Tag: tribe

The cult(ivation) of self

 

The following video was recently shared by Glen Brauer of Philosophy Dinners. I think it is a good synthesis of mindfulness, philosophical enquiry and the state of knowledge in the neuroscience of emotions, and so it is a good starting point for an exploration of the limits of some pervasive concepts in the world of what is often called self-development.

Now obviously I have nothing against self-development per se, or I wouldn’t be writing this blog. And I think Chade-Meng Tan sets the idea of self-awareness out, in the video, in a contemporary manner which already avoids some of the traps, even if he is still constrained to some extent by language. Thus it is obvious that what he means by “mindfulness” is not an awareness only of the mind or of cerebral processes, but also, to the extent possible, of somatic processes and in particular of emotion. This idea (“bodyfulness”) in itself already takes us beyond the mind/body split which we inherit from Hellenistic philosophy, and I think it is very valuable. He also indicates that the result of self-awareness should be an increased flexibility in ones mental range of action: that the ego becomes a tool and not a driving force. So far I agree. However, before zeroing in on what seem to me still to be some limitations in this paradigm, a brief excursus is required.

The Socratic exhortation to self-knowledge is historically inseparable from an exhortation to self-discipline, as Plato’s development of it, and its political economy, make clear. Socrates in no way was advocating a truly open-ended spirit of self-enquiry. Plato and Aristotle assume all number of things about the universe, none of which is founded in sensory data. In my opinion, there is nothing in the Western philosophical tradition before modern times which encourages or even allows for a phenomenologically based calling into question of social institutions. The dictates of logos, imagined to be self-evident, apparently led everyone to conclusions which are now mostly incompatible with major swathes of scientific knowledge about the human condition. The exhortation to follow the promptings of conscience was in reality an exhortation to conform, and one which led to no revolutionary insights at all, and no degree of authentic being.

There have been, of course, dissenting voices to the Socratic tradition, even if they have been marginalized by history: the Epicureans, the Cynics, Boethius…. But each of these has (of understandable necessity) sought a consolation compatible with the established order, even as they rejected it. The French Revolution was doubtless the first time that philosophy played any sort of a role in a mass political uprising, and it was hardly in the driving seat.

I know next to nothing about the history of Zen Buddhism, but the question arises of whether the particular form of the movement and its characteristic doctrines do not represent a similar accommodation. To ask this question, I would argue, is to answer it. Therefore, we should be on our guard for likely omissions in the doctrine which would have rendered it marginalized or existentially endangered, and thus have not survived to this day or are, like liberation theology, only in the process of formulation.

Primitive societies would struggle to understand our concept of self-awareness. To them it would be utterly alien to imagine that not only could an “I” exist separate from the tribe but that it could be so much an object of attention and cultivation that the tribe disappears almost entirely from view. At times it might seem like the whole spiritual tradition of “civilized” societies is a roundabout, almost absurd means to rediscover and enter into an unio mystica which to a hunter-gatherer is so immanent as to be self-evident. The hunter-gatherer, whose senses are already honed to perfection to his/her environment and peers, has no need of a doctrine of self. Perhaps we only privilege it because we have lost all else?

This view is more radical than I am able to be right now. However, it affords a neat perspective against which to evaluate some of the claims of even a progressive theology of mindfulness, and especially its equation with self-awareness. Tan’s presentation seems to draw on models of the emotions within neuroscience which embody an implicit limitation in the scope of knowledge to the self, at least de facto. This seems to pit self-awareness against other-awareness in a manner which betrays significant cultural bias and I am not sure survives a phenomenological audit. Tan seeks in this way to obtain “mastery” over experience. But who is it, in this case, that masters, and in the name of what? What scope does this leave for rapture and for the numinous? To give just one example, but which is telling, is one seeking to “master” the sexual act? Is this the mode of experience of it which is most authentic and most felicitous? Intuitively it seems not. And when we are “honest” about our limitations, are we as aware as we should be that what we really lack is a not a self-audit, but a critical perspective on society?

I think Tan is at least guilty (judging only on the basis of this presentation) of allowing his audience to persist in cultural biases which he might have helped them to overcome. If that cultural bias predisposes to individually and collectively unhappy outcomes, which I believe in the aggregate it does, his disciples can listen to their bodies and emotions all they like, they will still be zombies walking a path to global ruin.

