Neoshamanism

In recent conversations with two of my very good friends who shall remain nameless [Edward "No-J" Cox and L.A. Story], a recurrent theme reared its interesting head:  i.e., the comment was made that I, personally, seemed to have it in for global warming.  The comment also made it into one of Ed's periodic e-mails to me . . . without rancor, you understand.  We discuss lots of stuff; it's rather like sitting at an e-coffee shop on the Left Bank, or in an e-bierkeller in Munich.  So the comment simmered and seethed and stewed [I'm not alliterate; my parents were married], until finally it bubbled and baked and brewed into a fully-blown firestorm of . . . well, you'll see.

It starts with God.  No, not the entity, but the concept.  A brief anecdote will illustrate.  Several millennia ago, when I was about age four, maybe five, I asked Mom why the sky was blue.  Her response was, "God made it blue."  It took me a few more years before I realized that her response was a gentle and incurious way of saying, "I haven't the faintest idea."  You'll understand that in a religious household, which ours was, a response like, "God made it blue," pretty much ended discussion.  The question was settled.  She had invoked final authority, the question was settled.

Some years later, as more and more information osmoted its way into my brain, I came to understand that the blue color was the result of angles of refraction coupled with atmospheric density.  I might, if I wished, avail myself of certain texts that would fortify me with precise measurements and calculations in support of the statement of blueness, thereby further increasing my store of knowledge.  Why, given the proper equations and data, I might even be able to predict the color of the sky on, say, Jupiter, or Woman Wept, or Smirk's Larder, or Alastor, or the Lost Moon of Poosh.  The more information we gain, the more we know.  Pardon my tautology.

But human information is hard-acquired, hard-won.  Despite our hunger for liberty and freedom, we are a pig-headed species that clings to orthodoxy as if it were a second skin.  We are also a most terrified species, because of all those species on Earth, we alone, so far as we know, are aware that we can die.  We live in terror [it seems 95% of television advertising is fear-based, though which is cause and which is effect could be debated:  are we afraid because the ads make us so, or do the ads play upon our concerns and amplify them into fears?].

There's good reason for this.  Earth is chock-a-block with terrifying circumstances:  earthquakes, crocodiles, landslides, hurricanes, Gaboon vipers, sandstorms, cyclones, volcanoes, sabre-tooth tigers, appendicitis, floods, droughts, typhoons, famines, tsunamis, cave-ins, mammoth stampedes, erectile dysfunction, woolly bison, the folks in the next cave over, lightning, disease, heat, cold, menopause, thunder, heights, falling trees, falling rocks, hair loss, blizzards, lizards, lions, tigers, bears . . .

Oh, my.

And that's just the shit we can see.

[Yeah, Gaboon viper.  Bitis gabonicus.  So Google it . . . ]

Anecdotal interlude.  On the playground you quickly learned that if you gave Mongo your lunch money, he wouldn't clobber you that day.  You propitiated him . . . oh, darn, already you see where I'm going with this.

[No, we were dirt-poor, and I had no money, so I gave Mongo my PB&J lunch.  Never have a dozen X-Lax tablets been put to better use].

Continuing just a bit more.  Somewhen around the latter years of the Riss/Wurm Interglacial it occurred to Smegly, a lesser-known hunter of the Smeg Tribe, that if he bestowed

Sorry.  Riss/Wurm Interglacial.  Roughly 300,000 to 100,000 years ago.

. . . if Smegly bestowed a portion of his trout upon Smeghead, the Chief of the Smegs, why, Smeghead might look with favor upon Smegly and perhaps even upon his progeny.

There came a dark and stormy night.  Suddenly the earth quaked.  Fissures opened, swallowing bears, trees, and Smegly's progeny.  It was hard to stand upright.  Actually, given the level of evolution at that time, it was hard to stand upright anyway, but the quaking earth made it well-nigh impossible.  This event was accompanied by wailing, by the weeping and gnashing of teeth, by . . . terror.  What, oh what, was happening?  Who was causing it?  How might future fissures be forestalled?

And Smeg4brains, who was a tad swifter intellectually than Smeghead, though not as petty or bulky, saw his chance, and he spoke, and declared unto them.  "Furshglurk has done this.  He is unhappy that you lot do not obey Smeghead, your leader.  See me now.  I take this trout, which is in my right hand, and cast it into the fissure.  If Furshglurk is satisfied that you will obey Smeghead, he will no more cause the earth to open and swallow your progeny."

And yea, no more fissures opened, nor were progeny engulfed.

