“…we begin to seek our coherence from the conceptual system rather than from reality itself and our embeddedness in it”. ___Philip Slater
This in itself may tend toward a militant culture, and the more such a culture loses its ability to react and adapt to its environment, the more it may tend to select “scapegoats” in order to please the God(s) that bring misfortune on it. Sacrifice becomes a focal point of cultures that gains in size and population.
This also tends to support a “mechanical” mindset, the need to ignore feedback from the environment in order to preserve the “sacred” hierarchies of the culture. The more ritual and ceremony observed, the more the people are focused on ancient and “holy” ways of the forefathers.
This may begin a process of “deadening” in a culture, as they will ignore environmental feedback in favor of the ways of the forefathers of that culture. There is yet another aspect pointed out by Slater:
“A machine-like response in the face of danger had no value until men began to make war on each other”.
Those more mechanical, wrote Slater, prevailed over those less so, and an evolutionary trend developed toward machine-like cultures that were male dominated. This also had an accelerative effect in evolution. Those systems that were most successful in war-making could overrun whole territories and impose their will on those more responsive to local environments. Male dominant cultures could overrun female dominant cultures. But this occurred as individuals responded more to the “internal circuitry” of the culture than to the external feedback of their physical environment. Sacrifice was not only important in the culture, but necessary in large numbers of men who fought for the “greater glory”.
Religion, government, and war, were mutually supportive, as the people put their individual lives second to the goal of power and influence.
In light of this, there is much talk of a “Narcissistic” society. The word “Narcissus” comes from the Greek mythology of the man, Narcissus, who saw his reflection in water and was so enamored of it that he could not separate himself from it. Marshall McLuhan, in Understanding Media, points out that “Narcissus” comes from the Greek narcosis, or numbness.
McLuhan writes:
“This extension of himself(Narcissus) by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image….He had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a closed system“.
There is a hint of this in Godel’s theorem, since Godel, in trying to determine of mathematics was complete and consistent, had to develop “language” that were self referencing, a decision process that “mirrored” the system of math itself, a number system that replaced the axioms of the mathematical systems, so that “numbers operated on numbers”.
Once this was developed, Godel then demonstrated that in any consistent axiomatic formalization suitable for number theory, there are not only undecidable propositions, but the system can neither demonstrate completeness nor consistency. The system was, as Godel demonstrated, a “servomechaanism of its own repeated image”, and had no way of “deciding” if it was correct or not, producing statements that existed as correct, but not provable within that system.
A warring culture, extending itself as a “servomechanism of it own extended image” proved its “truth” on a tautology: it was successful because it was successful. Even if it was a “true” system, it could demonstrate neither completeness nor consistency within itself, but had to aim at perpetual self consistency in order to survive.
A s Slater points out, this need to extend oneself into the environment is known as Narcissism, but the very name “narcissism” comes from “narcosis” or “narcotic”, which acts to “numb” oneself to his/her own environment. Not only does a person extend him/her self, but the need to continue extending, to find “completion” is never satisfied. The more you “have” the more you “want”.
The reason why this need cannot be satisfied is because the body seeks equilibrium or homeostasis in order to survive. McLuhan writes:
“Medical researchers like Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas held that all extensions of ourselves, in sickness or in health, are attempts to maintain equilibrium. Any extension of ourselves they regard as ‘autoamputation’, and they find that the autoamputative strategy is resorted to by the body when the perceptual power cannot locate or avoid the cause of irritation”.
That is, we seek equilibrium by linear organization according to sight. We learn to visualize, to “order” events in cause-effect relationships, and we then can find “meaning” by that process of visual organization. The world, then, is “seen” to function according to cause-effect relations we establish by logic and reason.
Slater gives us yet another insight into this:
“When man invented the machine, for which there is no external model in nature, he invented it in his own image. The machine does not come from nowhere–it mirrors man’s mechanical head. The human is the only animal programmed to ignore the very feedback that it is simultaneously programmed to utilize, which is why only a human can make an animal, or another human, neurotic or crazy”.
This ability to respond to “internal circuitry” rather than external environment comes from our unique symbol-making ability. It is, perhaps our greatest strength, but as Slater writes:
“…attached to this strength is a fatal flaw, built into the species at the start–a capacity to disregard significant feedback in favor of inner symbolic circuitry”.
If this flaw is built in at the start, it suggests that the human is “created” as an android or robot, at least in regard to the mental processes of his/her own brain. There are no “whistles, gears, and pulleys”, nor any evidence of electronic circuits, but the brain itself seems to be built on the principle of “representing” the universe in terms of symbolic cause-effect relations. perhaps a “hologram”.
McLuhan writes on the conclusions of Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas:
“While it was no part of the intention of Jonas and Selye to provide an explanation of human invention and technology, they have given us a theory of disease(discomfort) that goes far to explain why man is impelled to extend various parts of his body by a kind of autoamputation….the central nervous system acts to protect itself by a strategy of amputation or isolation of the offending organ, sense, or function. Thus, the stimulus to new invention is the stress of acceleration of pace and increase of load.”
As McLuhan sees it, technology and invention are adaptations to stresses created by the environment, and and an attempt to re-establish equilibrium or homeostasis with that environment by “extending our bodies” through technology and invention.
You can begin to see how such ideas as “going to heaven when we die”, or the idea of a “soul” apart from the body, which we can finally “see” when we have rid ourselves of the body, seems to be a logical extension of human technological impulse.
Next I will explore the effect of alphabet as a technology affecting the eye as organizer of reality.Once an entire culture begins to react and seek coherence from a conceptual system, it begins to move from an individual dependence on reality.
