Chapter 31 "Women Who Listened to the Earth" - Day 3, Navajo Voices of Wisdom in the Air

"The Woman Listening to the Earth" is not a specific character in Navajo mythology, but rather a common kind of people, even a kind of "industry". The meaning of fading with the disenchantment of history. In Navajo mythology, the number one main god is called Talking God, the talking god. The exact meaning and origin of this appellation has probably not been verified. What is certain is that it is too literal to impose an explanation, thinking that Talking God is the only one who will To speak, and thus also to act as God, the only bridge between God and man, would be a great mistake.In fact, all the gods of the Navajo clan of glory can speak "human language", and they can talk directly to the "five-toed clan" on our surface without needing on-site interpretation. Today, from various versions of the Navajo In the Waho mythology, the one who talks the most and has the closest relationship with people is obviously not the majestic god who "spoke in the beginning".Interestingly, the Talking God shows up every time, for example, the time in the Fourth World when he used yellow and white corn covered with sacred buckskin to create human beings, unlike the narcissistic, dramatic and showy Jehovah in the Bible who appeared without warning Accompanied by heavy words full of threats, there are also clouds and fires that add to the atmosphere as the background. It takes time for the appearance of Talking God, from far to near, from remote and clear, like a wild deer walking, and also like a distant friend visiting on foot, he made a sound, but it was not a human language, but something like "Hu Hu Hu Hu... ..." The sound is like panting, like a war dance, and it has a kind of simple and pious meaning.

In general (because I don’t know if there are any exceptions), the most primitive gods of all nations spoke directly, but people soon discovered that letting the great gods talk so much was wasteful and directly constituted the “fragility” of the gods. On the one hand, God’s absence of jokes is a necessary condition for God’s holiness. If God speaks too often, there is a danger of self-contradiction or even failure to fulfill (the Lord in the Bible Old Testament is so often standing on the front line to speak) God who creates such troubles), therefore, people have to find a way to protect him, let God covertly, closed, only to a specific few people, the "politics" that is relatively ambiguous, and both pros and cons can be explained Words, in case people with a good memory accuse them of skipping votes; on the other hand, since God’s words carry such powerful power and power, it is not appropriate to let these words be scattered among ordinary people like the swallows before Wang Xietang. And seal up the power and interests contained in it.

As a result, the direct right of the gods to speak was gradually reduced to the point where they were simply imprisoned, and intermediaries such as spokespersons, brokers, and lawyers were set up between the gods and mortals. In fact, it is not only gods, but also political leaders who are as holy as gods and even charismatic idol stars of charisma (it is strange that the two are increasingly overlapping and becoming one in Taiwan). The principle is the same, and the handling methods are similar. God doesn't speak directly, but people have to understand. Here, there must be a conversion mechanism that is responsible for breaking codes and decoding—here, vision is a sensory tool that is difficult to operate, because vision is too clear, and it turns too much. Some kind of information that is too public and too common lacks ambiguous depth for interpretation. Relatively speaking, the human sense of hearing is much easier to use, and the sense of hearing is private and accepts fleeting sound waves, so it is difficult to verify.Moreover, the information received by the auditory sense does not have an "image" and must affect the discrimination and analysis of the mind. Therefore, the "discretionary power" of the intermediary person is greatly increased, and there is a wonderful flexibility that can be used.

Therefore, in the history of mankind, people who pursue vision and people who rely on hearing often take different paths. Those who look at the sun, the moon, and the stars are not enough, and they have to invent and use magnifying glasses and microscopes to make them People with clearer vision, such as Thales and Galileo, usually take the scientific path of dispelling charms and abandoning God; as for those who rely heavily on hearing, or even congenital blindness or acquired blindness, they can make their hearing more focused and less attracted by the five colors People who interfere usually live quietly in the kingdom ruled by God. The sound of wind, rain, thunder, insects, and even the sound of grass and trees sprouting (usually not including the sound of reading) are all the sounds of God caring for us but playing charades.

