Companionship.

I am once again at the mega-bookstore coffeeplace and still thinking about these issues of friendship and companionship, especially since I kept browsing through Lewis’s The Four Loves during my lunch-hour today. If you have time for only one Lewis book in your lifetime, make it this one! It is a gem, and only 128 pages.
In a section of Chapter 4, Lewis describes the precursor to friendship. He calls it companionship. I touched on this yesterday, on the blog. He said that friendship arises out of companionship.
In a very interesting argument, Lewis posits that friendship is the least “biological” of the loves (of the four types of love delineated in the book) and by this he means that the individual and the community can survive without it. But there is something else which the community does need in order to survive, and this is companionship.
I began to wonder if prehistoric man... cavemen, if you will, experienced “companionship”. Lewis says they did. Page 60 is so intrigueing, I want to transcribe it for you here:
In early communities the co-operation of the males as hunters or fighters was no less necessary than the begetting and rearing of children. A tribe where there was no taste for the one would die no less surely than a tribe where there was no taste for the other. Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had to. And to like doing what must be done is a characteristic that has survival value. We not only had to do the things, we had to talk about them. We had to plan the hunt and the battle. When they were over we had to hold a post mortem and draw conclusions for future use. We liked this even better. We ridiculed and punished the cowards and bunglers, we praised the star-performers. We revelled in technicalities. (“He might have known he’d never get near the brute, not with the wind that way”... “You see, I had a lighter arrowhead; that’s what did it”... “What I always say is ---“... “stuck him just like that, see? Just the way I’m holding this stick”...) In fact, we talked shop. We enjoyed one another’s society greatly : we Braves, we hunters, all bound together by shared skill, shared dangers and hardships, esoteric jokes – away from the women and children. As some wag has said, paleolithic man may or may not have had a club on his shoulder but he certainly had a club of the other sort. It was probably part of his religion; like that sacred smoking club where the savages in Melville’s Typee were “famously snug” every evening of their lives.
-- C.S. Lewis. The Four Loves, ch.4 --

I just think that the passage is so thought-provoking. Cavemen grunting at each other about how to do this or that. Did they ever laugh, I wonder?
The very last part, about Melville’s Typee got me so intrigued I went over to the store’s bookshelf and snagged it.
I cannot find the exact reference that Lewis is alluding to, but the gist of the story itself is that after a long arduous trek through the mountains of Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas, (Polynesia) two sailors, one named Tommo (a character based on Melville) and his companion Toby, encounter the Typees who live in a secluded valley. The two sailors are practically adopted by the villagers at once and treated as visiting dignitaries. The story contrasts the oppressive conditions in capitalistic society (called “civilization”) with the relative Stone Age affluence of the Typee. It is a sort of diatribe (the way I am seeing it here) against the abuses of racism and colonialism (I am going to equate it to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness). The protagonists, in their encounter with the Typee, end up wondering (aloud, at times) whether “civilization” is really that much of an advance over savagery.
The Typee are a peaceful people. They lack a concept of personal property or crime and they leave valuable items like spears and carvings out in the open, unlocked and unhidden. Ultimately Melville casts doubt on the possibility that cannibalism was practiced by the Typee, despite the allegations of missionaries and sailors who had preceded him to the island and who were far more prejudiced against the "savages." This is a pattern that has been repeated throughout the history of colonialism. During the early years of colonial expansion, subjugation of indigenous people was considered appropriate if they were beyond redemption, especially if they were reported to be cannibals. Hence, reports on such tendencies were accepted often at face value.
I should note that in real life, Melville and a companion jumped ship on June 23rd, 1842 (they were in the U.S. Navy at the time) and ended up on Niku Hiva, where they sought refuge with the Happaa people there. However, one day, after taking a wrong turn in the forest, they ran smack dab into the reputedly ferocious Typee (a rival tribe) and spent four weeks among them. Ends up that these “savages” were NOT the terrors that they had been reported to be, and this time in their midst inspired Melville to write Typee. Hence the “story” is really a cross between a personal essay, a piece of fiction, and a social commentary. It supports the idea that mankind is naturally good.

That was a longer digression than I had intended. I would like to go on, but I won’t.
It’s just that this idea of the “primitive man” is something that I find fascinating. I would love to observe how they interacted with each other... how they paired off. Observe the manner of friendships they formed.... the teams, the strategies they no doubt developed, etc. The fact that Lewis raised the issue in his discussion of friendship reminds me of how brilliant he is/was.
Somewhere around a year or two ago, I was contemplating what I would most want to observe, if I could observe cave-people. So I wrote a little whimsical poem about it. As I recall it now, I think that what I had decided upon.... [my one videotaped moment of cavemanity].... has everything to do with companionship.

Cavemirth

If I could observe prehistoric cavepeople
The hunt would not interest me (stalking
A saber-tooth until it gets stuck between their teeth).

Nor would the scene where they copulate
In some drippy, echoing vault
And slurp primordial soup afterwards.

Spare me the Olympic-style trot
Toward the world’s first barbecue,
Lightning sticks held aloft.

Steer me instead, to the first joke.
Let me try to decipher a Neanderthal punchline.
Was it a pre-planned gag?
Or just a mastodon tripping over a log
As it stomped past the lounging knuckledraggers?

I want to see them fall off their rocks
Banging their shaggy heads in the dust,
Roaring in perfect English, and
Crying, it hurts so good.
I want to see the first kneeslapper.

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