Posts

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Still more peaceful peoples

Here’s one more sampling of excerpts from the Encyclopedia of Peaceful Societies at the new website Peaceful Societies: Alternatives to Violence and War. See Thursday’s post for more details.

Comments and reactions should prove very helpful in helping my father and his collaborators decide what additional materials to put on the site. Judging from the few comments received here yesterday, I’d say it sounds as if putting up some more general, theoretical essays and papers ought to be a high priority.

I should perhaps have made it clear from the outset that none of these societies are intended to serve as models for some ideal utopia. Personally, I think there are always trade-offs, and that some qualities we tend to value positively, such as bravery and personal ambition, may not be all that compatible with true social harmony. In any case, folks interested in attempts by secular Westerners to build peaceful and environmentally responsible communities might want to check out the book Gaviotas, for starters. The Tristan Islanders, one of the peoples included on the Peaceful Societies website, are the descendents of another such successful effort, inspired originally by 19th-century socialist ideals. And on a much larger scale, countries such as Iceland and Finland might now also satisfy the website’s definitions of a peaceful society.

I haven’t done a fraction of the research on these societies that my father has, so my own generalizations should be taken with a grain of salt. But I will say this: while the absence of physical conflict may seem like a very minimal definition of peace, I would submit that having such a minimal definition is precisely what makes this survey so inclusive and interesting. It admits of an immense variation in worldviews and approaches to practical concerns such as childrearing and marital arrangements, allowing one to see that there is far from one way for human beings to be civilized.

Because really, peacefulness, so defined, is not an end but a beginning – a threshold. I would argue that another, closely related first step toward a more civilized society would be to accept limits to our desires – to learn and inculcate the values of self-control and self-denial. No – as in no violence, no self-indulgence – is an extremely powerful word. I know this goes against the grain of the American emphasis on positive thinking. Love, we like to think, is all we really need to make everything wonderful. Some days, I believe that myself. But as I see it, what we call love is often just another word for the pathology that is killing the planet. And I suspect that many people in places like Central America and the Middle East might have a lot more to say about what it means to be on the receiving end of American benevolence and charity.

The bottom line, for me, is that until human beings in the societies that now dominate the planet can learn to get along without resorting to violence against each other and against the earth, we are, quite simply, fucked.

The Mbuti view their forest as a sacred, peaceful place to live–they constantly refer to it with not only reverence but adoration. They sing songs to it, in appreciation for the care and goodness they feel they get from it. If something goes wrong in their camp at night, such as an invasion of army ants, the problem is that the forest is sleeping, so they sing to awaken it. Their songs of rejoicing, devotion, and praise serve to make the forest happy. They do not believe in evil spirits or sorcery from the forest as the nearby villagers do–their forest world is kinder than that….

Normally the Mbuti settle conflicts with quick actions. One of their major strategies is laughter, jokes, and ridicule. The camp clown, an individual who assumes the responsibility of trying to end conflicts through ridicule, uses mime and antics to re-focus the conflict on himself, to get everyone laughing and ridiculing, in order to divert attention from the issue of the moment.

*

The Nubians place a high value on resolving village disputes right within the community. When minor disputes arise, such as a fight between two unrelated children that brings the mothers and their kin out onto the street to support their own, neutral bystanders will normally rush in to end the conflict. When more serious conflicts threaten, third parties who may be respected by both parties to a dispute will intervene. Serious conflicts are discussed after the Friday prayers in the mosque by the men of the congregation. Networks of reciprocal relationships that bind people to others outside their own families also help militate against factional conflicts.

*

The Paliyans extend their injunction against violence to a prohibition of competition, which arises, they feel, from rivalries and desires for superiority or control. They feel competition leads to social disharmony and threatens self-reliance and egalitarianism. Since they expect to be self-sufficient, individualistic, and socially anarchistic, they also don’t cooperate much. They disapprove of any behavior that appears, to them, to hamper the autonomy of an individual, such as cooperation or competition. Such behavior is disrespectful–or, in their terms, it appears to lower someone’s status.

