From: Peshewegunzh <beaver.cs.washington.edu!gnosys!mthvax.cs.miami.edu!mamia!peshe>
Subject: Re: Environment and native issues
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 08:01:46 GMT

Original-Sender: Peshewegunzh <mthvax.cs.miami.edu!mamia!peshe>

Alan McGowen <hpindbu.cup.hp.com!alanm> wrote:

> While I agree with much of [what Peshewegunzh wrote], I think that the
> only spirituality which is feasible for western humanity at this point
> is one which must emerge from a deepened understanding of nature through
> science.

I'd be interested in knowing what this spirituality would consist of, since
it seems that Alan believes it would have to come through the filter of
western technology - that is, the considerable limits and assumptions of
the mindset limited to certain expressions of the scientific method. What
is feasible for western humanity to believe at this point is of some interest
because we all must live with the consequences to one degree or another, but
it is of course no one's obligation to accept something merely because
Europeans do, though of course that has always been most Europeans'
viewpoint.

> I gather however that Peshewegunzh thinks this a false path, based on a
> materialist denial of creation.

I think that limiting the accepted phenomena of the universe to simply what
is not outside of the competence of a particular useful but by no means
exhaustive technique has certain emotional and spiritual overtones that
have aspects of what all societies have recognized in the past as hubris.
When one sets up idols that one has made oneself, one tends to diminish
one's own self, becoming as limited as the idol.

Nevertheless, I would like to know more of the details of a new
emerging spiriruality based on materialism.

> But spiritualities that come equipped with all the answers in advance can
> have problems when they turn out to be wrong in the details. Not so long ago,
> western people all believed that the world was a product of a creator. They
> were also quite sure that the creation was fairly recent and that species were
> fixed in nature once created. They were wrong about this;

There are a certain number of unproven and unprovable assumptions that
all human beings act on, and those who are "scientific materialists" are
not exempt from their own. Merely asserting something does not make it so;
as the soviet biologist, Aleksandr Oparin, observed, "Proof in the sense in
which one thinks of it in chemistry and physics is not attainable in the
problem of primordial biogenesis."

> "Creationists" still hold out against the teaching of evolution to
> children, using arguments not unlike Peshewegunzh's about the harmful moral
> effects of materialism. Apparantly it does not occur to them that moral
> harm can also sometimes come from obstinate refusal to face facts.

Philip Johnson at UC Berkeley has explained why arguments such as the above
entertain such totalitarian notions, finding the practical expression of
dissent so intolerable, with their proponents being willing to resort to force
in its suppression.

Johnson observes that there is an ideological goal, to make "naturalistic
evolution a fundamental tenet of society, to which everyone must be
converted ... if scientific naturalism is to occupy a dominant cultural
position, it must do more than provide information about the physical
universe. It must draw out the spiritual and ethical implications of the
creation story. In short, evolution must become a religion."  Isn't this
more of the cultural hegemony practiced by Europeans, with a new
twist but with esssentially the same victims?

> Perhaps Peshewegunzh has no particular quarrel with evolution, but sees it
> as an expression of the creativity of the Great Spirit. Yet there can be
> pitfalls with this approach as well.

Although this argument seems to go out of its way to be unrelenting towards
any spiritually based position, I agree that there are pitfalls with this
approach. Essentially, I believe that although hiding behind the shibboleth
of the word "scientific," those so adamant about evolution are motivated
because of what evolutionist D.M.S Watson spoke of: "Evolution is accepted
by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or can be proved by
logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible."

As for moral implications, there are many, and they have to do with racism.
Alan attempts to avoid the problem of "evolutionary differences" that are
perceived among human beings by saying that evolution is not "progressive,"
i.e. there is nothing inherently superior about any life form from another,
let alone among human beings. Of course, taking nature as an example, then,
it may be that at some point humans might have to die, should it become
necessary, to ensure the survival of some other life form, and since there
is no qualitative difference among life forms - those other life forms might
happen to be humans, too. The Kansas City Star put it this way, in the
second half of the 19th century (that century of the ascendancy of
philosophies emerging from Darwinism): "The Indians cumbered the earth, and
were removed," justifying in the name of naturalism and scientific materialism
some rather baser motives as the rights of Indians were trampled.

> There was almost certainly nothing inevitable
> about humans, and if the evolutionary history of the earth had been even
> slightly different from what it was, there would be no humans at all on it
> today.

Given that we are here, this is speculative, especially as the mechanisms
by which such a history would have occurred have not been discovered.

