Future Primal. Louis G. Herman. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Louis G. Herman
Издательство: Ingram
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Политика, политология
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781608681167
Скачать книгу
the fly whisk made from wildebeest hair — the signature of the dancer. Once caught up in the trance-inducing energies of the singing and dancing, some of the healers started entering the spirit world, shaking, sweating, shrieking, talking in tongues, circling the group diagnosing and healing sickness and disorder. That night, under the stars, on the sands of the Kalahari, I witnessed an activity that I had seen depicted in rock paintings over a thousand miles away in South Africa, where the now-extinct southern San — the /Xam — performed the same dances and then painted their experiences on the rock walls of their shelters.

images

      I had no illusions of playing anthropologist or of contributing to the empirical fieldwork on the San, one of the most thoroughly studied groups of hunter-gatherers in the world. One scholar estimated that there are over a thousand published pages for every living San. I simply approached them with the big questions of political philosophy in mind. What can we learn about human nature from one of the last and oldest of such cultures that can guide us now? How did the changing context and circumstances of San life shape their society and politics? How can speculations about our distant past illuminate how we all should live together on this single, increasingly crowded, and fragile planet?

      After 1998, I continued making regular trips to South Africa. In 2007 I went to Andriesvale on the edge of the Kalahari to visit one of the last groups of Bushmen to survive within South Africa — the Khomani San. They had inhabited what is now the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (which includes the old Gemsbok National Park) on the border between South Africa and Botswana. During apartheid, they had been removed from the park and had scattered, losing their language — perhaps the oldest of all the San languages — and much of their culture. Then in 1999 the new South African government returned to the Khomani some forty thousand hectares, half of which were inside the game reserve. Since then some fourteen surviving language speakers have been found, and there are vigorous attempts to revive the culture and establish a viable local economy.

       Primal Political Philosophy

      The insight I got from repeated and sometimes difficult returns to Hawai‘i made me realize that I was no longer primarily interested in being a detached academic, applying critical methodologies to solve scholarly problems. Like it or not, I came to understand that my whole life was a struggle with something like the daunting project of classical political philosophy. This traditionally required nothing less than bringing together the totality of one’s lived experience to confront the defining question of the truth quest: “How should we live?” Socrates and Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Marx, all giants among many others, attempted to articulate an integrated vision in response to this question. Entire societies and ways of life were organized around these visions. In each case the philosopher had responded to a personally felt sense of crisis in the life of the larger society. In each case the creative response required a return to beginnings, to asking and attempting to answer the foundational questions around which every worldview and way of life are constructed: What is the human condition? What connects humans to the rest of creation — the community of being? How can this guide our thinking about good governance, a just and healthy economy, and a satisfying and meaningful life for the individual?

      From the perspective of scholarly research, the scope of such a project was clearly huge, and I hesitated to admit my ambition and face the accusation of grandiosity. Then the primal perspective gave me courage, reminding me that in a very basic sense no one escapes the challenge facing the political philosopher. Everyone has to take a stand in the face of the totality of life — even if it is the bad-faith choice of simply going with the flow or living in denial and choosing not to think. We are part of an epic story whose beginning and end are the deepest mystery. We all grow from infancy into adult consciousness asking periodically, “Who am I? What is real? Where am I going? What role shall I play?” All of us answer these questions more or less self-consciously, more or less hurriedly. Ultimately we answer them in the pattern of the daily decisions and actions that make up our lives.

      I was further heartened by the fact that, as I went back to beginnings and confronted these questions, I could feel myself becoming whole and healthy. The deeper I went into wilderness, the faster the regeneration, and the more I could see the glories and flaws of civilization in sharp relief. I discovered I was also following a path that could be called shamanic and that was much more ancient than our written philosophical and religious traditions.