*

The Piaroa believe in a violently creative mythic past when their gods achieved material and technological prosperity only through competition, violence, greed, arrogance, and lust, traits that, they believe, poisoned peaceful relations within and between communities. Their present society fosters its creativity by controlling that mythic period and by focusing on individuals who live peacefully together–the antidote to those past excesses of wanton wildness. Their communities, in fact, are almost completely peaceful, but they still face the threatened violence of their mythic past. In order to control that violence, the shaman chants every night and blows his words into water and honey which, consumed the next morning by adults and children, will keep them safe for another day.

*

The high degree of politeness that the Thai villagers show toward one another at all times has both positive and negative aspects. It contributes to their toleration of deviant behavior, nonconformity, and failures by some people to not abide by the social standards. The shortcomings of villagers who have serious faults are their own business and should not be ridiculed–they are accepted for what they are. On the negative side, however, the requirement for total politeness tends to dampen spontaneity and genuineness. Politeness enhances positive qualities at the same time it hides them.

*

Despite the fact that they have a highly nonviolent society, when some Semai men were recruited in the early 1950s to help the British army fight a communist guerrilla insurgency, some became aggressive fighters, though when they returned to their own settlements they returned to their peaceful, nonviolent ways. While violent homicides are abhorrent to the Semai, there have been a few recorded instances of murders. Undoubtedly, the introduction of firearms and alcohol is becoming a problem that threatens Semai peacefulness. Furthermore, while some Semai maintain that they will die before fighting against outsiders who are taking away their lands, others feel their nonviolence cannot last forever against outside aggression and alcohol.

*

Tahitians do not believe they have any control over nature or the behavior of other people; in fact, they believe that trying to change the nature of reality inevitably causes a rebound that destroys the initiator. People are optimistic but passive, a condition produced by their socialization practices and reinforced by other values in their society. Their universe is less frustrating cognitively than one where individuals believe they are able to change things….

The Tahitian word for love, here, has an emphasis on action and active belief in the relationship. It implies that, for heterosexual couples, they want to be together, both with their bodies and their minds. The man who only has physical desire for a woman, even if he lives with her, does not properly have a feeling of here unless the totality of his thinking is focused on her. The word also is used for parent-child, sibling, and friendship relations–it relates not so much to intentions as it does to actions and actual behavior.

*

One of [the Tristan Islanders’] primary strategies for avoiding violence and conflict is nonviolent resistance. A good example of this strategy occurred in the 1930s when they had to cope with an imperious, dictatorial minister who tried to run their lives. They could never confront him; they would always buckle under to his will with a meek “yes, Father,” out of respect for his power and high office. But they did perfect the practice of nonviolent resistance by accepting his orders as much as necessary to placate him–and ignoring everything else that they could get away with. They felt that his actions were simply part of the fun he enjoyed in being among them. Besides, in a few years another minister with different ideas would probably replace him.

*

If [Yanadi] parents were to punish children, or even make them do something against their will, a god might punish the children by making them ill. Parents therefore must tolerate cranky children and put up with their misdeeds, but they must never spank them. They even hesitate to yell at them. Parents cannot even force their children to attend school–the children make their own choices since they have the freedom to do as they wish. Parents do sometimes discipline children with the threat of bogeys–ghosts, devils, police, or non-Yanadi may get them.

*

Three Zapotec illness concepts in La Paz serve as mechanisms for diffusing deeply-felt emotions such as hostility that might lead to violence. Muina is a mild illness or indisposition that people may feel when they are angry toward others; the cure is to get rid of the anger. People rarely make distinctions about whether or not the anger is justifiable. Coraje, courage or passion, is a more advanced stage of illness where the expression of muina has advanced to verbal abuse or even blows. Bilis, bile, is an organic imbalance in the gall bladder brought on by frustration, abuse, or mistreatment by another. This condition is produced by someone’s inability to dissipate anger. People afflicted with these illnesses need sympathy and treatment, not condemnation and punishment.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Cibola 18

This entry is part 18 of 119 in the series Cibola

Esteban (1) (cont’d)

Men repair straps, tighten tumplines.
The women bend to their grinding
of the day’s cornmeal,
casting a hurried handful on
the sun’s road. Esteban stirs
the dead ashes with his finger:
thirteen days since Marcos
sent me on ahead: this must already be
the 37th day of Lent.
Maundy Thursday.

