A few days ago Alison Place, in discussing the pairing of the Runes, noted how biologically we Terran humans "are constructed with so many built-in pairs that regarding pairing as a fundamental natural truth may be unavoidable for us." She goes on say that "the primary division into female/male among most animals (especially ourselves)" is one reason most human cultures classify things into opposing or complimentary pairs, and later seems to imply that the sexual duality is "a truth of the physical world."
Please allow me to start with a little story, set in a small village in the West Indies. A little baby girl is born to a family, and is raised at her mother's side learning the traditional women's duties of washing and cooking. When the child reaches puberty, she finds her voice deepens, she grows a beard, and her clitoris enlarges into a penis. Eventually, this child takes a wife, and has children with her.
This human developmental path, so strange to most of us, is caused by a genetic deficiency of a specific androgen. And it happens so regularly in Santo Domingo (due to the genetics of the population there) that several villages have developed a third sex category for the transitory state, which translates literally as "penis at twelve." They have even developed rituals and customs to assist a "penis at twelve" child in switching from the female gender role to the male gender role.
My point is that here on Terra, things are a lot less clear than
our Western culture likes to admit. We are so used to thinking
about someone's sex as being consistant that it's often hard
for us to accept inconsistancy in this area. But in fact, the
chromosomal, anatomical, and hormonal sex of an individual
can all be inconsistant. Some persons who are born
anatomically male have a double Y chromosome pattern.
Others have extras of both the X and Y chromosomes. Some
persons born anatomically female have a Y chromosome, while
others carry a triple X pattern. In some past Olympic
competitions (I forget which year), anatomical females
without the XX chromosome pattern were excluded. Human
beings with breasts, vaginas, uterus', and ovaries are not
"female," from this point of view. Children are born with
anatomical anomalies; Westerners just have access to surgical
techniques to "correct" what is socially defined as an
"abnormality." And these are not as rare as most Westerners
think; according to my wife's textbooks (she's a labor &
delivery nurse), between 2 to 3 percent of all live births have
some kind of genital anomaly. (Most are minor, but still...)
According to a 1972 edition of _Science News_, it was
estimated that approximately 4 million Americans had
external genitalia that were neither or both male and female.
Lastly, sex hormone proportions in some adults conform more
to their anatomical 'opposite' sex than to the 'normal'
hormones of their anatomical sex.
Other dichotomies you mention are less clear too. There is an culture (I don't remember which one, but was mentioned in the TV series _Death: The Trip of a Lifetime_) which believes a person who stops moving/breathing/etc... is in a special type of prolonged sleep which 'naturally' precedes death. They are wrapped up and hung in the rafters of the house, and are not considered 'dead' until the family has completed the proper funerary preparations. So, they have three different states of 'being' (alive, sleeping, and dead) where we have two (alive and dead).
When you consider the pairs you mention, male/female and
life/death, I think you're doing something different than
"discussing the creation and cessation of life as we can
experience it." I think you are discussing the creation and
cessation of life as we can _perceive_ it, given our Western
socio-cultural view. And, I think this is what happens within
Glorantha too.
I believe the Rune system we know about _is_ a God Learner construct, including the way the pairings have been set up. That's not to say there isn't _any_ truth to thinking of the things the runes symbolize as pairs. It also isn't to say that such a thing isn't useful, allowing for some control and understanding of the forces within the runes. But, it is to say that such pairings are cultural truths, and are not ultimately and universally true.
Thus, while the assumption that pairing is a fundamental natural truth may indeed be unaviodable for us (and many Gloranthans), that doesn't necessarily mean it IS a fundamental natural truth.
Peace,
Peter
Powered by hypermail