Stories contain knowledge

In class, my dialogue leader told a story about the origins of fire. I will not re-tell it here except in the barest outline, because it is not my story to tell. But it did make me reflect on some Western stories. He said Aboriginal stories take varied forms depending on the teller, and depending on what the teller is trying to get across to the particular listeners at a particular telling of the story. This flexibility is lost when stories are written down; they then are told out of context, and lose a great deal of their meaning and intention. It makes me wonder about some ancient Western stories, and what they mean out of context.

In the Aboriginal story, fire was first kept away from people by the only group that had it, and then given to an outsider by a child in return for a gift. The outsider carried the fire inside a hollow part of a particular plant, and it was shared among all people. Those who had not shared it were punished. In Australia, the story dates back at least 50,000 years. The Greek/Roman story is a bit different, but there are a few correspondences. It makes me wonder whether there is a very ancient human story that got modified in Greek/Roman mythology to incorporate elements of the military and hierarchical system that their society adopted.

In Greek mythology, there was a group of beings who had fire and would not share it, the Olympian gods in this case. Before the Olympian gods had ruled, the Earth was ruled by the Titans, who included Uranus, the sky father, and Gaia, the earth mother, and their children, associated with other elemental forces of nature. In a war, the Olympians (led by Zeus, the child of Titans) overthrew the Titans and imprisoned all but a few of them in the Underworld.¹ One of the Titans who was not imprisoned was Prometheus. He saw that humans were miserable without fire, and went to Zeus and asked him to give fire to humans. Zeus refused, saying that if humans had fire, they would become strong and wise like the gods, and would overthrow them. The message of hierarchy and militarism is reinforced with this.

However, this message of hierarchy is then undermined. Prometheus was determined to give fire to humans anyway. He found a plant with a hollow stalk filled with a substance that would burn slowly for a long time. (Some versions say this was a fennel stalk, others say some kind of reed. I wonder about the ecological significance of the particular plant. What knowledge of this plant’s ecological relationships is hidden in the story, or has been lost? A hollow plant was used in the Aboriginal story too, a very different one, but it has ecological significance.) He went to the rising sun, and lit the plant with the sun's flames. Then he carried the smoldering fire back and gave it to humans. He taught humans other things as well, how to build houses, how to domesticate animals, how to work metal.

Zeus was angry when he found out what Prometheus had done. He let humans keep their knowledge and fire, but he punished them by creating a beautiful woman, Pandora, and giving her to Prometheus’ brother to be his wife. Zeus gave Pandora a golden box and told her it contained treasure. Athena, goddess of wisdom, warned her never to open it. She was curious and greedy, and finally decided to ignore Athena, and opened the box. Diseases and troubles flew out of the box, to trouble all humans. So were humans punished by Zeus for the knowledge they had been given. There is an interesting ecological truth contained in this story: herd animals are the source of many lethal diseases, such as smallpox, that were unknown in cultures that did not domesticate animals. (One exception is llamas in the Andes, which don’t seem to carry these diseases.)² Wealth and power accrued to those in herding cultures who had large herds, and herding cultures (e.g. Greek, Roman, Middle Eastern, Celtic cultures) have been thought to be most warlike, because people raid each other’s herds. Disease, war, and associated troubles would, in fact, have followed from greed and knowledge of herding. Funny how the story of Prometheus is always told as the story of fire, when it contains other truths as well.

Back to the origins of fire: Prometheus was punished by Zeus for giving knowledge to humans, but in the long run, Zeus’ authority is undermined and the punishment broken. Zeus ordered him to be chained to a high mountain, where he was exposed to cold winds, while eagles tore at his flesh, eating his liver every day, while it re-grew every night. His friends, the sun and the sea nymphs, would comfort him with warmth and songs. One day, a white cow named Io wandered past Prometheus. She had been a human woman who was Zeus’ lover, and was turned into a cow because of Hera’s jealousy. Prometheus recognized her, and told her she could find safety to the south, on the Nile, where she would become a human woman again. She followed his advice, and one of her descendants was the hero Hercules, who freed Prometheus.³

So what is the ultimate message here about authority and hierarchy? I think there is a hidden message about tyrannical authorities being hostile to the sharing of knowledge, but the story does not seem to endorse such authorities. The ultimate message seems to be that knowledge is to be shared.


¹ Info on Titans and Olympians is from Wikipedia entries on Titans.
² See Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, and Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
³ This version of the Prometheus myth is compiled from James Baldwin, "Old Greek Stories," from NS Gill, "Guide to Ancient Classical History", and from Mythweb, "Prometheus".

