An Archaeology of the Fall

By Razie Mah

Why civilization? The answer marks the first singularity, the contradiction of all that went before. Our current Lebenswelt is not "the Lebenswelt that we evolved in". "Everything that we evolved to be" passed through this singularity. Social complexity was no longer constrained. We forgot who we were. We had to define who we are. We became civilized.
But what is "civilization"?
"Civilization" is what we say it is.
Of course, this is madness. But look around you. What isn't madness?
The first singularity left a fairy tale trace. Look in the Bible. The trace begins at Genesis 2:4.
Here stands a portal to the Fourth Age of Understanding. The Age of Semiotics begins.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Jan 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9780988347670

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

Book preview

An Archaeology of the Fall

By Razie Mah

Published for Smashwords

Original imprint 7812 U0’

Revised 7819 U0'

Dedicated to

John Deely and the Four Ages of Understanding

Feel free to send reader's comments and corrections to:

[e-mail]

Note: This work has an instructor guide for seminar courses.

Table of Contents

1. The Beginning and the End

2A. Words Are Lies

2B. Words Are Not Lies

3. The Professor and the Lieutenant

4A. How Will Jacob Sow the Wind?

4B. Will Obeidullah Get Carried Away?

5. Jacob Presents to the Imam

6A. Reaping the Storm

6B. The Hand Off

7. Feeling Goody

8A. Beware of Beautiful Women in Burkas

8B. Remember Your Lessons

8C. Words Have Consequences

8D. Questions Have Lives of Their Own

9. Feeling You Out

10A. Feeling You Out

10B. Sarah Takes Jacobs Hand

11A. Man

11B. Child

11C . Woman

12A. Thinking Like a Woman

12B. Thinking Like a Child

12C. Thinking Like a Man

13A. A Woman Sleeps

13B. A Woman Makes a Forced Choice

13C. Awaken to the Force of a Woman's Choice

14. The Return

1 The Beginning and The End

0001 History begins at Sumer.

The title says it all.

But, the title also mystifies. What, after all, is history?

In 1944, Samuel Noah Kramer publishes another work. This one concerns Sumerian mythology. Surely, ancient Mesopotamian and cuneiform studies are starting to flower.

But, what else is going on at this time?

Economic collapse and global war follows the war to end all wars. Many wonder, Is civilization coming to an end?

This book on mythology is revised in 1961. By then, most everyone figures out that the world did not end. Western civilization, however, may not have been so fortunate.

I downloaded this little masterpiece while we were sequestered in Basra, while the Professor and his Engineer, Dad and Mom, supervised the construction of this floating research platform. I like to think of myself as the best of all possible research assistants. That is why I'm here.

In the autumn of 2010, in the cool before dawn, I sit near the edge of the platform, overlooking the still waters of the Persian Gulf. I watch the water and the sky. I ponder Kramer’s synthesis of the Sumerian synthesis of the synthesis, creation, that human eyes could not have witnessed. The Sumerians had to guess. Kramer had to guess. I have to guess.

The water lies like glass. The sky hangs pure and simple. No tankers ply the waters. Keller starts the transport mechanism in order to fill the bins that I am assigned to empty. Not now, later. At this moment, the glimmer of red-above is reflected in gray-below and the horizon shimmers into nothingness.

0002 Before the beginning, there is only the sea of possibility. The primeval waters above and below co-mingle, Nammu. In the beginning, the primordial sea separates into the waters above, the masculine An, and the waters below, the feminine Ki. In the beginning of the end, the sky and earth conceive the air. The union of An and Ki gives birth to Enlil, who proceeds to separate the heaven-father, An, from the earth-mother, Ki.

Kramer translates cuneiform tablets. These particular pieces of fired clay date to the latter half of the third millennium before the present era (between 4500 and 4000 years ago). In general, cuneiform is invented by 5000 years ago. At this time, the Sumerian civilization, having the structure of competing city-states, emerges from the town-chiefdoms of the Uruk period. The Uruk period starts around 5900 years ago, expanding on the earlier villages of the Ubaid period. The Ubaid appears at the beginning, around 7800 years ago, as the Earth warms from the most recent ice age.

