Koyaanisqatsi or Human Spiritual Paradigms and The Environment - Original Communism vs. Capitalism

The Human Adventure, Dr. Eugene Ruyle, CSULB, Spring 2002 By James R.
Walker An Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Copy
Koyaanisqatsi
Or Human Spiritual Paradigms and the Environment Original Communism vs. Capitalism
California State University Long Beach MarxismThe Human Adventure Dr. Eugene E. Ruyle By James R. Walker March 2002
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The Human Adventure, Dr. Eugene Ruyle, CSULB, Spring 2002 By James R. Walker An Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Copy
The spiritual paradigm of a culture guides and sets into action the way that society perceives and interacts with the natural environment. "Researchers emphasizing the sociocultural areas must deal constantly with the interaction of economic, social and ideological systems and must place these systems m relation to the natural environment" (Bodley, John H., 2001: pp.11). The shift to sedentary lifestyle, agriculture and the resulting cultivated food surplus is conducive to and responsible for, a shift in religious paradigms and concentration of power into the hands of the few or the one who controls the surplus food and other commodities produced by the labor of the many. What is more, this documented cultural shift illustrates and is congruent with the Marxian proposal that the material conditions of a culture dictates the ideologyspiritual and secularand hence the behavior of the society. Therefore, I will explore the inter-relationships between spiritual systems, secular ideological, social and economic systems, and a culture's adaptation to and impact on nature. In this light, I will compare and contrast the fundamental concepts common to the diverse Native American cultures to the present dominant culture occupying the same continent, the United States. I will illustrate that spiritual beliefs determine how humans view and behave toward the co-inhabitants, plants and animals including other humans, and the natural resources of the land and that these ideas are sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly incorporated into the collective consciousness, daily activities and governing body of that society. Furthermore, I will discuss how original communism, as exemplified by the Native Americans, is conducive to balanced utilization of
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ecological niches and provide evidence that the current capitalistic relationship with the environment is exploitive and potentially self-exterminating. I will end the discussion with suggestions and possible alternatives, naive though they may be, to the current dilemma our contemporary society has created. Let us begin with a brief history of human society. Early human groups lived under the influence of the same natural laws as all other animals. For thousands of years, without scientific intervention, they experienced the same limiting pressures to population as all life on earth. Disease and limited capability to procure natural resources maintained equilibrium between humans and the rest of life on the planet (Wallech, 1999: pp21-32). These cultures where egalitarian and, as such, were classless hence communist societies. As the governing forces of the biosphere constantly buffeted their existence, they created narratives, which imbued the listeners and tellers alike with reverence for all things in nature. These myths and spiritual concepts directed the daily activities of the people and moderated their utilization of the environment around them. "The stories outlined their relationship to plant and animal life and how taking a life effects them and describes attitudes and perceptions necessary for balance in the natural world" (Beck, 1977: pp.106). One such story passed from generation to generation in a hunter-gatherer culture in regards to their main source of meat and fur, the deer, relates ecological consciousness succinctly. The deer speaks, "If you do not make use of us properly, even in times when we are numerous, you will not see us anymore" (Beck, 1977: pp.107)
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Around 8,500 years ago cultivation and farming began in Mesopotamia and humans settled into towns and villages (Wallech, 1999: pp.27). As more food became available, settlements increased in size and complexity. Large centerplace towns developed urban hierarchy approximately 6,000 years ago representing a major reorganization of society. This settlement pattern suggested that more authority had become necessary to secure food production and store surpluses.
Agriculture joined urbanization in an independent evolutionary process that seemed to create a common social event. Also, the concentration of people on high yielding fields using irrigation revealed a trap that tied humans to permanent fields. Coupled with this urban-cultivation pattern, the authority required to maintain the relationship between food production, water management, and human numbers encouraged the first systems of social inequality (Wallech, 1999: pp.28).