And it came to pass that Smeghead was obeyed without question, and Smeg4brains became indispensable to the tribal infrastructure, then [as now] comprising two people and assorted sycophants and remora. 

Time counts, as Helen Buday said in Beyond Thunderdome, and keeps counting.

In the fullness of time, the role of Smeghead became firmly entrenched in human civilization as the position of chief [eventually termed king and other synonyms], as did that of Smeg4brains, whose role evolved into that of the shaman.  To said shaman accrued a wisdom and a grasp of portents far beyond those of the average tribal member.  In some tribal groupings the chief was paramount; in others, the chief and shaman were separate but equal; and in still others, the power of the shaman, in many circumstances, exceeded that of the chief.  But almost always it was the chief who ruled [and who ruled based on the shaman's interpretations], and the shaman who interpreted. 

Based on the level of information at the time, it seemed logical to the shamans to suppose that fissures were opened by a powerful being under the earth.  That lightning flashed from a powerful being in the sky.  That thunder sounded by a powerful being not visible.  That rocks that fell were cast down by such a being.  That floods occurred when a being in the river became angry, or perhaps bathed.  Everything that happened, especially happened with harm to the tribe, was caused by these beings.  These gods.  The gods were ubiquitous, and each required propitiation.  And over time, it seemed logical [and less draining on the sacrificial economy] to suppose that some gods were more powerful than others.  Eventually, one was presumed supreme.

[Repeating the caution:  this is not about an entity.  It is about a concept].

Supremity, however, has many names.  Each name has its spokesperson, and sometimes--as in the examples of the pontiff and the patriarch, or the Sunnis and the Shias--more than one.  But that's now.  Let's go back to then.

In conceptual monotheism, it can easily be seen that if the deity is the prime cause, then all that occurs must be attributed to that deity.  If one accepts that a human person--shaman, priest, imam, mahdi, and so forth--is the spokesperson for the accredited deity, then the power of that spokesperson, that representative, becomes prohibitive.  As H. G. Wells noted in his Outline of History, " . . . any doctrine . . . which makes [an action a] process to be performed by the priest, and only to be performed by the priest, and which makes [the action] the central necessity of the religious system, enhances the importance of the priestly order enormously."  [From p. 589 of the 1961 edition].

So there's humanity.  It lives and it breathes and it believes.  Except for a few individuals--Roger Bacon, Averroes, Copernicus, people like that--humanity accepts what it is told to think by its priests and what it is told to do by its rulers.  Sometimes, as in the case of the Pope from about Leo I to Leo III [say, 450 to 800], the ruler and priest were pretty much one and the same.  The code was simple:  believe this, and pay your taxes.  Such was life.

Inevitably, taxes become onerous, and belief becomes stifling.  Leaders come and go, as do taxes, or people come and go, as do Saxons [there must be a poem in there somewhere]; but belief and power usually remain in place unless challenged.  Why is the sky blue?  Because God made it blue.

But:  isn't it interesting how sometimes there is a rainbow in the sky just as the rain fades?

Eventually, "God made it blue" became, for some, unsatisfactory, or at least incomplete.

The tale, which may or may not be apocryphal, goes like this.  Roger Bacon, who was a pain in the posterior to the recognized authorities of  his time [the 13th century], became involved in an acrimonious debate over the number of teeth in a horse's mouth.  Great scrolls and tomes and research documents were brought forth from the monasteries [Bacon was a monk.  Didn't I say?], to show that the number of teeth was this or that or such-and-such.  Finally, Bacon did his best Popeye imitation--"thatsk all I can stands, I can't stands no more"--and up and spoke forth, and quoth, "Whyn't we find us a horse, open its mouth, and count the teeth?  Duh!"  And there was much howling and lamentation among the monks, for such an empirical suggestion was unheard of.  Why, what would happen if human beings were to question what they had been told?  Chaos!  Ragnarok!  Armageddon!  Gotterdammerung!  In Technicolor!  And Panavision!

The problem with knowledge is that it's very hard to bung it back into the bottle.  Rather like toothpaste in that regard.  Put another way, once questions are asked, it's difficult to unask them.  Where do rainbows come from?  Is it God's promise not to inundate the Earth again?  Or is it the result of sunlight passing through prismatic droplets of water that refract the light and separate it into its component spectrum?  If the latter is correct, does that negate the former proposition [and that God did not in fact inundate the Earth]?  Is the sky really blue because God made it blue, or is it blue because of angles of refraction of sunlight?

