"I don't like writing, I like having written." (Attributed to Gloria Steinem)
Part 1.
As anthropomorphic and amorphous as such a proposal appears, at first blush, there is already a substantial body of research to support this concept: consider most marketing research in global trends, the new field of meme synergies or even Hegel’s use of the “Zeitgeist” in the formation of his philosophy (upon which the rise of the democratic states of our world rely heavily) as starting points down this slope and one could arrive quickly at this previously abstract area. In addition to those concepts, the very ideas of an artificial intelligence or a virtual world suggests the creation of parallel, and sometimes over-riding, societal considerations that stem from the existence of the society itself. Though the actual concept of a civilization as a separate, sentient organism has not, to my knowledge, been expressed, there has been significant acceptance of the pretexts for such an examination. The purpose of this article is an introduction to and, then, a clinical evaluation of this individual, let’s call him (and her) “Xeno”. What is this individual like?
Well, I going to go out on a limb here and suggest we wouldn’t want Xeno as our neighbor…
So, the Xeno family moves in next door to me, and they have a gaggle of kids, and I’m thinking to myself, “What do kids like? How can I make my new neighbors feel at home here, feel welcome? Cookies, kids love cookies: I’ll make them a plate of cookies as a house-warming gift. Maybe, someday, our kids will play together, won’t that be nice!”
Midday, I go to their front door with a still-warm plate of cookies and ring the bell.
No answer.
So I knock just in case the bell doesn’t work.
A few seconds pass and as I’m about to leave, I hear a male voice from behind the door: “What do you want?”
I reply “Howdy neighbo…”
He cuts me off, “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it. Why are you pounding on my door?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to knock loudly, I just thought the bell didn’t work. I’m your neighbor, next door…”
“I asked you ‘What do you want?’ remember? Are you deaf or stupid? What’s your problem?”
The door opens and Xeno stands glowering at me.
“I wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood. I made you and your family some cookies.”
“What’s in them?”
“Raisins-they’re oatmeal and raisin. Oh, there’s no nuts-just in case your kids are allergic. Mine are so I‘m always careful about that because…”
He interrupts, “Yeah, what else? You trying to poison us?”
“Oh, no. No, no, no. I was just trying to be friendly and you know, someday our kids will be playing together, since we’re going to be neighbors and all so I thought…”
“Well, you can forget that thought. You know where the property line is?”
“I’d guess it’s pretty near that fence…”
“Close enough. Next time you cross it I’m going to shoot your stupid ass and I have the legal authority to do just that. Got it?”
“Oh, yeah, I definitely heard that.”
“And I catch you so much as looking at my stuff, or my family, I’ll be at YOUR door. I collect guns, a lot of guns: don’t think for a second I won’t take preemptive actions. You strapped?”
“I brought cookies…”
“You brought cookies to a gunfight? Well, now I know my neighbor is one stupid son of a bitch.” He grabs a cookie off the plate and shoves it at me, “Eat it. Eat that poison shit you brought over here!”
“Okay.” I eat the cookie. “See, they’re okay. Do you want them or not?”
“I want you to remember this: if there I ever anything I want from you, I’ll come over and take it. Now get the fuck out of here.”
“Just remember, jackass, that boundary works both ways and I won’t hesitate to defend what’s mine now that I know what you’re like.”
“Don’t look at us and don’t talk to us. And don’t come back…”
*
So now I collect guns, too. Which was fine until the economy tanked but now I’m still spending half my money on guns because of my violent neighbor-who appears to be struggling as well because he’s selling off his assets to keep up the balance of terror. I finally gave up and bought ammunition stocks as a hedge…
*
There’s always a bull market, somewhere.
*
Did you know there reason the PIIGS originally balked at the bailouts was because the bailouts were preconditioned with the maintenance of ALL military contracts to solvent Western nations-even at the expense of austerity and the abandonment of the social contracts those nations held with their peoples? Sound familiar? Goes to show, not all contracts are created equal and at some point it comes down to priorities.
