Dr. Charles Ess, Philosophy and Religion Department, Drury University
Very broadly, virtually all preliterate/preagricultural societies understood humanity to hold a place within and among the natural order. In particular: just as we seem to be conscious, alive, intentional (i.e., making choices about our acts, what we focus our attention on, etc.) - so everything in the larger world around us is thought to be conscious, alive, intentional.
This is a world populated by spirits - including the spirits of the ancestors (hence the belief in possession by those spirits in traditional cultures [Africa, China] - gods and goddesses, "the little people" (Ireland, many Native American peoples), animal guides (and animal ancestors), etc.
This is a world in which humanity feels largely "at home" within the natural order - indeed, as sheltered and sustained by "nature," as the various Garden myths and stories of the Golden Age suggest. In particular, "nature" is frequently associated with the feminine - especially in the feminine capacities of fertility (giving birth, bringing forth new life for the community), nurturing (breast-feeding // women provide 70-90% of the food in hunting/gathering societies), etc. For these and other reasons, Goddess traditions flourish (though not everything Merlin Stone, Maria Gimbutas, and others who have popularized notions about Goddess traditions stands up to either feminist and/or other forms of critical scrutiny).
In this framework, if something goes wrong (sickness, a bad death, familial or social conflict, etc.), it is because an original harmony and order has been disrupted. Religious ritual - including rituals oriented towards the experience of first-hand, experiential encounter with the Divine (through dance, song, intoxication, sacred sexuality, etc.) - is largely to help the individual and the community recall and recover that original harmony and order (often in the form of ritually/psychically returning to the earth/mother). (Following the way of the ancestors is very important.)
With the rise of agriculture and literate/hierarchical societies (specifically, patriarchy), "nature" becomes schematized in a new way. "Nature" is no longer the provident female - but one whose powers of fertility and nurturance must be coerced and controlled by males. (There may be a correlation between these shifts in social organization and religious belief, on the one hand, and climactic changes, on the other hand. Certainly, in the case of the Near East (Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Babylon, and early Israelite experience), the rise of agriculture and patriarchy is associated with a general shift from a wet, temperate climate [the Garden of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions] to a much dryer and less provident environment.)
Nature now becomes the goddess whose powers must be controlled (else natural, economic and social chaos will follow - so the Ishtar story in Gilgamesh); or, worse, a "wildness"/"wilderness" which must be "tamed" (especially if it's a virgin wilderness). In this framework, if something goes wrong - it is often because a female has gotten out of control, and (hierarchical/male-centered) order must be restored through force/violence. (As contemporary examples from American pop culture - so the young prince must destroy the sea-witch Ursula in The Little Mermaid; the erotically-charged female must be destroyed in Fatal Attraction; and, of course, the Borg in First Contact are controlled by a queen who uses enfleshment and sex to tempt Commander Data from his loyalties to the Federation.) Religious ritual is largely oriented towards sacralizing (making sacred) male powers, and assuring their continued dominance through appropriate appeasements to the sky-gods (likewise dominated by male powers).
The contrast between these two senses of nature and thus two senses of the human sense of place in nature can be seen in the conflict between European agriculturalists who came to the North American continent, and saw a wilderness to be tamed - through clearing the forests, planting fields, etc. - and the Native Americans, who largely held to more hunting/gathering sensibilities, and saw the white farmers as slicing open the breasts of mother earth with their plows.
But things are not always so simple. The rise of agriculture did not destroy the earlier sensibilities, but rather forced them to the margins and underground - from which they continued to re-emerge, mix, and occasionally come to the forefront in times of social change:
So the notions of the Tao and the balance of Yin and Yang in Taoism (reflecting preliterate/preagricultural senses of interconnectedness with the natural order) balance in China against Confucian sensibilities stressing hierarchical relationships (reflecting literate/agricultural social organization).So Buddhism emerges in India in the 5th ct. B.C.E., recalling the preliterate/preagricultural sense of connectedness with nature, as the prevailing hierarchical/agricultural conceptions of Vedic religion face a series of conceptual and political crises.