If you touch the Philosopher's Stone to a mass of lead, will it change the lead to gold?  All sorts of substances were tried [including plating lead with gold leaf and selling the resulting ingot as gold, which often resulted in gelding], but none succeeded.  Yet for centuries it was believed that such a stone existed.  As more knowledge was gained, it became manifest that such a transmogrification was not possible.  To change lead into gold, one had to remove three protons and about five to six neutrons from lead's atomic nucleus--something rather beyond the ability of feldspar.

The more humanity knew, the less it needed to believe.

The less humanity needed to believe, the less it relied on the priestly order to explain things.

[As a corollary, the less humanity depended on belief to sustain them, the more important the things of their lives became].

All of which leads us, in a somewhat circuitous route, to the early 21st century.

In the U.S. and in what is generally regarded as Western Civilization, humanity is less involved in religious belief and more concerned about its material well-being.  Generally.  Yes, there certainly are exceptions, the American South foremost among them [although along the Interstates in Tennessee you can see splendid churches right next to billboards that advertise adult bookstores].  But generally, that statement obtains.  One result of this decline is that we are less willing to fight for something we believe in--e.g., this country, our way of life--because gosh! we could be killed in battle and lose all this neat and pleasurable material stuff. 

Parallel with the aforementioned decline is our concomitant disbelief in an afterlife and a desire to be safe [and alive], regardless of the inconveniences and degradations we have to tolerate in order to ensure that safety.  Better Red than dead, as it were.

Well . . .

Early on in this Tuppence I pointed out that "we are a pig-headed species that clings to orthodoxy as if it were a second skin."  When one orthodoxy falters, we switch to another one that is more durable.  And this is exactly what has happened.

The switch did not come about overnight.  It was a long and arduous process.  Observations were made.  The sky is blue.  At dusk and dawn it can be red, or salmon, or violet.  Rainbows appear in the sky.  Light passes through quartz crystals and comes out like rainbows.  Hmm . . . maybe white light comprises the colors of the rainbow.  Observations continue to be made.  Questions are asked.  What if light contains colors beyond red and violet?  Colors we cannot see.  How then do we detect them, if they exist? 

Thus was born the electromagnetic spectrum.  Observe, test, theorize.  If the observations do not match the theory . . . then adjust the theory.  Observe, test, adjust.

Observe, test, adjust.  The process never ends.  D'you get that?  The process never ends.

It's a looping ribbon of a road to acquire knowledge, and all too often infested with mines, booby-traps, and other impedimenta emplaced by whatever authority is threatened by that acquisition.  Let's see.

Ptolemy [2nd century CE] stated what was the generally accepted belief of his time, that everything revolved around the Earth.  He proposed that each body had a circle, an orbit, which it followed.  All was well with the universe, especially after the Church bought this theory hook, line, and sinker, and effectively labeled it dogmatic. 

[Here was the Church's implicit reasoning.  If the Earth is the center of the universe, and Man is the highest form of life on the center of the universe, and Man has been saved by God, then Man is important and whoever is able to tell Man what to do and what to believe [i.e., the Church, assorted kings] is very powerful.  If the Earth revolves around the Sun, then the Sun is the center of the universe, and Man is less important and whoever orders Man about is less powerful.  Carried further, if the Sun and its planets revolve around the center of the galaxy, then [skipping a couple steps of logic] Man is insignificant and his necessity for salvation is reduced and the power of those who claim the ability to lead Man to salvation is also reduced.  If the Milky Way is merely one of a hundred billion other galaxies . . . well, you see where I could go with this.  Anyway, it follows that rulers and priests had a powerful vested interest in the theory that everything revolved around the Earth].

Copernicus [1473-1543][and one other fellow, whose name escapes me] decided that astronomical observations--as yet without benefit of telescope--might support a theory that the planets, including Earth, revolved around the Sun.  Copernicus wrote of his theory in 1512, but, being a wise and prudent man, did not publish it until he was on his deathbed and could no longer be punished by rulers and priests for his heresy.

Even so, this "heliocentric" theory remained just that, a theory, for without a telescope no detailed observations in support of it were possible.  Ptolemy's Earth-centered theory of the universe still held . . . and assorted Popes breathed sighs of relief.  To be on the safe side, though, the Church put Copernicus' work on the Index of Forbidden Books, which meant that if you read them, you'd go directly to Hell.  You couldn't even pass Go or collect $200.00.

So:  Telescope.  1610.  Galileo.  Observations.  Io, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede:  four objects that clearly did not revolve around the Earth, but around Jupiter.  No, the observations did not prove the validity of Copernicus' heliocentric system.  But they did kick Ptolemy's system in the gonads.