So buy ammunition stocks-they’re actually safer than houses at this point but I guess equally ironic in the larger scheme of things. And besides, if you don’t embrace the military industrial complex, they’ll lay-off millions of American workers. This is what America does for a living-but we have to because, well, because of THEM, those traumatized crazies our civilization keeps perpetuating. There’s more and more of them because there’s more and more of us, more people fighting over the same stuff, which, again, ironically, could be more stuff if we just quit fighting over it. Yeah, I don’t see that fighting stopping, either-I’m just all about the irony: we say we want peace and prosperity, as individuals, but seem to prefer our paranoia as a civilization, which doesn’t make it all that civil, does it?
Our civilization is one crazy mudtruckdriver. So we need to be ready because it’s not us who’s crazy, it’s our civilization, and it’s coming to get us. Or we’re paranoid, or it’s paranoid, or it’s making us paranoid or we’re making it paranoid: is it a spiral or just a circle?
The population boom has forced the issue: we either kill massive amounts of people or our civilization collapses-or we learn to live in peace.
Look, honestly, at ourselves and our history: what do you think is the most likely of those choices? I’d have to guess one or both of the first two scenarios because we don’t even recognize the third possibility.
Because it’s our neighbor that’s crazy, not us.
Part 2.
So is this the point where I veer of into the predictions of the Mayan’s surrounding a celestial alignment or the Bilderberg/ Rosie Crucian conspiracy theories? Well, I disagree more with their definite time signatures, dates, than with the central idea behind all of them: that there will be, more likely than not, a mass extinction of people, largely through our own actions or our environment’s reaction to us. I chose to reject them all as simply unacceptable-even while accepting the likelihood of an eventual similar outcome.
It’s just the way I was raised.
By rejecting this eventuality, it becomes incumbent on me to address the dysfunction I perceive: why is our civilization paranoid to the point of dysfunction-or even self-destruction?
I believe paranoia stems from trauma (and the balance of psychiatry would seem to support that idea): looking at the history of our civilization, it is as littered with traumas as any unfortunate individual’s life could possibly be and, again, we are looking at our society as an independent, sentient individual that co-exists with us. Therefore, because it comes to being through the collective experiences of the collected individuals, it shares the similar frailties of those individuals: moreover, because it shares the collected traumas and frailties of all the individuals, our civilization becomes the repository of trauma and, with that, the fear that our history is doomed to forever repeat itself. As bad as that is, the fact that it must exist without independent support and resource only exacerbates the isolation and desperation. This is the ghost that haunts as the Zietgiest: a tortured being that can not escape the world, can not heal itself and is forever doomed to becoming ever more distant from humanity.
What solace can we give it? Has it become so twisted as to be unapproachable by us? Would it even know to welcome our best intentions? Can we teach it to heal as we have taught ourselves?
Again, I am compelled by my upbringing to at the least try and at the least be compassionate toward this being. We’ve certainly put it through a lot.
I offer these articles, of my own creation, to that end: the
"Unforgettable" letter from The Erin Burnett Letters blog, the Impatient Shrink from My Poetry Blog by TVA and, perhaps most importantly, the “Order as a Paranoid Structure” section of The Treatise on Metaphorical Triangulation from my Abstract Building blog. Since I have little expectation that all those articles will be read I will attempt to summarize these complicated topics:
The concept explored in “Unforgettable” revolves around Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: in particular, the unfortunate aspect evolution plays in the formation of our memories. We are predisposed, by evolution, to form especially strong memories surrounding traumas as to avoid repeating them. This makes the remembering of traumas retrigger the adrenaline present during the original trauma which, again, creates a larger footprint, each time, of the memory in the individual’s mind. This is what creates the monster of PTSD and the individual’s conscious knowledge of this fact of nature can be useful in the spiritual combat of healing. If this seems indistinct, read the article.
