Thesis #24: Civilization has no monopoly on art.
by Jason GodeskyWhen the case is laid out against the material benefits of civilization, and the progressivist is forced to admit that hierarchy is an unnecessary evil (thesis #11), that it is a difficult, dangerous and unhealthy way of life (thesis #9), that it makes us sick (thesis #21), and that it cannot provide medicine (thesis #22) or knowledge (thesis #23) beyond that which is universal to all cultures, civilized or not. The typical last resort is the ephemeral. Civilization, the progressivist then claims, is still of value for the art, music, and poetry it creates. Primitive cultures have no Beethoven, no Rembrandt, and no Shakespeare. Again, the progressivist case is predicated on an abysmal ignorance of what primitive cultures can boast. In fact, art is universal to all human cultures, not just including primitive ones, but especially primitive ones. Art is essential to human nature–and thus, it is always at odds with civilization’s basic, dehumanizing trends–and it is found wherever one finds humans.
The nature of tribal art is somewhat different, though, in that it emphasizes a communal vision, rather than the work of a single “genius”–hence the oft-repeated refrain that tribal cultures lack a Beethoven, a Rembrandt, or a Shakespeare. Each storyteller tells a story, and in so doing taps a story that has been told and retold through the generations. At the same time, this particular telling is new, and different from every retelling before it; it is a perfect, sublime moment that never has been, and never will be again. This is a common theme through primitive art, a means by which the tribal ideal is reinforced: the simultaneous apotheosis of both the individual, and the collective, with neither one more important than the other. We see this reflected again and again in primitive art, music, dance,storytelling, and all their other forms of art.
Music is universal across all cultures. In “The memetic origin of language,” Vaneechoutte and Skoyles argue that humans are naturally and biologically musical, and furthermore, that it was song that laid the foundation for language. They suggest that music is very much central to our nature, and that it may also explain human sexual behavior.
We typically judge the artistic quality of music based on its complexity, but even by such a metric as “complex music,” civilization can claim no monopoly: the polyphonic complexity of Pygmy songs, though unwritten, was not matched by Europeans until the 14th century. That said, in Nature and Madness, Paul Shepard offers this insight:
In conventional history/progress thinking, the complexity and quality of music have steadily grown in the course of cultural evolution from something repetitive and simple like the Kalahari bushman’s plucking his bowstring to the symphonies of the nineteenth century. But a very different view is possible. Suzanne Langer observes that “the great office of music is to . . . give us insight into . . . the subjective unity of experience” by using the principle of physical biology: rhythm. Its physiological effect is to reduce inner tensions by first making them symbolically manifest, then resolving and unifying them. . . . One interpretation is that the more complex the music, the more fundamental the problem; or, one might say, the more elaborate the music, the more fragmented the vision of the world. Composer and musician Paul Winter has said that we are now habituated to an overstructured format, especially in so-called classical music, from which we need to escape into a more informal extemporaneous performance and audition. But if, indeed, music is a kind of final refuge serving to hold things together, this might be impossible in modern life.
Every culture now on earth has music. Archaeologically, our first evidence of musical instruments date back to the Upper Paleolithic, including bone whistles and pipes. Many anthropologists and ethnomusicologists have long conjectured that one of the first instruments may simply have been a hunter strumming his bowstring.
The first art in Europe appears in the Upper Paleolithic, long before the beginning of civilization. The cave art painted by Upper Paleolithic foragers is a wonder even today. Usually paintings of animals, they used the rock itself. One bull at Lascaux, for instance, uses a bulge of rock to form its haunches. These Paleolithic foragers did not simply paint on a flat, two-dimensional canvas; their paintings seem almost to walk out of the very walls, even today. An emerging trend of modern artists have tried to replicate the feats of Paleolithic artists, but have found them to be difficult masterpieces to imitate.
Art is made by foragers all around the world. From the famous totem poles of the sedentary Kwakiutl and other forager chiefdoms of the Pacific coast, to the sacred art of the !Kung in the Kalahari, art is universal. Being subjective, we may be free to interpret our art as “superior,” but on what objective grounds could we possibly draw such a conclusion?
