails as a “work.” It is a kind of together-binding of magazine or journal articles padded out into chapters. The book’s early chapters cover the same ground Raymond Moody did in Life After Life; in many areas Lommel’s book is more complete and thorough, in others interestingly selective. Moody gave very strong emphasis to the spirit’s reception in the beyond by a “being of light.” In Lommel’s presentation the testimonials he chose to illustrate this aspect support a much more pantheistic feeling. But it is Lommel’s main thematic I found interesting as an indicator of our times; but Lommel’s case, I hasten to add, is just one of many. He reaches out to physics for his theme and latches on to the concept of non-locality, a discovery of quantum mechanics.

In the crudest form, locality means that if someone punches me hard on the chin, the lady waiting for the bus a block away won’t fall down. She cannot be affected by what happens to me. In more sophisticated form, this means that for B to be affected by A in some way, communication must be possible between A and B; and this communication cannot take place more rapidly than the speed of light. Non-locality means that in some way, anyway, the pain I feel when punched does affect the lady waiting for the bus; my negative experience is communicated to everyone; others don’t have to feel it consciously, but it is so. It also means that instantaneous communications between A and B are possible, even if these two are moving away from each other at the speed of light.

Now it so happens that non-locality has been proved to exist in quantum physics. Two elementary particles can be caused to come into being by producing particle decay. These particles will be “entangled” with each another; thus if A has an upward then B will have a downward spin. If you change the spin of A, the spin of B will necessarily change as well; that’s what entanglement means. And this can happen even when they’re far apart. Experiments have been conducted so that A and B are caused to fly apart at the speed of light. Then the spin of one is forced to change—while the spin of the other is detected. Sure enough, as A changes, so does B. B seems to know that A has changed and thus conforms to be in harmony—but the “signal” between the two, if there is a signal, must have travelled faster than the speed of light. As physicist understand the matter—and they are clearly concerned not to violate Einstein’s iron law on the speed of light—no signal actually passes. Far separated although in space they are, A and B remain linked in a mysterious field relationship.

Now, you might ask, what does any of this have to do the ability of a human consciousness to survive the death of its body? The commonality here is relatively limited. Communications at a distance without a signal are difficult for modern man to grasp. Indeed, Einstein hated the notion of non-locality and tried to defeat it to the best of his ability. Similarly, for the modern mind—but not for those of us who grew up still embedded in hoary old traditions—the notion of human survival of death is a similar scandal. That’s the real linkage. What is interesting here is that appeal to physics, rather than to human reason and intuition, strikes Lommel as appeal to a Higher Authority. Lommel might have used Rupert Sheldrake’s Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home as his proof; Sheldrake’s findings also show “action at a distance” without discernible signaling, especially when the owner is downtown and the dog in the suburbs thirty miles away. Alas the truth is that the highest authority available to us is our own mind.

The Image of a Blast Furnace

Brigitte made me aware of an article Common Dreams.org reproduced from TruthDig.com by Chris Hedges entitled “After Religion Fizzles, We’re Stuck with Nietzsche.” I read the article (it’s here) and then sampled some of the 260-plus comments (and counting) that this article produced. Cultural change is a subject I mostly deal with on Ghulf Genes, but I thought I’d record some reactions to this phenomenon here. It’s my conviction that we are slowly leaving the materialistic culture behind us; I date this trend from the early nineteenth century; I think it’s real and, in way, counter-intuitive, indeed barely credible. That is because cultural change is vast and slow. You barely see the new because the all highly visible aspects of culture stem from the last four hundred years or so and overwhelm the new. Occasionally good eyes can glimpse the upwelling of change; Brigitte saw this in Hedges' article and, more to the point, in the rather large reaction to it. There is a great passion and energy here, and also what strikes me as a great mixing of relevant and irrelevant matters.

This bit of public speech—some would call it a “conversation”—reminds me of the seemingly equally chaotic processes that take place inside a blast furnace. There ore is mixed with limestone flux and coke to produce pig iron. At this stage in our culture, we’re still in the early stages of smelting the raw materials from which the bright sword of a new order will be forged. The other stages still lie ahead—and will require much more heat and sophistication: the Bessemer furnace to make steel of the iron, further refinement of the steel, let’s call it the making of stainless. And it is with this very advanced material that the Japanese samurai sword-maker will set to work, beating the steel, bending it, reheating it, hammering it again—and many times over—in ever more careful processes of hardening, and sharpening. And at last a new culture will be formed.