The change of material conditions prompted a paradigmatic shift in the way these new societies view nature and impelled a structural change of society. Now the earth was something that humans could force to produce so the idea of reverence for the natural world diminished. But some awe for nature was maintained and consequently, newly created local deities were propitiated to ensure productive crops. Power was now fully distilled and wielded by leaders who claimed to be god-kings. The ruling class enjoyed unprecedented affluence at the expense of the workers. Religious systems developed to legitimate and preserve the ruling class status and to keep the workers working. Military institutions were formed to enforce the class order and to conquer and spread the new social paradigm. The seeds of capitalism germinated and grew to supplant ecologically sound egalitarian cultures. The indigenous inhabitants of
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our country, being insulated by an ocean, escaped this fate for a long time, until the Europeans discovered the continent. They did not understand the people they met there. There are fundamental distinctions that set Native American cultures and spiritual views, with all their diversity, quite apart from contemporary American culture and spiritual views. Those distinctions have to do with basic world-view and philosophical orientations. They include ideology, spiritual paradigms, social structure and economic distribution and environmental practices. Marxism asserts that ideas are born of material conditions. One cannot have an idea (ideology) unless one has a brain (physical matter). In this vein lets compare and contrast the ideology of Native Americans to modem American society. Society is an ideological phenomenon that is a human product yet continuously acts back upon its producers (Berger, 1967: pp.3-4). An ideological construct is elicited from human material conditions; it has no other being except that which is bestowed upon it by human activity and consciousness. What is more, it is within these ideological constructs that "the individual becomes a person, that he attains and holds onto an identity, and that he carries out the various projects that constitute his life" (Berger, 1967: pp.3). Humans are a product of society and the ideas and attitudes, which comprise that society, are shaped by physical reality. This primacy of material condition of a people constitutes, therefore, the paramount causative agent in shaping human ideology. As we survey the ideas of Native Americans and the current dominant
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culture of the United States it is important to keep in mind that the spiritual, social, economic and environmental ideologies are all integral parts of the entire fabric of life. This deeper understanding of life is an explicit and guiding ideology of the collective consciousness of Native Americans.
Another concept that North American sacred traditions have in common is that all things in the universe are dependent on one another. Everything, though having its own individuality and special place, is dependent on and shares in the growth and work of everything else (Beck, 1977: pp.11).
The ideology of the United States, on the other hand, compartmentalizes various aspects of life, as seen in the numerous disciplines within science. This eclecticism is a powerful tool for understanding isolated parts of reality. Its weakness, however, lies in its inability to see the whole and the dynamics of all the parts working in concert to produce one outcome. The original communism of the Native Americans embodied an ideology born of the natural environment. These ideas in turn directed how they availed themselves of natural resources. The reciprocal nature of the physical world around them and their collective ideology serve as a self-correcting feedback loop. For example, as the physical condition in which they find themselves changes a resultant shift in the group's ideology adapts their behavior to cope. This domestic-scale culture enables the members to react quickly and intuitively to harmful effects that may occur due to human intervention. In contrast, the hierarchical structure of American commercial-scale culture is sluggish m responding to ecological stressors and lacks a sense of the spiritual in regards to nature.
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Spirituality permeates all aspects of Native American life. Animism, Animalism and Vitalism are words used by Western mentalities to approximate a common observation of American aboriginal spiritual practice. Briefly, Animism is the doctrine that inanimate objects, animals and natural phenomena are endowed with a life force or living soul. But this European definition is negligent of the nuances imbued in the native spiritual construct. Soul, in this context, is not identical to the Christian idea of soul. It is not necessarily personal property of the individual and often times has a more universal attribute that not only succeeds the individual but exceeds the individual as well. What is more, many natural phenomena and animals could be understood as a spirit itself made perceptible, perhaps, to enlighten the viewer or guide them through a didactic vision. European language has labeled this Animalism, that is, the concept of spirits as animals (Hultkrantz, 1987: pp.22). Additionally, the animal or inanimate object or phenomena could be seen as truly material within which a soul resides. Vitalism dictates that life processes contain a nonmaterial vital principle and cannot be explained entirely as physical or chemical phenomena. This worldview imparts imminence, respect and reverence for all things in nature that is deficient in the Christian world-view. Lame Deer asserts, "All living creatures are my relativeseven a tiny bug." (Deer, 1973: pp.22). Ruth M. Underhill (1965: pp.41) explains that this meant treating everything around them with courtesy, not exploiting them and embodies a concept of reciprocity with nature. Reverent environmental policy is intrinsic to their spirituality. From this perspective the environs of the earth are regarded as shrines, temples or places of worship:
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There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky! (Eastman, 1911: pp. 5)
For Native Americans from the beginning of time spirit was wedded to matter, and matter to spirit. "Matter received the impress of spirituality and was sanctified. Matter, because the spiritual moves upon its face, was thereby rendered holy" (Zaehner, 1963: pp.44). Therefore, all human food and resources garnered from the earth are seen as consisting entirely of souls.
