Richard Katz, in the prologue to his book, Indigenous Healing Psychology, recounts a conversation he had with a Ju/’hoansi healer, his “friend and guide,” while doing field research in Botswana in 1968, when the Ju/’hoansi were still living as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Katz had brought a tape recorder to record their conversation, and was playing his collection of recordings of Ju/’hoansi healing dances for his guide, who was absolutely fascinated, and requested that the sounds be played over and over.
At some point, the healer remarked that the tape recorder was “something definitely powerful,” and said that he wished he knew how it works. Katz started to explain how the microphone picks up the sound, but his guide interrupted and said that he understood how the microphone works by collecting the sound and then sending it down the wire to the inside of the box, and then dismissed the microphone as a trivial thing, and said that he suspected that it wasn’t really the thing doing the hearing. It is obviously inside the box where the voices are being collected, he said, that’s where the real power is. And then he repeated that he wished he knew how it works.
When Katz started to tell him about energy and sound waves, his guide interrupted again, and said, “We already know those things. But what I really want to know is, how does it work?” Eventually Katz came to realize that he could not answer the question, that his own understanding was really only a superficial sketch of the process. His guide was disappointed, and said that “Whenever we’re given a thing of power by our ancestors—and surely this thing that captures our voices is powerful—we’re always told how it works and how to use it.”
A major difference between the Ju/’hoansi of the mid twentieth century and the inhabitants of civilization is that the latter have no idea about how anything really works—and even less of an idea about how any of it should be used. I’m looking at the cellphone sitting next to me right now. It is definitely a thing of power. And although I could give an extensive sketch of the basics of cellular networks and digital information processing and touchscreen circuitry, I really have no idea how any of it works or how it should be used, what greater purposes it should be applied to.
All things of power in civilization are like this, from cellphones and automobiles to global financial institutions and international trade agreements.
