Shepard essay #4

In this essay, the Dance of Neotony and Ontogeny, Shepard gets to the heart of the matter he has been adressing in the past essays I have reviewed: the social and environmental problems of modern life are due to out maladjusted psychology. He begins by describing how the ontogenetic (after birth) development of humans has a schedule of age-specific transitions that must be accompanied by particular experiences. An example of this would be the critical phase theory of linguistics, that children must be exposed to and experiment with language at a certain early age, or they cannot learn it properly. The pattern of development is based on an extension of immaturity, a "retarded growth rate" which is know as neotony (the retaining of infant features as the organism develops). (Shepard, 143)

The attention of the infant is programmed to receive responses from the mother to "fill archetypal forms with specific meaning." (Shepard, 144) The biological process of neotony builds the identity of the individual as it passes through self-centered adolescence to a socially inclusive and interrelated adulthood. This process includes various social bonds and interaction with the ecosystem which is symbolic of the inner transformations and widening social interactions. For this process to unfold as intended, the adults caring for a child must give appropriate responses. Neotony must be countered by culture for the person to become mature.

After establishing all this, Shepard makes a very political statement, that civilization is best served by members whose ontogenetic development was interfered with in certain ways. Individuals who accept the ruling of higher powers need not become full adults. They need only the immature submission and conformity of juveniles. Without the use of the ecosystem as a model of order and meaning, people interact with domesticated, submissive animals, and paint their vision of the world accordingly. Individuals raised in this manner have anxieties and hostilities towards life, which they may treat as an incompetent parent.

The next step in civilization alienating people from our natural development were the "desert fathers" and their patriarchal anthropocentric monotheism. The emphasis that Western civilization has had since then on individual responsibility is essentially a fixation on the juvenile superego. The view of creation as being fallen or evil means we no longer live according to natural cycles and rhythms, and that we celebrate our separation. This schizoid ontology tells us to fear our own bodies, and causes a lack of integration with the rest of existence.

Initiations are the mechanism by which the adults respond to the neotonic traits of immaturity. These adults have gone through the process and are integrated social beings. The effects of missing or partially received steps of the process result in improperly integrated individuals with resentment for unfulfilled childhoods. Versions of psychotherapy exist in all cultures to alleviate these problems.

Shepard looks finally at our modern urban societies made up of "identity cripples." (Shepard, 153) We envy the innocence of childhood and view aging negatively. We long to go back to childhood because our own development has been mismanaged since then. We never moved out of the juvenile mentality that our selves were the center of existence, we never learn to see the natural world as symbolic, and our destruction of our ecosystems betrays this. Our individual maladjustment is extrapolated onto society at large, and we lash out at it and the natural world that we feel has let us down.

"There is a secret person undamaged in every individual, aware of the validity of these, sensitive to their right moments in our lives. All of them are assimilated in perverted forms in modern society: our profound love of animals twisted into pets, zoos, decorations, and entertainment; our search for poetic wholeness subverted by the model of the machine instead of the body; the moment of pubertal idealism shunted into nationalism or ethereal otherworldly religion instead of an ecosophical cosmology" (Shepard, 162)