The usual matter of art’s quality is the abstract thought it reflects. In that, too, we find a richness in primitive societies on par with anything civilization has produced. The complex theology of Austrlian aborignes features songlines, and a Dreamtime that is both present, and in the mythic past, simultaneously. Paul Radin’s Primitive Man as Philosopher explores the depth of some forager philosophical systems, especially the Ho-Chunk, and finds they are easily comparable to the philosophical depth found in civilization. The question of how well primitive art reflects that complex, intellectual world is answered by David Lewis-Williams’ The Mind in the Cave, where he compares the cave paintings of the Paleolithic to the rock art of the !Kung and the Native Americans, and finds many of the same images and motifs. Ethnographically, as Lewis-Williams shows, these images are shamanistic elements, bound up ultimately in the structure of the human brain itself.
Lewis-Williams suggests that art began as a means by which shamans could share their visions with others. Among the !Kung, stone is seen as a porous membrane separating our world from the spirit world. In both the beliefs of modern foragers, and in archaeological theories of Paleolithic art, the role of art is to connect people with a common vision of the world, and to communicate with the spirit world, drawing us back to Tolstoy’s observation, “art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling.”
The reality of such profound, primitive art is something that John Zerzan does not engage in his influential essay, “The Case Against Art.” Zerzan’s argument has informed many primitivists’ views against art and language, that it was the innovation of symbolic thought, rather than the innovation of civilization, that led to hierarchy. Lewis-Williams and Zerzan agree on many ideas. They agree that art began with shamanism, for example, and they agree that shamanism and art are bound up inextricably in the formation of hierarchy. Where Zerzan sees this as something that must be undone, Lewis-Williams sees it as a great advance for humanity.
Where Lewis-Williams’ argument falters is in his application of Max Raphael’s Marxist interpretations of the meaning of art as a mediator of class struggle. Lewis-Williams makes the argument that the “classes” in conflict here were “behaviorally modern humans” versus the Neanderthals, wherein “behaviorally modern humans” used art to flaunt their cognitive superiority to Neanderthals. In this, his argument becomes very tenuous, because there is a significant body of evidence which suggests that Neanderthals may in fact have had some types of art. While misinterpretation of some may be likely, Lewis-Williams seems to be on increasingly shaky ground as he argues that they are all misinterpretations of the archaeological evidence. Neanderthal cranial capacity was larger than our own, and while some of that may well have been to ennervate their shorter, stouter bodies, the undeniable contention remains that as far as the archaeological evidence can show, Neanderthals’ cognitive capacity was at least equal to our own. Besides the evidence of art that Lewis-Williams tries to dismiss, the Neanderthals also show the only evidence of adaptation evidenced in the Paleolithic, with the Chatelperronian toolset–a synthesis of the Neanderthals’ own Mousterian toolset, with the blade technology of the Aurignacian, associated with our own ancestors. It was not our ancestors who adapted the best parts of Mousterian technology, but the Neanderthals who showed that they could learn and adapt to new ideas. Given this, Lewis-Williams’ premise that Neanderthals lacked the capacity for symbolic thought that our ancestors expressed in cave and rock paintngs is sketchy, at best, and if the Neanderthals were able to understand symbolic thought just as well as our ancestors could, then the use of art for conflict and hierarchy cannot follow.
Where Lewis-Williams sees humanity’s abstract thought as the crown of creation, Zerzan sees it as our expulsion from Eden. Zerzan connects art and hierarchy simply by stating, “The shamanistic origin of visual art and music has been often remarked, the point here being that the artist-shaman was the first specialist.” This is a common view, but nonetheless a distinct abuse of the term “specialist.” Shamans usually have the same responsibilities as everyone else; they must hunt and gather like anyone else. Their station does not afford them any kind of command or undue influence. While in some societies, shamans guarded their “secret knowledge” jealously as a source of power, in many other societies, shamanism was open to anyone who wished to try, making shamanic specialization a matter of emphasis, rather than exclusivity.
Zerzan goes on to explain how, in the mediated life of symbolism, the symbol comes to replace the thing itself, thus separating humans from actual reality and providing a critical layer of symbols that can be manipulated by specialists like shamans, priests, artsts and ultimately rulers, to control us. He follows the progression of art through changing ideas and religions, showing how the increasing alienation of symbolism leads to increasing hierarchy and control. Consistently, Zerzan has also written against language (”Language: Origin and Meaning“), numbers (”Number: Its Origin and Evolution“) and time (”Time and Its Discontents“), creating a significant force in modern primitivism that is hostile to any symbolism that mediates sensory reality. In this view, it is symbolism that creates civilization and its problems, rather than any kind of material motivations. Zerzan’s view of history is driven by ideas, with a culture that changes its material reality to fit changing ideas–and thus, it is at odds at its most basic level with memetics and cultural materialism, where ideas are shaped by material reality.
