Human emotion serves as invisible organising energy beneath the intricate structure of the Origine people kinship system. Feelings are cultivated in a way that upholds both the Spiritual and daily order of society. As a principle of collective organisation, emotions play a significant role in the Origine’ kinship system. Each of the approximately 20 kin categories falls into one of five types of behavioural patterns, ranging from complete avoidance( mother-in-law/ son-in-law) to complete informality or the so-called joking design. Grandparents and Grandchildren usually share the latter. For a woman, the joking pattern applies to a paternal aunt or niece. Informal and joking behaviour includes dirty jokes, gossip, giggling, sarcastic snipes and all sorts of letting-your-hair-down nonsense. The sharing of this level of communication establishes an intimate bond across several generations, exposing the younger generations to mature, light-hearted insights into the reality of human behaviour.
Origine’ socialisation and regulation of emotions have even more profound implications. The kinship system designates a relative as whom one can turn to share feelings. Suppose one is grieving or suffering a severe embarrassment. In that case, there is always a relative one can rely on to share dramatically in the expression and release of that feeling for the Origine’ sharing emotions is an empathetic relational activity by which one enters into an identity with others and with society as a whole.
Emotional energy and its dramatisation is the basis for childhood education in Origine society. What might be called the “emotional nakedness.” of the Origine’ promotes psychic identity with society as the whole rather than strengthening a subjective sense of individuality. Origine’ believe in complete concordance of the physical and psychic worlds. In the material universe, the nuclear expansion or explosive forces balance the isolating constriction of gravity. Emotions act in the psychic universe much as nuclear forces do in the physical: expand, radiate, promote interaction.
The complexity of the Origine kinship system emphasises how the individual is integrated into their surroundings, social and natural. The network of kinship relations provides all Origines’ with support and responsibilities, much as their relationship with the earth. The Origine’ believe their kinship categories were established in the Dreamtime. As a young person grows and comes in contact with more distant tribes, he constantly fills in these categories with an ever-extending family. Every kin relationship carries obligations, rights and respect that were also predetermined in the Dreamtime.
Just as every member of Origine society is given self-sufficiency in gathering food as a cultural birthright, so too are all social and relational requirements given at birth through the kinship system; the predetermination of life relationships found in the kinship system can be seen as a symbolic reflection of organisation in the natural world.
Natural processes, in general, achieve their freedom and diversity because they are based on predetermined laws at the more fundamental levels of the organisation. Similarly, Origine freedom is based on socially predetermined rules that were laid down at the same time as the laws of nature. Culture and nature mirror each other, as they have from the first day of creation.
By exaggerating and strengthening the presence of emotions in social life, tribal people maintain active relationships with as many as 500 or more people. They radiate emotional energy beyond human relationships into communication with plants, animals and the earth itself.