So the rise of Dionysian and "mystery" religions in ancient Greece - alongside the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus and other pre-Socratic philosophers - recalling the older tradition of experiential unity with the Divine, over against the newer agricultural /hierarchical traditions of sky-gods (Zeus and the Olympian pantheon).
"Western" traditions and cultures have since fluctuated back and forth on a continuum between these two possible understandings of humanity's relation to nature. Consider...
Socrates, whose passionate (erotic - in a Platonic sense) interest in dialogue usually kept him away from the nature outside the city (polis) - indeed, who was so anchored in the community life of the city/state that he preferred death to exile.
The post-Socratic/post-Aristotelian philosophers, for whom the human political world, now under the control of empires and emperors far away and beyond one's control, was no longer the natural arena and theatre of human interest. Rather, one sought to escape the uncertain and often unpleasant human world of empire and fragmented cultural/political life - by stressing self-reliance, freedom from the passions, and escape into another, higher world. Stoicism, with its strict dualism between body and soul, will be especially influential.This turn from the human - from the city and the life of the community - takes on darker force with the rise of the Roman Empire and the influx of more Eastern (specifically, Zoroastrian ideas). Over against earlier Jewish and Christian affirmation of life in this world - under the influence of Stoicism (popular with the Roman emporers) and Zoroastrian dualism, later Christian belief heads in the direction of contemptus mundi, contempt for the world. (This contempt, of course, includes contempt for the accomplishments of agricultural societies - including the monumental architecture associated with the power of empires.)
The Medieval cathedrals reflect a new optimism regarding the human, nature, and the divine. Chartres and others are striking for their incorporation of the natural within the design of the cathedral as an expression of a highly rational/mathematical order that both derives from and extends to the Divine.
"Modernity," at least as defined by Protestant and Cartesian dualisms (inherited from the contemptus mundi of late Christianity), however, renews the agricultural emphasis on "nature" as a wildness to be tamed, to be mastered and possessed in Descartes' phrase.
Arguably, the people of the modern industrial world are not comfortable in a "natural" environment - despite the outbreaks of romanticism, "back-to-nature" movements, fascination with Eastern traditions of Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, and the like. Rather, much of our technological progress is devoted to increasing human control over our environment. Think of our attention to central heating and air-conditioning, visual and auditory systems - whether at home or in our cars, etc.
At the same time, we fear what technology may do to us (the Frankenstein/1984/Borg "tradition") and we seem particularly drawn to young heroes who successfully plug into "the Force" (i.e., who recall the preliterate/preagricultural sense of connectedness with nature as our original pattern and source of order, energy, etc. - precisely as he struggles to learn the ways of the Jedi knights from his elders) to vanquish the evils of "the dark side" and its deadly technologies. (But young Luke is not an either/or: the Force is with him - and, apparently, with his artificial wrist and hand. And: where is Luke "at home" - in the swamps with Yoda? in a rebel starship or his X-wing fighter? in a victory party with the pre-technological creatures who help overcome the Empire?)
Whether our romantic interest in myths that recall preliterate/preagricultural beliefs, and/or the new interest in and recognition of the importance of the environment and associated feminist interests will lead to a significant shift in our sensibilities - away from the dominance paradigms of hierarchical societies towards a greater sense of connectedness as characteristic of more egalitarian societies - remains to be seen.
How far our architectural practices follow these sensibilities, I leave to you to examine.
As a further way of considering different conceptions of space - we may also want to consider different conceptions of time.
A former Drury student, Angela Waicekauskas ('93), contributed the following excerpts to an Honors class web. The first two - on concepts of time in India and Japan - are taken from a longer article by Hajime Nakamura. These are more involved and detailed than we will want to discuss - but please skim them to get a sense of important differences between these two Eastern conceptions of time, as well as of important differences between such Eastern and (more familiar) Western conceptions of time (especially modern, mechanical "clock-time"). [Footnotes in both these selections are keyed to the notes.]
The third selection may be helpful in giving us a sense of representative Native American understandings of time and place.
Comments? Send e-mail to cmess@lib.drury.edu