An unbidden vision of the viceroy
in all his robes & ruffles making
a show of doffing his hat,
cradling the foot of one
symbolic beggar in
his soft white hands,
scattering a few drops of rosewater
on the already scrubbed
& perfumed skin,
while an obsequious Minister
Provincial of the Order
of Friars Minor
crouches at his side.
Holding up a gilded bowl
to guard the carpet.

His face must show it:
the women nearest him
have paused at their metates, eyes
large with concern.
“It’s nothing,” he says,
making the sign for memories.
Then smiling he chants
the hymn for Holy Thursday:
Pange, lingua, gloriosi corporis
mysterium . . .

The plainsong–or his half-serious
version of it–brings him
back to the present.
This cloudless dawn, worth more
than any reverie. These mountains.
Sing, my tongue, the glorious
body’s mystery . . .
__________

the foot of one symbolic beggar: Mutual foot-washing was a prominent part of the traditional celebration of Maundy Thursday, and Western European rulers used to participate in the manner described.

Minister Provincial of the Order of Friars Minor: The head of the Franciscan order for New Spain, the position that Marcos de Niza would subsequently assume, after his return from “Cibola.”

Posted on by Dave Bonta

More peaceful peoples

I’m showcasing some selections from the Encyclopedia of Peaceful Societies at the new website Peaceful Societies: Alternatives to Violence and War. See yesterday’s post for more details.

When projects are proposed or group work is underway, Hutterites are highly respectful of each other. Older men whose pace of work may slow down the operation are respected; when young, inexperienced boys join in the work they are not resented. In group discussions, everyone is highly conscious of rank and quite cautious about advancing proposals; suggestions will be made passively, many proposals considered, and since ideas are not attributed to specific individuals, the group as a whole becomes the author of the proposal that is decided upon. Everyone shares in the decision-making and identifies with the result.

*

The Ifaluk do not often discipline their children with physical punishment–they prefer lecturing to spanking. They fear that children who are hit could “go crazy,” kill themselves, or become aggressive. They teach their children proper values when they are about five or six, and they display song [justifiable anger] whenever the child misbehaves and metagu, fear, in the presence of strangers. To reinforce the feelings of metagu, adults teach children that a ghost will “get them” if they misbehave. Sometimes, one of the women, dressed up in a ghost costume, appears menacingly near the home threatening to eat the wayward child. The terrorized child quickly associates its antisocial and aggressive actions with its metagu and with the parents’ song.

*

The [Utkuhikhalik and Qipisa] Inuit use a form of “benevolent aggression” to foster positive social relationships. They develop ambivalence in their children toward love and fear by acting aggressively at the same time they are loving them–by overfeeding them, by roughly cleaning them while they nurse, and so on. They believe these approaches strengthen children by making them independent and by inculcating uncertainty and caution in their attitudes toward human relationships…. They play games with the child’s feelings by suggesting hostile and aggressive actions to help create their opposite, the positive, loving emotions. Why don’t you keep a choice piece of food all for yourself, one woman suggested to a three-year old, or “Why don’t you kill your baby brother?”

*

Most Ju/’hoansi (pronounced zhut-wasi) were nomadic hunters and gatherers until the latter part of the 20th century. Since they live in a very hostile desert environment, they had to keep moving in order to keep eating, since food and water resources are sparse. Unlike people in other arid regions, they did not have any periods of plenty and thus they had no way of storing food supplies. But since food shortages were likely to be localized, they reduced risk through widespread pooling networks and through the social solidarity of their local groups. In essence, the group’s peaceful cohesiveness was its stored surplus.

*

Kadar society has traditionally accorded equality to the sexes but these beliefs are fast being weakened due to the influence of the surrounding Indian society. Wage labor opportunities are available primarily for men, and when a man is able to afford a sari for his wife, she wears it in order to avoid the stigma of being naked above the waist. Since the clothing may prevent her from foraging in the forest, she becomes increasingly dependent on her husband and his job, losing her independence. Furthermore, the social stigma against bare-chested women has produced an attitude of servility by the women toward outsiders; they feel they have to hurriedly cover their breasts whenever they pass outsiders.

