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<body> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="5">EARTHBOUND ESSAYS</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="4">Views from a Mountaintop</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">by Hugh M. Lewis</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">1992</p> <hr> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="3"><sup>Copyright © 2001 by Hugh M. Lewis<br> </sup></font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="3"><sup>(Portions of this text may be printed and copied for personal use in research or education, and for use in the class-room only)</sup></font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> This is another</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">E-publication by</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/Publishing.htm">Lewis Micro-Publishing</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">For further information regarding Lewis Publishing</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Please contact:</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> <a HREF="mailto:lewismicropublishing@lewismicropublishing.com">Lewis Publications</a></p> <hr> <p ALIGN="left"><font size="5">Earthbound Essays Contents</font></p> <p ALIGN="left"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/EarthboundEssays/EarthboundEssaysPreface.htm" target="main">PREFACE</a></p> <p align="left"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/EarthboundEssays/EarthboundEssays1.htm" target="main">I. EARTHBOUNDNESS</a></p> <p align="left"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/EarthboundEssays/EarthboundEssays2.htm" target="main">II. PAN HUMANNESS</a></p> <p align="left"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/EarthboundEssays/EarthboundEssays3.htm" target="main">III. PARADIGMS AND POWER</a></p> <p align="left"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/EarthboundEssays/EarthboundEssays4.htm" target="main">IV. MIND AND MYTH</a></p> <p align="left"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/EarthboundEssays/EarthboundEssays5.htm" target="main">V. BEINGNESS AND NONBEING</a></p> <p align="left"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/EarthboundEssays/EarthboundEssays6.htm" target="main">VI. CULTURE HISTORY</a></p> <p align="left"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/EarthboundEssays/EarthboundEssays7.htm" target="main">VII. DIALECTICAL SYMBOLISM</a></p> <p align="left"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/EarthboundEssays/EarthboundEssays8.htm" target="main">VIII. SCIENCE AND SENSE</a></p> <p align="left"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/EarthboundEssays/EarthboundEssays9.htm" target="main">IX. EVOLUTION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT</a></p> <p ALIGN="left"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/EarthboundEssays/EarthboundEssays10.htm" target="main">X. PHILOSOPHOS AND PHILOLOGOS</a></p> <hr> <p align="center"><b><font size="5">PREFACE</font></b></p> <p align="center"><b><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="2"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/hughmlewis/">by Hugh M. Lewis</a></font></b></p> <p align="center"> </p> <p align="left">These essays were written about a decade ago, and this is the first and probably only form of their publication. I have explored the essay form periodically in my private career as a writer over the last twenty years. Perhaps it comes with the territory of Academic Anthropology that I have managed to mark out for myself over this span of time. </p> <p align="left">The essay form is now a largely neglected genre that has taken a peculiar place of importance in the history of English literature. It is most commonly found today in encyclopedias, academic textbooks, student reports and journals. I have found it to be an especially suitable form for the expression and exploration of basic ideas and concepts that otherwise are either difficult to clarify in juxtaposition with competing ideas or else lack the appropriate context their elucidation and elaboration when broached in other, more elaborate textual frameworks.</p> <p align="left">I believe that the traditional and neo-classical role of the essay in English literature has been largely usurped by the prevalence of journalism and newspaper articles that have a fundamentally different style and function than that of the formal essay. The conventional structure of the essay puts as a premium, as inherent to its form, a certain expressive parsimony and efficacy that is lacking in any other literary context. Thus, if a clear and simple style of English is sought, a kind of elementary Strunk and White, then the essay in its simplest and most stereotypical form would be preferred over almost any other kind of framework. But concision of expressive style is not all that an essay is about. The beauty of Bacon's essays are as much in their unity and style of expression as they are in any prosaic formalism. If these essays were one word less or more or one sentence or phrase lacking, then they would fall short of the standard that they have set for all good essay writing in English.</p> <p align="left">Most in our day and age would find the conventional essay boring stuff compared to the television or the Internet. We live in an age of McLuhan where the medium is both the massage and the message. The effect of the communication often does not extend beyond the moment of its mechanical transmission. In approaching the essay form it must be understood that form and function are intertwined and interdependent, but that both are conceptually dependent upon the ideas and range of experience they are bound within. If they are sublime and profound, then they will come to us like a bottle of musty old wine, or a good piece of poetry that is meant to be read, reread, and savored for all the nuances to be found within. Indeed, an essay that transcends its own mannerism and style of expression becomes a disembodied and unpetrified text that generates new meanings and accumulates meanings with each passing moment.</p> <p align="left">The essays contained in these pages are a departure from the hierarchical outline formalism of such writing that is taught in elementary school or that is found still in encyclopedias. I have taken an unconventional tack in essay writing with the purpose of exploring the structure and forms to which essays may be effectively put. Some of the essays are long, and others are short essays, intended to be only one or two pages in length at most.</p> <p align="left">The essays within this work are eclectic, but they have been unified in a framework that I would call "meta-thematic." There are ten meta-themes under which these essays have been grouped, and these meta-themes make these essays somewhat philosophical in orientation. I would define a meta-theme as a larger, more general frame of reference within which a variety of diverse topics can be grouped in service of a deeper philosophical understanding of the basic truths each relates to.</p> <p align="left">In hindsight, I would say that in my philosophy I have managed to blend a form of Eastern Buddhist-Taoist perspective with a traditional American Transcendentalism. I find the notion of earthboundness as adequate and sufficient for a wider range of conventional philosophical topics, from metaphysics to aesthetics and ethics. Earthboundness is a concept that has perhaps greater relevance in the present day than at anytime in our collective history.</p> <p align="left">I have been mostly a strong empiricist, and for much of my adult life had rejected any form of Platonic or continental rationalism. I have only recently returned to the fold of rationalism, especially in terms of scientific theory and metaphysics, upon the realization that empiricism alone is blind and insufficient to a complete understanding of reality and knowledge.</p> <p align="left">If one is to write and do philosophy in a creative and interesting manner, then I would suggest that one must eventually come to the essay as the most adequate framework for the expression of many of the most important and fundamental ideas to be found in philosophical inquiry. This comes with only one caveat. Though an essay can stand upon its own, as least hypothetically, an essay achieves its greatest strength when bound into a larger collection of thematically grouped essays.</p> <p align="left">Though I have periodically explored the essay form in my writing throughout my anonymous career as a writer, this work represents the greatest and most intensive effort in exploration of the essay form I have yet undertaken. Subsequently I undertook several works in essay writing relating especially to topics in anthropological knowledge, but these were focus upon things anthropological and largely esoteric in relation to the everyday experience of most people. </p> <p align="left">Essays blend naturally to a larger textual structure that I would call the article that are more conventionally and commonly found, especially in Academia and academic textbooks. The article is fundamentally different from the essay in addressing thematic issues that appear at least upon the surface of things to be more complex. Thus the focus of an article is more functionally distributed in the exploration or explanation of structures of knowledge within a thematically defined framework, whereas in an essay the focus comes to rest upon a single topic that can be said to contain its own framework in a meta-logical manner. Thus the voice and style of the essay may often come to mechanically embody the topic of the essay in a way that is more difficult to achieve in a longer and more elaborated article. I would claim that though the topic of a short essay might not appear as complex on the surface compared to the thematic structure of an article, an effective essay in general tends to be a much deeper and more profound exploration of basic concepts.</p> <p align="left">Another neglected form related to the essay is the more personal style of letter and note writing that harks back to a much earlier era in which an epistle had its own purpose and penmanship. Letter writing tends to deal with a more personal and subjective side of experience compared to the essay. Letters thus are inherently concrete in their discussion of feelings and thoughts, in the description of events and experiences, or in the recording of facts and figures. Letters, when they are published as collections, constitute their own literary form with their own distinct qualities. They are related to essays, but serve different purposes than the essay that is meant to inform and persuade, expound and critique on divers topics.</p> <p align="left">But the essay as a form and conventional style in and of itself has survived the ravages of changing media technologies and fashions, and remains today an important element of expression and thought in English literature regardless of how few writers may actually employ it any longer.</p> <font FACE="Times,Times New Roman" SIZE="2"> <hr> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PART 1</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="5">EARTHBOUNDEDNESS</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><b><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="2"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/hughmlewis/">by Hugh M. Lewis</a></font></b></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Early European explorers did not have a good conception of the earth as a single spherical entity. The whole earth remained an abstraction found only on world maps and scale models of the globe. It was not until Humankind actually escaped the gravitational pull of the earth and had the actual vision of the earth as a solitary planet in a vast and empty space that its wholeness and roundness began to have special significance for us. Before then, our vision of the earth was largely circumscribed by our seemingly boundless local horizons and we lived under the spell of its illusion of vastness and virtual unlimitedness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Enlightenment of the earth as a global whole did not suddenly burst into our imaginations like a sunrise. It emerged gradually, embryonically and quite unapperceptively . but now it has coalesced into its finished shape and we can see it and ourselves in relation to it more clearly and we can no longer readily ignore it. The earth is round and its horizons close upon themselves, is space is bounded in all directions, and its many resources finite in amount. The vision of its wholeness present us with a new sense of environment, one that is global in perspective, which our old metaphors, our old sensibilities and conceptions, and our old sensitivities hardly equip us to fully see. And we share an important psycho-geographical relationship to this new sense of environment--our personal and collective identities, our sense of experiential continuity and existential security, is tied to our ability to envision and relate to it as a planetary abode, as our earth home. But this new sense of environment is irreducibly wholistic, pristine, primordial ecology of the natural earth, and has replaced it by an artificial ecology of a scientifically organized humankind. What remains of the earth's environment is the composite result of world wide interactions between civilization and natural processes--a curious cyborgian mosaic of synthetic and natural elements. Nature has become bound by our civilization and our civilization has become bound by nature, and we cannot now return to a natural ecology without doing undue harm to both ourselves and our natural environments. The new kind of earthbound equilibrium which we need to establish is a conservative one in which the benefits of civilized development have to be weighed against the unaffordable costs to our remaining nature, such that the safety margins of both may be protected and preserved.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We have always had other choices than those provided for us by the world system--our collective failure has in part due to our individual failure to recognize such alternative choices and to realize the changes such choices would entail in our lives. Failure to make such choices has led to choices being made for us by the great and impersonal forces of the world system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Earthboundedness is a whole earth state of mind which regards the entire earth as a single, solitary home for humankind; vast in area but not unlimited; bountiful in raw resources but definitely circumscribed in all ways. Earthboundedness also regards our only home planet as a single, natural, well integrated orgasmic entity, enduring in its complexities but not impervious to the depredations of civilized development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But earthboundedness is more than this--it represents a whole world view of a new earth environment, a philosophy and a new way by the earth's boundaries, replete with all the many implications and significances which living upon an inescapable island in space holds for humankind, human culture, history, science, values and the ethos of everyday existence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Earthboundedness is not a natural state, but a human state of being bound in all thoughts and actions by the dimensionalities and proportionalities of the entire Earth. Earthboundedness has begun seeping into our everyday lives, influencing everything we say and do in contextual and unconscious ways, informing our words and deeds with a new level of importance and sense of order. Bringing the state of being earthbound to a heightened level of consciousness, 'earthbound enlightenment' in both the individual and collective mind is a way of dealing now with the new predicament and paradoxes which confront humankind in the third millennium after Christ, and its elaboration provides the common conceptual ground for cultivating a universal sense of human identity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As a word, 'earthboundedness' means several different things. Most literally, it means the state of being bound by the earth--environmentally circumscribed by the earth's gravitational field. We always soon know when our feet are not firmly planted on the ground. Metaphorically, earthboundedness provides the principle horizon of the human mind which like the anthropological conception of 'culture boundedness' in one's values, world view, attitudes, behavior, knowledge, perception and experience, such that one cannot escape one's own cultural orientation in order to assimilate or appreciate any other, makes its difficult to adopt any other kind of comprehension about the world. It is a 'geo-physically' orienting consciousness around a geo-physically limited and meta-physically limiting set of environmental constraints--pervading every instance of our collective experience, invading everyday of our personal existence, and predetermining our capacity to adaptively cope with and adapt to new environmental changes. A transition between world view, trading off one kind of 'total' world view for another, and in the process transcending the limitations of 'total world view' altogether. Finally the meta-physical sense of earthboundedness consists of the many states of mind and being which are informed by the awareness, however remote, of being earthbound in all ways. There has been an awakening of awareness of the collective condition of being earthbound, but there has not yet been self recognition of 'earthboundedness' as a collective frame of mind, nor any systematic exploration of its possible implications for humankind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Earthboundedness as a way of relating to our world concerns principally the human ecology of being on earth, rather than the natural ecology of the earth's environment. It is concerned with human adaptation. Unlike 'earth-mindedness' it is not primarily aimed at the relationship to the environment of the earth, so much as the human mind and state of being which is environmentally open and which allows for relationship with the natural environment. The primary problems challenging humankind today are environmental in symptoms, but the causes are rooted in human factors and human causes which eventuate in environmental destruction and in turn exacerbate the human factors and causes. Earthboundedness is also not about the anthropological condition of modern humankind, so much as it is about the philosophical, normative, historical and psychological aspects of the modern human condition in its maladaptation to the earth environment. Earthboundedness is a way of finding ourselves in our environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Earthbound' can be used adjectivally in a number of related ways. For instance:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Earthbound Epoch'. Culture historically we are entering an 'earthbound' age in which earthboundedness, as the basis of human reality, identify and humanity, is becoming the predominant theme around which humankind is organizing itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Earthbound Civilization'. The process of an emerging earth centered way of life which shares a common earth history and a common sense of human identity rooted to the earth.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Earthbound Environments'. We live and act within local, regional and global scales of context which are 'complete' environments in their circumscription of our world and our lives, composed of numerous webs and interlocking networks in which everything is related to everything else, however indirectly and remotely. We are enmeshed inextricably in many webs of interdependency which overlap and extend in every direction around the entire earth. We are locked into long chains of interaction the other end of which we rarely see or know about.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Earthbound Ecology'. There is only one complete ecology, the earthbound one, in which we find ourselves part of an important natural processes of self organization, cyclical patternings of change, chaos and anti-chaos, and in which there are no separate or independent or self determining entities apart from this natural ordering process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Earthbound Synergy'. The many parts have come to cohere jointly in many different patterns to make up the framework of the synergistic whole, and the wholeness becomes manifest in the patternings and processes of its many parts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Earthbound Indirection and Delay'. The former guaranteeing us that whatever the immediate direct consequences of our local behaviors, there will always be indirect 'damage' or 'avalanches' in regions of the earth which may be quite remote from our own. While the latter guarantees us that there will be some unpredictable delay in the total effects of long term consequences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Earthbound Existence'. Earthboundedness has come to pervade every aspect of our day to day lives, and all our actions have some cumulative consequences upon many other parts and eventually upon the whole. It is the global framework orienting all regional and local actions and considerations. The web are becoming more entangling, the chains of interdependency stronger and longer. We need to know how earthboundedness intrudes upon the many parts of our daily lives.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Earthbound Imperative'. Earthboundedness imposes a kind of existential imperative in our lives--the need to know and to act. Global circulatory and environmental circumscription superimpose a grand Malthusian dilemma which entails that we learn how to see and adapt to new global environments in ways which lead to health instead of disease.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Earthbound Karma and Dharma'. Whatever indirect damage we do, its consequences must eventually, however indirectly, rebound back to affect us in some way in our local situations--if not during our lifetime, then during our children's lives. Nature will always lay upon our doorstep the ills wrought by the errors of our ways until we mend our mistakes and repair the damages.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Earthbound Ethos and Ethics'. Our earthbound imperative demands that we adopt new styles of living and ways of being, and that we learn and teach to our behavior which confer the rational and moral legitimacy to lead our lives in new directions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is only one ecology, our own earthbound ecology, and it is composed of the planetary fabric of life--we are but parts of the whole, and all other environments or ecologies are but eco-niches of the earthbound one. It remains in a perennial state of super criticality, at the edge of entropy and complete chaos. We can no longer dump wastes into streams or sewers, or raze forests or habitats without affect in some measure of all other parts of the whole. We must understand a new earthbound 'ecology of mind' which reflects our awareness and responses to our environments. We are at the dawning of 'earthbound enlightenment' in which our earthbound ecology of mind is coming into environmental self awareness, providing us with a new macroscopic perspective of a natural humankind on earth. We are confronted with a new point of view, an 'earthbound perspective' with its own unprecedented complexity, completeness, comprehensivity, multidimensionality, encompassing and encapsulating all other viewpoints and defining for us our collective baseline and bottom line. Earthboundedness is demanding of us new kinds of adjustments and accommodation with which we've had little previous experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is within the framework of earthboundedness that we must come to terms with the most pressing problems of our era. These are primarily human problems, and only secondarily environmental ones, except the human problems are ones of environment as well. The human element is the cause, of the environmental challenges we are now facing, problems which rebound in turn and aggravate our human predicament. The predicaments imposing our earthbound imperative are interrelated like the global ecology in which they are situated--one set of problems cannot be understood without accounting for all the other problems in the field of relations. Similarly problems are processual and patterned, bound within complete contexts of interrelation lacking many delimiting boundaries.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">1. The first and most important problem is overpopulation. Natural population increase has always driven many processes of state formation, warfare, environmental circumscription, migration and other religious practices and social customs. Environmental circumscription is directly related to population pressure. Population increase is in equilibrium with environmental adaptation--there is a feedback process such that adaptive success begets population increase and population increase drives environmental adaptation. The problem is one of local and global overpopulation. There is enough food worldwide to adequately feed all five billion people upon our planet--it is the uneven distribution of the surplus which results in mass starvation and pandemic malnutrition in many regions. The kind of malnutrition that is the consequence of overpopulation is 'protein calorie malnutrition'--the insufficiency of essential amino acids and minimal levels of energy which increases susceptibility to disease, lowers productivity and empowers many 'population control mechanisms'. It has been the rapid rate of increase spurred by development and uncurbed by sufficient birth control and family planning practices, which threaten to carry the global population to overload the carrying capacity of the earth within one or two more generations. Inspite many educated guesstimates, we have no firm idea of the 'carrying capacity' of the earth. Scientific advances in the hybrid grains, breeding and agriculture may increase this capacity in indefinite ways, and the human capacity to tolerate and live with less remains quantitatively incalculable. The human world will only continue rapidly shrinking in relation to the increasing demand for land, resources, food and spaces for living, to the point that much of the globe will soon become essentially a very dirty, overcrowded little slum which most people will still cal their homeland.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Most of the social disease related to slum dwelling will also be pandemic--problems of mass poverty, underemployment, lack of social mobility, increasing food prices. The quality of life will deflate in proportion to the increase in the quantity of life and the human population will quickly outstrip our system's capacity to adequately and evenly meet the demands and basic requirements of earthbound existence--scientific technology will not produce enough technical solutions to go around, except for the final solution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The problem of overpopulation is one of ticking time bomb. By the time the global population reaches the critical carrying capacity of 7.5 billion, most of humanity will be children and youth who have yet to come of age in an adult world. It will be these children, the next generation of our earth, who will be hardest hit and most affected by the problems of population. It will be a critical age group in which the greatest human potential for development will become the most severely limited, frustrated and deformed. There will be tragic reverberations upon future progeny of the earth and in our collective capacity for adaptation in our earthbound environment. The time bomb will soon explode very rapidly when the next generation come of age to make normal, adult sized demands upon the environment, just to find general social systems broken down and under equipped to deal with them adequately. There will be systemic overloading and breakdown in many unexpected and unplanned ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">2. The political economy of our world system whose history of development and modernization has been one of potentially unlimited resource consumption and of human exploitation. We have created a global factory in which resources and labor are bought cheaply in undeveloped zones of exploitation and are sold dearly in overdeveloped regions of consumption. Both globally and domestically within nation states there is an increasing polarization between overdeveloped 'core' areas and undeveloped 'peripheries' or hinterlands. Between core and periphery there is uneven distribution and access to basic resources, vast differentials in the levels of consumption, availability of goods and services, income levels, education and opportunity. Peripheral areas tend to be the regions of greatest population increase as well as the areas where there is the greatest amount of environmental damage.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">3. Patterns of social mobility, mobilization and migration within a structure of global stratification, 'mechanisms' of population control, on one hand tend to destabilize the order and organization of the world system, and on the other hand tend to increase the adaptiveness of the system to the local, regional and global exigencies and emergencies. The global factory is accompanied by global stratification between first, second, third, fourth and fifth worlds, between five percent of haves who consume 95% of the earth's available resources and 95% of the have-nots who control and consume the remaining 5%, in a world where one billion over consumers are counter balanced by one billion people living in hopeless, abject, 'absolute' poverty without opportunity of escape, and the remaining 3/5's caught in a no man's land of relative poverty in between.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are occurring global patterns of international and regional migration--labor flowing from zones of exploitation to zones of consumption, 'brain drains' of educated elites from peripheral regions to core areas, increasing numbers of displaced domestic refugees and international homeless people who have been cast out by the wheels of modernization and systematically excluded and prevented from re-entering the system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To control and channelize the mobility of people and to render the masses of humankind docile and obedient to the dictates of the system, national and international bureaucracies have been established which systematically encapsulate people of different status. Vast screens of obfuscation and co-option quite systematically block or hinder either geographical or social structural mobility within the global system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">4. Global media and systems of symbolization and information reinforce and legitimate the progressive development of the world system. The culture of consumption has established a global hegemony which threatens to destroy the vitality and function of traditional local and regional cultures. Values of consumption are being exported to periphery regions without the availability of income which makes such consumption feasible.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relative deprivation, group reference, cognitive dissonance, frustration aggression, the revolutions of equality and of rising expectations are frameworks of understanding the spontaneous rise of radicalized mass movements and the political factioning of groups operating as political economic special interest groups, as largely self organizing processes resulting from the human response to systemic exploitation and reflective of the super criticality of the world system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">With increasing radicalization of special interest groups, organized around principles of race, ethnicity, nationality, family, religion or communitas, there are increasing levels of inter-group friction and strife and increasing competition for resources which eventuates in militarization and increased levels of violence. Such groups threaten to destabilize the world system and in turn require heavy handed measures of totalitarian control.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">5. The extremely evolved state of militarism in the world today, and the global militarization of many groups, increases the likelihood of warfare spreading from one area to others and of escalating in levels of violence. In a highly integrated system, minor perturbations are more likely to eventuate in system wide reverberations and damage. War is most likely to be started by groups that sense or fear some impending disaster such as famine, and seek to preclude such disaster by coercive appropriation of another group's resource base. Maintaining high levels of militarization and the machinery for the mobilization for war, exacerbates the likelihood and levels of violence. War is as likely to occur between trading partners or allies as not--the more frequent the economic interactions between groups the greater the likelihood of eventual conflict. Our recent world history has only demonstrated that world wars have occurred repeatedly, have escalated towards totality in levels of violence, are not controlled by the balance of power and can be precipitated by relative minor events or the rise to power of unpredictable irrational groups.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is in context of these general human patterns and processes that the interrelated problems of global ecology must be framed. Rapid deforestation, the greenhouse affect, global warming, atmospheric pollution, destruction of the ozone layer, depletion of fossil fuels and many minerals, contamination and destruction of marine and aquatic environments, upsetting of normal cycles of the hydrosphere, lowering of groundwater tables, soil erosion and nutrient depletion, desertification and desiccation, loss of evolutionary genetic potential with the extermination of many species of flora and fauna, permanent loss of arable land to modern development, radiation contamination, all of these environmental problems must be seen as caused and aggravated by social circumscription due to world wide development and in turn causing and aggravating the problems of social circumscription.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It seems that the world system must reinforce its order and organized domination in ever more coercive and controlling ways in order to maintain its dynamic stasis in relation to increasing levels of environmental and social circumscription and in response to the rise of social movements which continuously threaten to destabilize and damage its functioning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">By superimposed, coercive and manipulative reinforcement of the global regime of capitalist order and organization, the whole system must ossify into a generally inflexible authoritarian power structure in which local conflicts are contained at local levels without spreading to other areas. But with such rigidity and ossification and increased levels of organization, management and integration, the system itself will become less and less locally, regionally and globally adaptive to environmental changes and which its own development imperative is inducing. The system must eventually reach a state of super critical mass in which chain reactions throughout will lead to its systemic 'deconstruction' and disintegration. It will break down in depression and cease to function at all.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It must be understood that the system itself is not the solution to the problems and predicaments of human development in an earthbound environment. Such a system is great and impersonal and it is this very greatness and impersonalness which prevents it from meeting human needs on a local individual level, and which ultimately renders it environmentally and evolutionarily mal-adaptive.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Earthboundedness pre-structures and pervades our entire existence. Global contradictions are felt by every individual in many small ways--defining our ultimate horizon predicating all other considerations. This has fostered a new sense of pervasive anxiety about the world in the need to know and respond responsibly in new earthbound environments. We live in a world ridden by multidirectional, multidimensional pushes and pulls, forces and lines of stress which disintegrates the individual sense of order and control and undermines human identity. This anxiety has gone from neurotically obsessive to psychotically compulsive, resulting in a kind of social schizophrenia, a paranoid 'archosis' in a collective need to know which in its frustration becomes environmentally destructive.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are in an age afflicted by a basic crises of human identity--of a need to find ourselves within the vast and impersonal system and a need to reestablish a relationship with nature within ourselves.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This condition is characterized by the embodiment of the principle of Absence, or of 'nonbeingness'--a general sense of meaning loss, anomie, of purpose for being, of a feeling that something vague is missing or misunderstood. It is associated with feelings of loneliness, anonymity and deep seated alienation from our own natural sense of being. It fosters a sense of self as if this were but an empty, flat reflection in a mirror or projection upon a screen. We come to see ourselves in a 'derealized' sense as if performers on stage separated from ourselves.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is no longer a classic battle between the superego and the id--self controls reinforced by the constraints of successful adaptation in our system have been completely internalized to an unconscious level. The system and its symbolic context has become our unconscious--the system is within us, individually and collectively.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We sense critical absence of being because in the complete internalization of our world order and with the identification with its role models, status and values, in our lives, we have become cut off from the basis of our own being, unreflexive and unselfconscious which predominates in the most rationalistic way. We become out of touch with our own genuine self, cut off from our own deep seated roots in nature. Though repressed, nature remains as a prisoner deep inside ourselves, forever reminding us of its missing presence, or critical absence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The Self has become strongly, deeply divided between a public ego of presentation and a hidden self of private fantasy. The two worlds are disconnected and effectively sundered.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If there is a need to know, there is also a corresponding need to unknow, and these needs work at cross purposes and lead to schism in our personalities. Unknowing means avoiding symbolically those things which we do not know and so fear, tuning them out of our environmental awareness, acting as if they did not exist in our fields of view or relationships.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In order to cope in our daily lives we erect barriers which have the efficacy of common sense and naturalness of folk psychology and which block the flow of threatening or contradictory information in our lives. Our world has become one inundated by information--information overload is a common occurrence, while the effective and timely processing of information has become critical to our adaptive success within the system. We avoid or prohibit the unknown because we fear it and we remain ignorant of what we fear. We create convenient conceptual frameworks by which to safely categorize, channelize and hence sanitize the 'noise' emanating from our new earthbound environments. We manufacture elaborate mythologies, ideologies, sophisticated systems of rationalization and legitimization which allow us to maintain a sense of complacency and control in our environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our system has engineered sophisticated technologies and techniques which allow us to regularly cope and function with large quantities of information. Techniques of mass production and marketing have been applied via the media to the cultivation and development of the 'human mass' and a new brand of mass mentality, the primary preoccupation and function of which is the consumption of the effluvia of production and the elimination of its own effluvia.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Part of the crises of human identity is that the human being is increasingly identified as a member of 'mass oriented society' characterized by numerical, statistical anonymity, social anomie, and the habits and values of mass production/consumption, whose social role identity is determined primarily by the relative position with the production/consumption hierarchy. The modern modal personality is characterized as a 'mass oriented personality' with needs, desires and behaviors corresponding to the ethos of the system. Human beings have been reified into things, objects of production/consumption which can then be translated into quantifiables of time, money, man hours, man bits and man bites.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We have created for ourselves a cultural hegemony characterized by implicit denial of subjective experience. It is a culture of circular deceit and delusion, of living our 'vital lies' rooted in conformity to the ethos of the system. Complicity in our new world culture of denial has its own complications--the vicious cycle of coping with systems of coping which are fundamentally deceitful and delusional. Our system is controlled by a blind ideological program in which many people are in charge but no one is ultimately responsible. It is a secularized ideology of rationally whose information is propagandistic in its distortion of our earthbound realities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a new kind of authoritarian among us, characterized by his/her competency in administering, managing, manipulating, persuading, distorting and hiding information within modern contexts. In its worst form our new archetypical model of humanity is a modern kind of authoritarian who is quite rational, sophisticated, intellectual, multi-model, characterized by a sense of completeness, lack of subjectivity, non-reflexive invisibility and transparency. The modern authoritarian is a non-leaker of information, whose principle function is the simplification and reduction of the 'noise' of contradiction in our new environments. They are the new professional elites who are specialized in processing, filtering and modifying information for mass public consumption.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The modern authoritarian has become the model human resources manager and mass manipulator and marionetter. She/he is a professional performer and performing professional, guided primarily by motives, through apparently liberal and symbolically altruistic and selfless before the system are actually profoundly selfish, egocentric and self serving.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The key feature defining modern authoritarianism is covert and unconscious socio-pathy. It is no longer a battle between id and superego, but the silent domination and control of the ego over a sense of natural self--the completely internalized social ego and the totally projected sense of self. There is a psycho social inversion as opposed to social psychological conversion. If there is personification and personalization of social conflicts, then there is also a process of socialization and characterization of personal conflicts. The self is not an embodiment of contradiction and conflict--it has become too deeply and internally divided and detached from its own sense of being. It is merely the vessel of the ego.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In its best form, the new archetypical model of human being is a globe trotting poly-ethnic personality whose primary function is the brokering of boundaries and the mediation of differences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Global peace is a primary concern of our collective future, a peace which seeks solutions upon a local level of involvement and interaction by individuals. Integration of world cultures, rather than their homogenization or hegemonization or destructive assimilation or marginalization, entails cultivating a multicultural continuum of a genuine 'third culture'. This requires the development of a 'post conventional' personality whose primary identity, loyalty and involvement is at a global level of concern, within an individually focused system which sustains and maintains standards of universal human rights and promotes the development of human potential.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We also need a better comprehension of the problem of evil in the world--an anthropology of evil which provides a ground for understanding authoritarianism, power, violence and corruption and the causes and consequences of these in our world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We need to achieve a 'changing of Mind' in human beings, collectively and individually. This is difficult to achieve in a system which has mastered techniques of conversion, brain washing and behavior modification in human beings. In any given random group of people, a certain fixed percentage will tend to be highly resistant to external stimuli. A similar but opposite percentage will be highly susceptible and suggestible to such environmental influences. There will always be an intermediate majority of people more or less resistant or susceptible. In authoritarian regimes, the majority can be easily swayed, persuaded, intimidated, cajoled, induced, to swing over to conformity led by the minority who are the complete conformists. This simplifies the task of isolating, selecting out and eliminating the opposed minority who pose a threat to the established order. Once conversion of the human character is achieved, it remains relatively fixed and stable, given regular doses of reinforcement. All people can eventually, effectively be broken, given enough time, enough inducement. Learned dependency and acquired helplessness are the primary results. And there are a variety of inducements available designed to lower the human threshold of resistance. Under the disguises of anonymity, mass humanity can easily be whipped upon into states of madness and mass hysteria, and can be lead to do things they would not normally in their 'right minds' think of doing.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Who controls the self, self control or other control, is a critical problem of our age. Changing minds and hearts and changing human character is a principal challenge of our new earthbound age.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">EARTHBOUND-NESS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Bringing the state of being earthbound to conscious awareness, both individually and collectively, entails a completely new and different way of conceptualizing and seeing ourselves, our minds, our bodies, our families and our earthbound environments, whether locally, regionally, globally or cosmically, in symbolic inter-penetration with or new environments. We must find the source of this transformation in ourselves, and implant it in the cultural germination of our children, and we must sow its seeds and cultivate its grassroots until it takes hold and spreads to cover the whole earth with healthy new growth. We must redraw the boundaries of our imagination, vision, sensitivities and sensibilities and redefine the borders which separate people from one another. Our challenge will become our children's burden.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The way is clear, only the will power is lacking.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">ENVIRONMENTAL PROBES</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The human confrontation with new environments demands alternative ways of seeing and relating. Successful adaptation depends upon the ability to recognize these new environments for what they are, and then to recognize ourselves situated within them. Encountering new environments situates us upon the edge of our own existence, requiring vision instead of blindness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We need to initiate a set of textual explorations, literary 'probes' into new regions of mindscape and new relations of ideas basic to our encounters with new earthbound environments. We need to review the terms and meanings long taken for granted as given in some of our most important intellectual paradigms dealing with human reality. Many important insights remain entrapped in esoterica, encapsulated within jargonistic idioms and rhetorical designs purporting to allow the knowledgeable reader to do virtually anything but to think and make judgments independently. We need to deal not just with definitions of terms, but with the many relations which cohere between words, concepts and ideas, and with 'meta-relations' which seem to cohere between relations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Opening our minds is a way of opening our eyes, to better read the messages contained within our new environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">NEW ENVIRONMENTS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A new world civilization demands the reformulation of new commitments, new voices, a new collective consciousness and social conscience. It demands new resolutions, new habits, new symbols and finding new pathways to human development. It demands alternative possibilities within alternative environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But what choices do we really have if no viable alternatives are made available? The great and impersonal forces of evil are better organized, better equipped, better trained and better armed than ever before. They have great sciences, technologies, bureaucracies, academies, societies and resources at their disposal whose solitary purpose is the maintenance of the status quo of world wide class hegemony in the most effective, efficient and economical manner possible.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The problem had become one not so much of prevention--of not becoming something worse--but of cure, of learning to overcome authoritarian repressions and internalizations which have already prevented us from realizing our greater human potentiality. It is a matter of how to unlearn how to unbecome the kind of unbecoming people we learned to be.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this we must learn to work against momentous forces of our own making, against the sense of history and destiny we have created for ourselves, against the forces of great traditions which stand in our way. We must fly in the face of many long established values, even against our own experience and deeply ingrained common sense.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">CHILDS PLAY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Children are the living symbols of our future. They are the breathing embodiment of our hopes, expectations, concerns, frustrations, strengths and weakness. Children are the creatures of our myths, the caricatures of our civilization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are the amateur professionals and our children are the professional amateurs. They are the ones with the inherent capacity for challenging new environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our future is a child's reality. Alice's innocent faith in the reality of her language guided her successfully through the strange landscape of Wonderland. Children are the 'natural' amateurs who 'see' the world in and of itself. They come to know it in plain and simple terms without the adult vanities of false preconceptions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A child's natural approach to organizing the experiences of its environment is to 'tear down' in order to 'analyze' its elements, in the process 'unlearning' all that the adult perceives as appropriately ordered.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We must 'unlearn' how to see our new environments in order to better recognize the alternatives before us and to reconstruct a different sense of reality. By 'tearing down' our world we must unlearn how to perceive the rhythms of its elements without the preconditioning of our tainted traditions of experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Children are the complete anarchists. They leave nothing alone that is within their reach, upsetting everything adults try to keep in place. The saving grace in childhood is that children are not held responsible for their liberties.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For our children nothing is too sacred. We will have many important lessons to teach our children and they will have much to learn. But we will also have important lessons to learn from them and they shall teach us a great deal more.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">NECESSARY POSSIBILITY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Possibility is more than a state of human consciousness or imagination. It is the prerequisite ground of our future becoming. Determining the impossible, the duty of our science, is a gradual movement from the imagination of possibilities through reasoning of plausibilities to the determination of probabilities. It gives birth to the realization of the present, the concrete, immediate factualities of the here and now. Our future environment is a function of our imagination of possibility.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The future remains a mystery yet to be solved. It is an unfinished field of infinite possibilities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are rushing headlong into the darkness of our destiny, accelerating at every turn of events that brings to our vision new series of encounters, new fields of experience, new kinds of expectations and new environments. As we approach the edge of possibility, the state of our common existence teeters upon a dark chasm beyond which all we have known will become lost to all that we do not yet know. Standing upon this edge our traditions and history becomes inverted into 'trends' and tendencies which are supposed to guide us like a lantern into the darkness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We have neither the pre-science to foretell future events nor the ability to prevent our future becoming. Only shadowy outlines emerge vaguely upon our horizon, and these bare forms give us a premonition of things to come.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Now we can speak only of our common needs, our common limits, the basic parameters of our common experience which will go forward into the darkness with us. We have come to a grand juncture, and we have a collective choice to make about our common destiny.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our future will be shared in a shared world in which each person's fate will be bound up in the collective fate of all humankind, in ways never before experienced.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the same way that the past demands a fair and hones hearing, an accounting of actions and inactions, so also does the future demand an audience, a witnessing and a troupe of actors ready to perform its tragic comic dramas.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We will either orchestrate our future or fail to, having made wise choices or having choices made for us. But our basic choices remain the same.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our future will either be collectively shared, composed of common needs, limitations, aspirations and destinies, or else it will prove to be a future of collective failure.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">MYTHICAL META-THEMES</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The environmental meta-themes of our future are always mythical. The ability to envision possible futures requires a mythic imagination, in this way imagination of new environments sets the stage for the enactment of human dramas of struggle between man and woman, youth and age, life and death, birth and dying, right and wrong, the beautiful and ugly, the natural and supernatural. These are some of the fundamental antinomies which constitute the fabric of our minds and the ground of our meaning. Thus our reality becomes mythical and our myth becomes reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our paramount meta-theme is that the human spirit will struggle forward against the reactionary forces of evil. The essence of this spirit is creative, life giving, born of survival against necessity. It is always at odds against the powers of organized evil in which the authoritarian character strives unrelenting to predominate.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The race to the Capitalistic finish line will have only a few winners but there will also be many angry losers--people's dispossessed of their basic rights and freedoms, disinherited of their children's franchise in life's opportunities and dignities. The trickle down illusion of technological progress will then not sustain the delusion of inevitable global prosperity and participatorial equality that has been so cleverly fostered and foisted upon uneducated masses by the image control engineers of the world system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The permanently disenfranchised will refuse to remain silent for very long in the face of their children's increasing hunger. Hopeless in the deprivations of terminal poverty and choiceless in the irreversible depredations of unforgiving exploitation, they will raise a cry of battle and call out for equal justice. Their chorus will drown out the empty voices of authority.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The apocalyptic vision of our environment is upon us. Double crossed expectations and common feelings of unequal deprivation and injustice, lacking even the false virtue of necessity will give rise to global revitalization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">OUR COLLECTIVE FUTURE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In our never shrinking 'global village' we can no longer afford to foster delusions of national, ethnic or cultural superiority, the arrogance of narrow egoism or of blind ethnocentrism. No longer can we consistently ignore in or protected affluence the plight of so many other people. No longer can we cultivate effectively a selfish sense of distinctive separateness and privileged prerogative.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The enlightened spirit of a private, disinterested, literate soliloquy on the condition and fate of humankind will then become a hypocritical anachronism of a shared future.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Becoming a collective future, it will become a future collectivity--a new global social environment hitherto unexperienced by humankind, consisting of the active sharing of common needs and aspirations and concerns, and of exchanging different cultural values and elements.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But however common, however shared, our future will remain preeminently a human one, composed by human actors in their daily lives.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A social collectivity of any scale is never a reality apart from or independent of the people who together compose it. It is not an insect colony or a wild herd dominated by instinct and necessity. It is not an independent, empirically separable entity or organism. It does not breathe, live or think independently of the collective will of the human constituency.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is simply a shared state of being and wherever we search for it we will only find a common collection of people talking and working together toward a common cause.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The word collectivity of the future will be collectively made up of individuals who are independently thinking and autonomously acting and freely speaking out.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We cannot afford to promote a myth of a narrow, selfish egoism or that social man is necessarily a social insect. Nor can we afford to promote the illusion of the organiismic whole or of the social ethic founded upon the anthropological misconception of man the pack animal, man the ape, and the law of survival of the fittest. Greed and selfishness are no longer affordable virtues, as neither are selfless devotion and altruistic sacrifice.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The lesson of our histories leave us little guidance and less hope in these collective affairs.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">UNNECESSARY REALITIES</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our world cannot any longer afford the luxury of functioning for the good of the one and the few at the expense of the all and the many.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the long run, the world system cannot work upon the principle of 'unlimited good' for a limited few for it will otherwise spell collective disaster for all.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The collective ideologies and mass myths which sustain the mechanisms of the world system are becoming obsolete as we fail to resolve their inherent contradictions of class and power, affluence and poverty, economic efficiency and exploitation, inequality and violence. The bubble of promised expectations will burst in the storms of global crises and catastrophe.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science and technology cannot always be relied upon to create the solutions to or collective problems, but in the long way may create more problems than they will be able to solve.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Technological development is not necessarily, unreservedly beneficial and efficacious for the progressive future of human civilization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Energy, harnessed in ever greater magnitudes does not necessarily lead to greater efficiency, economy of effort, efficacy of design, or more manageable waste. High energy entrapment systems become concomitantly more wasteful and consumptive whatever the developmental rationale or technical strategies.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Information locked away in great treasures with privileged, graded access by the high priests and super specialist of the world technocracy, is no longer necessarily good for its own sake, nor does it necessarily lead down the golden pathway to collective enlightenments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">….Bits and watts--which here stand for units of information and of energy respectively--when packaged into any mass produced commodity in amounts that pass a threshold, inevitably constitute impoverishing wealth. Such wealth is either too rare to be shared or it is destructive of the freedom and liberty of the weakest…(Ivan Ilich, 1978:xiii)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Buckminster Fuller's anti-entropy equation of energy plus information equals something from nothing is not necessarily a valid design for the future or unequivocally the wisest kind of formulaic rationalism to apply like a band aid to our common existential dilemmas. More for less formulism leads down the road to less for more social patterning of exploitation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Storing information, money or energy in ever greater quantities is not necessarily the wisest strategy for meeting our collective future, as it tends to promote social patterns of elitism, hoarding, monopolism, class inequality, corruption and a false and pretentious idealism of privileged superiority.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Nor is the ideology of communism the only necessary alternative to a capitalist dominated world system, as communist societies face the same basic dilemmas of developmental inequality. Marx has long been dead. In facet, communism and capitalism as ideological doctrines have been cut from the same basic philosophical cloth of the western tradition of rationalism based upon the principles of progress and utopia.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">AND THE NEED FOR A COMMON WELL BEING</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The future of humankind's existence upon earth will not depend upon advances in technology, in greater development, more industrialization, mechanization, automation or professionalization or upon amassing ever greater stockpiles of potential energy or greater mountains of information. Our future health will not depend upon the development of superior tank armor, more accurate missiles or even less costly military machines.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The future of humankind will depend greatly upon our collective ability to meet certain basic conditions of human existence:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">1. The extent of the realization of human rights and fulfillment of individual human potential.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">2. Our collective capacity to live tolerantly, peacefully and compassionately with ourselves and with one another.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">3. The extent to which we can establish effective population management techniques (i.e. birth control, health delivery systems) on the basis of voluntary participation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">4. The extent to which we can systematically eradicate and control common diseases and disorders which afflict humankind and the extent to which we can improve life maintenance systems.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">5. The extent to which we can establish educational systems which teach effectively the values of equality, social responsibility and which foster freedom of expression and cultivate human creativity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">6. The extent to which we are able to reestablish an ecological balance and conservative harmony with our global environment, instead of promoting a predominant economic order founded upon the domination and destruction of the natural environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">7. The extent to which we are able to put available technologies, energy entrapment systems and treasuries of expertise, knowledge and understanding, to pragmatic work in the reevaluation, reorientation and redirection of the predominating world order to more efficaciously realize the preceding conditions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The future well being of humankind will be measured in spiritual terms of our collective, common emancipation from the tyranny of violence and necessity and the realization of basic human rights, freedoms and responsibilities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our future health will be measurable in real terms of how well we eliminate hunger, alleviate human suffering and stress and effectively control birth and death.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The future of our collective well being as both a global civilization and as a common biological species will be measured in terms of how well we will overcome our most pressing problems of global militarism, economic imperialism, ecocide, pollution, over population and poverty.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our collective destiny will be decided in terms of how well we will be able to reestablish a new and better harmony of common well being based on an alternative ecology of global culture and civilization not predicated upon the domination and control and alteration of our natural environments but in the reestablishment of a more natural symbiosis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Furthermore, it is demonstrable that the common well being of the whole of humankind will depend immensely upon the well being of the autonomous individual. The future will thus pose a grand paradox between the interdependence of the whole and the independence of the many parts--paradox about our common existence upon the edge of our critical juncture which will become our common problem to resolve.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">GAME THEORY AND WORLDS OF GOOD</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Some social theorists have sought to apply game theory to the understanding of our social realities. The prototypical peasant world view is one of a 'world of limited good'--it is a zero sum game in which one competitor gains are always another's loss in the competition for ever scarce and limited resources.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Some scientists have sought to discover evidence of optimizing strategies, cost minimizing strategies or profit maximizing strategies in different patternings of subsistence, foraging, food getting, marketing, fishing, etc. It is always to be wondered whether or not people actually plan their daily lives and moves in such a rational way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our world system of capitalism is founded upon an opposed strategy of profit maximization, based upon world view of 'unlimited good'. Capitalists are playing a 'non-zero sum game' in which the results of interaction between competitors do not always evenly cancel one another out, but produce surplus.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such a framework has not come to terms yet with the earthbound Malthusian view of the world which sees it as a world of 'diminishing good' played out in a 'negative sum game' in which one person's gain is everyone's net expense and loss. In an earthbound world the strategy to be adopted is one of minimizing losses through minimizing gains, rather than optimizing or maximizing gains through minimization of losses. Rather than a conservative, 'peasant' outlook, the predominate earthbound perspective is one based upon rationing of limited, irreplaceable commodities in order that they may be preserved for as long as possible. This leads us to a world of 'unrestricted good' based upon principles of preservation and prevention.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In an earthbound world of diminishing good, there will be no point in leveling on a global scale, as there will be nothing to level and no amount of resources sufficient to distribute evenly throughout the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">With a world of increasingly widespread deprivation as the rationed reserves run out, there will be local patterns of hoarding, panic, strategies of diversification, depression, followed by raiding, feuding, social movements of all kinds imaginable, in confrontation with increasing authoritarian power structures.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">LIFEBOAT REALITIES</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As we run out of room, out of food, out of resources, out of water, in our earthbound world, we will be confronted with certain basic existential dilemmas--on lifeboat earth that has overreached its carrying capacity, who shall be cast overboard and who has the responsibilities for making such decisions, or is it really a 'problem' in that there is 'always room for one more' as the rest of us whose security and safety is assured are constrained to 'tighten our belts' a little more.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">So far we have history of casting out the poor, the dispossessed and the weak.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Lifeboat dilemmas are a consequence of life control mechanisms running into death control mechanisms--those agencies which protect, preserve and prolong human health by preventing death and disease. Immunizations compete with birth control drugs, hospitals compete with military machines, schools compete with penitentiaries, old folks home compete with heart lung machines.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We do not yet know what the final 'solution' to the 'problem of population' will be, if there is one. It may be that there is in fact no real problem at all, or is not as immediately pressing as we now believe. Science may save the day, or find the final solution, or else the population problem will resolve itself for better or worse. As a collective, we have a choice of pathways, between Hitler's and Gandhi's solution to the problem of 'people'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SELF ORGANIZED CRITICALITY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Natural systems maintain a level of equilibrium according to principles of conservation. This level of equilibrium within a system determines the criticality of its self sustained growth, beyond which systems tend toward 'supercritical states' resulting in predictable chain reactions which lead to major events which eventuate in restoration of conservation in the system at the previous 'supercritical' level. The chain reaction maintains the criticality of the system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such systems are characterized by internal contradictions--they are unstable in many different directions but the critical state is absolutely robust. Local features are continuously changing due to events, but the statistical properties of the whole and of the size of the events, remains stable.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Criticality is a global property of the whole system--local dynamics may vary unpredictably, but they are a function of the total history of the whole system and critical events would persist with a merciless frequency that is an erratic 'flickering' which is nonrandom and implies a connection of the dynamics of events with past events of the system. Such flicker noise is a superimposition of signals of all sizes and durations produced in a dynamic system in a critical state composed of chain reactions of all sizes and durations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such self organizing systems are chaotic but nonrandom systems. Small initial amounts of uncertainty grow exponentially over time and prevent long term predictions which would require correspondingly exponential increases in information. Weak chaos generates uncertainty not exponentially but by a power law--it grows with time but much more slowly and predictably, on the border of chaos. Fully, strong chaotic systems have a time scale beyond which it is impossible to make predictions--weakly chaotic systems lack such a time scale and so allow for predictions. All self organized critical systems are weakly chaotic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such complex systems are governed by relational values or 'boolean functions' in which each component is a function of two or more other components of the same system and everything is related to everything else. There is a cycling of different possible patterns over a duration which fall into certain states. Minor mutations can precipitate 'damage' throughout such systems. Some such systems exhibit a remarkable capacity for falling into very stable patterns in which a majority of its relational patterns become fixed into stable clusters. This stability prevents widespread systemic damage by restricting the region affected to small areas of the whole. This is referred to as the evolution of 'anti-chaos'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Natural evolution exhibits features of such critical systems which evolve and 'adapt' themselves in a self organizing manner at the 'edge' of chaos. Such systems are likened to fluid states, in which the number of 'fixed' stable components of the whole are relatively few and far between, as opposed metaphorically to 'fixed' and unchanging states of solids and the completely chaotic states of gases. Such an explanation of critical self organization may explain the saltational 'punctuated equilibrium' observed in the fossil record, related to rapid speciation events following long durations of stability.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The conservation of the number of elements is an important feature of many systems which naturally evolve to a critical state. 'Throughout history, wars and peaceful interactions might have left the world in a critical state in which conflicts and social unrest spread like avalanches.' (American Scientific, Per Bak and Kam Chen, Jan. 1991)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not unreasonable to suggest that symbol systems and the social systems they represent and the dynamic political economic behavior of such systems within a global framework, are systems of self organized criticality which naturally develop toward supercritical states by the natural increase in population which the functioning of such systems promote. Social movements are like 'flicker noises' in such systems, which chain reactions may precipitate major events like 'avalanches or earthquakes'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">GLOBAL ORDER</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is estimated that the whole world will become structurally integrated into a single hierarchically ordered political economic system. Some see it happening now, others forecast it within a century, others believe it will take a couple of hundred years and yet others believe it will happen by the year 4850A.D. if such political economic integration is inevitable, then the questions of when, how and why are critically important. But it is also to be wondered whether such world order will be desirable--can it be achieved by peaceful cooperation or only through imperial conquest and domination? And will such a single world order necessarily be an Orwellian or Huxlian dystopia of the absolute and arbitrary rule of Great and Impersonal Organization of Evil, or may the characteristic millenarian vision of utopia be realizable by the progress of scientific technology which will result in a better world for everyone. Estimates based upon computer projections of current trends suggest that the present political economic disparities between global core and periphery are relatively stable and 'fixed' given the persistence and pressure of the political economic status quo of our Pax Amerikana.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is possible that such global order, if it is achieved by the conquest of war or the threat of violence, will depend upon the military organization of societies which must socialize its citizenry for the mobilization for war. Such socialization for the mobilization for war, or for 'economic competition' which seems to be the 'pursuit of war by other means' has negative consequences for the realization of human potential and humanity upon earth. If this hypothesis is correct, then the system which promotes uncontrolled capitalist expansionism and exploitation must have negative consequences for a world order based upon an organizational ethos promoted by the threat of violence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Political and military fascism has always been the dark underbelly of capitalist imperialism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It seems necessary that any world order, if it is not to be founded upon the evil tyranny of the threat of violence must be founded on the rule of peace and the devaluation of violence. If such an alternative 'rule of peace' is possible, one which would minimize the threat of violence then a groundwork must be lain down which would demonstrate how global political economy can be effectively achieved in a non-capitalistic manner.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">OVERSPECIALIZATION AND ADAPTABILITY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our present world system is no longer adaptable to the unexpected and unplanned. It does not respond in adaptive ways to the relinquishment of the motivation for social power. It cannot deal in any other terms than those upon which it was originally founded in a previous period. The earthbound environment is confronting the world system with a set of basic survival imperatives which the system is unable and unequipped to effectively deal with. The challenge is unmet and all attempts at adaptation are systematically frustrated. This inflexibility to natural change, the promotion of outmoded ideologies and commitments to lost causes and false organizational ideals, is occurring at all levels of the world system, as it becomes bogged down in an entangle political economic web of its own design. Our system has become in its structural hyper coherence, 'overspecialized' in its functional compartmentalization. Such overspecialization is a measure of its maladaptability in local contexts, and is a precursor to sudden, catastrophic events and eventual extinction of the system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In its progressive quest for power, for control over change, for stability, it has become crystallized and solidified by too many constraints--it no longer balances flexibility at the edge of chaos, and must soon fall into its abyss.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">A NEW AGE AND AN OLD ONE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are at the dawn of a new age, and at the dusk of an old one. We stand in a twilight of transition as one sun sets and another rises. The new age will bring with it new sets of problems to be solved, as well as solutions to some old problems which have remained unresolved. The new age is an earthbound age, one characterized by new adaptations in new environments. The new age is the post scientific age--one that will no longer depend exclusively upon the workings of scientific technology to solve every problem challenging human survival. The new age will not be any better or worse than the old one, it will only be very different in very fundamental ways. Science will still progress and be important, but it too will have changed in revolutionary ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The Malthusian dilemma of the exponential growth of population beyond the carrying capacity of the natural system upon which it is based is coming to pass within our children's generation. Population is the 'key' problem of the earthbound perspective, but it is connected ecologically to another problem of the environmental degradation of the very natural substrate which supports the population. We are witnessing a point of critical convergence between population increase and ecological destruction, a threshold to explosive cataclysm which our science and technology cannot long forestall or prevent.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is estimated that our earth will soon overreach its optimum carrying capacity, beyond which further increase will only eventuate in further ecological degradation. The consequences of this will be measured not just in relative qualitative terms, of the loss of the quality of life for the majority of the world's people, but in 'absolute' quantitative measures of infant mortality, gross income, net nutritional intake, disease prevalence, life span, etc.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is theoretically speculated whether population increase 'drives' systems of social complication or is the result of the adaptive success of social systems. It is, as a 'natural system' one which passes from sub-critical through critical to supercriticality in that in its overloaded state it generates a process of fracturing breakdown. Population growth eventuates in the formation of social chaos, which results in the entropic breakdown of the social system which generates it and is generated by it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Population increase will eventuate in other unforeseen consequences as it stresses and breaks down the system upon which it is based. The ecological dilemma of global overpopulation and environmental degradation becomes a 'biological time bomb' in which there is a built in time delay between the ignition of the fuse and the final release of its potential energy. Also in a hyper coherent, supercritical system , minor fluctuations in parts leads to major reverberations in the whole resulting in systemic destabilization. Things may happen spontaneously in one part and indirect resonance to causes in other parts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Population increase begets mechanisms of population control which attempt to brake and slow down the snowballing growth. Such 'mechanisms' may be family planning, birth control, abortion, infanticide, marginalization or exclusion, migration or warfare. Some methods are more 'cost efficient' and effective than others--the elimination of the fetus represents less loss of investment of energy than the elimination of adults. So far, family planning is the most efficient 'mechanism' available, but the promotion of its effectiveness has faced serious and social obstacles.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The 'problem of population' leads to certain ethical dilemmas of 'lifeboat realities'--on lifeboat earth that has overreached its carrying capacity, who shall be thrown overboard and who has the responsibility for making the decision, or is it really a 'problem' in that there is may 'always be room for one more' as the rest of us whose security and safety is assured are constrained to 'tighten our belts' a little more.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Lifeboat dilemmas are a consequence of life control mechanisms running into death control mechanisms--those agencies which protect, preserve and prolong human health by preventing death and disease. Immunizations compete with birth control drugs, hospitals compete with military machines, schools compete with penitentiaries, old folks home compete with heart lung machines.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The 'problem of population' is also a 'problem of hunger' and a 'problem of disease' and a 'problem of poverty' and a 'problem of prosperity' and a 'problem of education; and a 'problem of inequality' and a 'problem of authority' and a 'problem of responsibility'. The last problem is perhaps the most important, because it may very well be the case that in the global system, no one is really in control and no one is really responsible. The 'problem of population' is beyond control, and decisions made or not made in relation to its final solution. This is more than just the social diffusion of responsibility, and even if everyone miraculously wake up one day in the near future and decided to assume earthbound responsibility in their own life in the world, the momentum of the population snowball and the consequences of environmental degradation will still carry all of us to the critical point of global climax.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We do not yet know what the final 'solution' to the 'problem of population' will be, if there is one. It may that there is in fact no real problem at all, or that the problem is not as critical or pressing as we now believe. It may be that science does find the final solution, or it may be that one way or another the population problem will simply resolve itself for better or worse. As a collective, we have a choice of pathways, between Hitler's and Gandhi's solution to the problem of 'people'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The biological time bomb may have a longer delay than we know, or our bomb experts may defuse it in time. From our privileged position of first world affluence, we tend to 'blame the victim' and put the burden of guilt upon poor people who have many children and large families, even though it is not scientifically understood whether population drives the system or the system drives the population. Poverty seems to beget overpopulation, but overpopulation also begets poverty. It is a vicious cycle that must be broken before it breaks us.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">OUR EARTHBOUND ECOLOGY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From an ecological standpoint, the 'problem of population' is tied critically to the 'problem of environment'. If there were unlimited space, unlimited resources, unlimited water, unlimited forests, unlimited air and unlimited food, then there would be no environmental or population problem. In vain we look to the distant stars as a way out of our predicament. But the facts remain that the earth is being denuded of its last stands of forests, stripped of its mineral resources and its atmosphere, biosphere and landscape are being permanently altered by 'man made' processes. We are 'developing the earth' to a premature death--the growth of world civilization is resulting in permanent and irreversible alterations of the global environment, from destruction of the atmosphere, global warming, destabilization and contamination of the hydrosphere to mass extinctions of many species and the permanent loss of biological variability on the earth.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The entire problem of global ecology remains debatable, as it is not yet known exactly how large our energy reserves or mineral resources are, or how our atmosphere or hydrosphere will become adjusted in the long run to our presence and growth and development. Many still believe that science will still be able to solve all our problems if given enough time or if it can act in a timely enough manner. But the point remains that the earth is a limited sphere and its resources, once bountiful will eventually dwindle. The atmosphere cannot forever sustain itself in relation to the continuing increases in technological development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Global ecology is not a disconnected set of variables--it is itself a global system in which one set of 'problems' is interdependent with all other sets of problems in some important way. We do not know well how deforestation affects the atmosphere, or how atmospheric contamination will affect life on earth. Burning of fossil fuels affects the atmosphere and the biosphere. We have both a set of interrelated ecological problems, and a single problem of global environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The environment is rapidly being eroded and the ecology as a system degraded. This degradation and erosion follows a long series of incidences of human destruction of natural environments in the process of creating 'cultural' environments. The global environment is rapidly becoming transformed from a 'natural system' into a 'cultural setting' and this transformation has both bad and good consequences. But it seems as if it is an irreversible, inevitable and runaway process that has been beyond anyone's capacity to control.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Environmental consciousness has become popular--there has been an 'awakening' to the 'problem' and a sudden proliferation of literature, media and public/private interest and investment in the 'problem'. While this is an optimistic sign of the times, its hard not to notice that this is a 'cultural' rather than a 'natural phenomena'. Such consciousness remains a privileged prerogative of first world societies that stand the most to lose and the least to gain from the kinds of changes which might lead to real solutions to the problems at hand. As a symbolic mode of representation, it is to be wondered whether this rather fashionable interest is not a part of the very consumption industry which seems to drive the whole problem in the first place. It is easy to point fingers at the policies and patterns of third world societies, but might they not be a symbolic scapegoat for our own repressed sense of guilt for being the cause of the problem'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The cultural elaboration of ecological themata, as part of an 'ecology industry' represents not part of a solution to the problem of ecology but a prevention of the possibility of such a solution. Consciousness awakening and a high profile interest in ecological problems are not bad things, but neither does their industry provide the solution the problems it feeds upon, and even may hinder such solution by fostering collective illusions that money being spent on elaborated illustrated coffee table books devoted to global ecology will help in the effort to find solutions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This points up some basic dilemmas about the problem of ecology which we must learn to recognize and resolve, as they prevent our acquiring practices, habits, attitudes and objectives which might genuinely contribute to the solution of the environmental problem. In promoting symbol system which promote and preserve the status quo of social relations in the world, or by promoting the 'tokenization' of symbol systems which would otherwise threaten the status quo of political economy, we fail to face squarely and honestly the earthbound realities of which we are a part.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The global ecology movement has remained a 'molish' grassroots ground swell. The greening of global consciousness remains for the most part 'underground' as it must come into headlong conflict with the great and impersonal forces and interests of a global political economy founded upon technological development. It is apparent that the powers that be cannot be entrusted with the responsibility of caring for the earth in a way that will promote long term survival.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dilemma of the problem of global ecology is that those who have the most power to decisively effect the kinds of changes which would have decisive consequences for life on earth are precisely the special interests groups who have the most invested in the status quo and the most to lose by such change. Most of the rest of us merely follow suit for the interest of our short term social survival. But we are leaving our posterity a poor inheritance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE BIOLOGICAL TIME-BOMB</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The biological time bomb is an ecologically volatile system of resonance between social circumscription of overpopulation and related problems and environmental circumscription due to degradation, destruction and irreversible alteration of natural ecosystems. This 'supercritical system' is approach to a point of 'critical mass' of an inherent potential systemic instability which may suddenly but not unexpectedly 'go off' in a cataclysmic 'explosion'. We are running out of room and out of time, and out of the very things which sustain our being on the planet earth. Yet it is to be wondered whether it is in fact a 'time bomb' ticking to a 'global climax' or it is just a wound up alarm clock which will eventual just 'run down'. To a large extent, the understanding of our earthbound ecology is a big black box and we are not exactly sure what is inside of it. We are not sure whether the ticking coming from within is a bomb or just a clock.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But population, the environment and the interrelationship between them on a local, regional and global scale, poses a very real ecological problem. It is a problem which also has broader evolutionary consequences, not just for our own species, but for all of life on planet it, and for the whole planet as a living entity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The biological time bomb is in fact not a natural, biological 'climax' of life on planet earth, an inevitable outcome of evolutionary development. It is in fact a man made problem, and can therefore be called the 'cultural time bomb'. Human cultural development, an historical and non-evolutionary process, has been the main driving mechanism. But it is the biological consequences and the effects measured biologically, which make the bomb primarily a biological problem of global human global culture.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The primary experience of the time bomb are those of 'future shock'--of the exponential increase in interrelated phenomena which are the result in the supercriticality of the global system approach its threshold. 'Future shock' is in fact a form of 'culture shock' in that it is experienced as a cognitive and perceptual disorientation and feeling of loss of identity, in the encounter and adaptation to a rapidly changing global environment--one which is rapidly transforming from a natural to a cultural orientation. The consequence of this is the loss of our cultural capacity to cope with and collectively adapt to a changing global environment. We are quickly losing our adaptive abilities, and this reverberates in our personal individual lives. We are suffering paralysis from fear in our ability to deal with change at the very moment in our history that we must confront the most change. Fear of the bomb has frozen and unnerved us.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">HISTORY OF THE WORLD SYSTEM</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The history of 'modernization' of the world system is not to be confined to the industrial era of the rise of capitalism. The history of the world system is a history of the gradual rise of human civilization as a global phenomena with political, economic and socio-religious implications. It is in other words, the history of the political economic and socio-religious integration of the human population on earth. Capitalism and communism had precursors far back in ancient pre-history and classical history. The only thing 'modern' about them was not their political economic or socio-religious aspects, but rather the development of scientific technology and its social consequences. We cannot clearly separate out the political influence of conquering imperialistic armies from the economic influences of foreign markets and commerce from the socio-religious 'civilizing influence' of world religions. The history of the world system is one of gradually increasing integration of the global population into a single system based upon political, economic and socio-religious principles of organization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The contemporary period of this history with which we are most concerned is one which is characterized by global 'capitalism' that contains political economic domination/dependency between 'core' metropolis regions, on global, regional and local scale and outlying 'peripheral' areas. Power and wealth are focused at the 'center' of this capitalist system and relations between core-periphery are predominant in that they determine the life ways and life chances of all individuals within the system. It is a system which is characterized between gross inequalities between the core and the periphery, in which the function of the center is primarily consumption as a symbolically legitimating the materialistic values of the capitalist mode of production, while primary production is the primary function of the periphery, as the material base which supports the core.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The process of development/underdevelopment characterizing this capitalist world system is basically one of 'class polarization'--of separating people out into two polarly opposite classes, at local, provincial, national, regional and global levels, characterized by their unequal access to commodities of the global market. These two classes may be lumped into the consumers and the producers, the function of the former being primarily symbolic, the function of the latter being mostly physical labor. These may also be separated on the basis of parasite and host classes or exploitative and exploitable classes. It is largely a class phenomena because its social relations are focused in the exchange relations of the market place.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a third, in-between class, referred to in the global sense as the 'semi-periphery' and in a domestic sense as the 'middle class'. The political economic function of this class is to intermediate the social relations between the core and the periphery, or the upper and under classes. Bureaucratically mandated and empowered from above, from the standpoint of the core they resemble the periphery, while from the point of view of the periphery they are part of the core. Their function is to serve as a buffer to interclass conflict and to provide a central ideological prop for the articulation of the whole system. Extreme polarization tends to pull this middle class apart, to disintegrate it between the two extremes, whereas increasing systemic integration tends to pull the two extremes towards the shared middle ground.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is this class which is most characterized by inter-positional ambivalence and therefore cognitive dissonance of status ambiguity. It is for this reason that the world view of this class is said to suffer the most class/status consciousness and to have the greatest sense of 'false consciousness' or a collective illusion of its identity. This in-between class is also characterized by its structural heterogeneity--it comprises the greatest diversity of social interests and orientations, being at once the most conservative and reactionary supporters of the status quo and simultaneously the most fertile element for revolution and challenge. It is a class by virtue of its 'anti-structural' relation to either extreme. It is usually difficult to clearly identify the boundaries of the middle class, as they tend to grade off into the upper and lower classes. The 'middle class' therefore is largely a 'fiction' which maintains the boundary between the two extremes, by fixing a relative distance or difference which the middle class must bridge. It is not surprising then that the primary preoccupation of the middle class is that of social mobility and the symbolic representation of such mobility.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Besides an international division of labor and international patterns of labor movement, the capitalistic world system can be characterized by the 'global factory' as an index of the degree of political economic integration of the world. Production and consumption become complex international systems in which materials produced in one part are manufactured in another part, to be assembled in yet another, to be packaged in another and finally to be marketed and consumed in a final, separate part.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The key characteristic of the capitalist world system is the degree of disparity and inequality between the core and the periphery. This becomes the primary symbolic determinant of ones structural position within a global context, translated into ones level of consumption or distance from primary production.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE GLOBAL CONTEXT</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The world system is defined by its global context, and its history from its earliest beginnings has always been a world history. There are several levels of analysis of this context, the local, provincial, national, regional and global levels. These levels, subsumed by higher levels, or expressed by interconnections between lower levels (global is 'interregional or international', provincial is state or county or sub-national). These levels are characterized by economic markets of exchange, bureaucratic levels of administration and socio-religious symbols of identity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is reverberation and resonance between the levels such that what predominates at the global level is predetermining at all the other levels. There is a sense of 'domestic analogy' of the global paradigm such that 'core periphery' relations expressed regionally and internationally are reflected in core periphery relations sub-nationally, locally and provincially. Core periphery relations within developed and developing nations are reflective of the same core periphery internationally and globally.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This is also reflected in rural urban, core periphery patterns of diffusions and migration. Migrations from outlying provinces to built up city areas for work opportunities is a reflection of the larger international process of migration from peripheral nations or regions to core nations or regions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the political economy of the world system, it is no longer appropriate to separate definitively economic migration from political refugees--but the world system is characterized by 'political economic migration' in which most migrants have mixed 'push pull' motives which are both political and economic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the extent that 'refugees' are characterized by the state of 'homelessness' as political migrants, they are the international equivalent of the domestic problem of 'homelessness'--domestic refugees from bureaucratic exclusion and persecution, to a large extent, the 'refugee' problem of homelessness, internationally and domestically, globally and locally, is the problem of 'political economic migration' within a world system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">International stratification between first, second, third, fourth and fifth worlds become domestically recapitulated in provincial, national or local class stratification between upper, middle and lower, marginalized and excluded classes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE PROBLEM OF COMMUNISM</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is a shortcoming of the political economic ideology of capitalism that anything which is anti-capitalist must be construed as 'communist' and that anything which is anticommunist must necessarily be capitalistic. This 'either or' dichotomization between capitalist/communist world orders reveals a critical dialectic between the two political economic ideologies which makes them cut from the same cloth. That point is that an alternative political economic philosophy can be simultaneously anti-capitalistic and anticommunist transcending the limitations of both and their dialectical entanglement.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Communism as a social revolutionary movement is a secularized form of political economic chiliastic, millenarian movement predicting a perfect time and a perfect utopia based upon equality and no conflict. All such movements have an ontology of development in moving from an idealistic prophetic stage into a realistic bureaucratic and authoritarian stage. Any such attempt at the realization of an ideal utopia is bound for failure because it entails forcing human diversity and social variability into a single mold under a single social paradigm for appropriate behavior. It results in the tyranny of the rule of the proletariat by the communist party--an exclusive, elite membership of a minority of individuals who have power to control all other people.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such tendencies can be observed in the early formation of communist movements, in the demands and expectations and the power ambitions individuals have, usually frustrated by their own failure in the larger society, over other members or initiates within the movement. These true believers have a 'heart of darkness' which reveals, behind their total commitment to a superhuman social ideal, a totalitarian interest in power and the corruption which power can bring.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This is not to deride the value of Marxist political theory in its historical application to the rise of capitalism and the understanding of exploitation, but only to proffer the reality that such theory is not less ideological when it is promoted as a program for social revolution than the capitalist ideology which it contradicts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Being both anti-capitalistic and anticommunist, then are there any other alternatives which lack the problems of both and which in its own realization would not suffer corruption in the world. Any such answer depends upon the reasonableness of its aims and the appropriateness of its means applied to achieving its ends.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">GLOBAL STRATIFICATION</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">World society has become stratified into the first developed world, the second socialist world, the third underdeveloped world, the fourth marginalized world and the fifth homeless world of political economic refugees. This class stratification occurs at all levels of analysis and is restricted domestically as well as internationally.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Global stratification can be characterized as 'diagonal' class caste stratification, combining skewed vertical and horizontal forms. The characteristic of this form of stratification is the formation of segmentary 'ethno-nations'--politically economic ethnicized groupings of people focused around occupational specializations or administrative niches which crosscut the loyalties and solidarity of nation state identity. Global society is a 'plural' multiethnic society whose ethnic divisions are reinforced from above, defined by unequal access to resources and social structural discrimination based upon ethnic identity. Political economic co-option from above is a kind of colonial strategy of 'divide and conquer' and of alienating minority groups of their own leadership who are placed into middle class management positions. This is a form of bureaucratic encapsulation from above, of bounding groups and reinforcing inter-group boundaries under an ideological umbrella of pan ethnic national solidarity. The military, the media, educational institutions and public offices all reinforce the ideological norm of inter-ethnic solidarity and equality, whereas in the marketplace and in the political structure the actual situation is predominant one of inter-ethnic competition and the promotion of infra-ethnic exclusiveness and solidarity. Ethnic organizations become as if 'castes' which have their own internal stratification and which feature ethnic mobility as a group. The result is a complex social structure of multiple overlapping hierarchies.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Within this system of global stratification, national identity and loyalty are undercut by ethnic allegiances formed around the organization of power and money and an individual's overall status position within the world system is predetermining of that person's interrelationships. These ties may cut cleanly across ties of national citizenship or even of ethnic identity. In other words, members of the same class cross culturally share more in common political economically and socio religiously than the same people may share nationally or culturally with people within their own society but of a different class caste status position.