In Just Seven Days I Can Make You A Man

A post today on the Situationist blog points to a recently-published paper by Donald Braman, Dan Kahan, and Gregory Mandel (of my sometime alma mater Temple U., what what!) that analyzes the differential attitudes of socially and metaphysically hierarchical versus egalitarian individuals toward the engineering of synthetic life, in contrast to their attitudes toward other potentially dangerous technological interventions into natural processes.

Their research indicates that, whereas egalitarians are generally more sensitive to potential man-made threats to the ecological order, and hierarchically-oriented individuals tend to be more skeptical of such dangers, these perceptions are basically reversed regarding the creation of artificial life.

The authors conclude by providing some insightful interpretation of their findings:

What explains this unusual alignment? A likely possibility relates to the distinctive social meaning of synthetic biology risks. Individuals tend to impute risk to activities that symbolically threaten their values; they resist believing that society might be harmed by activities that affirm their values (Douglas 1966). Historically, concerns about acid rain, nuclear power production, global warming, and the like have connoted challenges to societal and governmental elites. This is a resonance congenial to persons who hold egalitarian views, but noxious to persons who hold hierarchical ones (Douglas &Wildavsky 1986). Synthetic biology, however, seems to be attended by a different constellation of meanings that are themselves symbolically threatening to hierarchs. Like evolution, which conveys an uncompromisingly secular understanding of the origin of life, synthetic biology, because it presupposes human license over the career of it, seems to denigrate a set of cultural understandings that subordinate man to the authority of God. The denigration of those understandings is in turn subversive to the authority of certain institutions and norms traditionally integral to a hierarchical social ordering. Hierarchs, consistent with the logic of cultural cognition, thus impute danger to synthetic biology.

While this is no doubt a valid analysis, I wish to draw attention to an element of the cultural construction of these perceptions of danger that I feel the authors may have under-emphasized, namely the role of metaphysical, rather than purely social, values. The authors do touch upon this element in their hypothesis regarding hierarchicals' attitudes toward synthetic biology - people who see biogenesis as the purview of a higher power are likely to see attempts by man to replicate the process as the height of insolence - but then immediately subordinate it to concerns of social order. Likewise, their interpretation of attitudes toward other conflicts between technology and nature resolves ultimately upon attitudes toward "societal and governmental elites."

I think the authors unnecessarily circumvent the possibility of a metaphysical (e.g., religious) hierarchicalism independent of social hierarchicalism. Surely the interests of "societal and governmental elites" are not necessarily the same as those of theological fundamentalists. Couldn't it be the case that "concerns about acid rain, nuclear power production, global warming, and the like... [are] noxious to persons who hold hierarchical" views, not because they "connoted challenges to societal and governmental elites," but rather because they connoted challenges to the idea that the mechanisms of the physical world are solely the responsibility of an omnipotent intelligence, and thus immune to disruption by the efforts of mortals? This interpretation more closely parallels the argument against synthetic biology on the grounds of "cultural understandings that subordinate man to the authority of God," and need not attempt to rationalize itself with an appeal to secular concerns.

My suggestion here is that, while secular, rational values certainly factor into attitudes toward the morality, or even the possibility, of human alteration of the biosphere, so too - and, I argue, independently - may metaphysical values.

Gifts Unlooked-For

I spent today with some of my family at a northern Pennsylvania heritage festival - demonstrations of pioneer-era domestic crafts, presentations on log rafting and the underground railroad, that sort of thing. There was also a short concert by the Seneca Moon String Band, who play Appalachian and Irish folk tunes. I was initially drawn to the stage from across the festival grounds by the reedy, Jerry Garcia-esqe strains of the autoharpist's vocals, and proceeded to settle down in the shade of the ancient maple tree looming over the portable bandshell and thoroughly enjoy the remainder of the set.

One thing that I found particularly striking, however, was something independent (so far as I can perceive) of any formal characteristics of the performance itself. I refer to the lyrics of the Shaker song "Simple Gifts" (you've heard it), a rendition of which the band started into shortly after I arrived:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

This is by no means a rarely-performed piece in modern times; perhaps especially in secular, rather than religious, settings. But what impressed itself upon me on this occasion, for the first time in memory, was just how profoundly Buddhist is the song's sentiment. Nirvana - freedom; not least of all from shame concerning our temporal circumstances - is the place [that is no place] just right, which is attained through true simplicity in mortal existence.

I have no idea what confluence of psychic contents, social setting, and neurophysical reactions to rhythmic/melodic influences caused me to perceive this semantic echo of 5th century B.C.E. India in a composition from 19th century C.E. New England, but the all-too-infrequent sense of what I can only subjectively term "transcendence" was undeniably attached to it.

I Guess That I Could Get Crazy Now Baby, Cause We All Got In Tune

A particular area within anthropology that has long been of interest to me is the interaction of individual psychology with elements of culture and social structures. This kind of interaction can be seen in an especially striking form in experiences of spirit possession occurring across a wide variety of cultural settings.

An interview with scholar of Jewish mysticism Rachel Elior about her new book, as noted on the Paleojudaica blog today, discusses a spirit-possession legend specific to Jewish folklore, namely that of the dybbuk. The dybbuk is believed to be the spirit of a deceased man, which enters and takes control of a living person. What is interesting about Elior's analysis of this legend (from what I can gather from the interview excerpt; I have not yet read the book) is her conclusion regarding its social function:

Elior argues that for women, dybbuks could be a means to escape the demands of a confining society. Once possessed by a dybbuk (or at least claiming to be), women were no longer considered responsible for their own actions, and were exempt from arranged marriages and relieved of wifely duties. Thought to be the souls of sinners, these spirits gave a certain degree of power to the powerless, freeing them from the norms of routine life and its conventional ordering.

I find this interesting in light of parallels that can be drawn with the Hauka religious movement, originating in French-colonized Africa, practitioners of which believed themselves to invoke the spiritual identities of colonial officials. Some scholars have theorized that this activity allowed the possessed to reclaim a sense of agency within the disenfranchising context of foreign occupation (further discussion of this and other aspects of Hauka can be found in chapter 3 of Paul Stoller's Sensuous Scholarship).

The use of possession experiences as a means of reclaiming personal or group power in the face of social oppression or disorder appears to recur throughout Western history. The latest installment of the Documents blog's continuing series on possession discusses analyses of the "dancing mania" of the ~14th-18th centuries in such terms:

The dire living conditions of the late Middle Ages - natural disasters, the Black Death, famine, social unrest - made Medieval Europeans seek relief in 'the intoxication of an artificial delirium'.

And of course we have the myth of Dionysus and King Pentheus.

So, in light of this apparent tradition of social resistance through intentionally-induced states of alternate identity, how might we interpret contemporary bacchanals? The participants, as those of the aforementioned historical examples, do not seem to consciously identify as members of a coherent movement against prevailing social conditions:

What’s the point? Well, it’s just an event where a bunch of people can get together to have fun, expend pent-up energy, and meet tons of new people with similar interests.

Yet, from the hippies at Woodstock to the candy-ravers of the 1990s, those who collectively tune in, turn on, and drop out have been repeatedly vilified and condemned by guardians of the normative order. Can a trance-based movement, regardless of intent, effectively call into question an authority simply by forcing its hand, thus revealing its lack of perfect control?