*

Because of the harsh mountain environment of Ladakh, helpfulness and cooperation among families is essential for survival. The Ladakhis establish cooperative groups called phasphuns, in which several unrelated families maintain alliances of friendship, cooperation, and helpfulness. If both parents in a family would die, other adults in the phasphun would adopt the young children. If a family separates, the other members of the phasphun make a fair division of the property. The families in the phasphun usually live in the same village, participate in group religious ceremonies, and worship a common god, though they are not necessarily neighbors and are often not related. The mutual cooperation is carried out under the aegis of the ruling deity, who provides the link for the six to ten families in the group.

*

Love, for the Buddhist Lepchas, is based on the satisfaction of mutual needs for food. When youngsters are asked if they love their parents, they will respond that they do because they are well fed. A young man admitted that he did not get along well with his new wife at first, but then he realized that when he came back to the house after a day of work and she had food ready for him, he loved her. He said, “this is my wife and I am pleased in my belly.”

*

While Malapandaram women gather vegetable foods, haul water, find firewood, and do the cooking, men normally do the hunting and harvesting of wild honey. The divisions are not rigid, however: men may help gather firewood and assist with cooking meat, while women may help hunt small animals. The simplicity of their gathering and hunting economy fosters individual self-sufficiency and economic independence, so social relationships tend to be based on positive feelings rather than economic dependence. Marriage for the Malapandaram is an extremely loose monogamous convention: they do not emphasize long-term, binding relationships. Spouses often exhibit quite warm feelings toward one another–but when the warmth cools, the relationship ends.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Cibola 17

This entry is part 17 of 119 in the series Cibola

Esteban (1)

At dawn the long-limbed shadow
that all night had blocked a northern
slice of stars

takes on color, changing minute
by minute from black to indigo,
from indigo to ochre,
from ochre to flaming red.
Takes on a kind
of substance, part earth,
part sky: a middle term
without which either side remains
irreducibly apart.

Even in the heat of noon–he muses,
watching the camp come to life–
these desert mountains remain
in a semi-liquid state.
More than mere mirage
or bank of cloud: something
none of the languages he’s learned
can quite encompass.
A substance perhaps closest
to quicksilver, which the alchemists
personify as Mercury,
messenger of the gods.

Or like molten glass:
not much of a stretch, considering
how the mountains resolve
into frozen layers of sand
at one’s approach. He recalls
the view from the slave
quarters in Azemmour,
how the distant hills
hung in the southeast
like the shadow of a smile
on the lips of a not-yet lover.
If mountains didn’t exist,
Esteban starts to murmur–

& breaks off, a sudden recollection
rising into view. When
had his mother ever
mentioned mountains? In all
the boundless lands south
of the Sea of Sand–where mountainous
islands made fortresses, bandit
lairs for the Blue People–
nowhere in that vast savanna
can he remember hearing
the tiniest
rumor of sierras. Tales
of mighty trees, yes–
some fat enough, if hollow, to house
an entire flock of goats, others
with crowns that shaded villages,
tasted the clouds.
But the biggest of trees can’t give refuge
to a persecuted people.

(To be continued)
__________

none of the languages he’s learned: Cabeza de Vaca makes it clear that Esteban had served as the main translator for the Four, though evidently they were all fluent in Native American sign language. This, combined with the obvious fact that Esteban probably grew up trilingual in the Portuguese colony of Azemmour and would have learned Castillian after being sold to the Spanish, influenced my portrayal of him as proficient in many languages.

Sea of Sand: The literal meaning of “Sahara” in Arabic.

the Blue People: The desert-dwelling, nomadic Tuareg, so called because of their distinctive, deep blue robes.

some fat enough, if hollow: This is no exaggeration – some baobab trees do grow that big!

others with crowns that shaded villages: This is a reference to the kapok tree, revered as a representation or hypostasis of the mythic world-tree in parts of both Africa and Mesoamerica, where the species is known as ceiba.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

“Peaceful Societies” website debuts

Today marks the inauguration of a new website on Peaceful Societies: Alternatives to Violence and War. This is truly a ground-breaking site. There is nothing else like it on the web.

