e., no practical need
to wonder about what was beyond the immediate and proximate,
never mind life and death. When the practical experience of
self-constitution made rudiments of language (the language of
gestures, objects, sounds) possible, a sense of time-as
sequences of durations-developed, and thus a new dimension, in
addition to the immediate, opened. This opening grew as awareness
of oneself in relation to others increased in a context of
diversified practical experiences. Acknowledging others, not
just as prey, or as object of sexual drive, but as associates
(in hunting, foraging, mating, securing shelter), and even the
very act of association, resulted in awareness of the power of
coordination. Thus the awareness, as diffuse as it still was, of
time got reinforced. Be-Hu Tung ventured a description of the
process: "In the beginning there was no moral or social order.
People knew only their mothers, not their fathers. Hungry, they
searched for their food. Once full, they threw the rest away.
They ate their food with skin and hair on it, drank blood and
covered themselves in fur and reeds." He described a world in
its animal phase, still dependent on the cycles of nature,
perceiving and celebrating repetition.
Myth and ritual responded to natural rhythms and incorporated
these in the life cycle. Once human self-constitution extended
beyond nature, creating its own realm, observance of natural
rhythms took new forms.
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