Archive for the ‘ The Self ’ Category

High-Level Unconscious Social Decisions

As a post-modern society, we have developed the amazing ability to make group decisions – decisions that apply to everyone – unconsciously.

To use a term from complexity science: this is an emergent result of our culture: something that was not there before, but all of a sudden appears when a complex system reaches a critical point. Another example is consciousness, which emerged when the central nervous system became sufficiently developed.

Freud discovered the unconscious, and Jung discovered the collective unconscious. And to this day there are people who believe in neither – especially the later. We are a people flying on automatic pilot, unaware of anything that is going on. How did this happen? How and why did we abandon the modern world?

It is safe to assume that human nature has not changed very much. So what has changed? Our technologies, and their impact on us. For this, I recommend Daniel Boorstin’s The Image – although, since it was written in 1961 – does not take into account the effects of computers and the Internet. But the basic trend he noted: our subservience to our technologies, is still valid. To use my terminology: we made a collective unconscious decision to structure our society to serve them, not us.

Modern society was based on new social relationships, with things very much in the background. Now this has been reversed. The first step in this process was the shift of attention from us to it – and the resulting deprecation of us. It didn’t take long before this developed into a hostility towards ourselves – and then a destruction of our selves. Simply because the modern self – the aware, conscious individual – was a threat to this new development and had to be eliminated so it could proceed.

A high-level, unconscious, social decision was made – with profound consequences.

2010
03/18
CATEGORY
Sociology
Technology
The Self
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The Breast or the Uterus

I started to title this Too Much of a Good Thing, but decided to go with the present title for reasons what will become clear – mainly because it gets the attention of readers, who are likely to be more interested in female anatomy than matters of information overload. But let me begin with the beginning.

In a moment of weakness, I subscribed to Scientific American – and while I was at it, Scientific American Mind. The price was amazingly cheap – which should have tipped me off. Later, I hoped the things would never show up, because I have far too much to read already – but eventually they made their appearance when I made my weekly run to the nearest large town to make contact with the world at large, and picked up my mail that had been flown in from Miami.

Once before, I tried Scientific American, but became dissatisfied with it, and switched to New Scientist – which I have stayed with, even though it costs me about $100 dollars a year to do so – nothing, really compared to my total yearly budget, but as behavioral economics has found, the human mind is subject to some strange quirks. I will be talking about behavior economics more later in this essay – its an important subject, part of the complex world we live it – but are scarcely aware of. Let me return to Scientific American.

One of the curses of our time is information overload. This is nothing wrong with most of this information – except there is too much of it, and our minds go into overload and shut off. Exactly what it is designed to do: to make our minds, and therefore us, disappear. When I scanned Scientific American and Scientific American Mind, my heart sank. They we so attractive – and at the same time, so superficial! Exactly the kind of stuff I don’t need in my life. I decided to cancel my subscription. But they were ahead of me. I am getting the damn things for free, and cannot turn them off! They exist to sell advertising, and having a high numbers of readers, real or not, is more important than anything else.

For example, there is a huge advertising section devoted to extolling the virtues of the Thailand’s institutions of higher learning. This must have cost a fortune, but since Thailand is now run by a military dictatorship, but it must have decided that repairing its image was worth it. You don’t have to look very hard at the ads to see their institutions of higher learning are mediocre at best. But let me return to what you are really interested in: breasts.

I turned to the New York Review of Books, and its feature article for Feb 11, Health Care: Who Knows Best? The author is Jerome Groopman, who:

Holds the Dina and Raphael Recanti Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is Chief of Experimental Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. A staff writer for the New Yorker, his latest book is How Doctors Think.

Need I say more? Yes, I need to say more. This is substantial stuff, not the fluff you see in the likes of Scientific American, and you will have to give it your attention. It is about the health care bills now in the House and the Senate, and the people behind each version: Cass Sunstein and Peter Orszag. And about Obama, who is doing his best to paper over their differences. I recall what my sister said when this whole movement began “We are waiting to see what Obama is going to do about this.” In other words “We are going to be helpless, and let Obama take care of us.”

It’s not that simple. It’s very complex in fact, but can be summarized (unfairly) by noticing the American preoccupation with two female organs: the Breast and the Uterus.

In November, the United States Preventative Task Force revised a long-standing guideline, recommending that women between the ages of forty and forty-nine do not need to have routine mammograms. A fire-storm of public opinion broke out! This indicated clearly that the American public, as usual, didn’t know what was going on, but was upset about anything concerning one of their primary preoccupations: the Breast. The author does his best to sort this out, but, in my opinion, did not succeed. I had to go back over and read it carefully. He could really have devoted an whole article to this, and probably should.

Later, an expert panel of obstetricians and gynecologists recommended that teenage girls no longer have routine pap smears for cervical cancer. No one complained about this, although the reasoning behind it was similar. The reason: the public is not interested in the Uterus, although it is much more important than the Breast – being the organ where we all are made.

2010
02/13
CATEGORY
Sex
The Self
2 comments

Our New Technologies have made Possible Vast New Power Structures

This is the first posting from an apartment in Orosi. I no longer have my own house in La Alegria, just across the river; the noise from the local bar drove me out.

It should be clear that I embrace new technologies eagerly, after all, this blog is on the Internet – and in my opinion the computer is the ultimate writing technology – it makes writing an entirely new experience. That said, however, I am also aware of the dangers of technology: its effects on the people who use it. The effect of writing was the explosion of empires in the ancient world – made possible by control at a distance. Central authority could simply send out orders, in writing, and demand information, in writing. Those on the periphery of the empire had to obey – or get stamped out.