Granted, I’m a bit biased. The site is largely the work of my father, Bruce D. Bonta, a retired academic librarian and peace scholar whose Peaceful Peoples: An Annotated Bibliography (Scarecrow, 1993) was similarly a pioneering effort. As someone with a considerably more slap-dash approach to writing and publishing, I have watched in amazement over the past year as Dad has mastered the technical aspects of website design, corralled some of the most prominent anthropologists in the field to serve as reviewers, and amassed enough material to fill a small book.

I’m sure folks can find their way to the Frequently Asked Questions, Facts About Peaceful Societies, and other introductory materials without my help. Please use the “Contact Us” link to send reactions and suggestions for improvement. And please note that the blog-like News and/or Reviews sections (linked together from the right-hand column on the main page) will be updated weekly. So be sure to bookmark the site and check back often!

The heart of the website is the Encyclopedia of Peaceful Societies, with twenty-five entries up and more on the way. I want to spend the next three days highlighting brief selections from these entries – things that struck my fancy for one reason or another. I hope that anyone who has ever been traumatized by a college anthropology class that spent the first three weeks on kinship systems and the next three on the Yanomamo as interpreted by Napolean Chagnon (The Fierce People) will be tempted into taking another look at some of the riches that the social sciences literature has to offer. It has always struck me as a little bizarre that peace activists, of all people, so often remain mired in ethnocentricity, immune to the possibility of learning from the vast array of other peoples with whom we share this planet.

Even the leftist slogan “Another world is possible,” admirable as it may be, presupposes that our world is, after all, the only one that matters. Here are a few glimpses into other worlds, other ways of living and dwelling and building more peaceful lives.

The leaders of the Amish churches, their ministers, are chosen by a process that combines nomination and lot. At the end of a communion service, men and women file past a deacon and each whispers the name of a nominee. Any man who is nominated by three or more people is included in the drawing. Each of the nominees is then handed a song book, one of which contains a slip of paper bearing a Bible verse. The man who opens his book to discover the verse is overwhelmed to realize that the Lord has chosen him for a life-long added responsibility of service to the community. The divine choice prevents quarreling with the leadership selection process and reaffirms the unity, stability and authority of their community.

*

The Batek believe that one of their diseases, ke’oy, consisting of fever, depression, shortness of breath, and weakness, is caused when someone is angry with another without justification. While there are some spells that may help, the cure for the disease is for the person who is angry to control his or her feelings so the victim can recover. The person responsible for the problem treats the victim with various folk remedies, tells the victim’s heart to be cool, blows on his or her chest for the cooling effect, and grasps and throws away the disease….

The anthropologist Kirk Endicott (1988) once questioned a man about the Malay slave raids that lasted until the early 20th century: why didn’t his ancestors shoot the attackers? “Because it would kill them,” the man answered in shock.

*

The traditional Birhor economy has been based on gathering, hunting, particularly for monkeys, and making ropes out of the fibers of a particular species of vine… Despite decades of [government-sponsored] resettlement efforts, they still abandon their settlements early in the morning to wander in what’s left of their forests, only to return mostly empty handed in the evenings….

When they encounter poisonous snakes near their camps, the adults simply try to shoo them off like pets. They react with respect toward the larger animals, and blame themselves for their fears if they are attacked. Their name for themselves, “Birhor,” means “men of the forest.”

*

The Buid see themselves as part of a mystical continuum, in which pigs eat passive plants, people have to commit aggression against pigs and eat them in rituals which attempt to control the dangers from predatory spirits, and the spirits eat people….

The men and women periodically wrestle together on moonlit nights, in semi-ritualistic gang fights in which the men reach up the women’s skirts, and the women fight back by ganging up on a man, grappling with him and grabbing for his genitals….