It may be objected, of course, that we have nothing else than sense-data, and hence that Tan’s position is a tautology. I do not dispute this; but everything is in how matters are framed. I could quote Bourdieu at this juncture, but I will content myself with Rumi, whose precocious prefiguration of social constructivism is breathtaking. “Speak a new language, so that the world will be a new world.“

Ancestral sexuality: more clues from our erotic imagination?

In my last post, I alluded to some of the evidence from psychoanalysis which supports the position of primary sexual non-exclusivity taken in Sex at Dawn. In this post, I would like to throw out another idea. (*)

I have mentioned before Robert Stoller’s work on the erotic imagination (here and here) and have just now finished reading the chapter on erotic fantasy in Esther Perel’s superb Mating in Captivity, to which I shall return in a future post Reading this, it occurs to me that we have no good answer to the following question: why is the experience of repressed aggression or of humiliation sexualized even when it is not obviously sexual in origin? That is, why do we make specifically sexual fantasies out of these experiences and wish to reenact them in a sexual context? One could perfectly well reenact them in other contexts, and as a practical matter this may often be far easier to do; yet the erotic persona often seems diametrically opposed to the public persona. There is of course a Freudian, “developmental” answer to this question, but it is in this regard circular: it begs the underlying question of why exactly sex is so important to the ego.

So what is the link between sex, aggression and status and why is it so powerful? After all, in plenty of primate species sex has no particular importance: it is casual, episodic and short-lived. Given the insignificant role of sex in such species, it is hard to imagine that they spend anything like the proportion of their time thinking about it which humans do. In fact there is only one primate species for which it is easy to conceive of its possessing an active erotic imagination and one in which sex and aggression are closely linked: the bonobo.

For bonobos, sex plays a rich and unique social role. Let’s listen to Frans de Waal: “Bonobo sex often occurs in aggressive contexts … A jealous male might chase another away from a female, after which the two males reunite and engage in scrotal rubbing. Or after a female hits a juvenile, the latter’s mother may lunge at the aggressor, an action that is immediately followed by genital rubbing between the two adults.”

Just like “make-up” sex which anecdotally is a frequent occurrence in human dyadic relationships, sex for bonobos plays a role of reestablishing social connections after emotions have gotten a little out of hand.

Now let’s imagine a bonobo which for some reason (forced induction into human “civilization” for example) is not allowed to use sex to bring reconciliation in a certain range of contexts and is also sex-deprived generally. The experience of aggression in these contexts is still, presumably, going to provoke in him or her an erotic reaction. Absent the opportunity to act on this impulse, one can well imagine its becoming, by the standard mechanism, a neurotic script whereby the circumstances which originally sollicited the reaction non-exclusively, now become integral to it and required for it to take place.

That is, we may hypothesize that the ability to make aggression into a core element within the erotic imagination  requires a significant primary link between sexuality and aggression in the social life of the species. Aggression and sexuality are in a subtle and continuous balance in bonobo society, the purpose of which is to sustain cooperation within the tribe.

My purpose, of course, is not to suggest that human sexuality is not much more sophisticated than that of bonobos: it clearly is. Yet it is appealing to imagine, even if it is only the embryo of an idea requiring further research, that we share this archetypal association, as it would illuminate what remains otherwise, to my mind, somewhat of a mystery.

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(*) Note: as readers of the book will be aware, the theme of a link between the erotic imagination and primary sexuality is already present in Sex at Dawn, where the authors discuss the appeal of multi-male pornography to men. This contribution is in a similar spirit.

Our tribal nature

Since Sex at Dawn, it is finally beyond doubt that humankind is not a monogamous creature. Nonetheless, there are lot of details still to be filled in as regards the exact role of sexuality in the social organization of our species, both past and present. In this regard, we are only possessed at present of a few, tantalizing clues. However, both brief introspection and sheer logic suffice to conclude that sexual behavior in our species does not serve simply or primarily as some kind of casual, diffuse and undifferentiated social glue. Such an extreme view appears to be a gross simplification even for bonobos.

What I have observed, purely from self-study and from listening to others who have similarly tried to understand themselves, is that there remains a fundamental difference between men and women as regards their emotional response to situations in which their sexuality comes to contemporary expression, at least when it is expressed within a holistic response to another individual where attraction is felt on a number of levels. This difference appears to me to be irreducible to purely cultural and contingent factors, and to play a plausible role in primitive societies as well.

