From: "Janet Jackson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 4:40 AM
Subject: Re: poets and shamans
> This is interesting... so I'm jumping straight in over my head...:-)
>
> Doug C reports on a lecture:
> ...
>> religion is fast vanishing what is going to bind people together. The
>> only
>> answer given tonight was football.
>
> Football, yes. But also music. Star Trek. Parenting. Poetry?
> Any shared interest, especially if it's a passionate one. And yes,
> religion or spirituality, which is not necessarily in the traditional
> form anymore. The idea that football, or Star Trek, or rock'n'roll,
> are religions, makes a lot of sense to me - it's not just a joke.
>
> I was thinking last night about what I have faith in. Not in some
> person in the sky, that's for sure. But I do have faith in other people.
> Quite a lot of people, actually... and particularly in people who
> are members of the communities I feel attached to. The thing about
> living urban & global is that they're not necessarily your neighbours
> any more and you might have to go looking for them. To me this is both
> a problem and a great source of potential. It's great that we can care
> about
> people on the other side of the world. It's a problem that we might
> not care about the people living next door.
>
It seems we need about 200 people in our head that we can recognise as
friends to give us our feeling of community. TV soaps spring to mind as part
of it. More real than the next door neighbour.
>> The only other thing I can think of is
>> dialect..texting for example. Each generation replaces the exiosting
>> dialect
>> by a fresh argot.
>
> Yes, these disposable dialects create a sense of something shared, and of
> a
> special group, an "us". But the dialect itself, and the groups,
> seem to be gradually absorbed by the wider language and community over
> time.
> Gangs and secret societies and urban slang have been around for a very
> long
> time.
>
> (There's a site called Urban Dictionary, possibly urbandictionary.com.
> My web browser isn't working right now so I can't tell you the URL.
> There's a lot of crap in there, but if you want to find out what some
> piece
> of urban slang means you'll probably find it there.)
>
>> But the basic problem is that our mnds are programmed to
>> live in communities of less than 200 people
> ...
>> And oh there was another point re Theory of Mind. Women are better than
>> men
>> at it hence their superior verbal skills.
>
> But is the poet's or shaman's mind differently "programmed", somehow?
> Sure feels like it in the case of the poet. The gender difference
> seems to be reduced, for a start, at least in some of us.
>
> I'm a poet but not, so far as I've noticed, a shaman.
> Some people seem to be both.
>
> Janet
Regarding the gender difference I think male poets probably have female-type
brains. It would be interesting as to how many of them are lefthanded.
Similarly many females have male-type brains. Baron-Cohen is the expert on
this. This is nothing to do with sexuality.
The incidence of mental problems is much higher in creative people which
will tip them into the shaman area. The book that told me most about shamans
was David Lewis-Williams' The Mind in the Cave. He makes it seem very
simple.
What I missed out re last night's lecture was the necessity of singing and
dancing in religion to make one fully involved. It releases happy chemicals
in us. It made me think of rock concerts.
Cheers.
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