So there is plenty of time between the conjuring of this tale and the rewriting of its beginning, with the end in mind. What end? The end where Enlil becomes the god that rules over the city-state of Nippur. Both temple and palace join voices proclaiming: Hail Enlil.

0003 According to Kramer, Enlil, after separating his father and mother, finds himself living in utter darkness, because An had become the pitch-black stone ceilings and walls of the house of the air god. Ki made the floor. So, Enlil begets the moon god Nanna, who, in turn, begets the sun god Utu. Now, Enlil has light.

Then, in a move that should give pause to every student of Freud, Enlil unites with his mother Ki. From that union, and with considerable help from Enki, a water-god, vegetable and animal life emerges.

Finally, Enki upstages Enlil in the creation of man. He does so with the cooperation of the undifferentiated, Nammu, and the has-been victim of incest, Ninmah, the earth goddess, who most likely changed her name from Ki.

0004 The end writes the beginning, I imagine, as the horizon becomes more of a dark line, separating the lower grays from the upper pinks. More likely, in the beginning, Enlil steals the sun, moon and stars from An, leaving him as stony blackness. He lays claim to the creation of (or is it the possession of?) vegetable and animal life. When Ki complains, he has his way with her, and then gives her a little office with an important-sounding title, ‘Ninmah, Earth Goddess’.

Needless to say, because of his failure in that maturational step known as the Oedipus complex, Enlil is not really well socialized. Instead, he is Society. He is the Chosen One. Just like me.

0005 What can I learn from this pattern of union, separation, thievery, appropriation and domination? Is this the way of the mythic cosmos? Does the end write the beginning? Does the end justify the means?

Or, does this dysfunctional storyline repeat, over and over again?

Does my own world replay this repetition disorder?

I consider a myth for my own civilization: the United States of America.

Before the beginning, a mix of British colonies, as diverse as the waters of the earth and the heavens, chew the cud along the East Coast, under the guidance of the One, the British crown, who really wants to get some cash out of this cow. The cow splits. The waters separate. A new world is born.

In the beginning, one can call the sky-god, Christianity, filled with stars of various denominations, the moon of Episcopalianism, and the sun of Deism. Also, one can call the earth and water goddess, the open marketplace, as well as the union of the people and their states against the crown, voicing the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Time passes. In the earthly realm, the sky god and the earth goddess expand in territory. In the divine realm, Christianity and Constitution groan. Something is wrong. The industrial North passes protectionist legislation that impedes the commodity markets of the South. The South impedes itself with an increasingly pathetic division of labor, slave and free, where status is verified through phenotypic differences between African and European. The North is preachy, hard drinking and aggressively righteous. The South is defensive, intoxicated and rebellious. A war ensues and hundreds of thousands die. Many of them are Scotch-Irish and have no idea about the politics behind the war.

The Union, like the air, is conceived. In the ensuing years, a Union-god, like the air-god of old, is born. Progressivism grows into the thin line between Christianity and Constitution, separating them, just as Enlil once separated An and Ki.

Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, sow the Winds of Progress, perfecting the attitude of a sovereign mythos that is neither religious nor illegal; transforming the honor, courage and love of Christianity into the check-boxes, initiatives and entitlements of an objective central government; translating the missionary zeal of the Churches into political advocacy; and finally, filling minister-founded academic halls with atheist socialist conformists, who proclaim themselves diverse. Christianity becomes as marginalized as An, the ancient sky god.

The Union-god claims the upside of the open marketplace as its own and blames the downside of the open marketplace on the open marketplace. It is easy to do. Capitalism overflows with failure and success. Indulge the failures. Envy the successes. The Constitution is supposed to protect the open marketplace (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) and suffers the same sad treatment given to Ki, in another institutional failure to mature through the Oedipus complex. Later, Progressives give her a little office with an important-sounding title, Living Document.

In the end, the Union-god of Progressivism writes its beginning. The temples of state academia churn out tomes of tribute to those fine heroes who sowed the wind. Those diligent scribes of America's Union-god, do they know the fate of Enlil? Do they know that the historic development of Progressivism re-enacts the trajectory of one of the earliest Public Cults of Civilization, as recorded in its own self-justifying myths?