Such an extreme view is as much contrary to human nature as civilization’s own. As we have seen, art is universal to all human cultures, and almost certainly intrinsic to our very nature. The truth of the matter is, the shaman’s exploration of his own psychology and the murky depths of the Dreamtime are far more real than the world we seem to experience. No satisfying answer has ever been proposed to allay our nagging suspicions of Descartes’ “little demon”–an inescapable doubt that returns to haunt us again and again in various forms, be it “a brain in a jar,” or more recently, The Matrix. The fact that we cannot escape is that we have never directly experienced the world around us. It is always mediated by symbols. We see a narrow band of electromagnetic energy as “light”; how would our view of reality shift if, instead of color, we saw infrared, or ultraviolet? We do not taste foods; buds on our tongue and in our mouth react to given chemicals in food, producing electrochemical responses in our brain. What we experience first-hand are the impulses conducted to our brain via our senses; what we experience first-hand are, ultimately, nothing more than another kind of symbol. The taste of an apple is a symbol in our mind for what that taste might really be, but we do not experience the taste itself; we experience only the neurological symbol conducted through our taste buds, to our nerves, and finally to our brains.
The external symbol merely extends that inescapable layer of neurological abstraction to create another layer through which we can deal with and experience reality. That layer is ambiguous. It can create, or it can destroy. It can open, or it can close. Many Native American shamanic traditions were very secretive, and created in the shaman a focus of power and authority, and thus, incipient hierarchy. Among the !Kung, shamanism was open and egalitarian, a matter of reconciling the dreams and visions of many into a great vision of the world–a vision they painted on rock to show their dreams to one another, and to all their children to come. That abstract layer of thought, symbol and art can be used to conceal things, as Zerzan argues; it can be used to coerce and control. But it can just as easily be used to reveal, open and share.
Zerzan’s condemnation of abstract symbols in and of themselves is as radcal as it is short-sighted. The ultimate proof lies in the fact that civilization’s propaganda is wrong. Every culture has art, a rich symbolic world, abstract thought and deep philosophy. Yet, only some of those cultures possess hierarchy, evidence coercion, or maintain a population showing the signs of being cut off from experiential reality, as Zerzan decries. It is part of human nature; it connects us to one another; it is universal. In condemning art, Zerzan condemns us all, just as civilization does.
Art has always been the refuge for those sensitive souls who cannot face civilization’s horrors. Even in civilization, it is a lifeline to human nature, and thus to some extent, stands in defiance of civilization. Every power has tried to co-opt it towards its own ends, but ultimately, art serves only the human spirit. It is irrepressible, and it cannot be claimed solely by any one culture–not even ours.
Jason,
I am by no means an apologist for Zerzan - I think it is good that he writes what he does, but I don’t agree with him - for the same reasons as you, it seems. However, you say:
Zerzan’s view of history is driven by ideas, with a culture that changes its material reality to fit changing ideas–and thus, it is at odds at its most basic level with memetics and cultural materialism, where ideas are shaped by material reality.
While this is in one way true, it seems to me that Zerzan’s view of history is ultimately cultural materialist (or at least materialist). His problem is with the fact that we developed the equipment with which to have ideas in the first place. Thats a very cultural materialist perspective.
P.S. The Anthropik vision of Primitivism is infinitely preferable to Zerzan’s, because you describe a very real recent past, remnants of this which remain in the present, and a feasable vision of the future. Zerzan, on the other hand, yearns for something long past and arguably pre-human (this is not bad per se - I think he may have a point about how fun it might have been - it’s just unattainable unless one opts for partial lobotomy - or mushroom abuse).
Comment by Clive — 10 January 2006 @ 3:38 PM
I’m not sure I’ve ever really gotten that from Zerzan’s work. I’ve only read his critiques of symbolic thought, never for any of the material advances that paved the way for symbolic thought.
With this thesis, I had to stake out my position, and establish a primitivism that differs from Zerzan. I respect the man and his work a great deal, but on this point, I can never agree with him. Frankly, I think Zerzan’s stance on this issue hurts primitivism a great deal, so I’m afraid I had to be less than kind in my treatment, to establish an alternative within primitivism.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 10 January 2006 @ 3:55 PM
To be fair, I don’t ever remember him saying specifically that the rot started with the material advance of bigger brains - that’s just my interpretation. I haven’t read too much of his stuff either. Its too damn academic.