All the creatures that we have to kill and eat, all those things we have to use or strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, souls that do not perish with the body and which must therefore be [pacified] lest they should revenge themselves on us for taking away...to do so would be an insult to the souls (Beck, 1977: pp12-13).
Their sacred traditions are based on cosmologies, which included land, the waters, the sky and all creatures. Taking and destroying the physical world without gratitude or reverence represents unselfconscious destruction of what is sacred. This demonstrates their intuitive and implicit understanding of the balances that exist in all natural systems, or ecology, and reflects their "knowledge that the world operates according to strict, ordered relationships" (Beck, 1977: pp.99). Karl Marx recognized the importance of ecosystems but there are those who would disagree.
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Marx, we are told, ultimately failed to address the exploitation of nature and adopted instead a Promethean view, which encourages ecological exploitation beyond the limits (Giddens, 1981: pp.53-60). Although Marx has been criticized for a lack of ecological concern, it is now abundantly clear that this does not fit with the evidence.
Marx denounced the spoliation of nature before a modem bourgeois ecological conscience was born. From the start Marx's notion of the alienation of human labor was connected to an understanding of the alienation of human beings form nature" (Foster, 2000: pp.9).
Marx's materialism sets "humans as social creatures who are required, by biological necessity, to interact with the material environment of nature" (Carver, 1987: pp.93). John Bellamy Foster quotes Marx m the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, "Man lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die" (1995: pp.108). Implicit in Marxism is an ecological ethic with the potential to sustain the basis of all life, the earth. Clearly, the Native Americans sensibilities embody the same ethos. The spiritual sensibilities of the United States guides environmental concerns quite differently. American bourgeoisie, while maintaining a superficial religiosity, discarded all reverence for creation and, dispensed with God: he was no longer relevant. Man thereby became the central phenomenon of the universe because he alone could bend his environment to his will (Zaehner, 1963: pp.45). The Ideology of Baconian dominance of nature, the Christian dictum that earth was created solely for human use and the resultant dichotomy between humans and nature and finally, the capitalistic belief that resources must be harvested and mined
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vigorously work together to form a cultural paradigm that encourages ecological disaster.
Capitalism's tendency to despoil its natural environment is constituted in the basic relation of capitalist exploitation and the corresponding value form of the products of labor and nature. When bounded by any given time period, the quantitative limitlessness of the goal of capital accumulations leads to pressures toward short-termist calculations and decisions that are often anti-ecological"(Burkett, 1996: pp.332, 345).
Capitalism, by denying any intrinsic value of earth:

...Maximizes the throughput of raw materials and energy because the greater this flowfrom extraction through the delivery of the final product to the consumerthe greater the chance of generating profits. And by selectively focusing on minimizing labor inputs, the system promotes energy-using and capital-intensive high technologies. All of this translates into faster depletion of nonrenewable resources and more wastes dumped into the environment (Foster, 1994: pp. 122-3).
This exemplifies Foster's construct of a "rift in the metabolic interaction between man and the earth" (1999: pp.380). He emphasizes that long distance trade generates alienation between our acts upon the earth and the effects of these acts. The original inhabitants of our country, however, directly experienced the effects of their acts. What is more, they never separated matter from spirit despite criticisms to the contrary. In an attempt to dispel a superior spiritual-environmental model, some critics allege modern humans created idealized Native American archetypes. In The Invented Indian, it is claimed that New Age principles have romanticized and spiritualized the Native American relationship with the earth; that these ideas have been superimposed upon the first inhabitants. The argument hinges on one Native American's words in 1885 portraying an Earth-Mother image; his name was Smohalla.
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During the last 100 years it has gradually developed in the writings of some of our most eminent scholars, specialists in the study of culture. Smohalla's single statement provides almost the only cited evidence on which to base the story. Most remarkably, the story is not about native American beliefs at all; it is not even about native Americans (Clifton, 1990: pp.131-135).