Some great quotes from class

These are from my lecturer. He objects very much to being called a lecturer, since he's running the class as a dialogue instead, so maybe I should call him the dialogue facilitator. The ones below in quotes, I'm pretty sure I wrote down just the way he said them.

"I can’t give you knowledge. The system we’re sitting in is a cultural system that assumes it’s possible for you to get knowledge from me."

"Culture is a knowledge management system."

"My idea as a thinker is that it’s not possible to transmit knowledge. But... knowledge is being transmitted all the time."

Dialogue is a sharing of minds. A lecture is not.

"Knowledge formation is not about how things organize themselves in your head." Knowledge formation is how we organize ourselves to manage knowledge.

How do you position yourself with respect to knowledge? The cultural regulations that govern how knowledge is managed are what is really transmitted in schooling.

The system constructs and delimits our interactions. Some things cannot be thought about in this system, in a European-style classroom.

Power differences are built into the way the educational system is set up.

How are we socially structured?

Our assignment this week was to write about social structure, how are we positioned within culture?

How am I socially structured, both in my own culture, in Australian culture, and with respect to Aboriginal culture? Hmmm. I’m not very aware of how I’m socially structured within my own culture. Whereas it seems to be an important part of Aboriginal knowledge to understand social relationships and social structure, this is not something I would have been explicitly taught about in my culture. There is nothing explicit taught in American schools about what is the proper way to relate to other people, and how society can be structured so that it works. There are no stories like the Red Meat Ant story [a story the lecturer told in class] that I understand to be about the proper kind of social structures. This is something left entirely to individual parents to teach their children. I learned implicit lessons by example in my culture, about enforcing authority with violence, and about not expecting others to listen. In school we had government classes about how the government is structured formally (and a lot about why it’s the best government in the world), but nothing about how to structure a group or a culture so that it is humanly sustainable. And the culture I come from is not at all sustainable, in human terms, much less ecological terms. People are lonely, alienated, and isolated. That’s considered "normal." We have epidemic rates of depression, and wonder why.

The notion of having to give something first before you take something, and the notion of sharing, given in the Red Meat Ant story, and in another Anangu story I heard at Uluru, is not a part of how American culture lives. The way the U.S. approaches give and take reminds me of [the lecturer's] discussion of yellow and shit. Everything leaves waste behind, and you can tell what’s been there by "reading" its poop. The U.S. has taken from all over the world and continues to, while giving back a lot of garbage, toxic waste, greenhouse gases, and radioactivity. A tracker could look at our planet and say, "Hmm, toxic chemicals, radioactivity, global warming – looks like a take-without-giving culture has been here, a no-relationship culture." But we are never told this as a story in America; I had to learn it myself as I got older.

Our European fairy tales are often pretty bloody, as are Hollywood movies, so I guess I’m culturally patterned to expect social structure to include violence. The deity in the Bible is a nasty piece of work, asserting his authority arbitrarily, forbidding knowledge, telling people they have the right to kill and take over the lands of others who don’t worship the same deity, so there are cultural lessons in those stories too.

Like scientific knowledge, my culture’s knowledge of social structure is all piecemeal. The first thing that came to my mind about myself in social structure was how I’m socially structured in my job: I’m an "expert" on certain topics, students are "novices," therefore I stand up in front of a classroom and lecture the novices about what I know. Then I give them tasks to see whether they remember or understood anything I said. The outcome of those tasks is a grade, and the higher the grade, the greater their opportunities within that system in the future. It’s all about rank-ordering. The outcome is not for me to go, "Oh, you didn’t understand. Let me make sure you do understand before we move on.” (I did do that once at [a univ in the US]; [my current univ] would never allow it, as it would mean deviating from my electronic course profile!) [Our lecturer] mentioned that Aboriginal knowledge isn't given by verbal telling, but by demonstrating what one knows. That is more similar to my relationship with postgraduate students, where I demonstrate my expertise in a research collaboration, rather than telling in a lecture. I’m also an employee, expected to adhere to rules and regulations, and produce things at a certain rate, or else risk disciplinary action or not advancing within my profession.

To another major sector of my culture, I am nothing other than "a potential customer." I have money, companies want my money, so they hound me with advertisements to convince me they have something I should value, so I’ll give them some of my money for it. This relationship is often like an abusive relationship. An abusive partner will try to convince his/her partner that she/he is no good, bad, worthless and that the only thing that can give the victim worth is gaining the abusive partner’s approval. In the same way, most ads try to convince potential customers that they are not good enough – they have bad breath, or wrinkles, or an insufficiently clean kitchen, and the only way to become good enough is to buy the company’s product. Where the relationship with advertisers is not abusive, it’s still a bit like being stalked – hounded by letters, flyers, billboards from companies saying "Notice me! Pay attention to me!" Respect isn’t part of this relationship. This potential customer relationship means I constantly have to have my guard up, looking out for lies in ads and protecting myself from being scammed, or at least just ignoring the constant presence of these messages. I’m culturally patterned not to trust, and that feels terrible.

