Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. —Bertrand Russell
The medieval European idea of order had a certain mathematical neatness that would have been appreciated by premodern Chinese. But medieval folk in Europe were obsessed by a fear of chaos and the fact of constant change. For them — just as for an Elizabethan — chaos did not mean the same thing as it does for us.
For our ancestors chaos implied a terrifying cosmic anarchy, best explained humorously by Bill Murray in Ghostbusters II as
Human sacrifices! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!
For medieval people, the critical issue was the solidarity of the universe built on the concept of earthly order, an order based on Aristotle's Great Chain of Being. At the top was God, and moving downward from the pinnacle you'd find the angels, the monarch, great nobles, lesser nobles, and the rest of us (and we were about 96 percent of the population).
The logical extension of the Great Chain produced Louis XIV and Charles I. (It also heavily contributed to antisemitism, but that is another story.) What was once considered ruling "by the grace of God" or "mandate of heaven" degenerated into the divine right of kings.
A place for us
In the ancient sense (which evaporated in America only with the coming of the first world war) place also signified a particular piece of land and a sense of politics. Status in society was linked to landowning, and one's responsibilities were tied to the land. One knew one's place (people still said this about black people until the 1970s). A woman's place was in the home (people still said this about women in the 1970s).
In Europe until the Enlightenment (and, in some places, until the present day), marginalized social groups such as Jews — and, in a few places, females — were not allowed to own land, and thus prevented from sharing the communal sense of place. Perhaps the property laws explained why some Victorian men argued at length about whether women were actually human.
The sovereign once ruled over the land because he was "the master of time" (the calendar), but over time and with cultural reinterpretation sovereignty distorted into rulership based on one's pedigree or genetics (after gens — breeding — which brought us gentry and gentleman).
Chain of fools
You can find the brave new version of these ancient ideas in Nancilee Wydra's Feng Shui books, for her Pyramid School is merely Aristotle's "great chain of being" made New Age. Wydra: 22; see also Lovejoy)
Although her Feng Shui Institute of America in Wabasso, Florida, encourages people to acquire degrees in fields she considers related to feng shui (baubiology, social work and psychobiology), bizarre is not too strong a word for many of Wydra's ideas.
The lack of adequate research and editorial integrity cast a long shadow over her credibility, although she bills herself as "a master cultural interpreter," "a pioneer who has challenged a complete set of cultural beliefs," and "the Nan Landers [sic] of Feng Shui." (Click here for information on the real Nan Landers.)
I intended to say that
Consider Wydra's belief that intention alone can be enough to produce change. In Look Before you Love (1998:v) she declares that in science this is called the Heidelberg Principle, a "phenomenon" that asserts "the mere fact of being observed changes ... results."
Her confusion about quantum mechanics is based on a misunderstanding of the Heisenberg Principle (also known as the uncertainty principle), named after Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901-1976).
Some people, including Wydra, think the uncertainty principle means the world is unpredictable when actually the opposite is true. The uncertainty (Heisenberg) principle is a recipe for making measurements with a precision that would be unimaginable with classical physics.
Besides the malapropism, Wydra confused the uncertainty principle with the participatory anthropic principle, which is used by people like Deepak Chopra to suggest humans can create molecules by thinking.
Robert Park in his excellent book Voodoo Science (2000) notes this concept suggests that psychic healing and casting spells rely on chaos theory, and quantum mechanics supplies the summoned spirits. It gives a new spin to The Tempest, in which Shakespeare tackled the thorny issues of colonialism and racism.
Now it makes perfect sense that according to Designing Your Happiness (1995:17), Wydra's school accepts theories "that have either scientific proof or are supported by a belief system."
Only left-handers are in their right minds
For Wydra, a bagua is predicated on the idea that right and left share inherent meanings across cultures, but she qualifies this idea by repeating her culture's myths about brain functions. (Corvallis and Beale 1983: viii)
A bagua, stresses Wydra, works by analogy as a conceptual map of our psyche, as a glimpse into our thought processes. The right side of the brain, she says, controls emotion and abstract thinking while the left side handles "the practical aspects of cognition."
Armed with these facts, she says,
it is natural to align areas relevant to our emotional life on the right side of the room and areas dedicated to critical thinking on the left. (Book of Cures:47-48)
Connect the right side of the house or a room to emotion and relationships, she says. Decorate the left side of a room according to organized and logical mental functions. (Ibid.: 49)
This theorizing establishes Wydra's crackpot theories as originating in contemporary American popular culture, for the facts about brain function are altogether different from those she relates.
Although our unconscious and conscious minds exist interdependently, the hemispheres control opposite sides of the human body and function asymmetrically. The right brain registers sensory input from the left side of the body (which, by the way, is traditionally the yang side). The left brain registers sensory input from the right side (which is traditionally the yin side).
In urban folklore, the left hemisphere has assumed much of the character of the military-industrial-entertainment complex with its dominant, linear, coldly rational stereotype. By contrast the spiritual, emotional, compassion-oriented right hemisphere reflects the creative order of the New Age. Corvallis and Beale: 168
Though our genetic material is primarily a product of our primate past, humans have asymmetrical brains. The brains of most right-handers exhibit a counterclockwise torque. (Ibid.:138-139)
The left hemisphere gives us rhythm and the ability to judge simultaneity, temporal order and duration, in addition to fine motor control (something
women are especially good at). Ibid.: 174
Across cultures, human females appear to be superior to males in verbal ability (also a left-hemisphere activity).
Most left-handed people around the world are male, disabled learners, schizophrenics, epileptics, and hyperactive. Ibid.: 207 Was that why ancient Chinese codified yang as being left-handed?
I think...therefore the idea stinks
Wydra also promotes the outdated Christian belief that sentience and consciousness are uniquely human — although scientific evidence doesn't agree with her. (Read Daniel Dennett's book on consciousness, or the works of Antonio Damasio.)
Because Christianity elevated humans to rule over our closest genetic relatives (chimpanzees, bonobos, and other primates) along with the rest of the natural world, humans stand at the apex of Pyramid School ideology with only a fuzzy "unknown" higher than humans on Wydra's Great Chain of Being.
Read Wydra's books and articles with a great deal of skepticism. She has contributed as many crackpot theories to American pop culture as Erich von Daniken and Pat Robertson.