However, Chief Seattles speech of 1854/55 not only pre-dates the above but also corroborates it. Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hollowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished (Seattle, 1854/5). Moreover, in The Sacred, I found many references to various concepts of earth as a sacred entity to be respected and honored. One such account describes a male earthspirit:
A power we call Sila cannot be explained in simple words. A great spirit, supporting the world and the weather and all life on earth, a spirit so mighty that [what he says] to mankind is not through common words, but by storm and snow and rain and the fury of the sea; all the forces of nature that men fear. But he has also another way of [communicating]; by sunlight and calm of the sea.... (Beck, 1977: pp.7).
Woven together, spiritual paradigms legitimate and inform social structure. Native American domestic-scale culture is egalitarian and postures its members to be in tune with the environs around them. As each member has equal sway in directing the decisions and activities of the group and a slightly different yet immediate experience of their material condition, swift and effective behaviors can be enacted in response to changing conditions, "...in a tribal, or use value, economy, producers are directly involved m production decision making and are immediately concerned with both the environment and the social consequences of production" (Bodley, 2001: pp.55).
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Conversely, snug in their offices insulated from the adverse socioenvironmental effects of their policies, the capitalistic United States alienates people from nature as they seize at alarming rates raw materials from distant lands.
The worldwide expansion of capitalism has undermined the historical foundations of spirituality by scattering families, destroying established communities, replacing traditions with consumerism, and alienating our relationship to nature. Marxists need to take seriously the despiritualization of society, and themselves, under capitalism (Brentlinger, 2000: pp.178).
Moreover, capitalism encourages, perpetuates and increases inequality. Surprisingly Adam Smith, although in opposition to communism, admits the roots of corruption lie essentially m the inequality of society.
This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition,.. .is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments (Smith, 1759: pp.61).
Inequality gives rise to poverty. Impoverishment was once believed to be the lot of the original Americans. Traditionally, early societies were viewed as laborious and destitute; its wretched members worked continuously just to survive. This is not the case, however, as original communism afforded affluence without tedium or surplus.
The traditional dismal view of the hunter's fix is preanthropological. It goes back to the time Adam Smith was writing, and maybe to a time before anyone was writing. It will be extremely difficult to correct this traditional wisdom. Perhaps then we should phrase the necessary revisions in the most shocking terms possible: that this was.. .the original affluent society. By common understanding an affluent society is one in which all the people's wants are easily satisfied; and though we are pleased to consider this happy condition the unique achievement of industrial civilization, a better case can be mad for hunters and gatherers. (Lee, 1968: pp.85 86).
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Careful studies reveal that, "even the most technologically simple peoples were able to satisfy all their subsistence requirements with relatively little effort" (Bodley, 2001: pp.57). Capitalism's predilection toward constant accelerated rate of accumulation of wealth manifests in, what Marx called fetishization of commodities.
Just as capitalism leads to production for the sake of production, so too it leads to consumption for the sake of consumption. The great bourgeois maxim 'grow or die' has its counterpart in 'buy or die'. Marx's famous notion of the 'fetishization of commodities' finds its parallel in a 'fetishization of needs' (Bookchin, 1997: pp117).
In the United States we experience this as the constant bombardment of advertisements that serve to create a market for a product that may not be needed or necessary. Clearly, this kind of economic model precludes egalitarianism and reduces the biosphere and humans to commodities open to exploitation. The ecological viability of the two systems is diametrically opposed. The United States government is well aware of the scope and degree of the endemic hazards intrinsic to the current socio-economic paradigm. In an Environmental Protection Agency report conducted by the Science Advisory Board entitled, Ecosystem Management: Imperative or a Dynamic World, the conservative conclusions regarding the environmental problems that continue to present high risks to ecological systems were prioritized as follows: A) global climate change, B) habitat alteration and destruction, C) loss of biological diversity, D) stratospheric ozone depletion, E) accidental or misguided introduction of exotic species terrestrial and aquatic, F) persistent bioaccumulative chemicals, metals, pesticides and chemical fertilizers and finally, G) over-exploitation of natural