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The is overall system is characterized most by its fluidity and flexibility and its overlapping inter-positionality rather than its rigidity and between group boundaries. Movement of people and resources, a jxtapositioning and interposing of multiple status and a 'network multiplexity' are common features of this system. Mobility is neither purely social or vertical nor horizontal and geographical, nor is it unidirectional, but it has become lateral or diagonal mobility in which geographical mobility for jobs will entail as well social mobility. It is multidirectional in that individuals usually to and fro and the ties between homeland and host country, though long distance, are not really cut off. Refugees politically severed from their country of origin may nevertheless maintain quite extensive economic ties with people back home. Economic migrants living with secure jobs and investments and family in a host nation, may nevertheless maintain a sense of political loyalty and economic investment in the land they left behind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Modern society is becoming a complex mosaic of multiple ethnic communities which may have local points but not be 'ghettoized' into enclaves. Living in core regions is characterized by its ethnic diversity of different groups which either live separately but share a common marketplace and a common administrative authority or live proximately with one another but lead quite separate lives.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another characteristic feature of this global stratification is the gross disparity between haves and have nots and the political economic inequality between members of different class castes. Globally there are one billion people or approximately one fifth of the earth's population who are characterized by over consumption way above the basic requirements of their biological sustenance. There are also one billion people who live in 'absolute poverty'--a death trap in which an individuals basic biological requirements are not met and from which there are very few opportunities of escape. Between these two groups of the worlds most and least privileged, there range a three fifths of the worlds population who lead lives of less rather than more wealth. In our own consumer oriented nature, 20 percent of the population control 80 percent of the resources, while the remaining 20 percent of the wealth is to be divided unevenly between the remaining 80 percent of the population. Our nation constitutes only 5% of the global population but it has been estimated that it consumes 95% of the global resources. Though exaggerated these figures illustrate the degree of disparity characteristic of the world system. Nations become ranked on a scale of consumption/production, as ethnic groups compete for positions of advantage within an international arena, and individual's juxtapose themselves for greatest strategic advantage, whether nationally, ethnically, individually or both or neither.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE GLOBAL VILLAGE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The world system and its society has two contradictory forces which collectivize and relativize global identity. On one hand there is a concept of the 'global village' in which the modern 'media environment' of 'secondary orality' leads to a global communal outlook which tends to unite individuals internationally and cross culturally by a common modern world view. Part of this notion is the cultural hegemony and media imperialism of the world system of the acculturative and symbolic influence from the West to the Rest--a kind of global pan-westernization. Part of this process is the 'intellectual imperialism' of the colonization of non-western world views and the domination of western forms of rationalism and western modes of representation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This predominant trend is contrapuntal to an opposing trend towards 'ethnization' and diversification of multiple symbol systems which are a synthesis of acculturative syncretism. This antithetical trend is tending to 'relativize' the global village into its ethnic neighborhoods. Characteristic of this trend are the formation of social movements based upon ethnic or religious or special interest parties which are seen as competing with other such groups or with corporations or governments, for political economic advantage. Part of this process is that as peoples are drawn into the webs of interdependency of the world system, and a push pull toward the center, they confront the dilemma of relative deprivation and a revolution of rising expectations which , in inter-group competition, becomes expressed as a revolutionary movement of political economic equality. Relative deprivation and rising expectations in comparison with peer polity groups leads to cognitive dissonance and to 'frustration/aggression'. Symbolism of ethnic group solidarity are created ideologically and in group/out group consciousness is fostered for promoting projection of aggression upon out group members. These groups form their own separate hierarchy. Often such groups are co-opted within a larger bureaucratic framework, or become manipulated by larger interest groups.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Competition may turn into inter-group conflict, especially as one group seeks to dominate and control another. Conflict resulting from such social movements can be very destabilizing for the larger social system, and can arise unpredictably. Ascendancy of one group over another may lead to implantation of mechanisms of population control, either of enforced marginalization or segregation, or of ethnocide or genocide, as with the Jews and other Europeans by the Germans in order to create Lebensraum and to eliminate political economic competition. But there have been numerous more recent examples of the very same phenomena.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">POLITICAL ECONOMY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the world system of the modern age especially, it is not possible to clearly distinguish politics from economics, nor to say whether the hen or the egg comes first. Economic monopolization entails political domination and vice versa, and capitalism and colonialism have always gone hand in hand in political economic imperialism. There is also always an associated socio-religious component, of integrated symbolic systems of collective representation which ideologically reinforce and promote political economic interests and motivations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not possible to distinguish the pure economic migrant in search of job opportunities in the big city or abroad from the political refugee escaping discrimination and persecution, but it makes more sense to think of political economic refugees who are a mixed bag of economic motives and political aspiration/fears. Where there is structural poverty, there is some form of political domination and persecution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Nor, in social movements is it possible to distinguish revolutions of rising expectations based upon economic interests from revolutions of equality based upon political inequalities, from religious syncretistic movements predicated upon the coming of the perfect age. There is only political economic equality, sought in the marketplace as well s in political representation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are no longer purely economic or purely political interests--political decisions may be guided by economic motives and economic choices may be dictated by political interests. Class caste ethno-nations are political economic groupings organized on political economic principles. There are no longer purely political parties or purely economic corporations. Nor can we speak of purely economic 'achievement' motivations which do not also have socio psychological overtones of 'power' motivation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Boundaries, identities and differences are political economic boundaries, identities and differences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">WORLD WARS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The history of modern civilization has been in part a history of modern world wars. These wars have occurred periodically and have been characterized by their increasing international involvement and destructiveness. There has been global militarization of peacetime vertical escalation of destructive force potentials and horizontal proliferation of modern weapons of increasing lethality. The international arms industry and its markets have become one key sector of the global economy. For the past forty years the entire world has existed beneath the shadow of M.A.D., the umbrella of the threat of nuclear holocaust, alone the single most dangerous threat to the ecology and life on earth.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The cross cultural study of warfare reveals that most peoples go to war out of fear--a social hysteria--of 'expectable but unpredictable' disasters which will threaten food resources--warfare is an attempt to conquest and appropriate the resources of the defeated peoples in order to stave off or cushion against possible future famine. Warfare feeds on fear. Furthermore, international alliances increase the likelihood of war--the balance of power is easy to upset. Warfare is related to trade, conflict of interest and disputes between trading partners escalate to war more frequently than between nations which do not trade much with one another. Also, military equality, especially when there is rapid military buildup, increases the likelihood of two or more nations going to war.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Warfare, like migration, discrimination, segregation and other practices of birth control, has been looked at as a population control mechanism, not very 'cost effective' but quite 'efficient' in times of scarcity. This is linked to protein calorie malnutrition which is characteristic of conditions of underdevelopment and local regional overpopulation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a sense of looking at global wars and its occurrence as 'supercritical events' similar to earthquakes, avalanches and perhaps famines. Social movements are also 'supercritical events'. Like earthquakes it is known that they will eventually happen, but not exactly when. They occur with a random frequency which is expectable but unpredictable. They are a function of the supercriticality of world political economic systems, of hypercoherent integration which may breakdown or destabilize under its own weight, triggered by minor, unpredictable events and reverberating into major cataclysms.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Every world war, major and minor has been the result of some ethno-national social movement which triggered a rapid mobilization of military machines culminating in conflagration with always unforeseen consequences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE FREEDOM OF CAPITALISM</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dilemma of capitalist economic doctrine is that it is founded upon a world model of unlimited good, or unlimited economic growth in a world of ever increasing profits and ever growing markets. It is a system which is sustained by growth and development as much as it sustains the same growth and development. Its success has been largely due to its marriage with science the technological spin-offs of which have lead to the illusion of the realization of a world of unlimited good.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A part of this dilemma is that, though it is a world of unlimited good, it is also a world of 'survival of the fittest' in a competitive marketplace, where one person's gains is another's loss. This imposes a contradiction in the capitalist world view which generated cognitive dissonance and a set of double standards leading to a compartmentalization or dichotomization of the capitalist world between public and domestic spheres of interaction. The illusion of that increased consumption becomes rationalized and that there is a 'trickle down' effect in the increasing standards of living of producers and consumers alike as a net consequence of economic growth. This fits the utilitarian ethic of the 'most good for the most people' understood in terms of 'units of pleasure' which can be easily 'commoditized' as 'values of consumption'. Competition in the marketplace promotes integration but also entails systematic 'exclusion' from the entire process--it sets up a system of consumption priorities which privilege few 'haves' from many 'have nots' which results in a 'consumption' hierarchy reinforced politically in that those who produce the most with their labor consume the least, and those who consume the most produce the least by their labor.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Besides generating inequalities and exclusion from the system, capitalism in an ecological orientation is 'anti-ecological' in that its promotion of unlimited production/ consumption entails eventually degradation of a globally limited and finite earth and its spin-off of wastes, pollution, planned obsolescence lead to contamination and accelerated depletion of resources. Part of this process is the adoption and promotion of a 'convenience' lifestyle, measured in terms of material appliances, based on the principle of the cultural control and domination of natural forces and their harnessing for a facilitation of the human production/consumption lifestyle.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The anti-ecological and developmental consequences of the promotion of capitalism or the production of environmental degradation and social circumscription and inequality, have the result of producing the biological time bomb--the historical convergence of the overpopulation of the impoverished and the destruction of the natural environment in the construction of the man made.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">A WORLD OF DIMINISHING GOOD</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The classic hypothesis contraposing the world view of 'limited good' which views the life of the peasant mentality as a 'zero sum game' and the bureaucratized world of the middle and upper classes as sharing in a world of 'unlimited good' in a 'non-zero sum game' is rooted in a very ethnocentric framework of modernization which attempts to explicate how and why tradition bound peasants should be so resistant to developmental 'processes' which promises a world of improvement. Such a framework has not come to terms with an Malthusian earthbound view of the world which sees it as a world of 'diminishing good' played out in a 'negative sum game' in which one person's gain is everyone's expense and loss. Decidedly, an earthbound world view is a 'post modern' perspective of the world which, antithetical to the optimizism of the development oriented scientific modern is a portentously pessimistic outlook upon the human future. The local peasant perspective from this alternative point of view does not seem any longer as pessimistic as it is merely conservative in scope--it promoted a certain social egalitarianism which hindered the rise of parasitic bureaucracies and tended to provide a certain village centered sense of security. It was a world view oriented to the worst case scenario of hard times of drought, famine, pestilence, warfare and disease.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The peasant has never been an entirely independent spirit, though he/she may have had strongly independent value orientations, they were inevitably feeding or paying taxes to some one else.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Hard times are returning again and for the most part the important people have forgotten how best to cope with them. The critical difference between the village bound local world view and the earthbound global world view is the scale and scope of the significance of the terms, the peasant is no longer safe in his village, nor is the bureaucrat necessarily any better off.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A world of diminishing good has certain theoretical and philosophical implications of attitude and adaptation. A negative sum game means that the no matter how well it is played, surplus gains will entail net overall loss. A zero sum game pits two opponents against one another in a very primitive way--neither mutual competition nor dominance of either one over the other eventuates in gain--only mutual cooperation begets success. In an earthbound world, the strategy to be adopted in one of minimizing losses through minimizing gains, rather than optimizing or maximizing gains through minimization of losses. Rather than a conservative outlook, the predominate perspective will be one based upon the principle of 'rationing' of limited, irreplaceable commodities in order that they may be preserved for as long as possible. This leads to a world of 'restricted good' based upon principles of preservation and prevention. Rationing strategies will be diverse given various local circumstances and will lead to patterns of local hoarding, panic and to strategies of diversification as the number of alternative resources, no matter how basic or inefficient, become substituted in a world of scarcity. It will become a world of increasingly widespread deprivation, socio economic regression and extreme political economic polarization which will tear asunder the world middle class and increasingly marginalize the bureaucracy upon which it has been founded and flourished. Hoarding will be followed by increasing incidences of 'raiding' which will in turn generate a vicious cycle of revenge and punishment and 'feuding'. Social movements of all imaginable kinds will proliferate in confrontation with increasing authoritarian power structures which will attempt to preserve the status quo of extreme polarization, a minimal regressed form of social structure. In an earthbound world of diminishing good, there will be no point in leveling on a global scale, as there will be nothing to level and no amount of resources sufficient to distribute evenly throughout the world.</p> <hr> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="5">PAN-HUMANESS</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><b><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="2"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/hughmlewis/">by Hugh M. Lewis</a></font></b></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the real world, might has always been made right. The powerful conquer the weak and superimpose their own sense of values, civilization, history and ideology upon the cultures of the conquered. This has been the hard learned political lesson of human history. It is a lesson sometimes difficult to understand because it is usually the memory of the dominant culture which survives, while the many other cultures are soon forgotten. And when looked at from the standpoint of a dominant culture, it is hard not to believe that one's own values, civilization, history and ideology is indeed morally justified and inherently correct--of living the illusion that right made right.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another difficult lesson anthropology teaches us is that in the world of human reality, people are neither good nor bad, right nor wrong. There is indeed evil in the world which is perpetrated by people, but the people themselves rarely if ever act with the deliberate purpose of being evil or wrong, except as rare perversions of nature. Even many criminals act within a narrowly rationalized world view of their own legitimacy of being. People and their parties may make many mistakes, or be misguided down the wrong path by some sick or selfish power mongers, but they always usually act within a moral and semi-rational world view which construes their behavior as morally legitimate and proper. Evil is largely a consequence but rarely a cause, in the world of humankind. People are just people, doing what people have always done. The lesson learned by anthropology that there is no right or wrong in the world, but many small rights and wrongs, is perhaps the hardest lesson to be learned, but from the standpoint of a value free science based upon the observation of human behavior, it is a necessary one.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the metaphysical world of philosophers there is right and wrong in human reality, if in name only, regardless of the lessons of history and anthropology. The real world may burn their books, imprison them to silence their words, or put bullets in the back of their heads, but philosophers will still argue their case for a moral bottom line in the human world. Human existence and behavior will always pose basic moral and ethical dilemmas, whatever the vagaries of power in history or the realities of people in anthropology. Philosophers are not only arguing for the legitimacy of right versus wrong in the human world, if in name only, but they are also fighting for the general relevancy of their own metaphysical orientation and for the primacy of philosophy in the historical or anthropological lessons of humankind. They are in a sense defending their own legitimacy and sense of morality in the world, and though the world may never prove them right, it also can never prove them wrong, either,</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Politicians follow the path of power and tend to deal with people as if they were the objects of power, to be controlled and manipulated. Anthropologists follow the path of science and deal with people as behavioral entities for scientific inquiry and for the elucidation of scientific principles. Philosophers follow the path of wisdom, and see human beings as the bearers of knowledge and understanding. Philosophers see that human existence is frequently challenged by moral dilemmas which have no simple scientific solutions or political resolutions. They see that human being is a wise being, whose reality is always complicated by questions, paradoxes and contradictions which demand responses. The problems of philosophy, they claim, come before problems of science or power, because it guides the many choices that people must make, from their world view and attitudes toward reality and predetermines the different directions we eventually follow. The path of philosophy can lead to wisdom and enlightenment and can eventuate in a better world if its way is correct and clear.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Wise human beings live in realities bound by their mind, and formed by the abstract relations of words and their many meanings--it is this life of the mind as expressed by words from the mouth which makes humankind unique in nature and especially problematic from a philosophical point of view. We cannot simply be studied as if we were rocks in the ground or manipulated or controlled as if we were mere brute beasts of burden.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To defend themselves, primarily from themselves, philosophers have adopted a position called 'meta-ethical'--they can study ethic from a disinterested and distant stance that is purported beyond the involvement with ethics. They study different ethical systems and moral philosophies in order to understand how, why and what it is they say, to ferret out all the possible implications and inferences and to try to construct various counter arguments in its critique, but as philosophers, they do not adopt moral stances either for or against any particular kind of normative orientation, or seek to judge systems in a prescriptive way. In this they are not too different from anthropologists, except that they deal with systems of words and their meta-relations, where as anthropologists as scientists purport to study systems of people, their behavior and their values in a naturalistic way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A meta-ethical position is necessary for philosophers as it gives them a handle on possible truths which are non-relative from the standpoint of either power or values. Meta-ethics provides them a means for addressing the problematics of a universal normative system, or set of values which can be claimed to be applicable for all people, in all cultures and in all time, regardless of the relativity of power or values.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Philosophy remains important in our human world, for if its path of wisdom is followed long enough and pursued hard enough, it will eventually lead us in the right direction, which we would never find without it, and being irredeemably wise, we could never rest easy unless we looked for it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Justification of a world order of humankind has always depended upon a political ethical philosophy which successfully proposes a valid meta-ethical argument of what is pan humanly good and right. Such a philosophy has always had other important metaphysical and ontological ramifications--economic, social, educational, scientific, religious, political, legal--much of which has been frequently left on its own. Such meta-ethical argument has always had to confront and has yet failed to successfully resolve certain fundamental dilemmas of rational truth versus empirical relativism which are inextricably bound up with what it means to be human in the world. Such final justification depends ultimately upon our collective definition of 'pan humanness'--what is universally means to be human in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">No world order which lacks such meta-ethical justification or which is based upon false or erroneous political ethical philosophy, can claim such legitimacy which has non-ideological, ontological status in the world. Discovery and elaboration of 'pan humanness' as a meta-ethical set of organizing values and universal philosophical principles which are non-ideological leads to the question of what is genuinely, fundamentally universal about human identity in the world which could claim the status of 'pan humanness'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We can find evidence of a pan human identity in certain natural traits and needs shared by all members of a common biological species. We find a common capacity for linguistic competence and evidence for the psychic unity of humankind along emotional, symbolic, mythological and rational aspects. But none of these are adequate for the purpose of a universal meta-ethical orientation, for these innate universals also comprehend a tremendous amount of difference and variation, and none provide the necessary linkage to explain that while humanity has the capacity for good and right, it also so often fails to realize this capacity. With ethical questions, people have choices to make, in regard to natural characteristics, they have no choice.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The necessary linkage is the human conception of the ideal of human equality--that in theory and in practice all people are treated equally and have the same basic human responsibilities. Humankind shares the same basic humanitarian ideal of human equality, which applies to every individual regardless of basic differences between people. The value of Homo equus forms the ground for a meta-ethical orientation which is pan human and which is non-ideological in status.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Recognition of this potential equality underlies our natural human identity as a member of common humankind--in that we recognize in other people the same basic natural traits, needs and capacities, that we find within ourselves, constituting our common ground for being, and this allows us a choice between acknowledging differences or sameness between human beings and with the affirmation of sameness, we get by extension ideal equality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But posing human equality as the ground for a universal meta-ethic creates more problems philosophically that it solves, and having posed it, now it must be proven, philosophically at least, if not politically and anthropologically.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human equality underlies the philosophical legitimization of universal human rights as the universal normative framework upon which to establish global order, and it is in the understanding of both human equality and human rights as necessary universals that we arrive at a more complete comprehension of pan humanness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human rights remains mostly misunderstood, and there is a convenient kind of power to usurp and violate them derived from such common misunderstanding. For the most part, the values of human rights remains itself contextual and implicit, always lurking in the background of critical attention which tends always to focus upon the immediate conflicts and events of their instantiation or violation--thus they are largely construed indirectly as something to be inferred in relation to other things more concretely and directly evident. But the doctrine of these values demands explication as something more important in and of itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The original formulation of human rights requires substantial revision largely because the cultural and conceptual context of their realization and violation has changed dramatically. These changes have led to new kinds of rights and new situations, to new ways of realization and new methods for their violation and to a great extent the rethinking of the original formulations have not been able to keep up with such substantive alterations of the environments of their realization and violation. This has led to the erosion and subversion of these rights in many areas of daily living because the forces and powers based upon their violation and usurpation are constantly, deliberately plotting new methods. Human rights are things and values which always need to be protected, because they are always many people who are trying to take them away. Whole socio political economic structures have arisen in our modern age based primarily upon the kind of power derived from the forceful violation, persuasive subversion and manipulative usurpation of such contexts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is important to distinguish between basic or primary human rights, and derivative or secondary human rights: the former are the set of core values defining what the principle basis of all human rights are supposed to be, while the latter are those innumerable sets of rules or unspoken agreements based upon the instantiation and adjudication of the basic rights in social life--the contextual extension of these basic rights into everyday life ways. It is the latter set of derivative rights which are primarily the ledger main of lawyers legalese and judiciary arbitrariness. The secondary rights alter as the conditions and contexts of realization and violation change, while the basic rights tend to remain relatively constant.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This is the distinguishing difference between rights considered basic and derivative. Primary rights are general and relatively unchanging, therefore largely rational and orienting in their expression: secondary rights are specific and alterable, context dependent and largely empirically exemplifying in their pragmatic instrumentality--the former set are few and restrictive in definition, the latter many and inclusive. Thus it make sense that if we wish to usurp the power of rights that we direct attention away from the explicit definition of the former and focus attention toward the demonstration of the latter, ignoring the implicitness of both in relation to one another and in relation to the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The basic rights are considered universally inviolable and in this sense absolute, but the derivative rights are violable and therefore relative to the contextuality of their interpretation. It is in fact the violability of the derivative rights that the pervasive failure of the realization of human rights, and of their contexts of understanding, are to be found. We may unreservedly condemn a tyrant who flagrantly violates the basic rights of others by torture, execution, imprisonment, and so on, but at the same time we may whole- heartedly uphold the interests of corporations or powerful individuals that chronically and massively manipulate and usurp many derivative rights in order to maximize their profits or promote their powers. And in upholding this usurpation we will say we are protecting their 'corporate' rights and prerogatives.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">another important distinction is between true or genuine rights, quasi-or semi-rights or spurious rights, and false, pretentious or hypocritical rights of convenience, or 'un-rights'. We may refer to the latter set as privileges, prerogatives, license derived from power, political economic interests and the irresponsible freedoms and pursuit of 'pleasures'. Such spurious rights will masquerade as the former genuine rights as long as it serves the interests of private individuals or special interest groups to do so. Those rights exist in the gray areas of context between the realization and violation of human rights.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All basic human rights and all true human rights are always and only individually oriented. Their enunciation is the only protection which the individual has against the whimsical social ethos of the group--they are the only guarantee of individual autonomy of will and independence of thought and action. They are the only things coming between the freedom of the individual and the anarchy of the masses or the tyranny of the few.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Groups and collectivities, at whatever level, from the local through the national or regional to the global, derive their moral charter and legitimacy from the recognition and protection of these basic, genuine human rights. Secondary rights pertaining to such collectivities as separate entities are based upon the 'domestic analogy' of the basic rights of the individual--they are treated as if they were separate, individual entities with basic rights--and these corporate groupings ultimately derive their normative and moral charter from the consensus of its individual constituency and from the need for the protection of individual rights and freedoms. This is the source of the moral charter of corporate organization, power and authority and is the exclusive basis of the derivation of their secondary rights.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though national constitutions may pay lip service to this charter for protection and guarantee of these rights, and may even sometimes instrumentally uphold its charter, no nation has the justifiable privilege or moral mandate to ignore or violate these rights, whatever the circumstances or occasion of their demonstration.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This maxim stands absolutely and grounds the values of human rights in the fundamental meta-ethic of human equality. This includes any manner of violation, whether for 'national security' or national interest. And what is correct at the national level is correct at the international and global levels as well, and throughout the hierarchy of political organization. No alliance of nations, no province or state or municipality, no matter how democratically constituted, may ignore or neglect these basic rights without forfeiting in the process their moral charter, their 'derived' right to rule. Rights and powers of organizations at all levels are derived from the charter of basic human rights--they either protect and guarantee these rights or fail to, but they do not grant them, privilege them, appropriate them or authorize them from above.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We may say that all individuals and all social collectivities are absolutely subject to the 'moral imperative' of human rights.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To a large extent derivative rights are concerned with the power and relations of social collectivities in relation to the individual. So, too, spurious rights and un-rights stem from the arbitrary powers of social collectivities or authorities to arrest and suspend genuine rights, or to modify them contextually in the name of or for the sake of organizational interest or security. It is at these rarefied levels of power, so above and beyond the everyday vision and interests of most people, that such gray areas of power and privilege come into existence, that genuine rights become invisible, acquiring their characteristic social invisibility or silence, and that derived or spurious rights, in their demonstration, become transparent or reified behind the illusive veil of power. We may refer to the characteristic invisibility of basic rights, the reflective transparency of derivative rights, and the reified, hypostatized illusion of spurious rights.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Spurious and un-rights of organizations do not stem directly from the misappropriation of the basic and genuine rights of the individual, but are only indirectly immanent from this moral ground of human reality. They derive from the derivative and spurious rights situated in everyday relations between actors and collectively and cumulatively, from the personal relationships and social networks of interdependency. Rights and their expressions involved in and governing interpersonal relationships, like organizational rights, are always derivative and never basic. The difference between these social interpersonal and organizationally derived rights are that the former are directly derivative while the latter are always indirectly derivative. It is possible to say that spurious rights in both contexts, are always coincidentally derivative or superimposed by authority and that un-rights are underivative.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is important to recognize that indirectly derivative rights arise from the need to govern and manage correctly the relations between people and to deal with the situations which arise incidentally as conflicts of interest between people which bring the problem to the realization of basic rights into question. In fact all indirectly derivative rights may be summarily reduced to and explained in terms of directly derivative rights between individuals and the interpersonal contexts of their expression. In this way we may say that nomos is derived from ethos and that legal and political institutions are derived from the cultural realities in their articulating and expression. Indirectly derivative and spurious rights always imply or entails some form of direct instantiation in the realization or violation of individual rights in interpersonal contexts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The immediate concern is not the elucidation of derivative rights, as these carry us away from the more pressing moral issues and lead us down the thickly wooded path of descriptive and prescriptive legal paradigms. The important focus is upon the sense of fundamentality of the basic rights as they are primarily situated in the existentially of the individual actor and the interpersonal ethos of face to face social life, and in the moral imperative this entails for all human social life. It allows a more precise understanding of the role of cultural and conceptual contextuality in the expression, realization and violation of these rights.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If directly derived rights provide the ground for the explanation and justification of indirectly derived rights and spurious rights, then they also provide the primary cultural and conceptual context for the instantiation and validation of the basic rights. They situate the fundamentality and moral imperative of basic human rights in the everyday relations between people. And it is in understanding of this 'situating' effect of directly derivative rights that the philosophical, meta-ethical comprehension and justification for human rights as a universal ideological and moral doctrine is to be found.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The doctrine of fundamental human rights is designed to protect the needs, interests and independence of the individual in relation to other people and in relation to the social contracts and charters between them. The design of basic rights is to ensure the autonomous willpower of the individual--his/her freedom to think, speak and act relatively independently from the constraints of others. This is the guarantee of the normative freedom of the individual's independent judgment, rationality and decision making capabilities. Liberty is what we refer to as the 'emancipation' from social constraint and social power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But the social reality of human existence inevitably entails that the freedom of one individual must always be balanced against and weighed by the relative freedom of all other individuals. In other words, freedom in the normative sense is not unrestricted and absolute, but is morally bound by the freedom, or potential un-freedom of all other individuals. The normative freedom of one individual is guaranteed as long as its realization does not involve the violation of other people's freedom. From this follow the moral imperative of human rights, the sense of normative responsibility the individual has toward all other individuals (and the collectivity, as 'individual' has towards all other 'individuals'). This normative responsibility and its moral imperative provide the charter for indirectly derivative rights and powers.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the same way that we refer to a fundamental set of basic human rights, we may also refer to a corresponding set of basic human responsibilities not to violate these rights of others in the realization of their own freedoms. Such basic responsibilities are not 'unfreedom' of arbitrary social constraint. Indeed we have a responsibility to protect and promote freedom. These are the basis for fundamental moral codices in society. We may also refer to the critical difference between the responsibility to exercise one's own rights in the realization of one's own fundamental normative freedom, and in the sense of freedom from responsibility which determines the moral boundaries of our rights. It demarcates the difference between liberty and license. We may also refer to the basic 'unfreedom' which is inherent in the violation of human rights and responsibilities. In the same way that we may distinguish between basic and derived, genuine, spurious and un-rights, and directly and indirectly derived rights, so also may we refer to corresponding kinds of basic, derived, spurious, direct and indirect human responsibilities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If basic human rights remain consistently unlearned and misunderstood, as we are consistently, habitually taught how to 'unthink' rights in relation to social sanctions and powers, so also basic human rights remains even more poorly understood and less well recognized. Our normative responsibility to ourselves in the realization of our own rights, and to all of humankind in the protection of their rights and common well being and the critical connection between the individual and universal levels of context, is intervened and interfered with by the indoctrination and inculcation of spurious responsibilities and unfreedoms by group bounded norms and narrow cultural traditions. Chauvinism, patriotism, blind loyalty to the collective, in-group/out-group prejudice, are all part and parcel of the ideological propaganda campaign to unthink ourselves out of our basic responsibilities to all of humankind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From the very beginning of our formal education to the end, from flag salutes and daily pledges of allegiance to prayer readings and organized team sports to rallying around the high school totem mascot, to the professional politics of evaluating papers, class grades and granting diplomas and the guild mentality of professional clicks and elites, we are taught and programmed to be responsible to everything and everybody including the almighty clock, the bell, the whistle, the schedule, the syllabus and the deadline, except to ourselves and the whole of humankind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The cultural and conceptual context appropriates for the realization of human rights and responsibilities constrains a kind of socio-political ethos which may best be loosely described ad 'democracy'. To the extent that basic human responsibilities entails a non-violent and honest orientation, and to the extent that politics based upon the culturally relative model of 'might makes right' is inherently corrupting and evil, then such commitment constrains a kind of a-political attitude which may well be referred to as 'social anarchy' without the necessary negative connotations of the tyranny of disorder and absolute chaos. To the extent that human rights protects human freedom, government by consent is demanded, and to the extent that educational institutions can successfully inculcate the individual in a firm sense of basic human responsibilities, an acephalous, anarchical socio-political order is resulting. In other words, a participatorial and self organizing political order can be envisioned in the kind of cultural and conceptual contexts of the realization of human rights and responsibilities,, based upon the minimization of the function of political control, military coercion and fascist discipline.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human rights and responsibilities become balanced in the scales of justice, and this balancing provides the ultimate framework for the understanding of the doctrine of human equality, the normative scaffolding for the meta-ethical justification of pan-humanness in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our sense of justice may be separated into what be referred to as 'natural justice' and 'social justice'. Natural justice arises from the natural constraints imposed upon human existence as these are manifest in terms of basic human needs. Natural needs may be referred to as those limitations or requirements which guarantee the sustenance of a health and human well being. There has been with the progressive development of convenience a corresponding 'need' inflation--people now 'need' cars to drive to work in to earn the 'money' they need to live upon, and they 'need' gas to fuel their cars. People also need fresh air to breath, clean water to drink, and nutritious food to eat.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the same sense that we may distinguish between primary and derivative and genuine and spurious 'needs'. Needless to say our inflation of needs occasions the multiplication of many falsehoods, delusions, addictions and greed. Social justice arises in relation to the exercise of human freedoms and responsibilities as these realize or fail to realize the natural justice of basic human needs. Social justice can be seen as derivative of natural justice and in its derivation becomes complicated by a great deal of need inflation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Basic human needs has always remained the same, so has the fundamental sense of natural justice relating to these needs remained essentially unchanged, but the context of the instantiation of these needs in directly derivative terms of interpersonal human relations has changed dramatically and our thinking upon the problem has not kept pace. Directly derivative social justice demands sufficient welfare--the common well being of the individual and of all of humankind should be one of the principle social and individual concerns. It too has a force of a basic normative injunction on human existence and a moral imperative to collective social action, but this primary concern has been largely vitiated by partisan politics and private special interest groups.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But why justice and why human rights and why freedom, that all these should constitute the moral ground and universal ethic for humankind? In other words, how shall we argue the case for the philosophical justification of this value orientation over any other plausible meta-ethical orientation towards a normative human reality. So far, most of the argument presented has been tautological without an convincing substantive argument, in favor of our acceptance of such a position.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The discussion of human freedom as a basic precondition of a moral human existence seems to fly in the face of many social science orientations, to contradict the doctrine of ethical and cultural relativism and is itself culturally and ideologically rooted in a kind of value orientation which defines freedom as a necessary good and a basic prerequisite of 'the pursuit of happiness'. It is in itself a relative value orientation, so how can it be used as a meta-ethical, trans-cultural and pan human foundation for a normative universal. Not all cultures value human freedoms equally and most of humanity seems quite content to compromise their basic freedoms for a sense of group security.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The doctrine of human rights is itself, like the doctrines of pacifism and non-violence, rooted in heterogeneous hermeneutical traditions which have been themselves culturally and historically situated. But ideological systems accrete meaning and become detached from their origins, gaining a life of their own, independent of tradition. Such systems become organizational in their function, orienting the collective mind. They develop their own conceptual contexts for their understanding beyond any particular cultural tradition.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As such they 'stand for themselves' as symbol systems and create their own meanings outside of cultural contexts or historical influences. Science is such a symbolic system, though its primary and ultimate referents are always natural phenomena. But science does not seek philosophical or epistemological justification though philosophers of science attempt such an understanding. It finds its own justification exclusively in the sufficiency of its explanations of natural phenomena. Similar kinds of sufficiency arguments may be applied to such philosophical religious orientations as human rights and pacifism. They go beyond mere ideology or tautological systems of rationalization in their ability to consistently explain what 'happens' empirically in reference to other 'empirical happenings.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Thus it is possible to imagine a kind of normative 'science' which sufficiently and successfully, 'correctly' explains events in reference to other events and 'meta-relations' between such events. A good argument can be made that all social science can be construed as 'normative' in orientation to the extent that it concerns human social relations between rational, decision making individuals and ad 'scientific' to the extent that it is concerned with human behavioral reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But all this still begs the question of a valid meta-ethical argument for presuming human rights to be fundamental and normatively universal in human reality. At first glance there seems little in the 'nature' of humankind that can be given as an a-priori or sufficient ground for such an argument. Indeed, the original natural human may in fact have been brutal, selfish and short. A good case has been made for natural human aggression explaining innately violent social tendencies. Then why must we necessarily presume a 'moral imperative' of superimposing regime of human rights over an original reality of need, greed and seed. Most anthropological, sociological and psychological evidence would seem to contradict such a presupposition.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The philosophical justification for the sense of natural justice and a natural moral imperative for normative freedom, rather than a science of natural order and the evolutionary imperative of the law of natural selection, can be found in the 'psychic unity of humankind' which posits that all people are potentially 'sentient' which endows us with a 'spiritual potentiality' of equality. The quality and character of human cognition, of Homo sapience as the 'sentient human being' is the distinguishing mark of human reality setting it apart from other life forms and allowing for human culture. While basic needs may be more or less the same, not all human beings are born equal. We recognize the ideal of the spiritual equality of humankind as a possible goal yet unrealized, as an ideal worthy of our attention and emulation. We do not deprive people of their human rights or basic equality in spirit because there are natural differences in abilities or talents. We do not deprive them of the benefit of a sacred 'soul of humanness' which characterizes the belief in the spiritual equality of humankind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Innate human sentience is regarded as what defines unique human identity, whether individually or collectively in terms of 'pan-humanness'. It set humankind, and the human being, apart as something special in the natural order. It is a fundamental symbol of the self which applies individually to the collective identity of humankind, forming the basis of what we refer to as 'common humanity'. Its recognition, however implicit, is the beginning of the development of a fundamental religious spirituality distilled from so much ideological dogma, myth and superstition. It is the source of our common humanity or human identity, the beginning of our collective emancipation from the bonds of nature, and our means of coming to terms with or own 'hearts of darkness'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The appeal to human sentience, the psychic unity of humankind and the spiritual equality of humanity work together in other ways to justify our sense of the primary philosophical importance of the doctrine of human rights, and so much meta-ethical justification is not as straight forward as it is made to seem.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our sense of justice depends upon a notion of 'equality' however relative or absolute. Thus we regularly refer to values of 'social equality' or 'political equality' or equality of opportunity or educational equality or ideological equality without really explicitly understanding what we really mean. We frequently grant one kind of 'equality' while revoking other kinds--any way we slice the pie we can be accused of discrimination. It is in a world of relative inequality that we find the need to establish ideals of 'equality in spirit'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our sense of justice entails a notion of 'fair play' even if in a poetic sense of 'an eye for an eye' or of revenge. Death is called the great equalizer. Western witchcraft believes in 'three fold retribution'. In all these there is a sense of 'fairness' in human relations and the need to restore such a state when conditions turn awry. Such a state of the need for fairness in social relations is related to values of harmony, mutual reciprocity, peaceful coexistence etc.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Fairness' related to our notions of equality in terms of 'evenness' and the consequent need to 'get even'. Equality comes from the Latin 'equs' meaning 'flat' or even. Equality refers to a state of flatness or evenness in social relations when there are no outstanding disparities between persons or parties in their basic conditions, expectations or relations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Rarely do we expect or get exact or true equality in any absolute sense. It is usually relative to some standard of measurement, more or less or approximate. Only ideologically do we refer to 'human equality' as being in some sense absolute and non-relative to all contexts, and this is our notion of universal 'spiritual equality of humankind'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">When attributing justice to our world, we are attributing qualities and states or conditions to others, which we recognize as being relatively present or absent in ourselves. We are behaving normatively in our judging and judgment of human relations, and in this we express our rationality and our sentience. Our sentience allows us the possibility of stepping outside or ourselves, of imagining a separate, sentient soul apart from our corporeal being. In this we can imagine ourselves in different states of being other than what we really are, and we can see ourselves in others and find others within us. A refined sense of the primitive justice of 'an eye for an eye' is 'do unto others as you would have others do unto you'. Even more subtly is the mandate 'do not do unto others what you would not want them to do unto you'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This sense of natural and social justice and the normative need for establishing relative equality are fundamental aspects of our normative reason, and constitute the basis of basic normative human needs in the restoration of social order and realignment of the social with the natural world. It resides in our ability to live vicariously in other people's shoes, to imagine ourselves in their condition and to wish upon other what we will. Even more importantly, it resides in our ability to recognize that what happens to others might possibly happen to ourselves.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One of the most convincing reasons given for the position of holding human rights absolute and inviolable and for attributing them universally to humankind with exception in our ability to recognize that if we allow the violation of a right in a single instance, we create a ground of precedence for the possibility of its violation in all instances. And if we deny them to any one individual, however inept or criminal, then we acknowledge the possibility for denying them to all individuals, especially to ourselves. And this peculiar quality of human sentience to imagine ourselves as others and others as ourselves is what identifies us in a pan-human state of being and allows us to imagine a universal brotherhood (and sisterhood) and to posit the need for universal equality and common justice.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But upon an even deeper level of our collective unconscious, our sentience allows us to understand our own heart of darkness and to recognize it in others. We seen in the possible evilness of all people our own possibility for evil, injustice and violence and or own ability to make normative mistakes and misjudgments. It resides in our recognition of evil for what it is and for its possibility of what it can become. In our ability to understand human evil, we also recognize the need to restore the balance and try to prevent possible future imbalance. Thus it is because we are potentially evil, that we must become potentially equal. It is because there is injustice in the world that we must keep ideals of human rights and justice.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">So we must foster forgiveness over vengeance, compassion over retribution, tolerance over punishment and we do not categorically condemn every breach of our pan human moral imperative or every violation of a human right. Indeed our collective history as been one largely composed of such massive breaches and mass violations. The progress of human emancipation has not been based upon the principle of violence begetting more violence. We strive not to indiscriminate but to enlighten and emancipate.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is from the sentience of humankind that comes our common sense of justice and the ideal of spiritual equality which unites us existentially and morally against the realities of relative inequality and injustice. It allows us to recognize in the law of nature the tyrannies of necessity, in the reign of power, the relative evil of might makes right and the moral tyranny of fear and the threat of violent force and in the chaos of lawless irresponsibility the tyranny of chaos. In this alone we recognize the meta-ethical justification for positing human rights and their realization as a universal moral injunction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though this argument must stand alone, not needing meta-ethical justification in terms of any other condition or natural state, it does have a more interesting explanation in terms of what human sentience is naturally and exactly how it related to the need for human rights.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A keystone has been missing from our meta-ethical edifice--individual freedom as the basis for human rights has not yet been sufficiently explained. Why is the granting and guaranteeing of normative freedom and independence necessary for the realization of human rights?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The answer lies in the natural reality of individual human differences and in the dilemma posed by the fact of individual uniqueness of identity and personality. The fact of individual human differences arises from the relativity of human existence--relativeness of equality, of needs, of conditions, of contexts and values. Relative and reflexive recognition of individual human differences creates a sense of individual uniqueness which we value as spiritually sacred and inviolable to our sense of human identity in the world. But this relativeness of individuality poses a grand paradox underlying the existential problematics of human social realities--our common sentience allows us to recognize a natural relationship to humankind. We also hold as sacred this identification with the common body of humanity. It leads is to posit an 'equality in spirit' if not in fact, which we then regard as inviolably sacred. The answer to this fundamental existential dilemma is that the inviolable sanctity of the human soul and the 'equality in spirit' of all humankind are one and the same things--the opposite manifestations of the same source of natural human sentience to recognize difference and sameness--this is the need for normative freedom and independent willpower.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The need for normative freedom is demanded by our natural sentience. Human beings are all equally unique and equally different in spirit. And this we hold as inviolably sacred. The expression of these differences and fulfillment of this sense of uniqueness demands a maximization of normative freedom in our social relations. Though there are common sameness of being and universal human traits, human beings are not all the same and should not be constrained to be all the same. Normative freedom is a necessity because it is prerequisite to the realization of these differences and uniqueness of individual personality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The distinctive characteristic of our sentience is our ability to imagine--to imagine ourselves as self, as others, to imagine other possibilities, to live vicariously and symbolically, to see ourselves as unique, separate and as sacred and as simultaneously the same and united and yet sacred. We are able to imagine alternative traits, attributes, conditions and states in ourselves and in others, and to allow this imagination to be the guide for our actions, and our 'instantiations' of such possibilities. Our imagination allows us to sense discrepancy, to fill gaps in our understanding and to make inferences and judgments about our reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Successful cultivation of such imagination, the so called 'open mind' requires relative normative freedom from overburdening social constraints. It requires the private freedom to decide right from wrong, good from bad, better from worse, in our everyday thoughts and actions and to explore options, possibilities in our everyday choices and most of all, freedom to make and correct mistakes. The exercise of our normative freedom allows us the opportunity to test our evaluations of the world and to learn by the wisdom of our choices. It also entails allowing others the same kind of normative freedom.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In every case, violation of human rights entails directly or indirectly some kind of social constraining force, whether active or passive, external or internal, upon an individual's normative freedom. Such constraining forces which so impinge upon our existence in the debilitation of the individual's normative capacity to act autonomously and therefor responsibly.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The innate, natural normative capacity of human sentience accounts for the distinctive characterizing trait of pan-humanness called creativity. Definitions of creativity embody operationally regular behavioral phenomena which is amenable to scientific method. It is 'self-organizing' and 'pattern generating' behavior of the imagination at the border of chaos. The vitality and adaptability of our common and collective creativity depends upon the cultural realization of normative freedom as a necessary and sufficient precondition. It defines the human capacity as a culture bearing, culture inventing 'creature', allowing the unique human ability to create culture and for the creation of alternative conditions for the realization of human possibility. Providing the kind of cultural and conceptual contexts required for the cultivation of individual creative capacities through the optimization of normative freedom is the essence of a common education for collective emancipation and enlightenment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This argument successfully resolves the dilemmas of cultural relativism which so far has prevented philosophical meta-ethics from constructing a universal normative system. Cultural relativism posits an irreducible relativeness of value orientations embedded in differing cultural contexts. This leads to the realization that there can therefore be no single correct system of values immanent or a-priori in human reality which may apply equally well in all cultural situations. It also leads to the further realization that, in fact, in our collective history, 'might makes right' and whomever has the power to constrain and change people's lives, therefore has the power to refashion and reconstruct cultural values. This is an historical reality founded in empirical fact which no amount of ideological truth or philosophical rationalization can undo. Understanding the realities of human moral existence therefore depends scientifically upon understanding the realities and meanings of social power and undermines any argument to establish a universal meta-ethical system for humankind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But a genuinely meta-ethical approach, being both 'beyond ethics' and of and about 'ethics' need not be inimical to the realities of power and cultural relativity. To be effective our meta-physical rationalizations must effectively deal with the dilemmas of the real world and effectively overcoming the 'paradox' of cultural relativism is the principle purpose and problem of any realistic and reasonable meta-ethical argument. Cultural relativism is properly interpreted provides the solution to our meta-ethical dilemma.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If wholeheartedly and unreservedly embraces, cultural relativism demands that we account for differences of cultural context in the justification of our normative systems. Cultural differences are a contextual and social derivation of individual differences, the reality of the former is dependent upon and a function of the realization of the latter. Similarly, uniqueness of cultural orientation is derived from the reality of individual uniqueness. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that to the extent individual differences and uniqueness demands a context of normative freedom, cultural differences and uniqueness of context require as well a relative freedom for its expression. It follows that part of the problematic of collective emancipation is the recognition and cultivation of cultural differences and the reality of cultural multiplicity, as this is essential to the context for the development of collective human freedom.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This argument is similar to the one which distinguishes basic and genuine human rights from derivative and spurious rights. We may say that cultural freedom is contextually derivative of individual normative freedom, and we may refer to a derivative kind of cultural creativity as well. Both individual freedom and creativity and cultural contextual freedom and creativity are directly manifest in interpersonal social relations and can be explained and expressed in terms of such relations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But there is an important limiting qualification to this argument in defense of cultural relativity of values. Where individual freedom is held as inviolable and absolute, and leads rationally to the need for enculturation of human responsibility, cultural freedom is always relative and subject to constraining violations and results in the need for collective social limitations and sanctions. The realization of human rights demands a cultural and conceptual context and the relative nature of this realization provides the acceptable parameters for defining this cultural and conceptual context.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In other words, cultural freedom and difference is allowable and preferable as long as it promoted the realization of human rights or at least does not constrain such realization. But when its realization eventuates in the violation of human rights or in the constraining of the basic freedoms upon which these rights are based, then the cultural freedoms and differences are no longer morally sustainable.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The paradox of cultural relativism is rooted in the same existential paradox of individualism and the solutions are the same as well. Recognition of the pan-human identity of both individuals and cultures in terms which are regarded as inviolably sacred--equality of people and of cultures--are found in the realities of differences and relative inequalities between both individuals and cultures. Both lead to the same sense of basic human responsibility and the same kind of universal moral injunction of human rights. Cultural freedom and difference is regarded as sacred as long as it does not violate its own inviolability based upon the absolute character of individual freedom and rights--cultural context is always relative to individual difference. These define the natural and social parameters of human freedom and responsibility, both individually and culturally.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The difference between a cultural orientation which sustains or cultivates individual normative freedom and one which leads to its neglect or violation is similar to the difference between genuine and spurious human rights and responsibilities. In this way we may refer to a genuine cultural orientation as opposed to a spurious one based upon the above distinction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To say that all people are equal in spirit or that all cultures are equal in values, is not to say that people may do whatever pleases them or that cultures may acceptably violate human rights, nor is it to necessarily deny the realities that not all people are created equal and not all cultures share the same, or even similar sets of values. Cultural relativism, as an empirical reality or as an ideological doctrine, and the doctrine of human rights as a meta-ethical philosophy, are not necessarily inimical or irreconcilable but are in fact mutually necessary and concomitant in the understanding of human rights and the problematics of their existential realization. Nor does the fact that most cultures throughout most of human history and prehistory have chronically and habitually, customarily and traditionally violated human rights en masse require us to deny these doctrines as unjustifiable or unrealistic. Recognition of inviolability does not depend upon the knowledge of its chronic violation, just as an infinite number of wrongs do not make a right or an infinite number of false incidences cannot prove a truth.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There remain real and important reasons why we regard such values as inviolable and universally absolute, reasons which transcend the facts of their disproof. The fact is that it is in our very recognition of evil for what it is, in our very ability to recognize violence as the violation of human rights and values of non-violence as promoting human rights, that we can in our sentience and normative independence acknowledge the tyranny of power and necessity and anarchy and can imagine better worlds with such tyranny, that leads us to universally value the pan human realization of such possibilities of human equality and freedom. Our very recognition of the critical difference between possible right and actual wrong, between good and evil, even as only an imagined potentiality of human spirit, creates the very ground for our meta-ethical justification. Our sense of justice is not only rooted in our cultural values, but also in the recognition of evil in the world of evil and in the possibility of human good.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In giving a name to human rights and in situating them in reference to cultural values, human sentience and the natural need for normative freedom, and in locating them in intellectual terrain in reference to related value orientations we have also given a name and an identity to human evil.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mete-ethical justification for the moral imperative of human rights is neither self evident nor amenable to common sense rooted in relative values and folk psychology. We must learn the wisdom of the way of the human equality and freedom--we are not naturally born with it except in spirit and potentiality. Human rights are held sacred in their function of identifying the uniqueness and value of human individuality in relation to all of humanity. They are held absolute in the sense of also being absolutely inviolable. Their sacredness defines our basic humanity and our basic human identity. They also serve as a counter reference by which to define our inhumanity. We find that their moral justification in the recognition of the evil that attends their failure and in our resulting need to resist and counteract this violence. In their realization we refer to what is basic and genuine as contrasted with what is derivative and spurious, knowing that its understanding is always relative to cultural and conceptual contextuality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is in the day to day derivation of these basic values that the possibility for their violation comes into play in interpersonal social relations. We justify the moral imperative in our sentience, our imagination, our sense of justice and on our compassion for suffering and understanding of the humanness of evil. We find its ground in our common heart of darkness--the ability to recognize within ourselves the possibility of our own evil and the subsequent need to come to terms with and conquer this sense of darkness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Notions of freedom and responsibility, justice and equality, needs and social constraints, all come into play in the elucidation of the meta-ethical basis for human rights.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We accept the call and charter of the moral imperative of human rights as the price we pay for identity with common humanity and citizenship to humankind, which necessarily transcends all other identities, loyalties and chauvinism. They exist because we exist as something more than blind followers or sycophantic believers. The virtues of human rights are nor innate or a-priori or even necessarily logical or utilitarian not natural to our sense of understanding. There are no preexisting constraints demanding that we live by such a doctrine. If there were then it would be clear that their violation would have been the extreme exception than the pervasive common rule. This observation is nor borne out by any history. Realization of human rights often demands degrees of self abnegation, sacrifice and sense of social responsibility which appears foolish in many circumstances and frequently proves inimical to other divisive commitments which may seem immediately more urgent, more powerful or more necessary. And yet human rights as a doctrine of commitment remains the only meta-ethically justifiable value orientation after all the other moral contradictions of our common existence has been distilled away.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This work has begun with the issue of human rights to emphasize their central importance, both to the understanding of pan-humanness as an alternative philosophical paradigm and to the understanding of the dilemmas and theoretical problematics which confront humankind today, the resolution of which will determine our collective future.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If the problem of human rights and pan-humanness were left to the end, as originally intended, then its imperative sense of priority and importance would have been buried beneath the mountain that is to follow.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PAN-HUMAN-NESS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Pan-human-ness is an awakening of awareness of being fully human in an earthbound world. It is a state of collective conscience of the universal relationship between individual human identity and the identity of the whole of humankind. It is the state of full realization of humanity on our world, of human potential, of human rights and human equality. It frames our reason for being in our world and constitutes the ground of meaning of our world. It is humankind finally coming of age upon the earth, with the mature sensibilities and sensitivities of a universal world view.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PRIDE AND HUMILITY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We must recognize all forms and examples of self pride as manifestations of over inflated and insecure 'ego' which we can ill afford to hang on to in our new earthbound environment. Jettisoning false pride as a dangerous value, we must embrace the value of humility in our social relations as a more adaptive way in the new age. Hubris and nemesis. The humility of the lowly turtle begets a long life. Our humility stems from the fact that in the face of natural forces we are indeed powerless to control change and to preserve perpetually the status quo of power. Embracing the humility of fundamental powerlessness will allow us to come to terms with our own natures and to resolve the Oedipal conflicts which plague our lives with anger and frustration.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">HUMAN RIGHTS, REVISED</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Everywhere human rights are proclaimed, but nowhere are they fully realized. The Bill of Rights was the singly best thing any group of politicians has ever done for humankind but now the recognition of our rights, and our collective need for their realization, demands radical revisioning in the face of unexpected global changes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The full realization of human rights perhaps itself only an unrealistic utopian dream, is not necessarily an unworkable or impracticable impossibility. There is nothing intrinsic to the nature of state organization or of social structuration except perhaps the threat of violence which makes the chronic and massive violation of these rights an inevitability.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Like, pacifism, the doctrine of human rights is an ideological orientation which is based upon the commitment to certain kinds of values which depend upon a cultural and conceptual context for their appropriate comprehension and realization. In fact, human rights is concomitant with the value orientation of non-violence--these sets of values go hand in hand in the emancipation of humankind. A working definition of what constitutes violence (to use force) is the violation (from the Latin violare--to use force or violence) of human rights. Pacifism, as an ideology of non-violence, entails a commitment toward the realization of human rights in our common world and the cultivation of the kind of cultural and conceptual context which makes this realization an efficacious possibility.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The doctrine of human rights requires substantial revision because the cultural and conceptual contexts of their realization and violation have been dramatically altered. These radical changes have led to new kinds of rights and new kinds of situations which contest them, to new ways of realization and new means of violation. To a great extent the rethinking of the original formulations has not been able to keep up with such substantive and contextual alterations of the social environments of their instantiation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A revised list of new Human Rights would include the following:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">1. The Right to a Home. No more homeless, no more refugees, no more slum lords, no more ghettos, no more tenements. Homes with yards, children, animals, peace, security and freedom.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">2. The Right to Work. Real jobs that pay enough to live on and then some to save with. Jobs that do not consume an entire life time. Jobs with benefits and security. No more unemployment, no more underemployment, no more systematic discrimination or obfuscation. No more labor exploitation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">3. The Right to Health. Health is a human right, not a privilege of the few and wealthy. Dying of cancer should not entail a life time of debt. No more unaffordable health insurance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">4. The Right to Eat. Adequate nutrition is a human right. No more starving poor or malnourished children. No more hunger.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">5. The Right to Education. Education is in a privilege of the wealthy but a right of all people. Education to as high a level of attainment as a person decided, in an open and public forum.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">6. The Right to Life Choices. We have a right to be what we want to be, no one can decide what we can or cannot become.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">BASIC HUMAN RESPONSIBILITIES</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Basic human rights are constrained only by a corresponding set of basic human responsibilities, such that the normative freedom and realization of our own rights does not entail the violation of the rights of others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">These responsibilities are universal--we apply them in regard to all human beings and we expect them of all human beings. No nationalism or ethnocentrism or familism can deny or preclude such pan human responsibilities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A brief incomplete list would include the following responsibilities:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">1. The Responsibility to Non-violence. Non-violence in any way, at any level or distance of involvement. Violence is the principle means of the violation of human rights.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">2. The Responsibility to Non-exploitation. We cannot use, dominate, manipulate other people for our own gain, greed or aggrandizement, however indirect our involvement.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">3. The Responsibility to Respect. We must respect the basic rights of all others and show people the basic dignity which comes with a common humanity and collective human identity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">4. The Responsibility of Honesty. We cannot lie, cheat, deceive other to our own advantage or their disadvantage. We cannot disseminate information which distorts, deludes, deceives or persuades others in underhanded ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">5. The Responsibility to Independence. We must think, speak and act independently of others. We must not become sycophants, true believers, proselytizers. We must regularly and courageously exercise our normative freedom even if it entails persecution and punishment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">6. The Responsibility to Intervene. We must intervene in the violation of the rights of others, if and when their rights are clearly violated and when we are able to do something constructive in this intervention.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">7. The Responsibility of Knowledge. Knowledge creates responsibility. To know and do nothing is irresponsible. It ignore and fail to know is irresponsible. We have a responsibility to be informed and to inform.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">8. The Responsibility to Health. Health is not just a human right, but a human responsibility. We have a responsibility to amend unhealthy habits and reneging such a responsibility violates our own as well as the rights of others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">9. The Responsibility to Equality. We have a responsibility to treat all others equally, to not dominate others or submit to the subordination by others or by systems of authority.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">10. The Responsibility to Non-discrimination. We must not be prejudiced or projective towards others, or treat people unequally or unfairly on the basis of human differences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">11. The Responsibility to Open-mindedness. We have a responsibility to not become closed minded, to allow our ideologies to obscure our vision of the world, to not adopt in-group/out group prejudices.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">12. The Responsibility to Pan-humanness. We have a basic identity to be our own basic humanity and to all of humankind, we have an obligation and a loyalty to uphold and support this pan human identity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">These are some of the possible human responsibilities of our world. The list is imperfect and needs to be amended but it points in the basic direction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE RULE OF VIOLENCE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Theories of state organization, of imperialism and the history of human civilization, attest to the predominance of the rules of violence. Even pre-historic patterns unearthed everywhere, and the stories of early hominid evolution, show how the rule of violence has been deeply buried and well rooted in our collective past. This has led some skeptics and pessimists to assert scientifically that violence is an innate human universal which must somehow be socially counteracted or deterred by punishment. Indeed. There is a great deal of evidence to support such a 'realistic' view.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The rule of violence is based upon the coercive power of the threat of destructive force--to harm, injure, terrorize, torture, murder. It's power is also subversive in a totalizing sense, as its threats fosters and reinforces fear which pervades and permeates every dimension of existence and tends to cumulatively undermine all resistance. Fear as a primary organizing principle in life leads inexorably to totalitarianism. Its power is very strong and effective, almost complete, in its ability to predetermine the organization of our lives. If human beings are not innately violent, at least the fear of violence and the efficacy of its threat seems inherent.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The rule of violence has its own kind of cultural and conceptual context. It is embedded within a moral ideology based upon a postulate that 'might makes right'. Ethical philosophers have ardently contested such claims, but there is a great deal of historical evidence prejudicing people in favor of such 'amoral realism'. The problem in arguing against such a doctrine is that, while there are many instances in history indicating that indeed, 'might makes right', there are a few if any clear illustrations of the counterexample of that 'right makes might'. Usually government demonstrate their might force before they go on to proclaim the sacredness of their ideologies and actions. If Hitler had won the World War, our sense of right and wrong would have been very different than what it did become. If communism had gained world control like capitalists so feared, our sense of social responsibility would be quite different than it now seems to be.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But does this mean that because a new world order has prevailed, the moral ideologies and principles upon which it has been founded are necessarily the 'right' ones? There is a strong suggestion that our own common sense of what constitutes right from wrong is not without some important contradictions. The present capitalist world system is one world order which lacks clear and unambiguous ontological status of a meta-ethical universal value system. Its values of consumption, development, progress, utilitarianism, materialism, private censorship, exploitation and that wealth makes virtue must be highly suspect as meta-ethically justified when superimposed upon a diverse world. Capitalism itself is a fundamentally 'chiliastic' ideology with its own sense of destiny in the making.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though the principle of 'might makes right' may have historical justification in a real sense, philosophers would still argue that might is not necessarily right in any ideal sense. This is the critical difference between disappointment of the way it is--of the realities of the collective state of humanity and the common condition of humankind as they have been and come to be, and the expected ideal state of enlightenment and emancipation as it should and hopefully will become.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The rule of violence and injunction that 'might makes right' is not completely useless to rational philosophers in their metaphysical worlds--indeed they cannot do without its naked realities and sense of realism in anchoring their feet to the ground, for it provides the baseline and dialectical counterpoint upon which to base their destruction of its sense of realism--a common senseness which has great appeal to masses--and from which to reconstruct a meta-ethical philosophy, and a teleological state of reality, in which 'right does make might'. And this is to be found in the violation and valorization of human rights.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">NONVIOLENCE AS A VALUE ORIENTATION</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The values of non-violence require a cultural and conceptual context by which to be understood. These values and their orientations in which they are bound are foreign to western ideologies, even though the dominant Christian ethos espoused is one of brotherly love.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The two kinds of value orientations share some important similar attributes of non-vengeance, respect and appreciation for the sanctity of life. But there are also important differences of context which need to be explicitly contrasted. It is possible that these differences constitute one of the most fundamental cultural orientations separating East and West as distinctive historical civilizations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From an occidental standpoint, the values of non-violence tend to be understood as a fairly radical orientation, the essence of which is a live and let live ethos, universal toleration and respect for life in all its different manifestations. Non-violence is construed as a passive orientation, encouraging non-resistance to force, acceptance of difference, forbearance and toleration, but also leading towards a kind of pervasive apathy, neglect, complacency and ignoring of suffering in the world. It is a commitment to not hate, but not to love.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Love is not a commitment to not hate, as hate is often only a pathological substitute for the failure of love--that which we are denied love often becomes the perverted object of hate. Universal love, on the other hand, embodies an active principle to not ignore--an altruistic command to alleviate suffering in the world and to demonstrate one's devotion by sympathy. But it sometimes proves difficult in such an orientation to simply accept extreme differences, and can lead to acts of intolerance and a proselytizing orientation of minding other people's business.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Being habitually non-violent towards one's neighbors does not necessarily entail loving them as brothers or equals, but being committed to loving one's neighbors sometimes demands that we treat them in ways they might not really want to be treated, 'for their own good' and also implicitly demands that they must love us in return.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Non-violence does not require compassion, and having compassion does not always lead to non-violence, but both pathways do lead to conceptions of emancipation and enlightenment as somehow necessary and important aspirations of human spiritual life. The oriental path to enlightenment is by detachment from suffering and devotion to the emancipation of the inner life--spiritual nirvana or satori. The occidental path necessarily carries us down the road through rational idealism, enlightenment from the darkness of ignorance, to the emancipation of external existence from the bondage of vice, sin and uncertainty. Both paths lead to eternity in the here and after--one by escaping the karma of reincarnation, the other by going to heaven, to the city on the hill.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For two millennium we have actively promoted dominant shared ideologies based upon the value orientations of brotherly love, and it has consistently failed to prevent violence in the world. And yet we cannot fail to simply ignore suffering in the world. It is only when the values of love and non-violence in all their existential ramifications become consistently and coherently conjoined in our common world, that we can hope for a better collective environment in our future.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">ENLIGHTENMENT AND EMANCIPATION</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Enlightenment, the state of being illuminated or act of giving clearer views, to enable to see 'truth' began as late as the 18<sup>th</sup> century movement in Europe which emphasized rationalism, education, skepticism, and empiricism in social and political thought. An implicit part of this doctrine was to free the mind from ignorance, prejudice and superstition and to this extent can be linked to a kind of spiritual emancipation from the bondage and restraints of an unfree and biased mind. Still enlightenment was, and still is, held to be the way to the eventual emancipation of the human being, and of humanity, from the bondages of our own prejudices and errors. Through our enlightenment we are supposed to become aware of kinds of servitude we have been subjected to and to realize in ever greater degrees our need for freedom from control. Implicitly this spirit of emancipation extends to corporeal and existential freedom, construed as prerequisite to spiritual salvation and liberation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Truth and freedom are deeply linked in the tradition of our beliefs--attainment of truth leads to our freedom, as a state of being metaphysically, existentially and normatively free, and perhaps, becoming free leads to our attainment of a condition of final truth, as well.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The ideology and philosophy of our secular science embodies and reflects this tradition. The scientific attitude is typically skeptical and rational, a frame of mind tempered by a strong and severe sense of empirical vision. The freedom it seeks is freedom from ignorance and superstition.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Eastern enlightenment remained one of religious and philosophical attainment, it remained spiritual and aimed at the emancipation of the soul from the bondage imposed by the body. Western enlightenment was from it beginning rationalistic, aiming at the emancipation of the body from the bondage of blindness and false beliefs. Eastern enlightenment and emancipation remained 'other worldly' while Western enlightenment and emancipation became 'this worldly' in orientation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Emancipation has been linked to normative freedom and liberation from the threat and force of violence--as violence is to be seen as primary means by which involuntary servitude and bondage are enforced. In this way the rule of violence and threat of force is to be considered as antithetical to the doctrine and spirit of enlightenment. Threat of force is irrationality based on fear, punishment is counter educational and prejudice and ignorance come from and lead to its rule.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If emancipation comes from enlightenment it also precedes enlightenment. Freedom, both normative and existential is the road to enlightenment.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">(STARTING FROM PAGE 102)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">East and West, the traditional ideals of emancipation and enlightenment are the distinguishing themes of human civilization, providing the context by which to measure qualitatively our attainment of human civilization. The technological development and advancement of our science are held to valorize these ideals as truth. They provision the theme of rational truth with an empirical sense of realism difficult to deny and harder to criticize.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PACIFIST PROBLEMS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Pacifism is the ideological orientation based upon a commitment to a non-violent value orientation. Entailing being more than merely a conscientious objector or a demonstrator for peace a militant police force, pacifism entails a whole way of life and a way of thinking which influences many areas of day to day living and which has symbolic resonances throughout our cultural universe. Pacifism as an ideological commitment, as a way of living and thinking, provides the necessary cultural and conceptual context required for the appropriate understanding of non-violence as a necessary value orientation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In one way or another, most existential dilemmas of human social life relate in one way or another to the issue of relative non-violence, and pacifism as a theoretical and practical orientation, promoting and understanding non-violence becomes a fruitful approach to the interpretation and possible resolution of such problems. By defining a universal human problem set in the framework of pacifism, we are thereby outlining as well a pacifist paradigm for the normative comprehension of human reality which incorporates the necessary context for the elucidation of non-violence--teaching us a genuine and sublime appreciation for its values as a human way of life.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Learning what non-violence is and how it affects our daily life and our everyday social world is an important prerequisite to the creation of a common well being in our collective future. It is a primary value orientation which cannot be suspended without doing further harm in the world. And most of the violence in the world is due to the fact that either directly or indirectly we have consistently failed to cultivate either culturally or conceptually a non-violent value orientation and have failed ideologically to realize a genuine commitment to pacifism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We even lack the appropriate terms with which to talk about it in any interesting or relevant way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PASSIVE RESISTANCE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A pacifist orientation does not entail only a rejection or a refusal to participate in any way in the promotion of violence in the world--it also entails an 'activist' form of 'passive resistance' to all those aspects and things in our earthbound environment which have some direct or indirect relationship to the promotion of violence in the world. It begins n our own daily personal lives and extends outwardly beyond any narrow sense of identity or loyalty to encompass and embrace the collective well being of the whole earth and all of humankind. It entails redressing the evil of 'Great and Impersonal Organization' and its depowerment in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The poor are the only experts about poverty. It is in their hidden and untapped potential that the poor dwells to cultivate a ground swell which will eventually bring peaceful change in the world. It is through their grass roots and ad hoc organizations and networks, created in the face of dire need and extreme circumstance and in the absence of any screens of social support that the designs for an alternative kind of future exists for the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">WORLD PEACE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The possibility of world peace must be recognized and promoted through understanding towards its realization. The ecological movement is founded upon the notion of Green Peace, one which deliberately demotes the idea of a single world order as inherently unstable and prone to evil, and instead promotes a greening of the world by a political economic fissioning into small, provincial sizes states any of which would lack the power to dominate globally through the threat of force.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The notion of the necessity of global peace, and of the likely destructiveness of future wars, and of the likelihood of the escalation of future conflicts past the nuclear threshold, threatens devastation not only of human civilization but of the very biosphere upon which our civilization depends.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Besides contributing to the understanding of the problematics of the world system, a major contribution of anthropology has been to the understanding of the central problem of ethnocentrism as a basic human bias in inter-group relations and cross cultural contact, and its promotion of the notion of cultural relativism as an antidote for ethnocentrism based upon an appreciation and tolerance of many cultures.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the study of culture shock and cross cultural contact, it is apparent that there is only one healthy way of promoting cross cultural relations and exchange, one which is free of ethnocentric bias. This is referred to as 'cultural integration' and requires mediation between cultures. It leads to a form of 'multiculturalism' in which an individual may function adaptively in more than one culture setting, with equal facility in each. Such individuals serve the function of culture brokers or mediators for cross cultural contact situations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There has been the development of a third culture of the world. Composed of 'multi-cultural' people who no longer identify exclusively of primarily with a single cultural configuration or value orientation. These people develop an independent values system which transcends cultural boundaries, incorporating multi-cultural paradigms, and allowing them easy access between different cultural realities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">An extension of this notion of multiculturalism is the notion of the 'cultural continuum' as a symbolic syncretism in which individuals may choose to configure the symbolic elements of their life into highly individualized paradigms derived from a plethora of different cultural orientations, selective choosing what serves them best from a wide range of available options.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another aspect of this is education not for intellectual development alone but for social normative growth as well, for maturation of the 'ethical quotient' to a transcendent, 'post conventional' stage of moral conscientiousness and normative independence which embraces cultural relativism as a value orientation of universal tolerance, equality and multiculturalism and eschews the conventional morality of ethnocentrism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Unfortunately, most individuals do not mature much beyond a 'conventional stage' of moral conscientiousness, reached at high school. The conventional morality is one which does not transcend cultural ethnocentrism, but remains bound symbolically to the narrowly defined loyalties and 'amoralisms' of the culture in which it is configured. Colleges take kids to the first level of post conventional development characterized by rebellion against conventional morality, such a stage of rebellion is tied to the very morality it is bent on destroying and represents a counterculture rather than a genuinely transcendent third culture. Most college students graduate with a keenly developed sense of self importance and power in the world that comes from striking a compromise and making a contract with its conventional morality to uphold it whatever the criticisms. Very few individuals have ever achieved a genuinely transcendent post conventional stage of moral maturity--Albert Schweitzer's and M.K.Ghandi's and Martin Luther King's are few and far between in an increasingly authoritarian world. Such individuals define their moral duty independently of any cultural value orientation and allow their existences to be guided by such transcendent values in spite of the social costs it usually entails.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not too much to expect that schools could in their advanced curriculum carry the individual beyond the rebellious stage and into a transcendent, independent level of normative development and socialize individuals for a sense of moral responsibility which transcends narrow ethnocentrisms and has a pan human frame of reference and an individual human focus. Such instruction is not very problematic nor difficult to implement and its effective implementation would have long lasting consequences in both the individual's lifetime and in the lifetime of the world.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <hr> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PART III</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="5">PARADIGMS AND POWER</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><b><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="2"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/hughmlewis/">by Hugh M. Lewis</a></font></b></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Paradigm is defined as a pattern, and example or a model. Formally it is considered a basic set of principles or rules governing particular relations, and in scientific philosophy it has become conventional to refer to social paradigms as bodies of theories around which particular kinds of practices accrete. As a pattern or model a paradigm is considered relatively fixed and stable, and as an example it is one that is exceptionally illustrative of what is represents.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As something overarching, fixed and exemplifying, it is the interrelationship between paradigms and power to control change in the world that provides the framework for understanding the consistency of patterning of certain social processes and structures in the world, their cycles of development and the consequences upon the lives of people who live within their 'spheres of influence'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is in terms of paradigms and their social organizing power that we can especially understand the general phenomena of evil in the world, its paradigmatic etiology and effects, and the recurrent, characteristic patterns of 'structure' by which social empowerment becomes expressed. Paradigms are not themselves necessarily good or evil, but it is through its everyday expression that both evil and goodness eventuate, and though people may be enacting their roles in the good faith of genuine belief in their own goodness or righteousness, the consequences of their actions frequently result in evil for others or for themselves.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">People require paradigms in their lives to provide order, direction and sense of purpose to their behavior. People cannot live very well without them. Paradigms are primarily symbolic and conceptual in nature, those ideas and metaphors underlying our structures of belief and collective conscious. They are organizational metaphors and key or dominate summarizing/elaborating symbolisms which, though they have no concreteness in themselves, take on the sense of giveness as if they were concrete and physically real, via the juxtapositioning and replacement of all the things which they stand for in the world. As such they help to clarify, simplify, solidify and disambiguate our worlds, resolving psychologically existential uncertainty and contradictions encountered in existence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Furthermore, paradigms typify reality for us, and typically sanction our adoption of regular practices, rituals, routines, habits, buzz words and clichés which tend to reinforce the apparent solidity, simplification ad disambiguating function of paradigms, further reifying their value through the demonstration of their efficacy. At this level they take on a concrete giveness in our lives, a common senseness, in which it becomes difficult to tell which came first, the paradigm or the enactment of its example. They gain the force of custom and the unconscious power of an indirect constraint--we can no longer function socially without them. They then acquire a certain transparency in our lives--an invisibility of their symbolic and metaphorical arbitrariness, a non-reflexive attitude toward their routine enactment. To begin to question them becomes not just taboo, but an exceptional absurdity and blasphemy--it is to question what is apparently the very foundation for our sense of order and basis of meaning in our lives.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">At this point paradigms have achieved social power in our lives, and to contest them is to go against this power. The power of paradigms then acquires an unconscious influence in our lives, and we begin acting in ways which systematically exclude ideas, symbols or actions which might possibly contradict or threaten to undermine the paradigms we live by. We erect barriers and thresholds to our understanding and even or perception of reality. Discrepancies and exceptional oddities in our environments which seem to run counter to our paradigmatic order or challenge it become systematically ignores, denied or prejudiced against as anti-thetical counter examples. We edit out or experiences of our environments, selecting what seems fit and casting our what doesn't. The greater the power of paradigms, the more we come to depend upon its organizing and simplifying influence, the more to work to enact its sense of giveness and efficacy in our lives, and the more we act against anything which will not fit easily into its simplifying sense of order. The power of paradigms are their control over our lives, both consciously and unconsciously and their promotion and perpetuation even against rationally convincing counter examples and contrary evidence, leads to the irrationality of our own rationalizations and the rationalization of our own irrationality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Paradigms are typically human and social way we have for controlling and dealing psychologically and behaviorally with change in our lives. And the control of change is what human power is all about. It is the influence of paradigms over change in our lives from which its power is derived and it is the influence of change over the paradigms in our live from which its power is deprived. It is the sense of power, our identification with its influence that forms the illusion and the ground of meaning in our lives.