More observations were needed, and they were made.  Theories were tweaked to conform with observed phenomena.  Newton developed the calculus, which enabled Kepler to show that the planets did not revolve in circles around the Sun, but in ellipses.  More phenomena were observed, theories tweaked.

In 1757, some 214 years after Copernicus' theory was published, the Church removed his work from the Index of Forbidden Books. 

They don't get out much in the Vatican.

Anyway, astronomical phenomena are still being observed, theories tweaked, even today.  We are constantly discovering new facts about the universe . . . maybe even about universeS, plural.  The scientific process never ends.  D'you get that?  It never ends.

These statements apply not only to observation and testing and theorizing about astronomical phenomena, but about any phenomena that fall under the heading of science.  Observe, experiment/test, adjust the theory.  It matters not whether we are talking about astronomy, geology, economics, psychology.  Observe, experiment/test, adjust the theory.

Take geology, for example.  In 1912, Alfred Wegener, building on some earlier hypotheses by, among others, Alexander von Humboldt, postulated that Earth's continents had at one time formed one massive continent, which eventually broke up and drifted apart.  At first, the scientific community laughed Wegener out of his socks.  But observations were made, tests conducted, the hypothesis was adjusted.  In 1937, De Toit adjusted the hypothesis by postulating that there might have been two primordial continents, not one.  But the mechanism that might allow them to break up and drift apart remained obscure.  More observation and testing was needed.

In due course it was observed that iron-bearing minerals possessed a magnetism that was not aligned with magnetic north.  It was hypothesized that the magnetism of such minerals pointed to the magnetic north of the time the minerals actually formed.  Obviously, if there were more than one direction for magnetic north, then either there was more than one such north [eliminated by direct observation] or magnetic north had shifted [possible] or the continents had shifted [hmm]. 

Finally, the measured spreading of the sea floor and the action of plate tectonics were added to Wegener's hypothesis, and . . . the continents drifted.  The process is still being refined, of course, as more measurements are taken, more observations are made.  We've only scratched the surface . . . barely to the mantle.  But Wegener is no longer the object of ridicule.

All of which brings us to the Climate Research Unit [CRU] in East Anglia.  These folks have been gathering temperature data since 1960.  The CRU is the primary data source for the so-called "global warming" phenomenon and for Al Gore.  The summary of that data was used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], which then proposed various lifestyle changes that were required in order to reverse the phenomenon.

Well . . .

Normally, when a scientist [or group thereof] conducts experiments and tests and makes observations, she or he keeps copious and detailed notes, be these in a notebook or a computer.  These notes are--and must be--open to all so that their accuracy can be verified and, for that matter, that the competence of the scientist[s] can be confirmed.  Look at it this way:  continental drift was hypothesized by Wegener, that's true, but it took many scientists using many different observational and testing techniques to confirm the validity of the hypothesis.  The heliocentric system of Copernicus required observations by Galileo, calculus [and a bunch of other stuff, like gravity] from Newton, adjustments by Kepler, and experimentation by a host of other scientists.  Notes involve everything that was done or thought in relation to the experiments and observations and measurements.  In some notebooks, now in museums, you will even see marginal notes, parenthetic additions.  Proper scientists are detail-oriented.  Anal, even.

Now, most of us do not--probably can not--conduct intricate and complex scientific experiments, although we are capable of understanding the scientific method in general.  Instead, we believe in the accurate results of scientific experiments and measurements that the scientists have conducted.  We believe in our scientists.  When our scientists tell us something, it is as if God is speaking to us.  When our scientists provide our leaders with their facts and make recommendations based on those facts, and our leaders then issue orders based on those recommendations, why, it's nothing more than the chief, being advised by the shaman, issuing orders to the tribe.

Science has become our new religion.  And, like all religions, its shamans demand orthodoxy of belief and obedience to the chief. 

This isn't necessarily evil.  As long as everyone involved is truthful of facts and open and honest of intent, such a hierarchy can be beneficial and benevolent.

We now know that the Climate Research Unit has not been truthful of the facts it has gathered, nor have its analytical processes been above reproach.  We know this, because we have their e-mails, in which the shamans discuss data manipulation.  It now appears that only those data that support the theory have been included in the recommendations to the chief.  It now appears that unruly data have been concealed from the experiment trail.  It now appears that those shamans who dissented from the recommendations have been "Wegenerized," to enable the orthodox shamans to claim the ability to speak with a scientific consensus.

And we tribal members cannot get the data checked and verified by independent institutions because all the data since 1960 has been, in the words of the CRU, "irretrievably lost."  [I expect the data to resurface at some point in the next year or so, purged of all "irrelevant" data and showing full and total support for the recommendations].