The “Impatient Shrink” is a, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, view of psychiatry through the temporal plane of reality: in other words, the time and money some people spend trying to resolve their past issues and future concerns might benefit them more by just staying in the present moment, realizing they can’t change the past and only project their futures through the present moment. Again, read the article for clarification.
“Order as a Paranoid Structure” is just a beast of a concept, which was hard enough to write the first time, so in bowing to the idea of not trying to re-invent the wheel, I’m just going to reprint it here-but it really is better in the random, rambling context of the full “Treatise” (if you are so inclined.)
Order as a Paranoid Structure
As I have mentioned many times previously, I have an affinity and appreciation for Salvador Dali and his art, and, even more, the artistic concepts that drove his work. The aspect of him I find so compelling is the honesty and sincerity with which he approached art and the burden he undertook in trying to drive it from its complacency in surrealism and nihilism in Dadaism. He fashioned his own model, the paranoid critical (based on psychological theory)and within that model, created a system of metaphor that allowed the juxtaposition and exploration of the joined metaphors and the differential relationships between them. Eventually he found his way to chaos theory in his final work, "The Swallow's Tail", and, in light of that recognition, I wonder if had he not been in failing health, would he have made the proposition I am making? The progression of his work and thought have inspired me to undertake that same burden for my art.
The paranoid critical technique acknowledges a hyper-awareness of both structure (Dali believed that paranoids created super-detailed constructs to support their delusions) and identity (the metaphors Dali made sprang from his dreams and idles.) Once the viewer understood the rules of the game and the system of metaphors at play in each work, it was his contention that the objects in the work related to each other in the least affected, most critical, manner possible. To the uninitiated, chaotic, but closer examination reveals that it is a system consistent with reality, has not transcended reality except in appearances, and still plays by the rules of logic. Not so much a negation of the logical concepts of reality but surreality.
Dali's progression through the paranoid landscape led him out to cubism as an expression of extreme order, supreme order, often juxtaposing cubes against extremely realistic human forms, used to great effect in his later historically and religiously themed works. This was the genesis of my proposal, that logical constructs are artificial structures, paranoid in nature, that can interfere with the natural interplay between artistic forces.
At this moment, remember the taunting of logic and mathematics I made earlier. Dali believed that order was numerical, logical and it led him to the dead end of chaos theory. I propose that logic is a flawed construct for that very reason and a truer, more accurate, more critical construct is metaphorical triangulation, the acknowledgement that logic is a metaphor for reality and as such can be moved in and out of the picture as suits the artist in creating the most authentic metaphor between the object, subject and the present moment.
Logic works, as long as you're willing to live with the limits and compromises necessary. Art can not function with limitations.
(I find it intriguing that, in the time since I wrote that article and this one, I have come to believe logic is an instinctual, evolutionary trait present, not only in people but, also, in many other animal species. It seems we may be predisposed to the creation of paranoid structures by our very nature…)
Part 3.
As I'm prone to saying, "That was really something, wasn't it?" Perhaps the question occurred, and perhaps it never left you, "Of what possible relevance is this concept and exploration? Am I merely participating in TVA's self-indulgence? In embracing such an obtuse notion, a notion so distant from my existence, has he cast me as simply voyeur or will I be brought into the interplay of his thought?"
How do I make this relevant to you and, consequently, make myself relevant to the world through your objective acceptance of these thoughts?
First, I believe a examination of the modus operandi, the basic premise, of my writing is in order: while I am writing for you as my audience, I am simultaneously writing purely for myself, for the raw mental exercise of it, to make my mind clearer and stronger through the extended focus required in the execution these articles. Should the work be rendered a failure by the audience's objective assessment of it, that fact does not render it, necessarily, as a failure to me. There are a number of articles of mine that I revere as turning points and progressions of my thought that are very rarely read and that fact does not diminish their value to me. There is a value, strictly to me, of these challenging thoughts and their expression towards my personal growth. My personal growth may make me relevant to you in the future, so my growth has relevance to you.