Comment by Anonymous — 10 January 2006 @ 4:07 PM
That was me.
Comment by Clive — 10 January 2006 @ 4:08 PM
I don’t know if I buy the idea that there were no “geniuses” as Beethovens, Mozarts, DaVincis or Picassos. I think that’s a distortion from the lense of historical evidence as well as from the influences of continuous historical information available to some of those named “geniuses.” Evidence of their accomplishments is accessible and is considered sublime in how it relates to the milieu we know they had available.
A hunter/gatherer may have had the talent, the devotion, and even the amount of knowledge of any of those. However, his or her world was probably much more fluid - with so much mobility tribes must have changed quite a bit from generation to generation if not more rapidly - and left a whole lot less record.
“The usual matter of art’s quality is the abstract thought it reflects?” This is mostly true to critics and the educational/critical world. To be a “true” appreciator of art, you’re supposed to know tons of art history. Many artists speak directly to this. The good ones play with it. True, you can find a lot of fun in some art by knowing how it relates to its predecessors and their symbols.
What I consider true art is that which moves the simplest (as well as the most educated) person by its own force, if they only come to it with an open eye (ear, or any sense).
There’s art and then there’s art. There is always expression of the contemporary culture, but in a relatively artistic way. State-approved art in the Soviet Union would be a good example. Surely some of it was quite appealing and even worthy. However, it had to agree with the state’s aims.
There’s also the more avant-garde art, which still inescapably reflects its contemporary culture, but attempts to expand its vision. It still should be judged by it’s appeal though.
Being against anything that might give rise to hierarchy is silly. There are obviously certain paths in the human brain and psyche that will always give rise to generalization, abstraction, synthesis, the occasional completely new idea, and even hierarchical organization of ideas as a mnemonic device.
The real key is to always have the good of people in mind. Just keep coming back to “Is it good for people, is it helpful to people, does it hurt people, does it promote abstract organizations at the expense of people?”
Comment by Sam — 12 January 2006 @ 3:53 AM
I wrote this thesis as an answer to art critics and their ilk, who balk at the idea of primitive society because it lacks art. Ergo, I used their criteria. Personally, I share your criteria: we should judge art by its ability “to break the frozen sea within us,” as Kafka said. But that’s a lot more subjective, innit?
As for geniuses, I have no doubt they existed! I’d never suggest otherwise. What concerns the kind of critics this thesis is written for is the lack of that “cult of personality,” if you will, that we have in our own art–a collection of this genius’ corpus, or that one’s. Forager tribes are nearly fanatical about “being against anything that might give rise to hierarchy,” as you say. The only thing more important than maintaining the tribe is giving each individual the opportunity to express herself fully–but not necessarily garnering that into any kind of power or influence. As such, we have the art of geniuses all the way back to the Upper Paleolithic–but we have no indication of who they are, or which ones belong to their corpus. They are part of the great flow of a people’s art–not a towering genius. I think, ultimately, that offends the elitism of most critics most deeply of all.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 January 2006 @ 9:12 AM
A critic creates nothing, and therefore feels qualified to judge creative people. There is wisdom here, he hates all creative people equally.
That was something close to a quote from Robert Heinlein, but I’m away from my library right now and cannot look up the exact wording.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 15 January 2006 @ 12:21 AM
Primitive cultures have no Beethoven, no Rembrandt, and no Shakespeare.
There is one other (and, I think, more legitimate) critique of this claim: Certain artforms (media) are only be possible with in the context of civilization. In other words, privative cultures have no movies, video games, etc.
I’m not making the judgment that those art-forms are better than non-technological art, but I don’t think the loss of those art-forms as an option is negligible.
Comment by L33tminion — 17 January 2006 @ 4:26 AM
Then again, there are artforms that we have lost. Storytelling, for example, meant something quite different to foragers–it involved rhythm, musical accompaniment, and a bit of improvisational theater. Rap is a pale shadow of that. There are no doubt others, as well, but that’s just off the top of my head.
So, we might lose film, movies, and video games … and gain other, new artforms. Do they balance? That’s difficult to assess, since there are so many subjective questions involved, but my intuition is, yes, we’re probably gaining more on that question than we’re losing.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 January 2006 @ 10:31 AM
That depends on how one defines gain and loss. Within any particular forager grouping, there is likely to be a net loss of art forms. But across the spectrum of groups around the world, there is likely to be a net gain. The individuals who are creating video and electronic art now will not suddenly lose their articic impulses just because those media become unavailable. Most of them will express their artistic vision in another form instead.
