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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> OT: background info (logic & value of Ultimate Sacred Postulates)
(regarding political culture)
-
Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity
By Roy A. Rappaport
Reviewed by Mary Catherine Bateson
(Whole Earth Spring 99)
ISBN: 0521296900
1999; 535 pp. $19.95.
Cambridge University Press,
40 West 20 th Street, New York. NY 10011=
.
800/872.7423, www.cup.org
Roy Rappaport writes in a time of ur=
gency,
when we must ask not only how religion f=
its in but
what might replace or sustain its ancien=
t
contribution to meaning and social integ=
ration. In
1968 Rappaport published a groundbreakin=
g
ethnography of the Maring people of the =
New
Guinea highlands, detailing the connecti=
ons among
their economy and its environmental impa=
ct, their
endemic warfare, and their cycle of beli=
efs and
ritual, which regulated the other two. R=
appaport's
curiosity then carried him into years of=
reading
about ritual and religion, at the same t=
ime that he
became increasing engaged in environment=
al
issues. This new book is what is meant w=
hen we
speak of the culmination of a life's wor=
k.
Rappaport delayed its completion for yea=
rs while
researching and rewriting passages again=
and
again, until he was diagnosed with termi=
nal cancer
and finished it before his death in 1997=
.
Anthropologists have argued that hum=
ankind
and technology coevolved=97the advantage=
s of tool
use, say, selecting for better and more =
opposable
thumbs, nimbler hands, and greater intel=
ligence,
which in turn created better tools. The =
same
argument has been made for the reciproca=
l
development of language and intelligence=
. We
suffer, however, the weaknesses of our s=
trengths
and the vices of our virtues. Human inte=
lligence
and technology have given us the tools t=
o destroy
the environment on which we depend, whil=
e
does not seem to allow the creation of a consensus
to address it.
Rappaport proposes that ritual and l=
anguage
have similarly coevolved, with ritual pr=
oviding,
from the very beginning, a necessary cor=
rective for
language-created problems that may other=
wise be
lethal. Language permits lies and permit=
s any
statement to be contradicted or opposed =
by
alternatives suggested by experience or
self-interest or speculation.
[***] However, by
participating in ritual, in which invariable words
and actions recur, men and women assume wider
commitments which are forged at deeper levels of
the psyche. Rappaport calls these invariable words
and actions Ultimate Sacred Postulates.
[***]
This does
not necessarily mean that the participan=
ts believe
the postulates. Indeed, they are ideally=
untestable
and without immediate consequences: "In =
God We
Trust." "Hear Oh Israel, the Lord Our Go=
d the Lord
is One." But these postulates that canno=
t be
questioned hold a key position in the go=
verning
hierarchies of ideas that Rappaport call=
s Logoi
(the plural of Logos), and they have con=
sequences
for social life. The simplest example of=
ritual
implementation of them would be the use =
of oaths
to create metatruths that are more relia=
ble than
simple reports. The sanctity of the Ulti=
mate Sacred
Postulates underlies the authority of co=
nvention and
of leaders, teachers, and priesthoods. I=
t is what
makes action possible as part of a large=
r social or
ecological whole.
Rappaport is not proposing the const=
ruction of
a new religion; rather, he is describing=
the kind of
ecology of ideas and actions that might =
include and
sustain religion as an integral part of =
life. He
points out that traditional religions ca=
n be
interpreted in benign ways and that secu=
lar rituals
(such as rock concerts or environmental =
clean-ups)
also exhibit many of the unifying proper=
ties of
shared participation. What is needed is =
not new
theology (though some tune-ups might be =
helpful)
but new forms of practice and social eng=
agement.
[***] We can talk until we are blue in the face, but that
may do more harm than good, creating new
polarities;
[***]
what we need to do instead is to march
or dance or sing, as in the great civil =
rights
demonstrations of the sixties that forge=
d new
convictions and new unity.
The book draws on a great body of
[***] anthropological writing and on multiple scriptural
traditions
to explore the nature of the Logoi as th=
ey
frame basic understandings of time and c=
ausality,
space and human motivation. Side by side=
with
examples from Buddhism, Judaism, and
Christianity, Rappaport sets examples of=
tribal
Australians, of the Sioux and the Navaho=
, and
above all of the Maring, dancing togethe=
r and
slaughtering pigs to create alliances sa=
nctified by
the spirits of the ancestors. All of the=
se are used to
[***] illuminate philosophical concepts and ideas that
have been drawn from cybernetics and
communications theory (lots of Martin Buber and
Charles Sanders Peirce and Gregory Bateson),
[***]
explaining the *universality* of ritual =
and its
*necessary role* in the evolution of hum=
anity.
This is a fat book, and a difficult =
one,
occasionally defensive and constipated i=
n its
argument. But it is an essential one in =
the
developing conversation about how human =
beings
can deeply know their involvement in the
Received on Mon Nov 13 2000 - 14:25:20 CST
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