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is a grand paradox of life that change is the only law we must really obey. Change is inevitable, inexorable and always entropic as its source is rooted in the experience of entropy in the universe. We measure change by marking time and we measure time by marking change. This is the basis of our science and the reason for its being in the prediction and control of change in our world. The perfect clock is the only unchanging device we have, because it has perfectly, accurately regularized the rhythms of change to absolutely reduce its sense of irregularity. And yet the phenomenon and experience of changes happens in our lives regardless of our clocks and our perfect cycles and circles and in the long run it always tends to carry us towards the absolute chaos of entropy. And except by the imputation of imperfect causality we have no other way of understanding the principle of change except as entropy, or complete randomization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the ordeal of change, the existential uncertainty, the elemental unknown that it brings to our lives and the incurable sense of insecurity and fear that the fixedness of the patterns of paradigms helps us to cope and deal with in ways which regularize, temporize and reduce the randomness of change. Paradigms counteracts change, carrying us from the edge of chaos toward the 'center' of perfect order. The functions of paradigms are anti-chaotic and the stability of its fixed patterns provide the sense of changelessness, and eternity of being, which we associate with sacredness and sanctity. We worship its power in its daily routines and rituals, through the expression of its symbolisms and sensibility of its verities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Paradigms are never perfectly fixed in their patterning--their preservation frequently requires periodic modifications of its elements and relations, alterations which tend to result in the redesigning of its patterning--its dynamic reorganization. Paradigms exist in a critical condition of self organization. The additive effects of change produces supercritical events which tend to reestablish stability and order to the system--preserving the constancy of the whole pattern by sacrificing parts or portions of the whole. Part of the power of paradigms is their potentiality for maintaining stability and constancy of overall pattern at the hypercritical edge of chaos while allowing the alteration of its elements and their interrelations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is no single paradigm in our lives, and no single paradigm is ever complete or total or absolutely dominant, except that we do not try to make them so. Paradigms are always unfinished, imperfect and finite in their circumscription of phenomena or influence of events. For all the fixedness and constancy of their patterning, paradigms are subject to the same principles of change and randomization as is anything else in the universe. In our worlds, there are always multiple paradigms, overlapping one another, paradigms within other paradigms, often competing or conflicting with one another, frequently functioning partially and mutually together. Our attempt to single out a key, dominant paradigm, to hierarchize them, to make them complete or all encompassing, to permanently fix their patterning is always bound for frustration, creating more anxiety that the capacity of paradigms can resolve. But we cannot live without them, they have a purpose and a function in our lives, and hence a necessity and an imperative.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the overall robusticity and long term structural stability of paradigms which gives them a kind of historical momentum and directionality of development which tends to follow repetitive, sequential patterns of unfolding and which in the viewpoint of the long run makes its change seem periodic, saltational and cynical.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Evolution is a paradigm. We are also paradigms, metaphysically and naturally. Culture and history is paradigmatic. Our minds are paradigmatic, as are our societies, organizations, families and our daily lives. Our science is paradigmatic and so is our religion, our art, our philosophies and our technologies. Though everything is paradigmatic, nothing in our lives is completely so. Everything is only partially paradigmatic and also poly-paradigmatic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Paradigms provide fundamental ways of seeing and relating to the world. They are inherently problematic and in their problematicalness are also inherently paradoxical. Paradigms provide problems about problems of other problems--they are paradigms about problems and problems about paradigms and in this is their paradoxicalness. The apparent fixedness and constancy of paradigms covers over many other important and related problems and the covering over of these problems itself creates a problem which in turn needs to be covered over. If its power constitutes our ground of meaning, beneath this apparent power is problematic powerlessness of the groundlessness of our being. Its paradox is that we depend both upon its ground of truth and its bottomlessness of reality for our sense of being in the world. The solution of its problematicalness is the resolution of its paradigmatic paradoxicalness--it is indeed just another Humpty Dumpty.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A psychological part of the paradoxicalness and problematicalness of paradigms is the tendency to construe things in its identity of relationships in the world in a way either emphasizing the non-relation of absolute differences or the relation of relative difference/similarity. The former way is what leads to paradox, as it entails a black and white or either/or kind of attitude toward the world which construes the paradigms as inflexibly fixed and the identity of things as either conforming or as anti-thetical. The paradox this leads to is a fundamentally divided reality, and a need to reunite the separate elements in order to reestablish unity of relationship. Part of this paradox is that this is widely held to be the dual logic rationality upon which our science rests, although science is frequently more synthesizing than analyzing. Such two value logic is also purported to be what distinguishes the modern, rational, civilized mentality from the primitive, irrational, savage mentality. It is the inability to see the gray, in between areas which accounts for the irrationality of a Hitler, and not the rationality of a pre-literate person. The latter way of identity of relations begins in paradox--of both/and and the grayness of the excluded middle ground, and leads to the resolution of this paradox through dialectical meta-logic. The former way leads from non-contradiction to contradiction, the latter way leads from contradiction to non-contradiction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The natural, rational aspect of paradigmatic patterns is the latter integrative way--the way that successful assimilates change, while the rationalizing, exclusive way which protects the fixedness of paradigms from change is the former, dichotomizing way. The latter way complicates paradigms to the point of their reintegration, the former way simplifies paradigms to the point of their immobilization and disintegration.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the latter way which leads to adaptation, accommodation and assimilation of change, it is the former way which leads to fixation, maladaptation and perseveration. The latter way is a way of health, the former way is the way of disease.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Part of the paradox is that in the adaptation of the short run, the former way often appears to be the more successful and 'adaptive', but the longer it is pursued the stronger it becomes and the more difficult it becomes to give up and change one's way. In short sighted strategies the latter way often appears chaotic, random, unfixed but the longer it is pursued the more its self organization becomes visible and understandable.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The former way that tends to dichotomize reality is the way that fears the unknown, devalues diversity, complexity and is obsessive over uncertainty. It leads to prejudicial projection and behavioral discrimination between people, creating in group/out group boundaries between people which denies common humanity and individual human identity. This is the way of evil.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Evil is not just a moral dilemma, but as a facet of human reality it is an anthropological problem in that it is necessary to understand it as empirical behavior and as symbolic phenomena in response to such questions as 'what constitutes evil' and 'why do people do evil' and 'how can evil in the world be prevented or cured'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are different kinds of evil in the world, for many different reasons, so it makes little sense to speak of the problem of evil, either anthropologically, morally or philosophically as if evil were a single abstract with a single kind of etiology, ontology or teleology. Such a monothetic conception would make evil a concern of rational philosophy and not an anthropological problematic of empirical human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Nonetheless, evil has a common set of general traits which can be associated with it in most instances. First, it is a consequence of the arbitrariness of power which renders one person's happiness subject to another person's will. Secondly, it involves some measure of violence, which is either destructive of life or the things upon which life depends or constitutes violations to basic human rights and freedoms. Third, it involves some kind of human aggression which is directed in a violent, destructive way, or at least in a destructive domineering manner. Fourth, it entails victimization or scapegoating which is the targeting of one's aggression upon a hapless or defenseless victim. The organization of evil involves the dependency of domination or the parasitic exploitation of one person or group over another person or group. Evil also involves the tyranny of fear and the rule of threat of violent force to reinforce relationships of dominance, dependency and exploitation. Finally evil entails deliberate intention or purposefulness, however indirect, relative, unconscious--it entails evilness of mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There have been many forms of evil perpetrated by humankind--racial discrimination, prejudice, physical and verbal abuse, sexual victimization, war, involuntary servitude, coercion, black propaganda, cruelty to animals, exploitation, authoritarianism. Another common feature of the etiology of evil is that the perpetrator usually believes he/she can get away with the crime, that they are stronger than their victim and that they are either beyond the purview of moral constraint, punishment or retribution, or else they are acting within the purview of their own amoral system of rationalization which justifies evil. It is this sense that makes evil so monstrous and insidious.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There have been many more indirect and impersonal forms of evil. Organized evil is usually indirect and impersonal--mandated by the structural ethos of the organization or the consequence of its functioning. It comes with the diffusion of responsibility or the passing of the buck up or down the hierarchy of power. There is also evil of unintended consequences, in the perpetuation of preventable poverty or hunger, of the uninvolved bystander, in non-intervention as well as a great deal of evil perpetrated in the name of Good, God or Glory--the slaughter of the American Indian in the name of Manifest, Destiny, Enlightenment and Civilization, for instance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are in need of a descriptive and normative paradigm of the problem of evil, one which will transcend its relativity of power and values and one which comprehends its variation and leads to an understanding of its reasons, etiologies and remedy in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Evil is defined as 'anything that causes displeasure, injury, pain, suffering, etc., or moral depravity, wickedness, anything morally bad or wrong'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One aspect of organized evil is that it is relatively impersonal. It derogates a human being into a 'thing' or an object to be manipulated and used and disposed of when its usefulness is worn out. It denies human individual's their own personal identity, their beingness and devalues their subjectivity and experience. It promotes by hook and by crook conformity to superhuman social ideals, and to the moral authority and super organic superiority of the social order, as it is represented and embodied in persons occupying positions of authority. It is this pervasive and diffuse impersonalness of evil systems which allows such social structures to continue its corporate perpetration and perpetuation of evil in the world while fostering an illusion of moral legitimacy or rational purpose.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One aspect of this form of organized evil is its preservation and protection of an 'inner sanctum' of conformity to a 'vital lie' or a 'sacred secret' by its reinforcement of a circle of deceit in belief and behavior. Information networks, gossip networks, special jargon, reinforce in group conformity to hierarchy and status identity and out group boundaries of projection and discrimination. Part of the 'inner sanctum' is the secrecy and hierarchy of a 'back region' of the darkness of evil, in which evil deeds are devised and perpetrated with immunity, impunity and anonymity. The threat and fear of punishment and persecution usually surrounds and protects this inner sanctum from the public discovery of its evil nature or actual intentions of power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The organization of evil is associated with the development of authoritarian power structures which become organized on the principle of fear and the threat of violence or punishment. Such power structures foster and attract into its ranks and reinforces such tendencies among its constituency, of psycho social authoritarianism. Such authoritarianism, part of a personality disorder of obsessive compulsiveness, sado-masochistic tendencies, displacement of libido onto symbols of authority, power and fear motivation, impulse control disorders, symbolic dependency and fixation, leads by accretion and organized accumulation to social institutions of authoritarian power structures which are a kind of social pathology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such authoritarian power structures have been common throughout human history, and have had many unfortunate consequences for humankind. Authoritarianism organizes itself into larger and larger systems through the promotion of conformism and mediocrity, as the predisposition to such personality is the attraction to power, the fascination with evil, destructiveness and perverse morbidness of death, and the need to immerse personal identity within a larger, impersonal social order. Authoritarian seek communities and comfort and security among other authoritarian, and have a need for the social hierarchy and symbols of authority which fits their character.. authoritarianism structures itself. Furthermore, evil, in its moral anti-structure requires a communities and social liminality, a shared sense of guilt, fear and social reinforcement of its evilness. It is much easier for people to perpetrate evil when their own individual identity is immersed in the anonymity of larger groups and impersonalness of organization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Understanding a meta-ethical and empirical paradigm of evil in the world requires that we frame it in terms of a normative disease, a social pathology and a collective archosis which provides an effective expression of individual neurotic tendencies and psychotic pre-dispositions in ways which help the individual to adapt as if normal within the structure of the group which is itself abnormal in parallel ways. As a disease, the structure of evil is not just an organismic dysfunction, but rather is also a problem of environmental maladaptiveness and 'misfit' in ways that are fundamentally destructive.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Psychologically, the structure of evil begins with the tyranny of fear. Failure to confront the unknown, to face our fears, to avoid and ignore those differences, contradictions or in between symbols which cannot fit easily into our nomothetic world view, leads to its 'stimulus generalization' and to the general existential pervasiveness in our lives. We no longer control our fears, but fear controls us.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Socially, the structure of evil transmutes the psychological tyranny of fear into the rule of the threat of violence. Our fears become displaced upon symbols of authority which threaten punishment for non-conformity to its dictates. Fear motivation, fear of failure, of persecution and punishment, drives people upward in the organization of evil through identification with authority. The control of fear over our being leads to the structuration and organization of people into systems of hierarchy and conformity based upon a common, shared fear motivation. Our collective fears become projected onto convenient out group symbols, victims of scapegoats, which become the objects of threat, contamination, abhorrence, hate in our lives. They realize our fears for us in a personally harmless way, such that we may then punish them with impunity. They embody our fears, giving them a concreteness and an objectivity in our lives. Systems of evil play upon our fears and an objectivity in our lives. Systems of evil play upon our fears and try to augment them to induce greater degrees of conformity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'World view' is a special kind of paradigm which is characterized by its comprehensiveness, its 'singleness' which purports to subsume other paradigms, its tendency to exclude other possible world views and its possession of a sense of center, or core of 'fixedness' around which its world view is oriented. It is this centeredness which structures its world view, and which possesses what post structuralist critics refer to as the 'principle of presence' of its structure.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The paradigm of the structure of evil is essential a kind of 'world view' paradigm which is characterized by its center of structure, its comprehensiveness and exclusiveness. It is as a 'world view' problem that the paradigm of evil is to be best understood.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The modern state of the world is characterized by a problem of 'world view' which is in fact an interrelated set of problems of different 'world views' subsumed by a single meta-theme of the 'world view problem'. 'World view' is both a problem by itself, in a general sense and a gloss for a range of particular problems in the real world--these two senses cannot be separated from one another in any but the most analytical way, but their synthesis has a synergism which if clearly elucidated has productive implications for our understanding of problems in the world on a microscopic level and world problems on a macroscopic order.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Traditionally, the world view problem has been philosophically and philologically a problem inherent to 'culture history' which as posed several dilemmas which have had unfortunate implications in the world. It has been used for the justification of ethnocentric 'superman ideologies' which promote a conservative status quo, reactionary regimes promoting a romantic, ideological mythology of the past, and which lead to a great deal of unnecessary violence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Part of the problem with the 'world view problem' has been that it has remained rather poorly, only partially elucidated as a systematic philosophical system of inquiry. As such it has suffered a misplaced identity as a self serving kind of philosophical 'determinism' which allows it to be easily attacked and easily abused and misused as a non-scientific ideology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The primary function of any world view is to rationalize and legitimate the status quo of the existing order of things in the world. The status of a world view is tied to the present social relations and to those of the past which account for the present. World view normalizes the order of the world and naturalize the present. It provides a sense of coherence and consistency to our reality and sense of being in the world. It describes existing relationships in terms of how they should be--it does not prescribe how relationships should be regardless of how they are. World view cannot itself step outside of world order of existing relationships, but its own legitimacy is dependent upon the legitimization of the existing social order. Furthermore, world view is used to justify morally and ideologically behavior and beliefs which support such a status quo in the world, or which promulgate revolutionary or reactionary change in such relationships. World view infuses a person's and by extension a group's relationship with the world with a sense of purpose and a sense of reason, and it comes to centrally focus experience and the interpretation of experience in relation to the world around such purpose and reason. World view is an orienting force which serves to allow individuals to organize their lives in a meaningful and seemingly consistent way. World view becomes superimposed upon reality as an organizing force and orienting paradigm which gives an individual a sense of belonging, completion, omniscience, non-contradiction and purpose in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is in such a way that world view is ideological and tautological in its self rationalization and relationship to the world. It engages in a dialectical relationship with the world, but does not transcend the dialectic as dialectic. It then stands separately from a sense of history, as outside of the purview of historical understanding or not subject to laws of historical transformation and change. It replaces history with ideology and becomes itself 'history in the making'--a self fulfilling prophecy in which there is a rational isomorphism between the eidetic ideas and ideals and real relationships in the world. Ideas represent reality and reality replicates ideals. It begs the question of the actual representativeness and non-arbitrariness of such isomorphic models--implicit presuppositions remain hidden and covered over from view, which if made explicit would reveal contradiction and difference between the beliefs and the reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">World view has the advantage of situating us in the immediacy of the world. We take part in its principle of presence as we situate ourselves near the center. It simultaneously 'collectivizes' us in relationship with one another and 'relativizes' s in contra-distinction to others. It makes us real, or allows us realization in the world--to participate in the unfolding of events rather than to remain mere spectators.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">World view engages the sense of being in a dialectic between sense and nonsense, order and chaos, structure and entropy, presence and absence, which involves a predominance of 'structure' or of collectivizing or identification over relativizing or sense of difference. It leads to basic dialectical and discursive antinomies which underlie all of our symbolizations of the world--dichotomies of self/other, internal/external, male/female, nature/culture, ideal/real. These dichotomies form the dialectical themata about which all our symbolic discourse in the world is constituted--it is the basis of the constitution of meaning in the world. World view brings a sense of power and totality--of totipotency which depends upon its 'centeredness' and 'presence'. This is a form of power diametrically opposed to the relational sense of power derived from the potential totality of the universe, or its infinity. This is a holothetic form of totipotency in which the power of the part embodies and reflects but imperfectly and partially the power of the whole,, but there is no totalitarian or completely comprehensive or absolutely final vision of the whole. The center is always missing or absent, and its power is always decentered. The center, the origin cannot be fixed, but can only be found in all things everywhere.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science separates the categories of Mind, Language and Culture for analytical purposes--in the process entailing reintegration such that each becomes 'explained' in reference to the other categories. But 'mind/language/culture' is a Humpty Dumpty kind of reality--a single symbolic stream of phenomena of human reality. Understanding each element necessitates understanding the others. In reality, there can be no clear separation of these concepts--they describe a single conflated integration of reality. These constitute homological facets of a single cybernetically integrated 'system'. This system is symbolic and symbolic integration of 'mind/language/culture' occurs intensively at the centeredness of being.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Language is seen as the principle mediating mechanism of the dialectic between Mind and Culture--it defines the textuality of Logos which situates the dialectic within the culture-historical continuum, within definite spatio-temporal coordinates.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Mind/language/culture' has a holothetic integrity--each process is a symbolic mediation of the dialectic of the other two. Altogether the whole system forms a complex dialectic interrelating several processes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Mind/language/culture' constitutes the symbolic 'world view' the integrity of which defines the intensiveness and relative centeredness of being. 'World view' becomes the symbolic centeredness of being. At the center, the interrelations between mind, language and culture become deterministic in the directive selectivity of change--but this center point of presence is an ever receding absolute origin--it is the 'black hole' of culture historical determinism. Concentric degrees of distance from this hypothetical center point designates orders of 'relativity' of 'world view' such that 'mind/language/culture' becomes less and less intensively determined and more and more extensively 'undetermined' by randomizing selective powers.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relative centeredness or the relativity of the center, leads to a contrast between 'intensiveness' and 'extensiveness'. Greater centeredness entails a greater intensiveness--greater distance from the center entails greater extensiveness. Where there is greater intensiveness there is less extensiveness and where there is greater extensiveness there is less intensiveness, but though contrastive, intensiveness if fundamentally different from extensiveness. The greater the intensiveness the greater the degree of qualitative distinctiveness and qualitatively defined symbolic coherence. The greater the extensiveness the greater the degree of quantitative continuity and the qualitatively defined consistency--qualitative difference gives way to quantitative similarity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The kinds of cohesiveness of intensive and extensive orientations are also fundamentally different--intensive cohesion is structurally defined from within, in relation to centeredness, defined by the symbolic integrity of relations. Extensive cohesion is defined from without the center, by the external relation with other centers within the extensive symbolic universe.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Extensiveness tends toward randomization, entropy and chaos. Intensiveness tends toward determination, fixedness, structure and anti-chaos.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Intensiveness consists of greater variations upon a few themes which are qualitatively distinctive. Extensiveness consists of fewer variations upon a multitude of themes--a thematic, qualitative multiplicity. Intensive cohesiveness emphasized difference upon a common theme--extensive cohesiveness emphasizes similarities or commonness of different themes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From the standpoint of the mind, intensiveness at the center results in greater internal coherence--extensiveness from the center results in greater external consistency. Perfect mind must always be situated at the center. Natural mind tends to be displaced from the center, and tends toward extensiveness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Extensively defined identity of being is different from intensively defined identity of being.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Between the extensive and intensive, there must always be some intermediate, 'supercritical' phase of transition in which extensiveness and intensiveness counterbalance and cancel one another out.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Intensification is an implosive kind of internal growth which reaches the critical phase line. Extensification is an explosive diffusion which tends to occur beyond the critical phase line. We may say that the extensiveness is centrifugal while the intensiveness is centripetal in power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The critical phase of transition between extensive and intensive orientations is the point in which, centrifugally, relativistic 'world view' disintegrates symbolically into a disparate mass of constituent units--forces of internal cohesiveness gives way to forces of external cohesiveness--and at which, centripedally, symbolic entities begin to coalesce into some semblance of internal order and integrity. Defined another way, it is the point of critical distance between symbolic components at which differences between components are counterbalanced by similarities--when such differences and similarities are defined thematically or qualitatively.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Within this phase line, the perspective of the world view is one of 'inside looking out'--an intensive point of view. Beyond this critical phase line the perspective of the center is seen from the outside looking in--the extensive viewpoint.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is possible to have an intensive perspective inside of the critical phase line, as well as to retain an intensive point of view beyond this line. This retention is largely a matter of individual mind. The intensive viewpoint becomes predominant inside and the extensive viewpoint predominate outside.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All world views are intensive, and are therefore perspectives of power. The intensive world view, from the inside looking out is what has been called the 'emic viewpoint'. An extensive world view would be called an 'etic' or 'outsider's' perspective.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The extensive viewpoint cannot constitute a 'world view' in the sense that it lacks a symbolic centeredness of being, but is always defined as opposed or in contra distinctive reference to any such symbolic center. It is always defined in negative outline in contrast to what it is not, but always lacks a central reference point around which it can develop a directionally of beingness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The intensive viewpoint is constituted by the principle of critical presence--of a sense of purpose or integrity of beingness. The extensive viewpoint is in contrast constituted by the principle of critical absence--the sense of possible non-beingness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Intensive and extensive, presence and absence, centeredness and centerless, insider and outsider, constitute a dialectic in itself--a dialectic which informs a hermeneutical comprehension of culture history as a transcendent study of mind or logos as constituted by the dialectics of human identity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Change, as the Logos of Nature is universal and irreversible except in a limited, cyclical sense. Change at the center--intensive change--is fundamentally different from extensive change. Extensive change tends towards randomness, intensive change is more directional.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power is defined as the control of change. Power is greater at the center--there is greater control over intensive change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Intensiveness of being is defined as relative powerfulness; extensiveness of being is relative powerlessness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power of change is causal power--the power of determination. Determination requires centeredness and intensiveness of being.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power may be conservative or revolutionary, creative or destructive, eufunctional or dysfunctional, but it is never neutral or static.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power related to selectiveness or selection in change--extensive selection is random or tends towards randomness in its multi-directionality. Intensive selection is purposive or non-random, tending towards uni-directionality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is something inherently corrupting about power--unconstrained power leads to absolute, unredressed corruption. The corrupting nature of power is in its arbitrariness. The more power an individual has the more such an individual is able to abuse and misuse power for evil purposes, with impunity and without fear of retribution. And it is not just that power leads to corrupt social practices but it is psychologically corrupting as well, in a way which is pathological both to the individual personality and to the larger society.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power fosters an illusion of one's self importance in the world, of false pride and petty egoism of self interested and selfish greed, and it leads to the delusion of the social efficacy of power as an effective instrument in the control over others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It leads to a system of symbolization and belief which sees power as morally pure, well intentioned, incorruptible, glossing over its own discrepancies and contradictions. Power leads to its own moral rationalization and legitimization in a sense of fate or destiny, and leads to a forgetfulness or ignorance of the need to seek standards of moral value outside the purview of its own control.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The pursuit of power becomes the aggrandizement and social charter for the pursuit of personal self interest in social forums. The very motivation which leads t the promotion of power leads to the erosion of the social fabric upon which its moral efficacy depends--the pursuit of self interest is valued above the common good, leading to the loss of trust and mutual respect upon which basic human reciprocities are based and balanced. The pursuit of power as disguised promotion of self interest and personal aggrandizement undermines the collective well being and fosters an atmosphere of competition, factionalization, conflict, chastisement with whips and scorpions, paranoid mistrust, and dirty closed door politics and retribution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But there is something deeper and more sublime about the corruption of power. There is an attractiveness about power that makes most people seek it out, however covertly. Power legitimizes the personality and allows the rationalization of personal interest. Part of the illusion of power is the deference given to those who yield it, the deification of people who might otherwise appear quite ordinary or mundane. There is an illusion and hypocrisy about power in its vestiges, in the 'king's new clothes' which preconditions our perceptuality and conceptuality of experience, orienting our view of the world. The pursuit of power will lead to the overriding of many other kinds of constraints allowing people to do what they would not ordinarily attempt.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The psychology of power leads to the possibility of psychological evil. Power does not inevitably beget the corruption of evil, but it strongly predisposes people to it. The relativity of power allows it to be sometimes used for good as well as evil. But unconstrained, absolute power does lead to absolute evil.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The paradox of power is that, although it inevitably corrupts, it is the best means by which to protect and promote the good. This paradox is that the individual's with the most power to influence and create change for the better in the world are those least likely to do so because they are usually among the very individuals with the most to lose from such changes. Its paradox is that though it is the only pathway to the promotion of the self and realization of personality, it leads through a dark forest which endangers the personality and society with corruption.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power has both real and imaginary, symbolic components in its manifestation in the world--it is always as much illusion and delusion as it is the actual reality of the 'way it is'. Power creates both Truth and Falsehood, both Right and Wrong. Both Good and Evil, through its realization in the world. The paradox of power is that it determines the world from possibility, but once having so determined it, it has limited and relativized it in its actualization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The paradox of power is that we cannot live in a world without it, and yet we cannot live well with it. We are forced to seek compromises in our dealings with it, and we cannot safely renege our responsibility to do so.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power creates entanglements as it enmeshes the individual involved in power in a social web of interdependencies which captures and immobilize the individual's spirit of independence and sense of normative freedom and it renders the person increasingly subservient to the interests of power within the system, the higher up the hierarchy the person may climb, and increasingly incapable of unwilling or resisting power in favor of alternative kinds of adaptations. Our ability to compromise with power becomes itself compromised.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power is a vortex, a maelstrom, which as we become more caught up within its spiraling currents, as we are drawn increasingly towards its dark center, we are more and more incapable of escaping. It overwhelms us and submerge us and eventually drowns us in its flowing force.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The psychology of power is related to authoritarianism and the expression and symbolization of aggression and sexuality through processes of psycho-social internalization and identification, but its locus is in the interrelations between the self ego and its social environment of adaptation. Power is defined as the ability to create and control change in the world. The feeling of powerfulness comes from a sense of mastery, control over or adaptive success within any given environmental configuration. It is therefore quite reasonable to see that lack of fit with the environment creates stress experienced as anxiety and begets a sense of powerlessness in the world--loss of a feeling of control or ability to change the environment. Powerlessness results in frustration of the drive for power, in its subversion or perversion in indirect ways. Power corrupts because its motivation is never sated or completed. Natural change always tends to upset the ecological balance of power, and power always seek to restore its centeredness and to fulfill itself in ever greater proportions. The psychology of power is one of incompleteness and making up for 'lost time'. It is contagious and addictive--it spreads between people and people who become infected with it and caught up more and more in its entanglements.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power has perceptual, conceptual, emotional and motivational components. It is derived from an existential, phenomenological need to maintain a rational 'unity of experience' such that perception, conception, emotion, motivation, behavior all can be seen as well as ordered, sensible, fitting together and following smoothly from one another. Percepts, concepts and drives reinforce one another and moderate one another in a way which makes 'sense' of experience. Lack of fit between inner and outer perception, between signifier and the signified, lead to 'cognitive dissonance' and attempts by individuals to modify or adjust their experiences to fit preconceived paradigms which reinforce their sense of order. This sense of order is founded in relationships of dominance and hierarchy--in being able to exert mastery over and control of objects in the environment which would otherwise be potentially threatening.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Psycho geography' is the study of the interconnections between object relations in the real, external world and internal psychological features of the ego. The environment becomes the symbolic representation and reflection of the sense of self, and the self becomes embodied in the environment. The body itself becomes represented as if the cosmic order of state and universe, and the external order becomes 'organicized' as if the body. This reveals how consciousness orders its experience of the world in the world. There is a dynamic repressive/projective, expressive/introjective relationship between inside and outside which constitutes part of the dialectics of the psychology of power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"The attribution to and representation of space in the topography of the human mind. Unintegrated aspects of the self and object representations and drive derivatives, unresolved psycho-sexual conflicts and body image are externalized onto people, places and things which come to be the outer referents for psycho geographic perception and action. (Stein pg. 78)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Psycho geography is simply a way of understanding how people construct the physical and social world based on fantasies about their bodies and their families. (Stein pg. 79)"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is from this basis that we can better understand the interconnection between personality and enculturation and culture--culture emanates from the psychology of the individual as a range of symbolic alternatives in a social environment. It is constituted through empowerment and enactment of power in ways which are psychologically relevant. 'Culture' denoted not so much an independent variable or context to which people adapt as it constitutes a symbolic or representational system that is heir to the inner 'representational world'. On the other hand, cultural symbolisms provide an external object environment and cultural historical relational context against which meaning and sense of self identity in the world can be configured and transformed.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Adaptation to environment is an ongoing and historically irreversible process, as the environment is always changing and so the organism's or organization's functional adaptive relationships with the environment are always tending to deteriorate entropically. The environment always threatens to undermine power with uncertain unpredictable changes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The net result of such natural or randomizing change is disequilibrium or a lack of fit between the organism and the environment. This is experienced cognitively and psychologically in terms of cognitive dissonance and relative deprivation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anxiety is the result of anticipation of unpredictable change in adaptation. Stress is the measure or index of the relative lack of 'fit' within the environment. The experiences of stress, anxiety and the relationship by either changing the environment to suit the adaptive pattern of the organism, a typically cultural response when seen from the standpoint of the collectivity, a process known as 'assimilation' or else to modify the adaptive pattern of the organism by altering the organism's behavioral responses or structural characteristics or what is referred to as 'accommodation' to new features in the environment. Assimilation is an 'intensive' strategy of realignment between organism and environment, accommodation is an 'extensive' strategy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Cognitive dissonance frequently leads to symbolic reinterpretation or rationalization of change and the lack of fit for the purposes of assimilating change to the previous cognitive orientation of the organism. Such rationalization prevents adaptive adjustments to change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The experience of relative deprivation also leads to symbolic reevaluation, but it works from an extensive standpoint of attempting to accommodate internal states to externally derived differences. It leads to a revolution of equality and of rising expectations and it frequently is also ineffective in fostering adaptation because in its extreme condition it damages the integrity of its intensive orientation, and disintegrates due to the overpowering influence of the randomizing forces of external changes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The experience of anxiety is the result of stress. Cognitive dissonance is the typical psychological mechanism which allows human adaptation to anxiety. A great deal of ritual, magic and myth is rooted in this mechanism for dealing with anxiety which is the 'symptom' of stress.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The long term experience of stress can lead to the adaptive malfunctioning of the individual, a breakdown in the coping mechanism and adaptive functioning of the individual, and its symptoms can become somatized in various ways or else lead to cybernetic feedback mechanisms which lead to less adaptive behavior patterns and modification, learned helplessness, stress response disorder which has a net negative effect upon the physical and psychological well being of the individual.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anxiety and deprivation are experienced as relative states of being--cognitive dissonance is dependent upon anticipation, expectations, frames of reference/inference, flexibility and open-mindedness, the nature of environmental changes. The defense mechanisms of rationalization and intellectualization and behavioral ritualization creates an 'absolute' state of being and mind which anchors the individual to a given centeredness of orientation and serves to allay the experience of stress. It is a 'trick' or 'turn' of mind which temporarily relieves the psychological pain of stress.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Elevated levels of 'frustration' results in greater incidence of aggression--certain environmental stimuli 'trigger' the release of built-up aggression, as well as exacerbating circumstances which elevate the level of stress and lower the threshold or level of normal resistance to release of its expression. This kind of frustration is the 'stress' which results from the lack of ecological fit between the organism and its environment or else it is the result of 'perceived' relative deprivation in comparison with peer 'polity' reference groups--results of 'elevated' expectations which are unmet in comparison to others, or triggered by a sudden downturn of expected events or an unexpected loss or lack of an expected gain. Frustration is experienced when expectations go unmet. Relative deprivation and rising expectations are the result of perceived structural inequalities vis-a vis a dominant or competing reference group. Frustration is preeminently a psycho physiological phenomena--it is one of the many ways the mind can influence the body and the body can in turn influence the mind. Expectations may be based upon a relative value orientation and relative deprivation is based on the knowledge of possible non-deprivation derived from the experiences of reference groups--the knowledge that continual 'deprivation' is no longer a necessary reality, but the experience of frustration and the 'need for aggression' is very organically real. Frustration can also result from what sociologists refer to as interpositional structural ambiguity of status role identity--the stress and strain of being caught in the push pull of overlapping structural hierarchies or in the interstices of power. The result of becoming incorporated within a global political economy and of restricted access to material affluence, education, opportunity and of learning that other people are undeprived, is based upon perceived social structural inequality and asymmetry in structural relationships and leads to social conflict and revolution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Sociologists see aggression as an innate instinctual human phenomenon. Yet acts of aggression, as symbolic expressions and as frustrated attempts to 'correct' problems of environmental misfit are largely 'learned' responses. Aggression is an expressive mode may be cultivated and elevated to greater levels of violence, as occurs in the media. Children learn the expression of aggression from peers, family and role models their society provides them. Oedipus theory is based upon the sublimation of aggression and the internalization of its control, and its expressive association with sexuality. Direct forms of aggression are regressive and in most social contexts are maladaptive and dysfunctional. Aggression becomes displaced psychologically upon neutral or convenient ways or objects in indirect forms of its expression. Its manifestation is associated with obsessive compulsive and impulse control disorders. In its sublimation, it may be either reserved or channeled towards out groups who are symbolically villainized or incriminated or else it is turned inwardly upon the self and becomes an inverted form of self violence culminating in suicide. The sublimation and displacement of aggression is symbolically mediated and allows its channeling into constructive or destructive or neutral 'structures' or paradigms. These 'structures' that are founded upon the sublimation of aggression through internal control and conformity to authority are authoritarian.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">However innate aggressiveness is, its style of expression, its transmission and the acquisition and elaboration of aggression is enculturated and transmitted through the elaboration of cultural symbol systems. Violence begets more violence, and acquired aggressiveness begets violence. The socialization for aggression is institutionally embedded in constraints, direct and indirect, and sanctions, positive or negative and in the norms and ethos of a particular social structure. By its socialization, aggressive drives are channeled into appropriate symbolic outlets of expression, and this prevents aggression from rending in group social relations or undermine the symbolic hierarchy of social authority. Its cultivation fosters an atmosphere of social security and of active involvement in the rituals which mediate difference and conflict. Aggression is learned through imitation, internalization, punishment, enforced restrictions and competition. People are constrained and coerced into aggressiveness through manipulation and reinforcement, through rationalized protection and defense of the ego, through 'trials' of ritualized suffering, challenge and endurance. Aggression is the expression of power in the world--its feeling, motivation and energy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The challenge of social cohesion and conformity is to transmute and channel independent forms of personal willpower and direct aggression into appropriate forms of social empowerment and indirect expression of aggression, of an extensive form of personalized natural power and transforming it into an intensive form of social, derivative power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Sexual drives and aggressiveness are closely linked--instinctually, hormonally and in the brain. Biological paradigms or fight or flight are tied to mating rituals and other forms of symbolic behavior. It is no wonder that the social repression of sexuality, seen as polluting, taboo, immoral is to be associated with the sublimation, cultivation, elaboration and projection of aggression onto out groups or members of out groups. The frustration of sexuality is a social mechanism for the indirect fostering and channeling of aggressive drives. Such a mechanism reinforces group solidarity and is a mechanism of control of social structure and reproduction and allows for the build up and subsequent targeting and triggering of pent-up aggressive impulses upon socially acceptable targets.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Aggressiveness can be socially transmitted, acquired and targeted in acceptable ways. The indirect release of aggression upon out groups promotes internal solidarity, cohesiveness and conformity. The coupling of sexuality and aggressiveness is a useful means of augmenting the motivational drives which then can be socially channeled in constructive or destructive ways. The frustration of sexual drives, and its sublimation into other domains of interest helps to heighten levels of aggression. The evocative power of sexual symbolisms can be transferred to the reinforcement of symbolisms of aggression. Sexual symbolisms can surreptitiously focus and direct aggressive impulses in deliberate and controllable ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Psychological growth of personality is critically linked to socialization and enculturation in relation to others in the world. The formation of psychological 'ego' as a socially interdependent expression of personality is referred to as 'identification'. Identification is a 'psycho social' process of ego development, having inseparable psychological and social components of its process. It is largely a dialectical process of self in relation to significant others. Identification of one's ego identity is defined vis-a' vis one's social structural positionality and in terms of relations with significant others and/or symbols of group identity. Identification is a consequence of the psychological internalization of the constraints and sanctions, values, norms, attitudes, aversions and predispositions predominant within one's world--a person's primary reference group. From a social standpoint, successful internalization has the happy and convenient result of precluding the need to maintain external social controls or of external mechanisms of behavioral reinforcement--the actions of the individual in relation to social life will be rendered expectable and predictable in a positive way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Negative stereotypes, associated with people who have failed to successfully internalize and identify with the predominant ethos and nomos of the group, or who have identified negatively and 'externalized' such norms and standards of conduct, are always associated with unpredictability and unexpectable and dangerous behaviors. Such people are prone to behave in aberrant and abnormal ways, and are therefore preordained uncontrollable and potentially dangerous as their inappropriate behavior threatens social order.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Internalization is not promoted without its costs to an individual or to the group, as it tends to separate the sense of individual identity from its own natural ground of being in the world, by the superimposition of artificial values and secondary orientations. This has the consequence of frustrating creative development and independent thinking and renders the individual, in motivation, interests, inclinations, attitudes, habits, subordinate to and subservient to and dependent upon the world view from which the social norms and values are derived. It 'fixes' and 'frames' an individual in a relative inflexible structural position. People become prisoners of their own unconscious psyche that attempts to deal with this condition--they become either rebels, silent conformists or sycophants of the predominant world view which predetermines their 'frames' of being and experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this matter people cannot prevent or help themselves in their controlled behavior, or in uncontrolled reactions to it, not even recognize in themselves what it is that so directs and controls their sense of being in the world. This vital control is blocked out, rendered transparent and invisible, covered over by something quite sophisticated systems of rationalization and intellectualization which protects their sense of ego identity and their implicit world view, from contradiction which might threaten or undermine it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Internalization has different consequences for different people--some have internalized more rigidly than others, and different people adopt different kinds of ego defense mechanisms to allow them to cope with the consequences of their own inflexibility in new environments. Different kinds of status role positions beget different forms and ways of identification.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Psycho social identification and the formation of ego in the world is referred to as an individual's 'status role' identity vis a 'vis a given corporate social structure and organization. Psychological ego identity is wrapped up with a person's nomothetic social status, or positionality within the social order, whether hierarchical or symmetrical, and with that person's functional role within that order. A person's status is critically linked to the role that person performs and to the social recognition and reinforcement such a role entails. Behavioral modification and reinforcement, in terms of 'professionalization' or 'professional socialization and specialization' of the ego focuses upon the manipulation of an individual's status role identity through sanctioned and constrained reinforcement of the processes of internalization and repression.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is through such status role identity that social structure as a normative and nomothetic order is primarily reinforced. Status role identity is critically linked to social group boundary maintenance mechanisms and symbolisms, whether internal or external. Threats to group boundary identity constitutes threats to an individual's status role identity within the group and threats to an individual's status role identity constitutes a threat to the social order.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is understandable that the ego defense mechanisms of world view--repression/projection, rationalization and intellectualization, compartmentalization and dichotomization--are also important mechanisms in maintaining and reinforcing the social structure and in mediating group boundary identity in the world, and that symbols and mechanisms of social reinforcement of group boundary identify figure prominently in the normal socialization or 'normalization' of an individual's status role identity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The psycho social processes of identification and internalization are related to the process of compartmentalization of the ego into separate domains of being, usually 'front' and 'back' regions, in which a person's ideals, sense of perfection, strengths, positive values and talents, etc. are relegated to the 'front' or public domain and the individual's weaknesses, wrong doings, negative values, etc. are relegated to the back regions where they may be easily hidden from view and denied. Compartmentalization requires maintaining a boundary or a sense of distance between the two domains, which consumes a great deal of psychic energy expressed in the form of inner conflict, dissonance and tension. Compartmentalization is more necessary in public regions of social space, in which all of one's ego defense mechanisms are in place to prevent the two domains from merging or becoming mixed. One's guard can be let down 'behind closed doors' and the sense of self can become relatively uncompartmentalized. This is a more 'relaxed' state of being which does not require as much energy to maintain. The stronger the degree of internalization of social constraint and values, the more compartmentalized a person becomes--complete internalization is a completely compartmentalized identity in which the defense mechanisms are always in place.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Compartmentalization of a person's self identity in the world has several important consequences. First, there is a resulting dichotomization of reality, which undercuts one's total world view. Placing values into separate boxes or compartments in one's own being leads to a compartmentalization of reality and experience into dichotomized, contradictive boxes of good and bad, right and wrong, strong and weak, positive and negative, etc. This dichotomization of world view underlies its mythological and ideological character, and it is all pervasive. There will be a strong need to find a sense of symmetry and isometry between one's internal and external worlds. If follows from this that individual's who have not, for one reason or another, strongly compartmentalized their internal lives, will tend not to dichotomize the external world and to have a world view which tends to be non-ideological.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The second consequence of compartmentalization of the internal world and dichotomization of the external order is that there is a resulting need to unconsciously reintegrate the separate domains of being, to reunite them and to recover a lost sense of integrity and completeness. There is a pervasive sense of being incomplete, unwhole, alienated, alone, unintegrated which leads to an often futile and frequently failed attempt to rediscover 'lost parts' of the self.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The psychological processes of internalization and compartmentalization rest upon the mechanism of 'psychological repression'--the holding back or keeping down of natural expression or development of devalued aspects of the self, through strict behavioral controls, reinforcing ideas, impulses, etc. painful to the conscious mind (ego identity) into the unconscious where they still modify behavior and remain dynamic, and the prevention of such ideas, impulses, etc. from rising to the level of consciousness. Feelings of weakness, inadequacy, insecurity, negatively valued emotions, feelings, expressions, traits, habits, pre-dispositions, become forced by psychological constriction and social constraint into the back regions of the unconscious.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such repression has certain inevitable consequences. First it leads to over controlled or constrained expression of self in non-spontaneous overly rationalized ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Secondly, such repression entails unconscious 'projection' of those negatively devalued traits onto a counter reference other, a member of some 'out group'. Projection is an almost automatic, reflexive outcome of repression--it is a form of indirect expression of what is repressed upon targeted scapegoats, expression which is only constrained by the boundaries, relative distance and difference of such out groups. The fact of projection is as transparent and invisible as the sense of necessary repression is strong and requires rationalization. Repression and the resulting need for projection often entails finding an acceptable target or a scapegoat, which entails the devaluation or negation of another individual or group. Psychological projection is the externalization of a thought or a feeling such that it appears to have objective reality. It entails finding appropriate symbols in the environment which conveniently and adequately serve the purposes of projection or indirect expression of what is repressed.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Psychological repression/projection is associated with social repression/projection. Group identity and constraints become incorporated through socialization and identification into the individual--what is socially repressed becomes internalized as psychological repression, and what is psychological repressed becomes expressed through social relationship as social repression. Furthermore, psychological projection finds convenient symbols in social out groups which are targets of social projection.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Repression/projection as psycho social mechanisms of internalization/identification and compartmentalization/dichotomization are the basis of rationalization and intellectualization which characterize world view. Such mechanisms allows us to understand how rationalization differs from rationality, and how intellectualization differs from intellect, as ego defense mechanisms characterized by cognitive dissonance, the need for non-contradiction, totality, denial, etc.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Repression/projection and status role/group boundary identity are mechanisms for maintaining a world view which symbolically ties together into a unity ego identity and group identity and leads to a well documented phenomenon of in group/out group consciousness. Such consciousness is characterized by some definite traits.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The out group is the symbolic scapegoat and victim/target of projection. It is negative devalued and excluded from communication. The in group is positively valued, and the in group language become exclusive facilitating internal communication but hindering between group communication. A sense of special identity is fostered, an illusion of superiority and prerogative over the out group. Hierarchy and solidarity of the in group is reinforced through ritual and symbolic practices. The presence of an out group is not just convenient, but unconsciously mandatory and imperative--internal cohesion, solidarity and hierarchy of power could not be reinforced without the critical 'absence' of an out group which serves as a projective target of internal psycho social repressions. Within group differences are repressed and within group conformity or similarities, or 'identity' is emphasized and between group differences are emphasized and between group identity de-emphasized.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">At the same time, the individual variation of the out group becomes 'collectivized' as a group stereotype--'if you've seen one, you've seen them all' where as the individual variation of the in group becomes emphasized and highlighted--'the organization of familiarity'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Status role and group boundary identity, in group/out group consciousness and world view become symbolically expressed and articulated in systems of belief and behavior which are referred to as systems of collective representation--symbolisms and symbol systems which represent identity and ideologically express and reinforce group vales and consciousness. Symbols of collective representation serve to 'normalize' and 'naturalize' such relations and to 'sacralize' the identity of relation. They express the collectivity of identity, and emphasize the collectivizing function of symbolic identity. Collective representations orient 'world view' and ground it in 'objective reality'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Compartmentalization and repression/projection entail symbolic dichotomization of social reality between the 'reference significant other' and the 'counter reference significant other'. The reference other is 'sacred' or endowed with 'sacred qualities' as a paragon of the collective representation or embodiment of the paradigm, in that it is an in group symbol of primary reference and emulation. It may be an authority figure, a normative ideal or archetype or an abstraction expressed symbolically. The 'counter reference' significant other is the archetypal or stereotypical embodiment of the negative projections of the self, characteristic of the 'out group'. These contraposed symbolisms are functionally complementary to one another--they require logically and analogically the mutual presence of both in the dichotomization of social reality. The significant reference other is the symbolic embodiment of the 'perfect self'--an externalized introjection of the positive attributes of the ego, while the counter reference other is an anti-type of the 'imperfect other', while the counter reference other is an anti-type, the internalized projection of the unconscious 'unself'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Prejudice, pre-judgment of others, is based upon ignorance about them. Ignorance is not only the lack of information but 'ignoring' such information through selective omission and perception. It is necessary that we do not know others in order that we may remain prejudiced about them. The insidiousness of ignorance is not that it is based on a lack of reliable, valid information, but that it is based on an unwillingness to learn about or a resistance to such information. All prejudice implies the rule of ignorance. Prejudice is self serving in a person's or a group's world view--it reinforces its own ignorance and its own preconceptions of the way the world is and ought to be.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such prejudice as pre-judgment of others entails that we superimpose standards of moral judgment on others which are independent of their actions or being, culture or history--their being and behavior is ultimately denied or devalued as unnecessary or unimportant in our constructions and preconceptions about them. Prejudice allows us to see and look at the world the way we want to see it, unmitigated by the reality of the other--the reality of the other is made to fit into our own world without references to the other's values, actions, experiences or realities. We then do not have to consult them or bother to inquire of them or their experiences to validate our views about them. Our prejudices are self validating by our ignorance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Prejudice is a mechanism for maintaining, protecting or preserving the status quo of hierarchical power relations and in group/out group boundary maintenance. Prejudice and ignorance leads to patterns of socially sanctioned social avoidance and persecution, which maintains the state of ignorance in order that our prejudice might not be compromised by contradictory information.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such prejudice and ignorance is based upon selective perception and preconception. We have preconceived ideas about what another person is like, or about good or bad traits, and we then see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear, and selectively choose to pay attention to what conveniently reinforces our own world view. This may happen not only consciously but unconsciously. Selective perception and preconception is based upon unconscious projection of things hidden in ourselves. Ignorance and prejudice, as psychological resistance and refusal have reasons which are rooted in our own character.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Prejudice and ignorance find reinforcement in 'labeling' and stereotyping of others. Labels reify abstract realities as if these were objectively real, and allow us to locate these 'realities' in others by way of calling them names. It reifies people into the qualities of labels. Labeling implies in group/out group consciousness, and creates thresholds to passing/perception between groups. Labeling reinforces world view and modifies our perception of reality. Once stuck, labels are difficult to remove. Labeling is a symbolic form of linguistic tattooing, a form of dysphemization which follows Gresham's law that bad meaning tends to crowd out the good. Labeling leads to self fulfilling prophecy, and to the 'I told you so' syndrome of picking out and emphasizing actions or traits which reinforce the realism of the label, while ignoring realities which may contradict it. This is a kind of 'blaming the victim' which projects the lack of personal responsibility and victimizes the victim of our prejudice as a 'self fulfilling prophecy'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Labeling creates and maintains stereotypes--any unvarying forms or patterns, fixed or conventional expression, notion, character, mental pattern, paradigm, etc. having no individuality, as though cast from a single mold. The onus of stereotyping is that they create psychological and social low self esteem which leads to self defeating patterns of behavior which reinforce and help to perpetuate the stereotypes or to exaggerated acts of over compensation which have a similar net result.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Collective low self esteem is a result of group stereotypes in which role models, dominant symbols, leadership traits and figures are devalued or demoted into submissive, subordinate, subservient, exploitable and victimizable status in relation to foreign, alien or antithetical models of dominance and superiority. It leads to a cultural inferiority complex which tends to reinforce itself--losers seek out and find the company of other losers, and prevent one another from escaping the vicious cycle of low motivation and low esteem, while winners are allowed to 'choke' into failure by the withdrawal of social support.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ignorance and prejudice lead inevitably to social/structural bias and discrimination which reinforces patterns of inequality and dominance inherent in the world view and world order such labeling and stereotyping begets. Discrimination is the behavioral exclusion or marginalization of members or of out groups from the normal social participation as in group members or 'citizens' and from in group status role identity. Discrimination prevents access to power, resources and social relations which are the basis of psycho social well being and adaptive success. Social discrimination leads to verbal abuse, name calling, derogation and slander. Structural discrimination is the bureaucratic omission or exclusion from due process and the screens of obfuscation and the removal of screens of support and opportunity. Bureaucracy encapsulates and colonizes the out group while it protects the interests of and privileges the access to resources of the in group.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Bias is built into the world view and world order which favors in group identity over our group identity. It leads to ethnocentrism and other forms of prejudiced world view.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Scapegoating is a targeting of aggression upon acceptable out groups--it is a way of focusing hate and antagonism outside of the normal social order to prevent built up anger and aggression from causing internal conflict and disorder. It is a way of symbolically reinforcing conformity by paradigmatic intimidation, by setting an example. Scapegoating is a way of blaming the victim--not only is the out group victimized by aggression, but the negative and devalued traits projected on to them and made to stick like labels, legitimates the use of aggression and projects blame and responsibility for the aggression upon the targeted out group. Scapegoating is a necessary mechanism for maintaining group identity and solidarity, especially when internal social relations are strained or stressed or conflictual or highly competitive and spurious. A competitive social ethos entails scapegoating. One form of scapegoating is witchcraft accusation and attribution of magic and sorcery. As a mechanism of aggression and of 'blaming the victim' and for reinforcing social solidarity it is clear how scapegoating in the form of witchcraft accusation functions. Scapegoating is in a sense the opposite of catharsis as the release of built up tension--the relieving or purifying of emotions by art, or the alleviation of fears, problems, jealousies and complexes by bringing them to consciousness and giving them due expression. Collective representations of out groups, in the form of stereotypes provide a convenient form of symbolism by which catharsis may be effected. Scapegoating can be seen to be a form of 'negative catharsis'. The release or resolution of potential aggression or built up tension allows a lower level equilibrium which restore social relations to a new harmony, however temporarily. Scapegoating, whether witchcraft or some other form, is a social coping mechanisms which allows tension in the environmental misfit of everyday social lie which would otherwise be threatening to the social order, to surface in a symbolically acceptable form and be given indirect expression, alleviating the tension. It is a conservation mechanism--a first order negative feedback mechanism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In scapegoating, in discrimination, labeling, etc. there is a hidden evil in that usually individuals promote such social processes or control their outcome for their own personal profit or empowerment at the sacrifice of other victims of the process. This is hidden, and always done deliberately. It is a way of manipulating the symbology of the structure of the system to personal advantage, through the systematic victimization of others. In this way also these mechanisms tend to promote and preserve the status quo in power relationships as the people in hierarchical positions of authority are the ones who are profiting by the legitimization and propagation of such processes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Values which emphasize competitiveness, hierarchy, authority and dominance, reinforce a world view based upon the efficacy of conflict and power to control. Conflict is a consequence of competition, on which the rewards of success are limited, and one party's or person's gain is another's loss. Values of competitiveness and hierarchy capitalize on the promoting and channeling of aggressiveness into indirect ways of social expression. In such a predominant value orientation, success as the reward of competition is highly valued. Cooperation, equality, symmetry or reciprocity as an antithetical vale orientation is demoted and devalued as a subservient way of being--cooperation in party's or team efforts only enhance and promote competitive success of the whole group at the expense of the individual's own personal identity. Our society values highly competition and devalues cooperation in schools, in work and play, in past time events, in virtually every aspect of work and play. Promotion of competitiveness and superiority reinforces our success ethics and our world view based upon social selection of 'survival of the fittest'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Antagonism as a form of direct aggression is related to agonism as a form of sexual competition--antagonism, as a kind of conflictual outcome of agonistic competition, becomes a way of reinforcing the structure of relations between people and between groups.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Hate and hostility are expressions of frustrated aggression projected onto marginalized members of out groups. It entails victimization of members of inferior out groups as a means of expression of antagonism and aggression, and as a means of negatively reinforcing the competitive success ethic. We hate losers, and we are hostile to cooperation which precludes competitiveness. This is the underlying fascism of our capitalist world view which promoted self interest at the sacrifice of others and concomitantly the interests of the system at the expense of other people's 'systems'. Self promotion precludes a personal sense of moral responsibility to the collective well being of humanity. Such an enlightened sense of social responsibility is a sign of weakness, a symptom of failure, a mark for systematic exclusion and even a 'villainized' threat of 'evil' communism. It remains the social prerogative of the elite and the chosen.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The basis of ethnocentrism in the world as a pan cultural phenomenon of world view is to be found in the promotion of power, self interest and authoritarianism, which plays upon the psychology of empowerment for a select few and depowerment for excluded others. The structure of ethnocentrism is derived as particular culture historical symbolisms as instantiations of the psychology of power and the authoritarian character. Ethnocentric focus and the force of enculturation are determined by and predetermine the social locus of power--it provides a center and concentricity of symbolism about which world view and the sense of collective order can be cultivated and maintained.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The psycho social process of personality development, ego identity and socialization described so far are fundamentally processes of the inculcation of the authoritarian character in individuals vis a vis their dominant cultural ethos and nomos. Authoritarianism is universal in human personality in the sense that the Freudian thesis of the Oedipus complex is a thesis about the internalization of male authority in the formation of the ego--it in a psycho social problem of authority. Authoritarianism has been described psychologically and sociologically but has never been directly broached as an anthropological concern.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Authoritarianism s the psychological internalization of the symbols and values of authority, and the conventional constraints and repressions associated with authority, and the internal conflict which results from this internalization and which creates rigidity, rebellion, the need for control, defense mechanisms and anxiety, and leads to other personality disorders. Sociopathy and counter cultural rebellion from authority are expressions and reactions to authoritarianism and the problem it leads to. We are all authoritarian to some extent--it is a question of how much and in what ways. It is a greater dilemma for some than for others, and others develop more morally mature ways for dealing with it. The psychological problem of authority is part of the central problematic of the psychology of power. Authoritarianism is a psychological preoccupation with power which frequently results in the perversions of its expression.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The manifestations of psychological authoritarianism, of the authoritarian character, takes several distinct forms and has many forms of expression. Common manifestations include fear or deficiency motivation, closed mindedness, symbolic dependency, rigidity and inflexibility in dealing with change, sexual repression, self denial or a preoccupation with ego, high levels of cognitive dissonance and emotional anxiety and a kind of 'evil' fascination with death.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Whatever its components, psychological authoritarianism is functionally associated with forms of sociological authoritarianism or the formation of 'authoritarian power structures' which may exist as a shadow organization within other organization frameworks, and which inculcated, promote and attract authoritarian personalities and cultivates authoritarians among its constituency. Such power structure exist for their own ends, for the end of 'power' and the perversion and moral corruption which power produces in human social relations. Authoritarian power structures accrete authoritarianism and power and lead to the problems associated with these.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Authoritarianism and its resulting power structures are a central existential and ethical problem confronting humankind today, one which must be effectively dealt with theoretically, methodologically and ideologically. It requires an elucidation of 'non-authoritarian personality' and of non-authoritarian power structures'. It is wondered whether the so called 'egalitarian personality' is the opposite of the authoritarian character or whether the 'non-authoritarianism' might have other attributes and traits and implications for personality development and social structuration which lie beyond the moral dilemma of equality. One of the predominant values of authoritarianism is the principle of social hierarchy--a belief in the efficacy of controlling power. Can power be articulated in or social world in fundamentally non-hierarchical ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Authoritarianism has been associated with low achievement motivation and with feelings of low self esteem. It can be argued that the association between the archetypical authoritarian character and low self esteem is fundamental to the understanding of both kinds of psychological phenomena--authoritarianism and low self esteem are caught in a cybernesis in which one leads to and comes from the other. Furthermore, just as authoritarians tend to flock together to socially reinforce one another and become caught into webs of relational interdependency which reinforce one another's identity and bolster each other's self esteem within the power structure of authority. The 'sense of being at the bottom' feelings of inferiority lead to a need to feel superior and to be on top, which are manifestations of authoritarianism. The need to feel better than another sets a person up for recursive failure--self fulfilling frustration--which enhances one's feeling of inferiority.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Chronic feelings of failure and fear of failure within a hierarchical arena creates a strong need to over compensate such fear and feelings by symbolically adhering to symbols of success and power, and also to a need to create, foster and maintain the existence of devalued out groups upon which such feelings and fears can be displaced and projected.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The key characteristic of authoritarianism is the preoccupation with the principle of hierarchy (hierarchism) in which elements of a group are ranked into a top-down relational structure in which dominance/subordination and inequality and relational asymmetry is stressed and symbolically, linguistically, behaviorally reinforced in social relationships. Preoccupation with hierarchy reinforces the social structure of hierarchy, and social hierarchy reinforces its psychological correlate. Authoritarianism leads to a dependence upon symbols of power and authority which reinforce such hierarchy and which devalues or downplays principles of egalitarianism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such hierarchism creates a predominant nomothetic arrangement of social structure in which people are normally classified, categorized, ranked and identified within a cross cutting comparative hierarchical taxonomy and are regularly, normally dealt with on the basis of such categories, labels and classes. This leads to an objective reification of people on their basis of their rank order status within the system--individual identity becomes subordinate to and dependent upon social hierarchy. Within such a nomothetic framework, the idiographic identity if the individual is systematically ignored and undermined. There is a denial and repression of intersubjectivity, longitudinal experience and personality differences and individual uniqueness and symbolically these become the characteristics of weakness, non-conformity and abnormality, and are projected onto appropriate out groups.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Embedded values of hierarchism are related to another phenomena of the growth and development of bureaucratic organization within social structures. The life cycle of organizations as social historical movements tends to follow a sequence of stages from a preliminary revolutionary, anti-structural period, lead by a prophet or a core group of revolutionary aesthetics. As such movements gain power and organize themselves, they tend to enter into a phase of corporate organization structure which becomes progressively routinized. Eventually such organizations ossify into top heavy bureaucratic organizations, with the original emphasis upon egalitarian values gradually becoming transformed to values of hierarchy. With the ossification of such institutions, their adaptation to environmental changes decreases and control or prevention of change becomes their primary purpose. The time is ripe for another 'fissioning' process of a new revolutionary splinter group which may separate on the basis of relatively minor doctrinal differences. The cycle begins again. Much of human history of social movements is one of a continuous process of branching and solidification and ossification.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There seem to be several reasons for this cyclical patterns of the spread and proliferation of social movements. First, successful movements grow and proliferate while unsuccessful one will die out while still relatively small. As successful movement expand they adopt organizational structure and associated 'centers' of ideology in order to cope with the enormity of its constituency. It stratifies at several levels, and promotes more hierarchical relations and values. Such organizations become 'grand and impersonal' and often fail to any longer meet the emotional and social needs of its basic constituency in any but the most limited or specialized manner. As it grows to encompass a broader range of diversity of people, there is more possibility for the formation of smaller, interpersonal splinter organization to form at the margins of its control, to crystallize in social organization and begin to challenge the power of its parent organization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Bureaucracy itself begins to proliferate within an organizational framework, and as it does it becomes less and less efficient and more top heavy and parasitic to its population base. As it stratifies into multiple levels of decision making there is a tendency for lower rungs to specialize in conflict mediation, control, delegation of negative authority and the preservation of the status quo of the power hierarchy. As it proliferates and stratifies it becomes less effective in dealing with face to face encounters except in highly formalized and hierarchical ways. An organization saddled with an overgrown bureaucracy tends to ossify and become less flexible and adaptive to change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Once bureaucracy grows it becomes more and more difficult to control completely or to diminish it. The attraction of bureaucracy is the limited security it offers. Bureaucracy is also the most inflexible to change and maintain attitudes of 'false consciousness' or are ideological 'true believers' in the efficacy and reality of their 'system'. They are instituted with the codification and enforcement of a legal structure and laws tend to increase in number and in elaboration, and laws are easier to institute than to repeal. Also the primary purpose of bureaucracy is the mediation of conflict on behalf of the interests of the system and such mediation is the source of stress and high levels of cognitive dissonance and require extreme levels of compartmentalization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It goes without say that bureaucratic structures tend to be authoritarian power structures and that authoritarian power structures tend to become highly bureaucratized in function. It also goes without saying that bureaucratic organizations tend to accrete a great deal of authoritarianism into its rank structure. It promotes values of routine operational efficiency and behavioral/attitudinal conformity, as its primary functions of control, conflict mediation and preservation of the status quo of power relations are best served by these values. Shows of individuality, of independence, of internal conflict are regarded as 'rocking the boat' and threatening to the status quo of power, and are therefore demoted or persecuted as nonconformity or criminality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Bureaucratic structures tend to become 'mediocracies' as they tend to promote mediocrity rather than talent or ability up its rank structure. Mediocre people make the best conformers who are the most routine operationally efficient and the least questioning of the ethos of their system. With the rise of mediocracy is also a rise of authoritarianism, maladaptiveness to change, organizational inflexibility and the promotion of sycophancy and blind ideology. In a mediocracy it can be bad to know too much, ask too many questions, out perform superiors, do 'too good' of a job, be overly productive or have too many talents or pre-occupations which interfere with the routine. Conformity tends to become valued above ability, and impression management becomes promoted over actual performance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is another hidden facet to the rise of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy serves as an official front for screens of obfuscation of opportunity and manipulation of power behind closed doors. Bureaucracy disguises the actual articulation of power through insider networks by which changes are actually mediated. The extreme degree of compartmentalization creates a whole organizational 'back region' in which laws, rules, rights, routines are routinely usurped or disregarded in order to 'get things done'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a formation of a circle of deceit and a common front of routine denial. In such organizations, social relations tend to be spurious for the sake of manipulation and convenience. People in such organizations are ultimately self interested in the promotion of their own hidden or private interests via the mechanism of the system. They are the most frustrated when their own expectations are nor met and their own needs and demands are nor served. Sacrifice of their own personal identity and conformity to organizational ethos is the price they pay for membership, social status and advancement within the system. Even 'true believers' who have lost personal identity for the sake of their identification with the system are surreptitiously most selfish in their expectations of what the system will do for them. Thus the back region hides the competition, the interpersonal strife, the 'back stabbing', routine scapegoating , brown nosing and victimization which bureaucracy inevitably eventuates in.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Authoritarianism is mostly an unconscious process. This is what makes it so invidious, so transparent and invisible, and so prone to hypocritical and pretentious presumptions and so difficult to eradicate when it becomes organized into power structures. This makes authoritarianism surprisingly easy to mask and cover over and conceal from the critical scrutiny of others--unconscious authoritarianism appeals to and speak to the unconscious authoritarianism of others in a paralinguistic, contextual and symbolic dialogue which is concealed within and hidden by the conscious rationalizations which might take neutral or even authoritarian forms of discourse. Although there are manifestations or authoritarianism which are conscious, its structure predetermines behavior and thought at an unconscious and contextual level of constraint. The paradox is that authoritarians act and react guided by dictates which they themselves are at best only scarcely aware of. There is a conscious need to cover or block out or avoid this self recognition of the ethical implications of their own behavior and attitudes. This unconsciousness of authoritarianism is what confers the fascination and preoccupation with symbols of power and authority. It allows people to behave aggressively toward others without their full conscious apperceptive recognition of their own aggressiveness. Unconsciousness is the consequence of the repression and denial of the causes of authoritarianism in their own weakness and character. There is a need to appear 'strong' and 'unemotional' which covers over weakness and a subconscious cauldron of emotionality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Within authoritarian power structures there can be whole underground networks of authoritarian discourse which goes on secretively and is even subconsciously reinforced by peoples attitudes and behaviors. The paradox is also that basically authoritarian personalities can so mask their authoritarianism with such sophistication that they appear or seem to be quite non-authoritarian on the conscious, surface level of interaction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Secret services, covert operations, closed door policies and politics, and behind the scene manipulations and the maintenance of circles of deceit, grapevines, plants among people and ears in walls, are all sociological manifestations of the communication and collective unconscious of authoritarian power structures. Voters may be manipulated on the unconscious level and can be guided to vote according to their unconscious inclinations inspite of their conscious, rational disagreement. As authoritarians, we may know better, but feel compelled to act in authoritarian ways inspite of our conscious awareness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Words and symbols convey messages at both the conscious and unconscious levels--messages which may be mutually contradictory or covertly complementary when the conscious manifest level is configured against a broader latent unconscious context. It is at the unconscious level that authoritarianism is typically transmitted and elaborated. While we may be entertained consciously, we may be quite unaware of the unconscious messages being conveyed which may provoke anxiety or trigger aggression.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols, while mediating the conscious and unconscious levels of communication, validate or valorize unconscious vales by their juxtapositioning within conscious arrangements. Propaganda and argot typically carry unconscious loadings of authoritarian values. We may enjoy the entertainment but remain unconsciously, or subliminally aware of the stereotypes we are accepting or that are being expressed. Unconscious drives empower symbolisms, vitalizing them with importance and relevance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols may be simple and crude, or quite elaborate and sophisticated, appealing to different levels of mind, different degrees of conscious and unconscious integration. Symbolic repression is a cause of psychological disorder--people adjusted to more sophisticated symbolisms can no longer find crude symbolisms adequate to meditate the conscious and unconscious, the ego and the environmental context. The de-symbolization of downward mobility, reverse migration, marginalization, and the accompanying psychic disintegration--symbol systems once culturally relevant may no longer be adequate for one who has 'grown' out of them, who are tuned to different levels, kinds and styles of power symbolism. Symbols from past epochs and periods are usually transparent and nonfunctional in their unconscious appeal and manipulative power. They no longer mediate for us--they lack their relevant historical context and appear trite, old fashioned and out of date. They appear naïve or 'see through' and obvious. In a sense societies elaborate different forms of symbolisms to different degrees and the unconscious repressions become more sophisticated and elaborated. Movement between cultures reveals the discrepancies in the values which are symbolically reintegrated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the unconsciousness of authoritarianism which makes it so difficult to identify and account for and so intractable to analysis and reform--though it may be pervasive and predominant in social environments, we may remain only marginally aware of it, and though we may strongly sense its presence, we may remain quite unable to focus upon it as a central problematic inherent to a particular social situation. Largely we lack the understanding and vocabulary by which to frame and objective understanding of authoritarianism as a psychological and social problematic or as a 'paradigm' of power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Consciousness must uncover and reveal the unconscious ground of authoritarianism in order to exert control over it--which is the only means of getting a healthy handle upon the problem. There is a natural and normal resistance to uncovering things in the unconscious especially as it threatens the 'status quo' and awakens the insecurities which authoritarianism copes with. Authoritarianism represents a frequently predominating and overwhelming power to control the unconscious and to cause the consciousness to conceal and cover over the unconscious.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The egalitarian personality is frequently contraposed as the opposite of the authoritarian character, and yet strictly speaking egalitarianism is actually the opposite of hierarchism, but one dimension of the authoritarian complex. Egalitarianism is actually only one aspect of the non-authoritarian character. Other aspects include low level of aggressiveness, non-competitiveness, high self esteem, relative open-mindedness, a 'reality orientation' and a wide acceptance of and tolerance for interpersonal difference. Egalitarianism is not so much a personality of values held to be basic to a democratic and egalitarian society. It can often disguise a great deal of hypocrisy. It is interesting that the model of egalitarian personality is often that of an enlightened, liberal minded, Jewish college professor. Such a stereotype can often conceal a paternalism of the 'law of the father' and a 'binding over of the son' as an unconscious form of authoritarianism in which authority is viewed as a kind, gentle, firm and parental in relation to children.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are people that are relatively free of authoritarian traits and who have a rather relaxed preoccupation with symbols of authority and power. Such people no longer need to define issues of power in social relations, with secure egos not threatened by nomothetic comparison with others, in terms of authoritarian frames of reference. They have brought to conscious awareness the unconscious dimensions of authoritarianism in their own personalities and such dimensions become visible in other people's personalities as well. Non-authoritarianism is not so much an overemphasis upon equality, if in name only, as 'egalitarianism' implies, though this is one important aspect of the non-authoritarian trait complex. Rather it is a de-emphasis upon identity and difference and a need to establish some form of reciprocal symmetry or give and take in social interrelationships. There is a tendency to deal with others in more personalistic, inter-subjective terms of idiographic personality and longitudinal experience rather than in terms of their status role identity. Status symbolisms are relative unimportant or neutral to the non-authoritarian, rather they are more in tune with the basic 'goodness' or qualities and attitudes of others as separate individual personalities, regardless of or in reference to group identity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">They do not prejudice or discriminate against others on the basis of status or appearance. These people tend to have a more idiographic orientation in their own life trajectories and in the understanding of and relating to others, rather than a categorizing framework in which they are measuring themselves and others in comparison and ranking.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Understanding others is a process of 'getting to know them'. People become interpreted against their own relational backgrounds in reference to personal life history, as they have been molded by past experiences or influenced by past events or environments. Such people may have systems of belief and entertain ideologies but they are relatively non-exclusive systems of belief--they are will to consider alternative viewpoints and to see the value of alternative orientations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The non-authoritarian does not seek power in its dependent social form, but seeks an independence from the control of such power, and an independent form of self empowerment in terms which are self actualizing but not premised upon the domination of others. The non-authoritarian values a strong sense of normative and intellectual independence and action, and stresses a moral code of self responsibility.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relatively few people are either extremely authoritarian or non-authoritarian, most people have aspects of their personality which are relatively authoritarian and other dimensions which are relatively non-authoritarian--and the differences in these traits varies widely between people, as do the forms of expression which such traits take. Most people are 'mixed types' for better or worse.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Being relatively non-authoritarian does not mean that such a personality is relatively unfree of the kinds of frustration and anxieties which reinforce authoritarianism. Typically the ways that such individuals learn to deal with such insecurities are fundamentally different from those coping mechanisms adopted by authoritarians. Yet it is possible that non-authoritarians are more flexible and adaptable to environmental transitions, creatively and constructively sublimating their sense of stress in ways which enhance adaptativeness and therefore are typically 'low stress' individuals.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such individuals may function better in 'high stress' situations without the degree of regression, need for routinization or breakdown seen with authoritarians. From an ecological standpoint this would make non-authoritarians a more desirable personality orientation in the functional adaptation to environmental changes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Genuine non-authoritarians are few and far in between in a world which is becoming increasingly stratified, stressed, bureaucratized and burdened by the problems of power. Authoritarian power structures which predominate in the world do not value highly or promote the kinds of traits exhibited by non-authoritarians. Adopting a non-authoritarian value orientation is often tantamount to self abnegation of power, status, identity, sociality or friendship in the world. It is to suffer a kind of social death in the world. On the other hand, the world is replete with authoritarians who are all trying to come out on top in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">EMPOWERMENT AND DEPOWERMENT</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The problem of difference and inequality in the world is seen as being a problem of powerlessness with the result that 'empowerment' has become the main ideological agenda of modern reform and social movements. It is usually not recognized that the problem of powerlessness is but a complementary part of the more pervasive and important problem of power in the world, with the result that efforts to create empowerment leads down the same road to ever greater divisiveness, difference and inequality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It also leads itself to hypocrisy as the movements which seek to 'empower' their people becomes entangled in the kind of power which subordinated and marginalized its people in the first place. They seek power for a select few as a special interest group.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The problem of power is its entangling process and its inherent corruption--social movements of the powerless in the face of power must be redirected toward the goal of 'depowerment'--the disinvestment of power in authoritarian structures and 'great organization' and its subsequent 'leveling' to a local level and decentralizing to an individual focus. Depowerment is the forsaking of the goal of 'dependent power'. It entails 'mobilization of the masses' in the sense of moving the great inertia of the collective and of tapping into the great reservoir of energy and ability of the powerless and bringing to realization the greatest potentials of their power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">IDEOLOGY AND POWER</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power centers world view. World view symbolizes and expresses power in the world. Ideology is the self fulfillment of power in the world. It is the making of power in the world according to world view. It is the logos which relationships of power and world view are founded. Ideology as a symbol system articulating power and expressing world view forms a mythology, a belief system of collective representation which centers reality by valorizing, naturalizing and consummating certain symbolisms with supernatural and super organic authority. Ideology transcends reality by attempting to step outside the natural influence of change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">WORLD VIEW AND POWER</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">World view is a consequence and a cause of the psychology of power. The corrupting nature of power must be seen in terms of the psychological origins and consequences of world view. World view shares in the paradox of power, and world view is a manifestation of empowerment in the world. It simultaneously liberates us and limits our liberation by situating us. World view as the psychological expression of power in the world is inseparably linked to power and becomes inevitably associated with its corrupting tendencies.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Part of the psychology of power and the key characteristic of world view is its 'totalizing' sense of order--it fosters the illusion of comprehending the total order and final nature of human reality. This totalizing sense of order in the world, which is complete, does not require other justification, and leads to a sense of 'totalitarianism'--a totalizing world view which maintains complete control and refuses to recognize and as a consequence suppresses, all other possible world views. It is not too much to suggest that a totalitarian world view and a psychological of totalitarianism is strongly associated with a totalitarian world order. It is in this sense of totality that absolute evil is to be found.