Transcription
Hi there, hi, hi, hi. Welcome to my third Eyewolf video. In my last video, I examined how our species transformed from being primarily a grazing vegetarian into being a hunting carnivore, and how this was a dramatic shift in our evolution. It was argued that we are a creature with a dual personality, in that we evolved as a vegetarian, but then made a revolutionary paradigm shift when we turned ourselves into a carnivore. Furthermore, I examined Carl Jung's universal archetype of the Dual Mother, and I asked the question: Who is the mother of our second birth?
This video is titled Totems, Taboos, and Naked Apes. A totem is a symbol attached to a family or a clan division within a tribe, and in his book Totem and Taboo, Sigmund Freud identifies animals as the most common of sacred totems. Totems are also associated with a clan's origin, and according to Freud, the totem is first of all the tribal ancestor of the clan. The clan descends from its totem, and connected to the clan totem are a series of magical taboos that act as restrictions and internalized fears. These restrictions and internalized fears, in turn, work to regulate social practice and convention within the tribe.
Furthermore, clan totems also regulate and preserve the power structures of the tribe. According to Freud, taboos connected with the totem protect the power of chiefs and priests, at the same time as protecting the ruling class. These tribal taboos supposedly aim at safeguarding of the weak, women and children, and common people generally, from the powerful mana, magical influence of chiefs and priests. In addition, according to Freud, taboos protect private property of individuals, determine the acceptable handling of the dead, and watch over the cycles of life, such as birth and initiation. Taboos associated with totems are central to the preservation of a tribe's power structure, and from Freud's 20th-century Western viewpoint, it would appear that conscious totems and taboos form the organizational foundation of the tribal life of these poor naked cannibals.
It is interesting to note that the root of the word cannibal are linked to the Latin word canis for dog, and to the Celtic word ball for forehead. Freud's reference to poor naked cannibals is, of course, politically incorrect today, but what about the foundations of our dog-eat-dog society? Is society really that much different for modern cultural cannibals who are richly clothed? Freud argues in Totem and Taboo that there are similarities between conscious totem culture and the unconscious behavior of Western compulsive neurotics, even suggesting the label of taboo disease for this unconscious behavior. Does our evolving global tribe of an unconscious totem animal? Are there unconscious taboos connected with this animal? What if the wolf is the original totem ancestor of the monkey with laptops and guns? Furthermore, is the wolf the parent of Carl Jung's universal archetype of the Dual Mother? Is the wolf the species that gave us our evolutionary second birth, and does the canine continue to appear as an unconscious icon in the stories modern man tells about himself?
A clan's primary taboo is the obligation not to kill or destroy their totem, to abstain from eating its meat, or from any other enjoyment of it. Any violations of these prohibitions is automatically punished. An almost universal taboo that persists to this day is the not eating of canines. There are exceptions, one being in parts of China where dogs are eaten. Interestingly, the dog in China is also associated with the West. So, it is shown by Freud that a primary taboo is to not kill or eat your totem.
In addition to the taboo of abstaining from the killing and eating of a totem animal, there is the taboo of incest, the all-most universal of taboos. A tribal clan system that is organized around the principle of taboos regulates the acceptability of potential mates through totem heredity. Sexual contacts between members of the same clan are taboo, and this ensures tribal reproductive health and fertility. Thus, according to Freud, the oldest and most important taboo prohibitions are the two basic laws of totemism, namely not to kill the totem animal and to avoid sexual intercourse with totem companions of the other sex. It would therefore seem that these must have been the oldest and strongest desires of mankind.
It is most interesting to note that one of these taboos is a very practical law for a scavenger species to follow if it is also learning to hunt for itself. If you are in the process of learning to hunt for yourself, but are still dependent upon scavenged meat, it would continue to be important not to kill an animal that hunts with you and helps to provide you with meat. This taboo of not eating your co-hunting totem animal is an incredibly important law to adhere to if your main food supply is obtained through hunting cooperation with an animal species different than yourself. If you eat this animal, there will be less labor available for your collective hunting, and if you grow up in a society based upon hunting and concert with another species, you will see this animal as part of your hunting pack, and in effect, you will understand that you have descended into the present as a result of this animal's past surplus labor that has provided you with the conditions to thrive, and also continues to provide you with the conditions to survive. You have descended down to the present day as a result of the hunting labor of your totem.
