Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 120.
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        Date: 2024-08-28 08:37:07+00:00
        From: David Zeitlyn <david.zeitlyn@anthro.ox.ac.uk>
        Subject: Surprise surprise divination

Surprise

Some sort of summer synchronicity:
On Humanist Willard reflects on surprise
On Substack Janet Ginsburg has a piece on the “Adjacent Possible”
https://substack.com/@jaginsburg/p-146800698

The combination of surprise and adjacent possibility is actually quite close to
my take on divination and oracles - where (unlike most of the literature) I am
less interested in the techniques per se or explanations given for why it works
(or doesnt work) but more in what it is used for  - in the questions asked and
the responses that the answers to those question elicit. (So a sort of
epidemiology of questions, answers and actions).  The responses can be quite
various - including the divinatory equivalent of diagnosis shopping - you go and
get a second or third opinion until you get one you like. Elsewhere I’ve written
about dutching – backing all the horses in a race. Thinking like this opens you
up to being surprised – you have to consider the most outlandish possibilities.
And divination can help you, prompt you, to consider the alternatives even if
you then decline to follow them further.

Actually I am particularly interested in when people do NOT follow the advice of
the oracle. When in effect they say thank you very much, but I am going to do
this not that.

What I think has happened in such cases is that the results of divinatory
consultation expose people to some 'adjacent possibilities' and this process can
help crystallise out some options that they may not be fully aware of. What may
have felt like vacillating between various alternatives now resolves into a
clear preference for one. In many cases that is progress. Whether it is a good
let alone the best choice is a whole other issue!

So perhaps we need more use of divination as ways to make us think through the
fan of possibility, including the surprises therein?

best wishes
david


--
Professor David Zeitlyn  ORCID: 0000-0001-5853-7351
Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), University of Oxford, 51
Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PF, UK.

  "Anthropological Toolkit" book 2022
https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/ZeitlynAnthropological
https://linktr.ee/mambila

From a review of my 2020 Mambila divination monograph:
"The book, with its exceptional ambition and thorough ethnography,
is essential for all social scientists studying divination."


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