The Buid avoid dyadic relationships as much as possible. When two individuals converse, they do not face one another or address comments or questions directly to the other person; instead, they may sit facing the same direction, or back-to-back, making comments that the other person may or may not respond to, depending on whether he or she agrees. Rather than contradicting the speaker, the listener may make his or her own comments on different subjects, to which the first speaker may respond or change the subject again in turn.

*

The Chewong completely lack a sense of rivalry or competitiveness. While the tasks they perform together are few, and some people are naturally better able to do their jobs than others, no one makes a point of one individual’s greater ability. Hunters do not compete in the amount of meat they can bring in, and people do not comment on the abilities of others. Children do not have any competitiveness in their games. When they spin tops, they leave out the competition that characterizes the Malay top spinning game. They do not have races. But while the Chewong do not compete, they also don’t help one another, since they prefer not to be involved with each other’s work.

*

Social advancement among the Fipa is contingent on peacemaking and social skills, symbolized by the twice-daily meals and frequent beer-drinking sessions which men and women participate in together. During leisurely meals people eat and converse, taking food from the central bowls without intruding on their neighbor’s space and without appearing to be too eager to eat. Drinking rituals differ from eating. People carefully pass the bowls of beer around through the assembled group from one to the next, and the same principle of avoiding any appearance of greed or selfishness applies as during meals. Even when people become quite inebriated during their drinking sessions, everyone maintains the correct forms of courtesy, and people rarely if ever become violent.

*

N!adima, the supreme being of the G/wi, is the all-powerful creator of the universe and of all life, a remote, omniscient being who does not necessarily intervene to help people. G//amama, on the other hand, is a mean-spirited deity who showers irritability, misunderstanding, misfortune, and disease among humans. Geographically isolated in the Kalahari, and remote as they are from N!adima, the G/wi achieve security primarily from their own social acts. Their harmonious human relations counterbalance the loneliness of the universe. Harmony among humans is the practical result, as well as the dominating value, that the G/wi derive from their worldview. Their word for human, khwe-, implies friendliness, generosity, wisdom, calmness, and good humor. A person without these qualities, by definition, is inhuman.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Cibola 16

This entry is part 16 of 119 in the series Cibola

Reader (2)

Tied in sacks they brought us, in the camel bags,
And they sold us in the wool market.
May God pardon them.

GNAWA FOLK SONG FROM MOROCCO
(translated by Paul Bowles)

*

Who of the desert has not spent his day riding at a mountain and never even
reaching its base? This is a land of illusions and thin air. The vision is so
cleared at times that the truth itself is deceptive.

JOHN VAN DYKE
The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances

*

Where one mountain sits on top of another
we turn the basket upside down
and sing a holy song.

We are in great peace.
We are in great peace.

It is not true
but it will confuse our enemies,
and none can sing the dead back again.

RICHARD SHELTON
“Navajo Song”

*

The mountains move and fly away.

AL-QUR’AN 52:10
(translation by Ahmed Ali)

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Primordial wonton

I’m in a bibliophiliac ecstasy. Yesterday I got two new books in the mail: Robert Alter’s magnificent translation and commentary on the Pentateuch – The Five Books of Moses (Norton, 2004) – and the “philosophical translation” of the Daodejing by Roger T. Ames and David T. Hall (Ballantine, 2003), a groundbreaking work. I am going back and forth between them like a dog with two supper dishes, or a bigamist who can’t decide which wife to spend the night with.

Dividing my attention this way – especially between two such contrasting works – may not seem like such a good idea. Eventually, of course, I’ll have to settle down with each in turn, take them to bed with me, read them with all the slowness and attention they deserve, lingering over each beautiful footnote. But in the meantime, this compare-and-contrast exercise has already yielded some tasty fruit. Last night, in the Appendix to Ames and Hall, I found the following:

Daoist cosmogony does not entail the kind of radical initial beginning we associate with those metaphysical cosmogonies that describe the triumph of Order over Chaos. In fact, the Zhuangzi‘s well-known account of the death of Lord Hundun – often translated negatively as Lord Chaos, but perhaps better rendered positively as Lord Spontaneity – provides a rather strong Daoist objection to the “One-behind-the-many” reading [of passages in the Daodejing that appear to refer to Dao as a kind of first principle]:

The ruler of the North Sea was “Swift,” the ruler of the South Sea was “Sudden,” and the ruler of the Center was “Hundun, or Spontaneity.” Swift and Sudden had on several occasions encountered each other in the territory of Spontaneity, and Spontaneity had treated them with great hospitality. Swift and Sudden, devising a way to repay Spontaneity’s generosity, said: “Everyone has seven orifices through which they can see, hear, eat, and breathe. Spontaneity alone is without them.” They then attempted to bore holes in Spontaneity, each day boring one hole. On the seventh day, Spontaneity died.

