Saturday, February 16, 2013

Quantum Genetics and Transcendence

There was something else in Scott Richard Lyons's excellent book X-Marks that I wanted to bring up here.  In a discussion of Indian nationalism and the different ways Native writers have tried to define what it means for them, Lyons returns to the Canadian First Nations writer Taiaiake Alfred and to Alfred's recommendations that I quoted before:
It is a reasonable question to ask if Alfred would value or even recognize “one-to-one mentoring, face-to-face interaction, and small-group dialogue to effect the regeneration of our minds, bodies, and spirits” if it were conducted in the context of an Indian church or a Boys and Girls Club and not in a “warrior” sort of way. If Alfred’s answer is no, then we are once again in the realm of cultural resistance, not nationalism, and probably in the presence of a culture cop. Another way that Alfred defines people by “what they are” rather than by “what they do” is evident in his curious defense of Kahnawake’s stringent requirements for citizenship. In his first book, Alfred defended his nation’s 50 percent blood quantum and its moratorium on marriages to non-Natives – that is, if you married a non-Indian, you would be stripped of citizenship – while admitting that Kahnawake’s desired goal was apparently no more than phenotype: “physical characteristics were ideal because they helped an individual identify himself as Indian, and represented the difference between Indians and non-Indians.” By that logic the comedian George Lopez could become a stellar Mohawk. Alfred’s second book was somewhat critical of blood quantum but still ultimately justified it, and Alfred even invented a convenient historical narrative for it: “membership was determined by beliefs and behavior, together with blood relationship to the group. Both blood relations and cultural integration were and are essential to being Indian.” That claim is historically false and biologically unwise, as mandated “blood relations” would soon enough produce unsightly genetic issues in any small group of people … [142-3]
I'd go farther than Lyons and declare that the combination of culture and "blood" equals racism.  Not many people who've gone through a Western-style education would try to root culture in biology anymore.  Western-educated people mostly know that there is no link between culture (language, customs) and biology (physical traits like skin color).  As Noam Chomsky says, "Take a child from a Stone Age culture and raise him in New York: he will become a New Yorker. Raise an American baby in New Guinea, and he will become a Papuan 'native.' The genetic differences one finds are superficial and trivial, but human beings have the extraordinary characteristic of being able to live in very different ways."  But there's still a counter-narrative based in Kumbaya liberalism that we, and especially non-whites, need to be in touch with our "roots," a metaphor that really doesn't work.  (A plant's roots are wherever it was planted, not in whatever distant place the seed came from.  Seeds are supposed to travel.)

But the main reason I wanted to quote this passage was Lyons's reference to mentoring, face-to-face interaction and small-group dialogue "in the context of an Indian church or a Boys and Girls Club and not in a 'warrior' sort of way."  Or, he could have added, "in a university classroom."  Back in the late Nineties, when the mythopoetic men's movement was at its peak, I had some vehement online debates with some of its adherents.  One of them argued you don't need to actually wield weapons or shed blood to be a "warrior."  I asked him if he could recognize as a "warrior" a gay man who fought with words and ideas against other men's abuse of women and other men?  He didn't answer that, even though it followed from his declared position.  I didn't really want to claim "warrior" status anyway, even such a watered-down version: I was countering his complaints that he, a would-be Jungian "warrior," was being picked on by what he called juiceless capons and soft men, among many other revealing epithets.  The mythopoetics were never really comfortable with the movement's faggots, despite their important but not prominent (for PR and merely homophobic reasons) role in the movement from its inception.  When someone starts babbling about "warriors," the first thing I want to know is what role they envision for non-warriors.

These thoughts sent me back to Richard Seymour's critique of Christopher Hitchens on religion.  First Seymour quoted Hitchens on religion as the opium of the people:
What is being argued in this passage is not that religious enthusiasts and prophets are dope peddlers.  That is the universal vulgarization of Marx's opinion.  What Marx meant is that there is a chord of credulity waiting to be struck in all of us.  It is most likely to be struck successfully if the stroke comes concealed as an argument for moral and human behavior.
Seymour comments:
This, bewilderingly, rebuts one vulgarisation with another.  It is a misreading bordering on travesty to say that Marx's passage here adverted to a 'chord of credulity' (meaning, I suppose, an innate need for some transcendental experience, which religion purports to supply).  It is quite correct that Marx was not dismissing religion in this passage but rather ascribing its power to earthly sources, or what Marxists describe as the 'material conditions' of exploitation and oppression.  
This is a disingenuous reading of Hitchens.  I don't think Marx meant a "chord of credulity," but I don't think Hitchens meant "an innate need for some transcendental experience" either.  What he meant, presumably, was a widespread human willingness to believe what one wants to believe, what brings one comfort, whether it's "transcendent" or not.  It's hard for me to believe that Seymour would deny that human gullibility is a real phenomenon, and a frustrating problem, both in others and in oneself.

As for Seymour's "innate need for some transcendental experience," it sounds to me as if he thinks there is such a thing.  But "transcendent" isn't the clearest word in the language; it has numerous meanings just within the philosophy of religion, and I'm not sure which one Seymour had in mind.  Leaving that aside, Seymour begs two questions: whether there is a "need" for such experience and whether it's "innate."  Just because you think you need something doesn't mean you do need it, let alone that you can get it.  One of the religious meanings listed by Wikipedia is "Salvation, the human transcendence of death."  There are many ways to "transcend death," and not all involve belief in an afterlife.  (I stand with Wittgenstein, who wrote that even if there is an afterlife, it's as much a riddle as this one, and so isn't any help.)  But even if Seymour's right, even if I grant that human beings innately need transcendent experience, it doesn't follow that they will get it, or that religion is the only way to get it.  That, I submit, is like claiming that religion is the only way to have morality, or beauty, or wisdom.  Some people have insisted that transcendence is best found outside of organized religion, for example, in solitary contemplation without sectarian membership; who is he to say they're wrong?

I doubt Seymour would want to go that far, though, for he continues:
Hitchens, as he made clear during the Rushdie affair, did not agree with this approach.  Religion had 'a life of its own,' and by the time of the war on terror had assumed such gigantic proportions in Hitchens's mind that it explained almost everything.  God is not great?  Hard to believe after such a lengthy tribute to his puissance [68].
I'd like to think that Seymour basically agrees with me that religion does not have a life of its own, and doesn't explain much of anything: it was invented and is constantly being reinvented by human beings, and it has no essence.  I'm not sure I agree with Marx's explanation of what religion is or where it comes from, but that can be discussed.  If people want "transcendent experience," they're welcome to pursue it, though they can still be questioned and criticized about what they're looking for and what it means.  What I want to argue here is that whatever good things religion "purports" to offer can be found anywhere and everywhere, and the best way to resist the culture cops is to remember that.