Reframing hunting, gathering, tool-making and art, as expressions of evolution of consciousness as depicted in Jean Gebser’s ‘the ever-present origin’

Abstract

Hunting and gatheringAccording to Dictionary.com (2017), hunting and gathering refer to the action of relying primarily or exclusively on hunting wild animals, fishing and gathering wild fruits, berries, nuts and vegetables to support one's diet, Until hunter-began to domesticate plants and animals about 10 000 years ago, all human societies were hunter-gatherers.Hunting and gathering are also defined as follows:1. Of a society, lifestyle, surviving by hunting animals and gathering plants for subsistence. 2. Hunting-gathering is associated with uncivilised people, that is, those lacking culture or sophistication. Civilised means having a highly developed society and culture. Civilisation is generally defined as people who have attained a triple combination of industrial capability, technological sophistication and economic productivity. Tool-makingThe history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques ranging from as simple as language and stone tools to the complex genetic engineering and information technology that has emerged since the 1980s. New knowledge has enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavours are made possible by technologies that assist humans in travelling to places they could not previously reach and by scientific instruments by which we study nature in more detail than our natural senses allow. The idea that consciousness, or experience, has evolved and may continue to evolve through time and history has been explored in one way or another by many philosophers and pioneers of the inner life, but is seen nowhere more clearly than in the history of art. No one understood this better than the poet and cultural historian Jean Gebser, who contributed perhaps more than any other scholar to understanding the history of human consciousness. Art and the evolution of consciousnessGebser's explorations of art and history begin with a sudden recognition that art at the fin de siècle represented a new kind of consciousness, a new way of seeing and experiencing reality. With this in mind, he searched backward through history to uncover a whole series of 'structures of This article explores the evolution of consciousness as directly correlated to hunting, gathering, tool-making and art. The methodology is qualitative theoretical analyses, articulated around Jean Gebser's seminal work, The Ever-Present Origin. Hunting and gathering are expressions of a magical, unitary, 'self-dissolving' consciousness. Tool-making on the other hand is depicted as evolving from a mythical consciousness of duality, polarity, symbolism and a state of being qualified by 'crystallisation of the I'. Lastly, art is a function of a consciousness of 'selftranscendence', 'I and I', idealisation and a transpersonal state of being. The article concludes by positing that hunting, gathering, tool-making and art can be reframed as 'forms of the movement of consciousness'.Reframing hunting, gathering, tool-making and art, as expressions of evolution of consciousness as depicted in...