Once I do buy something, I know nothing of its history, the people involved in creating it, what their working conditions/wages are, whether they care about what they produce. Everything is set up to cut me off from that object’s history. Tracking/mobility is simply not a part of my culture.

It’s interesting/disturbing that the first things that spring to mind about how I’m socially structured in my culture are about my economic place. Nothing sprang to mind immediately about being a woman, being a daughter, being a friend, being a romantic partner, being an aunt and a niece, being a sister. All those close social relationships seem more peripheral to my culture, while the central social relationships are economic and power relationships. Yikes! That’s not healthy. But it shows me some of my cultural preconceptions, and allows me to look at other cultures with some more clarity about my position, where I stand. That’s part of respect and deep listening.

How am I structured in relationship to mainstream Australian culture? Much of it is the same as how I’m structured in relation to American culture. But, in addition, I’m an immigrant, and a relatively recent one. I was so lonely when I came here – I didn’t know anyone or have any family. I don’t know the landscape, history, politics, foods, or slang of Australia, except the tiny bit I’ve learned since being here. I’m an outsider. I’ll never be Australian, even though I’m a citizen. I’ll always be an immigrant. But I’ve lived here, so I’ll always care about the welfare of Australia.

How am I socially structured in relationship to Aboriginal culture? What I know about Australian history, I’ve learned from Aboriginal people, so I’m in a different situation than most Australians, I guess. I’m the first person in my family to live in Australia, so my ancestors don’t have a direct relationship to Aboriginal culture. I had read and listened and thought enough about indigenous issues before I arrived in Australia that I knew I was coming to live on land that was not my own, and I didn’t feel the Australian government could meaningfully grant me permission to be here. I thought that I was moving here permanently, and from the beginning, I intended two things: to ask permission of the traditional owners to live here, and to offer to be a friend and ally, both of which I knew would require building a relationship. I feel that I am living on the surface of the skin of the land, here in Australia, that I do not belong here. I feel I need to come into right relationship with the traditional owners to come into right relationship with the land. I’m taking classes in Aboriginal issues to learn more about what that right relationship is.

My role of de facto spouse, and my life-long connection with the land in North America are calling me to return to the U.S., so I will always be a visitor to Australia, who does not belong here. But I would still like to be a friend and ally, and a welcome visitor, so I intend to continue my relationship with Aboriginal culture. My relationship with Aboriginal people here has made me take a different approach to living in North America, too, where I also want to come into right relationship with the traditional owners there. I have begun this process with the Indians of [state].

Where do I come from?

Our "assignment" was to write about our origins. For the sake of anonymity, I've edited out some specifics.

I know very little about my origins. No non-English languages, songs, dances, art, ceremonies, or recipes, and almost no stories have been handed down in my family from one generation to the next. I do not know where all of my ancestors came from. I don’t know what their cultural and spiritual traditions were before Christianity or capitalism. I don’t even know what kind of Christianity they practiced, once they started doing so, except for my parents. I don’t know how my ancestors felt about coming to North America from Europe. Nothing has been handed down – there is a great silence where ancestral knowledge could be. I’m a little angry at my ancestors for not passing anything on in the family, but I also know from reading history books that they were under the pressure of religious and economic empires in the past couple of centuries, and may have stopped passing on traditions as a matter of survival. My feelings about my ancestors are very mixed.

I was born and grew up in North America, in the U.S., a little bit in [city], but mostly in [other city]. I’ve lived in [four cities]. Also in [country] for one year. I came to Australia in [year], because of George Bush. I got a job at [university] and moved here by myself. I have one sibling in [city] (two nieces/nephews through him), my parents are both still alive and still married, living in [city] and I have lots of cousins, in [cities]. My parents met being civil rights activists in the late 1950’s. My father’s parents both came from middle-class small-farm families in [southern state], and both of them worked for equal rights for black people in their area, in ways that were a bit radical for those times. For example, during the Depression in the 30’s, the U.S. govt gave out relief cheques to everyone, but said that people had to come pick them up in town, knowing full well that this meant poor rural blacks without cars couldn’t get their cheques. My dad’s mother didn’t think that was right, so she took the family pickup truck and organized a kind of "bus service" to bring poor rural folks into town to get their govt relief cheques. I’m telling about these things here, because I think that my family’s past planted seeds for me to think about indigenous issues and justice.