However mixed and chaotic the current discussion is—and in circles that, thirty, forty years ago would not have been interested at all—it is good to see that the process has begun and that it’s drawing people who actually participate. At each stage the passion will be transformed into knowledge, the turbulence into concentration. And thus society will be transformed. A great deal of the heat and energy required for this process will come, alas, from the breakdown of the current order. Fortunately chaos hides order within it (we know this from chaos theory). I assert this of the big collective out there; that's what the exchange I cite represents, a public phenomenon. What happens at the individual level is something quite different; sometimes it is influenced by, but often it is entirely independent of, these cultural transformations. The old order has not died everywhere. The nutrients have always been there, even if hidden beneath vast layers of sediment.

Concentration

It strikes me that one of the distinguishing characteristics of being human, thus of consciousness and self-awareness, is the ability to concentrate at will. Animals are quite capable of concentration too, but it is not under their voluntary control. I observe this on every walk I take, especially this time of year. The squirrels are in the final phase of their preparations for the coming winter. They’re all over the place. And I can see how the environment directs their attention and compels their action. Every squirrel, every time will climb the nearest tree or hide under the nearest bush if, as I walk by them, I get close enough to them.

Voluntary action is the hallmark of transcendence. It requires a kind of separateness from the physical. The separation is rarely very great, but there it is. It is that “cubic millimeter” of separation Carlos Castaneda attributed to his real or invented sorcerer-guru, Don Juan. I am, of course, not talking about reflexive actions; controlling them requires extraordinary training. Nor do I refer to spontaneous heroism in situations of sudden crisis—self-defense or defense of the child. I once saw the strangest sight. It was a chipmunk “standing up” to one of our cats. It had been cornered; there it was, about to be killed. It rose on its hind legs and made warding off motions at the cat while making a hissing sort of sound. The cat, for whatever reasons—perhaps my immediate proximity distracted it—did not immediately act. The chipmunk then absconded. But for a moment, heroically, it was ready to face down the vast predator that over-loomed it. I don’t mean that sort of thing. We—whatever that word means—are tightly woven into our bodies. What is amazing is that we can indeed over-come the material at will.

What this suggests to me is that culture—personal as well as collective—will manifest itself in forms that signal concentration and detachment. By contrast, decadence will manifest itself as an increase in spontaneity, informality, and distraction. My classing spontaneity with decadence will rub some people wrong—rubs me wrong too, you might say. But I’ll say more about that in a moment. Processes that proceed in an automated way, stimulus followed by response, resemble the natural, the lower, the physical. Processes triggered by intentions, where the intention follows and guides the development—these are of a higher order.

The life process itself, as I see it, is the action of something high gathering strength and gradually freeing itself from its entanglement in the lower. Therefore life has direction. It is teleological. It manifests in increasing levels of order—and this order opposes, counters the random arrangement of the physical. Chance operates in the material plane, mind creates order. In humans the first possibilities of genuine detachment occur, and these manifest as concentration and conscious volition.

The process, in the human realm, has a cyclic pattern. Thus it manifests as cultural development followed by exhaustion and decay. Oddly enough our very success in organizing matter leads to decay. The pressures of necessity ease up. In consequence we relax our concentration, let go of our formalities, and permit ourselves to be distracted. Distraction requires much less effort. It is going with the flow, as it were. Ours is an age of exhaustion—and let’s not be deceived by our fantastic wealth, brilliant technology, and celebrated diversity. The whole structure of life today is organized to maximize distraction. That is what a culture of consumption produces. Things, things, things. Faster and faster. Flicker and flicker. Instant gratification is followed by equally instant dissatisfaction. Which calls for an immediate fix. And so on it goes. By contrast any activity that requires sustained, focused attention will appear as boring, old-fashioned, out-of-it rather than with-it. I maintain three blogs. Of these one is amusing, sharp-witted, and stimulating. One is cultural in focus but entertaining on a higher level. And this one is much more concentrated. Which one has the least readership? You guessed it. This one. Why? It requires concentration to follow.

Now a note about spontaneity. There is a lower kind which is reflexive. And then there is the higher kind. It is the higher kind that we actually admire and see manifested in the great works of art. But that kind of spontaneity arises from a great surplus of power built up over long periods of sustained effort, mastering higher forms of expression. And when it begins to operate, it looks effortless and yet produces wonderfully ordered structures. That spontaneity is valuable. The other kind even the drunk displays in various amusing and destructive forms.