Given the cultural practices of man tends to continue as a ritualistic law long after the original practicality of the observances may have passed into obscurity, by even those who continue to observe them, this evidence of an almost universal ritualized taboo of not eating your totem suggests the presence of a taboo and totem of origin, which at one time would have had a very practical reason and benefit behind its observance. While in historic times taboos have been associated with numerous ritual totem animals, the origins of totemic practice most likely grew from a pre-ritual relationship with one very special animal that was not just symbolically attached to the clan, but was a vital part of the collective hunting pack. Seeing this different species as part of your society, and not seeing it as a potential food source you prey upon, is important to your very survival.
In addition, the second taboo against avoiding incest is an important law to adhere to if your social structure becomes a small hunting group that is an extended family unit. The second taboo centered around the avoidance of incest is less important to a society large in numbers based upon the economic activity of a grazing troop with a large harem and a dominant male. However, as the grazing behavior the troop changes into hunting behavior, the old social order of independent grazers who find safety in large numbers needs to adapt to a cultural organization similar to a pack structure, and it needs to capitalize on the efficiency of small numbers living in tight social cooperation. Unfortunately, the isolated pack is an extended family, and if the pack model is adopted for its hunting efficiency while retaining the harem model of reproduction, it will not be long before the effects of incest will defeat or will hold in check any benefit obtained by adopting the pack social structure. It will be the same for any evolving grazing animal who is becoming a scavenger. There will be a contradiction to face and overcome.
In addition, a scavenger who is primarily becoming a hunter, already primarily dependent upon meat as a food source, will also face changing social contradictions. The taboo of not eating certain kinds of meat, if not all meat, and deviant sexual practices continues to be linked by some tribes to this day. For example, certain vegetarian groups in North America. Carol J. Adams, in her book The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory, makes a direct connection between the meat-eating patriarchy and the exploitation and sexual subjugation of women. This connection between meat-eating and the role played by women in society may not be as far-fetched as it sounds on first reading.
Desmond Morris, in The Naked Ape, examines the possible behavioral shifts that occurred when our ape ancestors underwent the metamorphosis from being a browsing vegetarian into a hunting carnivore. Morris postulates that several major shifts took place within the prehuman ape paradigm, including a major change in social sexual behavior. The naked ape is the only primate that forms pair bonds, while other primates, such as chimpanzees, do not know the exclusiveness of pair formation. Ironically, the naked ape is also the only ape to have fleas, while other primates have mites and ticks, and having fleas, like pair bonding, is connected to the fact that carnivores are territorial and return to a fixed bedding site, which is necessary for fleas to breed.
Desmond Morris argues that pair bonding behavior came about with the naked ape as a result of the division of labor that developed in a carnivore ape culture, when males tended to form hunting parties and females remained at a den site to look after the young. Primates display very little paternal behavior. However, the hunting ape males also had to carry food supplies home for the nursing females and their slowly growing young. Morris compares this new paternal behavior in the naked apes with the paternal behavior of wolves.
The changing from a browsing to a hunting animal also caused a basic psychological change in the species. Morris points out that the fruit-picking primates and hunting carnivores have very different motivational systems when it comes to feeding and eating. The fruit-picking primate does not need to have separate motivations for food collection and food consumption, since a grazing animal eats as it collects. In contrast to the direct motivation of the grazing animal is the hunting motivation of the carnivore. The advanced carnivore separates the actions of food seeking, hunting, and killing from the actions of eating. The two have become distinct motivational systems with only partial dependence one on the other. This has come about because the whole sequence is so lengthy and arduous. The act of feeding is too remote, and so the action of killing has become a reward in itself. This ability to separate an action from direct reward is an important step to make. While for evolutionary predators, killing is a separate instinct indirectly connected to the reward of food, for our ancestors who lacked an evolutionary hunting instinct and were developing consciousness, the separation of an act and a reward can be best described as the beginnings of ritualized behavior.
This ritual behavior would have led to a rapid change in our precursors, and as a result, would have become a form of species development outside of the strict definition of evolution. In fact, we would now have become a species which developed more through cultural revolution than biological evolution. Clearly, in becoming a carnivore, our species changed its relationship to the world and our relationship to ourselves. This metamorphosis into a carnivore was not primarily a physical change; it was behavioral. We did not develop fangs and claws of a typical carnivore; we developed the culture of a carnivore. We developed our brain, and with this brain, we developed technologies of fangs and claws.
In my next video, Evolution, Language, and Hunting, I will look at the relationship between hunting and language development. Is reading a ritualized hunting behavior with roots stretching back much farther than the invention of writing? So, if you want to be part of the pack hunting down our story of origin, remember to like this video, subscribe, make a comment below, and hit that virtual bell with your metaphor cursor spear as we keep tracking and hunting for the signs that are hidden in the stories we tell about ourselves.
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