Comment by ChandraShakti — 25 February 2006 @ 3:02 PM
Interesting how the brief history of videogames has been one of increasing complexity and decreasing diversity.
Comment by speedbird — 15 March 2006 @ 5:22 AM
Increasing complexity often means decreasing diversity. When those two are in conflict, I think it’s complexity that must be sacrificed for diversity.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 March 2006 @ 10:09 AM
“It is part of human nature; it connects us to one another; it is universal. In condemning art, Zerzan condemns us all, just as civilization does.”
To quote a gangsta: “…the extent to which thought and emotion are tied to symbolism is the measure by which absence fills the inner world and destroys the outer world.”
And
Shreeve: “Neandertals did not paint their caves with the images of animals. But perhaps they had no need to distill life into representations, because its essences were already revealed to their senses. The sign of a running herd was enough to inspire a surging sense of beauty. They had no drums or bone flutes, but they could listen to the booming rhythms of the wind, the earth, and each other’s heartbeats, and be transported.”
And
“When people see some things as beautiful other things become ugly. When people see some things as good other things become bad.” (Tao te Ching)
And
“Original nature has no opposites. Speech and words are not necessary. Without thinking, all things are exactly as they are. The truth is just like this.”
And of course
“The extent to which thought and emotion are tied to symbolism is the measure by which absence fills the inner world and destroys the outer world.”
At this point in my life, I couldn’t disdain art more. I absolutely hate it. What’s needed isn’t a half-assed philosophy of art, but a full-assed sociology of art. Zerzan hit that nail right on the head when he said that the extent to which thought and emotion are tied to symbolism is the measure by which absence fills the inner world. Why art? Express what? Erich Fromm said that primitivist religions didn’t address “the existential split.” That’s because they dont need to. Word.
Comment by Adam — 14 February 2008 @ 12:03 PM
“I’d rather be an optimist and be wrong, than a pessimist and be right”
And
“All we need is love…1969…isn’t that annoying?”
sorry
i just couldn’t resist
Comment by jhereg — 14 February 2008 @ 2:42 PM
Thanks, jhereg, for pointing out the most obvious fallacy in Adam’s post: you can find nice quotes to back up most any position you care to take. They can add some spice as an epigraph, or to give some emotional force to facts you’ve previously proven, but when you have nothing else, then you fall guilty of empty sophistry.
Adam, I find it amusing that you point to Neanderthals to support your claim. This crudely sculpted face points to only the most obvious evidence of Neanderthal art. Neanderthals buried their dead after painting their bodies with red ochre and laying them on beds of flower petals. Of course, the earliest art leaves no archaeological trace—songs, stories, etc.—but considering the complex material art they left behind, we have no reason to doubt that they had such things.
But I think your argument, like Zerzan’s, misses the mark entirely because of its common conflation of our interpretations of art, with the interpretation of art. The idea that art has a symbolic nature does not even monopolize our own, civilized interpretations; indeed, modern art defines itself by the appreciation of art as an object in itself, without any symbolism whatsoever. But more to the point, has anyone ever considered van Gogh’s Starry Night a fitting substitute for a night of star-gazing? Van Gogh himself said, “The feeling of the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.”
Yet every extant primitive culture (and, from the available archaeological evidence, every past human culture as well, including those of Homo neandertalensis) deeply values their art. But not as symbolism. They never look to their art as a symbol for their interactions with the world around them, much less as a symbolic substitution for them. Rather, they look to their art as one of the primary means they have to participate in that world. Human songs, music and dance allow them to harmonize with the rhythms of the world around them. They live in a world shot through with artists: bird sing their songs, deer leave their tracks, wolves howl up a symphony at the moon, insects carve sinuous designs into leaves. More than symbolism, more than imitation, human art simply offers a human mode of participation with the world, just as bird art, deer art, wolf art and insect art give those other-than-human persons the means by which they participate with the world.
To deny art means denying the example of every functional human culture; it means denying the example of other-than-human cultures around us; it means plucking out our eyes, ripping out our tongues, chopping off our hands, renouncing our humanity, renouncing our participation with the world, and resigning ourselves to some wretched corner of eternal isolation.
How about adding that to your list of quotes, eh?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 February 2008 @ 9:36 PM