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">WORLD VIEW AND WORLD ORDER</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">People have long debated whether a certain world view leads to a kind of world order, or that world order will lead to a world view. It is enough to recognize that any kind of world order will be associated with a certain kind of predominant world view. Other perspectives may be available but the predominant world view will find the greatest degree of validation in the world, whether it is true or false, good or bad, healthy or diseased.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It remains to be asked that if our current world order is an evil empire, then what is the character of the world view that is most strongly associated with it, how can this world view be accounted for by relations in the world, and how can such a world view be used to rationalize and legitimate evil in the world, and also how is such a world view promoted or inculcated within the character of people which leads to the perpetuation of the dominant world order.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It may also be argued that there is not one single world order or a single predominant world view, but there are actually several which are competing or which dialectically cohere to form a dynamically self organizing world system. If this is so, then it makes no sense to speak of a single world view, but of several, and then it becomes necessary to outline the difference and interconnected between them and to demonstrate how they cohere to form a single dynamic world system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It may also be the case that if and where evil genuinely exists, it is not an inherent part of such a system, but an inadvertent but inevitable outcome of its psycho-social dynamics, an unintended by product of its functioning and transmission. But evil is defined by its intentionality, or at least its intentional failure of responsibility. So the question of evil and world view requires a second, closer examination in order to better understand that if there is indeed evil in the world, then how does it become rationalized and how does it structure and become structured by the world evil.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It may also be the case that the world system being a self organizing and self regulating one composed of multiple orders and models, is in a sense a natural outcome of certain pre-dispositions, past orientations and future ward directions of development, of which no one is really in control or responsible for, and which would have like come into place whatever our intentions or irresponsibilities. If this is so then we may have no other choice than to tolerate and learn to live with its unintended evil consequences and to try to device means by which we can minimize its evil effects.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Whatever the case may really be, world view remains something important to be reckoned with, not just as a global perspective or general orientation, but as a model for belief and behavior, a predominant and pervasive attitude, inherent psychology and process of socialization and transmission. It is a paradigm of power. It also has certain implications of moral, ethical and existential efficacy which require examination.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not too far fetched to understand how evil can organize itself on a global scale in the structure of multiple authoritarian power structures. And it is not too unbelievable to see how such a world organization of evil can be accomplished ideologically in the name of preventing evil through the security of world order--how it can promote a world view illusion of the efficacy and moral legitimacy of its own promotion of power and the use of force in the name of its peace, order, prosperity and protection of individual liberties and freedoms.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is little question that a world order can be established by an evil empire. The important question is whether or not alternative world order can be achieved without authoritarian power structures and if so, then how. Evil flourishes in the absence of moral order--it entails a corruption and perversion of morality for the purposes of power. If world order is achieved prematurely in a world which is morally unprepared then it must be an order of evil founded upon the efficacy of power and the bureaucratic bankruptcy of a common humanity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE POWER OF PEACE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is time to learn to recognize and to cultivate within ourselves an alternative kind of power that does not depend upon the efficacy of violence. This is the power of peace that comes from patience, from the healing of time, and from the regenerative capacity of the earth and of our own human nature to forgive and forget. The power of peace lies within a state of powerlessness--forsaking the preoccupation and pursuits of power and seeking instead an independent form of power existing independently within our own unique personalities. We must learn the value of living peacefully with ourselves, with our neighbors, with our environments and with our earth. We must take care to pay heed to all the troubles within ourselves and outside of ourselves which cause us to seek to control the worlds, and we must learn to resolve these troubles in a peaceful way, by learning to live with them in an uncontrollable world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE PACIFIST PARADIGM</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The pacifist paradigm challenges all our paradigms of power and the power of paradigm with an alternative kind of 'unpower'. The paradox of the pacifist paradigm is that it is 'anti-paradigmatic' in the conventional sense of 'world view'. It is the dialectical counterpoint to or paradigmatic realities--of patterns, models and examples, yet outside of patterns, models and examples. It is meta-paradigmatic and thus transcends the problematics of paradigm through its synthesis of realities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Its synthesis of realities comes from its keen sense and valuation of difference in the world, and the ability to transcend this difference through compromise and integration. It remains always one step ahead of the Difference of differences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The power of the pacifist paradigm is the potentiality of people unfettered by the shackles of fear and blindness. It is the paramount paradigm of our children. It is the infinite question mark and the eternal answer.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <hr> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PART IV</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="5">MIND AND MYTH</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><b><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="2"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/hughmlewis/">by Hugh M. Lewis</a></font></b></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A common mythical myth of the American Consciousness is that of the conflict between the frontier and civilization, between the rugged, independently spirited pioneer and the Eastern gentleman of an organized way of living. There are many permutations of this theme found in Cowboy and Indian movies, propaganda war movies and in home grown American legends of Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan and John Henry. This mythology underlies a lot of science fiction and science fact, in our exploration of outer space and our heroes of exploration, in the popularity of Star Trek and Star Wars. John Wayne was an embodiment and paragon of this mythical expression in the movies. Superman, Batman and other superhuman comic book heroes are also cut from the same mythical cloth, as are Mike Hammer, Dick Tracy, Matt Dillion and the all boy Cartwright family in the long running television series Bonanza. Mark Twain's grown boyhood adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and A Yankee in King Arthur's Court.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The mythical meta theme of the American tradition of the folk hero informs the attitudes, collective unconscious and world view of American culture--or psycho geographical symbolisms, the way we look out onto and relate with a larger world and a total universe, as well as the way we understand ourselves and our own sense of society. It helps to frame our moral sense of duty in the world and the way we deal with conflict.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a sense, the hypothesis of evil as being rooted in an authoritarian power structure which strives for world domination and the basic conflict with the interests and independence of the individual as the source of morality, is but another, rather academic variation of this same old theme. A theory based on observation, experience, science and philosophy has captured and reproduced a fundamental mythology which underlies its own creation. The interesting aspect of this is that anthropologically the theory itself as well as the empirical experience and information upon which it was based was cut from the same mythical cloth. It is meta-thematic in being both of myth and beyond and about myth. It is clearly an insider's point of view from the margins of the culture. The dilemma is posed is whether some other possible outsider's point of view might not be quite different or more objectively valid an interpretation or if an outsider's point of view world be possible or understandable from an insider's standpoint. Cultural anthropologists are routinely challenged by this basic dilemma during their long sojourns in other places where other traditions, mythologies, world views and civilizations predominate. They are marginal outsider's seeking a common ground with the insider's frame of reference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is really no escaping this dilemma unless we posit somewhat arbitrarily and presumptuously a transcendent, objective, scientific frame of reference based on 'pure observation' of behavioral phenomena which claims in a 'hypothetico-deductive' and statistical fashion to stand outside of the purview of myth, normative consciousness, world view, history, that informs and composes the ground of the insider's point of view. In other words, the objective outsider's objective frame of reference is held to be the only scientifically legitimate one. The criticism against this 'unreflexive' attitude is that the outsider must have some general frame of reference for understanding human reality ad will actually superimpose his own implicit and transparent, unquestioned world view, values, mythology and sense of history upon the cultural realities of the people whom he 'studies'. True social scientists do not even have a problem, because they do not study people, but people as things, actions, events, numbers, words and as observational statements. The scientist then simply substitutes his/her own sense of pathos, ethos, nomos and mythos the vacant spaces between the lines of their recorded data--a scientific transformation of the realities of the people whom they've converted in to date bits, without a sense of critical absence, that something important about their lives is missing in the script.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is even claimed that science itself is bound within the cultural tradition in which it grew from and became paradigmatically formulated, and so is 'unconsciously' and implicitly rooted in the same myths, metaphors, values, moralities from which it originated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is another way out of this dilemma, and that is to presuppose that there exists a universal ground of being human in which all mythology is rooted, and that the goal of the cross cultural researcher is the discovery of this common ground between cultures. Then it is the case that both the outsider's and the insider's frames of reference, mythologies, sense of history and values, are rooted in the same basic fabric of human consciousness and the goal of science is to elucidate this universality of being. In the case of our meta-theme about the American character, we might claim that this mythology is itself but one permutation of a larger, pan human mythology, and that its objective comprehension is an excoriation of its inner layers of consciousness. From a classical Oedipal standpoint we might say that it is the rebellion and struggle of the free spirited son against the law of the father. This is the basis of Freudian in interpretation of the human psyche. Jungians posit the presence of a 'collective unconscious' and of archetypal symbolisms. Chomskians posit a universal generative structure underlying all human language and Levi-Straussians have done the same for myth itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All of these kinds of interpretations come out of a European philosophical/philological tradition of 'Culture History' and Platonic Rational Idealism which posits the a-priori existence of a Geist, a Spirit, a Noumena, a Cartesian Structure which underlies and predetermines human consciousness. It is interesting that the superman ideologies, the classical dichotomies between primitive and civilized, the Apollonian and Dionysian, and notions of cultural relativism and determinism all come from the same traditional source of Mind and Myth. It is also interesting that Marxist theory and post structuralist critique of such theory comes out of and is embedded in the same traditional fold.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To ardent empiricists embedded in a dialectically contraposed position of inductivism, such thinking is considered methodologically problematic from a standpoint of objective science. For positivists, the idea of a universal structure underlying language, thought, myth, and psychology is considered at best ultimately unamenable to scientific methods of falsification and validation and at worst, it is itself composed of the same ideological fabric of which it deals in its theory.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are left back upon the same horns of mythological dilemmas with which this essay began. In resolving this dilemma there are several points worthy of close consideration. First, both themes of rationalism versus empiricism, of science versus mythology, in their many permutations, are but the contraposed extremes of a common dialectical continuum which itself exists for the purposes of dialectical elaboration and this dialectic has no final 'synthesis'. The only 'objective' standpoint then consists of stepping outside of the dialectic itself and of taking a neutral arbiter's position--both sides are right but neither side is completely so. To do so is to adopt a 'meta-dialectical' orientation. This is the only appropriate standpoint with which to objectively evaluate the terms of the dialectics. Secondly, if the notion of a common universality of human consciousness is correct, in which all our mythologies are embedded and from which all their permutations emanate, then we must reevaluate and redefine the role of science and its methodology in its study of human reality in such a way that scientific validity rests on some other common ground than empiricist or positivistic 'falsification'. This alternative framework demands a different philosophy of science and a different theory in science. Thirdly, the idea of a universal ground of human beingness is to be considered substantially self demonstrating in a similar way that its many permutations of mythology are to be considered naturally self organizing. They are 'self evident' truths and realities in our own human nature. We cannot step outside of its universal purview except by the adoption of a relatively non-dialectical position, and yet their validation of universality does not ultimately depend upon our stepping beyond its universality but in embracing its meaning as fully as humanly possible.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Finally it is the thesis of this work that this sense of universality if human 'beingness' is neither just linguistic, mythological, psychological or symbolic, but is a phenomena of the entire culture historical tradition of humankind which is rooted in the human capacity for 'sentience' of, about and in the world. It informs our mythology as a kind of dialectical conflict resolution through appositional analogical and metaphorical relations which are essential meta-logical and form our fundamental frames of reference/inference of the world by which we create meaning and come to question the unknown. It is the basis of both science and mythology, rationality and empirical experience. This is referred to as 'Mind' and Mind has both collective, universal components informing the universal ground of human beingness, and also unique individualistic components which relativizes and renders the understanding of mind partial, imperfect and an inherent dilemma of dialectic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We can never escape this universal condition of mind, or separate ourselves from its fabric of our existence in the world. We can only come to know it better by embracing it and reflecting upon our own and others experience of it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Needless to say, this whole work, and the essays that follow, are intended for the elucidation of this basic human reality and of the implications which it has for our sense of mythology, morality, science, history, evolution, nature and phenomenological and conceptual human reality itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Evil exists in our world largely because we are actively engaged in acting out the mythological meta themes which compose our being and our world, of which evilness is but one possibility. The paradigm of evils is but one of many paradigms of our mythological consciousness. Pacifism as a meta paradigm is a paradigm of Mind, in the sense that Mind always comprehends and contextualizes the paradigms of Myth in our reality. Evil is a product of and model for myth. Peace is a condition of Mind--it is not just a possibility of the human world, as evil is, but it is the beginning and end of all human possibilities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mindness is a pan human state and sense of Mind which is expressed both individually and collectively. The problem of Mindness is dialectically contraposed to the problem of world view--each problematic informs the other by its counterpoint. World view is always situated within and bound by and relativized because of a culture historical context and horizon of being--Mind situates the culture historical context and horizon of being about a particular world view in reference to the universality of human beingness. Mind is a pan human, universal phenomena. It is the expression of pan humanness in the world and it is also fundamentally an irreducible expression of the phenomena of the individual in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mind has long been an unfolding, self revealing process. Mind has been continuously 'evolving' with the evolution of humankind. It has been self organizing and its processual patterning has been unfolding as a natural expression of anti-chaos in a chaotic universe. It has had an ecological function and an evolutionary purpose which has made the critical difference between the development of human culture and traditional civilization and the biological evolution of humankind as a species. The development of Mind has been a gradual process of evincing human possibility--it has largely been non-progressive in its development, except in the sense that human possibilities have become progressively expressed and its patterning played out through mythological and ideological enactment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mindness is the expression of the universal sentience and the toti-potency of humankind as a kind of partial omniscience, a toti-potency which has overreached its practical and philosophical limits in its present state of Earthboundness. Earthboundness is a paradigm of Mind, which carries us to the edge of natural entropy and chaos. It is precisely upon the verge of Earthboundness that we are able to reflect back and to comprehend the horizons of Mindness, as before now it was theoretically without limit and therefore remained incomprehensible and intractable to definition. In environmental exhaustion humankind has biologically and culturally reached the limits of its patterned possibilities which allows us to circumscribe what it means to 'become' human in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mindness was not a priori to the possibility of humankind--it did not preexist waiting to be discovered and elaborated by humankind. It sprung into being with the emergence of humankind--as its expression of the latent possibilities of human sentience and human being. It exists because we exist--we do not exist because it existed before us, except perhaps as a pure possibility of the physical universe. Mind does not frame our experience in the way that world view can be said to--Mind happens to us and through us, experience the world with us and for us. It un-frames and re-frames our frames of world view, as an expression of our possibilities of being. Mind realizes s as we realize Mind, as an expression of our total potentiality of being and becoming.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mythology is the pan human expression of mind in the world. It is not mind itself but the process of its actual patterning in the world. Mythology is the ground of human consciousness, Mind is the collective unconscious. Mythology is the way Mind mediates reality for us. It is the expression of its adaptive function in nature in relation to environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mythology is the only way that we can come to know Mind in ourselves, and in one another. Mythology is composed of the collective representations which cohere to create Mindness and Minding in our reality. Mythology gives us a handle on our minds and on Mind as a universal.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mythology is always expressed metaphorically, analogically, relationally and dialectically. It frames our experiences, our phenomenology, our 'senseness', our references, our inferences about our environments. It contextualizes Mind for us in reality and contextualizes reality for us in Mind. The function of mythology is the mediation between Mind and Reality--it is characteristically human means of human sentience for resolving conflicts between our experiences and our environments. Mythology is the way that Mind comes to know the environment and the way our own evolution of possibility has come to know its environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mythology is a mosaic of permutations and possible patternings of Human Beingness and Mindness in reality. Mythology is the ground of meaning and being for humankind. Mythology is the paradigmatic patterning of Mind. Ideologies and world views are but characteristic kinds of mythologies, configured from the universal ground of Mythos. They are mythologies 'in the making', in the process of being acted out or performed within particular spatial temporal contexts or 'epochs' or culture historical horizons of human experience. Ideology and world view represent the realization, actualization and empowerment of mythology. Ideology and world view are mythologies as 'self fulfilling prophecies' which makes the culture historical patterning of Mind seem recurrent, repetitive and pre-determined.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the enactments of power in the world, we cannot escape our mythological imperative in the fulfillment of our possibilities of becoming. Our mythologies, their many permutations and reinterpretations are our destiny in the world. Not even science is beyond its purview of pre-determination, as the technological teleology of science has come to epitomize the expression of our power in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The recurrent themes of our mythology are in a sense meta-thematic' in the sense that they converge upon a single set of dichotomous sets of 'meta-relations' held to govern other relations in the world. The meta-themes of life versus death, sea versus mountain, male versus female, parent versus child, civilized versus primitive, culture versus nature, become reflected in philosophical and even scientific meta-themes of mind versus body, natural versus supernatural, physical versus meta-physical, time versus space, ends versus means, etc. The structure of mythology has been well elucidated. Meta-themes govern sets of relations in the real world and they can be reinterpreted into other kinds of meta-relations. The value of such a structure is in its flexibility and in its contextuality--it always surrounds and explains things in terms of other things.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science would say that this makes mythology tautological and unfalsifiable and this is correct. It is to be asked but never answered whether such a convergence of meta-themes is reflective of archetypal dualisms which are determined by the structure of the human mind, or whether they are merely a thematic convergence of taxonomies and categories of experience which is situated within a common existential set of predicaments faced by all humans. The former hypothesis is indeed amenable to scientific method. The latter alternative is at least amenable to verification of its context of elucidation, the investigation of its existential experiences in which such meta-themes find expression in the real world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We cannot ultimately determine whether there are universal dichotomies in the human mind or if so, then what exactly these might be. But we can determine the recurrent kinds of existential relationships and common experiences in which these meta-themes are situated and expressed in reference to the world, and this is why the latter explanation is the more scientifically unproblematic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The meta-themes of mythology lend themselves to poetic expression--the roots of poetic consciousness are grounded in these mythological meta-themes and mythology is dependent upon poetry for its effect and relevance in human reality. It is in the understanding of the aesthetic function of poetry as the origination and creation of human possibilities of experience, that poetry can be said to be the voice of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The meta-thematic elements of mythology are a reflection of the 'meta-logic' inherent to Mind. The 'meta-logic' of Mind comprehends several alternative meanings, yet all cohere to make Mind 'meta-paradigmatic' and account for the special, unique significance of human sentience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The meta-logic of Mind consists of a 'meta-paradigm' of the following sort:-</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">a) Metalogue or metalogical dialogue between self and other constitutes dialectical question and answer conversation about a problematic topic such that the 'structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to the same subject. A metalogue comprehends more than one subject simultaneously, in meta-thematic terms.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">b) Meta-logic is defined by Webster's Dictionary as the 'metaphysics of logic' and as '1. Beyond the scope of logic; not determinable by logic. 2. Relating to the metaphysics of logic.' Meta-logic is both about logic and simultaneously beyond the purview of logic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">c) Meta-logos is about words and yet beyond words or the metaphysics of words. Logic is rooted in language and all language is metaphorical in meaning. The two value logic is a reflection of the meta-thematic unity of mythology. 'Logos' or word, was for the Greek philosophers the 'rational relations of things to one another or the general sense of order or measure'. It '…designated the principle through which the cosmos is generated, ordered, united and maintained, or even the ordered, united, evolving cosmos itself…Logos is therefore the common principle making possible 'understanding between man and the world and also between men.' (Kleinkrecth, 1967:page 81)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">d) Our awareness of our commons state of being is an extension of our self awareness. Our self awareness and environmental consciousness, our Mind, is structures by the apperceptive and simultaneous awareness of our own being in the world and the being of others in the world. Meta-logic carries the connotation of implication of 'apperception' defined as '1. Perception; 2. Consciousness by the mind of its own consciousness; self reflective perception applied to metaphysical ends--"Apperception is the essential mental act in the great stages of mental generalization, perception, conception and judgment--Baldwin." 3. The reinterpretation of new ideas by past experience.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">e) Meta-logicalness also carries the connotation of 'reflexiveness' which is of and about and yet beyond simple self reflection--it is the ability to make the strange seem familiar and simultaneously make the familiar seem strange. It fuses difference in the world such that we may find identity in difference. We find ourselves in others and others in ourselves and our mythologies become but variations of common meta-themes in other's mythologies and vice versa.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Sentience is found in our human capacity for establishing a meta-loge with the universe. This is the source of our human possibilities for becoming that are not constrained by nature or the physical reality of our presence in the world. Our meta-loge is the expression of the meta-logic of Mind that creates and comprehends paradox, antinomies, dilemmas, enigmas and questions in reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is important that we frame out problematics of Mind in metalogically in terms of meta-logue--it is important that we find in our meta-logues about Mind the basis for both our poetry and our science.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the understanding of Mind as the possibilities of human sentience, it is necessary to recognize the existential and phenomenological isomorphism between 'being' and 'meaning' such that the two are but opposite sides of the same coin. We must come to terms with the reflexive meaning of meaning and 'beingness' of being in our metalogical meta-loges of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To 'define' comes from Latin 'definere' (to limit, from "finis", a boundary) and is defined as 'to determine or describe the limits of, the nature of, to set down the precise outlines of, to describe exactly, to state or explain the meaning of meanings of a word, etc., to give the distinctive properties or characteristic of a thing, to constitute the definition of, or to settle or decide. (obs.) Synonyms include 'to bound, demarcate. delimit, determine, limit and fix.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Several connotations are evident in this 'definition of definition'. Definition is a response to the general question of 'what?' as in 'What is a thing?' or 'What is human reality?'. Answers to 'what' questions tend to be precise, clear and finite. It is a kind of answer tending to 'determine' what the meaning of a word is, in sharp outline or contrast to other words and meanings. It involves putting a clear, sharper outline of what a vague thing is.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Determining a boundary, demarcating a finite limit or a sharp outline by the definition of a thing or word constitutes an enactment of meaning in itself. Thinking up our definitions to 'what is' questions involves literally and figuratively the very meaning of that reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Furthermore, we come to define a thing in terms of other things that are related or compared or contrasted with it within a broader relational context of understanding. This is the metaphorical and basic mythological aspect of our definition of meaning in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our 'definition of definition' calls up the metalogical meta-logue about this problematic topic. Definition of meaning and the meaning of definition as being a metalogical meta-logue brings us to a 'mise en abyme' of meaning as constituting the essential 'paradoxicality' of Mind. Without our paradigms we would not be able to distinguish the nothingness which lies beyond it--'there can be no glimpse of the abyss, no vertigo of the underlying nothingness.' (Miller) But our paradigms both opens up the chasm of possibility, and simultaneously fills it up with meaning and covers it over by giving it a name--grounding the groundless. Our paradigms then automatically become 'trivial mechanisms' or 'artifices' f our production. 'It becomes something merely made, confected, therefore all too human and rational…' (Miller)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In speaking meta-logically of 'sense of order' or 'structure' or 'system' or 'paradigm' do we really mean something different from 'sense' itself as 'sense/nonsense' or 'meaning/ameaning' or are we merely 'tying knots in our handkerchief' as Gregory Bateson puts it, 'such that these terms will forever stand not as fences hiding the unknown from future investigators, but rather as signposts which read: "UNEXPLORED BEYOND THIS POINT". Our language can clarify as well as obfuscate.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Meaningful information consists of drawing a 'slash mark' between subject and object, known and unknown, something and nothing:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Meaning may be regarded as an approximate synonym of pattern, redundancy, information and 'restraint' within a paradigm of the following sort:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Any aggregate of events or objects (e.g. a sequence of phonemes, a painting or a frog or a culture) shall be said to contain 'redundancy' or 'pattern' if the aggregate can be divided in any way by a 'slash mark' such that an observer perceiving only what is on one side of the slash mark can 'guess' with better than random success, what is on the other side of the slash mark. We may say that what is on one side of the slash contains 'information' or has 'meaning' about what is on the other side…'(Bateson 1972: pages 130-2)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our definitional 'What's' delimits a boundary, an outline circumscribing a thing through the dichotomizing between what is and all else it is not, by inscribing a 'slash mark' between the unknown and the known by names and words which precipitate meaning and bounds a definite 'region of information' implicit contraposed to what lies beyond or outside of the definition.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The act of definition creates an order, a paradigm, of meaning, a semantics constituted by the interrelationships of meanings of words arranged in a particular syntactic sequence. Definition also excludes by implicit negation all that meaning is not. What is bounded by the word order is rendered explicit and concise and coherent, what is left unsaid and undefined, lying beyond the definitional boundaries, is left implicit only, unknown, unclear and chaotic. The question mark of the definitional question 'what' is a kind of slash mark emphasizing the definitional boundary between reference/inference. Precipitated meaning in the region of information constitutes referential knowledge gained definitionally--pointing to information beyond the slash mark consists of inferential information gained hypothetically.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Denotation is the explicit definition of a word as opposed to its implicit connotation. It is derived from the Latin 'denotare' or 'to mark out' and is defined as 'a marking out or off, the direct explicit meaning or reference of a word…an indication or sign.' Connotation is the implicit meaning of a word left undefined but associated with the definition. It comes from the Latin 'com' or 'together' and 'notare' or 'to mark, note' and is defined as an 'idea suggested by or associated with a word, phrase, etc. in addition to its explicit meaning…in logic, the sum of all the attributes thought of as essential to the meaning of a term. To 'connote' is to suggest, convey, to imply or involve.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Denotation and connotation stand in mutual relationship with one another, the former being the literal, explicit, marked off boundary and the latter being the figurative, implied relationships of the term to a larger contextual framework of meaning. There can be no complete definition without both strict demarcation and loose relationship.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We must understand the interdependency of semanticity and the structure of syntax in language as the dialectically contraposed components of sentience, understanding and information which is the communication of understanding. Syntax constrains the possibilities of Mind by the superimposition of a paradigm--without syntax Mind cannot be brought to full realization. Semanticity fill the syntactic structure with meaning--reinforcing it both referentially from within and inferentially from without. Syntax consists of the functions or rules of relation, all the kinds of slash marks of meaning. It is to be asked but remain unanswered whether there is a 'deep' syntactic structure of the human mind which is universal but precise in its determination of possibility. It is also to be wondered whether such a deep syntactic structure is always evolving with the evolving and possibilities and evincing patterning of human mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But such questions distinguish too greatly the difference between semantics and syntax--we must see that all syntax is contextually relational in its demonstration and all semanticity is syntactically constrained in order to be rendered meaningful and relevant. To look for a 'deep paradigm' of universal structure of the mind is necessarily to become 'meta-paradigmatic' to discover what is before and beyond structure, as the unfolding, patterning possibilities of Mind. All paradigms are environmentally relational and constraining--all structures have a subject-object context which is determined by patterning of Mind in which it is embedded--it is the result of a dialectical interplay between human conventionality and natural process. It is being continuously recreated, reconfigured into new patterns--it simultaneously creates meaning and nonsense in order and chaos.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The definition of definition suggests the 'meaning of meaning' as an important metalogical relationship. Meaning is defined as 'that which exists in the mind, view or contemplation as a settled aim or purpose; that which is meant or intended to be done; intent; purpose; aim; object or that which is intended to be, or in fact is, conveyed, denoted, signified or understood by acts or language; the sense, signification or import of words, or as sense, understanding, knowledge.' What emerges from this definition of meaning is the purposiveness of sense and the sense or significance of purpose as expressed through words or acts or the 'enactment of definition'. The centrality of the meaning of 'purpose' or the 'sense of purpose' or the purpose of meaning or sense, which is simultaneously connoted and denoted in definition of 'something from nothing' or 'sense from nonsense' conveys the idea of the 'meaning of meaning' as being the meaningful purpose of life in human reality as itself the meaning of purpose. The essential purpose of being is meaning, and the purpose of meaning is being. Purpose in this sense, becomes defined as 'aim, intention, design, resolution, determination or as an 'instance, example' or paradigm. Paradigm creates purpose and purpose creates paradigm.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This is the ultimate paradoxicality of human being and Mind, the inescapable tautology of the meaning of human being and the being of human meaning. When we refer to the meaning of meaning in human reality, we are referring to the paradoxical mise en abyme that meaning is both the means and end of living, the sense and purpose of being.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Indeed, meaning inheres intrinsically and inextricably in the fact and enactment of human existence--meaning is being--and the 'quest' for meaning constitutes the 'purpose' of human existence. The quest for happiness, for fulfillment, for wealth, for prestige, for truth, for eternity, or immortality or for El Dorado or the fountain of youth or for paradise or freedom or just a little bit of social security and a modicum of simple material amenities, is what it means to be human and the purpose of existence is the quest for ever greater meaning of human reality. Meaning is like a golden thread coursing through all the weave of existence composing the fabric of many bits and pieces of the grand tapestry of reality--meaning underlies all of the greatest and deepest and most important reasons and purposes and truths of life.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It follows that meaning, being and purpose become defined through their creation, pursuit and fulfillment in terms which are the enactment of paradigm and pattern in the world and are expression of forms of human empowerment. Mythology and its poetic voice is the human vehicle for this empowerment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The meaning of meaning and the definition of definition emphasize clearly the fundamental paradoxicality and the mise en abyme of the metalogic of Mind. It illustrates the essential, irreducible 'reflexiveness' of human sentience. Ultimately the structures of human reality and the experience of interrelatedness in the world are expressed through the 'reflexivity of meaning and being'. Reflexiveness is the principle structure of human meaning and being in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Reflexive is defined as 'reflex, reflective, or as expressing an action turned back upon the subject; designating a verb whose subject and direct object are identical…'. Akin to reflexiveness is 'reflectiveness or the state of being reflective, taking cognizance of the operations of the mind, capable of exercising thought or judgment…exercising thought, meditative'. Reflection expresses among other things, 'the fixing of the mind on some subject; serious thought; contemplation or the result of such thought; an idea or conclusion, especially if expressed in words.' (Webster's Dictionary, 1983)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Reflexiveness emphasized grammatical connotations, connotations of reflexiveness and reflection and the apperception of 'the conscious of mind of its own consciousness' or 'self reflective perception applied to metaphysical ends'. Inescapably human reality is universal, relative, symbolic and metaphorical and also has an inherently reflexive structure through symbols and metaphors. Human reality always evinces a quality of 'turning back upon itself' and of 'being self aware or conscious of itself'. It is a condition of self consciousness as this becomes reflected in contextual relation. Reflexiveness then is the ground of being in human reality--the ultimate meaning of this reality. But it is an ever receding ground in its inherent recursiveness and 'reduplicative' character. It is the well spring of infinite imagination and the abyss of infinite regress. It is the mise en abyme and the bottomless bottom of human potentiality and the possibility of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The reduplicative character of reflexiveness implies both a 'regenerative' nature of meaning, a processual patterning expressed through metaphorical symbolism and a fundamentally of paradox in that this regenerative quality contains both the potential for infinite regress and for infinite development of meaning. Reflexiveness defines the structure of meaning in reality and of human interrelatedness in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though reflexivity takes on different shades of meaning in various disciplines and contexts, a core is detectable. Reflexive as we use it, describes the capacity of any system of signification to turn back upon itself, to make itself its own object by referring to itself; subject and object fuse. A long tradition exists in which thought has been distinguished from unconsidered experience, where life is not merely lived naively without being pondered but regarded with detachment, creating an awareness that finally separates the one who lives from his history, society, from other people. Within the self, detachment occurs between self and experience, self and other, witness and actor, hero and hero's story. We become at once both subject and object. Reflexive knowledge then contains not only messages, but also information as to how it came into being, the process by which it was obtained. It demonstrates the human capacity to generate second order symbols or meta-levels--significations about signification. The withdrawal from the world, a bending back toward thought process itself, is necessary for what we consider a fully reflexive mode of thought. To paraphrase Babock (1980), in order to know itself, to constitute itself, as an object for itself, the self must be absent from itself: it must be a sign. Once this operation of consciousness has been made, consciousness itself is altered; a person or society thinks about itself differently merely by seeing itself in this light. (Ruby, A Crack in the Mirror, 1982, page 3)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The metalogical reflexiveness of the definition of definition and the meaning of meaning constitutes the essential ground of being in human reality--it is the mythological mirror of Mind and situated in the world. It constitutes our knowing and our knowledge about ourselves and our world. Knowing implies apperception of our own consciousness, of our own awakened knowledge, as a state of self awareness. To know comes from the Sanskrit root jna', to know, and is defined as 'to perceive with certainty; to understand clearly; to be sure of or well informed about, or to recognize by recollection, remembrance, representation or description, or to distinguish.' Knowing implies information, shrewdness, worldly wiseness. Knowledge is defined as 'clear and certain perception…the act, fact or state of knowing, understanding, learning, all that has been grasped by the mind…cognizance or recognition, information, the body of facts accumulated by mankind; acquaintance with facts; ranges of awareness or understanding.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From vagueness to clear 'knowing' knowledge denotes the definition of meaning in a certain paradigmatic pattern, a 'knowable' sense of purpose. It implies 'information'. Information comes from the Latin meaning 'an outline, sketch' or 'to give form to, to represent, to inform'. All information is definitely patterned with a fixed order of purpose. All formation is paradigmatic. The meaning of information implies definite knowledge which becomes communicated between self and other, 'objectified' by acknowledgment, recognized by others by being presented in a recognizable, knowable form. It also implies meaning which is contained within a certain definitional boundary--subsumed within a region of Mindscape.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Reflexive information fixes and paradigmatizes our own identity, meaning and being in the world. Knowing ourselves is a way of determining ourselves in the world, and determining ourselves becomes a manner of knowing ourselves.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Furthermore, information also implies communication or significant interrelationship between people, as that which is communicated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It makes sense to refer to the reflexive 'knowledge of information' and the 'information of knowledge' as the basis of human communication and transmission. We might also refer to the information of communication and the communication of information as the principle paradigmatic of 'knowing' our world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The essence and raison d'être of communication is the creation of redundancy, meaning, pattern, predictability, information and /or the reduction of the random by 'restraint'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is I believe, of primary importance to have a conceptual system which will force us to see the 'message' (e.g. the art object) as both itself internally patterned and itself a part of a larger patterned universe--the culture or some part of it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…Still more important, we like to test and verify the correctness of our view of our relationship to others. (Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1972, page 132)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Defining or meanings involves us in a process of 'figure ground' relationship between 'internal, intensive, explicit, defined meanings' and the 'external, extensive, implicit, connotative, figurative, metaphorical meanings of the larger contextual framework'. The figure ground relationship between subject/object and the background 'connoted by the outline of meaning' is the basis of metaphorical meaning, boundary identification, the metalogical mise en abyme of the paradoxicalness of meaning, and also provides the sense of 'parallax of meaning' which orients, configures and provides perspective in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The figure ground relationship constitutes the structure of antinomal meaning and being in human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We intentionally, purposefully 'configure' our reality. It must be recognized that how we define the outline of this interrelationship, how we draw the slash mark and outline of meaning and being, is first and foremost dependent upon an arbitrary act of will. 'Identification with a difference' is configured by what we decide we want to make it mean, and by all that becomes unintentionally implied by our definition. Our definition circumscribes the meaning we choose, and chooses the context which then circumscribes our meaning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The only constraints to our enactment of definition are those superimposed by7 the need for communication of limited information--the need for maximization of 'relatedness' in the world. These constraints are the pre-existing paradigms of convention, culture and history. Mind works through us independently as the expression of its possibility and also works outside of us as the paradigmatic patterning of its possibility.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Figure' comes from the Latin 'to form or shape' and means the form, shape or outline of something, a pattern, design, a picture, a likeness, representation, or a 'being of the imagination, a conception of the fancy; a phantasm; an image.' To configure is to 'form; to dispose in a certain form, figure, shape.' We configure our realities by making our paradigms. We configure the form, appearance, shape outline, in relation to a 'ground' which is the bottom, topic, area of reference, valid reason, motive, cause, logical basis of conclusion, that on which anything may stand, rest, foundation, basis or the 'figure of which a figure is represented' in relation to a context of constraining relations in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Reflexive meaning is the ground of being in human reality. It is the essence of what we come to know of ourselves and our world. It is also an extremely relative affair--differently interpreted by different people in different contexts. There is no fixed measure or elemental atom of meaning, there is no fixed context or universal frame of reference for meaning--no life force, or pleasure principle or eros which permutates into the many variations of a common theme. Meaning expresses a theme of relativistic understanding of human reality, a universal theme of human comprehension of which there are infinite permutations. In its reflexive regenerativity meaning becomes also dynamic and changing.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human beings are actively or passively engaged in making their own meaning systems in a continuous process of relating significantly with their contexts, of communicating themselves with the world. Human beings are engaged in continually refashioning their meaning systems to preserve and maintain a sense of existential coherence and continuity of self identity in the world. We seek paradigmatic unity of meaning and being, of Mind in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human beings who fail in this process of meaning creation inexorably suffer meaning in loss--psychological anomie--and loss of self identity--alienation--in the world. They become unreflexive and disintegrative.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In its reduplicativeness, reflexive meaning is also of an irreducible, universal and paradoxical nature. It is inherently paradoxical and therefore always problematic in the dual possibility of possible creation and infinite regression--the dialectically anti-thetical possibilities of progress and regress, construction and destruction, integration and disintegration inherent in meaning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The paradoxicalness inherent in meaning arises from the forever momentary 'indeterminacy' or possibility--the relative uncertainty of meaningful change. This is a source of chronic anxiety about existence, an expectant anticipation of chance, the fear of the unknown and unknowable, from which we all seek escape through paradigms but from which there is ultimately no escape. This pervasive, pan human condition gives rise to a quality of 'liminality' of simultaneously being nothing and something, and of 'antinomality' the background condition of our existence, the texture of our knowledge, the irreducible relativity and uncertainty of our meaning and being, an unresolvable sort of internal psychic conflict 'generated by a proposition that suggests its contradictory (or the domain of its contraries) as strongly as its own affirmation and the moment of its affirmation.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are more than one level of the super organic functioning of the re-synthesism of Mind. This is not the same imputation of super organic reality to cultural phenomena or to social life per se, as it is conventionally interpreted in anthropology, but that the mind and by extension the intersubjectivity of Mind, has a subjective life of its own separate from, but not completely independent from experiential human reality. This subjective life of the mind constitutes an objective reality of it own apart from the phenomenological experience or understanding of human reality. This super organic 'life of the mind' or 'experiential reality of the mind' or 'mentality' is irreducible and unamenable to analysis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolization as the dialectical process of symbolism has different 'modes of representation' which come to organize experience in a seemingly 'categorical' or configurational, paradigmatic way. These modes of representation are based upon different sign systems organized around certain implicit and explicit ideational rules of relation. Alphabets and syllabaries are two such modes of representation, as are ink drawing and clay modeling. Modes of representation organize and lead to the classification of varieties of experience--differentiating in a systematic way many relationships. Modes of representation subsume one another and lead to the hierarchicalization or relations and the taxonomic classification of things.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Different 'modes of representation' allow experience to be 'experienced' in different ways--to become expressed through different symbol systems and to become reconfigured into different paradigms of being. Different modes of representation lead to different 'casts of Mind'--the identity of experience is molded and pre-formed in characteristic ways which have distinct cognitive, emotive and conatie consequences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mind comes from the Anglo-Saxon 'gemynd' meaning 'memory'. Basic to the notion of mind has been the importance of past experience as the empirical, subjective, phenomenological ground of mental construction and the functioning of Mind as the integration of 'stored experience' which enables mediation of present environments. Matter comes from the Latin 'materia'--the 'stuff of which anything is composed'. This is an interesting contrast, as 'dreams are the stuff' and all mind is composed of the same essential human stuff--subjective experience--whether it is rationally or empirically derived or objectified.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mind and matter is a fundamental dialectic mediated by human experience. Mind can be expressed as the 'temporalization' of experience and matter can be thought of as the 'spatialization' of experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The structure of experience determines that there should always be a degree of symbolic isomorphism between Mind and Matter--the structure of each is reflected by and represented with the structure of the other. We experience mind and matter, and mind and matter are experienced by us.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The synthetic unity of human experience provides us with a sense of reality which defines our beingness through the articulation of symbolisms within our environments. It is this identity of experience which provides s with unity of Mind--the common human sentience of thought, feeling and pattern which is referred to as the 'psychic unity of humankind'. The synthetic, symbolic structure of Mind, expressed as the identity of experience is the basis of the principle of the psychic unity of humankind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We purposefully seek to maintain within our everyday streams of experience a sense of identity and the unity of Mind. The importance of this 'need' of human sentience,, both perceptive, conative, emotive, cognitive and normative, must not be underestimated as it becomes the organizing principle of culture historical development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the dialectic of identity, between beingness and non-being, selfness and otherness, there occurs a cybernetic interrelationship between Mind as the reflexive identity of self beingness and Culture as the other identity of non-being. The cybernetic relationship between Mind and Culture in the dialectical process of identification is more than analogical--the symbology of Mind being analogous to the symbolisms of Culture. The cybernetics of Mind and Culture are homological--they have structural affinity and the same ontology of development and are derived from the same origin. Furthermore, Mind and Culture constitute in their patterning of interrelations a single, cybernetically integrated system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the cybernetic homology of Mind and Culture which allow us to speak symbolically of a Culture in terms of an individual personality or identity of being, and to refer to individual identity in reference to a particular individual's contextuality within a particular culture historical framework.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">That this interrelationship constitutes a single integrated cybernetic system, one which is dialectical and symbolic, is important. There are many feedback mechanisms between culture and self which need to be comprehended. This dialectical system constitutes a developmental series of cyclical alterations which revolve around a single directional axis of development--of change and transformation of both individual and culture. This central axis is the 'center' of culture and character.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a cybernetic system of relations between the identity of Mind, the communication function of language, and the phenomena of Culture as patterned context. In a large part Culture is the physical expression and projection of the defense mechanisms which protect and reinforce the identity of Mind--culture constitutes the symbolic 'archosis' and collusion of tradition which provides a contextual framework by which identity of Mind becomes referenced and is rendered significant.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Language is the mediator of this set of relations--it is the medium of expression and articulation of its symbolism. It makes no sense to analytically separate Mind, Language and Culture in the on going stream of human conscious experience, but to speak of a single integrity of its experience as 'Mind/Language/Culture'. It is better to see these three sets of phenomena as but differential facets of the same basic operational system of human relationship in the world. It is possible to see Mind in terms of Language and Culture, and Language in terms of Mind and Culture, and Culture in terms of Language and Mind--there are symbolic resonances of each in terms of the other.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mind is the super organic collective consciousness of humankind which is seated in the consciousness of the individual--individual's are the vehicles of Mind. Culture's are the contexts of the collective unconscious of people, and Culture-History is the context of the collective unconscious of humankind. Individual's are the separate 'ideas' of Mind--the holothetic symbolic expression and embodiment of Mind. Mind experiences reality through the experiences of people. The unique identity of each individual occurs as the one possible 'ideational instance' of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mind as an 'idea' expressed individually is the product of the symbolic dialectic between beingness and non-being. As 'idea' it ultimately informs the individual's 'Reason for Being' in the world. Existential engagement of 'idea' as a deliberate decision requires the transcendence of the dialectic by the reaffirmation of 'self identity' in the world vis-à-vis the other identity as possible 'non-being'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">World view as the integration of 'mind/language/culture' informing the principle of presence and the centeredness of being, is in a sense the dialectical antithesis of Mind. World view occurs as a consequence of the functional integration of cybernetic systems of 'mind/language/culture' in terms of symbolic conglomerations. World view becomes the professional's perspective--Mind remains the amateur's naiveté' about the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">World view is always an 'intensive' orientation, while Mind is always an 'extensive' orientation. World view becomes the symbolic cultural identity of 'otherness'--the embodiment of the 'idea' of non-beingness. World view does not transcend the dialectic of identity, but unfolds within the mythological parameters and paradigmatic patterning of its counterpoint. The individual does not 'embrace' world view--world view embraces the individual and entails lack of or control over choice. Mind is 'epi-genetic', the germ plasm of Mind. World view is culture historically relative--a particular symbolic Geist predominating (as Centeredness of Being) within a particular context of place and period--Mind is transcendental and pan human in process, beyond the spatio-temporal boundaries and culture historical horizons of world view.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">So far, science has been mostly a phenomena of world view and not of Mind. Only when it embraces Mind fully will it transcend its own limitations of paradigm and power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The super organic integrity of Mind is always and only expressible in terms of dialectical identity of the individual. This is the holothetic principle--the integrity and 'structure' of the whole is expressed in terms of holism of its individual parts, in terms of dialectical textuality of individual identity. Mind becomes the 'thetic' starting point for the identity of the self, and the identity of the self becomes the synthesis of the identity of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It follows that any method based upon the holothetic principle attempts to understand Mind as this is manifest in terms of any given individual's basic identity in life, and attempts to infer from such studies an autobiography or life history the nature of Mind as a super organic transpersonal phenomena.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dialectic of individual identity is a counterpoint between self and other identity in the world. It is the self sidedness of this dialectic which confers the holothetic structure of Mind. The other sidedness situates and orients the self within a culture historical context, providing the relational significances of the individual sense of being, but it is the unique self identity which the individual brings into the formulation of mind which confers upon it a vitality and a real world relevance, without which individuality as an 'idea of mind' would remain unexpressible or incoherent. The super organism of Mind, then, is not expressed in terms of an individual sacrificing him/herself for the sake of a larger corporate social identity--though this may be one facet of the 'self' expression of Mind. Rather, it becomes expressed in terms of how and why an individual incorporates Mind as Self, as the organizing Reason for Being in life. It is in this self centeredness of the holothetic principle that the source of the momentousness tends toward a super critical unpredictability which may decisively redirect culture historical momentum.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the holothetic principle which confers a sense of wholeness to the self and to Mind as an 'idea' of human consciousness. The integrity of the self derives from the integrity of the Mind, and the integrity of the Mind is centered in the relative integrity of the self. There is thus a certain reflexiveness of identity between sense of Self and Mind which is the essence of the holothetic principle.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This is the part of the grand paradox of human existence--the sense of self and sense of Mind are separate and yet the same--both are an 'idea'. This paradox becomes even more problematic when this reflexiveness of identity is sees as expressed in terms of a dialectic between self and other--sense of self becomes defined in terms of the other-identity and vice versa, an individual identity is the self centered/other decentering dialectic of Mind. Other-identity intermediates the holothetic principle as the grand 'anti-thesis' of Mind. World view is situated in the other-identity of non-being.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Individual dual identity forms a dialectic of consciousness and context, character and culture, of contraposed values, interests, significances and choices which are always expressed and defined in terms of one another. This dialectical of identity constitutes the mythological fabric of culture historical consciousness written in the meta-language of Mind. The concepts of individual identity arises as the synthesis of this dialectic of Mind and Myth--it is the culture historically symbolic idea of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The individual, as the basic culture bearing unit of culture history, becomes as well the basic 'genetic unit' of Mind--i.e. an 'idea' as the basic constituent unit of Mind. It is the self side of the dialectic which serves to situate Mind as an idea with a corporeal materiality and with a uniqueness of purpose and integrity of being. It is the other-side of the dialectic which situates Mind within a culture historical provenience and which loads its 'ideas' with relative and universal symbolic significance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The universal Mind of humankind is but the collective unity of all individual human minds--the individual human mind becomes an 'idea' of the collective Mind. As individuals pass away, they 'vanish' as ideas of Mind, but Mind as a corporate collectivity of ideas, continues through beingness of others. The meta-language of Mind is the sharing and communication of consciousness between individual ideas--the universality of this meta-language is rooted in the potential universality of this sharing of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Self-identity and other-identity are but two sides of a single coin of consciousness--the coin of individuality as the idea of Mind, and the exchange of such equivalency of coinage is the universal economy of Mind. Individuals, as basic ideas of Mind are the principle irreducible mediums of exchange of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What is self becomes expressed in terms of 'otherness' and vice versa, so it makes little net difference in the dialectic which side one begins or ends with. Whichever side is manifest, the other shadow side is always implicit and predictable.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though individual 'ideas' may come and go, Mind as a collective entity continues as a corporate 'identity'--founded as it is in the possibility of patterning and necessity of communication--culture historical transmission of Mind. Mind as a 'collectivity' has than a 'super organic' structure and a meta-linguistic function above and beyond that of its constituent individual 'ideas'--it comes to have its own reasons for being beyond those 'reasons' if its basic ideas.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mindness is always expressed symbolically and metaphorically as 'something which stands for something else'. It is the metaphorical structure of human meaning which accounts for its inherent paradoxicalness and 'antinomality'--Mind must always be expressed as 'referring to something else'. Knowing Mind is always indirect. World view substitutes Mindness for Mind--the metaphorical structure of meaning becomes denied as 'something which stands for itself'. Metaphor both opens human meaning to possibility and simultaneously prevents the realization of possibility--world view closes off possibility through its realization. Mindness always functions metaphorically in the symbolic mediation of human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The 'ecology' of Mind is the measure of the inter-relatedness of reality--everything is related to everything else, however indirectly. This ecology is reflected in the Ecology of Mindness as the measure of relatedness of human awareness and understanding to the empirical ground of human reality--to the environments of Mind. It is expressed as an intrinsic ecological consciousness of the environmental physicality of Mind. The ecology of mind came into being gradually as a functional 'system' of interrelations which have some form of adaptive mutuality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The ecology of mind is total in an all pervasive sense--it always surrounds, contextualizes and relativizes meaning in the naturally chaotic and entropic environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">MINDSPACE AND MINDSCAPE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mind occupies its own kind of space. This space is metaphysical mostly, but it does have extension and parallels in physical reality. The spatial metaphor is a necessary way of imaging and looking at Mind, because it provides a sense of its synchronicity and simultaneously of its ideas and their meta relations that would otherwise be difficult to 'see' in a glance. Mindspace is infinitely internal and internally infinite in its dimensionalities, just as physical space is infinitely extensive. Within its infinitude of intenseness there is vast room for infinite possibilities of patterning. We cannot easily transverse mindspace, just as we cannot easily transverse even a minuscule region of physical space, because we are bound by our biological being within such narrow time frames of existence. As old as we become we always die too young and move to slow to cross even a section of its area, or to fulfill even a portion of its potentialities. And yet even from our limited vantage point, if we study its breadths we can formulate pretty good ideas of the kinds of things which compose it and the relations between those things.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mindspace is 'holistic' in the sense that its multi-dimensionalities cross cut every tradition bound academic boundary discipline, field of study and domain of imagination that there is available today and comprehend and unit the mountains of information into networks of understanding that we have yet been blind to. The depths of mindspace easily encapsulates the whole compendium and corpus of human knowledge and wisdom.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mind also has a kind of topography, a kind of terrain, a kind of geography that is distinctive. We speak of regions of mind, of no man's land, of mountains and of paths and forests between the mountains, of horizons, benchmarks, stratigraphy, foundations. We see that in a particular region of mind, in a particular paradigm of its patterning, things and ideas are set in relatively fixed and stable relations to one another, while other things and ideas are in fluid and dynamic relations, flowing around and between the fixed coordinates. We can speak of meridians and of relative distances of relations between things, and see that some forests are more thickly wooded that others, some mountains higher and some pathways more winding.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Spatial metaphors are important in our understanding of Mind because it provides us with a means of translating our temporal experience of Mind into a static sense of space, in which temporal frames of time become spatial measures of distance. Space and time in Mindness are not strictly separate--the experience of one becomes the experience of the other in different terms. Our normal experience of Mind is as phenomenological streams of consciousness which flow in time and across space. Even our perceptions of time and space can change and become altered in interchangeable ways, in a kind of synaesthesia of the fabric of Mind. Space and time metaphors are also the first and last 'scientific' anchors that keep Mindspace on the physical ground of reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mind in time, as dynamic pattern and change, is fundamentally different than Mind in space as fixed structure and synchronic happening and movement and each has very different kinds of consequences in our paradigms and understanding of human reality. Temporal metaphors of Mind allow us to talk about some things such as change, development and process, which spatial metaphors of Mind do not allow--on the other hand spatial metaphors allow us to see and examine 'structure', periodicity and fixed pattern and context in ways temporal metaphors disallow.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mind moves through a space time continuum. Mind always moves and movement is the key characteristic of its understanding. Its movement through space and time over the terrain of its mindscapes, animates Mind as a force, an event, a continuing happening of consciousness. Its movement, however constrained or however entropic never ceases. It may slow or speed up but it never stops.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">MENTAL MAPS AND MAZEWAYS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Given the efficacy of the movement of Mind, of its space time metaphors and of its Mindscapes and Mindspace, we must see that mythological paradigms of Mind create mental mazeways of walls, corridors, corners, doorways, windows, mirrors and thresholds which we must learn to navigate successfully within and which lead in many different directions but always indirectly.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In our daily streams of consciousness, we learn and develop mental maps of where, when and how to navigate our mazeways in a manner that becomes meaningful to ourselves. These mental maps of our Mindspace are simple and small at first, but we gradually add onto them and they grow in complexity and sophistication along the way. These maps record symbolic markers which indicate a basic change in direction, a shift in mode, a slowing or speeding up of movement. They are flow charts which indicate the consequences of alternative directions and all the crossings along the way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our maps and the navigation of the mazes are rooted in our memories and in our alternative states of conscious, phenomenological experience. Much of our memory is state dependent and is triggered by key symbolic markers in our environments. We seek a sense of continuity and an experiential identity of consciousness within our ever changing environmental contexts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">META-PHYSICS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is important to understand the possible relations between Mindspace and physical space. It is important to understand how our understanding of Mindscapes, however narrow and limited, becomes superimposed upon our 'normal' perception and experience of the physical world in which we live, such that it is always distorting and 'bending' the light of the things we see and experience through the prisms of its 'glassy essence'. Our perception of space and time are normally 'hyperbolic' and curved upon the peripheries of our conscious focus, there is distortion of parallax of our perspective and we lose sense of proper proportion as if looking up at objects from the bottom of the sea. Mind filters our experiences and always mediates our relations with the world in ways we are rarely self conscious of. The finished version of the 'normal world' that we get through our sense is always from a 'Mind's Eye' viewpoint and rarely are we able to know the difference. But we can always be assured that however sensitive, however sensible, or however scientific, it always must be in some measure be 'relativized' and disproportionately distorted by our small idea of Mind. Even the understanding of ourselves and of our own being in the world, must be mediated by our Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Only by embracing and understanding better the movement and workings of Mind, of the interconnections of mind and matter and the possible functions of human experience, can we hope to gain a clearer vision of both Mind and the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If the Mind filters the world through our experience of it, then we must also ask if the world of physical reality does not also in some important and hidden ways also help to 'pre-structure' or influence our Mind, or at least our understanding of Mind. We only discover the working of Mind through the reflexive elaboration of our own mythologies, and our mythologies always are derived from symbolisms rooted in natural environments and are always framed within relational contexts which are grounded in our experiential realties. It is to be wondered whether our narrow versions of Mind are somehow constrained and 'prejudiced' by the experience of our paradigms and mythological patterns in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If so, it follows that better and broader understanding of the Mind can be fond in gazing into grains of sand as well as mediating upon mountain tops. Learning how to see reality more clearly, more phenomenologically unconditioned, more naturally, and how to relate to our environments in ways which decrease the ecological distance between our own being and the experience of its nature, will not also help us to better embrace Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">MIND</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Whereas world view is a totality of a fixed center, Mind is the decentered totality of the universe of human experience and reality--it has no center, no boundaries, no ends, and yet its expression can be found reflected in anything and everything. Its sense of wholeness can be represented symbolically in bounded and finite entities. It is never complete and always open to other possibilities. Mind is the human awareness and its manifestation in human sensibilities and beingness. The possibility of Mindness gives us a partial hold on reality by relating us to reality. The history of human consciousness has been one of the developmental unfolding of the possibilities of Mindness as a reflection of being in reality. World views have arisen, changed their positions of power, and disappeared in continuous succession, but only Mind has emerged and blossomed as a continuously characteristic of human possibility.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mind exists as a universal possibility or as a possible universality, but it is always a restricted and limited human possibility. As structure, it is an a priori possibility, but as human understanding it remains always and only an a posteriori epi-phenomenon of human experience. It is not an immanent Geist or Spirit as an organizing force or ultimate Logos of reality as some eidetic, metaphysical and noumenal super reality. The physical phenomena of the universe are ordered upon patterns which can be represented by certain scientific principles or general law, but the human understanding of these ordering patterns and principles is always preconditioned by the limitations of human experience. There can be no perfect, proven, absolute isomorphism between the 'structure' of human reality and our knowledge of that 'structure' and all we are left with in the final analysis are or own sets of partial and imperfect ideas about the reality of Mind--our own limited sense of Mind (or Mindness) which serves as the basis for our scientific understanding and excoriation of real phenomena.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We exist because Mind exists and Mind exists because we exist--it makes no difference to ask which comes first or which cause the other. Both exist as manifestations of its possibility. We are the result of its eventual working out of its possibilities and our Mindness becomes its expression in reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our happiness, sense of well being, understanding, adaptive adjustment and mental health and sense of reality all depend upon our Mindness or 'state of Mind'--'a minding of our business'. Mindness is not necessarily achieved through embracing world view but through the dispelling of the illusion and delusion of power. Mindness is achieved in dialectical transcendence to world view as its antithetical opposite. Mind is attained through the cultivation of a sense of being, of beingness in the world in the fullest of human senses.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We cannot ever know or envision Mind directly--it is always construed indirectly, mediated by the mechanisms of experience. Its paradox is that if seen directly it is ultimately chaotic in appearance--chaotic because of its entropic complexity. Or mechanisms of experience superimpose a sense of order and meaning to this chaos, but at a price of superficiality and spuriousness. No sooner do we bound chaos to create order than Mind slips outside of our boundaries to exist in the unknown chaos beyond our field of view.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dialectics of Mind are evolutionary--they are continuously being transformed in response to the adaptive pressures of a greater environmental context which is also always changing. The evolution of Mind as a characteristically species wide human phenomena allows us to speak of the 'psychic unity of humankind' and to posit a 'universal structure' underlying human language. It has been a 'by product' of natural evolution and it arose as an 'adaptive mechanism' of human survival. The function of Mind as a natural system has been in human adaptation to evolving, complex natural environments and later, social environments. The evolution of Mind as the evolution of life on earth, as been largely a chance phenomena as an expression of patterned possibility--there has been nothing preordained or immanent or inevitable about evolution, not is it necessarily 'progressive' in the sense of fulfillment of higher purpose. It arises as a 'system maintaining' function--a consequence of maintaining an ecological, dynamic equilibrium of relations. This evolution is based upon an 'anti-entropic' and anti-chaotic principle of increasing order and complexity in the dialectic with natural entropy and the tendency towards random disorder. Life is fundamentally 'anti-entropic' and 'anti-chaotic' in a broad evolutionary sense in that it strives to perpetuate and increase meaning systems, organize relations, in the face of environmental change and chaos. Mind is in an evolutionary sense epi-phenomenal--it does not drive evolutionary development but is merely the resulting patterning by which such evolutionary development then becomes constrained. It is a second order feedback mechanism of evolution. Mind must be construed as the organizational patterning of natural systems, and as the human possibility for comprehending this patterning. This human capacity for Mindness is what most characterizes and distinguishes the human species.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">FREEDOM OF MIND</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The confrontation of new environments demands a different kind of courage, the courage to exercise rigorously the freedom of the Mind. Like any other kind of freedom it must always be fought for, as like any other kind of freedom it is being subverted or denied by all those people who feel threatened by it. And there is reason for their fears, for someone is probably profiting by them. Freedom of mind demand freedom of voice--to speak our loudly and to demand to be listened to. The enemies of Mind can easily be recognized as they are either trying to ignore you or to silence you. The reign of Silence, like the reign of Terror is the antidote to the social disease of 'too much freedom'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Often times it seems that what is written is not as important as how it is presented. A rich person and a poor person may both be able to write, and even if the poor person is a better or more interesting writer, it is the rich person who is still more likely to get published and read. There are different kinds of voice and different forms of silence, and varying degrees of freedom.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Similarly, a professor and a pupil may share the same set of ideas, and even if the professor conveniently 'borrows' them from the student, it will probably be the professor's voice that will carry the weight of credibility and be listened to instead of the words of the student.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This is a sad testimony on our sense of progressive enlightenment, a lesson to be learned about the alienation and spuriousness of social relations in our modern environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our exchange of ideas is still not very free and open. Minds do not regularly meet upon an equal footing. Worlds and the information they contain are still systematically controlled and suppressed. Access to information has become privileged within a rigid, class bound status hierarchy. Voices of opposition challenging the status quo of who knows what with bold new ideas are either strangled into social death, or the bright words merely fall upon deaf ears or else echo hollowly down long empty corridors.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Now we need to remind ourselves and publicly reaffirm our ultimate freedom of the human mind. Its continued freedom is the best guarantee we have for our progressive emancipation. The final control over our minds and our voices always depends upon our own courage and will power to resist programmatic brainwashing and behavior modification, to relativize ideological propaganda, to resist subtle and subliminal techniques of persuasion, to reach through the impersonal screens of political, economic and social prejudice and violence, to refuse to remain silent or to allow ourselves to become silenced under authority and power, and to reject the status quo of class bound consciousness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This we must do at any price as the quality and outcome of our collective confrontation with our new environments depends greatly upon it.</p> <hr> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PART V</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="5">BEINGNESS AND NON-BEING</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><b><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="2"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/hughmlewis/">by Hugh M. Lewis</a></font></b></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We look out upon the world and we are a part of it and yet we are also separate from it. The side of us that finds itself in the world is our sense o being in the world, or our beingness. The side that remains separate is our sense of non-being in the world. The former seeks identity in the world, the latter finds the difference of identity in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is our beingness and our non-being in relation to the world that creates the dialectical tension in ourselves, a struggle between sides as to which shall at any one moment have control over our sense of identity. The state of being in the world is the creation of a fusion of differences such that though differences exist in the world they are transcended by common identity--they are rendered unimportant. Non-being in the world leads to a differentiation of identity from the world, such that differences become the basis of relationship and prevent their fusion, and self identity also become sundered between what remains in the world and what becomes alien from it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We frequently switch between states of being and non-being in our world, depending upon circumstances. Insecurity or uncertain situations cause separation in order to protect our sense of identity from possible harm. In order to maintain this sense of separation we erect certain kinds of barriers, or 'ego defense mechanisms' which block or intermediate the flow of information or communication, between our inner selves and our outer world. It is behind such bulwarks that we can foster a sense of 'ego identity' that is supported by such defenses and which is essentially separate from the experience of the world and yet remains surrounded by and situated within the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Supplanted within the self, constructed of symbolisms and rationalizations by which we mediate experience of the world, we come to depend on our sense of ego as separate from the world and we invest energy into maintaining of props and supports which will help to preserve and promote it. Though spurious to our sense of being in the world, our ego's become important to us as if they were a genuine part of our own self identity--as something necessary and unexpendable in our lives.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">And our sense of ego identity becomes like transparent bubble or a pair of tinted sun glasses which always distort our perception of the world and always bends the light of our vision. We grow accustomed to this sense of ego distortion, so accustomed we no longer notice the difference and come to think and act as if our mediated experiences were genuine and unadulterated instead of filtered and distorted. Our whole sense of perspective of reality, as it is mediated through our ego identity becomes different from the actual dimensions of experience, but we soon can no longer tell the difference, and we response to our distortions and representations of the world rather than to the world itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our sense of ego identity becomes invisible to ourselves--we behave as if it were natural and true. But if it is so transparent and invisible to anyone else in the world--our ego identity become our see through clothes without which we would feel naked and probably quite ugly in the world. We wear them as if they were the outer layers of our skin, which cannot be shed except under the most personal of circumstances.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Other people who are wearing similar raiment over their identity fail to find genuine relationship with one another, but in their common alienation from natural experience they find a sense of communitas in which their different distortions of reality cancel one another out in interesting and sometimes complementary ways, and they find mutual satisfaction in the sharing of common fears, insecurities and defense.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To these people, those who walk with naked egos in the world are threatening, foolish, embarrassing and shaming of their own imputed morals. They become objects of derision, fear displacement and secret fascination. To those who walk nakedly or with very thin skins of ego adornment, those who wear the clothes of kings, sun glasses and live in little bubbles seem empty, hollow, false, ingenue, spurious, afraid and fundamentally distorted or slanted. Though those inside of bubbles seem translucent from without, their clothes are neither invisible nor distorted--directing perhaps but never distorted.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The differences between beingness in the world and non-being in the world are the basis of a fundamental schism of human reality and between people in the world--it is a schism of mentality, experience, world views and ways of relating in the world. It is not a difference between introversion or extroversion, or between hyper-suggestible and hyper-resistant, between aggressive and regressive, or between projective and introjective, though all of these may be a component part of a common polythetic complex of basic differences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">People who do not live in bubbles or who only walk in thin skins experience their worlds with only slight distortion and are not insulated from the harsh light of the sun or the cold of the night. They learn to live with direct, unmediated experience, without the need for props and supports to sustain their sense of identity in the world. Their identity is experience and experience is their identity, and there is little need for inflated ego in an essentially ego-less world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The state of being in the world is one in which identity gained through relationship with the world, through unmediated experience of the world. Identity is essentially un-Academic, to the extent that acquired, formal knowledge structures experience in the way that ego identity structures it. The sense of self remains strong,, because it survives the vicissitudes if the world unprotected and un-insulated from its harsher, more threatening realities. It can be called the 'school of hard knocks' but it is more of a natural attitude of openness to the environment that becomes augmented by acquired skills in dealing with and adapting to changes in the environment. Knowledge, however abstract or concrete, can either help or hinder this adaptive functioning, but is in itself neutral in regard to how it is deployed by and individual.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">While it might be said that the sense of being in the world is one of adapting to and negotiating with the environment, its resources, limitations and alterations, non-being in the world is primarily involved with coping with and controlling the environment or of maintaining sense of ego in relation to the environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Beingness in the world and non-being entail two different strategies of adaptation to the environment, strategies which have different sets of consequences for both individual character and the social environment in which the individual is situated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Non-being in the world works within environments according to pre-arranged designs or paradigms--attempting to superimpose structure upon the environment and to alter and render the environment conformable to this design. The design itself usually comes from the pre-conditioning of some previous environment in which the self became well adapted. It is the individuals attempt to maintain a consistency of environmental relations from this previous adaptive orientation in the ever emerging present. There is a dependency of the individual upon an internalized fixedness of pattern which is projected upon the environment in orderly ways. The sense of non-being, and the insecurity which underlies it, results from the degree of 'misfit' between the projection of the internalized sense of design and the actual order or environmental patterning encountered. This misfit results in 'cognitive dissonance' which forces upon the individual a decision of either to amend the internalized sense of order or else to attempt to amend or rearrange the environment. Attempts to do the latter lead to a need to establish 'control' or power in the environment and results in greater frustration and greater cognitive dissonance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another way of understanding this is to see that peoples prearranged plans and preconditioned paradigms set up in the individual certain standards of normality of expectation in relation to the environment--it is when changes which happen lead to a sense of 'relative deprivation' either actual or anticipated, that an acute sense of environmentally situated stress occurs which requires resolution through remedial action. The frustration producing attempt to maintain one's pre-designs at all costs leads to the formation of ego defense mechanisms and coping mechanisms which allows one to channel and deal with the stress that inevitably, continuously results. The ego perseverates in a high state of tension which comes to infuse all experience with supernormal significance and larger than life importance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Non-being is brought in to the present as an unchanging sense of past, of past sense of order and paradigm in the world which is uncompromising and 'absolute' in its existential coordinates.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Non-being can in a sense be referred to as a regressive state of being in the world--one which falls backwards into a nonexistent sense of the past by failing to move forward with an ongoing sense of the present.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Non-being leads to a 'set piece' planning strategy which renders responses to the environment typical and therefore predictable. The range of possible moves or alternative patterns of adaptation are laid out well in advance, as a set of rules, guidelines, instructions the form of which exists representationally in the environment. This kind of strategy attempts to account for and manage all possible kinds of change in the environment, frequently by attempting through control mechanisms to reduce the range of these possibilities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Beingness encounters the environment in a more flexible ad hoc and spontaneous manner which relies upon intuition and ad lib extemporaneous responses to meet and cope with environmental challenges and changes. The success of such and 'encounter' strategy depends upon the organismic and functional flexibility of the individual. It entails a foregoing of previous designs, sets of expectations and standards of normality. It entails an 'unlearning' of past patterns of adaptation such that their experiential elements remain, but without a necessary fixed pre-pattern or pre-arrangement which needs to be preserved. The ego identity is able to manage disorder even to thrive on chaos, at a minimum threshold of stress.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such an orientation entails an open-mindedness to the ongoing, ever present environment. Experience is taken at face value, fully and as a matter of fact. Sense of identity depends upon maintaining a sense of environmental relation, of being able to change appropriately and in a timely manner with fluctuations in the environment. Control over the environment is not sought so much as control over the self in changing environments. The locus of control is introjected into the self rather than projected out of the self. Loss of control results not from failure to maintain ones internalized sense of pattern in the external environment, but in the feelings of things getting out of control in failing to adapt to the environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There may be extreme types but no 'true' types of only non-being or beingness, but there are many mixed types of people who are more or less one way and the other.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Non-being can be said to correlate with patterns of authoritarianism, while beingness corresponds with creativity. These types of complement one another and can be thought of as negatively correlated such that where there is a predominance of non-being and authoritarianism there will be a corresponding lack of beingness and creativity, and vice versa.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The two types can be said to elicit two different varieties of experience of the world. For non-being the experience of the world is 'fear mediated' and one's responses are 'fear motivated'. Environmental changes are experienced as threatening to the established sense of order. There is a regressive sense of always lagging behind and of needing to keep up. There is a sense of deficiency which is rooted in the environment, the lack or need to make the environment better or perfect, more complete and finished. Stability of the environment, continuity of perceptual pattern from past to present, the congruence of experiences with previous expectations, are valued and are preferentially perceived. Deviations, anomalies, discontinuities are devalued and selectively filtered from experience or simply ignored. There is in the experience of non-being a pervasive feeling of basic, inexorable uncertainty and anxiety which is construed in the environment of the world, feelings which require secondary compensation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For non-being, the world is experienced in a basically vicarious way, as something distant, indirect, alien, full of illusion and as separate from the self. The world is constituted by difference in a non-relative way such that any and all differences make the difference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For beingness, the experience of environments is fundamentally challenging and stimulating. Change and difference are not repressed or devalued but are prized as 'interesting' and exciting or at least diverting. Identity is gained by experiential involvement with environments rather than through a fundamental sense of separation. Sense of self is experienced as incomplete in relation to the environment, demanding self fulfillment, actualization and expression. There is a feeling of being supported or uplifted by the environment. Diversity, anomaly and difference are values as the source of intrigue and expectation while continuity, similarity and sameness are seen as uninteresting and unchallenging.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For beingness in the world, the experience of environments is always immediate, direct, irreversible and different. Many differences exist but none make the difference.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is possible that non-being in the world is related to the psychological phenomena of field dependency--of depending upon fixed frames of reference by which to orient ones perspective of reality and experiences of the environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Non-being is an inherently simplifying approach to human reality. It favors over diversity, conformity over deviance, simplicity to complexity. It is an approach which always seeks to interpret the world in simplified and simplifying paradigms.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Beingness is always complicating human reality--preferring diversity, difference and deviation over the opposed values. Complexity--in both the environments of the world and in the experience of these environments is preferred.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Non-being is a specializing and focusing approach to human reality. It seeks a single set of repertories and of patterns on which to model the world. It is a matter of become finely tuned to certain specific environments, of becoming exceptionally well adapted in narrow frames of reference and in environments with relative overall stability.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Beingness is a generalizing approach to many different environments. It is a jack of all trades but master of none. It is a broad based behavioral flexibility which readily transfers and moderates skills and experience from one environmental context to others. Beingness tends to approach the world in a generalizing and generalistic way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Non-being is relatively restricted yet highly elaborated to many variables upon a single common theme. Beingness is relatively unrestricted yet unelaborated to a few variations upon many different themes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Part of the paradox of beingness and non-being is that both ways of experiencing reality lead to two different sets of long term consequences for adaptation and depending upon environments, one kind of adaptation is more suitable for some circumstances while the other is more suitable to other contraposed circumstances.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Non-being in the world fits best when the world has overall stability and is highly compartmentalized into many different niches. Specialization in narrow niches congers on non-being adaptive success over the generalization of beingness. It facilitates long term fixed focus and the exclusion of peripheral distractions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Beingness works best in rapidly changing environments which are destructive of daily routines and 'sense of structure'--it fosters general but non-specific adaptation to a wide range of environmental niches and works best under the stress of change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Beingness and non-being are centrally tied to the psycho-geography of human experience and relationship with environments. People seek to maintain an experiential 'identity' of perceptions in the flow of events from one environmental context to the next. Rapid changes, death and separation tend to overload and break down the individual's capacity for dealing with change, leading to maladaptive relations between self identity and its environmental context. In psycho-geography, there is clearly no separating the external, environmental identity of the self and the internal psychological identity of the environmental context. Unconscious becomes rooted in context, and context becomes rooted in the unconscious.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The principle kinds of environments in which beingness and non-being find reinforcement are in social environments of interpersonal and self-other or individual-group or group-group relations, and natural environments of the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Social environments which are characterized as 'in group' oriented and 'intensive' are reinforcing of non-being. Rank Order Hierarchy and Status Role identity are nomothetic social contexts which foster and are fostered by non-being--the self as compared to significant reference others, or as constituted by the psychologically internalized relations of the social environment. Such environments foster a sense of security and social stability based upon a traditional conservatism and conformism to a given, narrow range of values or a focused group orientation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Long term existence in relatively slow changing natural environments also fosters a sense of non-being of identity. Cultures which are fixed, sui generis and relatively secluded and immobile also lead to a cultural orientation based upon the elaboration of non-being--superstition, prohibition, animism, ritualization of sacred and secular life.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Social environments which are 'out group' oriented and 'extensive' as 'outside of any center of power' are reinforcing of beingness as a strategy of adaptation to randomly fluctuating social environments. Sojourners crossing cultural boundaries and regularly having to 'make the strange familiar' must cultivate a sense of being in the world in order to avoid the otherwise inexorable and debilitating culture shock. Strangers and marginal types are also more generalistically unfocused and are characterized by their beingness in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The poet, the artist, the sleuth--whoever sharpens our perception, tends to be anti-social; rarely well adjusted, he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists among anti-social types in their power to see environments as they really are. This need to interface, to confront environments with a certain anti-social power, is manifest in the famous story, "The Emperor's New Clothes". 'Well adjusted courtiers, having vested interests saw the Emperor as beautifully appointed. The anti-social brat, unaccustomed to the old environment clearly saw that the Emperor 'ain't got nothing on'. The new environment was clearly visible to him. (Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Message, 1967)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It follows that beingness comes from the confrontation of diverse ranges of natural environments or regions of great environmental diversity, and that displaced cultures or diffused cultural orientations that have witnessed or suffered a great deal of mobility and transition should be more promotive of beingness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Certain aspects of beingness of the new generation are in conflict with the sense of non-being of the older generation--nonconformity to certain traditional values, creation of new cultural environments and orientations, general lack of social responsibility that goes unlearned except by negative reinforcement and punishment. It also follows that certain aspects of the non-being of the new generation are in conflict with the beingness of the older generation--roller coasters versus strolls in the parks, daydreams versus disillusionment, self centered pride versus hard won humility.