The question of relevance revolves around the utility of the thought: if it strictly is for my personal benefit, it become a mental exercise but if it crosses over the point of relevance to the reader, than it must be considered work. Beyond that consideration lays a deeper societal benefit to this type of exercise: at the base of our knowledge, beyond the merely relevant and provable, lies the realm of provocative thought that challenges the base assumptions and fact from which we proceed. The value of this provocative thought is that, even though I may not be able to prove the case at hand, perhaps the reader will, through their own consideration of the topic, arrive at the conclusion that eluded me. In this way, all my "exercises" of thought have the potential, to the reader, of "work" and, moreover, it is impossible for me to know when my thoughts cross-over between those two possibilities. I, therefore, have stopped concerning myself with that dynamic.
That has become a tremendously liberating decision for me-perhaps something you may want to consider. In the end, all exercises becomes work, even the exercise of examining my thoughts-even the irrelevant ones, for no other reason than the challenge they place in your mind, which your mind will, then, relentlessly attack. Provocative thought forces the observer to engage their assumptions, determine what they believe and, more importantly, why they believe it. In the process of self-expression by the artist, the dynamic of spiritual, personal growth is engaged most directly by the audience. Free your mind and then speak your mind: it is the best possible thing you can do for your civilization. Otherwise, the ghost in the machine will speak in your stead.
*
At the next level beyond the relevance of the topic is the manner, the attitude, at which I approached it: is our civilization paranoid or is that just my judgement? Certainly, the argument can be made that we live longer and that there has been progress towards the betterment of life, in sum total. That was never the argument I wished to engage.
The argument I wished to engage was, "Are we dragging the baggage of our history behind us, hampering our progress, by proceeding on the same base assumptions that were established centuries ago? Has there been no progress in the understanding and acceptance of ideas that challenge our own? Have we allowed the fear, of things we once knew nothing of, to mitigate our progress? Will turning a blind eye to this impediment ultimately force an unfortunate outcome? Why does our civilization not reflect the spiritual progress the individuals in our society have made? Is there a flaw in governance (as Hegel professed it be reflective of society) that impedes the spiritual progress of the attendant civilization?"
The conclusion I arrived at was our society has come to reflect the traumas of its creation and perpetuates the trauma by the paranoid fear of their recurrence. Perhaps the recognition of that fact could help us move from our current state of dysfunction, caused by living within the ever-present fear of the re-manifestation of those prior traumas, to a fuller embrace of our spiritual evolution. It is how each individual in our culture deals with these events: perhaps it could be applied on a wider scale. The concept of a social sentient functioned as an illustrator of this concept: it's actual validity is still wildly speculative and, therefore, provocative.
I can remember scoffing at the notion of the Great Barrier Reef being viewed as an organism instead of a collection of organisms. I now recognise that not only functions as a collective but has unique properties as a sum, as well as its own attendant ecosystem. Perhaps in this is a template for further reconsideration of the sum actions of individual entities...
But I digress.
Part 4.
As the two immediately prior parts have been an expansion of the premise of Part 1, this concluding part will be an expansion of the statement that concluded part 2: it seems we may be predisposed to the creation of paranoid structures by our very nature. As survival is considered to be the strongest of all instincts, ironic is not a strong enough description for the self-destructive civilization our survival instincts have created. How was it that our instinct has turned against us? Was it greed, selfishness or some other personality flaw that puts us at this precipice? Are we, in the very nature of our thought, a evolutionary dead-end that has yet to play out?
It seems unlikely evolution would endorse a being intent on its own destruction, so it occurs to me this is not the case, because, less the lemming, suicide is not a typical natural act. Indeed, the life of each individual on this planet revolves around survival, so why is it the sum of those actions do not reflect that imperative?
Survival is personal to the individual, emotional and intense, but to societies and civilizations, well, if they ever had the capacity to feel, it has been traumatized out of them. Not only are they ambivalent to their own end, they are ambivalent to our end and are giving us no feedback or correction. They just don't care because feeling is illogical and they are logical structures.