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resources (Environmental Protection Agency, 1995). I would have asserted the last item as the primary source of all our woes. We must remember, however, that this investigation was conducted under the auspice of capitalism. In keeping with this tone, Gregg Easterbrook uses all the environmentalists buzzwords to clothe the wolf (profit driven industry) in sheeps clothes. He states that, Roughly half of U.S. forests are privately held. But even for all thei4r failings, market forces and a self-interest stake in forests are the best system for assuring responsible behavior, as they confer voluntary reasons to protect the land (Easterbrook, 1995: pp.402-403). On the other hand, the Club of Rome, a group of thirty individuals from ten countries, sponsored two ecological studies comprised of scientists, educators, economists, humanists, industrialists and national and international civil servants (Meadows et al, 1974: 1992). The group came to conclusions graver than the EPA or Easterbrook had claimed. Historically, soulless capitalism responds reluctantly and slowly to these harms. The urgency of the situation needs stringent measures. The despiritualizing effects of imperialist capitalism have initiated a chain of ecological events with the potential for annihilation of humanity. The lust for increased surplus wealth has dehumanized all but those few able to resist. The long-term success of original communism in early societies is a resounding testimony, to those who are listening, that spirituality need not be independent of social, economic and environmental ideologies; that these are entwined into one fabric and that we must, therefore, consider the whole and that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We must-needs incorporate this ancient
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wisdom into our mentality and socio-political practices. Perhaps the current paradigmatic arrogance of capitalism could learn poignant lessons from the few domestic-scale cultures still extant. In light of the enormous disaster accumulating and confronting us, we need more sweeping, insightful and soulful knowledgescientific and socialto redirect our misguided way. We must reconstruct our approach to the dire problems posed by the apparent contradictions between nature and society. What we can and must do is expand our sense of self to a greater connectedness; a connectedness to each other, to the earth and to the universe. We must realize that the universe and everything in it has intrinsic value. Finally and most importantly, we must admit to our indiscretions and move, albeit with trepidation, to realize our full potential. I will close with a concept captured in one Hopi Indian word, Koyaanisqatsi, which means a state of life that demands another way of being.
Bibliography Beck, Peggy V. and A.L. Walters. I977. The Sacred ways of Knowledge; Sources of Life. Berger, Peter L. I967. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc. Bodley, John H. 200I. Anthropology and Contemporary Human Problems. 4III ed. Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Company. Bookchin, Murray. I997. The Murray Bookchin Reader. Edited by Janet Biehl. Virginia, London: Cassell. Brentlinger, John. 2000. "Revolutionizing Spirituality: Reflections on Marxism and Religion." Science and Society 64(2): I78. Burkett, Paul. I996. "Value, Capital and Nature: Some Ecological Implications of Marx's Critique of Political Economy." Science and Society 60(3); 333-347. Carver, Terrell. I987. A Marx Dictionary. New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books. Clifton, James A. I990. The Invented Indian. New Brunswick, London: Transaction Publishers. Deer, Lame. The Weeping Sky. New York, London: Sheed and Ward.
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Easterbrook, Gregg. 1995. A Moment on the Earth. Penguin Books Ltd.: Middlesex, England. Eastman, Charles Alexander. I9II. The Soul of the Indian. Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press. Environmental Protection Agency. I995. Science Advisory Board report: Ecosystem ManagementImperative for a Dynamic World. (Prepared by the Ecological Processes and Effects Committee. Washington, DC.) Foster, John Bellamy. I995. "Marx and the Environment." Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine. 47(3): I08-II6. (Review Article) I999. "Marx's Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology." American Journal of Sociology I05(2): 366-405. Accessed through: http://links.jstor.org/ 2000. Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York: Monthly review Press. Giddens, Anthony. 1981. A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hultkrantz, Ake. I987. Native Religions of North America. San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers. Lee, Richard B. and Irven Devore. I968. Man the Hunter. New York: Aldine De Gruyter. Meadows, Donella H., Dermis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William W. Behrens III. I974. The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books. Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers. I992. Beyond the Limits. Post Mills, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company. Seattle, Chief. 1845/5. Originally published in Seattle Sunday Star, Oct. 29, 1887. Accessed through: Http://www.webcom.com/duane/seattle.html Smith, Adam. I759. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited in I976 by D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Underhill, Ruth Murray. I965. Red Man's Religion. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press. Wallech, Steven. I999. Synopsis of World History. 2"0 ed. New York: Forbes Custom Publishing. Zaehner, Robert Charles. I963. Matter and Spirit. Planned and Edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen et al. New York, Evanston: Harper and Row Publishers.
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The Human Adventure, Dr. Eugene Ruyle, CSULB, Spring 2002 By James R.

Walker An Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Copy

Capitalism, by denying any intrinsic value of earth:

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