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As we grow older, we tend to trade off our sense of being and non-being in the world for another sense of non-being and being in the world, and this becomes the basis of the perennial conflict between the generations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a fundamental difference between the professional specialist who is well adapted to a fixed environmental context, highly elaborated set of behavioral repertories and the 'amateur generalist' who is never afraid of trying out new lines and is usually pretty good but rarely superlative. Amateurs often offer a sense of freshness which stuffy, tried and true professionals usually lack. Amateurs sometimes invent or discover things too obvious but quite apparent to professionals.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Professionals come to know and exhaust the many different profiles of a single occupational or adaptive horizon--their inventory of experiences focus upon the complete range of variations of a common line or theme of activity or involvement. The amateur shotguns experience over many profiles of several different horizons and the experiences gained in each add to a general repertory which may be applied to still others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is another paradox between beingness and non-being in adaptation to environments. The structure of ego identity of non-being seems strong and impervious to change, yet it is founded upon spurious foundations which can suffer sudden, complete breakdowns or go through its own 'conversion' experiences when its mediating function finally becomes undone by environmental changes. The high level of environmental stresses confers upon non-being a kind of hyper-suggestibility and susceptibility to environmental or social influences which seems counter intuitive to its show of changeless imperviousness. The stolid character of ego identity can appear quite hypocritically strong and enduring like a rock and yet be actually quite manipulable by subtle influences which are threatening and fear inducing. Unmasked, the essential selflessness of such egos become the hapless and helpless bodies of mass oriented, mindless crowd behavior. They become the soulless entranced spectators of tragic accidents. As much as these people attempt to control their environments, they are also controlled by their environments. Their relationship with the environment is characterized by psychological interdependency such that the relative status of the ego, its sense of expectation or deprivation, is critically influenced by changes in the environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is this paradox which confers upon these people a kind of 'change of wardrobe' chameleoness which allows them to change ego identities when environmental constraints makes it convenient for them to do so. They exchange their fixedness of being and purpose for a 'fitness' of new internalized environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Beingness on the other hand, seems to have on the surface an apparent flexibility, a capacity for its skin to change colors with the changing seasons of its environment,, but underneath its chameleoness it remains the same chameleon. It fosters an integrity of being which continues through adaptation and fitting into new environments--this integrity of self identity crosses many boundaries of environmental variation and change without breakdown or undergoing a metamorphosis of being. This is a basic paradox of being, for it is ever changing and yet always the same basic identity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The importance of understanding the distinction between Beingness and non-being extends beyond the characteriological and experiential differences and have are of greater consequences in accounting for fundamental social differences and general phenomena of humankind's adaptation to their world. It has come to influence our sciences and our modern world views.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture history can be said to be in part of study of human beingness and relative non-being as it becomes manifest in the world. As such culture history opens us up to qualitative and substantial varieties of human experience and general phenomena which are mostly unavailable to more scientific approaches to the study of human reality. It allows us to frame answers for certain kinds of questions and problems of human reality which are otherwise unanswerable or difficult to contextualize.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One critical difference is between the study of the human being as 'an object of knowledge' and the learning about human experiential realities as a 'subject of understanding'. The former, statistical approach defines human being as non-being, in terms of countable objects or components, in terms of numbers and things. This approach reifies human beingness and transforms human identity into 'thingness' that is 'objectified' by becoming 'de-subjectified'. The second approach deals with human beingness in subject terms of phenomenological experience and resists the reification and numerical transmutation of the irreducibly qualitative and holistic in its original state. The second approach transforms human beingness into 'metaphor' for which to understand a human's interrelations with the environment. Being transformed into a name or a 'word' has other consequences for human identity, whether it is nominal or verbal, or literary or oral, but the looseness of interpretation and connotation preserves a sense of the generality and contextuality which inheres naturally in human experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Erich Fromm makes a distinction between authoritarian conscience, which he describes as the 'superego' of the internalized law of the father, and later, of society and the 'humanistic conscience' which is not internalized authority but an inner 'voice that calls us back to ourselves'--'the human core common to all men, that is, certain basic characteristics which cannot be violated or negated without serious consequences'. This humanistic conscience is rooted in the traditions of religious philosophy. He goes on to assert that the central moral problematic of modern humankind is the reification of human identity. 'Man is not a thing, and if you try to transform him into a thing, you damage him.' Power reifies human beingness into non-being, turning a human being into a corpse.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…A corpse is a thing. Man is not. Ultimate power--the power to destroy--is exactly the ultimate power of transforming life into a thing. Man cannot be taken apart and put together again; a thing can be. A thing is predictable; Man is not. A thing cannot create, Man can. A thing has no self. Man has. Man has the capacity to say the most peculiar and difficult word in our language, the world 'I'…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…to understand our neighbor and ourselves--is to understand a human being who is not a thing. And the process of this understanding cannot be accomplished by the same method in which knowledge in the natural sciences can be accomplished. The knowledge of man is possible only in the process of relating ourselves to him…Ultimate knowledge cannot be expressed in thought or words…And you can never exhaust the description of a personality, of a human being, in his full individuality; but you can know him in an act of empathy, in an act of full experience, in an act of love…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What, then, are the ethical demands of our day? First of all to overcome this 'thingness'…to overcome our indifference, or alienation from others, from nature and from ourselves. Second, to arrive again at a new sense of 'I-ness', of self, of an experience 'I am' rather than succumb to the automaton feeling in which we have the illusion that 'I think that I think' when actually I do not think at all but am rather like someone who puts on a record and thinks he plays the music of the record.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Medicine and the Ethical Problems of Modern Man' Erich Fromm, The Dogma of Christ--and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This difference of beingness and non-being is related to the fundamental schism between the 'two cultures' of Academia, the Sciences and the Humanities and the critique of the 'anal obsessive' Weltaangshaung of science as being unable to deal impersonally with the personal and its comparison with more humanizing traditions rooted in religious philosophy, has been noted by such people as Abraham Maslow who makes a distinction between the nomothetic, deficiency motivated knowledge of science based upon the control of uncertainty in the environment and idiographic, love inspired knowledge which seeks involvement with the environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Subject-object relations in the world are directly related to differences in self- other relations in our social worlds. Consideration of 'self-other' relations in the world involves Martin Buber's critical distinction between 'I-thou relation' and 'I-it relation'. In the life of dialogue we can choose to either meet face to face what challenges us in our environments and refer to it as 'you' or else we can stand apart from 'it' and view it as an object. Each of these different attitudes involves a different sense of self, or I, one being characterized by beingness and 'I-it' being characterized by non-being. The self of beingness is involved in an exclusive and unique relationship, unlike any other. The self of non-being is one that 'experiences, assesses, compares, sums up, analyzes and learns'. No preconceptions, anticipations, desires or purposes interfere between I and you--such a relationship is only possible when such pre-dispositions have been vanquished. 'I-thou' always involves reciprocity. From relation it sometimes leads to 'encounter'--'the high peak of relational life, the lightening flash which suddenly illuminates the way'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As for what is precisely meant by encounter: whereas relation is the unilateral recognition of a vis-à-vis as you on the part of an I, encounter is what happens when two I's step into relation simultaneously. Encounter is the coming together into existential communion of two I's and two you's. encounter is a privilege that I receive. I enter into your-relation of my own accord and thereby fulfill the 'act of my being, my being's act' but encounter is not done by me. 'You encounter me by grace; it is not found by seeking…You encounters me. But I enter into immediate relation with it…'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">You-relation …is the very 'cradle of real life'. And what is 'real life?' All real life is encounter. Is life unreal then? …History shows that it is out of I-you and I-you encounter that the truly creative, redemptive and revelatory acts draw their being. It is both from the mighty encounters and from the little encounters between I and you that new creations, new redemptions and new revelations spring…(Martin Buber by Pamela Vermes)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This understanding of the difference between beingness and non-being in self-other relations recognizes the primary importance of 'encounter' as a state of 'reflexiveness' or 'reflexivity' in relationship that comes from the doubling of mirrors dissolving boundaries in reality, opening out onto endless possibility and becoming 'identity with a difference'. Furthermore, the connection between the reflexivity of encounter in self-other relationships and creativity is recognized. The possibility of encounter of the self with the world is the wellspring of human creation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The inherent reflexiveness of self-other relations entails that we find ourselves in others, as reflections or representations of the self, and that we find others in ourselves, as their reflection and representation. This leads to consideration of the inherently interpersonal horizon of the self identity and other identity--a self-other meta-relation--such that neither self component not other component is complete when separate or alone from the meta-relation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The interpersonal horizon of the self and the other is composed of 'bundles of things'--traits, experiences, memories, skills, feelings, etc. Both self and other identity is defined polythetically rather than monothetically. I or thou are not just a single organismic entity, a name with a complete personality attached. Both of us are a composite of many different things. Furthermore, the things within us are integrated by sets of interrelations between these things. We are composites of a range of variation of different images, but are found in reflection and representation in reflexive 'inter-identity' between self and other</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">When self and other enter into interrelationship, there is an 'unpacking' of things and their interrelations and things are shared, compared and contrasted between self and other. Common things and their relations are the common ground for mutual identity--differences between things become the basis for the irrelation of non-being--the separation of difference--defining the self other meta-relation in terms of differences--reifying the other into an object of differences to be 'studied'. Everyone has something in common with everyone else, but the more in common with identity, the stronger is the meta-relation between people--the greater and more intense the 'encounter' between self and other. But defining meta-relations exclusively in terms of shared sameness or difference leads to reification in both directions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This sense of exclusive reification is the basis of spurious self-other identification and meta-relation. Meta-relation takes a life of its own--it is the 'life of dialogue'. This life has a direction ultimately beyond the control of either self or other and will become interpreted different by both self and other on the basis of their different 'personality matrices' of bundles of traits and their interrelations. Sharing a meta-relation leads to a generalization and 'fusion' of differences--to encounter--over time such that the personality matrices of self and other are brought into closer alignment over time. Encounter in meta-relation opens up new possibilities for growth and inter-identification between self and other. People learn how to react to, reject, accommodate, tolerate or assimilate the differences they find between one another and vice versa.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In asymmetrical meta-relations the reciprocity and interchange is more one directional--self or other attempt to control the direction of the life of the meta-relation. Reflexivity is impossible under such circumstances and such a relationship is the basis of an externalized form of power in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symmetrical relationships based upon evenness of 'inter-change' or reciprocity is based upon shared similarities and mutual identification between self and other. Relationships which are asymmetrical are based primarily upon differences between people--there is no 'fusion of difference' but only 'separation of horizons.' Similarities tend to be denied or rejected, withdrawn and these result in spurious 'irrelation'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In spurious irrelation, self and other are separate and one is transformed into a thing, an instrument, or object of power of the other.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the reflexiveness of self-other meta-relation, there is a process of internalization or identification of the 'ego' of the values of the meta-relation--the other is incorporated within the sense of self. Often the internalization of this meta-relation, which begins in past or remote primary social relationships between parent and child or between siblings results in the intrinsic incorporation of difference and 'contradiction' such that self identity of the resulting ego is compartmentalized on the basis of inimical differences. This leads to front and back regions of the personality of the ego, to 'top dog' and 'under dog' intra-physic conflicts between the ego and the self.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">When our inter-relational mechanisms which serve to preserve the integrity of or sense of being breakdown under the stress of conflict, there occurs a disintegration of personality--the bundles of things no longer cohere into a general pattern of the self--they do not fit together anymore.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In or self-other meta-relations, we come to 'work out' or project these differences of ego identity upon the relationship, which entails a 'reification' of the other of the meta-relation as a thing. Such a projection is the recognition or imputation of the 'over emphasis' of difference in inter-human relationships--differences which are actually repressed within the self. In such cases, we are largely unable to have a genuine encounter experiences with people--they are narcissistic objects of our own projections, they are objects of reflection, but not reflexiveness. Our meta-relations and our 'inter-identity' in our social world becomes one predominantly of 'non-being'--spurious, separate and alienating.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is through learning how to engage in genuine self-other meta-relations, to unlearn difference within ourselves and between ourselves and the world, and to 'encounter' our world that we can resolve our intra-physic conflicts rooted to an unreal past and which keep our sense of self always imprisoned in a world of dependent, asymmetrical object relations. We actually gain self control over our own identities by releasing our projective need to control or be controlled by our worlds.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">*****</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It must be understood that interpersonal differences and similarities are not so much real or actual as much as they are ascribed, imputed on the basis of metaphorical connection, symbolic identification or analogical evaluation. We are looking symbolically, hence reflexively, for ourselves in others, and for others in ourselves. And it is from this search and this 'inter-identification' that our sense of ego and sense of self ultimately depend. It is the analogical nature of these differences and similarities in meta-relation which is the basis of psychic meaning and being in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The other becomes the reference of significance for the self--what is called the significant reference other. If focusing upon similarities, the other becomes an object of empathetic emulation--subordinating self to authority of the other. To focus upon or emphasize differences exclusively in meta-relation is to concomitantly ignore similarities and to disallow similarities. It is to assert one sense of ego identity, or its authority, over the other. The other becomes negative 'counter-reference' significant other. In either case, the exclusive emphasis of either similarities or differences leads to a nomothetic pigeon holing of the identity of the other into the personality matrix of the self. Non-being of the meta-relation is the result, as in neither case is encounter with the full humanness or identity of the other as self recognized reflexively.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Focusing exclusively upon either differences or similarities is a social distancing mechanism necessary for the protection of ego identity. It is necessary for maintaining a reference relationship in which the other is a reflective object of the self and not a real person, or separate sense of self. The other person is merely a symbol, but not one which stands for itself. Masks, personas, assertion of authority, control and power, enforced anonymity or alienation are all social distancing mechanisms employed in defense of the ego. On the other hand, focusing upon similarities and differences in terms of sympathetic and empathetic resonances within the self leads to idiographic 'understanding' of the subjective other such that differences in time are worked out, fused, or tolerated. Difference remains, but becomes unimportant in terms of real difference and similarity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is to be seen by extension that if a majority or the predominant part of social interrelationships in the world are based on non-being and are therefore spurious irrelation, then the social reality which is produced by the networks of these spurious relations will also be spurious. Such a social atmosphere will be characterized by its impersonalness and alienation, by the cultivation of front regions which mask the hidden networks of back regions and will foster asymmetrical irrelations between people. Such societies will in turn foster and promote 'spurious' social relationships and socialize personalities which internalize 'difference'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are no 'purely' spurious or genuine cultures or relations or people--there are many mixed types of more or less spurious or genuine.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Sapir's dualism consists of a single continuum defined on the basis of how well a given culture provides a suitably adaptive environment for the individual. Genuine culture begins with the concerns of the individual needs while functioning as an integral and meaningful whole--'a richly varied and yet somehow unified and consistent attitude toward life in which no part of the general functioning brings with it a sense of frustration or misdirected or unsympathetic effort. (1924, page 410) Spurious culture is extraneous to the individual, cultivating an attitude of non-participation and alienation. While the genuine culture serves to nurture the creative potential of human beings, the spurious culture is inherently frustrating, fragmentary and wasting of human endeavor and sentiment.' (Grindal, 1979, page 13) (Lewis, unpublished manuscript, 1989)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It follows from this that cultural orientation which promote beingness in identity lead to a creative fluorescence of 'civilization' in which the individual potentialities of the human being become promoted and 'nurtured' through genuine meta-relation and is allowed to express itself in the world in terms of the realization of greater creative possibility. It also follows that in civilizations in which spurious irrelation prevails, such personal realization through meta-relation becomes systematically frustrated and stemmed from further development through interpersonal irrelation. There is a net loss of creative productivity of people, and a net increase of authoritarianism and its social effects in social relations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Alfred Kroeber associated the growth and high points of development with culture historical developments of characteristic 'style type patterns' as well as with the frequency of culture historical personalities or of 'genius' of a reflective of the particular style of civilization. The determining factor of the appearance of bursts or clusters of genius in the course of a civilization culture historical development is due largely to the social context which either fosters or allows this rise of genius, or which systematically frustrate or prevent its occurrence. Culture historical contexts which become spurious tend to prevent the growth and development of stylistic genius of civilization, while genuine meta-relations within such contexts encourage and protect such development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We have now an important linkage between individual experience of reality, between beingness and non-being, and the growth, development and demise in culture historical process of human civilization. Which comes first, the individual or the context of the individual's development, is largely a hen and egg question. They come together in a dialectic of human identity. What is important is to recognize how the statistical frequency and relative structural predominance of certain kinds of 'encounters' or face to face meta-relations, work consistently through extended networks and 'social movements' to turn the wheels of culture history and to describe the processual patterning of the rise and fall of human civilizations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We have in this a culture historical account of our own civilization--the promotion of the rugged individualist style of civilization through many genius who invented a whole new world and now the rise of a pervasive and predominant sense of non-being in social relationships which tends to frustrate and prevent the rise of the very kind of genius upon which its greatness was founded.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dialectic of mind and world view are collective representations of the individual human being's experience of beingness and non-being in the world. Such experience is primarily subjective and phenomenological in the sense that it is derived from the recognition of one's self in the world, of the sentient possibilities of other's beingness, and of the dilemmas of death and separation and inexorable facts of life. It is subjective in the sense that it is a non-absolute and relative, yet non-arbitrary condition of human existence--recognition and understanding of the sense of identity and difference of beingness and non-being is relative, contextual dimensionality which as no external or a-priori standards of frames or references. It casts human existence, individually and collectively, in a shadow of indeterminacy such that there are few fixed, unchanging points of reference by which to anchor experience, understand change or about which to configure meaning in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Beingness and non-being are a contrapuntal dialectic which informs human existence with meaningfulness and ameaning--they are the essential counterpoint of or mythologies and our enacted social dramas. Being and non-being stand in unending opposition to one another and it is the dialectical tension of this contradiction which creates the antinomal and paradoxical ground of meaning in the world and which allows for transcendence of the dialectics through symbolic synthesis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But beingness and non-being have a very different connotations for meaning in the world--following one way or the other has very interesting and problematic implications for how individuals and collectivities come to organize experience, mediate environments and structure their world view, and both lead down different pathways to changing which has very different consequences for humankind and the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Individuals may lead a life of beingness while the collective of which that person is a part may lead a different way of non-being, and vice versa. Though interconnected the dialectics of being for the individual is different than the dialectics of being for the collective--the way of life of the collective may lead to the individual's life ways, but the individuals way of life may also lead the life ways of the collective.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dialectics of Mind, of being and non-being, and of Mindness and world view are founded upon the basic principles of identity and difference--principles of relation between the term and the thing, subject and object, self and other the signified and the signifier and the metaphor and the thing for which it stands. The dialectic of identity and difference informs all other dialectics as being between 'collectivizing/relativizing'--contrapuntal directions and tendencies of understanding. Identity and difference are inseparable, as identity must be defined by anti-thetical contraposition to relative difference, and vice versa. The principles of identity/difference are articulated quite simply and logically by the Theory of Sets. The principle of identity is expressed in terms of being; difference expresses non-being. Identity comes through the recognition of similarities and differences, and their fusion upon a common horizon of meta-relation. Differences comes through the separation of similarities from differences and the exclusive emphasis of each to the neglect of the other.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">DIALECTIC OF SELF AND OTHER</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Individuality is the 'idea' of Mind and is the synthesis of a dialectic between 'self centered identity' and 'other de-centered difference'--or the self defined idiographically in conjunction with the sense of personality development--biographically and longitudinally organized as a sense of inner directed continuity through time and across space and the 'otherness' of the self defined nomothetically as a bindle of relationships to other things and ultimately with other people, or other 'selves' in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Self in the world is defined diachronically as motion through time. Other of the world is defined synchronically as distance across space. The dialectic between self and other is a dialectic between time and space as well. Translation of self into other and of other into self is concomitantly the inter-translation between space and time. The dialectic between self and other is the spatio-temporal manifestation of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Sense of self is the expression of the holothetic principle of Mind--'idea' expressed in terms of other 'ideas' which remain extrinsically defined in terms of other ideas of the world. The paradox of the dialectic is to synthetically transcend the dialectic while remain extrinsically defined in terms of other ideas of the world. The paradox of the dialectic is to synthetically transcend the dialectic while remaining within its circle. The function of a meta-language is to allow this transcendence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this regard it is vitally important to note that the social sciences are largely, almost exclusively, the science of 'other identity' and so cannot transcend the dialectic of individuality. To 'de-center' the importance of the 'sense of self' in a systematic way is to attempt to subjugate the self to the dictates of the social order, and to define Mind in exclusive terms of social organization. It places the momentousness of Mind to the service of the momentum of culture history and reduces the importance of the self as the manifestation of Mind. In essence it constitutes a systematic denial of Mind as an ordering principle of human reality. Put another way, it constitutes a denial of beingness in the world by the affirmation of non-being of the world in terms of 'becoming' in a Perfect State of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not an accident that social sciences legitimate themselves in constructs and languages which are mostly spatial and synchronic in reference--the aim is a Logos of Perfect Space/Time in which disorder, randomness and uncertainty become minimized.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This emphasis upon other-identity has important implications for the role of the social sciences within a culture historical framework. The recovery of Mind depends upon the recovery of the sense of self from the anti-thetical principle of otherness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">BEINGNESS AS A NATURAL STATE OF MIND</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Beingness gains its identity in a dialectic with 'non-being'. Beingness identifies the reflexive identity of self and mind as an idea and a 'meta-relation' with the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Logos as 'natural systems theory' states that 'mind' as the natural logos of the human being has occurred as an order of reality which is guided by its own reasons--reasons which are basically 'meta-physical'. Yet meta-physicality of mind, of the 'beingness' of humankind, must have had its evolutionary origins in humankind's natural adaptation to selective forces in past environments. And as an adaptive mechanism, mind came into being long before humankind invented civilization in the historical sense--it came into being in the heads of individual's as they struggled for survival in hostile environments. It came into being among people whose only sense of social solidarity must have been 'natural' and 'mechanical'--who acted or had to learn to act, as individual 'culture bearers' rather than as 'organic specialists' whose adaptive success and survival came to depend more upon the success and survival of their 'social system' than upon their own individual state of being.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Neither were these primeval human beings very interested in the notions of progress or of 'becoming' or of perfection--being in its dialectic with possible non-being was an earnest, everyday problem of survival. The mind of human being developed to its full ecological and evolutionary significance long before the development of the civilized contexts for understanding 'ecology' and 'evolution'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Humankind has long existed in a 'primitive' state of beingness for a much longer span of time than we now know how to imagine. Perhaps mind as a culture historical phenomena had been in a long slumber before finally 'awakening' to its own self consciousness. We will never know.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Beingness as natural state of mind exists in the fear of death, in the daily confrontation with disorder and disintegration. As such there was no significant sense of 'becoming' except perhaps in the most mystical and magical of meanings.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">REASONS FOR BEING</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Many different reasons for being have been given--some better than others. Many are just lies, other sophisticated rationalizations 'in service of the ego'--others reasons are more pragmatic or more philosophical and others have been mandated by socio-economic survival or political struggle and confrontation. Systems always seem to have their own reasons, and if not, eventually will. Reason for being is not any or all the reasons we may give for our being--being in and of the world has its own reasons separable from the ones we may bring to it. Reason for being does not wait for our understanding of it, nor do our substitute reasons ever replace it. Reason (and unreason) for being is not necessarily 'rational' or 'logical'--reasons for being happens around our own ideas and in the absence of our intentions and plans.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But reason for being is not a divine spirit or a guiding force. It is not fate, nor destiny, nor the will of God or Allah, or even the action of logos or the science of truth. It is not an essence reducible by scientific or philosophic explanation--no psychoanalyst can mine its treasures or discover its depths in the individual psyche.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Difficult to put into words, it is more like willpower, but not unconscious or conscious motivation. It is collective in being shared, but it is not an internalized superego, a phenomena of mass movements or social hysteria. It is the function of mind, and the human expression of logos. It is not the deep, generative structure of structuralism. It is similar to the Dao that cannot be put into worlds or the way that isn't the way. It is not the same for all people, it varies with individual differences. It is an integrity of being that makes its own sense. It is a synergism and an encompassing totality arising from the fact of being itself rather than preceding or following it. It predetermines nothing except itself, and is predetermined by nothing but itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We cannot know it completely, objectively or however remotely, because we cannot separate ourselves from it, nor isolate others from it. It is the forest and we are the trees of the forest. It expresses itself through us but not because of us. We are its vehicles, its vessels, carrying its essence and substance into our future.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though reason for being is not our reasons, it ultimately informs them with reason. Though we cannot control it, or comprehend it in any sense, we can come to know of it and understand some of it and describe what of it we know and understand. And whether it may be scientific or not is irrelevant. It is because we are and we are because it is, and just that is enough. Knowing and understanding it is enough in itself--its relevance is self evident. We will know it when we find it, because it will know us and have fond us.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Reason for being is the principle of mind. The study of culture history is the attempt to generalistically excoriate the principle of mind and our reason for being from the phenomena of everyday experience in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">NONBEING AND THE RATIONALITY OF BECOMING</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The rationality of becoming is the scientific substitute for being. But no matter how progressive our rationality for becoming may be, however fulfilled or fulfilling in our lives, it never reveals our reason for being. It covers over the dialectic between being and non-being by incorporating the principle of change and the control of change, into its unfolding dialectic and thus makes non-being the basis of human identity. The rationality of becoming fails to transcend the dialectics of being and non-being but reverses its counterpoint.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The evolution of mind arose as the result of the logos of change. The rationality of becoming can be constrained as the principle of non-being of change which is directed or controlled--a sense of superimposing a pattern of structure of a non-existent future upon the sense of the present. Reason for being transcends the dialectic of being and non-being by an acceptance of the inevitability of change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The rationality of becoming leads to a denial of the reason for being--an attempted escape from its inevitability, a desperate effort to purposefully forget it or to 'unlive it'. It attempts to substitute for reason for being in its own rationality of becoming something other than what one is. Its vicariousness searches for its own reason for being in the non-being of the possibilities of change itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Rationality of becoming lives in the world but is not of the world in the way that reason for being is. It serves a purpose of change. The principle of change becomes the principle of progressive evolution--change with a purpose.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">CHANGE AND NONBEING</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Part of our reason for being is the maintenance of a sense of continuity of consciousness through time, an identity of perception, a sense of constant, stable self. Though we watch ourselves gradually change, we like to think that there remains something fundamental which does not alter with circumstances or change with the seasons. It is vital to our being even though we cannot explain exactly what it is.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If there is a universal principle or a logos, then it must be the principle of universal change--everything changes, constantly, gradually, rapidly, alternating, growing, expanding, moving, eroding, even our mind. Changes pervades our every and very experiences of the cosmos. Whether change in the universe is evolutionary or not remains to be discovered--it only seems so ordered in our locale. Universal change guarantees us that nothing remains the same forever, that all things are indeed temporary and ephemeral.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The observation of change, the ability to notice and to know change, both creates sense of being as somewhat resistant or defying change, and simultaneously challenges this sense by the possibility and the inevitability of non-being. Being and non-being rise in the world together as part of the dialectical mediation of change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Perhaps it is our name, or our social and natural history which produces us a sense of continuity through time, inspite of changes. We recognize our reason for being in our offspring, and see the challenges to its survival in the death of friends and family. We may call it love, or nature, but we do not seek to analyze it or explain it. We act and make decisions on its behalf because we are a part of it and it is a part of us. But always we measure it by comparison with non-being in the world--that changes that go around us and through us which suggests our own impermanence and our own ephemerality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">NONBEING AND VICARIOUSNESS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Recognition of the possibility of non-beingness and the denial of beingness leads also to the capacity for vicariousness--the substitution of possible states of non-beingness for beingness. Vicariousness is a qualified form of non-beingness as it covers over the sense of separation of death by the false sense of belonging derived from the imagined experience of another person's beingness. Vicariousness comes from our social identity, our knowledge of the beingness of the other as an experience of our possible non-beingness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The importance of the pathology of vicariousness in the constitution of the modern mind should not be underestimated--as modern beingness has become defined by the vicariousness of other identity to the point of loss of beingness in self identity. Part of this social vicariousness of non-beingness becomes expressed as a 'cult of individuality'--of the over emphasis upon the distinctiveness and importance of the self vis-à-vis other identity. The media promotes this pathology of vicariousness as a mechanism of the 'system' in the de-personalization of the beingness for the sake of its perpetuation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The principle of becoming is a special form of vicariousness. Becoming is also a form of non-beingness which becomes a substitute for beingness. Becoming substitutes the vicariousness of the other with the non-beingness of the self as the embodiment or progressive realization of a rational ideal--the substitution of the idea of natural mind by the ideal of perfect mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It follows that a modern world built upon the principle of progress incorporating the principle of becoming and the modern mind of this principle of becoming, is a pathological world founded upon the vicariousness of non-being and the denial of beingness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">DEATH AND NONBEINGNESS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Non-beingness is expressed symbolically as death and separation. Because death is the inevitable and ultimate consequence of life, the entire process of living can be looked upon as a gradual process of dying--every minor parting or permanent transition in life has a sense of separation and becomes a resonance of death. Death is a natural end state of life, and separation is a natural process of living.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Death and separation are the expressions of the principle of inexorable change in life--everything changes in time, and these changes over the long run are irreversible and permanent.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Death is the final, most irreversible change of living. It represents a great unknown. It is the only absolute horizon of our understanding and knowledge beyond which our consciousness cannot carry us.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Because it represents symbolically the unknown, death is the universal source of fear and the cause of anxiety over change and separation. Such fear and anxiety pervade our life, and are normal conditions of existence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Pathology comes from the inability to deal with these fears and feelings of anxiety as natural states of living--leading to their denial or to the 'fear of fear' and to the anxiousness about anxiety. Denial of death as a pathological way of dealing with it leads to its covert sublimation in other ways--an unconscious symbolic preoccupation and fascination with dying and separation. Fear of fear and anxiousness about anxiety are part of this unconscious denial--obsessive expressions of this fear and anxiety which become inordinately powerful and suggestive in the daily rituals of living.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The possibility of the denial of death comes from the recognition and possibility of denial of beingness--as a consequence of mind it comes from the self recognition of the dialectic between beingness and non-beingness. It is concomitant to the reflexive identity of self and mind. Like Versus and Falsus, the ability to apprehend the identity of truth, (or the truth of identity) always also opens up the possibility of untruth and non-identity. We cannot have knowledge and understanding of truth and beingness without the understanding of the possibility of untruth and non-beingness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">BEING AND BECOMING</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A human being is more than a bundle of traits--more than behavior plus mentality, more than a set of psychological processes (perception, learning, memory, thought, intelligence, skill, communication, motivation, emotion, personality) more than a name, a wardrobe, a creature with a home life and a work life, more than a 'culture bearing animal' or 'symbolic creature'. A human being is more than a body with a soul and a mind and a shadow--a human being is more than a 'thing'. Human being is a living state, a super organic condition, a synergism of reality, a unity of reality and undivided totality of experience. He cannot so much address it as be addressed by it. We cannot know it so much as be known by it--it always encompasses our comprehension--always 'something more' than our 'nothing buts'. Human being exists in the world and happens of the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To say that 'human being' is an oxymoron of knowledge and understanding--it compels an unnatural kind of self reflexivity, an apperceptive awareness of our own being in and of the world--trying to 'objectify' the intrinsically 'subjective'. We say 'well of course human being, what else?' Indeed what else can there be? To subtract either the human or the being from the equation of experience--to inform knowledge or understanding 'as if' either were unnecessarily absent, is a falsification of actual experience. Of course we can imagine with a high degree of scientific certainty that should all humankind perish in turn, the universe would continue to exist without us, but our essential experience of it would have vanished into nothingness and along with us, the knowledge that there is a universe. There is no point quibbling.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Perhaps it is better to say 'beingness' instead of just 'being' to convey the 'sense' of 'state' or 'condition', to better emphasize its unequivocal experientiality or self evident essence. It is perhaps the only true synthetic a-priori which necessarily comes before everything else. Being has always been enough.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">And yet in our world dominated by scientific rationality it is no longer simply 'to be' as a unquestionable given, as an uncontestable 'fact' of experience itself. (and it probably never really, absolutely has been) Being human in the modern sense has come to mean much more than simply human being. The principle of progress and its premises of perfectionism make it imperative that we will 'become' something more than we 'are' or have 'unbecome' something that we 'were' before. The need to 'become' has its own 'superhuman methods' and its own 'superhuman madness'. And 'becoming human' is never quite enough.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PERFECT MIND AS A STATE OF PATHO-LOGOS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Perfect mind arose from the principle of becoming which became a substitute for the dialect between being and non-being--it arose from a denial of non-being and hence implies a denial of being. Its aim is a perfect logos, a state of perfect space and perfect time, from which non-being as an imperfect state is exorcised.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the extent that perfect mind is based upon a principle of becoming which denies the dialectic of being and non-being, it must be construed as an 'unnatural' hence 'pathological' state of mind. It must be construed as an intrinsically maladaptive kind of mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not difficult to look around and see social pathological states of collective mentality which exist as self fulfilling prophecies of their own culture historical traditions--modern militarism, MAD and the Pentagon's power are peculiarly pertinent examples. Implicit to these pathological states of collective mentality is a shared delusions. Such social pathologies have as their purpose not the 'beingness of the mind' in terms of the self, but in the destruction of the self in the service of the other--or of a symbolically depersonalized 'system'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Rational idealism and scientific rationalism promotes a logo-centrism which leads to reification of abstractions and to a misplaced concretization--this kind of logo-centrism can be seen to promote a frame of mind which aims towards a perfect state of mind which is reinforced by and reinforces a perfect social system.</p> <hr> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PART VI</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="5">CULTURE HISTORY</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><b><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="2"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/hughmlewis/">by Hugh M. Lewis</a></font></b></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Superman has long been a mythological archetype of many different cultures. It is a human of supernatural origins and a human upbringing who exhibits superhuman physical strengths and abilities, which he uses in a series of trials and contests with monsters, villains, Gods and with other men. Behind Superman is always a female seductress who threatens to rob him of his powers. The Hebrews had their Samson, the Greeks had Hercules. Ancient Mesopotamian civilization had Gilgamesh, the Indian had Arjuna. There have been many variants of this common theme, and the point of variation upon a common theme is as important as the understanding of the essential structure of the theme itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It was Frederick Nietzche who gave to western rational philosophy the contrast between Superman and the slave, superman being the superior man who was the goal of evolutionary 'survival of the fittest'. Recent German ideology capitalized upon this mythological theme as a core archetype of their superior civilization which was rooted in their genetic history, and a unified, strong nation was mobilized under a fanatical leader to go to war with the world to conquer and dominate it militarily.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this instance we have a clear example of how the power of a mythological theme can be used to foster collective ideological illusion around which shrewd and cunning leaders may mobilize the people of an 'ethno-nation' for fanatical action. 'Understanding kills action, for in order to act we require the veil of illusion…' (Frederick Nietzche, The Birth of Tragedy)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All cultures have their different hero myths. We have whole pantheon and Halls of Fame devoted to the greats of baseball, football and basketball. We have political heroes and folk heroes, we have war heroes, scientist heroes and even industrialist heroes. Heroes become the stuff of which legends and children's day dreams are made of and from our legends come the justification of the greatness of our cultural traditions and the object lessons for how we spend our lives. Now we have a whole movie industry which regularly creates and recreates these hero myths in living color, to give our collective illusions a substantial sense of perceptual realism, however two dimensional and electronic. And film and TV creates its own legends, stars, great directors and great roles which provide us with yet other pantheons of Oscar winners, wax museums and parades.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Humans seem to need heroes to serve as role models of exemplary behavior and superhuman feats and as paragons of our cultural values and virtues. They are the semi-human props for our everyday illusions and the superhuman solutions for our existential problems. Everyone loves a winner and no one wants a loser.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In our daily performances and enactments of our cultural values, in our recreations of our mythological characters, supermen and heroes, we can see clearly how myth may both serve to reflect and to regenerate our cultural traditions and inform our lives and our daily destinies with special significances of which we may quite unselfconsciously aware. For us they are reflective of our cultural orientations, but they are frequently not reflexive of our own realities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We sometimes seem to so need our hero myths and legends that we are quite willing to completely disregard the kernel of historical truth lying at the center of the story in order to better enjoy the flesh of the fruit grown around it. In our culture, we consume our heroes as we consume our junk food and our material possession, to use them up at our convenience and then discard forever the pithy remnants into the junk heaps of our buried and forgotten history.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It has been the study of culture history which has provided us with an intellectual window onto this cultural process of mythology, hero making and consuming, the illusion and superhuman spirit of ideology it cultivates and the sense of history that’s inevitably left behind. It is the study of culture history which best answers our 'why' questions about the happenings of history and the events of culture, because it allows us to paint the sense of holism and animation that imbibed a people with a collective purpose and orientation and gave to their culture the breath of history. Culture history elucidates the integrity and synergism of a people within a given period and place, and shows how its mythology is related to its language and psychology, and how its history and ideology is related to its mythology and how its sense of civilization, its sense of individual self, gender, class, and even its ecology and experiences of its environment are conditioned through and by its mythology. It also shows how this mythology is also rooted in its geography, its ecology, its economy, its sociality, its customs and manners, its politics and its history. In short within the study of culture history everything is somehow related to everything else, however indirectly or remotely or superficially.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For those students of culture who would seek to know a foreign people, or even to study themselves, the firm foundation of the understanding of the people's culture history is of paramount and prerequisite importance in the contextualizing and grounding of their studies, no matter how scientific, specific, a historical or sociological. It is foolish for such students to conduct research of any kind without a well rounded appreciation of the language, culture and history of the people whom they study. Without such culture historical understanding, such researcher's inevitably fall prey to either the mythologies of the people's that they've ignored, to their own culture historical mythologies that they have ignored reflexively in themselves, or else the results of their studies will stand apart from the whole fabric of human consciousness itself, as something disconnected, irrelevant and worst of all, trivial--of little or no value at all in any culture historical framework.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The culture history of a people is similar to the people's own 'ethno-history' or 'folk history' except that culture history comprehends this insider's frame of reference as well as the outsider's frame of reference , within a dialectic of views that leads to its synthesis. Culture history stays with no single viewpoint, but seeks a wide variety of perspectives in its encompassment of the contexts of mind in which a particular people are situated. Because an infinite number of such viewpoints are potentially possible, the program of culture history is never finished, its images and stories of a people never complete.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Several key themes characterize the study of culture history and distinguishes it as separate from other kinds of studies of people. These themes are:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mythology; culture history is preeminently a study of mythology--its common themes, variations, ranges, histories and 'structures'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Tradition; culture history is basically a study of a people's common or separate sense of tradition, how it relates to their histories, folklore, mythologies, customs and character.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Language; culture history seeks to study language in its many modes and mediums of expression, especially from the standpoint of its semanticity, its pragmatics and its metaphorical connotations and connections.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Customs and values; culture history seeks to understand a people's cultural orientations, values and how these cohere to give cultural life consistency and efficacy, customs and constraints, rituals and ceremonies which surround, explicate or deviate from such value systems and cultural orientations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Stereotypes; culture history seeks to comprehend and understand the kinds of 'stereotypes' are used within a grouping of people or are used about such people. Culture history can be said to deal in stereotypes, in the dialectics of their social cultural construction and critical de-construction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Social structure; somewhat surprisingly, culture history, to be complete, must understand the regular patternings of political, economic, social and religious behaviors of people, as these 'structures' interrelate functionally and organizationally to give a long lasting and pervasive sense of 'structure' common to a collectivity of people.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Cultural geography; the landscape, environment, ecology, means of adaptation are all necessary to a complete picture of a group's culture history.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Integration; culture history attempts an inquiry into the systemic and symbolic integration of a people's culture historical realities, to demonstrate the many possible interrelationships with in a collectivity of people.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Variation; culture history attempts to understand the many historical and geographical variations of the cultural themata around which a grouping of people are organized, as well as the individual ranges of variation between individual' within groupings and the ranges of variation of culture histories of different groupings of people.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Civilization; civilization is construed as culture historical process which gives to a grouping of people a collective consciousness of being distinct and unique. Civilizations may be great or small.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Collective representations; religious beliefs, attitudes, symbolisms, superstitions which informs a people of their culture historical identity and of the identity of others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Mentality'; culture history has always been a study of human 'mentality' as this may be different or similar between groupings of people in time and place--to understand the basis of these differences and similarities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">History; culture history is the study of the 'culture of history' and the 'history of culture' as well as the study of 'meta-history' as a dialectic between 'stories of people's past' and 'people's past itself'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture; culture history is also, simultaneously a study of human culture as an organizing metaphor for the pan human phenomena and experience of things cultural--and of its many thematic variation in time and place as well as the 'continuum' of pan human 'culture' in the 'structure of the long run'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Contextuality; culture history is an attempt to contextualize and understand the inherent background contextuality of time and place in which a people are situated. Contexts are relational frameworks which provide a sense of the interrelationships and interrelatedness of people within social and natural environments through time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the study of culture history no kind of knowledge or information is beyond its purview of importance. The aim of such study is always comprehensive in seeking a compendium of understanding about any grouping of people. As such psychology and phenomenology are also valuable perspectives of a culture historical approach, as would be physical anthropology or sociology or even sociobiology. The culture historical paradigm is encompassing and non-exclusive in its orientation. As such it is also necessarily generalistic and unparticularistic in its synthesis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">*****</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The notion of what is 'general' is better restated as an issue of 'generalia' (things in general; general principles or terms) have referring mainly to ideas, notions, terms, and systems of such things. 'General' is defined as 'the whole; the total; that which comprehends all or the chief part; opposed to particular.' or as 'applicable to or involving the whole or every member of a group. 2. Widespread; prevalent. 3. Not restricted or specialized. 4. True or applicable in most but not all cases. 5. Not precise or detailed. 6. Diversified…' In this context general might also be referred to as 'generality' or as 'generality' defined as 'the quality or state of being general. 2. The main body; the hulk, the greatest part…3. An idea or expression of a general, indefinite and vague nature; a general statement or principle' or as 'generally' as 'in general; extensively though not universally; most frequently but not without exceptions. 2. Without detail; in the whole, taken together' or in terms of 'things generalizable' or as 'generalization'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'General' then has several interrelated connotations of theoretical, philosophical, metaphysical, comprehensive and universality of meaning--'as broadly based, deeply significant, as widely applicable as possible'. Comprehensive generality as a way of comprehending holistically an undifferentiated human reality is preferable over a notion of strict universality with the connotations of 'absoluteness, completeness, finality or ultimate'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Being general and a generalizing study, it is also a study of generalization about human reality. Culture history tends to speak of groupings of people as if they were whole and in a sense complete, and to some extent isolated and independent of an outside world. There is a search for an overall pattern of configuration of culture about some central archetype or model or paradigm. The classic conception of culture historical study has been the depiction of a culture as a wheel with spokes which radiate from a central hub or axis around which the wheel of culture turns. Each of its spokes is an aspect of that culture which converges towards a center.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But the generalizing nature of culture history is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness, and this seems to hook it upon the horns of an unresolvable dilemma which 'stems from the chastening insight that no culture can be mapped out in its entirety, but no element of this culture can be understood in isolation…' (Gombrich, page 41)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It must be understood that the study of generalization in culture history is a necessary way of proceeding toward a holistic understanding of culture history. Generalizations based on patterns of phenomena are formulated in order to then be 'de-constructed', reevaluated and reconstructed. Though this process theoretically never ends, through it we are provided with a multiplicity of possible patterns and generalizations from which themselves certain meta-order paradigms emerge in the generalistic understanding of a group of people. It is not the generalizations themselves which are important, except as vehicles of understanding, but it is appreciation of the people and a grasp of mind which characterizes their group that is the final aim of culture history.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From this standpoint, culture history must be understood as a dialectical methodology which always poses a paradigmatic thesis to then contrapose antithetical counterexamples or exceptions through which conjunction yields a synthesis of mind. The important concerns are not the thesis or anti-thesis, or even the synthesis itself, but the act of the dialectical process itself in revealing mind and human reality. The culture history stands outside of the terms of the dialectic, while still enacting the dialectic, and studies the unfolding of the process in its entirety from an uninvolved distance which allows the student to step outside of the hermeneutic circle of ideology and history, and to become reflexive about this hermeneutic circle as well as about his/her own dialectical involvement in it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There then occurs in the study of culture history a fusion of horizons between the student and the people whom he studies, a kind of identity of difference which allows cultural generalizations to be made and to stand for themselves without an involvement in the hermeneutic history of their production. These generalizations remain as necessary vehicles of the hermeneutic process, but do not stand as ideological props, paradigms of power or as mythological charters.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture history is the study of mythology which is itself situated in mythology. It is a study of ideology which is itself situated in ideology. It is a study of structure, history, culture, mentality which is itself situated in these 'things'. The only hope of escaping this paradox is by its own reflexive transcendence that steps beyond the parameters of its dialectic. In the process culture history becomes meta-paradigmatic and relatively a-mythological mythology, or de-ideologized ideology. We move from structure to anti-structure and then back again but in the process stop midway between the extremes to discover a middle ground of meaning which exists from the tension of the dialectical extremes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture history proceeds to make generalizations about the cultures and histories of people which then eventually become associated with racial epitaphs and ethnic ideologies. And yet culture history does not stop because of these associations and distanciation of 'surplus' meaning. The danger of reification of subjectivity constituted realities are surpassed by the knowledge and appreciation gained by the process, knowledge and appreciation which eventually goes to undermine the very reifications upon which it was founded.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dialectical process itself is one of a 'collectivizing/relativizing' perspective or orientation in which symbolism of identity and difference become configured and contextualized in relation with the world. These are processes inherent to our understanding of human reality and are not to be denied except at unnecessary cost to ourselves in terms of our failure to realize more fully human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It may be asked what the net result of this process is in the world. It leads neither to the deflation of ignorance nor to the progress of human enlightenment. It may only be said that it is mostly pursued for its own sake, for learning what it means to be more fully human in a greatly inhumane world. In other words, the pursuit of the study of culture history does not seek justification beyond itself, beyond its own process of study--its justification is found in its own appreciation and understanding of what it means to be a human being in the world, in its own terms of this meaning of being human. Humans do it because they are human, whether they do it well or not.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From this standpoint, culture history can be understood as both a methodology of the study of the processual patterning of mind as it has become evinced during the cultural development of humankind, and a systematic, if not inevitable, consequence of the functional patterning of mind itself. Culture history becomes both an representation and a reflection of mind, both an expression of mind and the movement towards its reflexive understanding in the world. It has as its basis the study of how mythology contributes to the understanding of how mind works in the historical and cultural development of humankind upon earth.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture history provides a super organic approach which allows us to capture the synergism of human reality--it provides a meta-paradigmatic framework of conception which transcends the dichotomization of reality by framing such dichotomies in terms of its dialectic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The culture history approach directly confronts the philosophical/theoretical problematics of history as an inherently relativizing and particularizing process, and the related problem of ideology as a collectivizing and universalizing process. Culture history is informed within a dialectic between history and ideology--how ideology entails an implicit denial of history and a rewriting of the past to suit the purpose of the present--how history in the making entails a working out of ideology as the unintended consequences of its self fulfillment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture history as an updated and revised paradigm is a necessary antidote to the modern syndrome of an earthbound world view which prevents us from seeing the most common basic differences and similarities between ourselves as individual human beings and as members of humankind as a single geo-biological species, and which would allow us to come to terms with our present predicament in a global environment and to adapt to it in a more realistic and human manner.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One of the most important aspects of the culture historical approach is that it follows a central place for the individual in a broader scheme of generalizations about the world--it allows us to look at cultural and historical processes in a holistic and relativistic manner without losing sight of the key roles always played by individual actors upon the stage. This is perhaps the greatest paradox of the culture historical approach--it begins with generalization only to end in particular persons. This tends to run counter from more 'empirical' social sciences which claim to start inductively with particular individuals and to eventually build up to generalities. It is a fact that in almost every theory of the social sciences, including psychology, there is no room left for fitting the individual, independently acting person, at the hub of the Hegelian wheel.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It has been culture history that has given us the ideologies and theories of cultural relativism and determinism, the 'world view' problem, theories of diffusionism and by logical extension, acculturation, theories of cultural configurationalism and dynamics, and 'culture and personality' studies which purport to demonstrate how culture is reflective of the predominant personality orientation of its people, and of notions of the primitive versus civilized mentality and about 'collective representations'. It has also lead to the development of Hegelian dialectics, structuralist and post structuralist critical theory, existentialism, hermeneutics and phenomenology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Its study has been received with much ambivalence within western academic circles in which sciences are the predominant paradigms. Culture history remains associated with the humanities as its temporality of perspective is held to be one of 'pattern' recognition, or of 'Geisteswissenschaft' versus the spatially oriented positivistic 'naturwissenschaft' of science.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Much of the ambivalence centers around the inherent paradoxicality of the dialectical nature of the study of culture history and in the promotion of its 'strong' ideologies versus the power of suggestion of its 'weak' theories. The dialectic of culture history begins with the recognition of this paradigm which then process to the deconstruction of this paradigm through further study, and then the reconstruction of the original patterning upon which the paradigm was founded. Part of the dilemma of this process is that the 'original pattern' is also destructed in the critical process of deconstruction and that the reconstructed paradigm is based upon a derivative but different pattern. This confers upon its dialectics a sense of always trying to catch up with reality, of being one step behind the actual unfolding of events, and of trying to keep its feet firmly on the ground of human reality. Its ontological status is derivative of and dependent upon the ongoing ontological status of human reality. As such, there is in its studies a sense of time lag separating its paradigm from the real patterning of events--it is a depiction of yesterday and yesteryear which can ultimately never be demonstrated as either true or false. This also renders it susceptible to the mistaken identity between past and present, of ideological reification of the past in the present or of its superimposition upon the realities of the present. Through culture history we can learn from our past, so as not to make the same mistakes in our future, but we can also make the past our master and our future a slave to the past.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dialectical process of paradigm construction, deconstruction and reconstruction is an ongoing one that needs to be kept apart from the actual movements and turning of events. It never yields a complete or ultimate or perfect paradigm--the aim of its dialectic is the production of multiple paradigms about the central axis of dialectical development. This confers upon its dialectic a sense of directionality and of its own ontology, but one which is only reflexive of the real ontology of events.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the extent that the dialectics of culture history are rooted to the ongoing experiences of the past, then it can be said to serve as a collective memory of mind, and that it is a memory which is always limited in its re-constructive capacity and therefore always selective. Its editing function of selectivity, of what elements to focus upon serve as important and which kinds to exclude, renders its dialectic fundamentally a normative function of human evaluation, interpretation, decision making.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Its editing function also tend to render the past in terms which are of service to the needs of the present, as well as to promise that any such paradigm must always remain partial and imperfect and therefore soon to be replaced by yet another paradigm, as present sets of needs change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Social science which are grounded in a spatial framework of synchronicity of elements and stable continuity of structure implicitly held to be uninfluenced by historical events or process of change, are also actually all tied to an selective editing function of events of the past, and therefore always partial and imperfect. No paradigm producing study of patterning of human reality is not so tied to the past. This makes social sciences susceptible to the same influences of ideology and to criticism on this ground as culture history. The important difference is that culture history should at least reflexively recognize its own partiality and bias of ideology, whereas with the social sciences, for the most part, this bias is usually invisible or implicitly denied by the superimposition of an unempirical 'rational structure' which is separate from its history. In other words, social science are no less ideological than culture history is, to the extent that they study the same basic events and experiences of the past and suffer the same lag between past constructions and present de-constructions. The difference is that when reading social science, there is no sense of past, but only a sense of frozen, permanent present fixed by structure. Without acknowledging its own ideological and ontological status, social science is more susceptible to the influence of ideology than is culture history and more tied to the needs of the present.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From a social science standpoint, even history itself becomes structured in the sense that it is seen as a diachronic series of events or processes which are the result of the mechanistic function of an unchanging social structure. It is this kind of ideology which looks for strict causality between past and present and through the statistical determinism upon our sense of past experiences to be pre-determinative through its dialectic rather than post determined in the modus tollens sense of present consequents confirming past antecedents. It also leaves a broader margin of self organizing criticality in its less particularistic and more generalizing framework. Its inherent holism guarantees that its histories will always tend to be multiply determining and determined in a non-exclusive manner.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the inherent, explicit openness of the study of culture history as a system of inquiry into human reality which is its chief and primary advantage.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>A great deal has been written about the relativity of culture, language, cognition and history and yet relativism remains poorly defined and largely misunderstood as an alternative paradigm of rationalism. It is also often confused with its strong ideological form of determinism which creates fictitious little culture gardens the life of which are completely independent of outside influence and yet this is precisely contradictory to the genuine significance of relativism, that everything, no matter how bound, is always related to and configured against a larger background of contextual relativity.</p> <p>It is the relative contextuality of an particular place and period which renders its understanding culture historically different from the understanding of other points in time.</p> <p>It is this relational contextuality which allows the study of culture history to remain an open system of inquiry, for whatever its paradigmatic definitions these are always to be understood within a more open and indefinite contextuality which always surrounds it.</p> <p>Because contextual relations are always changing the general relativity of a particular place and period is always different from that of any other. When a statement is made that something is relative, it must always then be asked 'relative to what?' Relativeness is never absolutely determined and never determines absolutely, but relative is always relative and indefinitely determined in relation to something else. This is part of the dialectical process of culture history--to frame the understanding of something particular within a more indefinite and generalistic context of understanding.</p> <p>The value of the relativism in the culture historical understanding of human reality is precisely that it provides us with an non-absolutistic framework for the understanding of difference and dynamics in the processual patterning of mind--it enables us to deal with change in a more realistic and less idealistic fashion as a part of a larger, encompassing context.</p> <p>Relativism also helps to cultivate a general attitude of open mindedness which is essential to the study of culture history--it provides a 'generalizing' framework for understanding human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Cultural configuration was an effort to find persistent and generally predominant patterns of a grouping of people in a place and period--these patternings were held to be somehow 'essential' in the culture historical understanding of culture. It is no accident that such configurationalism turned to the purported general psychology of the individual in order to understand the core of this patterning, as such psychology was held to be 'essential' to culture historical ethos. The exact psychological mechanisms involved varied and were left indefinite, but the general theme was always that early patterns of childhood socialization and enculturation of cultural values and norms produced a predominant personality type which tended to reinforce and replicate the norms and values of a particular cultural orientation and this predominant personality conferred the unique and peculiar flavor to a distinctive cultural orientation. This 'configuration' defined the normative boundaries individual variation. If people's psychological pre-dispositions fit the general pattern, they had a greater likelihood of successful adaptation, on the other hand if their character varied or deviated too far from the normative center, then they might well suffer marginalization or persecution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This configurationalism was never so much 'wrong' so much as it was over simplifying of cultural realities. All cultural orientations has a 'core' value culture which mutually fit certain psychological character traits more than others, but this perspective emphasize culture as the 'multiplication of uniformity' and tended to ignore the degree of individual variation tolerated within a culture--the 'organization of diversity'. Taken to their extreme such studies led to 'National Character Stereotypes' whose profiles were based on somewhat specious and spurious theories of socialization and superfluous understandings of the evaluative complexities of any and all culture.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such studies also tended to presume an a-priori culture historical 'baseline' which as left tacit to the studies themselves as something taken for granted. A baseline is a starting point, a line of demarcation or departure, usually rather arbitrarily chosen, from which change, convergence or divergence, however relative, can be measured. The fact of the matter is that there are few if any non-arbitrary baselines or bottom lines in the demarcation of contexts in human reality or in human history.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But we need our generalist stereotypes whether they are the archetypical 'peasant' or 'savage' or 'village' or 'tribe' or 'city', however implicit and taken for granted as the thetic starting points of our dialectical synthesis of a people in a given place and period. It is better that our culture history attempt to explicate these bottom line stereotypes or 'pre-paradigms' or 'Gestalts of collective mind' rather than to leave them as implicit only as so often is the case in social sciences. These pre-paradigms or 'proto-patterns' form the prerequisite ground upon which we can then reconfigure our generalistic understanding. It is important that we actually return to and amend our original preconception many times over which allows us to fashion a more accurate rendering of what it is we see in reality. By explicating these preconceptions, culture history adopts a reflexive attitude towards its own understanding of reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">An essence then, may and usually does, involve systematic relationships between many descriptive elements; these relationships themselves contribute to the essential definitions of the related parts. We may then speak of about the horizon of a book (as opposed, say, to the horizon of the spoken word), of nineteenth century landscapes, of universality life, of the Renaissance in Italy, provided, however, that in all these cases we can show that there is a single essential structure to the phenomena. I believe we can even speak of the horizon of atoms and elementary particles--but more about this below. We can have apodicity about the structure of the horizon only in the reflective attitude, because only in this attitude can we be reflectively aware of the full range of profiles to which an essence refers. (Patrick Heelan, 1983: page 10)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The fact that culture history eventually amends, or else replaces, its preconceived models with newer ones is called 'learning' and it allows full the elaboration of a fuller more complete range of profiles and a more sophisticated and elaborate model (or sense of essence) that what existed before.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture historical configurationalism of the interrelationships and inter-relatedness of culture and character is not wrong in its direction, so much that it has so far been simplifying in its aim. The inter-relatedness between culture and character is much more complex and contextually involving than is realized, but within such studies there is much room for the formulation, elaboration and alteration of basic stereotypes of culture historical configurations that has yet been realized.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is important to understand that culture and character are interrelated in many different ways upon many different levels within different contexts of understanding. Archetypes of culture historical configurations are the key paradigms of their understanding. They are composite symbolisms made up of many different elements--they tend to focus upon and become embodied within and personified by certain character profiles. People may or may not try to live up or approximate such stereotypes according to how they construe them and come to understand them within their own individual contexts. It is likely that their understanding of culture history is much more complex, yet more straight forward, than anyone yet realizes. Any one culture may offer more than one kind of archetype or have a set or series of configurations which allow different people a whole range of options. It may be that there are rarely central or predominant archetypes but several competing ones or a plethora of possible paradigms waiting to be 'vitalized' by people. But culture historians must proceed with one at a time, exhaust the profiles of each, and then move on to the next.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We all need our heroes, but we need them all differently.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture is our organizational metaphor for comprehending all those varieties of experience and diverse phenomena for which we would otherwise not have a name for, and yet which make up so much of our lives. Culture is our conceptual recognition of the patterns that happen in our experiences of human reality. We do not organize this phenomena about our own definition of culture, but we fit our understanding of what we call culture to our own self organizing patterns of our environments and experiences. This patterning is epiphenomena on mind, as it works through us in our own mental templates of 'culture' and as it works through our experiences of our environments as contexts of culture. Our cultural templates serve to order and reinforce our organization of culture, and cultural phenomena provide the evidentiary ground of experience by which we construct our templates. Mind exists as the basis and product of this interrelation between our selves and our environmental contexts of our phenomenal experiences--between ourselves and our worlds.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As such, the patterning of culture is always ephemeral as well as dialectical. It evolves as we evolve within evolving environments. Mind mediates our sense of self and our sensing of the environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Cultural dynamics has been the name given to the culture historical study of how culture works within groupings of people. It sees that people are socialized and enculturated as children into their cultural ethos. Sanctions in adulthood reinforce these cultural orientations and it is in adulthood when adults deliberately alter or break with given cultural constraints. This is the process of the production and transmission of culture through time and across space. Cultures are composites of many aspects, of which there are focal aspects which become more highly elaborated. It is in the focal areas of a culture that there is greater variation and elaboration, and a culture tends to drift and change in the direction upon which is focused. Cultures drift along given directions until they run into other drifting cultures and have 'historical accidents'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">An understanding of the processes of culture change underlies the understanding of variable cultural forms. 'cultural forms are the expression of unique sequences of historic events but they are the result of underlying processes that represent constants in human experience.' (Herskovits, 1964:page 231)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Cultural dynamics as a way of understanding the 'mechanisms' of culture change are a point of entry to the problems of change in culture history, yet as it was elaborated by Melville Herskovits it remains a rather simplistic device for understanding the multiple permutations of human culture history. It is referenced against a baseline of stable and conservative pattern--'patterned structure, regularized form…as the designs taken by the elements of a culture, which, as consensus of the individual behavior patterns manifest by the members of a society, give to this way of life coherence, continuity and distinctive form.' (Herskovits, 1947:page 202)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The problem is that culture history must study change from a relativistic standpoint as continuous and contextual. In this sense cultural environments and its elements provide the substrate upon which individuals regular reconfigure their designs along certain broader paradigmatic parameters or cultural context of available or possible schemata and 'frames' from which an individual's or a group may continuously 'construct' and 'reconstruct' their culture along a dialectical pathway directed by tradition. Change happens within a cultural continuum of many small cycles that begin with the birth of each individual and end with their death.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the overall robustness of the larger cultural context of a grouping which gives a distinctive culture its consistency, conservation and stability of patterning. The elements of this context change, but overall at a much slower rate and individuals work to refashion these elements, but in the process slowly modify them as well.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Change is influenced simultaneously both from within a culture by its constituent members and outside of a culture by relations with other cultures and with the natural environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We must come to understand that culture is similar to language in that all people share a pan human capacity for language and a common 'deep' structure which is rooted in mind, which allows all cultures to be mutually intelligible and translatable, and yet culture as the patterning of mind is highly variable across space and through time, and continues to vary with only few fixed constraints.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To see then history as our recognition of the unfolding process of mind as largely self organizing process is to acknowledge amidst our efforts to discover a deep structural dynamics of historical process all the many unintended consequences and local details which render such structure as best vague and most general, highly relative and always contextual.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human histories have largely been political histories, the areas of greatest power having predominant influence over the control and directionality of change. In this sense change has largely been relative power in human history.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the context of the idiographic phenomenological experience of the individual, historical process must be seen at a level of local face to face, interpersonal interactions between different people. From a bottom line, empirical standpoint, this is the basis for the construction of history. Group history incorporates all those relations bound by a grouping in a particular period and place, including those external influences and relations with other groups or outsiders.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">People form networks in time and across space. These networks overlap and reintegrate or segregate. Social networks are the grindstone of human history. These networks are the weave of culture history with the worf of time and the weft of space.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such networks provide maps and avenues which individuals, in their daily rhythms and streams of consciousness, learn how to navigate and manipulate. People interact within multiple networks and this meta-level of interactions, 'pseudo events' confers a higher order of social integration.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a most general sense, culture history is always complete and total, always comprehending the full extent of all social networks of all peoples across the world and throughout history, as these are mostly interconnected and overlapping.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To see how networks, in their process and patterning, and in their interpersonal negotiations and transactions and individual enactments, interrelated and cohere to articulate social structure, cultural praxis and historical dynamics and in their instantiation come to reflect the contextuality, relativity and the patterning and process of mind, is to understand in the most empirical way possible how history moves and culture change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The culture historical study of social, interpersonal networks as 'events' of mind, leads to a related study of the historical patterning of social movements as a basis for understanding the dynamic patterning and processes of the mythological paradigms of mind. Social movements begin small, with but a few casual prophets, and , if successful, emerge large. This growth from small to a large scale, the history of social movements within larger culture historical contexts, the biographies of its founders and subsequent leaders and the psychology of its members, the basis for its organization, the stages of transition through which they pass, the reasons for its stagnation, demise and death, the process of splinter groups branching away, provides, when coupled with the study of networks, an in-depth look at how culture historical process actually 'happens'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Social movements here is used most generally, to encompass virtually every form or kind of corporate human organization, or ad hoc mass movement or spontaneous social event, which exists or had existed, including religious, ideological, secular, national, revolutionary, peasant revolutions, criminal organizations, etc. All such movements entail certain common attributes and characteristics which provide a sense of 'on going' structure to the process of culture historical development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Civilization is the pan human process of culture historical development. It represents the unfolding of mind. Civilization is not culture historically specific, but rather it is general. It happens to all cultures, and encompasses cultural groupings of people within larger culture historical frames. It happens to and around cultural groupings. Civilizations are inter-group phenomena--large scale patterns of group relations which become 'great traditions' which unite states into nations, nations into regional empires, and regions into world civilizations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Civilization as process is largely a function of power, and is similar to the process of inter-group acculturation with which it is dialectically interrelated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Civilization is always defined relativistically in regard to its centers of power or its mainstreams of development. It is to be understood in the metalogical idiom of mind in terms of relational human power structures within the context of human culture history. Within this context, there are many sub-groupings, some of which are more interconnected and interrelated than others which are relatively isolated. At any point in time, tracing the lineaments of structural interrelationships within the whole continuum of culture, there can be identified 'cultural complexes' possessing a center of gravity and a definite patterns of structural growth.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another problem confronted by culture history has been the elucidation of 'mind' as different kinds of 'mentality' as evidenced by beliefs, world views, superstitions, collective representation, attitudes and reason. There has been a basic dichotomy between the primitive mentality and the civilized mind, between the Dionysian and Appollonian, between the pre-logical and the rational, the concrete and the abstract.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There have been different versions of this common theme, one such version seems to have some historical substance. There seems to be a fundamental difference of 'mentality' between predominantly 'oral' cultures which have an oral tradition of transmission and 'literate' cultures which have a literate tradition of transmission. These basic differences of mentality are reflected in basic configurational differences of culture and character as well. The development of writing and especially of printing, entailed major revolutions of human consciousness which brought with it, among other things, the development of historical civilization that was no longer bond by a tradition of oral recitation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Just how important this single set of difference are had become a matter of some speculation, and what this means for the study of culture history remains to be determined, but it is one clear instance of the culture history of the development of mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The principle paradox of the study of culture history is the understanding of change in human reality--how it happens, why it happens, and what happens. Culture history seeks to understand change not in order to discover means of exerting control over it as a form or instrument of power, rather merely for the sake of its understanding in our lives--how it influences us in cultural historical contexts and how we characteristically adapt to it or fail to as human beings.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Change always presents us with paradox, because it is continuous and always relative. In our attempts to control change, change controls us.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"This is how we escape from our second apparent dilemma and rest comfortably on both its horns. Culture is both stable and ever-changing. Cultural change can be studied only as a part of the problem of cultural stability; cultural stability can be understood only when change is measured against conservatism…perhaps the basic difficulty arises from the fact that there are no objective criteria of permanence and change…" (Herskovits, 1947:page 20)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The basis of the study of culture history is the philological enterprise of hermeneutical exegesis--the systematic explication of signs, symbols and language in its culture historical context. Culture history is an open, unbound sense is the study of human mind or of frames of mind as these are the hermeneutical points of view or profiles of the 'horizons' of individuals, as these are manifest through time and across space, through the excoriation of identity and the determination of basic difference in a relational context.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"A world though singular in that it applies exclusively to a particular community at a particular place and period, is not the only world: Worlds are historical and anthropological, differentiated by peoples, times, places and perhaps professions. A world is always inter-subjective, the shared space of a historical community with a particular culture that uses a common language and a common description of reality." (Patrick Heelan, 1983:page 11)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Hermeneutics involves the systematic elucidation of contextual relations and the encompassing of the multiple interpretations or 'profiles' of a phenomena.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture history does not see the study of cultures as analytically separable from the study of history. All cultural phenomena are historical in an idiographic sense and all of history is cultural in a contextual-relational sense. Culture history studies the interface between space and time, culture and history, people and their environments, as these become articulated and mediated through human experience. Nor does culture history see the study of physical human phenomena as analytically separable from the study of the mind and metaphysical meanings structures as both interpenetrate one another. Culture history is synthesizing and integrating--it looks for whole patterns and general processes of change. Culture history also steps outside of the boundaries of 'normal' consciousness through the breaking of these boundaries.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The cultural continuum exists across space and through time, and there is in the last analysis no clear separation between the spatial and temporal dimensions of its occurrence. Any culture and all cultural groupings have a locationally fixed center of gravity--a central place from which it spreads across space and lasts through a duration of time before disappearing into something else. Through our science tends to analytically separate these dimensions of understanding into 'synchronic' and 'diachronic', with such profound consequences for the final form of our thinking, in actuality the universe of cultural phenomena exists upon a single spatio-temporal unidimensionality of mind. This is reflected in the symbolic universe by the inter-translatability of spatial metaphors into temporal terms and vice versa. Space can be converted into a matter of time, and time into a process of space.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The spatial temporal unidimensionality of the cultural continuum leads us to look at the symbolic universe as composed of a uniform and universal cloth of culture history, the fabric of which is composed of interwoven threads of space and time--the worf and weft of human consciousness and culture. The cultural continuum is a huge edgeless tapestry, made up of an endless series of collages of cultures consisting of recognizable patterns and distinctive designs. This seamless cloth of culture is always unfolding at the future edge of the present moment--at the here and now. It may become wrinkled or folded over upon itself or stretched out very tightly. Rips and holes may form in it in which there is a general vacuousness of culture history.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Space time unidimensionality of the cultural continuum and the symbolic universe becomes the fabric of culture history as both a collective state of mind, a 'universal frame of human consciousness' and as the symbolic fabric and textuality of the cultural continuum itself. Symbolic space time becomes the object and subject of culture historical understanding, and culture historical understanding becomes the universal frame of symbolic space time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture history becomes the study of the symbolic inter-translation between synchronic and diachronic 'modalities' of human 'beingness' in the world, of 'mind' and its reflections and projections in reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Death is the only absolute horizon of the culture historical continuum and of our symbolic universe--it is the ultimate unknown which mind cannot see beyond. But there are other relative horizons of knowledge and understanding of mind--ever receding toward which our symbolic universe spreads but which it never reaches or surpasses. Infinity and eternity are two things which we cannot directly know--we cannot know definitively the origins of the culture historical continuum itself in our collective past, nor will we ever know the total range of its variation through time and space. There are also many other relative horizons of our knowledge and understanding--our own humanness imposes a natural horizon to our understanding of other non-human beings, our culture and language limits our understanding of other cultures and languages and our own mind of beingness limits our knowing of other's minds of beingness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture historical horizons are something different from spatio-temporal boundaries. Spatio-temporal boundaries are always relative in terms of continuous degrees of separateness or distance between beings in space or time--spatio-temporal boundaries are always physically real, the result of being situated in space and time, whether as an individual or as a particular cultural grouping. Spatio-temporal boundaries always have a quantitative continuity about them--they always exist in the same physical universe. Culture historical horizons may exist in the same symbolic universe, but are characterized by a qualitative discontinuity of different orders of beingness within the same time-space framework.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture historical horizons overlap with spatio-temporal boundaries in regions of the symbolic universe in which matters of social distance between self and other, or culture historical distances between different groupings, become expressed in spatio-temporal terms as well. This is a kind of phase harmonization between boundaries of being and horizons of mind which has periodicity and a regularity. These regions of overlap create channels of movement and change which give to mind its momentousness and to culture history its momentum.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">CIVILIZATION AND STYLIZATION</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For Alfred Kroeber, the process of growth, atrophy, decay and disintegration of civilization are only analogical metaphors of superorganicism--they only resemble organic process of biological growth and decay. Kroeber located three co-occurring components of civilizations--a body of 'cultural content', adequate adjustment to environmental problems and to social structuring and a release of 'so called' creative energies more or less subject to shaping by the factor of style. These components are holistically integrated into a unique 'nexus or system of style patterns'. Creative processes are the 'growing' points of civilization, stylizing civilization but never determining of civilization. Though the understanding of civilization is 'a generically and genuinely historical one', historiographical methods hardly reveal the structure and content of civilization except as 'events of history', the changes of structure and content as 'institutional events'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"To summarize. To the historian, civilizations are large, somewhat vague segments of the totality of historical events which it may sometimes be convenient or useful to segregate off from the remainder of history, and which tend to evince certain dubiously definable qualities when so segregated. To the student of culture, civilizations are segments of the totality of human history when this is viewed less for its events, and less as behavior and acts, than as more enduring produces, forms and influences of the actions of human societies. To the student of culture, civilizations are segregated or delimited from one another by no single criterion: partly by geography, partly by period; partly by speech, religion, government, less by technology; most of all by those activities of civilization that especially concerned with value and the manifest qualities of style. This is an area of subject matter peripheral to the historian, but increasingly in his view. Culture is most easily conceived as a static generalization of collective behavior suppressing event in favor of non-transitory form. Yet it is increasingly evident that no civilization is actually static. It always flows. Like style, it is a qualitative, structured form in process. The form and structure possessed by civilizations invite a comparative morphology. Yet the forms are always in process means that they are also historic phenomena and must be viewed historically. To the point at which historical examination and morphological inquiry seem most fruitfully to interact is in the phenomena of culmination which civilizations share with styles. (A. L. Kroeber, An Anthropologist Looks at History; page 17)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Kroeber viewed the historical development of civilizations as a form of socio-cultural process which 'means the relation of pattern to pattern within successive developmental stages of civilization, these civilizations themselves being viewed each as a total unit and ultimately also in comparison with one another.' (1963;page 27) The most important characteristic of the endogenous process of civilizations are the stylizations it achieves, its unique forms of cultural expression. Style is the most distinctive attribute of a civilization, giving it form and continuity. 