> Considerations such as these have to be taken into account together
> with the idea that humans are spiritually unique. The history of life in
> no way suggests that we were the purpose of the whole thing. As Julian Huxley
> is supposed to have said when a bishop asked him what his study of biology
> had taught him about the Creator: "He has an inordinate fondness for Beetles."

One could as easily say that he must have an inordinate fondness for
bigots, since our history with the multitude of Europeans has born out the
sad fact that they have been in the majority. I prefer to agree with
Frederick Douglass, great champion of freedom and former slave who said,
"The man who is right is a majority," recognizing that spiritual and moral
development do count for a great deal, however numerous are those without
it.

> However, I'm convinced that Peshewegunzh is quite correct in his diagnosis
> of western humanity's main spiritual disorder as a confusion about "place"
> -- specificaly, an inability to accept a place in the scheme of things and
> live in it.

We are not to become insignificant, either through materialism that says we
are just another animal belly, or materialism that says we are our own gods.
We are to be in harmony, and yet transcendant.

> The proper use of the
> uniquely human adaptation for symbolic intelligence -- our "unique spiritual
> position -- is to enhance nature rather than to destroy it:

That's a valuable goal, but a human "adaptation for symbolic intelligence" is
not the same thing as "our unique spiritual position" at all. It is quite
possible to have the former without developing the latter very much.

> Amazonian
> rainforest peoples understand this, and they act to *increase* biological
> diversity in their vicinity, for example. They are an asset to the forest
> ecosystem. Many North American indigenous groups apparantly acted similarly,
> and understood this activity to be a crucial part of their spiritual function.

I wonder if any actual Indians recognize themselves in this description. Such
eulogizing gives me an eerie feeling, perhaps of being classified, and leaves me
wondering when, as one of the beetles, the Huxleyan heirs will choose to study
us at the end of their ecological stick-pins.

> According to [Berry's assessment of a false western] view, those who
> depend upon nature, rather than on artifacts, are "uncivilized" and should be
> raised up above their "bestial" state.

All human societies leave artifacts; perhaps a mixed blessing for those who
are invaded by European sociologists and archaelogists. I am certainly
troubled by the unreality of the "noble savage" idea expressed here. While
condemning those who think we ought to be raised up beyond what is
perceived as our original condition, it shares with them the false perception
that that was (or is) our state.

>         ... if doctrines of the religious right are masquerading as a
>         desire to protect native Americans from untoward "European"
>         alliances with things like environmentalism, it should certainly
>         be open for discussion in this forum as to whether that may not
>         itself be such an untoward alliance.

I think this is distressingly intolerant, and rather than an attempt to
understand, seems to try to discredit Indian beliefs and efforts,  by
smearing them with innuendo of association with some sort of "religious
right". Do I detect echoes of a House Un-Environmental Activities
Committee, asking, "Have you ever been, or ever associated with... " ?

>         I respect traditions which hold that the world is
>         sacred and that humans have special responsibilities within it,
>         but this is not the traditional western religious view of the earth:
>         -- made for man's dominion.

What I perceive is that the great misuse of the earth has occurred during
the last two centuries, actually accelerating as the influence of spiritual
values on human beings worldwide was either abolished or made irrelevant
to the ordinary pursuits of life. In European terms, it could be said that
the profane has been substituted for the sacred in almost every area.
It has been the materialists - the scientists, the industrialists, the
socialists, the bureaucrats - who have used their considerable power
to create blindly this massive nest fouling. Looking for salvation from
the same sources is like a dog returning to its vomit. The dog has
no hope of any spiritual insight, of course.

>         ...when the opposition is of such a divisive nature
>         ("don't listen to those environmentalists -- they'll try to
>         Europeanize you, they don't understand you", etc.) Divide and
>         conquer is the oldest tactic of the far right.
>

I'm bemused as many are by this European obsession with "left/right"
political struggles - as I understand, a cultural holdover from where
various people stood in medieval Europe, at either side of their king.
But to me, as I've said before, it all sounds like a jackboot march -
"Left Right! Left Right!" with the future, in Orwellian fashion, a
boot stamping on an Indian face - forever.

I must admit I'm distressed by Alan's visceral hostility
to spiritual values firmly rooted in Indian Country, especially since they
are in harmony with living in respect of our fair sister, the earth.

--
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Peshewegunzh

peshe%mamia.UUCP@mthvax.cs.miami.edu
mthvax.cs.miami.edu!mamia.UUCP!peshe
peshe@mamia.UUCP
mthvax!mamia!peshe

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