oocities | Western anthropology pretty much equates animism with spirit belief.
I think this is mistaken. Spirit belief is not necessary to, and, when
present, is only a superficial expression of, animism, which is more
accurately viewed, I believe, as an expression of “identity
transparency”. I prefer this term to “participation mystique” which has
a connotation of primitivism not at all justified -- given that
subject-subject and subject-object empathic fusion requires access to
elaborate simultaneous awareness states of consciousness not easily
experienced by the uncultivated awareness.
Urban versus rural may not be the real issue. Explicit animism in
Japan has probably fallen into abeyance due mostly to the fact that the
traditional arts, crafts, and inner disciplines are no longer being
practiced as widely or as authentically as they were only one or two
generations ago. The relative absence of analogical and metaphorical
reference in contemporary Japanese architecture (compared to the
traditional) may well be another factor promoting conscious abeyance of
animism (which abeyance, I believe, has unconsciously been
psychologically compensated for by the flood of highly fetishized
pornography which came on the scene beginning in the early-1970s).
Regarding the second question you raise: I think Schrödinger must
certainly have had quite elaborate experience of “identity transparency”
(and thus of animism) and that this played a significant role in the
production of his famous wave equation. I also think it played a role
in his refusal to embrace the probability interpretation of his
equation. Indeed, I view much of the problematics associated with
quantum theory as being the result of an absence of animistic experience
on the part of those doing the interpreting.
At the beginning of this 21st century, the monoculture use to which
the evolving techno-base is being put is imposing a uniformization and
subjective-intersubjective cognitive and neurologic deficit
omniculturally on such an unprecedented scale, that, given the history
of holocausts associated with this millennia-long cognitive implosion,
one would have to be oblivious to human history to believe THE NEW WORLD
ORDER will be imposed absent holocausts of unprecedented scale. It's a
ridiculous notion entertained only by those with huge neurologic
lacunae.
Being uninformed is not only a mark of distinction in America, it is a matter of national pride.
Cell phones will be to the present generation what cigarettes were to the WWII generation.
It has been a long time since there were students in American universities; now, there are only trainees.
Intergenerational memory of inner states is far poorer than the famed
limitations of institutional memory: collective amnesia is endemic to
the human species.
Anyone with a voice at this juncture is not doing any good. If the
person were doing good, knee-jerk nesting instinct protecting the
current institutionalization would not allow him or her a voice.
When U.S. officials responsible for causing the Cambodian holocaust
were not held legally culpable for their acts -- indeed, one even
received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts -- who could possibly
imagine U.S. officials being held responsible for their acts in the Waco
deaths? They were not held responsible for the Hansford irradiation;
the production of Agent Orange at a location on the waterfront in
Alexandria, Virginia, at the time surrounded by a densely populated
ghetto community, which, when gentrified to upper-middle class, the City
Public Works Department required 12 feet of dirt removed, a plastic
shield placed, 12 feet of new dirt installed before building could
proceed; the testing of electromagnetic pulse weapons for well over a
decade in upper-middle class suburban Virginia and Maryland, which, in
all likelihood, was involved in triggering or inducing fulminations of
SLE and other radiation-sensitive degenerative autoimmune and
demyelinating diseases; and so on; and so on.
Nothing significant will be done until the wave moving from the
periphery to the power centers begins to break. All sorts of interest
will arise at that point, but only the most meager of undertakings will
then be possible.