'A style may be provisionally defined as a system of coherent ways or patterns of doing certain things.' (1963;page 66) The developmental cycle of a civilization is signified by the developmental life cycle of its styles:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"The characteristic forms of culture which are non-repetitive, plastic and creative, are its styles. Styles are characterized first by internal consistency, second by the property of growth and third, by a quality of irreversibility: they can develop but they cannot 'dis-develop' or turn back. All three of these qualities--consistency, growth and irreversibility--are characteristic also of organisms; though this similarity is only analogous, since organisms are animals or plants functioning through physiology and heredity, whereas styles are social products of the one species of organism, man. Civilizations contain more or less repetitive elements in which the qualities of style are present only feebly or transiently; but they nor only do also contain styles, but on their creative dynamic side they consist characteristically of styles. They may be described accordingly as a collection or association of styles, and in proportion as this association is integrated, we can usually regard a civilization as a sort of super style, or master style, possessing some degree of overall (WORD?????PAGE 303) and being set, faced or sloped in a specific or more or less unique direction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A civilization would presumably partake of the qualities of the styles of which it is composed. Besides the consistency of coherence which we have just mentioned, civilizations should then also show the property of growth, and this property they are indeed generally credited with. Finally civilizations might share with styles the property of irreversibility and this is the problem we have set ourselves to inquire into." (Kroeber, 1963;page 57)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The culture historical development of civilization refers then to two dialectically interrelated processes, the 'push' of endogenous processes of socio-cultural stylization, and the 'pull' of exogenous process of acculturation. Together this dialectic of the development of civilization may be referred to as culture historical dynamics. Acculturation is the process of external, extensive evolution of the environmental contexts of civilization which impinge upon particular cultural groupings to cause change and adaptation and to constrain the directions of such changes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">STRATIFICATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Stratification of consciousness is the culture historical consequence of the development of world view as orientations and paradigms of power in the world. It occurs as a separation of symbols into multiple, hierarchical levels of taxonomies of increasing generality or descending particularity and is reflected by the symbolic 'embedding' and layering of ideas in both our collective experiences and our collective environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Stratification of consciousness leads to a polarization of human reality, and a dichotomous bifurcation between the real and the ideal, the rational and the empirical, the term and the thing, and a subsequent confusion of ontological, phenomenological status between these separate worlds of consciousness. There occurs reification of ideas and the abstraction of concrete things.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Stratification of consciousness also results in an arbitrary or collectively customary, relative prioritization and hierarchicalization of values, significances, relations and interests in the world. This has resulted in a false distinction between primitive and civilized frames of mind, between rational and magical modes of thought and to a false separation between 'natural' and 'cultural'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Stratification of consciousness is the result of the radical shift from a primarily extensive frame of mind and beingness in the world, informed by natural linguistically, to a predominantly intensive world view of non-being informed by a rational linguisticality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The rise of principles of power, hierarchy, control, authority and corporateness are a reflection and a consequence of the stratification of consciousness in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">MOMENTOUSNESS OF MIND AND THE MOMENTUM OF CULTURE HISTORY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The corporate super-organicism of mind confers to it a kind of momentousness--a universal significance of value and meaning and a sense of 'purpose' which goes beyond the mere summation or economization of its 'ideas'. As a social phenomena it exists 'larger than life'--always greater than the individual ideas which compose it. This larger than life quality is not, though a super organic integrity in the same irreducible sense that individual ideas are--it is not a higher consciousness or a different plane of order or transcendent plan of being. It is 'self organizing' in the sense of approaching a super criticality of interrelationship of ideas--a systemic level of self organization beyond which it tends to have 'super critical events'--haphazard, random but predictable 'happenings'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This momentousness of mind confers upon the unfolding of culture history a certain irreversible momentum--an inertia of movement which must be overcome in order to deflect or shift the direction of change or development of culture historical process. This momentum confers upon culture historical process a certain predictable directionality and inevitability of change which tends to impel and overwhelm the most counter movements or efforts at resistance. It is the great flood of human history which sweeps in its tidal power all things down its channels. The momentousness of mind expresses this momentum if culture history in terms of its 'important and decisive events'--it confers upon this momentousness of mind a directionality in the sequencing of 'one event leading to another'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Momentousness of mind and the momentum of culture history tend to counter balance each other past a point of criticality--the super criticality of mind checks or breaks the unfolding momentum of culture history, just as the momentum of the culture historical stream tends to sweep the momentousness of mind along with it--Events of mind renders the unfolding of culture history ultimately unpredictable with a sense of random chaos in the course of events.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The directionality of culture history may be easily deflected or shifted by momentous events of mind--a slight deflection may have dramatic and cataclysmic consequences which may radically alter the culture historical stream, which in turn leads to dramatic 'changes' of mind which are a structural reorganization or revolution of mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The momentousness of mind confers upon the momentum of culture history a sense of self fulfilling prophecy, of fate, destiny or divine intervention. The momentum of culture history confers upon the momentousness of mind a sense of Divine Will or Divine Plan, a sense of Spirit in the unfolding events of the moment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">METALANGUAGE AND THE TAPESTRY OF CULTURE HISTORY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A meta-language must be both beyond language, or transcend any particular language, and also be about that language, or refer to any or all particular languages. That a philology of mind must consist of a coherent and consistent meta-language and be fundamentally culture historical in orientation is de to the culture historical embededness of language which a 'meta-language' must both transcend and be about. It is no wonder that hermeneutic philosophy and critical theory should be so steeped in its own kind of esoteric and impenetrable jargon in attempt to analyze the rhetorical power of language--to speak about language in its own terminology is to be unable to transcend the logos of its terms--it is to remain entangled in Wittgenstein's language games. A scientific linguistic approach--a phonetic alphabet of universal transcription and a phonemic structural analysis of a language--effectively transcends the language but in its objectification cannot refer back to the meaning structures which are intimately connected to culture historical context and give that language living relevance. A scientific meta-language is at best a third, culture historically situated, language of it own, which cannot be about any other language except in its own terms. It becomes a positivistic 'Esperanto' instead of a language of inter-translation or inter-mediation between two languages--it begs the problem of direct translation between two languages by interposing an indirect translation to and from a third language.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A genuine meta-language must be about and in terms of the universal fabric of culture history itself--the common cloth of mind itself in terms of its spatio-temporal translatability and symbolic inter-textuality common to all languages. It is not necessarily a universal grammar or 'deep structure'--but it basis is in the equivalence of complexity and sophistication acquisition and performance--what has been loosely referred to as the 'psychic unity of humankind'. A genuine meta-language depends upon the fact of mutual translatability of all human languages as well as upon the universal symbolic integrity of human languages--as living systems of symbolic mediation of human reality. It is about and in terms of spatio-temporal symbolic universals in human culture history.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is fitting that the unfolding tapestry of human culture history--the evolution of mind--be described and interpreted in meta-linguistic terms which reveal the embedded pre-understandings implicit in our own situated languages and which transcend the boundaries of other culture historical groupings as well. What is called for is a systematic 'destruction of the familiar' and the discovery of universal symbolisms inherent in all languages.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">INDIVIDUAL AS BASIC CULTURE BEARER</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The fundamental unit of culture historical analysis is not the culture as an isolatable entity, but the individual human being as the culture bearer. Wherever or whenever we look at 'cultures' we see people acting, transmitting, interrelating, talking, etc. 'Cultures' are relatively fixed in place and time--cultures flow through space and time via people as the basic carriers. Cultural groupings may migrate as unities, but they must come into conflict with or displace some other cultural grouping in space and time, or else lose their distinctive identity. But such groupings do so as collectivities of people sharing the same cultural orientation. When cultures disintegrate they do so in terms of its individual constituency dissolving common cultural bonds. People as individuals transmit culture or pass between cultural boundaries, taking p new cultural identities. People are the primary agents of culture change, and the principle agency of cultural conservation and transmission. And all people have culture historical provenience which always serve to situate them in place and time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Individuals as culture carrying 'units' are irreducible 'integrities' (individual personalities) which always have a 'dual identity' defined introspectively in terms of 'self identity' and extro-spectively in terms of other identity or social status role identity. We may further reduce individuals in categorically classified, purported universal bundles of traits--intelligence, strength, emotionality, health, skills, innate abilities and we may use such schemes as interpersonal and cross cultural systems of nomothetic classification and comparison--this is frequently done in many ways. But in doing so we concomitantly destroy by analytical dissection the synthetic idiographic integrity and culture historical tapestry composed of individual's interrelationship in shared cultural environments as discrete units of culture historical analysis. This sub-individual analysis is precisely what the 'progressive' social sciences (linguistics included) have for the most part done, and this is precisely where they have mostly failed in their attempts to come to terms with human reality. Individual human beings symbolically learn and transmit culture in certain common ways which characterize their humanness--ways which cannot be systematically reduced to trans-personal trait complexes without loosing sight of the super organic structure of such symbology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">CONSCIOUSNESS AND UNCONSCIOUS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Consciousness is symbolic enactment--the active process of experiencing environments. Consciousness is the act of walking through the forest, of seeing the individual trees of the forest. The forest itself is the domain of the unconscious. To refer to the 'unconscious' as a 'thing' which exists in our heads is somewhat of a misnomer. It is better to call it 'unconsciousness' as the sense or state of being unconscious--the lack of conscious awareness. As long as the 'unconscious' is construed as a 'deep structure' rooted in the human brain, it will remain a reductionistic and over determining reification. Synonymous to 'unconsciousness' is the contextual relations of the world and of beingness in the world--it is the universal context of experience, which always 'backgrounds' or relates the act of experience to everything which remains unexperienced but experienceable. The forest of the unconscious is the universe of experience, the sea through which we swim like fish.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Collectively, conscious and the unconscious become the 'known and the unknown'--and we must separate the 'unknown' of the unconscious from the 'unknowable' of non-consciousness. What is unknowable is not the unconsciousness, but defines the boundaries of the unconscious. Bringing things into consciousness is an act of 'learning'--of making known by separating the unknown from the unknowable.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Consciousness is the process of 'minding and mattering'--of thinging and relating--unconsciousness is always implicit and indirectly inferred from consciousness. It is important to note that this 'contextualization' of the unconsciousness liberates mind from Freudian libidinal chains and from 'structuralists 'rational categories'--the 'unconscious' as 'nothing but' the analytical components of the human psyche, but unconsciousness as 'something more' potential synthesis of mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This entails that there is no precise way of separating internal constructs of meaning from external embodiments--unconsciousness is a passive possibility--the expression of non-beingness which is rooted to the environment of experience as to the experience of environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Unconsciousness is composed symbolically as possible experience. Waking consciousness is the self determining experience of beingness in the world--dreaming consciousness is the unconsciously determined experience of non-beingness.</p> <hr> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PART VII</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="5">DIALECTICAL SYMBOLISM</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><b><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="2"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/hughmlewis/">by Hugh M. Lewis</a></font></b></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols may stand for themselves as well as each other and for other things of relative significance in the human environment. Symbols have both a substantial, empirical basis in physical reality, by being embodied within some 'thing' or set of things which come to literally represent the symbol and its associated significances. Symbols also have a metaphysical 'essence' which phenomenologically and experientially transcends their corporeal substance and figuratively represent the things they stand for. Thus symbols and symbolisms stand between heaven and earth, the physical and the metaphysical, and mind and body--and it is their function to 'inter-integrate' and mediate these two different and otherwise separate kinds of reality. Thus symbolisms provide a sense of unity and integration to human reality in a very basic kind of way. And we can look at the separate realities of Man as but the two sides of the same symbolic coin of human reality and thus understand that while we believe our feet are planted firmly in one kind of reality and our head is obscured in the clouds of another, we are actually only in a single kind of human reality which is preeminently symbolic and usually two sided. Seeing a single, whole, un-dichotomizes symbolic human reality, we no longer need to be so vexed by the dilemmas and illusions of being simultaneously in two separate realities at once.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the substantial human physicality of the things which stand for our symbols and the ethereal insubstantiality of the things which our symbols stand for, that lead us to such chronic confusion over symbols, ideas and things. It is sometimes difficult to fathom the ideology that regards a gigantic arsenal of nuclear warheads with their promise of total devastation as primarily of non-substantial symbolic value. They exist not so much as weapons of potential or actual destruction, but as symbols of power, control, mutually assured deterrence, strength and even perennial peace. They have been allowed into our lives primarily as symbols of the kind of political economic authority they represent and this is how their otherwise incredible and horrible presence has become fostered into our lives. They stand forever poised as both our weapons of ultimate force and as out symbols of ultimate power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Automobiles are another example of objects of possession and control which are primarily symbolic embodiments of our personal mobility, status, success, power and freedom, and yet which we habitually even compulsively use as functional vehicles for transportation. In this case, the fossil fuel automobile has become a predominant cornerstone of our collective modern existence as symbolisms of technological and industrial dominance and success over our physical environments--inspite of the fact that they are dangerous, polluting, expensive and ecologically unaffordable. They have become the mainstay of our modern lives not so much because they are symbols of the success of progress, but because they functionally mediate our physical environments, whether we really need them or not. They have become symbolically foisted upon our collective imagination because they have become a real physical need of modern Homo automobiles.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the failure to understand that our realities, whether ideological or material, are primarily and ultimately symbolic, that leads us to mistakenly identify as inevitable matters of fact such things as nuclear missiles and petro-powered cars.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectical symbolism is a central theory in the culture historical studies of the developmental processes of human civilization, explaining how the dynamics of social movement, cultural change and historical patterning function in a self organizing but predictable way. It is a systematic theory about mind, how it works and the ways it becomes manifest in the civilizing processes of culture history. It is a theory explaining how mindness as culture historical frames of mind, has become expressed symbolically and dialectically in the evolution and ecology of mind. It outlines this evolutionary and ecological process of development of mind as the central thesis of the study of culture history.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectical symbolism stands Marx back upon his head--it converts Marxism political economy and materialistic arguments back to an Hegelian unfolding of Geist or Idea, except that it is not a theory of the progressive immanation of Spirit, but holds the notion of the dialectics of symbolism as the principle form and function of the expression of human mind--all symbolisms leaves substantively real, epi-phenomenal 'things in the world' which can become 'objects' of scientific verification and all symbolisms has pragmatic, adaptive function in the empirical world which serves to scientifically explain itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The gradual but increasing rapid, even explosive, emergence of global human civilization is seen as an inevitable, mathematical outcome of a long term process of the structuring of many different but interrelated processes of patterned human phenomena. Given enough time and the relatively irreversible character of many kinds of changes, the self organizing critical state made up of many local culture historical processes of change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The unfolding of mind has been a dialectical process--its main thesis has always embodied its own contradictions which eventual leads, through environmental change, to its self transformation. As a dialectic it is always a synthesizing reality which transcends itself through the fusion of opposites--it is a never ending process of revolution and resolution about a central, common axis of directional change. The synthetic transcendence of this continuous dialectical counterpoint is never an inevitable outcome of this contrapuntal movement--it is the power of metaphor as vital symbolism to combine contradictory opposites as if a single unity, but this is always outside of the main axis of movement of the dialectic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is a movement from thesis to antithesis and back to a new thesis without a necessary sense of progressive fulfillment or realization. The dialectics simply describe the resultant patterning of the social movement of symbolization about directional axis of transition and change. The movement characteristically turns about a central axis and describes an undulating, to and fro, cyclical movement of change through time and across space.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Besides being essentially self organized and non-progressive, the dialectics of symbolism are also complex in being multi-modal and multi-thematic. Unlike the 'simple' dialectics of dialectical materialism in which there is a single axis of movement, dialectical symbolism involves the multiple movements about several axis of structural change simultaneously--and these multiple axis of change are interrelated one with another such that there is a net synergistic patterning of the entire process of developmental unfolding. It is this synergism which confers upon the patterning of culture historical process a 'life of its own' independent of its separable or component patterns. We cannot understand the total dialectic merely by analyzing the separate movements of each of its axis of change--the whole dialectic can only be understood by revealing how each axis is interrelated to the others and how the functioning of each is interdependent with the functioning of the others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectical symbolism substitutes for the basic materialism as the driving motto of Marx's theory the basic pan human reality of symbolism and symbolization as the focal 'prime mover' of culture historical process. The principle mode of expression of mind has been metaphorical and symbolic--and it is from the starting point of the metaphor as the basic symbol of mind that we are to understand its process, purpose and pattern of development. The pan human processes of symbolization which 'drive' this complex dialectic of culture history give to change the sense of patterned form--the regularity we associate with stability--symbolisms are the vessels and vehicles which contain and carry change. symbolization does not so much energize culture historical process, so much as channelize the available human energies and potentialities into focal directions of development. It harnesses these forces around the central axis of change. symbols carry significance which mobilizes people into action and metabolizes social systems to change. the function of symbolization is primarily organizational--it interrelates and articulates otherwise disparate elements in order to provide an overarching continuity to change and action.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolism organizes not only our metaphysical sense of world view or mindness, but our physical representational worlds as well. Symbolism intermediates our two worlds--the life of mind and our experience of the environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectical symbolism also integrates in the study of culture history the different levels of analysis and synthesis, the general and the particular, the universal and the individual. It shows how the pan human problematics of mind are expressed and mediated on an everyday level of the individual within larger contexts of relational sets. It shows that the fundamental symbolic process is identical at every level of analysis and helps to confer a sense of theoretical and philosophical unity to the whole range of realities, from experiential to the conceptual.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectical symbolism thus focuses the brunt and burden of culture historical process, of change, of civilization, upon the understanding of the individual in daily interaction with other people. It shows how relative context is always generally defined in metaphorical terms and how this context always symbolically influences the attitudes, orientations and actions of the individual. It does so neither through passive constraint or predetermination--the symbolic dialectic on the level of the individual's reality is always one of continuous negotiation, compromise, transaction, give and take, and contingency with ever changing complex environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectical symbolism is in a sense a complete theoretical orientation which qualifies it as a systematic 'science' of culture history--its symbolic referents have a real, scientifically amenable basis in empirical reality--but it is simultaneously something more than this in also being a metaphysical and metalogical philosophical orientation which informs such scientific theory--it asks ultimate questions and seeks relative answers.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectical symbolism is dialectical in the sense of encompassing a movement of mind from thesis to antithesis and back again through synthetic transcendence, and yet the process is non-revolutionary in the sense that there is no sense of governing necessity or purpose in its development. Mind is not immanent or emergent from the dialectic, rather it is only the result of the patterning of the dialectic. The movement of the dialectic from thesis to counterpoint and back again, and the transformations it involves, are always relative and relationally contextualized. It is the total set of universal relations of mind which is evolving in an anti-entropic, directional sense, in the process of its working out of its own possibilities and it is this evolving context which accounts for the sense of transcendent development of the dialectic within any given provenience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Only in a universal sense is mind developing--in a local culture historical context mind is simply changing in a less than more random way. Though mind is evolving in a universal sense, we in our local frames of mindness cannot ever know in any non-relative way that general direction or how this evolution is occurring except to vaguely sense and infer its directionality and systematicity from a broader sense of history and the changes of mind in the so called structure of the long run. We can redefine our understanding of this 'evolution of mind' from the ecological changes which have come from it, but we can never conclusively prove that mind is evolving or what its ultimate direction or purpose is.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The evolution of mind is not a metaphysical phenomena--but it is a physical process of transformation which is experienced perceptively through the senses. Mind is the potential total possibility of self organized relational patterning of humankind in the physical universe. The brain and its abstract functioning, the electronic super computer, DNA and cultural transmission, exist in the world because mind exists as the expression of the patterning of mind. As self organizing principles and properties of the physical universe, its patterning is 'dumb' in a random, non-reflexive sense, and yet its evolution is based upon an inherent 'anti-entropic' tendency to maintain a weakly chaotic sense of order in the face of natural disorder and randomization. It came into being as a statistical possibility of the long run, as the epi-phenomena of a unique concatenation of 'forces' or 'events' which lead to its self sustained growth and development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In our limited and local framework we are forced to accept the possibility of mind on the basis of a grand leap of faith, without the possibility of conclusive demonstration and yet without it we cannot achieve a coherent sense of order in the experiential universe of our collective being.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectical symbolism is a theoretical orientation based upon Hegelian dialectics applied to the evolution of symbolism as the principle process of human culture historical development. It is neither strictly a form of philosophical idealism nor a brand of materialism--symbols are partly ideational and always materially expressed. Symbolism cohere naturally to form 'synergism' of mind which embody contradictions of beingness and non-beingness and which transcends these contradictions in their own development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectical symbolisms is the central theoretical orientations of culture history. The human being is by definition a symbolizing creatures--it is an essential and vital part of our nature and character. Symbolizing is a 'need' just like the needs of breathing, drinking water or nutrition--without it we must perish as something less than fully human. Neither can we distance ourselves from its omnipresence in our worlds nor separate ourselves from its ultimate sense of realism. Symbolism confers upon our reality an indivisible unity, and it brings to our sense of realism the possibility for its own dichotomization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dialectic of symbolism is developmental, but it is non-progressive and always incomplete. It revolves and resolves itself around central directional axis of change in the unfolding of mind as an objective of time, reality of beingness in the world. This central axis is that of time, and it is irreversible in an absolute, non-relative sense. Our measure of change as time is the measure of the duration of all things which have been and will ever be. The dialectics of symbolism has as its basis the spatial mediation of time--mind is the spatialization of time in human consciousness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The symbolic spatialization of time is expressed as beingness in the world--we know it as 'experience'. Mind thus becomes expressible in terms of and through our experience of the world. The construction of culture and the process of civilization is the expression of the realization of our experience of mind--culture and civilization become symbolically patterned in their unfolding dialectics in the form of mind. As symbolic process, the development of civilization becomes the patterning of the function of mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dialectics of symbolism become experienced cyclically, as recursive patterning and revolution about the axis of time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All symbolisms have as their ultimate referents the representation of time as the formal/functional mediators of change. its spatialized manifestations are the expression of its beingness in the world--of the human experience of the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectical symbolisms integrates and idealist versions of reality, and through integration transcends its own inherent contradictions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Many natural communication systems contain symbolisms however mechanical or rudimentary. But it has been only humankind of all the species of nature who have developed the capacity for the spontaneous creation of symbolisms, their generalizations and metaphorical elaboration. Symbols encompass human reality complete. All things and acts which are primarily functional in the human world are also always symbolic but not all symbolisms are necessarily functional or pragmatic in any concrete sense. Sometimes they occur for a purely symbolic purposes, or spontaneously happen for no apparent reason at all.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols intermediate between the ideational constructs of the human mind and the many physical signs occurring in the environment--they are the synthesis of this intermediation, always having analytically an ideational component and a sign set. It may also be said that ideas are the synthesis of the dialectic between symbols as such and signs, and signs are what remains once we've removed ideas from symbols. This informs a kind of complex dialectic in which each may be a synthesis of the other two components. Mind thinks symbolically and dialectically--deduction is the inference of signs and/or symbols from the dialectic between ideas and symbols. Induction is the synthesis of ideas from the conjunction and signs and symbolisms. Symbolic abduction is the derivation of a symbol from the dialectic between ideas and signs. Another way of putting this is to refer to ideas as general metaphysical concepts and signs as particular, metonymical percepts. The intermediate level consists of metaphorical symbolisms.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolic development underwent a critical shift in orientation, from extensiveness of mind to intensiveness of world view, when symbols went from being based upon primitive ideas rooted in signs of the natural environment to being based upon derivative signs based upon independently existing ideas. The environment became transformed from being one of a field of natural signs to one of a socio-cultural construction of conceptual signs as reified ideas. Symbols switched from being 'sign oriented' to being 'idea oriented'. The function of symbols shifted from a general purpose mechanicalness to a special purpose organismic orientation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Signs/symbols/ideas' like 'mind/language/culture' is in fact an integral, singly unified reality. The categories are useful analytical divisions which in fact describe a single complex process of mind as an unfolding stream of collective human consciousness within environmental contexts. It describes the dialectic of mind in terms of how mind creates itself--tracing the movement of 'meaning' between intensive center and extensive environment. There is no way of clearly separating exactly what a sign is from a symbol or what an idea is without reference to some symbolic sign. Signs, symbols and ideas do not have exclusively concise boundaries.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This complex dialectic describes the developmental or unfolding process of mind interacting or symbolically mediating with the environment--or rather as the process of mind as a dialectical synthesis as the mediation between environment and experiential human beingness. Symbols mediate, negotiate, transact, identify the critical boundary between self and world--symbols create a 'boundary' of identity which relates our beingness to the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols have an 'evocative' function vital to human identity and beingness in the world. It is this which empowers symbolism as the expression of mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A reflexive characteristic of our metalogical metalogue about the question of 'what is human reality?' is that our definitions, meanings and our information and communication are all primarily symbolic and metaphorical in construction and function, and we may refer to metaphorical symbolism or symbolic metaphors which compose the fundamental quality of human beingness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Metaphor' comes from the Greek word meaning 'to bear over', 'referring to a transfer of the sense of one word to another', and is defined 'a figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another, different thing by being spoken of as if it were that other; implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily used of one thing is applied to another…'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A 'symbol' is defined as '1. Something that represents something else by association, resemblance or convention. 2. A printed or written sign used to represent an operation, element, quantity, quality or relation as in mathematics or music.' It comes from the Greek 'symbolon' which means 'token for identification'. A sign, token, pledge by which one infers something, from 'symballein' or 'to throw together'. It is also defined as 'something that stands for or represents another thing, especially an object used to represent something abstract; an emblem; a written or printed mark, letter, abbreviation, etc. standing fort an object, quality, process, quantity, etc.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The key symbol of meaning is the 'word as metaphor'. Without language, humankind would have no culture nor civilization: Language is the principle symboling system of human culture--it is the voice of mind. Meaning is principally metaphorical, phenomenological, psychological and abstracted from basic concrete percepts. Meaning is something suggesting something else or its antithesis to human rationality. The word as metaphor functions as analogy, comparison of similarities and the relationship between different or disparate things, 'affecting' a meaningful crossover, or 'identification' between previously unrelated symbols, bridging differences and creating new possibilities of relationship, patterns and integrities and imposing alternative frames of reference out of an original context of meaning, fusing together different meanings of different symbols to create new meanings and new symbols.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Metaphor is connotative, suggesting new associations and possibilities of meaning, expanding meaning qualitatively beyond mere one to one correspondences between words and their dictionary definitions, as if they were mere numbers or names or signs with the most immediate referents. It is this metaphorical quality which allows us to reference more than is immediately available to our sense, that allows us to go further in our meaning structures to posit inferences and to ask and answer questions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"A metaphor, and, by extension, a trope generally, equates on conventional point of reference with another, or substitutes one for another, and obliges the interpreter to draw his or her conclusions as to the consequences. It elicits analogies, as perceptions through language, so to speak, and those analogies or perceptions become the intent and the content, of the expression.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Figurative usage, then, because it makes a kind of prism of conventional reference, cannot provide a literal field of reference. It is not formed by 'indicating' things or by referencing them, but by setting pointers or reference points into a relation with one another, by making them into a relation that is innovative upon the original order of reference. It 'conveys' a re-negotiated relation, but, not being 'literal' in any sense, cannot 'point' to it. Thus we may say that it 'embodies' or 'images' its object, figuring sympathetically by becoming itself that which it expresses. When we speak of things that do not have conventional referents, then out manner of speaking must itself become the referent. The effect of the construction is embodied in its impingement upon conventional reference; this impingement is simultaneously what it is and what it is about." (Roy Wagner; Symbols That Stand For Themselves; 1986:6)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To write 'metaphorical symbolism' is something akin to 'mixed metaphor' but more like 'power politics'. It is difficult to say exactly which term, 'metaphorical' or 'symbolism' is the more general and inclusive. The expression metaphorical symbolism is used to suggest more than just a category of mind or a class of symbols--but to emphasize the point that all symbols are by their intrinsic nature 'metaphorical' and thus to emphasize as well the 'something standing for something else' function of symbols. Furthermore, metaphorical symbolisms express or stand for a characteristic feature of human inter-relatedness to reality--human beings define meaning, express significance, relate to reality through the use of metaphorical symbolisms. In a sense, it is a propos to refer to human reality or to human relativity within reality, as irreducibly metaphorical and symbolic in nature, and in structure.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"Any symbolic metaphor provides a conceptually definitive frame of reference/inference serving to dichotomously separate and distinguish aspects of reality--internal/external, subjective/objective, figure/ground--'outer forms frame an inner meanings'. One may refer to alternative symbolic functions, like 'dominant symbol', 'master symbol', 'key symbol' or 'summarizing metaphor' or 'elaborating metaphor' but the primary function of all metaphorical symbolisms is to serve as a frame of reference for the conveyance of human meaning. In order to do so, any symbol must have a primary referent which serves as 'signifier' or a 'denotation' which is concrete and derived from the physical environment. To reiterate, all symbols are ultimately derived from and refer to nature, no matter how abstractly or indirectly. This primary referent may be simple or complex, either taken directly from empirical, perceptual reality or else composed of many diverse elements drawn directly from or abstracted indirectly from Mother Nature. This primary referent serves as significant marker in that it embodies and incorporates relatively significant meanings which are recognizable, however unconsciously or structurally or concretely by the knower. The act of recognition is a form of humanological involvement, an expression of the inter-relatedness of human reality, bringing meaning to it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The symbolic metaphor is applied, or recognized and created within a universal reality of human meaning which is both continuous and ever changing--a dynamic continuum which forms both a relational context which is all encompassing and within which symbols are created, destroyed and recreated, and reconstituted by new meanings and new relationships. Meaning is derived from the human inter-relatedness with symbolic metaphors. The act of recognition of a symbolic metaphor as a frame of reference/inference is properly known as the function of 'identification'. The marker or primary referent serves as a cognitive, symbolic boundary which identifies meaningful differences--defining the identity of human meaning. Identification is a process of differentiation of meaning inside and outside of the boundary of the symbolic marker. Differences between relationships or 'things' or meanings outside of the boundary and inside of the boundary are emphasized as relatively significant, while the similarities are de-emphasized as relatively insignificant. Attention is focused upon the figure in the foreground, outlined by the symbolic frame of reference/inference, while the background if ignored. Furthermore, differences within the boundaries of the symbolic marker become emphasized, the similarities ignored, while the similarities outside of the boundary are emphasized to the ignorance of differences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Humans create their meaningful reality through the process of symbolic identification. Furthermore, as frames of reference/inference, metaphorical symbols also function as symbolic mirrors of meaning, as a vehicle of both subjective reflection and of objective projection of the self. Identification within human reality is properly a process of self identification through the reflective/projective process of human interrelationship. Symbolic identification expressed as a process of interrelationship between external differences/internal similarities and between subjective reflection/objective projection, defines the secondary referents of symbols and metaphors. The primary symbolic referent serves as a metaphorical mediator, or a medium of expression, a frame of reference for the identification and recognition of the relationships of secondary reference." (Lewis; unpublished manuscript, 1986: 53-55)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms 'relate things' in an unmarked manner, and 'thing relations' in a marked manner. Symbolisms come in two basic forms--things to be related and relations between things. Unmarked things and relations imply contextual neutrality--a lack of significant emphasis which reinforces the status quo of the identity of experience. The usual or 'normal' state of being in the world is such an 'unmarked' manner of experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Marking significance is a matter of emphasis and may have either a positive or negative connotation and lead to either positive or negative evaluations of experience. If the 'normal' state is positively valued, the tendency would be to mark negative evaluations of difference in a covert way, i.e., unconscious symbolic context of experience and to overtly mark positively evaluative 'things'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Relating things' temporizes space, and 'thinging relations' spatializes time. Symbolisms of things are expressed spatially--relational symbolisms are temporal. Matter is made of 'things' and the 'thingness of relations; and mind is composed of the relations of things.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Analytically, human experience may be divided into cognitive, emotive and conative or motivational categories or modalities. Like 'mind/language/culture', and 'idea/symbol/sign' it is better to consider experience wholly as a unified field of 'cognition/emotion/conation'. This unity is achieved through articulation of symbolisms in the environment and can be spoken of as being 'synthetic' in dialectical structure. There can be no clear separations between cognitive, emotive or motive components of experiential events--all ideas have an emotional and a motivational dimension and all emotions have an ideational construction and motivational implication.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is by the 'cognitive/emotive/conative' unity of experience that we can usefully recognize the internal structure of human experience as a process of dialectical symbolization. All is experience is structured, or integrated in this way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human consciousness is engaged in the process of fixing symbolisms in the environment to fit intentional frames of mind or ideas, and also in fitting frames of mindness in order to fix symbolisms in the environment. Fix and fit are the mediation processes of human symbolization which constitute its dialectic. This symbolic dialectic is critically related to human adaptation to environmental change. There is a human predisposition to preserve the constancy of symbols across differing contexts. But the process of change, variation in the context, disrupts the symbolic continuity of experience, so the need for fixing and fitting symbols within their contexts in order to make sense of them is continuous and never ending as a process of human consciousness. Failure to do so creates psychological incoherence which is unsettling and dysfunctionally maladaptive. The process of fixing and fitting symbolisms is referred to as 'framing' and there is a proclivity towards preserving constancy and consistency of symbolic 'frames' across different contexts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The two functions of symbolization are reference and inference. Reference is the process of relating a thing to its contextual relations with other things. Inference is the process of determining a thing by its interrelationships within its context of understanding. Symbolisms used referentially are 'names' for things. Symbolisms used inferentially describe the 'verbal' relations between things.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Reference related to the denotation of a thing--inference to connotation of relationship. Reference is deductive in deriving something logically from something else--inference is inductive in something else being derived from a thing.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolic frames are simultaneously frames of reference/inference. Mind functions according to the dialectic of reference/inference frames. Any symbolism entails both an explicit reference and implicit inference functions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms become 'fixed' by investment of certain emotive 'values' in their structure. These values are achieved by 'marking' or highlighting the symbolism in a figure/ground context. There is an emphasis upon certain significances or order of significances and of stress which leads to metaphorical salience and metaphysical importance. Emotions become encoded through symbolisms into our cognitive mappings of experience and are recalled through 'elicitation' and read by 'evaluation'. It is the cognitive evaluation of symbolisms which leads to our sense of 'understanding'--it is their emotive evaluation which leads us to their 'feeling' or 'sense of relevance'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Values' as organizing principles of the lifeways of people and their ways of life have a symbolic structure of 'evaluation' which is emotively fixed or fitting. Symbolisms have come to have an evaluative structure in the way in which they dialectically articulate human cognition, emotion and behavior.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Linguistic practices, through marking/unmarked, over/covert categories or relative inter-or intra-sentential code switching/mixing in our everyday usage of language, reveals the subtlety of the symbolic process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The primary human function of symbolisms is evocative (to call forth, to elicit or bring forth). This evocative function always has cognitive, emotive and perceptive elements. Symbolisms evoke meaning and reaction. Evocations are basic stimuli to complex attitudinal and behavioral responses. Specific signs or sign patterns act as triggers which actually precipitate response--symbols generalize this stimulus function of signs from their particular contexts of occurrence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols also 'fix' this evocative function in certain environmental configurations--similar symbolisms evoke similar ranges of response and experience. This 'fixing' stores latent or potential 'energy' in environmental configurations--complex symbolisms become a reservoir of pooled 'response potential' which can have a delayed release and a triggering threshold. Thus symbolisms come to have a relative value in their evocative potential. This evocative potential 'empowers' symbolisms as the mediators of transformational experiences in changing environmental contexts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From the standpoint of the individual, an important point of this evocative function is its emotional expression. The symbolic synthesis is part of an emotional expression. The symbolic synthesis is part of an emotional dialectic which integrates psychological and physiological processes in natural and social environments. Emotional energy becomes 'stored away' in certain symbolism--evocation of these symbolisms provokes or precipitates the release of the flood of feelings--the stored potential emotionally expressed energy dammed by behind symbolic frames.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Experiential isomorphism of mind and matter confers a sense of symbolic symmetry of experience--a symmetry reflected by cognitive consonance, emotive harmony and symbolic resonance within the environment. It renders human reality reflexive. Cognitive dissonance is the result of a lack of symmetry between experience and the environment. Experience and identity seeks an equilibrium between mind and matter, a sense of ecology of beingness in the world. Disequilibrium results in cognitive dissonance, and requires readjustment of mind and matter in order to reestablish symbolic symmetry.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such a synthesis presupposes a normative conception of mind as a balanced, 'steady state system'--it is precisely this sense of the identity of experience which makes possible a normative conception of the world. It is actually a mechanism for the mediation of environmental change in the environment, allowing ecological adaptation of the individual in the world. As such, it is a mechanism of evolution. It presupposes a sense of adaptive, functional integration in the world, which may or may not exist except as a relative state.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols are derived from configurations of signs--all symbols are contextual in that they are derived from and conditioned by the sign context in which they occur. As such, symbols depend upon their contextual framework as an 'extrinsic' part of their 'negative definition' or connotation by association with other elements. It is this contextuality of symbolism which gives to symbols their unconscious depth of multidimensionality if meaning and which renders them the vehicles of empowerment in motivating and directing human action.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols cannot stand completely isolated and separated from all relational contexts--their coherence and relevance would dissolve away into a chaotic disarray of separate signs. As such symbols are always found interconnected with other symbols and thus become grouped according to different 'principles' of patterning. Symbols have a boundary of their possible experience--an outline which distinguishes their outer contextual 'horizon' and an inner structural 'horizon' which carries it across different contextual frameworks and incorporated a range of variation of profiles. It is this boundary which is transformative, variable and malleable and yet which retains a net, overall thematic consistency in the life and function of the symbol.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols are composites of signs--they are epi-phenomenal artifacts of human experience and the vehicles of human condition.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is this contextuality of symbolism which makes them relational and relative and the by products of dialectical transformation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Unconsciousness is the internalization or introjection for the symbolic contextuality of our environments. It is always encompassing and comprehending, always relational and yet indirect. It is total and complete in its openness and all inclusiveness and yet our consciousness can only cast light on only small portions of it at any time. All symbolisms must be found or fit within a relational context in order to carry meaning--the contextual relations of symbolisms must become internalized in the unconscious as implicit, connotative, latent and over components of meaning which 'configure' the outlines of symbols upon a background.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols are commonly related to other symbols, normally occurring in groups or 'symbolic complexes'. People come to have sets of expectations as to the cognitive coherence and perceptual consistency of such complexes--these sets of expectations are quite cognitive and behavioral 'frames' into which experience becomes sorted and rendered significant.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Cultural environments are 'universes' composed of interconnected 'symbolic constellations' or groupings of centrally oriented or focal 'symbolic complexes'. A library is a culture historical cosmos of mind composed of many books, each a symbolic 'constellation' made up of chapters, paragraphs and sentences that represent interconnected 'symbolic complexes'. A word is a 'sign symbol' or a 'symbolic marker' made up of sets of signs and sign relations. Signs are relatively independent and arbitrary but when grouped together in different arrangements create different symbolisms.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A cultural universe provides the unconscious framework of an individual's consciousness--an individual's conscious is constrained in definite ways by the kinds of symbolic constellations which compose his culture historical contextuality. Different symbolic contexts constrain the consciousness of the individual in different, but distinctive ways. An individual's consciousness is an active, normative, energetic, evaluating, selecting, focusing, defining, decision making instru-mentality of mind which arbitrarily or customarily assigns values to various symbolisms and symbolic complexes within respective contexts--it functions symbolically, referentially reading from and inferentially reading into the environmental experiences of people.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is by means of the dialectic between the unconscious substrate, or introjected relational context, and the symbolic consciousness that people normally manipulate the elements and relations of their environments and navigate through their collective shared worlds.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The unconscious, both individual and collective is composed of experiential, referential and inferential 'frames within frames within frames' that are drawn from the background of the culture historical context and the 'cosmos of mind'. There occurs between mind, encompassing the dialectic between consciousness and the unconscious, and the culture historical context, a cybernetic interaction of symbolization. The on going conscious experiences of people are 'fitted' into unconscious 'frames of expectation' derived from similar relational contexts as elicited by the present sets of experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols recur and resonate in environmental contexts in regular, ritualized and expected ways which are directly or indirectly constrained by both the 'culture historical' flow of events and the past relational contexts of understanding which are brought to bear upon the present experiences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols which seem to occur 'out of place'--a poor man driving a limousine, a rich man dressed in rags, or an adjective poised behind rather than before the English noun it modifies, or a misspelled word--then its experience no longer 'fits' the expected frames of reference/inference. Frames then become disrupted and either the symbols need to be repaired or 'fixed' or else the frames need to be 'reevaluated' and reconstructed.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Common sense' is largely composed of the expected, unconsciously 'embedded' and ritualized regularities of the culture historical universe of experience. These regularities are frequently left implicit or are taken for granted in the experience of the environment. Common sense interacts with cognition in both conceptual and perceptual ways, in the mediation of symbolic environments which are both ideal and material, cognitive and behavioral.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolic dependency is a cognitive predisposition to conceive or perceive symbols within expected frames of reference/inference which leads to selective preference for regularly recurring symbolisms and to the inability to 'cope' with symbolisms which occur 'out of frame' and to a cognitive 'dissonance' about the irregularity of such symbolisms. This relates to the capacity to tolerate margins of error and to the inability to manipulate symbolisms independently of their expected, 'common sense' contexts. Highlighting common symbols leads to an 'unconscious' filling of its expected framework--to its common 'configuration' by which it is rendered significant. Psychologically symbols take on a significance of their own, largely independent of the actual experiences in which they occur, but predetermined by the frames of expectation and the contextual configurations in which they 'common sensically' recur.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolic dependency leads to 'fixation' of a symbolic configuration within a given framework or context of understanding--such a fixation becomes invested with an inordinate degree of cognitive, emotional and behavioral significance and importance as a centrally orienting and ordering device of one's experiences. Disruption of such 'significant symbolisms and their fixed frames' results in a great deal of symbolic disorientation and confusion, emotional turmoil and to 'behavioral maladjustment' or failure of 'coping mechanisms' to functionally adapt in appropriate or expected ways. The sense of ego identity undergoes a crises, disintegrating and breaking down. Developmentally, symbolic dependency may be linked to a 'field dependency'. Children should be expected to be relatively more symbolically dependent than adults. As adults mature, they become more symbolically independent, but symbolic dependency in adult life may lead to a failure to fully mature or develop either cognitively, emotionally or behaviorally.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture may come to reinforce or encourage or sanction some forms of symbolic dependency, such as those acts or values relating to paternal authority, libidinal ties to the mother, or to acts of violence or sexuality, and thus discourage the development of symbolic independence in these areas. Likewise, it may encourage development of symbolic independence in other ways and therefore discourage symbolic dependency in indirectly related ways. Again, there is a cybernetic</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">(WILL START FROM PAGE 335) …..interrelationship between the collective symbolisms of culture and cognitive symbolism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolic dependency leads to the development of elaborated symbolic fantasy life, both culturally and cognitively, in which the relevant symbolisms, divorced from the validation of real experience, become used in the distorted manipulation of frames of reference/inference. There is a general suspension of credibility, even though the symbolisms so divorced may carry heavy loads of cognitive, emotive and behavioral significance. Non-being is the result of such exaggeration of frames and distortion of experience in symbolic dependency.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms become 'fixed' into certain 'categories' of experience. Such symbolic categories take on an independence of relation--a distinctiveness of separate identity among commonly related things--which come to have special significance and come to be seen as pre-existent or previous to experience, as 'coming before experience' and as therefore existing 'beyond or outside of the realm of experience', even though its pre-existence must then be verified by consecutive experience. Such 'categories' come to organize experience in certain expected ways, and serve to simplify the problems of maintaining symbolic symmetry in the experience of the world. Such symbolic 'categories' confer a certain a-priori 'imperativeness' to the generic kinds of experiences which they subsume.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is in such a way that symbolisms lose their arbitrariness of representation, their original concrete signifiers and their functional independence from the constraints of custom and culture historical context.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such categorical symbolisms accrete into symbolic 'configurations' which frame experience in certain pre-selective ways. Configurations become 'fixed frames' which are relatively inflexible and unamenable to experience in the environment. They are different from symbolic constellations in that they organize the identity of experience intensively, working ideationally from within, while symbolic constellations are environmentally rooted and functionally derived from an extensive orientation in the world. Symbolic configurations are a special order of symbolic congregation--they carry past experience forward into the present and future. Configurations are composed of symbolisms which are marked with special categorical significance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolic categories and configurations compose 'world view' as opposed to the 'natural' symbolic conglomeration of 'mind'. They come to have a common senseness and 'givenness' which is frequently absent in the paradoxicalness of mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power rests in the Center. Movement toward the Center represents symbolic empowerment of non-being--controlling change or the possibility of 'non-being in the world'. Centeredness of world view defines itself in terms of the symbolic empowerment derived from the super imposition of fixed frames, symbolic categories and configurations of experience and expectation upon the world. It is this fixedness of frames, its categorical imperativeness reinforced by common sense configurations of experience and expectation, which creates the grand illusion of the Center.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms provide configurational frames by which to contextualize and make sense of our experience. We share in multiple frames of mind which confer a sense of continuity and order to our world and its experience, orienting us in relation to things in ways which are predictable and stable. We are actively reformulating our frames of mind in order to accommodate the changes we encounter in confrontation with new environments. The dialectics of symbolism are the dialectics of change. We symbolically construct our realities based on symbolisms derived from past experiences--and then we reconstruct them based upon modification to fit or fix our sense of change. Or symbolic realities are constructed, negotiated, interpreted, evaluated and configured in a world of on going change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Frames are mostly general and generalizing in orientation--they contextually relate particular elements of reality. They are derived from and composed of these elements, but they take on a life of their own--a metaphorical and metalogical level of 'importance' which 'translates' change and difference in our realities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Frame disruption' occurs when events in our environments occur which demand our attention but fail to fit our frames of reference/inference or else work at their margins to undermine their relevance and significance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Frame elicitation' is the calling forth of frames to met or 'fix' the experience of environmental events or relational situations. Signs in the environment stimulate or trigger the elicitation of frames, often unconsciously.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Frame fixation' is the relative inflexibility of a frame to be adjusted to fit changes in the experience of environments. Frames are carried forward and made to 'force fit' such changing contexts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Frame reinforcement' are conscious, ego coping mechanisms which attempt to 'force fit' frames and environmental changes in ways, cognitively, emotionally and behaviorally, which reestablish the relevance and importance of the original frames.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Frame reevaluation' is the effort to deconstruct and reconstruct the frames in order to accommodate or assimilate the environmental changes in such a way that restores the frames adaptive significance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Frame replacement' or 'revolution' is the complete destruction of a frame, and its substitution by an altogether different frame which may or may not incorporate the elements and relational patternings of the old frame, but always in a new configurational arrangement.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Frames are devices of rationalization and ritualization of human consciousness and behavior. As rationalizing devices, they serve to order the experiences of the environment in a way that is purposive or fitting to the 'design' of the frame. As ritualizing process, they order behavior in prescriptive and predictable ways, controlling reaction and response in ways which behavioral reinforce or ideological legitimate the structure of the frames.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Frames become represented and are reflexive of culture historical process in the patterning of social networks and in the unfolding of social movements.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Frames are generally derived from 'schemata' that exists within culture historical contexts. Schemata are the 'elements' of culture. They are like 'cliché' of speech--they are either words or several syllable phrases from which larger symbolisms are constructed. Schemata are combined into schemas or 'strips' which are like sentences or paragraphs. Strips normally describe or represent a single 'event' or a single combined instance of experience. Schemata are the elemental atoms of culture history--they might be thought of as the minimal component units of phenomenological experience. Strips become the normally combined units of phenomenological experience. Strips become the normally combined units--they are like 'molecules' which compose the substantial fabric of culture history. They have a normal sense of ordering of its component units which combine together for form the patterning of culture historical process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is in terms of such phenomenological atoms and experiential molecules that we construct, deconstruct and reconstruct our symbolic realities in the paradigmatic patternings of culture history. Everyday we are engaged in the manipulation of these minimal units of meaning in the configuring and reconfiguring of our sense of identity in our world. We take these units from the culture historical contexts in which the experience of our world is situated. Our culture historical contexts are internalized in the form of these units as they occur in groups and sets that form regular patternings.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is in terms of such schemata and strips that we build our frame and deploy them in our confrontations with reality. It has bee estimated that there are natural, normal limits to our innate capacity to process such units, and that these limits of 'long term memory' define the structural sizes of various levels of groupings of such components. It is estimated that the most elements that can be dealt with in the most direct manner is around a hundred or so, and that the minimal units will be grouped in composites of no more than five or ten. These one hundred or so elements are derived indirectly from a larger context composed of no more than five hundred elements. These five hundred elements can be structurally grouped into a single taxon which contains no more than perhaps three thousand such elements. Over time he total long term capacity can be pushed upward fifty or even slightly eight thousand such 'bits and pieces'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is possible that these kinds of structural limits in the capacity of symbolic systems superimpose other kinds of constraints and have certain kinds of predetermining consequences in the patterning of culture history. Any given system of symbolism must have a certain optimal carrying capacity for its relative order of functioning. Any inputs overreaching this inherent limit leads to a 'supercritical' state of overload which results in 'events' or damage to the system. Such a system may then 'evolve' into a new systemic arrangement incorporating new elements and throwing off others, or it may structurally lift the whole system to a higher more general order or level of functioning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is also likely that the pathway taken by any given scenario would be to some predetermined extent by the larger structural relations of power in the context--such that larger more powerful systems tend to 'swallow' smaller ones, while systems which coexist on a even parity of power perhaps compete with or mutually resist one another or counterbalance each other in directive ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Power, in its various forms, structures relationships in definite ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbol systems and the contexts which frame them, exist in critical and dynamic states--their stability is a function of their flexibility to deal with inevitable changes which alter their composition of elements.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms accrete meaning, grow, mutate by several mechanisms or principles of symbolic change. Metaphorically, symbolisms continuously go through a process of 'extension of meaning' into other contexts incorporating other elements and relations between elements. The looseness and fuzziness of metaphor allows meaning to be extended or to be 'displaced' by other meanings in a gradual but steady manner. Euphemization and Dysphemization of language are examples of such displacement, in which 'bad meaning' tends to drive out good meaning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms sometimes transfer meaning or significance from one symbolic domain to another or from one context to another or from one environment to another. Metaphorical meaning is easily transferred from one symbolism to another, and this can follow a whole indirectly line or chain of such transference such that the original significance may be very remote or directly unrelated to the symbolism to which it becomes contextually related.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms can also change from the mechanism of 'stimulus generalization' in that they signifiers of the symbolism become part of another class or group of 'stimuli' to which the symbolism becomes attached.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms can also be modified by continuous or proximate analogical association to other symbols, such that the traits of one symbolism become associated with the traits of the other one.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SIGNS, SYMBOLS AND IDEAS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols are composed of signs. All symbols are signs, but not all signs are symbols. Signs are the minimal building blocks of symbols--they are characterized by their recursiveness, redundancy, uni-directionality, uni-dimensionality and proximity of meaning. The metanymical function of signs is mechanical and relatively non-arbitrary. Signs are context dependent, occurring in an order which is not as random as with symbols--they are 'harder', more highly constrained by their denotational significance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Signs may be elevated to the functional level of symbol, than carrying metaphorical 'suggestiveness' of meaning, but in doing so it looses its significant determinacy. Signs carry fixed meanings--significance, which is always metonymical, referring to 'things' at a concrete level. Employed in combinations, signs become symbolic 'markers'--they loose their individual metanymical significance as vehicles for carrying the metaphorically relevant meaning of the symbol they stand for.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Whereas symbols function analogically and metalogically, signs function homologically and relationally by logical principles which disambiguate its significance. Signs have a communicational purpose which requires that they have unambiguous significance--a determinacy of value relatively invariable and inflexible.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ideas are similar to symbols and signs--all ideas are symbolic and are composed of signs but not all signs or symbols are 'ideational'. Ideas are the basic units of metaphysical importance. Single symbols or even signs may be elevated to the status of an idea--'0' (zero) for instance--but more regularly ideas are composed of sets of symbols in typical arrangements or configurations. Ideas are abstractions--complex thoughts whose only concretized embodiments are the signs employed for their expression. Ideas are not normally constrained by any external reference or bound within a context, but are 'super contextual'. Ideas are metalogical as well as metaphysical in function, serving to 'focus' thought in given directions. Ideas are also normally polythetic and polythematic as nomothetic categories. Ideas are eidetic and 'meta-relational'--they refer to relations between things and relations of such relations, but rarely to 'things' themselves. Ideas are 'constructs'--mental images built up from experience, but indirectly separate from such experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A table is an idea of a sign, a symbol and an idea, as is a 'triangle'--the 'idea of table' may be symbolized by the word 'table' and be signified by an actual instance of a typical table, but is still only a mental construct of mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SIGNS AND SYMBOLS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is important to emphasize the critical differences and similarities between signs and symbols, as these differences and similarities underlie the split between the sciences and the humanities---they inform an important epistemological division in our rational knowledge. All science is ultimately a study of signs as systems. The humanities are ultimately a study of symbols as conglomerations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Signs are 'symbolic markers' which carry specific significance--as markers they function mechanically and automatically to produce a significance which is moderated by proximate or sympathetic connection with other signs. Signs do not 'carry' meaning separately as do symbols--they have separate significance which is non-arbitrary--it cannot yield up or transpose its separate significance. It is only in conjunction with other signs or when signs become promoted to the status of a symbol that they act as vehicles of metaphor. Signs function as 'markers' serving to anchor meaning to concrete, contextually determinate reality. Signs are mnemonic devices--perceptual 'markings' which trigger significance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a strict sense, significance is a communicational metaphor for 'information'--it is important for the significant of a sign be clear and unambiguous in order to efficiently communicate information. They tend therefore to be hard and strong. Signs denote some definite and specific--they are therefore concise. Symbols 'connote' or suggest something general and therefore vague. It is important therefore that symbols are indeterminate in order to exploit their inherent ambiguity--their relevance depends upon a 'critical indeterminacy' or 'vagueness' or 'indefiniteness' of meaning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A sign functions--it 'does something', performing an informational, communicational service. A symbol 'means' something, integrating by suggestion. Signs are special purpose devices. Significance is always context dependent. 'General significance' refers to a classificational or taxonomic function of signs--their hierarchical design--they locate and fix a context of significant relations around a 'thing'--thereby situating and orienting a sign within a framework of significations. A symbol may act as a sign, its metaphorical function relegated to a special purpose by becoming context bound--symbols come to have a special significance in a given context. A password is a symbol relegated to the function of a sign. A dictionary is a sigh system of symbols.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Sign systems communicate knowledge, solve puzzles, reduce noise and communicate, describe, explain, predict and control. Symbols systems create understanding, asking why instead of answering how, resolve dilemmas, 'destruct' the given and determinate, and thrive on noise and indeterminacy as the groundless ground of meaning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SYMBOLIC COHESION</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols readily cohere in to clusters, complexes, constellations and galaxies because they have a characteristic stickiness--an adhesive quality which allows one symbol to be readily lined to others. This is symbolic cohesion.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In order to understand how symbolic cohesion works, it is necessary to examine the structure of the symbol as a 'thing' and as a 'relation' between things. A symbol functions as a 'metaphor'--it is something, 'anything', which stands for something (anything) else. This metaphorical function is polysemic--a thing can stand for many things at once--and 'multi-vocal'--a thing can say many things at once. Symbols have, therefore, a certain metaphorical flexibility which allow them to be adjusted to fit many different kinds of contexts--they are contextually independent and generalizable--they are general purpose metaphors.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols have fussy edges--their definitional boundaries are rarely clear cut but phase into a wider less determinate connotational realm of general metaphorical saliences. These fussy edges give symbols an added malleability that allows them to be fit into varying contextual schemas with relative ease and which allow two or more 'compatible' symbols to be conjoined--to be hooked together by the conflation of their edges. Words as metaphors are the archetypal symbols--compounding or modifying words into phrases is an example of the fussiness and looseness of symbols.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The fussiness of symbols is due in part to the fact that most symbols are composite sets of 'signs' which function as minimal building blocks of symbols--these signs can be added to or modified--conditioned, to alter the form and metaphorical function of a symbol. Morphological conditioning of words are an example of this sign modification of symbols.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The metaphorical 'general purposeness' and the looseness of symbols allows them to be used in several ways--symbols may stand for other symbols, for themselves, for other 'things' of significance, for relations between symbols or things, or for relations of such relations. One symbol may summarize a whole set of symbols, or a set of symbols may elaborate a single symbol. Symbols can be arranged taxonomically into a hierarchical order of determinations or can be used polythetically.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolic cohesion is most often weaker than it is stronger, allowing symbols to be easily conjoined into larger sets and allowing symbols also to be lifted from one context and put into another. Symbolic cohesion accounts for the conglomeration of symbols into patterned sets, but it also accounts for the criticality of the structure of such conglomerations--symbols systems may disintegrate as easily as integrate.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SYSTEMS OF MIND</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Signs, symbols and ideas form their own separate kinds of systems which operate at different functional levels of meaning. All idea systems are symbol and sigh systems and all symbol systems are sign systems as well, but sign systems are not symbolic or ideational. These systemic orders inter-function and in most instances co-function and overlap but it is useful to analytically separate them in order to understand their critical differences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Symbolic logic' is an example of a sign system, despite its name. Linguistics deals with language at the level of a sign system, but not as a symbolic system. In general, science does not treat symbolic systems except as these systems are also sign systems. Mathematics is an example of a 'pure' sign system. A sign system is necessarily a 'pre-determined relational system'--in this sense it is 'pre-logical'--specified or specifiable 'relational rules' which serve to order and disambiguate its patterns, and render the interconnections between signs decisive and exact or precise. These rules function as direct constraints. Natural information systems, as with chemistry, physics and micro-biology are sign systems predetermined by 'natural laws'--man made sign systems, statistics, mathematics, traffic signs, cook books, telephone books are predetermined by 'conventional rules'. Sign systems tend to be directly and explicitly constrained--its rules are amenable to direct, explicit explanation. Sign systems have a rational and an empirical order--signs cannot occur at random or out of order or sequence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The difference between a sign system and a symbol system is the difference between a computer and the mind or natural language--a mind may function like a computer if so constrained and a natural language may be prescriptively regulated to fit a computer language, but a computer may never function like the mind or natural language. A symbol system is metaphorical--it tends to be indirectly constrained, context independent and analogical. It functions to mediate multiple levels of meaning and mythologically in the process of identification. Symbol systems are dialectical and 'dialogical'. They are also syncretistic--composing a hodgepodge or a collage of different symbolic conglomerations. Sign systems are denotational, symbol systems are connotational. Sign systems function referentially, symbol systems inferentially.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ideational systems are metaphysical--ideas refer to other ideas or to relations between ideas. Ideational systems are ideo-logical and metalogical. They are rational systems that are tautological--ideas are justified by other ideas, and are unconstrained themselves, but are themselves constraints--ideas are 'rules' or meta-relational constructs ordering relations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">FRAMES OF MIND</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though Mind exists as a universal, all encompassing possibility, its real manifestations consist of an infinite number of possible Frames of Mind, attitudes of Beingness which inform our existence of meaning and relevance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Frames of Mind are different points of view, or casts of light, which give to Mind its holothetic multidimensionality. Frames of Mind cohere and link together to provide the on-going articulation of the possibility of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Frames of Mind do not form a taxonomic structure on the basis of essential differences in meaning of its components--Frames of Mind are but varying combinations of ideas which are configured thematically about some central axis of transformation. Different Frames of Mind may share many similar components. Differences are not structural, but historical and contextual--each Frame of Mind is contextualized within a larger comprehensive framework of the possibilities of Mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Frames of Mind do share some common distinguishing features of design and content. Frames of Mind have a particular provenience of period and place which defines their cultural historical context of origination, diffusion, development. Frames of Mind shift provenience as a process of gradual steady transformation, just as language gradually changes and alters in an imperceptible way. This transformation occurs regardless of the ideological attempts to conserve the status quo of world view. Frames of Mind encompass entire contrapuntal dialectics of thesis and antithesis--at any particular point they are represented by the complete range of variation of world view manifest. Frames of Mind are constituted locally by the total relations within the complete text of their articulation. Frames of Mind flow sequentially--they are streams of consciousness which appear to be historically continuous and yet in hindsight can only be studied discontinuously--they are the opposite of the frames of a movie being projected--where as the animation of the movies is only an apparent optical illusion of the running together of a long sequence of many discrete stills, the streams of consciousness of frames of mind are not the derivative effect, but the primary experience of Mind, where as its analysis and study entails 'slowing it down' to appear as if it were a sequential series of skills. The transformational development of Frames of Mind can only be discontinuously apprehended over the long run. Frames of Mind are set of relations between things rather than sets of things--they provide formula for the ordering of relationships between things. Different Frames of Mind can describe the same set of things in essentially different ways. Every world view, every theory, every field of inquiry is made up of multiple, overlapping frames of mind--every Frame of Mind encompasses a plethora of different world views, theories, fields of inquiry. Frames of Mind have thematic unity, and provide thematic unity of understanding to diverse sets of date, things, relations. Frames of Mind are basically 'meta physical' and the relations they are based on are irreducibly 'meta logical'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Frames of Mind are culture historical phenomena--they are like languages and cultures in that they have an historical integrity and a kind of synergism which makes them unique, and yet Mind is like language and culture in the sense that all somehow share a similar set of universal characteristics which define them across time and across the entire range of variation. Frames of Mind are like 'culture areas' or language groups which are defined on the basis of phylogenetic relationship.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Frames of Mind are our way of understanding from a historical perspective in terms of its contextual articulation. They cannot be understood of distinguished outside of the frameworks of understanding which we superimpose upon the relationships which constitute it or the language by which we interpret it--Frames of Mind are subject to the same kinds of biases and problems of interpretation which all historical phenomena are prone to--they can be constrained by the world view which predominates and dictates their reinterpretation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The understanding of Frames of Mind provide an approach to the resolution of the paradox of history--the dilemma of rewriting the past as a reflection of the present. Relational phenomena of the past were independent of present and yet in some measure events of the present are not independent of relational phenomena of the past--transcribing Frames of Mind is by demonstration of how the present is or is not an indirect representation of the past without the surreptitious projection of ideology. It involves reconstructing the past as an 'independent event' of the present which nevertheless has its own historical sense of precursory relations. Events of a past become written in terms of a previous lost sense of the past which is independent of the sense of the present. Frames of Mind are Frames of Difference, focusing upon the relativizing differences inherent in historical processes of change. Unlike world views they are not collectivizing orientations, but detotalizing and relativizing orientations, serving to historically isolate sets of relational phenomena within their contexts of understanding and articulation. They exist culture historically as the necessary counterpoint to any collectivizing world view, assuming that all world views cannot be total or absolute in a sense of not being subject to processes of historical change. Reconstructing past frame of Mind is a hermeneutical problem of philology. It is a vital and prerequisite problem if contextualization of the past in terms of the past in a non-ideological manner is desired. At no point is the collectivity of humankind comprehended by a single world view or paradigm--each point of time is characterized by a plurality of perspectives and multiplicity of points of view which provides the chaotic tension of the times--the dramatic sense of culture historical importance. Past Frames of Mind provided the motivations and the rationalizations for historical action which are basically lost to our present world view. We cannot fully reconstruct these past frameworks of mind, but we can come to a sense of their critical differences through the ideological disinvestment of our own Frames of Mind and through seeking the unity of Mind which constitutes the principle identity of humankind. In such a search for lost difference, no stone can be left unturned, no matter how 'irrelevant' or trivial, whether in relation to our own fields of view of to those of other culture historical contexts. We can do no better than the excoriation of identity to get to the problematic core of basic, underived differences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Frames of Mind are always heterogeneous and complex interactive phenomena encompassing the complete local context and configuring this against a general universal context of possibility. They are continuously dynamic in that they are subject to historical changes and process of transformation. And yet different Frames of Mind share similar sets of things or relations between things, recomposed differentially--the total range of which may actually be finite and limited and the relations between which may be systematically ordered in some complex manner. Different Frames of Mind are united by a common ground in the possibilities of mind--sharing a similar relational context which allow the possibility of intercommunication and mutual recognition and understanding between peoples.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND THE EXPERIENCE OF STRESS</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolic disequilibrium between experience and environment induces a state of cognitive dissonance--cognitive dissonance leads to a need to assimilate new environment to one's experiential expectations or to accommodate ones expectations to new environmental problems. Cognitive dissonance is the expression of the experience of stress which is created by inexorable change. Stress becomes expressed cognitively, emotionally and motivationally. Stress is a symptom of experiential disease of the self in the environment. Overwhelming stress leads to a breakdown of the mind as an adaptive mechanism for the mediation of change in the environment--trauma may result in a 'conversion experience' which leads to a consequential experiential inflexibility--a fixation upon the stimulus of the traumatic event. Pathology of mind--disintegration of the identity of being--is the long term consequence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">MIND AS AN ADAPTIVE MECHANISM</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Natural 'mind' evolved as a super organic adaptive mechanism or managing change in the environment. It evolved at the level of the individual human being, as a dual cybernetic system--an integrated natural sign system and natural symbol system focused exclusively upon perceptual images. The dialectical synthesis of a natural sign and symbol system was a primitive ideational system of mental images derived from experience--perceptual events. This ideational system may have been largely un-self-reflexive. Symbols remained 'sign oriented' and the natural environment was largely a 'sign dominated environment'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The evolutionary ecology of 'mind' sign systems were 'mechanisms of selective perception' allowing reduction of noise and indeterminacy in complex natural environments--allowing maximization of carrying capacity of environmentally adaptive information for purposes of 'organic communication'--biological transmission.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolization of signs allowed for a greatly increased order of information processing, arising as a 'learning' or 'stimulus generalizing mechanism' which enabled 'adaptive radiation' into a broad range of environments. Symbols were largely perceptual images--concepts remained 'concrete' and 'non-abstract' . symbols become general purpose tools that could be carried into different environments--tools were general purpose symbols which allowed adaptive flexibility in different environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The picture which emerges is one of small groups--family sized micro-bands spreading out from clan sized macro-bands. Small group survival depended upon the selective fitness of the individual. Adaptive radiations may have comprised only a small series--a wave of a few hundred or a few thousand individuals in a kind of 'outward movement'. The ability of 'mind' to function as a sign/symbol system in complex environments--not just in hunting but also in gathering adaptations, lead to 'environmental generalizations'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Two or three such 'adaptive radiations' are apparently recorded in the hominid fossil record--the earliest is the highly successful Homo Erectus. Later the adaptive radiation of Archaic Homo Sapiens. Finally came the radiation of Modern Homo Sapiens in the upper Paleolithic 50-35,000 BP.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is impossible that these early adaptive radiations were characterized by mechanisms of species wide 'self selection'--preferential mating of 'successful hunters/gatherers' and a gradual loss or culling of less fit members. This early selective mechanism focused upon the mother infant bond which promoted longer post partum infant dependency periods, a reduction in the rate of ontogenic development, selecting for greater cognitive growth and longer periods of 'learning'. Poor mothers would have been unsuccessful in reproduction. Crucial to infant cognitive development would have been peripatetic exploratory behavior, encouraging 'field independence'. Infant orality--putting things into the mouth might have selected for mothers who were able to keep a careful eye upon their infants and who knew the environment and yet who allowed children to explore.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Saltational episodes, early evolutionary events, were probably complex phases of rapid reproduction and population growth, perhaps stimulated by the introduction of new symbols or new 'discoveries' and perhaps preceded by a previous phase of population reduction or adaptive contraction which bottle necked a gene pool. Rapid reproductive increase and selection favored cognitive reorganization of 'mind' promoting symbolization. Successful 'cognitive' adaptation favored selective increase of the population, leading to a gradually slowing adaptive radiation, which gradually modified the 'new traits'. This process did not happen all at once, but took place in a series of 'steps'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this view, symbolic culture as an ideational system that is conceptually oriented and highly abstract is largely an 'epi-phenomena' of human evolution--a burgeoning development of human 'cultural evolution' (development) which emerged more recently and slowly but exponentially began to depart from the tract of human biological evolution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Seen in this light, culture either as process or as material artifact is largely a secondary, derivative phenomena occurring long after the cognitive evolution of human 'mind' as an adaptive mechanism in complex environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Regulatory mechanism of 'culture' and 'cultural ecology' the bio-psychological functions of culture arose after the evolution of human mind, as secondary development and involved the development of the ideational systems component of 'mind' as a symbolic system--putting to service a symbolic system which had its own reasons in a previous evolutionary epoch.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Pre-cultural symbol systems were 'natural symbol systems'--symbols derived directly from nature. These systems served several interrelated functions--their primary function was to mediate changes in complex environments--by the framing of events by 'cognitive maps' derived from previous experiences. The empowerment offered by 'symbols' is to be found still in their evocative function to elicit modes, moods, memories and physiological and psychological responses which have their origin in 'instinct'--whether it is mass hysteria, stress response, hypnosis, exotic ritual, mass media preoccupied with sex and violence. They create the illusions of fear, of the separation of death and non-beingness, which have their symbolic source in the biological being of the primeval human being. The behavioral and physio-psychological responses symbol systems evoke are discrete and measurable. Natural symbols order an d channel such responses into appropriate patterns. The return to the communitas of 'primitive states' of being is a natural inclination.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols stand intermediately between ideational and sign systems, serving to mediate and integrate these levels into a coherent 'whole'. This relates to the symbolic system function of individual identification in the dialectic between being and non-being. Symbol systems provide a 'cognitive identity of experience' of the individual which allows functional adaptation to strange environments. This begins at the perceptual level--the identity of perceptions--and becomes a cultural ideational identity of conception. With the development of culture, natural mind of the individual becomes displaced by the rational mind of the culture bearer.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">With evolutionary development of mind, sign, symbol and ideational functions differentiate and become more systematically distinct.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">With the development of culture history, symbol system come to have a higher, separate ideational function which is critically related to the organization structure of the social order. At this cultural order, natural symbol systems come to have a sign system function which becomes contextually bounded and conventionally non-arbitrary, tied by proximity to other symbols and come to have a 'cultural evolutionary and culture ecological' super organic purpose. In their ideological functional, abstract idea symbols cease to be arbitrary in their implicit arbitrariness--having a functional significance of their own, distinguishes from the sign function of natural mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">WORLD VIEW AND CYBERNETIC SYSTEMS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The 'world view' of 'mind/language/culture' defines a centeredness of overlap and integrative congruence between sign systems, symbol systems and idea systems as a single cybernetic system. As sign systems, idea and symbol systems are subject to the same kinds of constraints as all sign systems but as an idea and symbol systems they become used 'both ways'--as sign systems and as symbol systems and as ideational systems--the constraints as if signs are lifted as symbols and ideas.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is possible to cross reference sign, symbol and idea systems with analytical categories of mind, language and culture, and to investigate the relations between each of the nine combinations of the matrix.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is also possible to speculate about the evolutionary order of development of 'world view' from signs to symbols to ideas, as a sequential unfolding of increasing sophistication. This sequence is reflected in the development of writing--from idiographic and rhebus and syllabic signs to alphabetic world symbols to modern concepts; but it is more likely that 'primitive' 'signs/symbols/ideas' co-evolved together into more complex 'signs/symbols/ideas'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a sense of systems rooted in percepts--in perception based experience--and of 'primitive systems' adaptive function to process perceptual information. 'Sign systems' remain basically perceptually rooted systems, though the signs may become conceptually abstracted from root percepts. Symbols systems are anchored to sign percepts, concrete or abstracted, but float loosely upon the conceptual, completely abstracted level. Idea systems are no longer so anchored to percept based signs.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">An 'etic' view of 'world view' would interpret symbol and idea patterns as 'sign systems' in the way that the natural sciences elicit from patternings of natural events basic ordering rules. An 'etic' view depends upon the 'natural ordering' of human cybernetic systems, of symbols and ideas, as if 'signs' and attempts to elicit what the rules for such a natural arrangement might be. An 'emic' view deals with symbol systems as symbols, idea systems as ideas and symbols, and tends to treat all human sign systems as if symbolic and ideational.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As sign systems the cybernetics of 'world view' has 'nothing but' significance--but as 'symbol systems' they have 'something more' importance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SYMBOLIC TRAITS AND METAPHORICAL FUNCTIONS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The cohesive structure of symbols confers upon them other traits and other functions as metaphors which are ordering principles in the patterning of symbolic conglomerations. Symbols have depth and a multidimensionality which allow them to recur and co-occur upon several metaphorical levels of significance simultaneously. This accounts for their 'duality' of design--they function not only as signs at the level of signification and as multiple metaphors at the level of salience, but they also function metaphysically at a level of general relevance which is primarily abstract. These three levels are designated as 1) metonymical significance, 2) metaphorical relevance, 3) metaphysical importance. Each of these levels is characterized by the degree of contextual dependence/independence of function.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A limited number of symbols can be used in an almost infinite number of possible combinations to create an endless variety of combinations. Nominal symbols refer to 'things' or other symbols--'verbal symbols' refer to relations between things or symbols. Summarizing symbols refer to whole sets of symbols, elaborating symbols elucidate a single symbol. Dominant or master or key symbols are focal symbols which subsume or summarize symbolic conglomerations. Strong symbols have strong cohesive characteristics, weak symbols weak cohesiveness. Hard symbols are less fuzzy and more determinate--soft symbols have greater conglomerations and less determinacy. Peripheral symbols occur upon the margins of conglomerations, core symbols occur near the center. Dependent symbols modify independent or unbound symbols. Abstract symbols are mostly metaphysical--concrete symbols mostly metonymical. Orienting symbols and organizational symbols are used to order symbolic conglomerations--to 'center' them structurally. Independent symbols stand alone--accreting their own significance or meaning free of context, or making their own context.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Besides sharing all their design features of human language, such as semanticity, prevarication, truth value, duality, hierarchy, displacement, etc., symbols also have other characteristic functions. Symbols may be synonymous or antynonymous. Symbols function analogically and carrying meaning which is metalogical. Symbols are both reflexive and referential. They are arbitrary. Symbols must occur in arrangements which are internally non-contradictory and externally consistent with other symbols or experiential reality. Despite their fuzziness and plasticity symbols cannot be erroneous or out of order in arrangement. Despite arbitrariness, symbolic arrangements follow conventions and are constrained in an unrestricted sense.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SYMBOLIC CONGLOMERATIONS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolic cohesiveness allows symbols to be aggregated into conglomerations or congregations of various sizes. A minimum number of symbols may form 'sets' or clusters--clusters may be congregated into larger sets or 'complexes' of associated clusters which may in turn be further aggregated to form entire 'constellations' which have a centeredness of gravitational attraction. Constellations are grouped to form whole cultural galaxies--what might be referred to as 'civilizations' of symbolic forms. These civilizations occur within a single integrate cultural continuum referred to as the symbolic universe. Symbol 'sets' of various orders have different integrational functions experiences--presenting themselves in a series, ordered one after another. They are read as a cultural narrative of experiences, or 'events' which are sequential in arrangement. Symbolic complexes organize domains of experience--different categories of complexes produce different categories of experience--they are 'trains of events' or separable, qualitatively distinct, 'episodes' of experience. Symbolic constellations order different symbolic complexes as 'trait complexes' which have a particular spatio-temporal locus. Symbolic constellations resemble bounded 'cultures' within a given geographical locale and historical period. They are an arrangement of a series of episodes into a particular cultural historical 'epoch'. This is the level of experience which has received the greatest attention by traditional cultural anthropology. 