The word "Holy" used in our Chinese today remembers the latter kind of person and the latter path: in the most original oracle bone inscriptions, the word "Holy" is composed of three things, a person and a giant form this The ear of the word focus, and a mouth symbol attached, the reasonable explanation is that this is a wise man who can listen to all kinds of strange, obscure, and enlightening voices, and explain them to us mortals through his mouth. Hallow it. The woman who listens to the earth. Of course, in the novel "The Woman Who Listened to the Earth", the modern Sillerman did not return to the ancestors to push the old and blind Navajo woman to a sacred height, and even heard and predicted the future. The revelation of the case's advantage in solving the case (in fact, she couldn't even detect and stop the murder tragedy that was close at hand).Schillermann only rationally endows her with the simple wisdom she should have, a kind of wisdom that is almost inevitable because of her professional talent and experience and her age.

Blind so wise?No, that’s not what it says. We’re not here to gloat and insist that losing sight is a kind of happiness that makes people wise. In fact, it’s a word of affirmation that we’re trying to understand the bitterness of this journey. Because people can only rely on inconvenient and highly used thinking to distinguish and analyze all information, such unfortunate people have the opportunity to make their minds more focused, diligent and developed to make up for the lack of visual understanding of the senses—— Biologists who rely on their eyes have noticed this for a long time. When calculating and converting the brain proportions of various creatures, they obviously found that among creatures of the same level, nocturnal animals tend to have larger brain proportions, which is why it is so necessary replace.

It is less disputed, besides, that age confers some wisdom. However, what is interesting is that when we extrapolate such "blind/old" reasonable wisdom, it seems absurd to place the situation of the Navajo listening woman in the contemporary social reality we live in today , it is obvious that in the society we are familiar with, they are just unfortunate people in need of social help, not playing the role of wise people, so we have to ask: what happened?What has changed to make wisdom fly away from them like a blue bird?So much so that except for a very small number of people in this vulnerable group who still predict the number balls of the Mark Six and Public Lottery and reveal their cards, we only feel that we should give them (social relief and social welfare) and do not expect to get anything from them.

Many, many things happened.Here, we have no intention of constructing a whole history of human social development to find the answer. We just want to point out one of the interesting and important reasons, that is-man invented writing, and let this writing become the expression, storage, transmission and inheritance of human wisdom achievements absolute subject. Writing is indeed the most powerful invention of human beings on the earth (the Chinese myth of word creation says that Cang Jie invented writing, "ghosts cry at night"), and it was first owned by only a few people (it is estimated that only 1% of human beings five language systems have successfully developed characters), but in a short period of time almost the entire world has been destroyed, it has completely changed or directly recast the overall style of wisdom, and of course it has changed the entire world. Since then, no characters People can only be continuously persecuted into the dark corners of history.

And we know that the Navajos did not invent writing, and they really are in the corner of the desolate reservation area today, including the women in their tribe who listen to the earth. In Plato's Dialogues, there is a record of a complaint made by the Egyptian king Dohamus to the Egyptian god of word creation (a human ibis head, a pen in one hand, and a clay tablet in the other), and he has been seeking wisdom throughout his life. And Socrates, who was recognized as the wisest by the Oracle of Delphi, quoted to his friend Phaedras: "This invention of yours will only make the minds of learners forgetful, because they will become unwilling to use more. Your own memory; only believe in the written words outside, and refuse to take the time to remember yourself. The characteristics you discover do not help memory, but help recall; what you give to your disciples is not truth, but what appears to be truth They will find themselves hearing many things, but remembering nothing; they will appear to know everything, but in fact know nothing; Wisdom is, in fact, under the surface."

For Socrates, a wise philosopher who inquires around like a disturbing gadfly, or can be called a "Greek man who listens to the street talk", it is obviously inconceivable that he is sensitive to the destructive fixation of words—— With text, most of the memories can be conveniently stored outside the human body, and there is no need to work hard to memorize them repeatedly, thus losing the delicate chewing and deep understanding that must accompany the memory struggle.Not only that, without the assistance of words, people want to remember more and longer, especially the ancient misty things (meaning the origin and experience of wisdom), people have to compile and even convert them into easy-to-remember things. And spread various forms, including proverbs, ballads, legends, myths and even rituals, to ensure that the sound is not easily lost in the air; and such a beautiful sound memory and its transmission form are like a big magnet and a rich The great river that flows through the history of human beings from generation to generation naturally absorbs the relevant voices from generation to generation, and retains the memories of each generation of people involved in the memory. Therefore, this voice is always changing, dangerous, but lifelike. .