It is our capacity for memory that truly separates us from other animals and our superior thoughts spring from that distinction. From our memory, we created languages: imperfect in the transmission of the true nature of thought but functional, none the less, within typical parameters necessary for survival. We can adequately express danger (as witnessed by this article). The problem seems to come into the picture in our response to danger which we approach with the concepts of logic.
The important thing to recognize about logic is that it is a reactionary structure, evolutionary in design, an animal instinct of memory to replace the true instinct which most animals function with successfully. It is inherently inferior to true instinct because it establishes parameters that situations must fall into for the successful application of its reactionary discipline. True instinct functions in real time, entirely specific to the incident, while logic assesses, prepares and applies approximate remedies. It appears we have logic to tide us over until natural, evolutionary, instinct catches up with the rapid progression of our genome-if that should ever happen. If that should ever happen however, the logical assumption would be that we would fall back into the natural symbiosis the rest of the planet enjoys instead of being the piece that doesn't quite fit into the picture but doesn't really have any other place to be. If you can forgive the term, we would fall back into a state of natural grace. It appears it's knowledge that separates us from our Eden, but, put more exactly, it's actually memory. Our capacity for memory, the extent of our logical thought processes and the rapid progress of our genome have made us alien to our own surroundings.
And we do appear to be floundering.
If we lack sufficient instinct to support our genome and the logical structures we create are reactionary, approximate and paranoid, in the long run, what resource is left to humanity? What is present in the individual life that is not present in the logical structures of civilization?
I believe it's that thing logic, science and government decry as the the most fatal of human flaws: emotion. Why is emotion so bad that it has to be removed, systematically, from all rational considerations? It is subjective and therefore has no place in the objective world. Unfortunately, that "objective" world is created from the collection of "subjective" viewpoints, just like our civilization is created by the individuals that compose it-less the emotion. Emotion is corrosive to the objectivity of logic: the point of logic is that it is a pure reaction to particular circumstances but it remains a reaction, not instinct honed by evolution to the purpose, created to fit subjective parameters. In other words, logic is prepared as a reaction to expected events, which is an inherently paranoid mindset, not the proactive, or at least real-time, disclipine available to the individual. So if logic is reactionary, how did evolution compensate for the the temporal disparity between logical decision-making and instinctive decision-making, how did it mitigate our seemingly slow-motion decision-making? Emotion, fear, flight response, run first and figure it out as we run: evolution predicates that emotion AND reason are used together for the maximum opportunity for survival. In the preparation of logical defense and survival mechanisms to compensate for the real-time deficit humans experience verses instinctual animals, we perpetuate a reliance on approximate, paranoid remedies for circumstances we have spiritually and culturally moved beyond.
But that is not the correct way to look at our cultural, communal progress: as our logical structures have made our survival more likely, we have engendered the other, emotional aspects of our beings that arose from the community we created for our survival. Higher "abstractions" of compassion, empathy and love are not so abstract if viewed as part of our survival instinct for community yet we separate them from the logical structures we create to that end. Our paranoid, logical, thoughts blind us to the reality that we are still one community, a large and diverse organism still bound together in the common struggle for survival. We have forgotten we are still huddled together in fear of our surroundings and begun to turn on ourselves, begun to pick and chose the survivors, ascribe value without the wisdom to make such discriminations, separate, divide and blame. We fight among ourselves ignoring the wolves that gather at our door: those very surrounding into which we do not quite fit and lack sufficient instinct to deal with. To this malevolent universe, we have added a adversarial civilization structure, a ghost of Machiavelli whispering about the treachery of the others that surround us, that seeks to rule us and does not care for us.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that this separation within our instinctive community may become our undoing in the end.
Perhaps it takes the entire community to fight that ghost but first we must consider that there may be such a thing-acompanied by the typical emotional reaction to seeing a ghost.
In the end, it may be fear that saves us, not logic.