'Epoch' are ordered or arranged into a culture historical tradition of civilization which frequently has a specifiable boundary or set of long term growth patterns. Frequently this has been called 'culture area' and has become a way of parsing the globe in terms of cultural geography. Traditional civilizations tend to span several distinctive epochs, and may have a 'civilizing influence' extending well beyond boundaries of political control. What characterizes symbolic constellations and galaxies are not so much defining boundaries so much as 'complex centers' and the distances between such centers. Complexity 'centers' symbolic congregations--such complexity is made up of the local or regional integration of symbolic complexes--several such complexes or sets of complexes overlapping in such a way as to provide a symbolic unity of experience or of different sets of experiences in an orderly and organic manner. Within a tradition such centers go through a developmental cycle which leads to 'cultural evolution'--the branching of traditions into different directions, the coming together of other traditions, their extinction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">CRYSTALLYTIC STRUCTURE OF SYMBOLISM</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectical 'signs/symbols/ideas' cohere into 'symbolisms' of mind--salient focal points upon the culture historical landscape. Symbolisms are the nodal points of the symbolic networks--the points of overlap, conjunction and disjunction along symbolic pathways. They are critical points of transition or transformation of mind, from one state of beingness to another.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms have a characteristic 'crystallytic' structure--their reiteration and conglomeration forms recognizable complex patterns which have a sense of symmetry, order and balance but which are infinitely variable in design. Symbolisms are able to refract dialectical mind through many different facets of beingness simultaneously. Similar symbolisms within larger complexes take on characteristic, characterizable forms which serve to distinguish them from other kinds of symbolisms--one symbolism will have a similar structure as a similar symbolism--however separated in space and time and though the actual symbolic markers or components may be heterogeneous and quite different from one another.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is this crystallytic structure which allows different kinds of symbolism to integrate into organic complexes which then come to have a super organic or synergistic function. Symbolisms have definite compatibilities and complementarities with other kinds of symbolisms which allow them to become functionally integrated and specialized.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolism have their original function in the individual's beingness in the world--and though they may be integrated to form complex organisms, these larger entities come to reflect and take on many of the basic characteristics of these symbolism on an independent, individual level. Complex symbolism thus become organized into patterns which resemble the organic organization of the individual. This allows us to compare levels of symbolic integration in homologous and cybernetically related ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The crystallytic structure of symbolism not only determines their patterns of development but sets the critical limits to the growth in complexity of symbolisms, beyond which they are subject to 'random events' which increase the likelihood of their disintegration over time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The crystallytic structure of symbolisms makes their growth somewhat self organizing and also self limiting. It also creates symbolic 'resonances' or reverberations which tend to become 'self amplifying' and inter-integrative between different kinds of symbolisms--growth and decay in some symbolisms becomes reflected in the facets of other symbolisms.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">BASIC SIMPLEXITY AND DERIVED COMPLICITY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols oriented toward the natural environment have a basic simplicity about their design and function,--they are 'simplex' in the way that they network mind. Symbols which are derived from ideational constructs and which are oriented toward ideas have a fundamental complexity or 'complicity' about their design and function. Simplexity is basic and 'primitive' symbolic structure--complicity is always a 'derived' form. Symbolisms develop from simple forms and functions into complex forms and functions--they go from a general use design to one which is special purpose. Basic symbols and derived symbolisms thus organize mind in fundamentally different ways--the former being 'extensive' in orientation and the latter being 'intensive'. Growth of basic symbol is like an explosion diffusing outward from a center of origin--derived symbols 'implode' in an ever increasing complexity towards a center.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Simplex symbols form different inter-relational patterns than complex symbolisms. Simplex symbolisms interrelate with a limited number of other symbolisms in many different ways--each symbolism comes to take on an independent identity of function which cannot be easily substituted by other symbolisms in the network. Symbolism come to take on a variety of functions which gives them a versatility but which limits its capacity for any single kind of function. Symbolisms come to have an externally undifferentiated design.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Complicit symbolisms take on special purpose functions which come to define their relationship to other symbolisms--many different symbolisms perform many different, distinctive and discrete functions and these functions come to inter-integrate. One symbolism may be easily substituted for another--it is their function which remains indispensable.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">With simplex symbolisms discrete functions may be lost without destroying the integrity of the whole symbolism--the symbolism remains symbol oriented in its primary purpose. Complicit symbolisms become function oriented--individual symbolisms may be lost without disturbing the functions in relation to the whole.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Simplex symbols act as symbolic ideas organizing a plethora of environmentally inscribed signs--complicit symbolisms become as symbolic signs organizing a range of ideas. Simplex symbolism tend to be highly internally differentiated but grouped on the basis of external differences and intensive focus. Simplex ideas lack a focus, but have a locus within themselves--complicit ideas have a focus, a center, but lack an internal locus.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">EVOLTION OF SYMBOLS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolic conglomeration 'evolved' from simplexity into complexity--individual pathways formed networks of symbolic clusters which eventually coalesced into larger and larger centers. This 'evolution' is actually a matter of fairly continuous development of the culture historical continuum. There was always some minimal symbolic network of humankind--individual pathways were never completely disconnected or non-overlapping. And this minimal network arose out of and is directly rooted in a minimal 'biological network'--the social behavior required for species survival and propagation. And it is at this original 'baseline' that the first symbolic rudiments of human culture history are to be found. The symbolic capacity which later allowed the full scale development of culture history must have evolved at this first stage in terms of the rudimentary network pattern of humankind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SYMBO-LOGIC</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms, as systems and mechanism of mind, have a logic of its own which occurs at an unconscious level and which predetermines and preconditions conscious activity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This unconscious symbolic logic exhibits certain distinguishing characteristics--a recurrence and resonance of motifs, multiple overlapping motifs, a consistent and symmetrical ordering or arrangement of its components. The symbo-logic is largely an aesthetic symbolism and appeals to an individual's aesthetic sensibilities and sense of design.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The unconsciousness of symbo-logic is the symbolic context which is rooted culture historically to larger symbolic context of understanding. It is an embedded and embodied 'mythology' of meaning which reiterates and reinterprets and recreates a larger culture historical context and which speaks unconsciously through the individual 'enactor' who is the vehicle or voice for bringing it to the level of conscious manifestation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbo-logic is characteristically a hyperbolic mode of representation of reality--it involves a slight unconscious distortion to achieve its effect. It is this hyperbola which distinguishes symbo-logic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The logical aspect of symbolism is its sense of syntactic configuration or arrangement which gives it relational constancy of pattern across different contexts. Symbolic syntax is a kind of complex dialectic involving a multiple number of thematic components contra poised to one another and indirectly related through another mediating component. This syntax is hypertactic, syncretistic and synthetic in that it involves conjoining components by relational linkages. Symbols have a dual function in that they may be either thing or relation or both--symbols relate other symbols. Symbological syntax has a 'shadow' effect, a translative and transformative consequence, and a reflectivity of symbolism such that one symbol is tuned into other symbols which are contextually related.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the systematicity of symbo-logic in their articulation and manifestation which allow symbolisms to be configured into complex, sophisticated arrangements of design and to cohere into 'cultural historical' complexes. Symbolism become 'woven' together in the worf and weft of time and space to create a tapestry of meaning which represents and reflects the reality in which it exists.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Part of the syntax of symbolism are the dialectics or the logic of opposites, of infinite reduction and the multifaceted 'profiles; of composite 'structures'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">RELATIONAL LOGIC</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The basis of symbo-logos is relational logic--that set of principles governing relations between things and the contextuality of things. Relational logic transcribes signs into different signs and involves the translation of symbolism from spatial to temporal or temporal to spatial dimensions--relational logic is spatio-temporal. It is hyper physical in that the relations which it governs are beyond the purview of physical principles governing the relations between signs. They are relations of partial identity and relative differences between things based on ascribed values or importance assigned within a culture historical framework or 'hermeneutic circle'. This relational logic is nevertheless syntactically systematic and forms the basis of the structure of the unconscious as it is embedded and embodied in the relational context. It is based on the hypostatization of the relation between things and the reification of the attribution as if it were a 'thing' which embodies the identity and differences of the things being related. The strength of the attribution is based on the number of aspects of similarity and differences which it encompasses between things. For instance, round balls of different sizes are related on the basis of 'roundness' but distinguished on the basis of girth. If such balls were of a similar color and surface texture then they would held to be more alike even though their sizes were vastly different. Relational logic involves a balancing and a weighing of similarities and differences between things to determine the strength of weakness of the relationship.. it allows different objects to be taxonomically related on the basis of the number of shared affinities or ascribed characteristics and thus forms a taxonomy which is polythetic and non-hierarchical in structure.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">These taxons tend to cross cut the physical perceptual ordering of experience even though the two sets overlap and are frequently contiguous. Principles of relational logic include: 1) Things spatio temporally proximate are more alike than things distal. 2) Things of similar shape or form or of similar sequential ordering are more alike than things of different form or sequential ordering. 3) Things which share a number of physical traits are more alike than things which have more differences between physical traits. 4) Things which are symmetrical in design are more alike than things which are asymmetrical. 5) Things which share the same set of contextual relations are more alike than things which have different sets of contexts. 6) Relations are more alike than things which have different sets of contexts. 6) Relations between things tend to be hyperbolic such that similarities or differences tend to be overemphasized or de-emphasized such that emphasis of the former leads to a conflation of identity and emphasis of the latter leads to contra distinction of differences. 7) Similarities tend to be positively values and differences tend to be negatively valued. 8) Things become relatively ranked according to their net positive and negative values. 9) Things of higher positive or negative rank tend to have more salience--the extremes tend to be emphasized and the middle ground excluded. 10) The systematic exclusion of the of the middle range of value leads to the hypostatization of absolute values of identity and difference between relational taxons. 11) These relational values become reified as substitutes for the elements of the taxons. 12) There is a systematic process of substitution, Grisham's Law, such that hyperbolic values and attributes tend to drive out or displace actual relations. 13) Previous values tend to lose their relational salience and become continuously replaced by more salient values, which in turn begin to lose their salience. 14) The greater the valence between things the greater the salience. 16) The greater the salience the faster the rate of substitution. 17) Things of balanced valence tend to have neutral value and are the slowest to substitute--the rate of substitution is more even, gradual, continuous. 18) Neutral things tend to remain in the contextual background.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SYMBOLIC PATHWAYS AND EXPERIENTIAL STREAMS</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The function of symbolic congregations is to 'channel experience' along certain spatio temporal pathways--experience becomes channeled into continuous streams of meaning. Consciousness travels along these streams both through time and across space. Symbolic clusters constitute individual experiential pathways, arranging experience into a sequence of events--these pathways for networks at the level of symbolic complexes--symbolic networks situate individual experience into communities of relational, interpersonal experiences. Separate such symbolic networks may converge or overlap into a complex aggregation with develops a 'locative' center orienting different orders of experience in an integrated way. A set of such centers forms a regional or interregional dynamic leading to a complementary functional integration or a widening sphere of influence extending over wide areas of space or continuing through long frames of time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">At symbolic centers, networks converge and overlap and take an essentially different structural character than in simple aggregations. In such a way it can be seen how individual streams of experience become channeled into converging common streams of cultural experience, which flow 'together' in centers which constitute 'pools' or experiential reservoirs. While pathways multiply and criss-cross in ever increasing social entanglements, streams of experience steadily converge into a collective pool. In such pools, 'collective experience' takes on a 'corporate' character, such that the total range of experience extends beyond the single spans of individual experiences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SYMBOLIC MAZEWAYS AND MENTAL MAPPING</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Experiential pathways structured symbolically into congregation and networks become a labyrinth of experience--a symbolic mazeway composed of corridors of movement and change, turning points, intersections, doorways and windows, walls and fences and open areas. The mazeway becomes an expression of symbolic unconsciousness, or the unconsciousness is the expression of the symbolic mazeway of mind--as it is composed of the collective 'unknown' pathways which represent possibilities of experience. The existential problematic of the individual is to learn how to negotiate these mazeways in a successful manner, such that movement down a corridor does not lead to a dead end but to gateways through which other openings may be found. We acquire 'cognitive maps' derived from our own or other people's experience--ideational symbolisms which 'map' onto the mazeway and allow us to successfully negotiate it. Mental 'maps' are cognitive constructions of experience of environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">CENTERS OF GRAVITY, CENTRIFUGALITY AND CENTRIPEDALITY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolic galaxies and cultural groupings have a centeredness of gravity about which all symbols become oriented. People and things become defined in relation to their centeredness. This field of gravity attracts and pulls everything towards the center--it is a great constraining force preventing movement from the center or crossing over to other cultural centers. The force at the center is much stronger than at the periphery--beingness at the center is much more constrained than beingness at the periphery.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Cultural centers have a centrifugality and a centripedality--things and people are thrown off from the center, diffusing outwardly and other things are pulled into the center through gravitational attraction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The push and pull of cultural centeredness is the result of symbolic displacement--two ideas of mind that cannot occupy the same point in time and the same place. Symbols have an inertia, mind has a beingness of its ideas. Movement of some ideas toward the center entails displacement of other ideas from the center--movement of ideas from the center creates a vacuum which draws in other ideas away from the center.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The center of gravity of a cultural grouping defines the structural integrity of that symbolic constellation, the web of relations--the culture historical fabric. The sense of integrity is greater at the center--the consistency and coherence. There is less ambiguity or uncertainty at the center. There is greater overlap between culture historical boundaries and spatio temporal boundaries. Reality at the center is much more highly 'structured'. There is greater momentousness of mind and culture historical momentum at the center. There is greater symbolic and relational 'density' at the center, hence greater inertia. The closer to the center something is drawn, the steeper the gradient for such movement, and the more difficult such movement becomes. There is hence greater degrees of displacement towards the center, with a corresponding greater centripedality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The center of gravity leads to an accretion of symbols toward the center, a gradual aggregation of such symbols until a critical phase line is surpassed, at which point forces of randomization begin to set in leading to the disintegration or disaggregation of the center.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SYMBOLIC UNIVERSES AND CULTURAL CONTINUUM</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A culture is a limited grouping of particular people in a given time or place--frequently circumscribed by a linguistic or territorial boundary--or it is the distinctive way of life of such a grouping. A culture exists in history. A culture consists of a given 'galaxy' of symbolic constellations which accrete centrifugally about some 'center of gravity'. But culture are rarely if ever completely isolated from other cultures--there is always some degree of interchange across cultural borders. 'Culture' describes the pan cultural characteristics of humankind as it occurs through all time and across all space, and the 'cultural continuum' is complete range of intercultural relations and interchanges serving to situate separate, distinguishable cultural groupings within a larger field of relations. The cultural continuum encompasses all boundaries between cultural groupings, whether of space or time or of kind, as being semi-permeable and non-absolute. The cultural continuum itself has no recognizable boundaries--it encompasses the symbolic universe of humankind as the total, but infinite, range of symbolic variations and combinations available through space and time. The symbolic universe has no edges and no beyond in an extensive sense, except the unknowables of death and non-beingness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is moot point to ask whether there are not multiple symbolic universes. There are as many separable symbolic universes as there have been cultural galaxies and symbolic constellation with their own center of gravity. These differences though are intensive and qualitative--there may be infinite variations upon common themes, and no definite historical boundaries but these remain many variations upon a finite number of common themes. Cultural galaxies may be internally and intensively infinite, but they remain always extensively bounded and finite in the fixed range of its variations. Intensively, there are multiple symbolic universes, but extensively there remains only one, and that is the symbolic universe of the cultural continuum--the human universe of 'culture' as a defining characteristic of humankind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though there are no extensive boundaries of the cultural continuum, there are definitely recognizable 'horizons' of our understanding of its universe, beyond which our knowledge gives way to the unknown. As we approach our human horizons, knowledge gives way to ignorance, and is replaced by myth and prejudice until we are no longer able to deal in a scientific world of fact but in one of fiction. And this is an approximate matter--approaching an ever receding point of absolute zero--or of absolute nothingness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">DIALECTICS AND DICHOTOMIES</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dialectical tradition reaches back to Plato and Aristotle and took the form of discursive argument between an opponent and a respondent in which the arguments were framed in a syllogistic arrangement. It was not demonstrative in the way that syllogistic logic was held to be, nor was it rhetorical or convincing as 'eristic'--the success of the dialectic was to achieve an effective and relatively objective question and answer dialogue about some central theme of discussion. This dialectic tradition formed the basis of western scholastic tradition up until the 18<sup>th</sup> century--it was the core part of the curriculum of every major European university with but minor variations. Even so, dialectics in the traditional sense has fallen by the wayside as a polemical practice, with few surviving records of its many instances, or else it has come down to us 'Hegelian Dialectics' which involves a transcendent synthesis as an intrinsic part of the counterpoint between thesis and antithesis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The important point is that our academic tradition remains steeped in an embedded tradition of dialectical practice though it has become largely unaware the extent of its influence in the modern world. Dialectics allows for a thematic dichotomization of reality between a thesis and its opposite antithesis--an affirmation of identity and the negative denial of difference. It is this dichotomization of human reality which provides the consistent and extended tension of reason and relevance for theoretical polemic and discourse--it also opens the way for falsification and prevarication of truth.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dichotomization of human reality is a consequence of the pervasiveness of the dialectical tradition. Such a tradition has been rooted in the importance of basic oral dialogue as a fundamental part of the socio cultural fabric of language in a public forum. Dialogue and discursive practice is at the heart of dialectics as a tradition of intellectual practice, and dialectics was principally and purposely achieved by means of such dialogical exercise. It also points up in the dichotomization of reality between thesis and antithesis the essential duality of human understanding and meaning systems as these are projected symbolically within cultural contexts. Basic terms such as identity/difference, being and non-being, means/end, rational/relative, mind/body, nature/culture, male/female, becomes the focal center point for such dialectical discourse, pursued formally and informally as an exploratory intellectual exercise in asking and answering questions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SYMBOLISM OF CYCLICAL TIME</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All time is cyclical--the circle is the only method of for the measurement of time. The circle and the center of the circle are the symbolic embodiments and spatialized representations of time (the clock).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The exact, ever diminishing perfect center of the circle is the symbol of perfect, eternal time--time which transcends changing and comprehends absolute peace. It is perfectly motionless time. Concentric circles about the center expresses relative time which is also real and incomplete time. It is the time of the cosmic which is in endless movement about the center. The circle represents infinity--as the endless movement of time in space. Distance from the center is the relative degree of change. The further from the center the greater the rate of change, the faster the movement of time. All change emanates from the center and orients itself around the center in cyclical revolutions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Linear time is the unfolding of cyclical time projected upon a single plane. Linear time becomes spatialized time. The view from the center must see linear time as 'progressive' and purposive--as an evolution of events unfolding in a determined direction of change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The center constitutes the greatest degree of control over change. It represents absolute control. It is the symbol of the Oculus or the pan optical eye of the cosmos--the omniscient knower or envisor of truth.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The number of revolutions counted from the baseline of time are the indexes of measurement of the degree of change from a point of origin. Time is spiraling out worldly.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Journeying closer to the center is to embody greater timelessness as the center of being. Journeying to the center is a journey to absoluteness--absolute power, truth and time. Standing at the center of the circle is to empower oneself with an omnipotency and omnipresence of spirit. It is a symbolic and ritual act of absolute control.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Spirit always exist at the motionless, changeless center--the exact center of the hub of the spokes of the turning wheel.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Emotionally, the center is the point of origin. It is the womb of the mother. The essence of the female element. Time and change become a male-female dialectic of roundness and straightness, pole and fountain, etiphallic penis and vulva.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Natural time is time ordered periodicities and sequences of events--eclipses, waxing and waning of moons, diurnal/nocturnal rhythms, biological cycles, seasonalities of plants and the growth cycles of animals, living and dying.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Calendrical time is ordered cosmologically by the counting of the cycles of the sun and the moon. There is agricultural time and historical time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mechanical time, clock time, machine time and developmental time of the modern era with increasing degrees of the symbolic directions of time. Time is linearized and vectorial in its symbolization of force.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Cybernetic time are the cycling of systems of information--the rate and capacity of the flow of information. Scientific time is symbolic of prediction and control of physical processes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SYMBOLIC ECOTONES</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms and systems of symbolization evolve boundaries and borders in the regions of mind which define the limits of their adaptiveness and functioning. These boundaries might be described as symbolic ecotones which serve to separate different symbol systems and to control and constrain the interaction between outer and inner regions demarcated by the boundaries.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Different kinds of symbolisms may overlap to some extent, and thus integrate to form a large system, but symbolism of the same order or kind tend to be mutually exclusive of one another which it becomes the function of the ecotone to maintain separation and distance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ecotones are the edges of the adaptive radiations of symbolisms in culture history. They are the adaptive boundaries of time and space which determine where and when one style or trait ends and another takes over.</p> <hr> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PART VIII</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="5">SCIENCE AND SENSE</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><b><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="2"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/hughmlewis/">by Hugh M. Lewis</a></font></b></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We live in the modern age of science. Science has become our primary sense making view of the world and it has been spectacularly successful in making sense of our world, at least from a secular point of view. Our modern technological civilization vindicates the efficacy of science and is vindicated by science. Its efficacy in our world is undeniable and unavoidable--anywhere we turn in our world we find its effects and consequences. We have created a good system based upon science, it works very well and we are sticking with a good thing as long as it lasts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But in the total history of human civilization, science is only a very recent and late development. It has really only been within a single century out of three hundred or so centuries that science can be said to have come into its own and that the great majority of its achievements have been witnessed. Even the last decade has seen the development of new ideas and new applications which far exceeded anything possible before.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is to be legitimately wondered what the 'structure of the long run' holds for scientific development and whether such a new good thing can last forever or really be so miraculous as some of its practitioners and preachers would want us to believe. Danger signals have already gone off in many different areas of the world and it has been the 'pure scientists' themselves (separating themselves from the technologically 'applied' scientists) who has sounded the first warnings concerning global tends in the development of modern technological civilization. Will we and our earth survive our scientific madness or will our sciences survive our own madness? And even if science does not survive past our modern era, will it continue to grow and prosper at its current near exponential rate or must it eventually overstep its own horizons and reach a kind of plateau of understanding which is able to claim once and for all 'this is the way the world mostly is'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What direction will we turn in our world if and when our science runs out on us? And what will science become like once it has exhausted most of its possibilities of patterning and potentialities and what will the world then have become?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Does science have natural limits and if so what are the consequences of overstepping these boundaries? Will we then seek out another sense making view of the world once we have gone beyond the horizons of science?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another way of asking these questions of science is to question whether science will continue to remain as dependable as it has become in answer and finding lasting solutions to most of our environmental predicaments and existential problems. Will its solutions hold out as stable and permanent or will they in turn lead to other sets and kinds of problems and predicaments which goes beyond its own sense making capacities or will its sense making success and solutions remain viable and efficacious in the long run. If not, then what must we find to substitute for its solutions, if there are such substitutes possible?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Can we even ask, much less answer such questions in a realistic way?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From a philosophical perspective, the study of culture history is situated well within the humanities as fundamentally separate domain and kind of understanding as the sciences--it shares in the Geisteswissenschaftlich vessel versus the Naturwissenschaft of the scientific Weltangshung. The 'two ways of knowing reality' are held to consist of two fundamentally separate and distinctive 'modes of experiencing' human reality which have different kinds of consequences for each--the former objectifies experience as to its phenomenological immediacy and leads to an endless circle of patterning within other patterns, while the latter objectifies experience according too its 'causal efficacy' and leads to a parsimonious chain of reasoning about the basic structure of 'how the world works'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But it is the central dilemma of culture history to be positioned between both the horns of academic understanding--it can neither fully accept the methodological constraints of science in the study of human reality and yet it can neither completely reject the efficacy and realism of the scientific attitude and its 'frame of mind'. It must somehow reconcile itself between with both the inanities and the virtues of the two academic cultures of the sciences and the humanities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Like its close cousins in the social sciences; psychology, sociology and anthropology, culture history is left over to define itself betwixt and between the two cultures of academia--in this case more to the left of the social 'sciences' and therefore closer to the fold of the humanities. It is therefore faced with a crises of identity in defining to the world and for the world its own efficacy and reason for being in the world, and this crises of identity threatens to undermine the entire program as a legitimate field of study, as a valid 'sense making' view of the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The resolution of its dilemma of identity rests with the recognition of the unity of experience such that there are not really two separate modes of experience, but in actuality two extremes of a single continuum of experience. The scientific modality is but a more rigorous and systematically constrained version while the modality of the humanities is more loosely, metaphorically interpretative and less well defined. The unity of experience of human reality is primarily symbolic, whether it is taken metaphorically or more strictly as is the case in the sciences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The culture historical study of science does not simply critique it from the antithetical standpoint of the perspective of the humanities, it proffers in its stead an alternative version of that science--of how science normally makes sense of our world and how we make sense of our science.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From this standpoint, science is not regard culture historically as just paradigm of certain specific world views, but also as certain kinds of 'frames of mind' which have a certain culture historical provenience in reality. As 'frames of mind' the sciences share with the study of culture history certain non-ideological yet reflexive metalogical attributes of mind--science in its openness and generality shares with culture history the virtue of a 'meta paradigmatic' perspective of mindness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Like the philosophy of science to which it is related, the culture history of science seeks to find a meta physical framework in which fit our understanding of the role, purpose and functioning of science in our world, but it goes beyond such a kind of analysis in attempting to see the general patterning of science within its proper culture historical contexts and to see science as a particular kind of system of symbolization of the world and in the world. It is with such a view of science that culture history can proffer an alternative model or version of what science is supposed to be and how it is supposed to work and why it is important to be studied.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">*****</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is interesting to compare the two modes of experience as fundamental differences between two cultures of the sciences and the humanities as being fundamentally related to the differences between mind and world view and between beingness and non-being in the world. Though this would over simplify the realities involved in scientific praxis it is an interesting and not irrelevant point of entry in understanding the culture history of science as both paradigmatic and un-paradigmatic, as both generalizing and particularizing, as both ideological and non-ideological, in its many manifestations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is also important to realize that like culture history, the study of science has been engaged in a dialectic of symbolic discourse about a central directional axis of its development as 'frames of mind'. It is as dialectic and as directional development that culture history must frame the understanding of the 'mindness of science'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science has become the dominant world view of our modern age, and it has paradoxically also become the main frame of mind informing or sensibilities about our world. Science, from an insider's point of view, claims to be fundamentally, exclusive secular in orientation but from another standpoint it has come to take on important religious and ideological status in fulfilling the void of the non-secular religious traditions which it basically usurped in the world. In its secular status, it has a fundamental relationship to 'common sense' in which it is rooted and from which it grows. The growth of science has meant fundamental change in our sense of commonness and common sense understanding of the world--before its success common sense was informed primarily by the nonscientific religious and ideological beliefs which elevated it from the world of the secular to the levels of the divine. There is nothing divine about the world of science except science itself, and common sense has come to reflect this changed outlook upon the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science in its theory and praxis and in its secular success in the world, leads to philosophical speculation about its status, its relevance, its structure and process, its ontological, metaphysical and epistemological basis in the world, and the human relationship to it. Science as sense is derived from and reflected by the philosophy of its theory and praxis. It is by understanding systematically how and why science is rooted in and derived from common sense that we may arrive at a model of both science and sense as constrained by a secular (non-religious) world view and a fundamentally 'open' 'frame of mind'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Neither science nor sense are simple phenomena in the world--both embody contradictions of understanding and both entail contradictions of understanding in relation to one another, which renders a philosophy of such understanding extremely problematic and paradoxical. But both have a special and related significance when they become interrelated in their symbolic representations of 'human reality' as being both about human science and human sense--or the science and senseness of human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The understanding and philosophy of science or of common sense cannot be divorced from an understanding of humanness, or of the sense of being human in the world. To claim that science rests upon principles and premises which come before or exist beyond the purview of our human symbolically mediated experience of events in the world is to claim a non-secular (i.e. ideological) status for both science and sense in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Scientists who see themselves as 'pure' like to think of themselves as fundamentally non-ideological and not committed by their science one way or another to issues in the world. This is an elitist viewpoint which guards the neutrality of science as a prerequisite to its objectivity and success in the world. For these people, science has a special charger and a privileged role in the world which mandates its separateness and distance. It is a simple matter to don a white lab jacket and thereby foster the illusion of special importances and power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Thus robed, scientists do not begin looking unlike many other orders of priest which see themselves apart with a special mission to accomplish in the world. And like other priesthood the scientists have their methodical rituals, their taboos and prohibitions, their shared lore and their formulas and incantations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">And if 'pure science' itself has not really or is not permitted to take on the trappings of a religion, it is without doubt that science 'in the world'--as it is realized by its many practitioners, popularizers and professors--does take on many of the characteristics of a religion, however secularized it may be. Science as it is interpreted and articulated in the world, cannot but help take on the connotations of any kind of body of belief and praxis of the world, and cannot avoid coming full circle as something less non-ideologically than it is purported to be. Even the notion of a 'perfect science' is so strikingly ideological with its implications of progressiveness and purity, that we are left to abandon the whole argument of the non-ideological status of science as an absurdity of ideological self denial.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are left to rethink what is meant by the term 'science' and to reconsider its actual, versus its apparent, ontological status in the world. Science as a world view is inescapably paradigmatic and ideological. As an ideology of the world, it is also fundamentally mythological--it is a dialectic about reality which embodies its own sets of contradictions and which also creates its own resolutions to its contradictions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As modern myth, science constitutes a human cultural orientation with its own foci and its own configurations and styles, and with its own set of core values which characterizes it and leads to its constitution. It is also a phenomena of culture historical patterning with its own sense of distinctiveness and history in the making.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To understand culture historically the essential culture of science is to understand the core of or own modern civilization and to explain what we have become about with all our power and progress.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If and when our scientistic egos become endangered by such critique, we can attempt to unhook science from its ideological pegs by claiming somewhat tautologically that whatever in science that is ideological is therefore not real science, but 'scientism'. This is a convenient means of getting round the whole dilemma while still failing to address 'what is real about science' or 'what is pure science' if such a thing is necessarily 'non-ideological'. Another way of addressing this issue is to ask what is the critical difference between ideological and non-ideological, and why should 'non-ideological' be preferable, necessary condition for true science and on the other hand, what is inherently wrong with being 'ideological' which would make such a condition inimical to the purity of science? It seems that such a way out of the fundamental dilemma of science is not thusly resolved, but such attempts at maintaining the scientistic ego only result in an infinite regression of ideological denial and affirmation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">*******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The resolution of our dilemma comes from understanding the culture history of science as this is part of a larger culture historical process of modern civilization in the world. It is as a culture that science can be better seen for what it is as a sense making methodology of the world--it provides a way of experiencing human reality which is itself embedded within a larger culture historical context of experience--one that is preeminently materialistic, mechanistic, utilitarian, pragmatic, secular. It is world view which rigidly dichotomizes the world between true and false, between identity and difference, between what is and what isn't, between the natural and the supernatural. Within such dichotomies are found its dialectical patterning of mythology and the basis of both it ideological ontology and its claim to a special non-ideological status.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In understanding science as culture history we come to paradoxically to a better understanding of the 'science' of culture history and discover the common ground between the two ways of experience and also the crucial differences between them.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">*******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In regard to the ideological and ontological status of science in the world, we can adopt three points of view. The first is a 'pro scientific' attitude which sees the progress of science in the world as inevitable, as intrinsic to the process of science, and as leading to beneficial ways of improving the human condition on earth. It is our science which has made a difference between savagery and civilization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The second, 'sophisticated' attitude sees science as fundamentally neutral in the world--as a 'discipline of disinterested inquiry into the world'--and though it may be used in both negative and positive ways, science itself must, in the pursuit of its own progressive interests, remain indifferent to the human condition of the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It has been claimed that adherents to this philosophy are the very puppets of a larger social powers in the world--maintaining a neutral attitude of ignorance and arrogance, of scientific superiority in the world is a way of science as a culture of relinquishing any moral obligation to the world in the practice of their science. These sophisticated 'professors' are, from the standpoint of their world view no different from the pro-scientific promoters and preachers.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A third critical anti-scientific perspective views the practice of science as basically the paradigmatic pawn of power in the world--its progress benefits the few and actually may help to aggravate the predicament of the many others, even if unintentionally. This viewpoint holds that not only is its praxis morally corruptible, if not actually corrupt, but that the very world view and culture of science itself is fundamentally 'anti-life' in that its principles of progress are based upon prediction and control of natural phenomena which inevitably entails acts of destructive consequence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The anti-scientific attitude views the scientific mode of experiencing human reality as fundamentally destructive--learning the anatomy of the frog entails an analytical act of the destruction of the being of the frog. This mode of experiencing human reality is present in all its various phases, except that the destructive consequences may not be as direct or apparent.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not difficult today to look about our world and to find many unintended side effects and destructive consequences of our much vaunted scientific 'Weltaangshaung'--and we cannot facilely deny the crucial role that our science has played in the research and development, theory and design, of such modern devices of convenience as the hydrogen bomb, the nuclear reactor, or in such phenomena as the depletion of the ozone layer. It is not difficult to become easily disillusioned with the rhetoric and rationalizations of science as to much more ideological white-wash.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">None of these scientific attitudes are completely wrong or right. All of them entail partial truths and prejudices. Sciences has been a mixed blessing--it has had both good and bad consequences inspite of the professional hubris of some of its practitioners who regard such moral considerations as unworthy of their own scientific attention. What is most important to realize is that the culture historical attitude towards science adopts a 'hermeneutical' and a 'critical' attitude towards the culture of science, but such attitudes weigh evenly all different points of view. It see science as neither monolithically good or evil, nor as disinterested or 'uninvolved' but rather as complex, polythetic social reality which comprehends the horizons of all its profiles and attitudes and even has its own culture historical understanding of the scientific attitude and world view.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The only point of view which a culture history of science adopts is that science is anything but neutral and uninvolved in the world, or stands apart as something necessarily separate from the world. Indeed, the culture history of science sees it as something necessarily situated by and in the world, constituted by meaningful relationships with the world. To the extent that this is deemed ideological, then science suffers the same problem of ideology as any other view of the world. Science is not necessarily the less for being ideological and it what science is in the world, inspite of its ideology, and not because of it, that makes it of special interest from a culture historical standpoint. In fact, science exists 'apart from the world' to the same extent and in the exact same way that any and all ideology can be said to separate itself and stand apart from the world--from its own sense of culture historical context in the world--and so the ideological façade of science exists in the very ideal of its neutrality and privileged distance from the world. Its paradox is that its 'non-ideological' ideal is its own special distinctive ideology--in living the lies of its non-ideological orientation, its promoters are living the illusion of its ideology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science exists in the world as something other than its own non-ideological ideology, and it is the culture historical perspective that this 'something more' of science, the science of beingness, is rooted in and reflexive of the mindness of our realities. Science as something authentic is isomorphic with the human expression of mind in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science came into being as the expression and evolution of mind, as the eventual realization of its possibility in the world. Science gains its status in the world by its reflexiveness and meta-paradigmatic expression of mind. Mind is the basic structure of scientific principles when disinvested and disillusioned of its own ideologies and world view. Science is not without values, paradigms, ideologies in the world, yet like the mythological expression of mythos mindness it seeks to continuously transcend its own limitations. Science, like mind, is therefore a never completed project and an ever emerging, always evolving possibility in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To speak of science is something of a misnomer. In actuality there are many sciences and many kinds of scientific practices and orientations. 'Science' in terms of a singular generality does not exist in the world as such, except as an example of ideology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This critical difference brings to bear what Thomas Kuhn has referred to as scientific paradigms and the paradigmatic structure of scientific revolutions. Science as a social and historical phenomena exists as paradigms which consist of accumulated bodies of theory and understanding based upon precedent, accumulated evidence and accepted practices which are predominant and resistant of counter factual or contradictory evidence until such evidence amasses and alternative theories arise upon the periphery of the paradigmatic orientation which challenge and eventually change the paradigm.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"There are sciences whose 'paradigms' blocks of theoretical precept and precedent that define the orthodoxy of what Thomas Kuhn calls 'normal science' maintain a frozen immobility until their underpinnings are melted by the heat and pressure of accumulated evidence and a plate tectonic revolution results…" (Roy Wagner)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A scientific paradigm is associated with and identified by the strong presence of a 'scientific community' which shares standard definitions of its science. 'A paradigm is what members of a scientific community share, and conversely, a scientific community consists of men who share a paradigm…' (T. Kuhn) Thomas Kuhn recognizes a scientific community that carries on its dialect in a characteristic idiom or jargon which requires years of education to master and which is for the most part inaccessible to the untrained laity or other professionals beyond its borders. Such professionals defines the logos of science shared by its members. Such communities are relatively small, elite and narrowly exclusive with well defined boundaries. Its primary forums are professional journals which are highly technical and relatively remote and inaccessible to the general reading public.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…A number of characteristics for membership in a professional scientific group must already be strikingly clear, the scientist must, for example, be concerned to solve problems about the behavior of nature. In addition, though his concern may be global in its extent, the problems on which he works must be problems of detail. More important, the solution that satisfy him may not be merely personal but must instead be accepted as solutions by many. The group that shares them may not, however, be drawn at random from society as a whole, but is rather the well defined community of the scientists' professional compeers. One of the strongest, if still unwritten, rules of scientific life is the prohibition of appeals to heads of state or to populace at large in matters scientific. Recognition of the existence of a uniquely competent professional group and acceptance of its role as the exclusive arbiter of professional achievement has further implications. The group's members as individuals and by virtue of their shared training and experience must be seen as the sole possessors of the rules of the game or of some equivalent basis for unequivocal judgments. To doubt that they shared some such basis for evaluations would be to admit the existence of incompatible standards of scientific achievement. That admission would inevitably raise the question whether truth in the sciences can be one." (Kuhn: page 168)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"A scientific community consists, in this view, of the practitioners of a scientific specialty. To an extent unparalleled in most other fields, they have undergone similar educations and professional initiations; in the process they have absorbed the same technical literature and drawn many of the same lessons from it. Usually the boundaries of that standard literature mark the limits of a scientific subject matter, and each community ordinarily has a subject matter of its own. There are schools in the sciences; communities, that is, which approach the same subject from incompatible viewpoints. But they are far rarer there than in other fields; they are always in competition and their competition is usually quickly ended.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As a result, the members of a scientific community see themselves and are seen by others as men uniquely responsible for the pursuit of a set of shared goals, including the training of their successors. Within such groups communication is relatively full and professional judgments relatively unanimous. Because the attention of different scientific communities is, on the other hand, focused on different matters, professional communication across group lines is sometimes arduous, often results in misunderstandings and may if pursued evoke significant and previously unsuspected disagreement." (T. Kuhn: 177)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">According to Kuhn, science is defined by its progress. Scientific communities begin in a 'pre-paradigmatic' stage in which basic controversies of their own definition as science inhibit the formation of a fully 'paradigmatic scientific community'. Basic doctrinal definitions plague such a field of inquiry and hinder its 'progress'. 'Furthermore if precedent from the natural sciences serves, they will cease to be a source of concern not when a definition is found, but when the groups that now doubt their status achieve consensus about their past and present accomplishments…'(Kuhn: 160-161)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A science, then, achieves paradigmatic maturity when its community of professional practitioners achieves a sense of relative unity and uniformity about basic definitions and standards which serve as the foundation of their science. A science will then grow and proliferate, and will achieve a 'post paradigmatic' period of greater breadth and specialization. Separate communities emerge sharing in the same broad paradigm, but each pursuing its own narrow range of related interests--'Though science surely grows in depth it may not grow in breadth as well. If it does so, that breadth is manifest mainly in the proliferation of scientific specialties, but not in the scope of any single specialty alone.' (Kuhn: 170)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The notion of progress somehow informs a scientific community of its own corporate identity and becoming paradigmatic implies some form of progressive evolution of the field, if not toward some futureward vision, then at least in a retrospective sense of looking back at the slow process of separation of the significant problems from the trivia, from the unknown from the unknowable, of the emergence of the known form the unknown, and of choate mind from the formless inchoate. Scientific progress is informed by hindsight not by futureward vision. Sciences, like all natural phenomena, progress from more primitive states, but not necessarily 'towards' any future or inevitably better state--'products of a process that moved steadily from primitive beginnings but toward no goal.' The evolution of science like the evolution of mind or of nature, is not necessarily goal directed teleology informed by the progressive evolution of a single essential principle.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"But need there be any such goal? Can we not account for both science's existence and its success in terms of evolution from the community's state of knowledge at any given time? Does it really help to try to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal? If we can learn to substitute evolution from what we do know for evolution toward what we wish to know, a number of vexing problems may vanish in the process. Somewhere in this maze, for example must lie the problem of induction." (Kuhn: 177)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the Kuhnian framework, scientific process in terms of paradigmatic conflict and revolution occurs in a natural way similar to the 'blind evolution' of nature itself. And it is in this sense that this notion of 'achieved progress' in science versus its purported teleological ideology of progress is similar to the idea of the natural evolution of mind and human culture historical movements in the evolutionary emergence of human civilizations</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"The analogy that relates the evolution of organisms to the evolution of scientific ideas can be easily be pushed too far. But with respect to the issues of this closing section it is very nearly perfect. The process described in section XII as the resolution of revolutions is the selection of conflict within the scientific community of the fittest way to practice future science. The net result of a sequence of such revolutionary selections, separated by periods of normal research, is the wonderfully adapted set of instruments we call modern scientific knowledge. Successive stages in that developmental process are marked by an increase in articulation and specialization. And the entire process may have occurred as we now suppose biological evolution did, without benefit of a set goal, a permanent fixed scientific truth, of which each stage in the development of scientific knowledge is a better exemplar." (Kuhn: 173)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Progress is equated with becoming paradigmatic in the sense that scientific knowledge is cumulative, deepening, more exact and specialized and also because its progress serves to unit a community of scholars and provide a sense of shared identity which survives and endures the trials of many revolutions, only to emerge stronger than before. The notion of progress, then, depends upon the relative notion of achievement of paradigmatic unity by a scientific community.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…We must learn to recognize as case what have ordinarily been take to be effects. If we can do that, the phrases 'scientific progress' and even 'scientific objectivity' may come to be seen in part redundant…Does a field make progress because it is a science, or is it a science because it makes progress?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…Viewed from within any single community, however, whether of scientists or of nonscientists, the result of a successful creative work is progress. How could it be anything else?…No creative school recognizes a category of work that is, on the one hand, a creative success, but is not, on the other hand, an addition to the collective achievement of the group. If we doubt, as many do, that nonscientific fields make progress, that cannot be because individual schools make none. Rather, it must be because there are always competing schools, each of which constantly questions the very foundations of the other. The man who argues that philosophy, for example, had made no progress emphasizes that there are still Aristotelians, not that Aristotelianism has failed to progress." (Kuhn: 162-3)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Kuhn employs the construction of scientific paradigm dichotomously and somewhat dialectically in two senses--the sociological sense of the shared community and a deeper 'metaphysical' sense of paradigms as shared examples based upon past achievements. It is in this dichotomy that the dialectical tension of the notion of scientific paradigms underlying the 'structures' of scientific revolutions and the conception of the progress of science, and it is in resolution of this inherent counterpoint in the construction of this scientific philosophy of 'paradigms' that the door is opened onto the understanding of the role of culture history in the understanding of both the philosophy of science and of the culture history in which this philosophy is embedded and recreated in the sense of 'scientific process as civilization'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…On the one hand, it stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by the members of a given community. On the other hand, it denotes one sort of element in that constellation, the concrete puzzle solutions which employed as models of examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science." (Kuhn: 175)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This tension reflect the dialectics between mind and world view and beingness and non-being in the world, expressed in terms of the critical differences between paradigmatic science as ideology and meta-paradigmatic science as non-ideological unfolding of mindness culture historically situated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Kuhn's imprecise, generalistic and rhetorical use of the term 'paradigmatic' to refer to multiply and connotatively to different things simultaneously has given rise to a great deal of controversy in the philosophy of sciences as to what exactly is a 'scientific paradigm' and what renders science paradigmatic and whether if science is even paradigmatic at all. There is a distinction made between 'pre-paradigmatic', 'post paradigmatic', 'quasi- or semi- paradigmatic, poly-paradigmatic, un-paradigmatic and meta paradigmatic'. Paradigm must be seen as a relativistic conception of science which is multiply and differentially understood from the standpoint of the individual interpreter. From a 'scientific' and rationalistic standpoint this would seem to set the notion of 'paradigm' on shaky ground--a great descriptor perhaps but a poor explainer. But as a generalizing and generalistic conception of scientific praxis as both a social and historical phenomena of shared values and relations, and as a shared set of ideas, symbolisms and 'examples' which serve as substitutes to actual empirical demonstration in the march of science as proof, the notion of paradigm is a necessary way of understanding the culture history of science and its interrelation to mind and world view.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ideologically, science shares with Western philosophy its predominating sense of rational idealism, or Platonism, which becomes expressed in several ways in the paradigmatic world of science. First, there is implicitly posited an basic isomorphism, or principle of reflective identity, between eidetic 'structures' or noumenal, a priori principles which are believed to underlie the natural patterning of reality and to provide it with its sense of ordering. It is therefore believed that by understanding and correlating the patterning of natural phenomena this underlying structure of reality can be systematically revealed through rigorous scientific praxis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Secondly, this structural isomorphism is held to be potentially reflected in a linguistic sense in the denotative relation between term and the thing of the world which it represents. There is thus a possible one to one correspondence between words and their proper definitions and by logical extension between these well defined words and the things which they actually represent in the world. This is the basis for logical and empirical values of positivism which holds that the secret to scientifically unlocking the hidden structure of reality is in part a problem of proper definition, description and denotation--a linguistic problem of applying the proper words to the proper things in their proper order.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Thirdly, scientific rationalism holds a view of a strict logical dichotomization of the reality of experience--scientific statements and its language follow the principles of logic in making sense of experience. Strict isomorphism and one to one correspondence between the term and the thing demands that there must be an equally strictly enforced law of identity, or of 'non-contradiction of opposites' such that A is A and not B. By extension this leads to the superimposition of two value logic based on the principle of the excluded middle ground--A cannot be both A and not A at the same time. The basis of mathematical logic and syllogistic structures of rationality--abduction, induction and deduction and the implicit hierarchical ordering of general/particular levels of ideas, knowledge, percepts and concepts are rooted in this two value logic of the principle of identity and non-contradiction--either A or not A.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is from this rationalistic point of view that states that the relations of the universe are ordered by single first principles and that immutable laws which can be precisely stated in proper terms govern the relations of reality. These isomorphic relations are held to be mathematically pure and precise, the reflective relations between terms and things and their logic, is purported to be reflective as well of this mathematical purity and precision.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such emphasis of two value logic, positivistic correspondence of language and logic, and the structural isomorphism of reality, have other kinds of consequences. One is a search for causality or determination as the basis for both description and explanation of experiential events in the world. Causality may be ultimate or efficient, mechanical, uni-modal or multi-modal, or systemic or uni-directional but in such a viewpoint consequents must always be affirmed by antecedents and in turn consequents confirm antecedents. Principles 'cause' reality to happen--are made, acted upon or created by first principles. Gravity 'causes' the apple to fall from the tree, social anomie causes the high incidence of suicide. It is from such a rationalistic standpoint that the world view that all change must be someway predetermined, must have a logical cause or rational reason for happening, that the principle of progress is rooted.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another consequence of this form of rationalism is that it guides our selection and scientific decision making--we use its systematicity as the basis for making choices or determinations which are otherwise difficult or impossible to clearly make. An example of this is the employment of the null hypothesis which posits an arbitrary threshold for 'rejecting' a correlational hypothesis--it guarantees our statistical statements a certain minimum level of probability given the reliability of the sample and the relevance of its definitions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Other scientific standards which have become the bulwarks of its methodological dogmas follow from this strict rationalism. The principle of experimental control, repeatability, non-tautological falsifiability of its statements, of validity of empirical evidence and the reliability of the non-arbitrary measures.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As they stand, all of these standards are necessary to the paradigmatic and progressive success of science--but the question remains as to whether these ideals of scientific method are actual procedural outlines for scientific praxis or whether scientific praxis itself on an everyday level does not also involve something more or less and rationalistic as the ideology of pure science claims for itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The two value dichotomization of the rational reality of science between a predetermined 'is' or existence and an undeterminable 'isn't' or nonexistence is reflected as well in the metaphysical and epistemological dichotomization of science between natural phenomena, which are held to be amenable to scientific standards and measures--as 'events in the real world'--and supernatural experiences--collective beliefs, statements, claims, associations in the world, which are unamenable to direct empirical substantiation and therefore are also superficially unprovable. A permutation of this kind of dichotomy is between the secular and religious world view of science and the non-secular ideological and religious world view which s basically non-scientific in orientation. This kind of dichotomization and its sense of dualism of reality between material and ideal, the real and normal, the sacred and the secular, is fundamental and distinctive of the world view of science.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This kind of scientific world view becomes reflected in the principle of scientific progress as a dialectical movement toward the expression of perfect principle and in the dichotomization between 'primitive mentality' as basically 'pre-logical', 'irrational', 'third value', concrete, analogical. Mythical and magical and the 'rational' mentality of civilized man which is scientific, logical, causal, statistical and correlational rather than analogical.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is from such an orientation that we can see the basic world view of science which is both paradigmatic and yet nonetheless maintains itself as essentially 'non-ideological'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The structural rationalism of the world view of science has been criticized on the basis of several interrelated points. In general, it is held that the exclusive and restrictive nature of such rationalism precludes the consideration of alternative possibilities of relativistic contexts and of complication 'in-between' factors which go unexplained in its terse symmetry of words and worlds. It generally fails to account for the dilemmas imposed by inter-relational factors and context. Its pre-selective mode of experiencing human reality is held to be even operative at the basic phenomenological level of observation and perception of events--how we literally 'see' the world is literally preconditioned by the words with which we define the world. Structural rationalism and its dialectical corollary of strict empiricism cannot deal well with the dilemmas imposed by contextuality and relativity of event 'horizons' in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The apparent, inferred isomorphism between apodictic, ontological structures expressible in terms of universal logos or ordering principles and the actual patterning of events in the world is itself a hypothetical and 'unfalsifiable' presupposition of the 'top down' and hierarchical arrangement of relations in the world. The theory of evolution as a so called 'hypothetico deductive' approach which was nevertheless built upon years of detailed 'inductive' observation, remains a fitting example of the inherent inadequacy of presumed universal principles to adequately or completely explain the diversity of phenomena under its purview. The theory of evolution remains a great orienting paradigm in the understanding of nature, yet its actual principles of transformation and change remains imprecisely defined and for the most part still presumed.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A similar rationalistic fallacy is the strict compartmentalization of the meaning between the denotative and the connotative and the positioning of a precise, mechanical and mathematical relationship between the term and the thing it purportedly represents. This has long been an linguistic ideology of the creation of a 'pure' language which is inherently simplifying and self explanatory of the events it describes, which has long predated the arrival of modern scientific method.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The third fallacy of this rationalism is that events of nature are always ordered in a logically consistent and coherent manner--that discovery of the proper terms designating such events and relations between things also explicates their natural order and process of occurrence. In this regard, our two value Truth Theorem logic is rather itself artificial and superimposed upon a natural universe of relations rather than immanent from within the patterns of relationships themselves. In this regard the principle of absolute identity is seen as exclusive of the possibility of alternative identities or multiple profiles of the same thing across space or through time. Connected with this is the hypostatization of the word for the thing--seeking identity in the abstract sense of a class of taxon of things superimposed upon the actual individual variations of its component entities. Also, many experiences, as process of events, rather than as 'things' to be reified, are structurally indeterminant. The principles of the excluded middle ground of meaning does not always work in the consideration of the phenomenological flow of experience and in the alternative ways that we may parse our realities into different shapes, sizes and forms.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It follows from such 'syllogistic fallacies' that our imputations of 'causality' to the natural flow of events might also be fundamentally spurious and distortion of the natural relations transformations involved in 'event structures' of reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our 'systems' of causality themselves might be essentially 'over determined' and teleologically over determining. It superimposes a fundamentally hierarchical categorization of our reality which in turn leads to a 'monothetic' and 'monothematic' conception of a rational reality to the ignoring of the polythetic structure and relational composition of events in reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Similarly, our rational decision making 'systems' of causation allows our 'systems' to make the evaluative, normative and indefinite decisions in 'uncertainty reduction' for us based upon predefined criteria of selection. We no longer need to recognize reflexively our own part in the decision making process but can better accept the illusion that the 'theory' or the system is actually doing our work and making the decisions for us.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Similarly, our efforts to superimpose experimental control may lead to our unacknowledged 'control' of events and our efforts to standardize or make reliable and replicable the empirical results of our experiments may lead to failure to recognize our own hands in reconstructing the conditions for such experiments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All of these points towards a surreptitious ideological function of our non-ideological methodologies of 'pure science' and to the unreflexive self denial of persuasive, rhetorical, paradigmatic role of language, method, belief and value in scientific praxis. It is the failure of science to recognize and respond to its own ideological function in the world which is the shortcoming of its methodological praxis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Hans-Georg Cadamer writes about human understanding itself as an episodic and 'trans-subjective' linguistic process--an 'event' or the fusion of 'horizons' in the act of communication. The hermeneutics of the language process is seen as universal and as therefore underlying all attempts at understanding the world. The general frame of philosophical hermeneutics underlies all form of knowledge in the world, whether individual or social. Knowledge springs from the linguistically and contemporaneous of all human experience in the world. The relationship of rhetoric to hermeneutics represents the 'positive' side of hermeneutical interpretation. Rhetoric and hermeneutic interpretation are deeply interwoven in the understanding and knowledge of science--in the 'sociality' of human existence. The praxis of all three represents a challenge to claims of scientificity of knowledge. Rhetoric appeals to ordinary 'natural' reason in its claim of probable verisimilitude as opposed to the scientific claim of demonstrable truth. Ultimately, all understanding and interpretation proceeds from this rhetorical call to reason, as does ultimately scientific method as well. The rhetorical function of convincing and persuading extends its scope to take in universally all human understanding--scientific as well. It is in particular regard to this hermeneutic and rhetorical universality of its 'linguisticality' that the intential alienation and 'distancing present' of the logic of science is critiqued. The 'positivistic ossification' of the sciences stems from its failure to reflect upon its own linguistic foundations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science raises the claim of transcending 'pre-scientific' universality of the hermeneutic experience by 'methodical and controlled alienation'. Self reflective consciousness of the hermeneutic problem seeks awareness of prejudices and pre-understandings which undermines scientific positivism. The role of the observer cannot be effectively separated from the on going process of the event itself to allow 'objective'--non-hermeneutic appropriation of the independent meaning of the event. The observer's own relationship with the even becomes denied.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The 'achieved progress' of scientific understanding of the world proceeds inspite of its rationalism and its methodologies and not because of them. The principles and processes which actually inform the everyday praxis of science and its normal and revolutionary unfolding is something quite different from what its rational idealism and positivism purports it to be. By and large, its regular routines and methodical rituals are but the self sustaining illusions of it is own ideology and teleology in the world. But this ritual and the mythology and ideology which informs it are perhaps necessarily in the unfolding culture historical dialectic of its development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In defining paradigms and in describing the process of how students of science learn their 'puzzle solving' by learning to see 'the same gestalt as other members of his specialist's group' and by assimilating 'a time tested and group licensed way of seeing', Thomas Kuhn refers to the role of 'acquired similarity relations' in the history of science in which 'scientists solve puzzles by modeling them on previous puzzle solutions…' He refers to the 'tacit' and 'consequential' knowledge 'learned by doing science rather than by acquiring rules for doing its' and 'thereafter embodied in a way of viewing physical situations rather than in rules or laws.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"When I speak of knowledge embedded in shared exemplars I am not referring to a mode of knowing that is less systematic or less analyzable than knowledge embedded in rules, laws or criteria of identification. Instead I have in mind a manner of knowing which is misconstructed if reconstructed in terms of rules that are first abstracted from exemplars and thereafter function in their stead." (Kuhn:193)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Members of two groups who have learned to see the same situations differently, who 'have systematically different sensations on receipt of the same stimuli, do in some sense live in different worlds.' Members of the same community in order to communicate with one another effectively, must share in the same sets of sensations, but with differentiation and specialization between groups, there are different kinds of sensations operating. Returning to the notion of paradigm as shared exemplar, it is a fundamental mechanism by which members of a group 'whether an entire culture or a specialist's sub-community' learn to see the same things when confronted with the same stimuli. What is being acquired are not necessarily the rules and the ability to use these rules:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…That description is tempting because our seeing a situation as like ones we have encountered before must be the result of neural processing, fully governed by physical and chemical laws. In this sense, once we have learned to do it, recognition of similarity must be as fully systematic as the beating of our hearts. But that very parallel suggests that recognition may also be involuntary, a process over which we have no control. If it is, then we may not properly conceive it as something we manage by applying rules and criteria. To speak of it in those terms implies that we have access to alternatives, that we might, for example, have disobeyed a rule, or misapplied a criterion, or experimented with some other way of seeing. Those, I take it, are just the sorts of things we cannot do.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Or, more precisely, those are things we cannot do until after we have a sensation, perceived something. Then we do often seek criteria and put them to use. Then we may engage in interpretation, a deliberative process by which we choose among alternatives as we do not in perception itself…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">These are all deliberative processes and in them we do seek and deploy criteria and rules. We try, that is, to interpret sensations already at hand, to analyze what is for us the given. …But the fact that the system obeys the same laws in all three cases provides no reason to suppose that our neural apparatus is programmed to operate the same way in interpretation as in perception or in either as in the beating of our hearts. What I have been opposing in this book is therefore the attempt, traditional since Descarte but not before, to analyze perception as an interpretative process, as an unconscious version of what we do after we have perceived.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What makes the integrity of perception worth emphasizing is, of course, that so much past experience is embodied in the neural apparatus that transforms stimuli to sensations. An appropriately programmed perceptual mechanism has survival value…It is just because so very few ways of seeing will do that the ones that have withstood the tests of group use are worth transmitting from generation to generation. Equally, it is because they have been selected for their success over historic time that we must speak of the experience and knowledge of nature embedded in the stimulus to sensation route.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…We have no direct access to what it is we know, no rules or generalizations with which to express this knowledge. Rules which could supply that access would refer to stimuli not sensations and stimuli we can know only through elaborate theory. In its absence the knowledge embedded in the stimulus to sensation route remains tacit." (Kuhn: 195-6)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"In both literal and metaphorical senses, 'seeing' as interpretation begins where 'seeing' as perception ends--'the two processes are not the same, and what perception leaves for interpretation to complete depends drastically on the nature and amount of prior experience and training." (page 198)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"Paradigmatic version of normal scientific praxis depends upon the shared ability of things and</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">relations into 'similarity sets' which are primitive in the sense that the grouping is done without an answer to the question, 'similar with respect to what?' Communication based upon acceptance of a shared set of values, shared experiences, and ways of seeing allows a group to make decisions between choices 'to ensure that most members of the group will ultimately find one set of arguments rather than another decisive.' Revolution changes the 'similarity relations'. Members sharing the same linguistic code begin using their words differently. Group communication breaks down and the corporate identity of the community is threatened. Alternative choice of theory will become the focus of such breakdown--'not surprisingly, therefore, when such redistribution occur, two men whose disclosure had previously proceeded with apparently full understanding may suddenly find themselves responding to the same stimulus with incompatible descriptions and generalizations…" (page 201)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"Briefly put, what the participants in a communication breakdown can do is recognize each other as members of different language communities and then become translators. Taking the differences between their own intra- and inter-group discourse as itself a subject for study, they can first attempt to discover the terms and locations that used unproblematically within each community, are nevertheless foci of trouble for inter-group discussions…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Since translation, if pursued, allows the participants in a communication breakdown to experience vicariously something of the merits and defects of each others points of view, it is a potent tool both for persuasion and for conversion. But even persuasion need not succeed, and , if it does, it need not be accompanied or followed by conversion. The two experiences are not the same…" (Kuhn: 202-3)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"The conversion experience that I have likened to a gestalt switch remains, therefore, at the heart of the revolutionary process. Good reasons for choice provide motives for conversion and a climate in which it is more likely to occur. Translation may, in addition, provide points of entry for the neural re-programming that, however inscrutable at this time, must underlie conversion. But neither good reasons nor translation constitute conversion, and it is that process we must explicate in order to understand an essential sort of scientific change." (page 205)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What it is that scientist regularly do, and what normally happens in science, is perhaps something quite different in everyday praxis than is implied by the reiteration of its rules and symbolic generationalizations. It is must less formal and rationalistic than hitherto presumed to be and involves a level of selectivity, perhaps automatic and reflexive, that is becomes a matter of perception and ads a mode of experiencing reality is fundamental as a way of seeing and representing reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science is about knowledge, as ordered experience, which is expressible symbolically. Our scientific knowledge enables us to make 'sense' of our experiences by relating them symbolically to similar sets of experience. Our scientific knowledge does so in precise and predictable ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science addresses the unknown--the unknown are the all the possible experiences which exist beyond our knowledge--those sets of our experiences. The unknown exists beyond the horizon of our experience, either individually or collectively. It is normally inaccessible to our senses because it continuously presents us with anomalies of experience which do not fit our 'paradigms'. The process of science consists of filling in the gaps or the gulf between the known, the experienced, and the unknown, or yet to be experienced. We 'uncover' the known from the unknown by bringing new experiences into alignment with old experiences. We learn from the unknown by the expansion of our horizons of experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Collectively, science represents a movement from the unknown to the known, in the process separating out the inherently 'unknowable' (i.e. unverifiable, unfalsifiable, unanswerable) from the simply relatively unknown. What is unknowable becomes separated out and falls by the wayside of scientific interest as impossible and what is simply, relatively unknown moves gradually into the light of our previous experience and thereby becomes known or learned by science.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is by such a process that science has been expanding the horizons of our known world, systematically excluding and eliminating the ultimately unknowable, and thereby increasing the fund of our experience of the world. Our science has been moving simultaneously in two directions--it has been sorting our the unknowable from the unknown, and has been moving the unknown into the domain of the known.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The process of sorting out the unknowable from the unknown is also a process of distinguishing between the impossible and the possible. What is determined to be impossible or possible is largely a function of the known--of previous experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Movement from the simple unknown to the known is a gradual movement from possibility to plausibility and then to probability--knowledge emerges in ever more solid and definite proportions. What becomes knowledge emerges full blown into the world as the difference between what is and what is not--what exists in fact and what only potentially exists as remaining possibility. As we acquire knowledge it becomes a part of our experience--the process of bringing something into full knowledge is the process of fully and finally experiencing something as a 'thing' or a relation in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Movement from possibility through plausibility into probability is a stepwise process of selective determination characterized by diminishing degrees of freedom and increasing degrees of relational contingency or contextuality. A thing becomes known in the world by becoming or being recognized as being fully, completely situated in the world within a broader, more general framework of understanding.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such a movement towards greater degrees of likelihood of knowledge is a decision making or normative or interpretive process that requires increasing degrees of selecting the unlikely or implausible from the more likely and plausible.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such a movement from the unknown to the known is an 'inference making' process which bring a 'thing' or a relation between things from the imaginary world of the merely possible into the real world of what is--into the world of 'reference'. Scientific knowledge represents then, a movement from inference to reference, by the superimposition of our previous, paradigmatic frames of experience upon our new environments of possible experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Inference making is a process of making predictions of possible experience on the basis of previous experience and on the basis of perceived contextual outlines of present experience--clues and circumstantial evidences which surround and negatively define the outlines of the unknown.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We 'encounter' the unknown in reflexive recognition of our experiences with it. Science rooted in the experience of beingness is oriented toward the encounter with new environments--science based upon the defense of non-being is rooted in the reflective reinforcement of past experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our reflexive recognition of the unknown creates possibility--it opens the doors of conscious awareness upon the alternative realities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The inference function of science sees its praxis and function as being one primarily of problem posing rather than 'puzzle solving' or paradox resolving, and as one of question asking rather than of question answering. The power of science lies in its ability to create possibilities and to eliminate impossibilities--it rests in its ability to ask question of reality in such a reflexive manner that it creates a gap in understanding awareness or knowledge which then must be filled in a sufficient way. To ask a question is to pose a statement in such a way that it expects a response, a reaction and is left incomplete without such an answer.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The success of science depends upon asking the right questions in the right way, such that the answers fitting these questions must appear as either correct or incorrect.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Asking questions appropriately frames reality in an experientially open way, such that present experiences can then be 'determined' according to their fit or non-fit.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It must be asked whether in the scientific movement from the unknown to the known, it is prediction which is the actual value of its success--the ability to make correct inferences regarding future experiences or events, or whether it is more a matter of expectation--such that previous frames of experience predispose us to experience new events in certain 'predictable' or expected ways, which, if aberrant from our frames of expectation, lead to frame disruption and reevaluation. Science is involved in constructing and reconstructing general frames of reference/inference which create specific sets of expectations regarding the behavior of natural phenomena and which are evaluated by the 'accuracy' of its 'predictions'. Science is successful if its experiential frames of expectation are correctly fulfilled--if it eventuates in greater predictability--hence knowability--of experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If events do not perform according to our scientific predictions, it opens up the door to the unknown and poses a problem which science then needs to adequately resolve. Scientific frames of expectation, based upon the knowledge of previous experiences, become disrupted by the anomalousness of new events.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If the value of a science rooted in the experience of beingness is one of problem posing rather than puzzle solving, or in question asking, in elucidating the unknown, then it follows that its primary value is not so much one of prediction or expectation rather than one of discovering anomaly and unpredictability of phenomena. The value of scientific knowledge is not in the pattern recognition of its knowledge, or in the reinforcement of its frames of expectation so much as it is engaged on a search, or a quest for the unknown, for the anomaly and the exception to the rule.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To define, as Thomas Kuhn does, scientific praxis as primarily one of puzzle solving entails a very systematic, and perhaps stereotypical view of scientific method in which the solutions or answers to the problems are 'out there' or already waiting to be discovered, rather than be 'created' or 'formulated' as symbolic generalization. Puzzles are characterized by the singularity and correctness of their unequivocal resolution--there is only a single right answer and this answer already exists in the proper arrangement of the pieces or parts of its problem or pattern. It is to be wondered whether this some one simplifying 'structure' of scientific praxis is not rather more reflective of an particular 'attitude' which is perfectionistic and unduly rationalistic in a monothetic sense. It is also to be wondered whether such an attitude doesn't unnecessarily restrict the range of scientific interest to the range of the known, of what is, rather than to the openness and possibility of the unknown. Again, puzzle solving emphasizes pattern recognition and reinforcement versus frame disruption.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Paradox resolving' or 'dilemma debating' focuses upon the uncertainty inherent to open science and to its basically linguistic praxis which is basically dialectical. Paradoxes and dilemmas, unlike puzzles are characterized by the vagueness and possibility of multiple solutions or of contradictory answers. The problem posed by paradox and dilemma are open to interpretive process and are complicated in their systemic interrelationships. Dilemmas and paradoxes are also characterized by partial and imperfect and incompatible answers.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Paradox and dilemma might seem more the provenience of literature and philosophy than of science, but the natural order of events in the physical universe are fraught with as much paradox and dilemma for its human knowers as it is filled with puzzles and riddles waiting to be filled in with the missing pieces. To say the world is ultimately one of paradox rather than puzzle is to perhaps deny a final ground of knowledge which is empirically and rationally undeniable and unquestionable--but it does not necessarily deny the relative possibility and probability for such ground of experiential knowledge in reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is also to be wondered whether science can ever really answer a problem in a truly 'falsifiable' manner, or whether its inherent openness and possibility always guarantees its partial and relative statements a degree of methodological immunity from experimental falsification. Are not all statements in science ultimately unfalsifiable to the extent that they are based upon limited sets of experience in potentially unlimited possible realities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Falsification is a sophisticated but spurious positivistic value of scientific praxis. We can never know whether the thousand and first swan will be black or white, no matter what the statistical probabilities based upon our previous experiential samples.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It does not matter whether scientific statements made are falsifiable or ultimately unfalsifiable or whether more logically they are amenable to empirical, experimental validation or not, or whether they are ultimately verifiable or validity testing. But it does matter whether scientific statements made do become falsified by later experiences or become set canons of truth which remains consistently revalidated by subsequent experiences. It also matters whether subsequent validation of falsification is dependent upon previous frames of experience or arise 'independently' of these frames of experience. In other words, it matters whether scientific statements are non-teleological or not in reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is to be wondered whether the relative values of openness of scientific praxis and independence if its results are not more important than such notions of 'falsification'. The strength of science rests in the repeatability of its results and in commensurability and verifiability of its standard measures and indexes. It is important that scientific praxis not be a closed tautological system in which its results verify and in turn become verified by its theory in any 'self evident' way. It is also important that such systems not be dependent for their verification on preexisting conditions or predetermining relationships of power in which its theory is situated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This also leads to the question of what actually constitutes proof or disproof in science other than in a sense of statistical incidence. Does experimental demonstration necessarily prove or disprove the theory by which it was designed--or do not the tacit pre-understandings and generalistic presuppositions underlying the theoretical design in a sense predetermine the outcome of the demonstration. If we can never know what the next toss of the coin will be, and if we cannot therefore either make falsifiable, 'non-ideological' statements, then how can we ever know with absolute certainty whether our scientific knowledge is proven or disproven by our experiences. Like puzzles, proof depends upon the preexistence of a single 'correct' solution to a problem and are therefore mathematical in their accuracy and precision. Science values supremely accuracy and precision of its statements and always emulates mathematics as 'pure theory' but its proofs and disproofs must always remain based upon tacit, speculative and tentative foundations of the interpretation of what its experience really means.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Because there are no non-relative proofs or disproofs there are no absolute right or wrongs in the knowledge of science, but there are only statements which are more or less accurate, precise and certain which become the symbolic generalizations of scientific laws and principles.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The rereading of Thomas Kuhn reveals that general scientific knowledge deals with relational statements adhering between things rather than definitional statements about things. In making generalistic statements science can be said to be a system of generalization dealing with experiential reality and as such it is subject to the same kinds of constraints as are any other kind of system of symbolic generalization. It is not the correctness or rightness of such a system, but its consistency in generally explaining the relationships and events between things in reality by which such a system is evaluated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Not being definitional in orientation, it can be said that science as a system of symbolic generalization is not concerned so much with the description of things so much as the 'explanation' of the relations which occur between things. Things can be defined or described, but relations are not so much described as explained. Systems of symbolization which are basically descriptive and definitional are in a sense linguistically unlimited in the amount of context or detail which can be included in its statements. Systems of symbolization focused primarily upon relational statements are constrained in certain ways by basic relational rules. Where definitions can be expanded and descriptions can afford to wax lyrical, explanations of the relations between things cannot afford the same kind of surplus of meaning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It can be said that such relational systems of symbolization being primarily explanatory rather than merely descriptive are constrained by certain rules of efficiency and sufficiency which are not subject to the same kind of metaphorical looseness and flexibility as are descriptive systems. Such rules are non-arbitrary in the sense that their application is not governed by the same normative or subjective criteria as are descriptive statements, but are considered generally 'necessary' in the understanding of the relatedness between things in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is an interesting twist of philosophical rationality which sees science as the production of 'prescriptive' statements rather than of 'descriptive statements' and in the process of its prediction, deriving and 'ought' from an 'is'. But in its explanatory symbolism and relational prescriptiveness about the world, this is exactly what the praxis of science in the world actually is.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another way of considering this difference is to understand the role of description as basically referential knowledge and the role of explanation as being basically inferential. In reality, the difference between description and explanation and between references and inference is not so basic or clear cut as such a simplistic dichotomization would make it seem. Explanation is always at least implicitly based upon preliminary description, and is itself a form of restricted description, and inference always depend upon the presence of a referential context for its predictive success. In a similar way, the philosophical dichotomization between descriptive and prescriptive statements and between analytical and synthetic statements, is not in reality so clear cut or convenient as it would rationalistically seem. All description as interpretation of phenomena is latently, implicitly selective and prescriptive--its statements are always tacitly loaded with value, and all prescription as normative judgment is always based at least implicitly upon descriptive interpretations of things in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another way of considering is to consider statements of increasing levels of generality--from the very concrete to the very general, and of the problem of maintaining general consistency with the ascending orders of generality. (This is the rose, etc.) There occurs a general shift in such an ascent from basically descriptive to prescriptive statements, but it remains difficult where exactly to draw the line at when a 'middle level' statement stops being the one and becomes the other.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Similarly, when we ask when and where questions we are dealing with points of time and coordinates on maps which are very exact in their descriptive accuracy. When we approach what and who questions of description we become a little less precise in the plotting of our graphs. Then we ask how questions and though we can give some definite mechanical kinds of answers, the margins of our statements remain nevertheless well defined and more imprecise and open to alternative interpretation. Finally when we come to 'why' questions we leave description completely behind us as no longer satisfactory and must proffer very general and vague statements which seek to explain.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ultimately, science as explanations is involved foremost with asking why questions, though its many 'puzzle solutions' are frequently framed in terms of 'how' responses. How and why questions ask about the relations between things and leave behind the descriptive definition of what or where and when things as already given.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Objectivity is another value of scientific positivism and rationalism which remains as an unquestioned but vaguely defined precept of its praxis. In general 'objectivity' is contrasted with 'subjectiveness'. Objectivism is a philosophical doctrine stressing the objective reality of all that is known or perceived. Such objective reality refers to 'anything external to or independent of the mind; real; actual' or 'having to do with a known or perceived object as distinguished from something existing only in the mind of the subject, or person thinking'. Metaphorically it also refers to being without bias or prejudice, being the aim or goal, detached, impersonal or determined by and emphasizing the features and characteristics of the object or thing dealt with, rather than the thoughts, feelings, etc., of the artist, writer or speaker. From the standpoint of science all of these connotations are fitting and we may refer to the normal scientist as having an 'objective frame of mind.