Wednesday 14 August 2002

Pic of the day: Look what I found in the cellar. (In the computer game Morrowind, I'm happy to say.)

Bones of the Ancestors

Ancestor worship (and magic fantasy) as metaphor for coping with our own mortality.

"What is language? What is tradition? What is culture, what is civilization itself, if not the mind's mirror of the bones of our ancestors? Memory fades and is forgotten. A name becomes lost, like the face of a corpse long dead; identity is fleeting. Memories of a life dissolve like flesh. Yet something remains, enduring like bone. Their words are in our mouths. Their habits are our traditions. We follow their ritual, we inherit their sense of beauty, their architecture, even their religion. Without the mind's bones of our ancestors, we would be as animals: Without language, without art, without customs and traditions to guide us, driven only by instincts. Our homes are built on the bones of the ancestors, and their ghosts dwell always among us. Do not expect your name to live forever, but hope for your bones to be interred in the cellar of your children."

As I woke up, these thoughts were roaming in my head, and I got up to write them down. This doesn't mean that I have forsaken faith in my Lord and my Savior in favor of ancestor worship. The history of the initial paragraph is more complex than that. It can be traced down to at least three topics that I have written about before.

***

For one thing, I have expressed this sentiment before in a less poetic form. Each of us may feel very important, but the fact remains that we build largely on the works of others. We don't stand just on the shoulder of giants, but of hundreds of generations who have either made our civilization or passed it on. Our language is not our own invention, except perhaps for a couple words, and even those are usually patterned after other words. Our life is packed with traditions which we follow without thinking, from sitting in chairs to eating with a fork to living in houses with square walls. None of these are our own inventions, nor are they instincts (though some people seem to think so, and to regard anyone not following them as not quite human). In truth, all these things are not given to us just by our parents, but by teachers and broadcasting - our clan is replaced by a global village. But the principle is still the same. We build our lives not from clay, but from ready-made parts given us by others.

The more direct inspiration for my metaphor is easy to see if (and only if) you have taken my advice and got the groundbreaking RPG of the year, Morrowind (available for the PC and Xbox). The Dunmer, the dark elves native to Morrowind, worship their ancestors. They literally believe in ghosts, and they preserve the bones of their ancestors with great care. In the past they used to have them around the family property, so the power of the ghosts would protect the living. This practice has been discontinued during the Imperial rule, but bones of ancestors are still found in some cellars and in elaborate family graveyards. This may seem like a senseless thing to do, but as I trust you see by now, it is a quite meaningful symbol and certainly makes more sense than our current belief in the "self-made man".

The third influence comes through The Empty Vessel - a journal of contemporary Taoism. A magazine coming out once each season, and not for the casual reader I'm afraid. Not that any of you are supposed to be casual readers, but in terms of Taoism perhaps. Anyway, there was this article explaining Oriental ancestor worship in reasonable terms. You know, this doesn't happen just because they are silly, what with those eyes and all. The Chinese had a flowering civilization back when people hereabouts were still barbarians and acting the part.

Anyway, ancestor worship. It was really a continuation of a process that starts in this life. (The magazine did not make any references to C.G. Jung, but I will. He firmly believed that the "midlife crisis" – which he was among the first to describe – came from people not knowing how to handle their transition to a more spiritual phase of life. In Eastern civilizations, it is more common to accept this change.) During our first years, our vitality is firmly tied to our body. But as we grow older, we start to step back from the more immediate needs and get a look at the larger picture.

The Taoist writer seemed to believe that this process continues after death. As time passes, the spirit moves upward, away from Earth and closer to Heaven. Eventually, when there is no longer an experience of connection between the living and the deceased, the spirit passes on completely. Before this happens, it has grown ever more powerful but also ever more remote to this world.

***

The reason I came to think of this was that one of the muses in my head was doing some world-building again. (Actually they are not muses – they are more like independent background processes with a limited scope – but the name for those have a rather bad sound to people in our culture, except those who work with UNIX on a regular basis.) Anyway, it presented me what I think of as "Tadpole World". In that universe, Earth is the breeding ground for a race of superhumans that might have been known as gods in a primitive society. They have psychic powers with no known upper limit ... but they use centuries to grow into them. These Ageless, as they are called, start their lives as normal humans only with more vitality. Most often they are crossbreeds between Ageless and Agebound ... the Ageless are vital but not very fertile. Over time, their Agebound half withers away and is replaced by Agelessness.

Anyway, the idea is that there are at any time dozens or even hundreds of Ageless in various stages of development, the younger of them often not even knowing what they are. As they stop aging and start to develop psionic powers, some of them are petty and greedy or even outright evil, but some are nice people. The evil ones tend to run into trouble with people, including not least each others, and are gradually weeded out. Those who survive to a ripe old age tend to be the humble, pleasant or reclusive ones who want no trouble. Also they have no motivation to cling to their power ... as their power grows, they invariably become able to perceive a greater world, with opportunities and challenges that this life can no longer give them. So far none of them have been able to explain in any earthly language what it is they see, but it pulls on them, stronger and stronger. After a thousand years or two of growing ever more remote from the world, they finally walk the Burning Bridge and disappear forever. But don't worry, there are new ones replacing them in a continuous succession.

After listening to my "muse", I recalled the article in The Empty Vessel and found it eerily similar. Of course I don't believe in any of this ... not as a literal thing. But as a metaphor, yes. And it blends in with the "ancestor's bones" metaphor. Just like the body is lost but the bones remain for a long time, so does our heritage gradually stop being personal and becomes timeless, impersonal. When our names are forgotten, or are nothing but words in a list, the echo of what we did will still spread like rings in water, the source forgotten or misnamed. This is as it should be. It is a process I am already resigned to and even encouraging. If any of my thoughts fit you, adopt them! Forget who told you. Names fade, faces fade. Spirit endures. Or so I hope.