But that doesn't really matter, because our tribal chief, President Barack Obama, has already declared that in the matter of global climate change, "the science is settled."

You'll notice I did not say "global warming."  I said "global climate change."  What's the difference?  Well . . . initially it was called global warming.  Indeed, some of the measurements and temperature data suggested that yes, the temperature of the Earth was rising, just a wee bit.  The problem for the shamans arose when they howled global warming, and the observation of the tribal members was that such-and-such winter was one of the coldest on record.  The observations of the people on the ground, so to speak, did not jibe with the conclusions of the shamans.  These observations were not just blips on the big screen.  Consider:

The winter of 2009-2010 has seen some of the coldest winters and highest snowfall on record.

Great Britain and Germany are suffering through one of their worst winters, Britain's being the coldest since 1981.

Since 2000, and despite "greenhouse emissions," the average temperature of the Earth, according to measurements not associated with the CRU, apparently have either remained relatively constant or, in some cases, actually declined.

Snowfall in Iowa led to massive flooding in 2008, and in 2010 the state recorded its coldest temperature since 1958.

Florida, the Sunshine State, is marketing "pre-frozen" orange juice.

And that's just a few "unorthodox" observations.

Well, after the laughter and ridicule waned, the red-faced shamans made an adjustment in the hypothesis, to wit:  global climate was changing, a far less controversial term, and the word "warming" was dropped . . . but not the hypothesis.  The Earth was still warming, said the shamans, and in the adjusted global climate change model, it was [as a convenient truth] allowed as how unusually cold winters and high rates of snowfall were covered in a "warming Earth" model.  Thus, in 2010, when the entire east coast of the U.S. was closed down due to a historically unprecedented snowfall, it did not deter the shamans or the tribal chief, who stolidly poked his head up through the mountains of snow that buried the White House to again proclaim that "the science is settled."

Yeah, and the Titanic is still making port calls.

So why are the shamans and the tribal chief so stubborn, in the face of contrary observations and data?  It's simple:  it's about power and control.  If they can get you to buy into their orthodoxy, they can tell you what to do.  And they are insidious about getting you to buy into it.  Consider this gem from the World Meteorological Organization:  no single event should be regarded as " . . .proof of either warming or the fact that warming has stopped."  What's wrong with that?  You may well ask.  On the one hand you have "warming."  On the other you have "warming has stopped."  In either case, you have to accept the fact of warming, either as a continuous process or as a process that has stops and starts.  You are not offered the option or the possibility that there was no warming, or that there was cooling.  Instead, you are hoodwinked into accepting by default the case for global warming . . . er, climate change.

The problem for us common tribal folk is that there is some validity to the process of global climate change, even to the process of global warming.  It's in the interpretation where the conflict lies.  See, polar ice is melting.  Antarctica is calving massive icebergs.  Glaciers here and there are shrinking.  And weather is changing.  But are "greenhouse emissions" the cause?  Or does the Earth warm [and cool] as part of its normal processes?  Considering that the Riss/Wurm Interglacial lasted 200,000 years, I'd say it's way too early to tell, and probably will remain so for another thousand or more years. 

Look at it this way:  so far this year we've seen a 7.8 earthquake in Haiti and an 8.8 in Chile.  Based on these data, the CRU would predict the complete disintegration of the Earth by 2012.

No, the Earth doesn't do anything in a hurry.  Only humans do that, and usually for the wrong reasons.

In the meantime, keep in mind that science is never settled.  We are always learning new things.  Anyone who tells you that "the science is settled" is either abysmally ignorant or trying to sell you a Rolex that you really don't want to buy.  If the shamans of science are going to insist on orthodoxy, and the tribal chiefs are going to remain in power by legislating their recommendations, perhaps it's time for a new Martin Luther to nail a paper to the White House door.

Past Tuppence:
December 2009
September 2009
June 2009
March 2009
December 2008
September 2008
June 2008
March 2008
December 2007
September 2007
June 2007
March 2007
December 2006
September 2006
June 2006
March 2006
December 2005
September 2005
June 2005
March 2005
December 2004
September 2004
June 2004
March 2004
December 2003
September 2003
June 2003
March 2003
December 2002
October 2002
August 2002
June 2002
April 2002
February 2002
December 2001
October 2001
August 2001

Read more from Tyree Campbell in any of the following:

The Dog at the Foot of the Bed
by Tyree Campbell

Wondrouse Web Worlds Vol. 6

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 5

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 4

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 3

Sex and the Single Alien
An anthology

Nyx
A novel by Tyree Campbell

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 2