All this was changed radically with the invention of the printing press – the technology that created the modern world and literacy. No small matter.

The advent of the computer and the Internet has created an upheaval without precedence – and paradoxically, brought on the end of the modern world. Most alarmingly, however, it, and the technologies that led to it, have made people unaware of this – or almost anything else – have made them unaware of themselves.

The modern Self was formed when the authority structures then in place (in the Late Middle Ages), were being undermined. Now that they are being empowered again, the Self is disappearing.

2010
01/29
CATEGORY
Internet
The Self
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People Have Become Objects

It used to be said that people would become robots, but this never happened. Robots have remained on our production lines, where they belong, and will never be much of a threat anywhere else. People who act like robots do not get very far.

But a new kind of person: persons who have no individual Self, only an organizational persona, has taken over without anyone noticing. Before we go on, however, we need a short historical review. What is the Self and where did it come from?

The Self was created as part of the modern world – which was originated by the Greeks and inherited by the Romans. Intrinsic to this notion was the worth of the individual – which did not include slaves or women. And it included the idea of virtue or wisdom, which anyone could have, rich or poor. In the days of the Greek Democracy and the Roman Republic anyone could rise to a high office, and all were expected to make this effort. With the fall of the Roman Empire all this was forgotten for 1500 years – while Islam had its Renaissance and then faded too.

When the Western World woke up, it rediscovered the Classical World in a movement known as Humanism: discovering what it mean to be be human – something that had been forgotten entirely. After a long struggle, the result was the Modern World and modern people. In the West, this was limited to Northern Europe and its descendants, not Latin America.

Recently, in the last century or so, there has been a reaction to modernism and a return to a more normal society – based on religion – but a new kind of religion: the religion of business – that is, an obsession with power and control. In this world, the autonomous self has no place. What is needed are objects, not people. People do not fit in, but objects fit in perfectly – because that is what they are designed to do: to perform the functions the organization needs.

These new beings are still people, but people who have no objectives of their own – but only objectives that are compatible with the organizations or movements (or religions) they identify with.

I call them objects because they are analogous to software objects: self-contained entities that can do two things: (1) accomplish their assigned tasks, and (2) relate to other objects: send messages, and receive them. This may sound like they are robots, but they aren’t, because they are part of an organization, and this organization determines what they are – on an ongoing basis. In religious terms: they are part of a higher consciousness.

But to do this they cannot have their own objectives, their own Self – or in computer terms: their own program or agenda. They must be pure, free from impurities that could contaminate any instructions given them. In religious terms: free from sin.

2010
01/27
CATEGORY
History
The Self
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Elevation: the Uplifting Emotion

New Scientist: five emotions you never knew you had

I just re-subscribed to New Scientist, I have too much to read, but I don’t want to miss its good stuff – such as this article. It starts off with this quote:

“Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”

In the midst of last year’s economic turmoil President Barack Obama’s inauguration speech was powerful, inspiring stuff. Some of his supporters, hanging on his every word, will have had tears in their eyes, a tingling sensation on the back of their necks and a warm feeling in their chest as though it was opening up to let love and hope flood out. This feeling is what Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, has labelled “elevation”.

If you subscribe now, you will get four free issues.

2010
01/15
CATEGORY
The Self
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The Destruction of the Self

Of all the events in our destructive time this is the most serious – and also the easiest and the most invisible. No one notices it is happening, because they are obsessed by events outside themselves, not events inside themselves. Gradually, they come to feel that they, as persons, are inferior to the much larger events outside them.

This is the exact opposite of the sequence at the beginning of the modern world: where the individual became important for the first time in history, and where everything depended on him, his awareness of what was going on, and his actions – especially politically. People in the post-modern world, by contrast, are apolitical – it not apathetic.

What are these outside spectacular events? Boorstin, in his book The Image puts it well:
——
In this book I describe the world of our making; how we have used our wealth, our literacy, and our progress, to create a thicket of unreality which stands before us and the facts of life. I recount historical forces which have given us the unprecedented opportunity do deceive ourselves and befog our experience.

Of course, American has provided the landscape and has given us the opportunity for this feat of national self-hypnosis. But each of us individually provides the market and the demand for the illusions which flood our experience.

We want and believe these illusions because we suffer from extravagant expectations. We expect too much of the world. Our expectations are extravagant in the precise dictionary sense of the word – “going beyond the limits of reason or moderation”. They are excessive.

The making of the illusions which flood our experience has become the business of America, some of its most honest and most necessary and most respectable business. I am thinking not only of advertising and public relations and political rhetoric, but of all the activities which purport to inform and comfort and improve and educate and elevate us: the work of our best journalists, our most enterprising book publishers, our most energetic manufacturers and merchandisers, our most successful entertainers, our best guides for foreign travel, and our most influential leaders in foreign relations. Our every effort to satisfy our extravagant expectations simply makes them more extravagant and makes our more attractive. The story of the making of our illusions – “the news behind the news” – has become the most appealing news of the world.

We tyrannize and frustrate ourselves by expecting more than the world can give us or than what we can make of the world. We demand that everyone that talks to us, or writes for us, or takes pictures for us, or makes merchandise for us, should live in our world of extravagant expectations. We expect this even of the people of foreign countries. We have become so used to our illusions we mistake them for reality. And we demand that there be always more of them, bigger and better and more vivid. They are the world of our making: the world of the image.
——
What happened to the self in all this? It disappeared. We were looking out there so hard, we lost our ability to look in here – and became a stranger to ourselves and the ordinary world.

2010
01/05
CATEGORY
The Self
3 comments
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