16543: Brown: Re: 16535: Lafleur: RE: 16535: Laleau: Re: 16434: Cunningham: More of God in Haiti!! (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Haines Brown <brownh@hartford-hwp.com>

Lourdes,

> I have never been a voodoo follower myself, even though I do
> recognize voodoo as a very important part of my cultural
> identity. . .

> Voodoo has destroyed my family and that is a very painful experience
> that I've been living for the past month.

> . . .even the most trivial ailment can be attributed to the meanness
> of someone else in the immediate family just because the "houngan"
> said so. There is no way, anyone with good sense can make them
> believe otherwise and for the past month we have been at each
> other's throats.
>
> Is there a way to convince, the doctors, the accountants, the
> engineers of my family that adversity, sickness, pain and death are
> part of life and that they do not happen because one of their peers
> made them happen? Can someone on the Corbett list come up with one
> phrase or sentence that will make them change their minds?

I reply, not as someone expert on Voudou religion, but who
nevertheless has experienced a situation not unlike your own.

My first suggestion is that an appeal to supernatural causation (in
the case of your relatives, evil spirits) is found in a variety of
religious contexts. The problem may not be with Voudou specifically,
and I suspect that if you were to understand this, it would be subtly
helpful.

Although some people are inclined to supernatural explanations, it is
nearly always constrained by culture, such as conventional religious
teachings. This may be the difference between personal insanity and
socially accepted illusions.

Second, there is no way you can come up with a philosophical point
that will make them change their minds. The difference between a
naturalistic and a supernaturalistic explanation of events is not a
question for philosophical discourse or debate, but reaches beyond
the intellectual level to engage the psyche. Put otherwise, it
involves a quit different axiom  set; it is an existential choice.

It is very, very, difficult to get someone to inspect their own set of
initial assumptions critically. Most are embedded in our culture and
are therefore invisible. A challenge to them tends to shake one's
entire being. That is why religious conversion is such a profound
event. Your own basic assumptions are present, and probably to a large
extent invisible to you.

So, my second suggestion is that the problem is not with your
relatives, but rather a problem in human relationships. Rather than
point a finger to assign guilt, see yourself as part of the problem. I
think that if you were to believe this point to be true, half your
battle would be won. Your aim should not be to change them or prove
them wrong, but to change yourself in ways necessary to restore
positive relationships.

The issue for you, as it is for many others, is how to bridge the
chasm to restore social relations. It seems that to a large extent
that chasm is unbridgeable. Those who find discourse with the larger
society impossible retreat into a cult. Usually, though, the
disengagement with larger society is only to the extent necessary for
one's psychic health. A set of beliefs may be held by a group that is
suffiently large to place much of one's social life within it's
comforting embrace (such as church-centered mutual employment, social
life, stores, family). Contact with society at large is sufficiently
limited so that one can hold one's breath for those times when
surrounded by evil spirits associated with the "world".

And yet, despite logic, the chasm between supertition and naturalism
is often enough bridged in practice. I'm not sure how, but love is a
powerful force that can weld people together so tightly that they are
able to build into their words, their behavior and thought certain
rules of disengagement, to yield when yielding is necessary, to be
forebearing when that seems a herculean task. Love can also, just as
importantly, construct regions of engagement that fortify a
relationship in matters that don't involve the
naturalism/supernaturalism dichotomy.

I hope you understand that I'm no expert at all, but merely one who
has experienced a situation not unlike your own. My sense is that your
goal to change your relatives from their mistaken ways is quixotic and
destructive. You have your own axioms of which you are hardly aware,
and which may also involve superstition (if you are a Christian, for
example).

Voudou is embedded in Haitian culture, and so is unassailable, and a
challenge to it is a challenge to the social fabric. An effort to
relieve your relatives of their illusions is contradictory, a threat
to the family solidarity you would preserve. I suggest that a partial
solution would be to build areas of mutual engagement, of trust, and
of loving care which are fairly independent of your basic assumptions.

Haines Brown