Unavoidable fact

The fact that there's so much about which I know nothing.

Claude Levi-Strauss 1908–2009

Understanding, or participating, in the ecological reflection of humans such as the Amerindians is not only what he considered most important to study for himself as an anthropologist: it also coloured his values. These, from time to time, particularly towards the end of his life, he allowed himself to make public. He repeatedly expressed his distaste for the narrowness and sterility of much post-neolithic thought, and its obsession with the exploitation of other living things rather than simply reflecting on the latter's complexity and mutual relationships. As a result, he became something of a hero to certain modern ecological ideologues. For Lévi-Strauss, writing and formal education are just as likely to lead to philosophical impoverishment as to anything else.

There is also another, even more fundamental, way in which his thought seeks to rejoin that of the mythology of the Amerindians as he understands it to be. Myths have no authors. Their creation occurs imperceptibly in the process of transmission or transformation over hundreds of years and across hundreds of miles. The individual subject, the self-obsessed innovator or artist so dear to much western philosophy, had, therefore, no place for Lévi-Strauss, and indeed repelled him. He saw the glorification of individual creativity as an illusion. As he wrote in Tristes Tropiques: "the I is hateful". This perspective is particularly evident in his study of Amerindian art. This art did not involve the great individualistic self-displays of western art that he abhorred. The Amerindian artist, by contrast, tried to reproduce what others had done and, if he was innovating, he was unaware of the fact. Throughout Lévi-Strauss's work there is a clear aesthetic preference for a creativity that is distributed throughout a population and that does not wear its emotions on its sleeve.

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Obituary by Maurice Bloch guardian.co.uk

Tuesday 3 November 2009 >>>

edge of the lake

Daylesford–Malmsbury Road Sunday 1 November 2009

In the days of the Yellow Emperor...

In the days of the Yellow Emperor, there was a Minister of Laws who believed that there was nothing perfect in this world, until the day he had a daughter. She was beautiful and intelligent and affectionate. There was not one hair on her head that he would change. ‘For my perfect daughter, I need a perfect man,’ he told the people. So he passed a new law: only a man who could draw a perfect circle could marry his daughter. Many men tried. And every man failed. Then came the day when there was only one man left who had not yet tried. He was in the dungeon, being punished for failing to show respect to the many laws of the country. The man in the prison said: ‘If you let me out, I will draw six perfect circles.’ His daughter was lonely for a husband so the Minister let him out. ‘Take me to the edge of the Lake of Bottomless Calm in West Tianting,’ he said. The prisoner, the Minister of Laws and his daughter gathered at that place. The man dived from the edge of the cliff into the Lake of Bottomless Calm and disappeared. At the point he entered the water, they saw six perfect circles radiating outwards. Blade of Grass, we think of laws as things made by man. But who made the laws of nature?

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From: ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’ by CF Wong

Nury Vittachi Mr Wong Goes West. A Feng Shui Detective Novel

Allen & Unwin 2008 p1