That is to say, when the form of wisdom changes from gaseous sound to solid text, and from auditory sound to visual text, what changes is not only the way of personal private memory and its content, but more importantly, The air around us has completely changed. Molecules of wisdom crystallize into heavier words and fall into the pages of books like ore to be dug. In the study room, the sound has further lost the energy injected from generation to generation. Therefore, its thinness can only become thinner as time continues to flow. In the end, only the "not qualified" is left behind by the words. Crystallized crumbs of shallow popular opinion, unsubstantiated roving lies, and gossip. Benjamin once lamented the eternal loss of human beings’ ability to tell stories, including the rare legends brought back by merchants and the thick legends grown by farmers from deep roots. From this perspective, they are actually caused by the invention of writing and its Expansion, looting the most exquisite parts of it, such as cruel rent collectors, so there is no such questioning "industry" as Socrates, and now only drunk bums and advertisements are left on the streets. Leaflets; old women who have lost their sight can no longer hear the revelation of wisdom, just because wisdom no longer travels through the air to visit, it is stored and gathered into words, and has to be read by sight, so age only guarantees old age And slowness, just like the white rats in the cage who have been on the wheel for three years are not smarter than those who have been on the wheel for half a year. Today, we say that the Navajo has no written language, which may be a linguistic error.They never invented writing, but just like most of the language systems that have not invented writing today, they borrowed the existing writing symbols of other languages, and also tried to record their own voices - surrounded by Great America , under the jurisdiction of the federal government of the United States of America, the character symbols borrowed by the Navajo language are of course the English alphabet, and some necessary special symbols are added to deal with their unique language, which is not in the English pronunciation. The part with strange sounds from strange articulation parts. For example, I personally have a "Navajo/English" dictionary in my hand, with a khaki cover, a thin one, shipped from the online Amazon bookstore, and I am ashamed to say that the element of curiosity is far higher than the element of learning, because I It is impossible to accurately utter the special voice that also conveys beautiful legends, myths, and sad history by "seeing the symbols to speak". But such a thin Navajo dictionary with a very limited vocabulary makes me feel very sad and ominous-the world picture constructed by these words is extremely narrow and ancient, and there are no more "modern" words at all, which means it It has largely stopped developing itself, no longer trying to illustrate, remember, and explain the world that turns every day, so it is more like a sand painting, a beautiful chain of silver and turquoise. We use it to commemorate, caress and think about the old feelings, and they are constantly disappearing. Here, we relate a peculiar experience of the Navajo language, which was about its last glorious victory. This happened in the Pacific War between the United States and Japan in World War II.At that time, in addition to the visible and real deadly gunfire, the two warring parties were also engaged in eerie code warfare to deceive each other. For example, the U.S. military sank four precious aircraft carriers of the Royal Japanese Navy in the battle of Midway Island to turn the tide of the battle, and In the future, the landline of the famous Japanese general Yamamoto Fifty-Six was shot down over the Solomon Islands, all of which were the results of successfully deciphering the Japanese army's code. The most basic dilemma of a cipher is that it must be so complex and difficult that the enemy cannot disassemble and decipher it, but it must be so simple and convenient that our side can understand it verbatim in the shortest possible time, especially in times of fierce battles and moment-to-moment ciphers. There is no time to delay the special juncture, and think about it, the other party is trying to break the code is a whole group of people who study your telecommunication every day and gather the best guessing minds in the country, but our personnel who answer the code are most likely just Soldiers in the frontline trenches with extremely limited education and talents, therefore, some kind of mysterious but simple code becomes a heavenly thing. In 1942, a whimsical man named Philip Johnston appeared. He was originally the son of a Protestant preacher. He grew up with his father in Navajo land and could speak Navajo fluently. Huo language, he believes that using Navajo or even other Indian aboriginal languages ​​as combat codes ensures that the Japanese army will never be able to