Sticking to bonobos, and we should be careful in extrapolating too naively to our own species, we know that they live in philopatric groups. This means that the male composition of groups is constant over time, whilst females migrate into groups other than that in which they were born. Whilst homosexual behavior takes place in both sexes, it appears to play more of a bonding role amongst females, whereas amongst males its role is more as an outlet for sexual tension and to reinforce mating hierarchies: males exhibit markedly less intra-sex solidarity than females.

Now I have not read anything about this, applying either to bonobos or our own species, but the question obviously arises of the factors which come into play in inciting a female to join another group. There is clearly a push factor – the desire to avoid incestuous pregnancy – but it is still necessary to choose the new host group. It is hard to believe that this choice is entirely left to chance.

Looking at our own species – methodological rigor is not claimed – and trying to think a little bit how this would have worked in primitive tribal societies (though contemporary evidence should also be available), I have remarked and postulate that men, when they feel a high degree of attraction to a new female (“fall in love”), seek to bring her into the tribe. “Falling in love” does not cause men to wish to abandon their existing family and other social ties, though it may be so strong on occasion and encounter such opposing forces that this less-preferred option nevertheless comes out on top. Essentially, male sexuality is inclusive. Males also have a strong wish for new females to bond with existing females and will make efforts in this sense, however fruitlessly and apparently, perhaps, naively. Bonding with existing females will be a factor in the ultimate inclusion or otherwise of a new female in the group. Translated into contemporary society, the bottom line is that men do not want to leave their wives (never mind their children), but at the same time do wish to offer protection and security to new sexual partners as well.

On the female side, other forces are at work. A woman who feels a deep attraction to a new man is likely to feel a desire to be with him, and to consider abandoning her existing social roles in order to realize that goal. The frustration of this desire can result in dramatic behavior,  à la Madame Bovary. It is nonetheless held in check by certain factors, principal amongst which are children and female friends. To leave her existing mate is less inconceivable for a woman than for a man and sentimental ties are less important relative to the force of her new passion.

In bonobos, for a female to leave a group would mean to leave her immature children behind. The males will never rejoin her, and the females, once they enter into adulthood, are unlikely to. I do not know if females ever produce children in more than one group but am guessing it is most uncommon. It’s likely that a female who has become a mother remains henceforth with the group in which that event has occurred. Romantic attachments to extra-group males, whilst they might still happen, would not achieve the critical momentum necessary to sever existing ties. Female sexuality eventually settles into a more nurturing and more inclusive form, but the initial choice of group is made on the basis of a single male considered as a desirable mate – not on the basis of an assessment of the group as a whole.

This postulate shows us how what we now consider as “monogamous” sexual attraction may have existed and played a role in the social processes leading to the formation of primitive tribal groups, in particular to resolve the problem of choice of group faced by the newly adult female. In this perspective, it is not something anomalous grafted onto a fundamentally polygamous nature. When, however, it encounters contemporary social structures, it misfires for several reasons.

Our existing “tribes” are tiny nuclear families or, at best, kinship groups. Woman have been given legal rights (without my taking any view on these rights) which make it likely that separation from children will not be a cost of divorce. Under these circumstances, leaving the “tribe” is much easier. This creates a risk of breakdown in the tribe which a man’s efforts to strengthen the tribe by bringing in new females and new children may only hasten. The same drives which developed, in other words, to generate stable social structures under the constraint of maintaining genetic diversity, now generate unstable social structures in which childcare inevitably suffers.

This picture is not, perhaps, as hopeless as it sounds. In primitive times also, many factors would have frustrated the wishes of many individuals, and yet these factors would not have led to massive neurosis and social breakdown. We are far more robust to disappointment than we perhaps realize.

That certain desired outcomes cannot be realized is not in itself the problem. The dramatically dysfunctional outcomes that we see all around us are rather due to the fact that we cannot even own the truth of our nature and respect that of the other. Under these circumstances, it is not only particular wishes that cannot be accommodated, but the whole prospect that such wishes will be accommodated, ever and to any degree. This systemic, existential frustration generates ill-feeling and potentially violence and abuse which goes on to undermine our tiny tribes from inside, making their undermining from outside ever more probable.

As ever, a wise and adaptive response can only come through awareness and empathy.