Who can imagine?

0006 As the edge of the sun shimmers into view, I put my e-book down and lay back, staring straight into the jeweled sky. The vapor trail of a jet... a flight from Cairo to Tehran, I am on it now, in the end. I travel to pick up my Father, an Associate Professor in Anthropology at the University of Chicago, who has been examining artifacts from the Susa period at the Museum in Tehran. He has been working there for the past twenty months. Now, the University of Chicago charges him with illegal expropriation of research funds. Under this indictment, he is no longer of use to those who would find him of use. They are returning him to me, so that he may face these charges, these illusions designed to foil illusions.

My body is completely veiled. My passport is German. I fly before the storm. Beneath the fabric of my glove, on my finger, I wear a ring, bearing a ruby circled with tiny diamonds.

I imagine that, for a moment, the red light of this ring could mingle with the blue light of the differentiated, the Mahdi, the Messenger, the one who is to come, the Messiah, the son of Mary, the one who came, Mohammed, Zarathustra, the undifferentiated, before the beginning, after the end, everything that rises must converge.

The beginning writes the end.

2A Words Are Lies

0007 Splat. Splat. What?

Keller throws mud at me, trying to get my attention.

What? I wave.

HELEN. HERE, COME. he gestures with one arm.

I pick up my book. He stands beside the bin, in his natural form, wearing only goggles, water-friendly gloves, and high-tech beach runners. Mud coats his body.

The transit tube is parked. I grin as I approach. I cannot help it. Keller has a way with words.

The transit tube delivers material from the sea floor to the collecting bin with scientific precision. At the seafloor, dozens of small computer-driven pressure-sensing mechanical spoons pick at the ground, dislodging mud, rocks and all sorts of stuff. These scrapers were once components of little machines devoted to digging out improvised exploding devices. There were devised for war. Now, they serve science.

Keller calls the submerged part of the transit tube, MOUTH.

Dislodged muck travels up the tube, rising about three meters above the deck of the platform, and then turning downward. The lower part of the loop is flexible and lowers into the collecting bin, as to fill it from the bottom up.

Keller calls this end ANUS.

The anus has a problem. It defecates large rocks. One can feel them rattle down the tube. There is no easy way to remove them. Practically, they can crush things. Keller’s solution is to get into the bin and catch them as they poop out. He can do that because he is strong and agile, say nothing of theatrical.

He waits for me, like a hybrid between a statue of Apollo and a mud bath. He has that wait-until you-see-this smile. His arm is in the muddy water of the filled bin. I cannot see through the mud.

Dramatically, he raises his hand. A skull comes out of the brown-red water, its eye-sockets filled with pure black, its mandible attached by the same black material.

Wow, this is incredible. He offers for me to hold it. It is heavy, like a bowling ball. The black material is pitch. The entire skull is packed and held together by bitumen. He keeps his hand out, expecting me to return it. I place it back into Keller’s hand.

0008 He looks away, lowering the skull back into the muddy water. I look where he gazes. Dad approaches. He never comes out to actually work, so he has some other agenda. I hear the bowling-ball artifact thud against the metal bottom of the bin.

What is going on? I ask, as Dad comes up, squinting in the bright sunlight.

Sarah, Jacob, I want you to make sure you are cleaned up after dinner. We are going to have a visitor. You will have to sit for my presentation, he commands. Then, he nods to me.

I sign what Dad said to Keller. Keller can lip read. But, sometimes he makes mistakes, especially when it comes to what Dad says. So, I am appointed to be the translator. I want to make myself a badge: Safety in Communication.

Jacob nods submission. Dad, satisfied, turns to back to his tent.

Now, you find it. Keller gestures. I go and make an investment.

Translation: Now that he has filled several bins for me to process, he can shower and take a crap. The latter act corresponds to his definition of the politically charged term investment.

Off he strolls, mister Apollo-Mud, leaving me to my own devices.