As far as we know, most of our ancestors on my father’s side, on both his parents’ sides, were from Scotland. We know that my grandfather’s family came from the Mac[name] clan in Scotland. They were removed from their lands by the English in the 1700’s, as the English tried to break the Scottish clan system. Some, including my ancestors, came to the U.S. around then, continuing the process of displacing others from their lands; others went to Northern Ireland. No Scottish Gaelic was passed on in my ancestral line; the language stopped when they got to the U.S.

On my mother’s side, her mother grew up in rural [state]. My grandma and my great-aunt were orphaned when my grandma was 8 (parents taken by tuberculosis) and grew up poor with relatives in a one-room shack. We don’t know all our ancestors on her side, but we do know that at least one line of them are English, and came over with some of the earliest colonizers in the 1600’s, from London to Massachusetts. I don’t know whether they came before, during, or after the period of time in which smallpox decimated the Native American communities of that region. I don’t know whether they were Puritans, seeking "religious freedom" in "The New World" (which had civilizations older than any in Europe), or whether they were capitalist entrepreneurs, trying to make money off a newly discovered continent full of things they saw as resources they felt entitled to, or whether they were just poor sods who signed on to a colony ship because it seemed better than living in filthy London, and someone told them there was "free land". I wish I knew their story.

My mother’s father came from a Scandinavian family. My great-grandfather fled to North America in the 1880’s, because his country had been conquered by another, and he didn’t want to be drafted into the conquering nation's army. Two years later, my great-grandmother followed him. They settled in [western states] where there were many other Scandinavians. Eventually, when the U.S. govt revoked yet another Indian treaty and opened up more Native American lands for "claims" for settlers, they moved onto a small claim in Montana and became farmers and ranchers. I believe it was the Crow Indians, specifically, whose land they moved onto. I have been to the village my ancestors came from in Europe, but I don’t know any relatives there. Neither I nor my mother speak any of the language, so we couldn’t ask or investigate easily. I have read that theirs was one of the last countries in Europe to accept Christianity, and I strongly wish I knew how that process of adopting Christianity and leaving behind their native traditions had unfolded for my ancestors.

The Four Concepts

These are the four concepts we'll be working on in my Aboriginal knowledge class. I didn't write these, the lecturer did.

Engagement:
This is about expressing and sharing the emotional dimension of learning. Are you part of the Dialogic process the class is generating, are you involved in the context, or are you opting out? Engagement is about asking "what does this mean to me? How do I feel?" It is also about responding from this place, not always seeking to say the 'right' thing, the 'intelligent' thing, but instead saying what you feel, reflecting on how the topic, the discussion, or the process is affecting you. It is about AUTHENTICALLY sharing your self and respecting others as they share themselves. Engagement is about developing and maintaining human contact rather than keeping issues, events and others at 'arm's length'.

Tracking/Mobility:
This concerns the ability to see movement in knowledge across contexts and time. It is about tracking ideas, where did this idea come from? Why was that idea given this significance? Where are the relationships between ideas? It is also about the recognition that history is not a single linear or static series of 'facts' but a critical literature itself: created, imagined, manipulated and contested. It is about the ability to see and appreciate where knowledge comes from, whose knowledge is being spoken about, what is understood as 'knowledge', and where that knowledge is taking us. Mobility also seeks to instigate movement where understandings are seen to be static. Mobility challenges imposed, unconsidered, and concealed understandings.

Fit/Deep Listening:
Having engaged and moved with the topics, the next question concerns positioning: where do I fit in relation to all this? It is about the recognition of your personal importance in the process, and about whether you accept a role in the continuum: whether you see yourself as no longer separate from the context. It is also about how ideas, assumptions, and preconceptions fit with various contexts; and how the same things re-emerge in other contexts, so that history can be recognised as a record of the shifting patterns and social reconstructions of understandings. Fit is about a deeper understanding of how all these things, and the self, are located; how sometimes things just seem to 'fit' and why some things are excluded from a social understanding.

Respect:
Throughout the whole process there needs to be a demonstration of cross-cultural respect. This means allowing there to be other ways of seeing, knowing and expressing. Respect is about showing care and awareness in the way you identify, explore and assess meaning across cultural contexts, including your own. To be aware of your own cultural contexts and develop the ability to suspend the judgements based on them to allow other understandings to be brought to mind. It is a kind of openness that allows conceptions to come to mind through suspending cultural filters. It is also about relationships and responsibility and the responsibility to maintain good relations. It means to be human in the proper way for humans, a moral and ethical understanding of being in the world.