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SERPENTINE_FEARS
January 29, 2003
Consider the
Chapter From "Consilience"
"Ariadne's by E.O. Wilson. CONSILIENCE_PRIZE
Thread".
Wilson states that
Freud "guessed wrong"
with his theories of
dreams as indications
of early psychological
trauma.
He then presents
the modern theory
of dreams being
the result of
random synapse
firing, a sorting
and shuffling of
experience, a
kind of
neurological
housecleaning. I've heard this theory
before in a number of
popular articles, and
it sounds very nice.
But then Freud's
theory sounded
nice also. What's
the evidence for
this new theory?
What evidence
could there
possibly be?
Wilson pretty
much just
presents it as
fact.
Wilson then suggests
that a tendency toward a
fear of snakes evolved
because of long contact
This explains with poisonous snakes of
their common different varieties.
appearance in
dreams, myth,
and folklore.
So Jung was
substantially
correct in his
"collective
unconscious"
theory??!
Big news: an
evolutionary
biologist
believes in
Jungian
archetypes!
I always thought that
the pace of evolution
was too slow to expect
something like
"archetypes" to be
wired into human
consciousness.
Jung was a Lamarckian,
which helps explain why
*he* thought they were
plausible... if you
believe that acquired
characteristics are But given the ubiquity
inherited, evolution of snakes, how can you
would work faster. rule out the notion
that this stuff is all
just environmentally
learned and culturally
transmitted?
Perhaps it's plausible
that this is some sort of
inherited "prepared
learning", but how would
you conclude that? Maybe
some kind of careful
cross-cultural studies?
Checking the footnotes,
I see he bases all of
this on a *single monograph*:
"The Cult of the Serpent:
An Interdisciplinary
Survey of Its
Manifestations and
Origins" by Balaji
Mundkur, (1983, State
University of New York
Press, Albany, NY).
And 1983 being ten years
pre-web, there's not a
lot out there about this
monograph.
It does tend to
turn up in a lot
of bibliographies
of newage junk,
though.
Wilson argues that imagery of snakes may have a
biologically determined significance for human beings:
Human beings also possess an innate aversion to
snakes, and, as in the chimpanzee, it grows
stronger during adolescence. The reaction is
not a hard-wired instinct. It is a bias in
development of the kind psychologists call
prepared learning. Children simply learn fear
of snakes more easily than they remain
indifferent or learn affection for snakes.
Before the age of five they feel no special
anxiety. Later they grow increasingly wary.
then just one or two bad experiences -- a snake
writing nearby through the grass or a
frightening -- can make them deeply and
permanently afraid. The propensity is
deep-set. Other common fears -- of the dark,
strangers, loud noises -- start to wane after
seven years of age. In contrast, the tendency
to avoid snakes grows stronger with time. It
is possible to turn in the opposite direction,
learning to handle snakes without fear or even
to like them in some special way. [...]
The neural pathways of snake aversion have not
been explored. We do not know the proximate
cause of the phenomenon except to classify it
as "prepared learning." In contrast, the
probable ultimate cause, the survival value of
the aversion, is well understood. Throughout
human history a few kinds of snakes have been a
major cause of sickness and death. Every
continent except Antarctica has poisonous
snakes. [...]
Snakes and dream serpents provide an example of
how agents of nature can be translated into
symbols of culture. For hundreds of thousands
of years, time enough for genetic changes in
the brain to program the algorithms of
prepared learning, poisonous snakes have been a
significant source of injury and death to human
beings. [...]
The tendency of the serpent to appear suddenly
in trances and dreams, its sinuous form, and
its power and mystery are logical ingredients
of myth and religion.
Amaringoan images stretch back through the
millennia. Prior to the pharaonic dynasties
the kings of Lower Egypt were crowned at Buto
by the cobra goddess Wadjet. In Greece there
was Ouroboros, the serpent that continuously
devoured itself tail-first while regenerating
from the inside. For gnostics and alchemists
of later centuries this self-cannibal came to
symbolize the eternal cycle of destruction and
re-creation of the world. One day in 1865
while dozing by a fire, the German chemist
Fredrich August Kekule von Stradonitz dreamed
of Ouroboros and thereby conceived of the
benzene molecule as a circle of six carbon
atoms, each bonded to a hydrogen atom. [...]
In the Aztec pantheon, Quetzalcoatl, the plumed
serpent with a human head, ruled as the god of
the morning and evening star, and thus of death
and resurrection. He was the inventor of the
calendar and patron of learning and the
priesthood. Tlaloc, god of rain and lightning,
was another serpentine chimera, with humanoid
upper lips formed from two rattlesnake heads.
Such apparitions could have been born only in
dreams and trances.
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