0009 Speech talk has a problem.

Keller has a label for the way that he, and his fellow students at Gallaudet University, talk: hand talk. The rest of us (hearing folk) practice speech talk. Unlike, hand talk, speech talk is unanchored. Words mean whatever we agree they mean. But gesture, hand talk, is a different beast.

For example, what comes out the anus? Mud. What is mud? When Keller gestures the word, I see his face, despite the goggles; his body, despite the filth; and his hands, despite the gloves. Glistening wetness adds to the literalness. In hand talk, word-gestures combine symbol, index and icon. The word-gesture is symbol. The body is index. The image is icon.

The gesture expressing mud is linguistic. It is a word. A word is an element in a symbolic order. A symbolic order is a finite system of differences. A century ago, Ferdinand de Saussure defined language as two arbitrarily related systems of differences. The qualifier, arbitrary, applies to only to speech. For hand talk, the relation is motivated.

How? Here is one path.

Unlike speech talk, the hand talk word for mud places the body in motion. The gesture situates the emotional nuances of the word, playing with diminution and exaggeration. The word-gesture may be as imperceptible as a whisper or as excessive as a scream. But, unlike the whisper or the scream, the word-gesture carries all the traces of the presence of the body.

Hand talk is like opera, ballet, that funny face I make when I smell something bad. It's like rumba, the look of anguish, laughter, where did I put my book? And, what about vaudeville, tripping over my own shoelaces, silent movies and Cirque de Soleil? Body language comes from the principle that animates the body. Hand talk always incorporates body language.

Finally, the word-gesture carves an image into space. The referent itself is invisible. Yet, I can imagine its presence. Its surfaces are marked with the beauty, the presence, of the hands, young or old, spotless or covered with mud. I can visualize the word-image, even when words have been simplified. The gesture for woman is the strap of a bonnet. The gesture for man is the edge of a hat. The word-image does not create the referent. The referent inspires the word-image.

0010 The anus has another problem. When the bin is full, it automatically rises to its safety position. Then, after a pregnant pause, the anus farts and emits, in most any direction, a big blob of you-know-what. It hurts when it hits.

When Keller fails to dodge in time, he finger spells: d-a-m-n e-n-t-i-t-l-e-m-e-n-t-s.

That brings me to speech talk. Finger spelling is like writing. Writing lives in the cognitive space carved by speech talk. It shares all its weaknesses, with one caveat: It cannot be forgotten. As long as the page exists, the written voice speaks.

A few decades ago, farmers in Egypt were grinding up these weird stones that they plowed up. The stones had marks on them and they made great fertilizer. Someone got the idea of taking some of these stones to a museum to see whether the marks meant anything. That is how the Royal Library at Armana was discovered.

0011 What is this weakness of written and spoken words?

The answer is as simple as it is profound: What do they mean?

After Keller started college, he made a provocative claim. Words are lies. Every word belongs to a symbolic order that excludes alternatives.

But what does that mean?

The sound of each word gives no icon or image that might allow me to see what it references. The body does not guarantee the spoken word. The spoken word is a formant-frequency placeholder in a system of differences. So the system of differences is just as important, if not more important, than each spoken word.

What goes on in the mind of a sociologist who hears the word-sounds free, brave and rights?

Certainly, her thoughts are not the same as old-time patriots who claim that America is the home of the free, the land of the brave, where the people are endowed with unalienable rights. The words take on different associations. The symbolic order changes, but the word-sounds remain the same. That is why spoken words are lies. The symbolic order has a history, but each spoken word does not tell its own history. Unless I know the history of the word, I cannot hear behind the sound. I cannot see behind the veil.

0012 For example, I speak the word-sounds social and security. Combined, these word-sounds label one of the largest government programs of forced income redistribution in human history. These word-sounds veil a social construction, a history...

In Chicago, I told my neighbor’s great-grandmother, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

She frowned and replied, Roosevelt started it. We contributed all our lives. It’s our money that we are getting back.

Great-grandmother only knows what she has been told. She knows what she wants to hear, not the invisible history. Just look at the words: social and security. Great-grandmother loves the image conjured by the juxtaposition.

When any word-image veils the realness of its invisible history, the word is a lie. As long as great grand-ma’s social security check comes in the mail, the lie remains true and her