crack them. This idea successfully convinced the U.S. military—the ultimate consideration of adopting the Navajo language. In addition to the Navajo being the largest Indian tribe with the largest number of people, more importantly, before the start of World War II, the Germans planned to Having entered various Indian reservations in the name of various academic studies, only the Navajo is where the Germans have not gone. This is the most important security guarantee that must be guarded against. So, starting on August 7th of the same year, the first batch of Navajo correspondents entered the field, bringing their peculiar language with a long history, and also their peculiar patriotic enthusiasm for the United States of America (this has to suppress their long-standing history of white people. hatred)——as expected, the Navajo language will immediately show great power, without encryption, without relying on cipher machines and code books, the two ends of the communication can talk directly, and what the Japanese decoding experts intercepted was only "a series of strange Throat sounds, nasal sounds, and tongue-twisting sounds", not to mention incomprehensible, or even impossible to record with existing text symbols, and there is no way to decode them.The Navajo code is one of the few most successful codes of World War II that has never been broken. Using the Navajo language as a war code, of course, there are some troubles that need to be dealt with first, that is, the Navajo vocabulary does not contain modern weapons, combat terms, or even the names of belligerent countries. This part has to be created using pronouns. Fish", bombs are called "eggs", reconnaissance planes are called "owls", fighter jets are called "hummingbirds" and so on.But this extra language burden does not bother these Navajo language fighters at all. The reason is very simple, just as the Egyptian king Dohamus said to the god Tut, the Navajo who do not have words are accustomed to memory, " Navajo, it's all in the head—songs, prayers, anything. That's how we grew up." Of course, the huge historical memory and mythology of the Navajo people can never be as verbatim as the combat code, but every Navajo who participates in the memory and transmission is qualified to add his own feelings, turning points, Supplements and endows explanations, "printing their own stencils", no words give it unfinished, fluid qualities that have been repaired and replaced from generation to generation, and also force them to retain many auxiliary materials such as chanting, pictures, prayers, worship ceremonies, etc. The fertile forms of memory, as we can see everywhere in Schillermann's novels. If you want to truly understand the deepest mysteries of the Navajo world, it is not enough to rely solely on vision. You have to learn to listen before you have the opportunity to call out those things that "everything is in your head"——Therefore, the anthropological There is a very vivid joke: "Today, the composition of a Navajo family is grandparents, parents, children, and an anthropologist." Pan Anbang, the singer who sang "Grandma's Penghu Bay", said in the lyrics that his grandmother's house "has an old captain", a mysterious old captain whose relationship with his grandmother is unknown to us today, and what function exists ; but what are the anthropologists that are necessary in the Navajo family? Finally, as usual, we will tell another Navajo myth, but this time it is an R-rated beautiful story. After the Navajo Glorious Clan successfully created men and women, and successfully formed a couple to reproduce the race, the "first woman" was more careful. She wanted to ensure the completed family form, and hoped that the man and woman could attract each other forever. Life and death are in harmony, so she used turquoise as a material to create a phallus for men, and white shells as a material to create a vulva for women. She thinks that both are very beautiful, and they will summon each other, like Yin and Yang magnetic poles. When the two parties are separated, they still have the power to attract and unite. At this juncture, the mischievous Coyote wolf was born. He also thought that the creation of the "first woman" was beautiful, but he said: "I can make them more beautiful." So the coyote wolf plucked a handful of its own hair and blew on the penis and vulva, and the hairs stuck to it. This is the source of human pubic hair. But "the first woman" thinks that the genitals with pubic hair are really beautiful, and she is afraid that the man and the woman will be separated for a short time, and they will be useless in farming and weaving, so the "first woman" teaches people You have to put on clothes to cover up your beautiful sex organs. In the white man's "Bible", Adam and Eve were ashamed of their naked sexual organs and had to cover them with fig leaves; the Navajos thought differently. Their mythology had no moral meaning of sexual taboo, but some kind of life Pleasure, the joy of sex. This is the third day.