But why according to Zhuangzi shouldn’t one wish to bring order out of hundun? A reasonable question, indeed, if hundun is the confusion and disarray – the formless surds – that other cosmogonies describe as primordial Chaos. But if hundun is the spontaneous emergence of novelty that honeycombs all construals of order in the continuing Daoist present, then the imposition of order upon it means the death of novelty. After all, it is spontaneity that makes the life experience deliciously indeterminate and, in some degree, unpredictable. To enforce a given design is simply to select one of a myriad candidates for order and to privilege that one over the rest. Swift and Sudden have transformed the unsummed and causally noncoherent dao into a single-ordered world.

Well, yeah. But every act of artistic creation, every authentic making represents such a privileging, regardless of its origins in spontaneity. That’s the tragic beauty of life, it seems to me – and that is why I continue to draw so much inspiration from the great expressions of theistic faith, such as the Bible. This notion of a seven-day-long process of imposing a creative and destructive will sounds awfully familiar! But again, Chaos and Order are modern – or at least Hellenic – categories that don’t always fit the most ancient parts of the Bible. (After all, as a god of storm and whirlwind, as the agent of watery or fiery destruction, YHWH works as often through “chaos” as against it.)

When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And it was evening and it was morning, first day.

Alter says about “first day” that, “Unusually, the Hebrew uses a cardinal, not ordinal, number. As with all the six days except the sixth, the expected article is omitted.” So perhaps we would do better to translate as if this were a Mayan text: “And it was evening and it was morning, Day One.” Because these are the days that will recur week after week and year after year until the end of time, no? I find it difficult to credit that the original authors of this passage understood divine creation as a one-time event. The mythic imagination doesn’t work that way.

Alter’s note for “welter and waste” points up the contrast with the Zhuangzi‘s hundun.

The Hebrew tohu wabohu occurs only here and in two later Biblical texts that are clearly alluding to this one. The second word of the pair looks like a nonce word coined to rhyme with the first and to reinforce it, an effect I have tried to approximate in English by alliteration. Tohu by itself means “emptiness” or “futility,” and in some contexts is associated with the trackless vacancy of the desert.

But that desert, or wilderness, remains an essential testing ground for spiritual heroism and a major locus of theophany throughout the Bible, so perhaps we are meant to understand tohu as empty more in the way that a womb might be construed as empty, rather than as a mere nullity or vacuum. Tohu wabohu could perhaps be seen as Openness – a close cousin of Spontaneity. And indeed, in this cosmogony God shapes or distills things from this omni-potential matter; there is no creation ex nihilo in the Bible.

Set against the vivid language of Genesis, the Daoist allegory may seem a little dry. And I’ll admit, I’ve never been a big fan of allegory as a genre, which may explain why I never focused on this passage in A. C. Graham’s translation and commentary (Chuang-Tzu: The Inner Chapters, Hackett, 2001 – another philosophically and philologically informed effort).

Graham, I discover, chose to leave “Hun-t’un” untranslated, supplying the following note:

Hun-t’un is the primal blob which first divided into heaven and earth then differentiated as the myriad things. In Chinese cosmology the primordial is not a chaos reduced to order by imposed law, it is a blend of everything rolled up together; the word is a reduplicative of the type of English “hotchpotch” and “rolypoly”, and diners in Chinese restaurants will have met it in the form “wuntun” as a kind of dumpling.

So there’s God in his white apron at the Panda House restaurant, rolling out the dough to make dumplings. Thus, at least, the pictures taking shape in the tohu-bohu of my mind, all higglety-pigglety.