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Methodologically scientific objectivity rests upon the reliability and repeatability of its experiments and its 'proofs' and in a more basic sense, in the universal commensurability of its basic standards of measurement by which it defines and describes experiential events in discrete, non-arbitrary ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But it must again be asked whether it is the actual objectivity of the observations and statements made upon which science rests empirically, or if what is actually happening is some other kind of phenomena which becomes distinguished as 'objectiveness'. Part of the answer to this rests in distinguishing the critical differences between 'inter-subjectivity' as a core value of science versus 'objectivity' and in seeing how these are rooted in the linguistically of the production of scientific statements and of the function of such statements to communicate information in a theoretically as open a way as possible.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The difference between objectivity and 'inter-subjectivity' is the difference between etic and emic or roughly the outsider's versus the insider's point of view. This dichotomy is in a sense spurious, because in fact the etic, 'objective' point of view is but the 'emics of the observer'. What we are left with is the inter-subjectivity of a community sharing a set of viewpoints, value orientations, beliefs and even experiences of reality. Objectivity remains a 'pure' ideal state--perhaps unattainable--of 'alienated subjectivity'. Inter-subjectivity is a kind of empathetic relational communion between people--based upon common experiential encounter. The problem of objectivity and inter-subjectivity are part of the problem of the interpretation of reality of the determination metaphorical salience and metaphysical relevance in the reading of the signs of the environment, and in the inter-translations of different interpretations of the same reality which have different topographies of 'mindscape'. Another related problem is the 'dilemma of context'--the problem of deciding how much or how little context is important to be included or excluded in the understanding of something. Objectivity posits the possibility of a single correct interpretation of reality, and of a single correct etic translation of this interpretation, in comparison with which all other 'subjective' versions are imperfect and distorted.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dilemma of the 'objective' standpoint is that it is self reflective of its own embedded and tacit value orientations yet it is non-reflexive of its own role in the interpretation and translation of reality in the same way that 'inter-subjectivity' is necessarily reflexive. Inter-subjectivity is also based upon a fusion of phenomenological horizons which are subjectively determined of both the individual and the collective.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Inter-subjectivity is based upon the understanding of its own linguistically in the knowledge of science, while objectivity represents a denial of this linguisticality. Objectivity superimposes a single hierarchical order upon our collective conception of reality by justifying a single correct interpretation of its rules and laws. Inter-subjectivity unites a community at a more basic level of common perceptions, experiences and pre-understandings.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The purpose of the value of inter-subjectivity and of relational explanation of symbolic generalization of science is to facilitate communication of scientific information within a community to enhance the 'survival value' of that society. The communication of shared experience as the basis of scientific knowledge represents the primary criteria of scientific understanding--if a theory is phrased in language which prevents communication of its relevant scientific content in as broad and trans-linguistic context as possible, or of its own distorted or propagandized for purposes of persuasion, then scientific suffers from a condition of its own tautological scientificity. Science must always be stated in terms of a virtually open system of symbolic communication. The real proof or disproof of scientific knowledge is in its communicative efficacy--if it facilitates a sharing of experience, hence scientific knowledge in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is this communicative function of scientific language imposes the constraints of efficiency and sufficiency upon scientific explanation of relational phenomena in the world. The inherently limited channel capacity of any symbolism, word, phrase to convey the essentially unknowable. Scientific advancement in theory and knowledge has not just become more reflexively realistic but it has in a basic sense, created and expanded reality itself to become larger and more encompassing. It has not just excoriated the unknown, but it has systematically exorcised the unknowable.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It in this sense that our worlds today are fuller of knowledge and greater of vision and possibility that were the worlds of our distant ancestors. We see further and deeper into the nature of reality of which we ourselves are inextricably a part.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science can be looked at an on-going dialectical debate between the rational and the empirical and between the 'objective' and the phenomenological. As such there is a continual movement between generals and particulars, between etic and emic awareness, between things and their relations and the term for things and their relations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A thesis is not expounded that is not soon challenged by counter evidence--a usual way of seeing new evidence is not long without competition from alternative points of view.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is from this continuous and unending dialectic that the paradigms and models of the world of science has gradually taken solid, distinctive shape in our world and though it is always growing and changing--its general form and outline have achieved a degree of consistency and constancy such that it can be talked about with a degree of certitude that it will not soon become unrecognizably altered.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p>(THE FOLLOWING CHAPTER BEGINS ON PAGE 417. THERE ARE SENTENCES MISSING …….) relevant information necessary to an understanding of why something happened in the world entails the strictest most succinct and concise statements which summarize in as few words as possible the necessary conditions and characteristics determining a relationship, while leaving as implicit only the descriptive pre-understandings that are taken for granted in an inter-subjective context of collective understanding. Such minimalization of redundancy and optimization of carrying capacity is the communication of its formalized, symbolically generalized, experiential understanding enables science to communicate its conceptual understanding of the world to as broad and as exotic an audience as possible, and eliminates the risk of error and misunderstanding in the transmission of its information.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The scientific goals of progressive knowledge of the world or increased accuracy and predictability and control over the world, must also be brought into question as the rationalistic, versus the actual 'purpose' of scientific praxis. A closer look reveals that what science has accomplished is a gradual enlargement of our perceived worlds, albeit indirectly through its instrumentation and a refinement of the precision of our understanding of the nature of relationships in the world. A spin off of applied science has been literarily an expansion of our world through the creation of new things and possibilities. In other words, the progress of scientific praxis is to be measured in terms of how much it has expanded our experiential horizons of the world, both individually and collectively and by how much it has modified our vision of this world through the progressive excoriation of the known from the unknown and the reductive elimination of the ( THIS IS THE LAST CHAPTER ON PAGE 417. THERE ARE MISSING SENTENCES…)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is from this perspective of science as culture historical dialectic that we can see the rise of science as the primary sense making paradigm of our modern world. Its function is to make sense of our world as a special mode of experience of the world. It orders our 'senses' and our sensibilities. It provides consistency to our perception and sensitivity to our experience of the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As sense, we can speak of both the physical meaning of sensation, the psychological meaning of perception and conception and the metaphorical meaning of 'seeing' and the metaphysical meaning of 'understanding'. As science carries our knowledge from the possible to the probable and our statements from the particular to the general, and our questions from the descriptive when and where to the explanative why, so also does it carry our 'senses' (beingness) of the world, from the sensate stimuli through the levels of perceptual experience to the order of abstract conceptuality and the imagination of possibility. And in this movement of sense it is difficult if not impossible to tell when the 'objective' sense of the world leaves off and the 'subjective' sense of our own interpretation of the world takes over.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As symbolic process, science works in both directions at the same time, and the synthesis of its dialectic is primarily in terms of its special symbolic generalization. Science as symbolization integrates our world for us at all levels of sense. As a system of symbolization, science is also primarily a verbal and literal world of language--its synthesizing, integrative function of our reality is fundamental to its linguisticality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science was not latent in the objective world as an a priori possibility waiting to become discovered and realized by humankind--humankind created science through the deployment of its language to intermediate its understanding and vision of its reality. Science, like mind of which it is an expression, is reflexive and representative of this reality in a symbolic sense, as models and metaphors, but it is not necessarily preexistent in this reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The worst ideological delusion science can promote is to confuse its scientific versions of the world for the world itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As a sense making system of understanding our world, science is primarily symbolic and it partakes of the capacity of human symbolization to function simultaneously upon several 'levels' of experience in an integrated synthetic manner.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is from the standpoint of dialectical symbolism that science and culture history can be seen to share in the unity of the mind. It is not too much to suggest that science and its advancement was likely, if not inevitable, outcome of the processual patterning of human civilization and that it has become symbolically the most direct expression and realization of human mindness that we now have. In a sense similar to mythology and culture history, science is the voice and sense of mindness in the world, when it is disinvested of its ideology and non-being of its rationalizing paradigmatics.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not without relevance that the dictionary's definition of 'sense' reflects the ascending levels of its scientific experience. '1. The ability of the nerves and brain to receive and react to stimuli, as light, sound, impact, constriction, etc.; 2. The senses considered as a total function of the bodily organism; 3. Feeling impression, perception, or recognition, either through the senses or through the intellect, awareness; 4. An ability to judge, distinguish or estimate external conditions; 5. An ability to feel, appreciate, understand or comprehend some quality; 6. An ability to think or reason soundly, normal intelligence and judgment, often as reflected in behavior; 7. Meaning; especially any of several meanings conveyed by or attributed to the same word or phrase; 8. Essential signification; 9. Soundness of judgment or reasoning; 10. Something wise, sound or reasonable; 11. The general opinion, sentiment or attitude of a group.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In understanding the communicative and inter-subjective criteria of science, it is important to understand the collective notion of 'sense' as both 'common sense' and seeking a 'consensus' about the world. It is the precision and hypothetical replicability of the instrumentality of science which enables a general consensus to be reached in the widest context of signification and symbolization as possible. Its symbolic generalizations are held to be 'trans-linguistic' and 'meta-linguistic' in the sense that they stand above the condition of language as human universals--its laws can be interpreted and translated into any language.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To claim that science, as a collective, corporate enterprise of the scientific community, is basically rooted in common sense and the goal of consensus, is not without some qualification, as the very danger of the paradigmatic ideology of scientism also is founded upon the 'common sense' and 'consensus' cultivating functions which scientific praxis inevitably eventuates in.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"It is not always appreciated that the problem of theory building is a constant interaction between constructing laws and finding an appropriate set of descriptive state variables (units) such that laws can be constructed. We cannot go out and describe the world in any old way we please and then sit back and demand that an explanatory and predictive theory be built on that description…That is not to say that there is an insoluble contradiction. Rather there is a process of trial and synthesis going on…in which both state descriptions and laws are being fitted together." (Lewontin: 1974a:8)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A dialectical tension in science has been emphasized between time like historical approaches which emphasize why explanation, ultimate causation and dynamic change and space like a historical approaches which are systemic, functional, how descriptive, nomothetic, proximate cause and 'essentialist' in orientation. Space like systems of science assume a universal homogeneity, while the time like science does not assume that reality is unified as a system but rather it has directionality of development. 'In such a view, phenomena cannot exist as bounded, a priori entities, but are always in a process of becoming. Time like sciences are relational rather than 'thing' oriented. 'Relations cannot be rendered as timeless universally true statements among entities, because there is no constant set of entities…' 'The absence of a periodic table in such sciences is not a function of disciplinary youth; it is a function of their ontological status…'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"The absence of discrete, bonded, empirically meaningful entities in one view, and their presence in the other, have a profound influence in all aspects of science. The notion of nomothetic science is clearly founded in a space like conception of reality, and physics is the prime example of such a science. It is not at all so obvious what it means to be nomothetic within a time like framework. To be universally true, classical laws requires units that are independent of time and space. Clearly, laws of this sort cannot exist at the same level in time like sciences (e.g., Popper 1963). Attempts to generate such statements result in empirical generalizations which can be shown to be false a priori, and obscure the variability that the time like conception is designed to make accessible. This is not to say that laws are impossible in time like frames, or that time like sciences cannot be nomothetic, only that the substantive terms must be different and that efforts to construct laws strictly on models derived from physics are wasted. Only one grand theory of this sort exists--Darwinian evolution. Here, 'laws' attend how things change, not how they interact. It could be no other way." (Dunnell, 1982)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Historical 'time like' sciences are a more general and encompassing order of science that are the 'space like' sciences. Historical sciences embrace a historical sciences in much the way that mind embraces world view. What is seen as ideologically 'non-ideological' about science is its construction primarily following the examples of a 'space like' physics. Though science in general is more 'comprehensive' at a 'time like' order of generalization, it is also less precise and exacting as are the 'space like' sciences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science as Kuhnian paradigms is primarily 'space like' in orientation. Only the theory of evolution so far consists of a 'time like' metaphysics of science, and it is so far incomplete and partial.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Common sense is fundamental to human culture history--it defines the horizon of our sense making capacity. It may be referred to as an 'ethno-science' or 'folk psychology' that all people carry around in their heads. Common sense is largely a culture specific phenomena, and it is rooted in the context of culture which constrains our lives--'it determines the kinds of observations, the rules for assembling those observations into sense, and even what constitutes sense. As a sense making system, common sense is functionally equivalent to theory in the sciences.' (Dunnell:12)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Common sense is bound ethnocentrically by the same culture historical horizons of which it is composed. It is synonymous with the paradigmatic world view of culture history in that its intensive 'sense' is largely determined by the existing status quo of power relations in a society--who controls change is the arbiter of 'sense' in even an experiential mode, and change that happens as a consequence of power is seen to 'make sense' much as 'might makes right'. In this 'embedded' sense, common sense is reflective of but not reflexive upon, the power relations, class differences and inequalities of social structure in which it is rooted and derived. Socio linguistically and psycho dynamically, it is 'situated' in local, dyadic discursive practices--speech styles, code switching, jargons and pragmatics which reinforce or reflect these social differences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The 'general structure' of common sense is conditioned by the mechanism of its 'natural selection'. No common sense could persist if it routinely led to incorrect solutions that affect the transmission and reproduction of a cultural grouping. Common sense is practical and works within its own culture historical provenience. No common sense can persist in the face of competition with a more powerful common sense. As a product of selection, common sense is adapted to the framework experienced by living people; it is the height of presentism. Common sense changes, largely unmarked, to meet changed conditions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…it does not itself embody a developed notion of time; in fact, even the notion of qualitatively different time is a relatively modern notion in western cultures and is in large part linked to the development of science (Toulmin and Goodfield, 1965). It is easy enough to appreciate why common sense is incapable of embodying a serial notion of time, beyond a rather nebulous sense of history. Selection places no premium on longevity--longevity thwarts change. in that future conditions are unknown, they cannot be anticipated by common sense. To incorporate a past would be anachronistic and maladaptive. A common sense that 'averaged' large amounts of time would because of change, be a poor adaptation at any given time. Thus, common sense is space like and essentialists." (Dunnell, 1972: 12-13)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Common sense exerts its influence largely on an unconscious level--it consists of those pre-understandings of our culture history, embodied in the knowledge of our experience which predetermine and condition our consciousness in subtle and 'unmarked' ways. Its pervasive and persuasive influence in our lives is due to the fact that it goes mostly unnoticed and unrecognized for what it is, as something given, to be taken for granted and to be left unquestioned. The difference between common sense and science is that the former is mostly implicit and must remain so, while the latter depends upon bringing the implicitness of knowledge into explicit, reflexive recognition. Like mythology, of which common sense is but a secularized everyday version, common sense normally embodies contradictions and partiality of understanding. All that is important is that this contradictoriness and partiality of common sense remains unconscious in its functioning. 'We cannot know it explicitly, cannot examine its premises, and are unable to control its change…The need for science derives from posing questions that are not permissible within common sense, and thereby not answerable within it. For these new questions, a substitute system must be manufactured explicitly if the system is to be manufactured at all.' (Dunnell: 13)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Thus common sense as a culture historical phenomena competes with science for possession of mind, and the history of the rise of science can be seen as well as a dialectic between common sense and science. Unlike science, common sense is virtually invisible since we are not usually aware of its functioning in our lives. 'Once data are converted into a form that is tractile in common sense (by the extraction of its temporality) explanation is virtually self evident and almost unchallengable.' (Dunnell: 13)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"Realizing that common sense competes with scientific explanation where the two overlap in subject matter and that science must initially be forged out of common sense may explain many of the gross features of the history and development of modern science. It is probably not accidental that the first sciences to develop, and those which have enjoyed the greatest success are those in which an essentialist framework is workable, and the subject matter at a very different scale that that attended to by common sense. The former feature requires the least amount of change, while the latter insures modest competition. Sciences that attend to phenomena at similar scales and require a materialist framework are the least well developed, the last to appear and have been won at the price of accepting a man/nature dichotomy." (Toulmin and Goodfield, 1965)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"The history of science is really one of the development of theory as a substitute for common sense and a constant battle against the incursions of common sense. When explicit theory fails or is incomplete, the space is not left vacant--common sense will fill it…" (Dunnell, 1972:14)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Common sense as an implicit horizon of human experience, is in dialectical competition with science as an explicit horizon of human experience--both compete with one another to achieve a 'consensus' of understanding and 'order' of reality. Common sense does so in terms of world view and its paradigmatics, science does so in terms of mindness and its realization. To the extent that science, as normal, rationalizing world view, is paradigmatic, it can be said to be embedded within and dependent upon the metaphorical power of common sense--to the extent that science explicitly becomes meta-paradigmatic it can be said to transcend and synthetically replace common sense as the primary sense making device of modern consciousness. Common sense and science exist in a mutual relationship--today our common sense of the world is as much informed by our views of science as our sciences in the past have been unconsciously informed by our common sense view of the world. Common sense is perhaps an inevitable outcome of science, and science is perhaps an inevitable outcome of common sense. Ultimately science must appeal to the same empirical source of what is most common about our senses as our common sense is rooted in our everyday experience of reality--both seek a 'consensus' of vision about the world, although the explicit criteria of the former are more constrained and constraining than the implicit criteria of the latter. Common sense can be said to be the 'intuitive' ground--the fertile soil of human consciousness, from which we configure and reconfigure our scientific understanding. It is the intuitive and counter intuitive creativity of our common sense that we regularly construct, deconstruct and reconstruct our scientific systems. The danger and the strength of science can be found in its appeal to and contradiction of common sense--it is when our scientific sense contradicts our common sense, or our common sense seems counter intuitive to our scientific sense, that we recognize the existence of conflict and the need for change in our ways of experiencing reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As a system of symbolic generalization, science shares with common sense the symbolic function of human language to express, reflect and understand our experience of human reality. Understanding the linguistic praxis common to both science and to common sense as modes of expression and experiencing reality is important to understanding the limits of both.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Change is the most difficult problem which science must deal with. An historical 'evolutionary' time like science attempting to understanding the 'structure' of change is perhaps the most general kind of scientific explanation yet available to humankind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A key theoretical issue is whether or not an evolutionary frame of mind is a necessary and sufficient form of explanation for the understanding of the interrelationships of natural phenomena, and of changes, through time. If not, then what might be? This issue constitutes one of the principle horizons of our scientific knowledge.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Evolutionary theory is not the actual origin itself, but constitutes a way of modeling our minds about change. Evolution moves toward an 'ecological' frame of mind 'as a new way of thinking about ideas and aggregates of ideas called mind.' (Bateson, 1972) Roy Rappaport associates ecological order with the term logos--the 'rational relation of things to one another', 'the general sense of order or measure'. Ecological mind is in this sense of order 'holistic'. Logos, in somes, in the thought of Heraclitus and his followers designated the principle through which the cosmos is generated, ordered, united and maintained, or even the ordered, united, evolving cosmos itself.' (Bateson, 1984:309) 'The logos is, therefore, the common principle making possible understanding between man and the world and also between men.' (Kleinkrecht, 1967: 81; in Rappaport, 1984:310)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">An ecological frame of mind about evolutionary theory leads to a metalogical dialogue about this problematic topic such that 'the structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to the same subject'. Meta-logic is beyond the scope of the structure of our logic, a metaphysics of that logic, which defines our ecological frame of mind, structured as it is by the apperceptive awareness of our own evolution. The meta-logic of our dialectical comprehension of the logos of nature is itself a reflection of the logos of nature is itself a reflection of that logos, and our 'coming to terms' with it we call 'science'. We are, as far as we know, the only creatures to have evolved a capacity for reflexively comprehending both the logos of nature and of our own being.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In speaking of sense of order, or 'structure' or 'system' whether formal, functional, deep, generative, architectonic, etc. do we really mean something different from 'sense' itself, or sense/nonsense or 'meaning/ameaning', whether symbolic, psychological, affective, behavioral, idiomatic or as Gregory Bateson put it, are we merely 'tying knots in our handkerchief' such that 'these terms will forever stand, not as fences hiding the unknown free from future investigators, but rather as signposts which read: 'UNEXPLORED BEYOND THIS POINT'. Language spoken or textual, can obfuscate as well as clarify. 'Structure' and 'system' may only be convenient substitutes hiding or own ignorance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our science is systemic as 'natural system's theory'--meaning general approximation or modeling of physical, biological and human patterning of natural phenomena. Nature is universal--there can be no going beyond it. But our science is finite and limited. We can go beyond it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Irreversible change is the logos of nature, its only unchanging absolute is the fact of change itself. In reference to universal change, I refer to the 'natural continuum'. Change, defined as alteration, modification, mutation, transformation, metamorphosis, variation, differentiation, revolution, implies disorganization, decay, disorder, chaos, entropy. When constrained by some kind of 'redundancy' (i.e. cybernetic information) change is no longer fortuitous chance, randomness, or chaos, but becomes patterned, systemic, ordered, predictable, recursive, restrained, relevant and meaningful. As natural systems theory, our science implies a quest for informational systems of the patterning of natural phenomena in relationship to the principle of universal change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"Any aggregate of events or objects (e.g. A sequence of phonemes, a painting, or a frog or a culture) shall be said to contain 'redundancy' or 'pattern', if the aggregate can be divided in any way by a 'slash mark', such that an observer perceiving only what in on one side of the slash mark can guess with better than random success, what is on the other side of the slash mark. We may say that what is on one side of the slash contains information or has meaning about what is on the other side…" (Gregory Bateson, 1972: 130-2)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The logos of science is natural change, or entropy. Science can be described as 'natural systems theory' which attempts to adduce and explain how patterns of natural phenomena maintain a sense of order in the flow of change, or how dynamic structures endure through the process of change over the long term.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The logos of science as natural systems theory seeks explanation as to why things and relations between things change in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Natural systems are self organizing systems whose patternings and transformations are in part determined by the relational functions between its elements and the possibilities of patterning which these functions can account for. Self organizing systems theory, seeks to understand the functional transform 'rules' of relation which guides the patterning. It also seeks to understand the total history of the process of patterning such that the understanding of individual events can be understood as a function of the overall stability of the system through time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In natural systems theory there are recognizable three 'informational' horizons of scientific understanding. The most basic and comprehensive is the physical level. A subsystem of the first is the biological level and a subsystem of the biological level is the human level. At each of these levels, there are different orders of phenomena and the experience of these phenomena. Each subsequent subsystem comprises a different order of organizational complexity of information. The higher the level, the more general and 'time like' the understanding and the less precise and predictable the patterning. At each ascending level there are synergistic patternings of the 'system' which cannot be accounted for by the analysis of its lower order parts. Understanding of the information of the subsequent order or complexity cannot be sufficiently reduced to the terms of the previous, lower orders, though understanding of the previous orders is prerequisite to the complete understanding of higher levels.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…In such a hierarchy of determinations, physical and chemical laws stand as absolutely necessary for the explanation of biological phenomena, but they are equally and absolutely insufficient.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The same kind of hierarchical relationships holds for culture vis-à-vis biology (and by implication physics and chemistry). Culture is biology plus the symbolic faculty…" (M. Sahlins, 1976:65-6)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Part of the program of science has nevertheless been the reduction of higher order patterning to explication in terms of lower order elements and their interrelations. This approach to science has been analytical in orientation and reductionistic in aim. This is not an appropriate role for scientific research--it is a necessary prelude to the kind of synthetic understanding which should eventually follow. But description of how patterns is not an adequate answer for why questions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We cannot translate all biological processes into purely physical terms, nor all cultural or human processes into purely biological or physical terms--such a process of continuous and complete reductionism entails the complete extraction of the time like dimensionality of the higher order levels of generalization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science as reflexive of mind, as 'natural systems theory' is based upon the function of a 'relational logic' which follows certain 'relational rules' which govern transformation and change. the relational logic which informs such 'natural science' in its dialectic of mindness is fundamentally different from the mathematical and rational logic held to inform scientific discourse. This 'relational logic' is both metalogical and meta-paradigmatic in being both beyond logic and paradigms in the formal sense and about such logic and paradigms, and it provides the alternative criteria of substantiation, operation and validation within the 'third culture' of culture history which is irreducibly different from the criteria applicable within the arts or the sciences--its philosophy of inquiry is fundamentally different from either a philosophy of science or a philosophy of the arts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science has not been so much based upon the 'discovery' of preexisting principles as much as on the invention and creation of a posteriori rules of relationship accounting for previously observed patterns of phenomena. The 'structures' of scientific theory are held to be partially and imperfectly representative or isomorphic with the eidetic, apodictic 'structures' underlying and governing the observable patterning of phenomena in the real experiential world. Logos is both the ordering principle of the cosmos and of human mind--the principle of logos holds that human rationality is capable of comprehending the logos of the universe. It is no accident that logos has come to mean knowledge as expressed by language. The critique of 'pure' science has been that this logos of language is embedded within and embodies the hermeneutic circles of the culture history of mind. There can be no pure perceptual experience of real phenomena nor an 'unbiased; account of such experience, which has not been un-preconditioned by the phenomenological 'intentionality structures' which we bring to the ordering of our experience. It follows that the basic difference between the rational 'two value logic' of the 'hard sciences' and the relational logic informing the 'third culture' is that culture history as a 'science' of humankind, must somehow take into account in its formulations of theory and praxis the influence and phenomenological substrate of the experiencing mind, as something more than mere super structural epiphenomena or a residue of physical process. Any other account of human reality must necessarily and insufficiently be 'reductionistic' and 'reifying'. The logos and language of relational understanding cannot be positivistically reducible to a perfect one to one correspondence between the term and the thing. Such mechanical/material theories of language have a much deeper history of ideas than most modern social scientists or linguists would care to elucidate. Relational logos must somehow account for the connotational indeterminacy of its significations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Rational systems are typically 'over determined' systems, especially when they are premised upon relationships which are based on unidirectional causality. Systems of functional relations are over determined 'structures' of direct causality based upon the minimization of uncertainty or the maximization of 'information'. Such systems are physically 'perfect' in a mechanical sense of being unaffected by the law of entropy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relational systems are 'natural' systems rather than purely abstract or mathematical or noumenal structures--natural systems are entropic and 'weakly' chaotic in that they tend to grow predictably from certain order toward uncertain chaos. Such system manifest 'self organizing criticality' which accounts for a wide range of variation of phenomenal patterning based on the total history of the functioning of a few basic rules of relation. The elaborated patternings of phenomenal 'structures' are but the long term derivative of fairly fixed and stable, 'robust' patternings based upon the crystallization of these basic sets of rules functioning at different scales, orders and magnitude of interaction and relation---they are 'weakly determined' by the transformation of basic relational rules governing the eidetic structure of the systems minimal components.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relational logic attempts to understand and reduce in a systematic way complex phenomena to such a basic set of relational rules among a minimal set of component entities, within a total universal context of possible relations. Such relational logic is also inductive and empirical in the sense of being derived from phenomenological perceptual experience rather than being based upon conceptions of innate, a priori rational structures or sense of perfect order. Relational logic is the logos of natural systems theory, concerned not so much with 'truth', identity or validity in any absolute sense but with accounting for the concurrence, sequence and recurrence of patterns of change in phenomenological experience. It seeks identity and difference in a 'relative' sense of relational contextuality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The purpose of relational logic is the understanding of how complex systems or patterns of phenomena come to be self organizing or self regulating, and how such systems naturally tend to evolve towards chaotic states of super criticality. The long terms structures and dynamics of complex systems are the consequences of the total history of transformations and interrelations based upon the operation of basic relational 'forces' between individual component entities of the system, in relation to environmental transformations affecting it. Complex structures must be construed as so many possible permutations of a basic set of relational rules which are interacting within complex environments. There exist no isomorphic, eidetic 'structures' which dictate causal necessity to the developmental history of such patternings--they are randomly organized. The complex patterns are epiphenomenal events resulting from the interplay of a variety of interrelated phenomena.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Like galaxies, solar systems, land masses, clouds, human systems of culture, symbols, economics, ecology and history are self organizing and weakly chaotic. Physics, astronomy, geology, chemistry and biology are all founded theoretically upon basic relational paradigms--the formal sense of a set of rules governing the relations between entities--sets of basic relational rules forming limiting constraints upon the behavior of component entities of a system. Intermediate relational rules describe the interactive transformations of relations within the environment. Epiphenomenal relational patternings are those observable 'structures' which constitute the phenomenological order of the real world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Natural systems theory attempts to describe the basic relational rules, account for the intermediate, derivative transformational rules, and the epiphenomenal patterning at several distinctive orders of phenomenological experience--the physical, biological and the human. These levels is constrained by lower order rules and yet involves more complex sets of intermediate relations which confer upon such systems greater dynamic variability, indeterminacy and chaos. Higher order systems must remain non-contradictory with respect to lower order rules, but the patterning of their relations are also synergistic and irreducible to lower order rules.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is possible to explicate and 'discover' a basic relational meta-paradigm governing pan human behavior, social structure, cognition and culture historical process, but this has not yet been achieved. Incomplete and partial relational sets have been devised governing certain facets of human experience--Marxian theory of 'modes of production' and 'relations of production' are an example. But the problem of integrating the complexities of human reality have not yet been resolved in a scientifically satisfactory manner.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relational logic is also 'dialogical' and dialectical in the sense that its functions through question and answer, respondent and opponent dialectic which explores and exhausts the possibilities of the relational 'paradigm'. Such dialectic is neither the strict, precise logic conventionally valued by pure scientists, nor is it just the arbitrary rhetoric espoused by humanists--it yields relatively approximate rules in terms of reasonably convincing and definite statements which are general and stable in accounting for a broad range of phenomena, and which are amenable to further application and suggestive of other alternative possibilities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relational logic is not rational logic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There exists no a priori or transcendent structure or Cartesian logos to relational rule sets. Rather the basis of the relational organization is based upon the functional integration of the physical properties and characteristics of the minimal component entities, and there overall total relational matrix in the universe.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relational logic is not concerned so much with validity or truth value as much as with co-occurrence, sequence, and the recurrence of change. It is the logic of dynamic change--difference and identity are understood in a relative and contextual sense rather than in any absolute sense. Relational logic is concerned with the relatively and contextuality of truth or of indirect forms of truth rather than 'truth' itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relational logic does not seek causality or consequentiality but correlational significance of associations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The number of possible relations and patterns is determined by the number of 'independent variables' of the basic system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are three levels of relational rules:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">1. Basic relational rule.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">2. Relational combinations, intermediate derivative rules.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">3. Observed patternings of phenomena.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Higher order systems are non-contradictory with lower order systems but are synthetic and involve more rule sets.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Basic relational rules are context independent, static, stable and are articulated at different levels and are variable according to environmental contexts of their articulation. Intermediate derivational rules are context dependent, dynamic and are the conditions of the environment in moderation of the transformation of the basic relational rules.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Higher order systems are derived from more levels of intermediate, permutational relations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relational structures represent frozen or fixed patterns which are relatively stable. Relational patterns represent epi-phenomenal variations of a common theme of possibility--alternative profiles of a common horizon.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relational logic follows set theory as illustrated by Venn diagrams.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relational rules involve variability, proximity, remoteness, direction/indirection, similarity/difference, affinity, homology and analogy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relational rules are basic statements which govern possible combinations. They are entered into an informational system yield sets of results in terms of ordered patternings which resemble crystallitic structures.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are a bias set of component relations--limited and independent factors.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Basic relational rules are systematic, relatively consistent, stable and general.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Dialectic is the process of elaborating, explicating and refining statements regarding relational rules.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relational rules inform the basis of 'possibility theory'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">everything is related to everything else in more than one way, however indirectly.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relationships are never direct, but always indirect--intermediated by something else.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Some relationships are more indirect than others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Indirect relationships tend to be hidden from experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Nothing exists independently and separately from everything else.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are no absolute boundaries separating things.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Some things are more directly related than other things.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Meaning is always situated in a web or nexus of relationships between 'things'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Nothing can be construed outside of its contexts of relatedness with everything else. No group of things can be construed as separate from its web of relationships with everything else.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The ideal relational context is infinite and unending--it can never be encompassed or eliminated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">No matter how satisfying or sufficient, there is always a more interesting connection between things remaining to be discovered.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Everything is changing. Everything changes at different rates.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relationships between things are always dynamic though slower changing things are more static.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The universe of experience is continually transformative.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The universe of experience is infinite and unending.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The universe of experience can never be encompassed or gotten outside of--we can never know the forest for the trees or see the whole elephant.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There can be no complete knowledge of the whole.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our knowledge is always bound, limited and direct.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We cannot directly ascertain the inherent indirection between things, but only circumstantially infer such relationship.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The universe of experience is a field of unfinished possibility.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Whatever we know, is always encompassed by all that we do not know.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Some relationships are more basic and long lasting than others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">More basic relationship are more pervasive--but this can only be known in a local and relative way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Nothing is absolute, nothing is unknowable, nothing is impossible.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relationships between things are always mediated indirectly by a third 'thing' which becomes expressed through time as a 'force, power, movement, a differential, a state or condition of relation'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All things are different. No two things are exactly alike.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The universe of experience is characterized by impermanence. Nothing exists forever.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Things' are fundamentally nonexistent--only relationships between things exist.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The existence of things and their relations is only temporary, ephemeral and transitive.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Things and relations dissolve into other things and relations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We can only know a thing's shadow, its negative outline and its felt presence of the space it displaces. We can only see what lies just beyond our vision upon our horizon and as soon as we enter a new region, what was there escapes from our sense of presence and we mistake it for what is left behind--its imprint and impression, its sense of absence. We seek to discover what it is, only to find out what it is not, but in the process we crowd it out of our present space. We force it into the ever beyond. We bound it in a negative way, internally. It is no longer infinite, no longer total and in its absence can never become complete.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">And so science is lead by its own tail of ignorance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">ENTROPY, EFFICIENCY AND EVOLUTION OF MIND</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">George H. Spencer's synthetic theory of universal evolution explained that everything evolves from simple to complex. This occurs inspite of entropy, which states that everything rends toward a random disorder--absolute simplicity. The dictum of parsimony implies an intrinsic 'eco-logism' of natural systems and logos--that natural systems always inherently tend to efficiency maximization--a built in 'presence' or 'mind' or rationality of systems. Minimization of randomness or noise if not necessarily synonymous with the maximization of efficiency but the two meanings are often conflated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human cultural evolution is said to have developed on the basis of increasing efficiency in energy use. Progress has been based upon the principle of efficiency maximization--science validates itself on the basis of 'efficiency rules'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A critical difference must be recognized between a narrow sense of efficiency--1920 gasoline engines were less fuel efficient than 1992 gasoline engines--and a sense of total systemic efficiency within a larger global or universal ecosystem--modern post industrial fossil fuel economies are less energy efficient, but more energy consumptive than 17<sup>th</sup> century north American hunting and gathering subsistence economies. It must be asked if in the long teleological train of human evolutionary events, whether stones to make stone tools were necessarily any less efficient that tools to make tools to make tools to make internal combustion engines.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Judgments about absolute efficiency of systems depends upon the completeness and closure of such systems as functionally autonomous entities--but in the universe of determinations, one in which our solar system is but one very diminished spot and in which we haven’t yet found any sense of a boundary, there is a different sense of relative efficiency of all systems which are in fact subsystems composed of subsystems within greater subsystems--in such a universal framework it no longer makes much sense to speak about 'efficiency' in any but the most limited way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The ideal of absolute efficiency is another implication of the rational ideal of perfect mind existing in perfect space and perfect time. Rationality itself strives for such perfect efficiency--flawless decision making, logic, definition, etc. Increasing efficiency is spoken of as an ideal--a value judgment we make in relation to people and things. Movement toward greater efficiency, 'economy of effort' underlies the principle of progress. Yet the only truly efficient development seems to have been the evolution of mind--producing something from nothing and more from less--an 'anti entropy' which defies simplistic explanation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PARSIMONY, PURITY AND POLLUTION</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The principle of parsimony or sparingness or extreme frugality or economy underlies rational idealism and has come down in scientific rationalism as 'Ockham's Razor'--to always choose the simplest of competing explanations, theories as the most reasonable and least problematic. It is a principle implying that the rational world of perfect mind is a perfectly coherent order which is inherently simplifying and easier rather than more difficult to understand. Simple models are preferable over complex elaborate ones. This leads to a principle in language usage and writing style that the simplicity is the essence of sound communication and style, reducing the effects or random noise or possible error. Symbolic logic reflects this principle, and it underlies the use of statistics as a descriptive language. The principle of parsimony is frequently applied to justify scientific theories whether or not the real, natural order or record is simple or complex. Implicit in this kind of reason is that in the logic of determinations, the one is better than the many, the singular preferable to the variable. This reflects values of perfection and absoluteness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The indiscriminant application of the principle of parsimony begs the question of whether nature or logos are always or necessarily organized on the principles of efficiency, simplicity and maximum coherence or noise reduction. It also begs the question of whether the simplest argument or explanation is necessarily the best or most accurate one possible. But its adherence, if in name only, does reveal an implicit value orientation of rationalists--perfect mind is pure, and falsity is pollution which must be ritualistically and mythologically tabooed. Parsimony is one way of tabooing unparsimonious cognitive or conceptual pollution. Pure mind must be protected by Ockham's Razor. Falseness itself is not tabooed--it is only negatively sanctioned as a kind of indirect constraint upon the perfect mind. The real dangerous pollution is the indeterminacy, the noise, the bias, the unknown and the affects of randomization. Uncertainty is tabooed as intolerable in the rational mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is interesting to speculate that purity and pollution in the ordering of the rational mind might not entail certain fundamental contradictions in the rationalistic world view. Our progress towards perfection means the development of pure science, pure mind, pure reason. We bring brand new perfection through the front door, the ritually pure and sanctified and we through the pollution out the back door as garbage. As our rational science creates a perfect paradise on earth, it has been noticed by more than a few scientists, pure and applied, that the levels of technological pollution of increasing beyond our limits of tolerance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">VERUS AND FALSUS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">That logo-centrism leads to the reification of rational ideas as if they preexisted a priori to their instantiation experience and a misplaced concreteness of the abstract form of ideas as expressed textually in words, and therefore to a prefabricated construction of a rationally ordered reality through its textualization--I speak and write with words, therefore they must be real and true themselves and not just representative of reality and truth--also leads to the conclusion that scientific rationalism is also a conceptual construction of mind. Our scientific mind is also constructed on the basis of implicit preconceptions about order, rationality, progress and perfection.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Rational idealism entails an implicit preconception of truth as 'veritas' or 'verus'--that something is genuine, authentic, actual or agreeable to fact--a statement is either true or it is not true, or false. The truth of something can be reasonable predetermined in terms of having 'all the distinctive qualities of the thing specified'. Falseness comes from the Latin fallere--to deceive--and implies something that is untrue, contrary to fact or truth, incorrect, wrong, mistaken. It also implies deceit, lying or dishonesty. The possibility of falsehood is concomitant with the possibility of truth.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Rational idealism preconceives of perfect truth (and truth as a state of being perfect) Mathematical equations such as one plus one equals two is the best example of this a priori, perfect kind of truth. In this regard any error is false, an imperfect state--one and one cannot equal one and a half, nor any other number besides two. In its absoluteness, perfect truth is always singular and invariable--falseness is defined in relation to truth. Scientific rationalism approximates perfect truth and falseness as the ideal state of perfect mind--the approximateness of the empirical, inductive character of science is seen as a necessary impurity, a sobering indeterminacy or uncertainty of the possibility of falseness. But progress in science is the reduction of falseness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Rational idealism and scientific rationalism can admit only of truth and falseness--anything that is not true is automatically false. In logic this is express as truth value, the law of identity or non-contradiction and the principle of the excluded middle ground--there can be no half truths or part falsehoods in a perfectly rational world. This is referred to as two value or dichotomous logic. In statistics, this is expressed in terms of the null hypothesis--arbitrarily determined limits of tolerance for random error. In the statistical world anything that is not random is either biased (false) or true (valid). In other words, there can be no in-between ground or part true and part false--no imperfect truth or uncertain logic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">RATIONAL IDEALISM AND PERFECT MIND</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The enlightenment quest for mental perfection is the psychological embodiment of the doctrine of rational idealism. The scientific quest for the perfect logos or mind is also an expression of the doctrine of rational idealism. Perfect mind, according to this doctrine, is the textual realization of final, absolute, flawless, eternal truth. It leads to the ideology of the progress of scientific theory to the discovery of the universal logos in terms of 'natural systems theory'. Perfect mind is an ideal conceptual space occupied by monothetic, nomothetic ideal forms--preferable expressed numerically and mathematically. Perfect mind is the mathematical mind (the mind of exact and accurate 'learning').</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Rational idealism began with Socrates and idea of ideal platonic forms, and has subsequently become the predominant theme in western philosophy. It is based upon the belief in the a priori preexistence of prefect, ideal forms, such as the ideal table or ideal horse, of which every instance is but an imperfect replica--a doctrine easily uprooted when it comes to tables, chairs and horses, but one which has proven fairly intransigent when it comes to mathematical notions about truth, beauty, goodness, right and reason itself. Rationalism has become the philosophical doctrine that accepts reason as the only authority in the determination of opinion or decision, that reason or intellect is the true source of knowledge, rather than the senses and that rejects divine revelation of the supernatural--reason is the sole source of knowledge.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Reason becomes the expression and manifestation of perfect mind--it is also the justification and normative function of the principle of presence. Reasoning entails planning, speculating, calculating, weighing options, logical ratiocination and decision making--ratiocination is the act of formal reasoning using especially mathematical logic--using special symbols manipulated according to exact principles. Ratiocination is the act of determining rations or proportions of difference of balancing or weighing the difference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The rational ideal is to reduce all concepts to single word determinations of truth and falsity--single words with exact, absolute, changeless single meanings relatable to other word concepts in a nomothetic table of classification by precise determination or measurement of the 'ration' of difference. Rational idealism implies first a universal framework of meaning organized by universal principles of difference and order, secondly a pre-determinable exactness or perfect precision of reason against which all instances are judged and finally a normative decision making process in the realization of perfect mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PERFECTION, PARADISE AND THE PRINCIPLE OF PRESENCE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Progress implies advancement toward a state of perfection, or perfectionment which is an ideal of perfectionism--the doctrine that moral, religious and social perfection can and should be attained on earth. Progress implies the process of perfecting. The perfectionist ideal is a heavenly paradise on earth--a place of perfect place, and an age of perfect time. Construction of the city on the hill is the collective achievement of this realization. Millenarian dreams and movements, so basic to the Judeo-Christian tradition elaborate the perfectionist doctrine of the coming of a perfect time, or the creation of a perfect place. Enlightenment doctrine secularized this millenarian philosophy within the logocentricity of scientific rationalism--'in the modern world the intelligence of public opinion is the one indispensable condition of social progress'. (President Elliot of Harvard) Reform through modern education and education as a social institution founded upon the principle of enlightenment have become the hallmarks of becoming modern.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Central to these doctrines is the implicit value orientations of perfectionism--of perfect mind and body, perfect state of being, perfect self and perfect society free of defect, error, weakness. This normative preconception stands behind and before our scientific rationalism as implicit ideal standards of comparison in our estimations of reality, always indirectly prescriptive in dictating notions of rational and scientific purity. Science never addresses directly this normative idealism, as it never deals directly with its own logocentricity, as such attempts would undermine the anti-religious ideology of scientific rationalism. It is no accident that the primarily normative criteria of psychiatric health is 'adaptive functioning' defined in terms of economic success, social status and past time activities. Perfection is also embodied in the periodic table of the elements, Newton's Law of Gravity and Einstein's 'E=Mcsquared'. Physiological health is a perfect state free of disease and disorder and a perfect efficiency of a machine must defy the laws of thermodynamics.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The doctrines of progress and perfectionism to the extent that they are validations of the present in retrojection to a past and projection toward a future, imply the principle of presence--the presence of a mysterious spirituality manifest in the present or realized in terms of the past or future. The principle of presence privileges the immediate understanding as somehow significantly related to the understanding of the past and the future, that present progress will lead to future perfection, and comes from past regression.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">LOGOCENTRISM AND THE PRINCIPLE OF PROGRESS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Progress has become the orienting and organizing principle of our modern scientific world view. It is the principle upon which our modern world has been construed, infusing with significance every aspect of our collective existence. The imperative of development (undevelopment, underdevelopment, developing, overdeveloped and cycles of redevelopment) has become the global force in the determination of political economic success and survival. It entails an ethos of 'achievement at any cost' which has become translated into a psychological construct of 'achievement motivation' as the personal internalization of the principle of progress--the driving willpower to succeed in political economic terms. Progress informs our personal and daily lives with fundamental significance--the need to improve, to make it, to get ahead, to succeed, and it informs our understanding of mind as intelligence, enlightenment, discovery. This predominance has occurred inspite of the inherent 'blindness' of the principle of progress in the estimation of future prospects. Pre-science and predictability, long the goals of scientific rationality are absolute impossibilities in the sense of 'seeing into the future'. Consequently progress is always measured in hindsight, in comparison of present states with states associated with the past. The past then becomes endowed with progressive purposes in service of the present--a kind of self fulfilling teleology and ontogeny.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Progress, as a dominant principle, is not as ancient as the idea of logos. The Greeks did not embrace the notion of progress (from the Latin pro- before and gradi- to step, go) but it arose in conjunction with the Romanization and later Christianization of the western world. It became a Christian doctrine of advancement toward a perfect place and time--the ideal of the city on the hill. Members of the enlightenment embraced and elaborated the principle of progress, which later became an essential part of the scientific revolution against the Christian theological straight jacket. The rational mind of a secular science found liberation from religious doctrine. Progress became central to the new doctrine of scientific enlightenment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The enlightenment and the scientific revolution of mind shrugged off the yoke of narrow doctrinarianism but did not transcend the inherent logocentrism of the tradition it so radically revised--the word boundedness of mind which treated the written word as the embodiment of truth, or of the rational ideal from which has led to so much reification (turning a being into a thing) and to so much 'misplaced concreteness' (treating ideas as if materially real). This logocentrism has led our modern scientific rational mind in quest of the impossible--the realization of perfection.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THANATOLOGICAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC THANATOPHOBIA</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The view that represents a scientific rationalism as a cultural institution preoccupied with perfection, progress, purity, parsimony, anti-entropic efficiency, presence might also lead to conjecture about the psychological sources of this preoccupation. Tabooing of randomness and uncertainty as pollution and the search for perfect order which is timeless and transcends change leads to the speculation that symbolically and ideologically science may be attempting to ultimately control or exorcise death as the inevitable entropic epi-phenomena of life and to root out 'decay' as this is dialectically anti-thetical to the fundamental organizing principles science upholds.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From a strictly scientific point of view, death represents not only the great 'unknown' but even more important the great 'unknowable'--the kind of rational, experiential consciousness upon which science is founded cannot freely pass into and out of the dark state of death--as scientific mythology, Frankenstein became the abominable apparition of a scientific anti-structure which embraces the knowledge of death.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Science has been held to have evolved out of magic--magic and science share many interesting affinities--emphasis on causality, decision making based upon randomization of possible choices, emphasis on explanation, prediction and control of unseen events, the teleological praxis of making something happen, procedural manipulation of 'things' to produce 'results'. Though it is obvious that there are important contrasts between science and magic, it remains important not to completely dismiss the analogy between science and magic as irrelevant. Much of the magic has been involved with witchcraft and dealings with death and disease--magic has formed a kind of projective system which allows its practitioners to symbolically externalize and displace onto others problems which is situated in themselves. It remains to be asked whether science also doesn’t constitute a similar kind of projective system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Scientific progress has been held to account for the exorcism of death upon the planet earth--diseases of all kinds have been eliminated or effectively controlled, famine has become banished from developed nations, even natural disaster's are being brought under control. And yet scientific progress has also lead to the creation and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and potential extermination. Scientific knowledge is greatly analytical, aimed at cognitive control by the reduction of uncertainty. Lab dissection has been the metaphor of scientific haruspication. Ritual purity and pollution bespeak an obsessive compulsive fear and fascination with death--one that is historically well founded in the human struggle for natural survival.</p> <hr> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PART IX</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="5">EVOLUTION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><b><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="2"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/hughmlewis/">by Hugh M. Lewis</a></font></b></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Evolution is the great mystery story of our planet earth. It is our earth's origin mythology. How, why and where did life first begin, and why did the age of the great dinosaurs or of the great mammals suddenly come to an abrupt end. And we can push our speculations even much further back in geological earth time and cosmological time to hypothesize an original act of creation in terms of a universal Big Bang.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All traditional civilizations, major and minor, have had origin myths which explain the past and provide validation for the present and a sense of purpose in the future. Tenses of past, present and future are not clearly separable in the mythological mentality. Scientific ideology elevated to the status of a secular religion, has framed its own kind of origin mythology in terms of stories about human evolution and the rise of modern civilization, which confer upon our modern processes a kind of natural legitimacy and inevitability of natural process. It is in this sense that human evolution is to be understood in terms of the biological evolution of humankind and the stories which have been written describe the important events about this evolution. In this way the vales of the present can be implicitly valorized in our collective representations of our remote pasts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not without some significance that the closer we come to our own epoch on our convergent time lines the more the problems and paradoxes of historical counter evidence intrudes upon our common sensibilities and sensitivities about our past and the less firm is our mythological grasp of the ordering of events.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our notions of temporal process, change and the dynamics of evolution have been closely coupled in our collective imaginations with ideologies of spiritual emanation, of progress toward utopia--or paradise in a perfect period and a perfect place and of rational fulfillment or 'enlightenment' which is supposed to collectively free ideological linkages to our mythological thinking about our remote pasts have a culture historical precedence in the Christian doctrine of the Great Chain of Being which envisioned the natural order of things as frozen since the age of creation into a hierarchy in which man, penultimate only to God himself, stood proudly on top.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The power of our ideologies of progress as these have become evinced in our beliefs about science, technology, modernization and development of our civilization was in large part the result of attempting to reconcile our undeniable evidence and view of evolution with our own embedded beliefs about our own innate, natural superiority on the Great Chain of Being. Popular notions of natural selection, fitness and 'survival of the fittest' survive in scientism today to explain the human rise from barbarity and primitiveness to civilization and sophistication, of culture and civilization from simplicity to complexity and of the rise of modern mankind from inferiority and weakness at the hands of 'natural forces' to a superhuman position of superiority and mastery over the elements of nature through our science and technology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In first proposing the biological theory of evolution, Charles Darwin created a modern revolution of earth shaking proportions, not only in the world of science but in the whole world. Not only has it lifted the plane of scientific generality to a new order of thinking about change and natural process on both local and grand scales, but it has challenged our world and our view of our world for the first time with the vision of our own nature, with our own relative fitness or lack of, and with the problem of our own collective survival on earth. It has challenged our own basic preconceptions about our own innate superiority on earth--our own 'anthropocentrism'--and its further development is leading to the challenge of our collective ideologies of our own inevitable progress and becoming 'better' on earth.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Indeed, science has done much to excavate our deep sense of the past, to exorcise our creation mythologies and to explicate the relations and rules which have lead to the understanding of how we came to be on earth. In the structure of the human and the natural long run, science is slowly working to unearth and excoriate the layers of our own understandings about ourselves and our world to uncover the ontological seed of our mind, of our culture history and of our biological beginning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the understanding of evolution, several different problems must be separated out as distinct, though interrelated, to one another. The first is the question of natural evolution itself, and of the logos of change and entropy which underlie this evolution. The second is the question of the biological evolution of humankind as a distinct and special species on earth, and of the general problem of defining precisely and generally what constitutes human nature as it survives in us until today. The third problem is that of the rise and development of human culture history and the process of human civilization. The fourth is the understanding of the problem of human development in the sense of the 'humanization' of humankind, and of the evolution of mind of which human development is a function.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The first two sets of problems, natural evolution and human biological evolution, are strictly speaking biological and scientific problems, while the second two problems, the rise of human civilization and the human development of mind are the proper domain of the study of culture history. But in the interrelation between these problem sets it is not always possible to sharply or clearly distinguish where and when one set of problems leaves off and the other begins.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In general, the problems of human evolution can be distinguished from the problems of the culture historical development of human civilization in the sense that mythology, scientific or otherwise, can be distinguished from history. Similarly the problem of the evolution of the human body (and brain) in a way that symbols can be distinguished from sensate signals, or that super organic patterning can be sorted out from organic functioning, or that the historical development of languages can be separated from the physiological production and innate capacity for speech.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But it is in seeing the interconnections and interrelation between the natural science of evolution and the study of human culture history, in the movement of understanding from biological beingness to phenomenological sentience, that we can speak of a critical important convergence of knowledge between sciences and humanities--of an evolutionary science of culture historical development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though human culture historical process can be said to be developmental, it remains essentially non-evolutionary in a natural biological sense. The rise of modern human civilization has for the most part remained disconnected from the genetic evolution of humankind, though the former has always been conditioned by the latter, has always occurred within its frame, and though the latter has become irreversibly altered by the former. We must understand human culture historical development as what a single species has done pheno-typically and environmentally on earth to enhance its survivorship against natural forces. This process is not related to the larger framework of speciation and evolutionary branching which is ecologically inter-species and trans-specific. Furthermore, human development on earth has achieved its own historical momentum and movement such that it continues in its own way and at its own pace for the most part independent of any natural evolutionary constraints.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The developmental processes of human culture history are in a historical sense irreversible, linear and unwinding toward a final sense of completion. The natural processes of evolution are in a sense cyclical, curvilinear and continuously diverging in multiple directions--it does not necessarily unwinding toward a final sense of completion unless our understanding of its patterning is yet partial and incomplete. It merely continues on its day to day adaptations to altering rhythms of the earth's environment, exploring and perhaps, in the long run, exhausting all its possibilities. Human development has been a case of multiple variations upon a common theme, many possible profiles within a single culture historical horizon of mind--biological evolution has been limited variations upon multiple themes of development, a few profiles of possibility within many event horizons. On the other hand biological evolution has always been an infinitude of possible patterning within a single environmental horizon of the planet earth which is itself an phenomena of natural evolution, while human culture historical evolution has essentially remained the thematic reiteration of a few general human profiles within multiple horizons of period and place.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What is being emphasized is the sense of complementariness between natural evolutionary process and human developmental processes. It is tempting to describe this complementariness as a function of the dialectic between nature and culture, evolution and development and in another sense, between natural sciences and the humanities. In understanding this complementariness based upon similarities and differences, it is important for a hypothetical 'natural science of the evolution of human culture historical development' to focus upon the points and periods in the remote past of humankind in which there was a close interconnection between human evolution and development and a simultaneous convergence and divergence of forces and relations which resulted in the emergence of human mind and the beginning of culture history and in the subsequent unfolding of its complementary but separate character.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It has become fashionable for sophisticated modern human scientists to translate recent and distant human history in terms of gene culture co-evolution with the explicit idea that one or the other tracks or leads the other in fairly close, systemic and ecological ways. Such an approach is held to promise a grand synthesis between ecological and evolutionary approaches, between universal and particular scales of understanding and between nature and culture. While the common sense of its application to relatively recent historical or pre-historical developments of human culture and civilization remain extremely problematic as so much bio-cultural determinism which extracts the problem of historical diffusion and the relative independence of different traits within given culture historical complexes, it remains nevertheless an intriguing point of entry in the hypothetical speculation of the remote and gradual emergence of human culture and civilization during the biological evolution of Homo, and of a long formative period of 'proto development' in which there perhaps were closer connections in gene culture co-evolution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From a scientific standpoint, there must be some point in the natural evolution of humankind in which the innate capacity for symbolization and culture eventually emerged, and which proto development conferred upon its possessors an adaptive edge and evolutionary advantage. This must have happened over some indeterminable period or frame of time which from an historical standpoint was quite extended but from a larger, global evolutionary framework was quite sudden and rapid.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The relations and processes of change at that particular point and period must have been to some optimal degree cybernetic and systemic and perhaps organic in a substantive sense. First and second order feedback relationship between human organism and natural environment and between human experience and organism must have occurred which lead to a step wise evolutionary growth and development of human consciousness and culture.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This period of acceleration on the runway was a necessary first step in the 'taking off' or 'first flight' of human civilization, which, once gaining its own momentum, overcame the evolutionary laws of gravity which kept all species in their environmental places, and led to eventually to the processes of civilization and development to supersede and overcome, albeit destructively, the natural processes of evolution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In our recent development of global civilization, humankind has become like an 'unnatural' alien predator species which, when introduced and allowed to run wild in a new habitat, upsets and destroys the natural balances which evolved and eliminates all competitor and host species until it eventually eliminates itself or becomes the solitary island survivor.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In understanding the interconnections between human evolution and development it is important as well to recognize the extent and ways in which our evolutionary knowledge, our environmental memories, our collective understandings and our ecological information is contained within, carried and expressed by our on-going fund of human experience and modes of experience. Our basic beingness contains the protoplasm of our own natures, the secrets of our own origins and biological beginnings, and the adaptive wisdom of our own kind. The way we experience our modern world have been pre-conditioned and are rooted in the traces and fund of 'primitive understandings' rooted in our past. This primeval and coeval experience of humankind both individually and collectively and literarily and metaphorically expressed, represents the evolutionary fund of our human development. To call it instinctual or 'fixed action patterns' or 'deep structures' is to misplace its concreteness in the anthropomorphizing of the ethological understandings of other species. It is to zoomorphize humankind in a reductionistic sense. Better perhaps to refer to it as 'intuition' at the base of our most common sense, 'feeling' underlying both our universal sympathies and sentient empathies, and our rational sublimity and imagination and our paradoxical sense of individual uniqueness, self importance and pan humanness. It is to be found in our existential self awareness of our own eventual demise as reflected in the death of beings around us as well as in the innate needs and biological rhythms of our own bodies.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is a danger that collective illusions of our modern scientism and developmental ideologies are teaching us to quickly unlearn and collectively forget the lessons of our own basic beingness, to become aware in both an organic and an apperceptive sense of the naturalness and wisdom of our own experience and to rapidly replace the long evolved and developing modes of human experience with a new, artificial kind of experience of non-being. This substitution has been a very recent phenomena of human history--though its own roots may go back several millennium--its blossoming today in terms of the overwhelming power and persuasiveness of mass oriented, materialistic electronic media is inducing an unprecedented phenomena of experiential numbing and pan-human forgetting that is frightening in its proportions and devastating in its consequences for basic human environmental adaptation and continued natural evolution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a very real and basic sense our future adaptability and survival depends upon our getting back in tune experientially with the nature of our environments and with our own human natures. It is vital that we relearn how to experience wholly again ourselves in our world without the vicariousness and alienation which has become embedded in our modern collective existence. This re-attunement is not a matter of secondary elaboration of planning to be spontaneous and unplanned, of intending to experience fully and undividedly. It is a matter of unlearning the kinds of 'unlearning'--the embedded constraints which we've acquired through our adaptation to civilized environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this, perhaps the mythological portrayal of primitive man as a weapon wielding, violent and war mongering animal that regularly slaughters his neighbors. This seems to have been more of a self fulfilling prophecy of the projection of our own acquired violence than anything that has necessarily been demonstrated by the Paleolithic or archaeological record. It is in the exaggeration of our own aggressive impulses and overemphasis of our capacities for violence in the world that we find most of our own alienation from our own natures and from the natural world around us. It is in the many ways which violence has become embedded in both our modern civilized way of life and on our own ways of experiencing the world that we find our greatest alienation and loss of our own attunement with the natural world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our symbolic experience is our greatest sense making, ordering way of relating to the world. It is vital that we learn to see and understand the ways of our natural experience, and the ways that this natural experience can become corrupted and perverted. We need to know, both normatively and experientially, the way that adaptation becomes encoded into our experiences of our environments, individually and collectively, and the ways that our experience is based upon incorporated by and embedded within evolutionary survival skills which are rooted in very origins of our human identity in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">How does mind become embodied by and expressed within experience. How does our experience learn the environment. How does a endothermic lizard know to move from a cool shady spot to a warm sunny rock in the cool morning, or a snake distinguish between a threatening aggressor and a harmless by-passer. How did mind evolve in ecological adaptation and experience of natural environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The greatest problem encountered in the conceptualization of evolution is trying to see the entire process as something other than a big branching tree with a single trunk from which all subsequent lines eventually diverged. The tree fits our taxonomic understandings of the dynamics of time because it is the shadow of our own nomothetic consciousness which tends to classify things, such as the Scalae Naturae, into a hierarchy from the particular to the most general. The danger with this kind of conceptualization about evolution is that it tends to misconstrue the directionality and patterning of the entire process of evolution as essentially a single interconnected stream of life, rather than as multiple streams of different kinds of living beings each with its own set of origins in an obscure beginning and all intertwined and interwoven in the web of life with other living things. The tree model of evolution obscures our seeing that evolution has always been more of a wild forest of living things rather than a single tree of life.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is also difficult to see that in the structural long run of evolution speciation, branching and divergence has been a rather continuous, rather than a discontinuous process. It is only in hindsight and in rather fragile and thin Paleontological records, that we tend to look at single lines of stable, unchanging species. At any one point in the entire process any species was probably characterized by divergence and differentiation--in a state of fission and splitting within which a relatively 'complete' line from beginning to end could be found. It is only in the hindsight of the survivorship of certain lines over others that the record must appear more homogeneous and static than it really was. It is also because the record is composed almost entirely of sporadic 'cross sections' taken at particular instances of time--like frozen images of snapshots--that the full degree of variation and interrelation remains relatively hidden and misleading.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is in this regard that it also seems difficult to reconcile the notion that evolution has essentially been blind to the environments of its evolution--that the mutational mechanism has been largely a 'dead brain' that responds dumbly but statistically to selective forces. It is difficult to believe that blind chance alone can account for the tremendous diversity, complexity and symmetry that is replete in the biosphere at all levels. And yet the principle of its blindness and dumbness remains a basic tenant of the law of natural selection. Lysenkoian arguments of the phenotypic influence and genetic transmission of acquired characteristics have all but fallen into complete abandon and disfavor.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But it is to be wondered whether evolving species do not typically and regularly 'explore' their environments and in an evolutionary sense are able to see and experience environments as alternative possibilities which guide their adaptive responses in a genetic way. Can the evolution of all the diversity of life be accounted for merely upon the chance but statistically regular occurrence of a certain rate of mutation--that in any given population at any given period enough 'adaptive' mutations are available to afford the survival of the species. It seems that life in general must possess some mysterious, yet poorly understood by science, means for experiencing and exploring its different environments, for responding to fluctuations in these environments in adaptive, organic ways and for somehow reprogramming these adaptations into its genetic matrix. But if it cannot be by the Lysenkoist acquisition of traits, then what are the other possible mechanism which would explain such a phenomena.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Fitness and selection is not an individual function, though these process work at this level of the adaptation or elimination of the individual, but is a group or species wide phenomena. At any given time the total fitness and selective forces are represented by the whole grouping and within such grouping there is always a range of variation of 'genotypic/phenotypic' profiles that are expressed. The range of variation represents the net or average adaptation of the entire group. At any given time a certain maximum number of individuals of the group can always be removed from the process of reproduction without affecting the net fitness of the whole group--such systematic exclusion of maladapted profiles and inclusion of only the most adaptable ones can drive a species up a slope to an adaptive peak--the process of natural selection is at work, but it depends not only upon geno-typical mutation to drive the process of continuous variation, but upon the range of adaptive variation of phenotypic/genotypic profiles. Given such a scenario a minimal number of the species must survive and reproduce in at least replacement to prevent the entire species from dying out. If the number of reproducing members falls much below this minimal threshold, the entire adaptive-reproductive capacity of the species is threatened. Within this minimal group of survivors, there is a species wide totipotency of phenotypic/genotypic variability expressible through their offspring. The surviving offspring will always reproduce 100% of the total variability of the entire population. Furthermore, over the long term, a enduring species will reproduce almost an endless, infinite amount of 'phenotypic/genotypic' variability within a given genotypic matrix of a species.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This process alone is not enough to account for the actual environmental variation and of relative selective pressures and limiting factors and the rates of speciation itself fluctuated quite regularly and interdependently with one another, such that at certain times for a given population forces of selection may be strong but population pressure or environmental circumscription may be quite lax, while at other times the rate of speciation may occur quite rapidly while the selective forces driving such differentiation may have been quite weak.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is also quite evident in the fossil record that though natural selection and speciation may have been for the most part continuous, there is an overlay of another pattern in which speciation episodes occur more sporadically and discontinuously between long periods of relative stasis and specie stability. This saltational, model of punctuated equilibrium reveals a long period of robust adaptation of a specie which is generally adapted to its environment, during which pressures of natural selection were present but were slow and weak, and with only slight modification of the genetic matrix of the species. There then occurs a sudden speciation in which the genetic matrix seems to rapidly reorganize itself to produce in a relative brief span of time a new species with a different 'phenotypic/genotypic' horizon. It may be that during these brief episodic periods of reorganization of the genetic matrix, some other kinds of mechanisms may have been involved other than the normal process of natural selection.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One such schedule that has been proposed is that given a certain set of functional genetic interrelationships of the genome which control and account for the total possible patterning of the range of 'phenotypic/genotypic' profiles, that these genetic matrices regularly 'cycle' through the possible patternings at a fairly rapid speciation events, nor does it account enough for the way that species may 'experience' evolution through an exploration of their environments. Not enough account has been taken of the selective effects of the phenotypic patterns of adaptive behavior which individual's adopt or acquire during the course of their lifetimes and it is also difficult to see how mutation alone can account for the genetic transmission of instinctual 'fixed action patterns' which are perfectly adaptive for certain kinds of environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One possibility is that for species with bigger and more complex brains, that phenotypic/genotypic patterns of brain function may be acquired and subsequently transmitted to a certain proportion of offspring--a predisposition to respond reflexively to certain given stimuli in certain kind of contexts. These patterns may not be so much genetically coded as is the ontogeny of their subsequent development becomes a likely pattern of a certain genotypic matrix.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Elimination or negative selection does not necessarily have to drive the process of speciation. It is not that a minimal group must survive, but it must reproduce--a minimal threshold of reproductive activity must be maintained by any given grouping to ensure the corporate survival of that group's genetic matrix and totipotency. It seems that in most instances actual elimination of individuals from groups was not driving the process, so much as relative removal of certain proportions of phenotypic/genotypic profiles from reproductive activity--through inconvenience, agonistic competition or patterns of social structure that privileged access to a select few and prevented it to most of the others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It seems as well that the relative ranges of phenotypic/genotypic variation, of adaptive variability and determinable rate and that certain minimal genetic fluctuations or mistakes or mutations might eventually cause a catastrophic self organization of the genetic matrix which results in rapidly changes in ontogenetic development and in the final expression of phenotypic/genotypic profiles. This process of genotypic self organization is held to account for the process of ontogenetic development of the organism and the functional differentiation of its cell structure during its development. Such self organizing patterns can fall into relative fixed and stable matrices, that given a general adaptation in a range of environments, entails a rather long duration of little genetic differentiation and minimal selection. Sudden changes in the environment, over specialization or just the 'winding out' of the horizon of the genetic matrix would then precipitate a relative sudden alteration of the structure of the organism--rapid speciation would then occur.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is also apparent that for many species of animals individuals are born into a 'group culture' of some rudimentary sort which provides the ritual patternings for reproduction and organismic functioning and survival. Individuals inherit not only genotypic traits from their parents but also inherit phenotypic behavioral patterns and 'values' of experience from their groups. It is not known how much of such group culture is instinctual and fixed and how much of it may be in some way linguistic, learned and transmitted through imitation or sanctioning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture in this rudimentary sense is itself an adaptive mechanism of natural selection which is not confined to the human species. It is through the transmission and enculturation of such corporate group culture that individuals with different phenotypic/genotypic profiles survive and become selected for reproduction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">And corporate group culture does not have to necessarily be taught or become learned by organisms which are members of it. In a sense they are born into it and from the beginning are programmed in their very experience and perception of their environment by it. It is the only way provided for their sensibilities for interacting with other members of their group and for group responses to their environment. It is in a sense indirectly constrained and ingrained by the very experiential structure of their group life.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this we can distinguish between the mechanical solidarity of more primitive kinds of societies and the more developed, intra-specific organic solidarity of more highly organized societies, which exhibit exclusive functional specialization by members of the group.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">While it is fitting to apply the notion of corporate group culture to many animal species which exhibit environmental awareness and motility if not individual mobility, it is much more difficult to apply the same criteria to plant life which remain rooted to the spots in which they germinate and which do not respond actively or sensitively to their environments. In the plant kingdom, the regular processes of mutation and natural selection and the preconception of a statistical, blind evolution based on chance survival, is more fitting. But if this were the entire picture of evolution, then all animals, humans included, would necessarily be plant like as well.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this sense we may refer to a passive, plant like evolution which is blindly 'acted upon' by selective forces, and to a more active, animal like evolution which is experientially 'reacting to' selective pressures. In this sense we may refer to qualitatively different kinds and orders of evolutionary process--that the forces of evolution are not everywhere balanced and homogeneously the same.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is even possible to speculate about species specific horizons of adaptive fitness and of perhaps even species specific forms of evolutionary process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Other mechanism of evolution are perhaps operant in different kind of phenomena. The notion of a species over specializing in certain eco-niches or along the lines of certain phenotypic/genotypic profiles until the point they become functionally maladaptation or the environment suddenly alters the adaptation in their eco-niche, leading to their rapid extermination. In this case, evolution follows a pathway to a dead-end in evolutionary development. We can see that evolution is always following multiple pathways, and seeks out the lines of least resistance for elaboration. It is also possible that some certain traits, like size, bone structure or shape or their relative proportions are relatively more plastic and alterable in terms of their phenotypic/genotypic profiles than are other kinds of traits. The canines of the saber-tooth tiger and the huge racks of the Irish elk are clear examples of specialized over-development of certain traits which become clearly an evolutionary dead-end.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is also possible that the possible patterns or kinds of pathways that evolutionary development can take, or the kinds of associated trait complexes are relatively few in number such that different kinds of species might follow a parallel evolutionary path along the same lines of development. In this evolutionary development must concede to certain kinds of mechanical or physical constraints. Whether a bat, a bird or a pterodactyl, flight requires a similar kind of wing structures. Giant dinosaurs cannot lift proportionately the same weight as ants, but they must have had to consume a great deal to maintain their own bio-mass and so were a strain upon their environments in a way that all the ants in the world could never be.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is also possible that adaptive fitness in given environments becomes encoded organically into the sensate structure of an organisms experience or capacity for sensing its environment. In this way, snakes with poor eye sight, have developed heat seeking membranes and though deaf, are finely tuned to the vibrations of the earth. Many similar examples exist in nature. Even how a species comes to experience its environment in any given modality may be preconditioned by evolutionary developments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is also a kind of optimal balance or ceiling in the horizon of adaptation of any species, given its total genetic matrix there can be only so much that can be done, so many possible designs and an limit to its capacity and possibilities for developmental patterning. To add here is necessarily to take away from something else--to pursue one line of evolutionary development entails diminishing degrees of freedom to pursue other possible lines of development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is possible that while some kinds of evolutionary changes are generalizing in nature, others are specializing--general trait complexes may confer an overall robustness, but lack any special advantages. Specialization in one or a few fields of adaptation, though at cost to other possible pathways of development, confers at least short term or myopic advantage. There might also be a tendency for certain kinds of traits or trait complexes, once begun, to evolve to extremes which are no longer adaptive and are irreversible.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a sense, species may be defined spatially and synchronically in relation to other species, temporal dimension, a species is open ended in its development and unbounded. In a temporal sense, boundaries between where one species leaves off and its offspring species takes over are never clear nor precise. It could be that the phenotypic/genotypic profiles of a species become gradually submerged beneath or amalgamated with those of a replacement set of profiles until the former species is no longer recognizable as such.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Seen in a deep temporal dimension, speciation resembles more of a gradual substitution or replacement of one species by a closely related but separate species, or sub-species, such that in time or across vast distances of separation, there is relative discontinuity between species. Such patterns are too slow, gradual and general to be recognizable on an everyday or local level except in terms of relative absence or scarcity of some species, or of a gradual day to day dying off of individuals in relative specie isolation</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the deep sense there are a few sharp and solid boundaries where one species ends and another begins--rather multiple populations are in continuous flux and transition, with individuals pursuing many different directions of development.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is worthwhile to take one more step back and to try to see the bigger picture of evolution. Are there possible structures of the long run' in evolutionary development of which we are scarcely aware? Where is evolution of the long term headed, if it can be said to be headed anywhere?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this regard it is necessary to understand the evolution of the natural earth and the interconnections of the environments of the earth and the evolution of life on earth. Ice ages, warm cycles, volcanism, periods of atmospheric change, all of these have resulted in dramatic transitions of many life forms and life begins on earth.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this regard, it is worth wondering where evolution essential stops for some kinds of species, and where it is focal for other kinds. Do certain levels of biotic climax made possible or probable the development of one direction of evolution--say the rise of giant animals, and a shift to another kind of bio-mass spell the demise of another. In this sense might not evolution and its directionality and selective mechanisms be attuned to larger contexts and global processes, to whole webs of life rather than to particular speciation events. Might not evolution like ecology upon which it is based, be in actually a global phenomena which is mostly interdependent such that many kinds of species evolve together or in interrelation and if removed from these webs and contexts, fail to evolve at all.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This brings to notion of the simultaneously of all life on earth and of the on-going total synchronicity of the evolution of life on earth. All of life has always been evolving as a whole web together, and that individual lines of species development are but single threads of its total weave.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Perhaps the evolution of life on earth has its own clock that is slowly winding out. Perhaps the movement from the age of fish to the age of amphibians to the age of reptiles to the age of mammal to the age of man, in which each age is represented by the greatest amount of living tissue, surrounded by different contexts of plant life and bacterial and insect species which follow their own evolutionary pathways, has a sense of order and direction or design, such that as each age exhausts the horizons of its predominant patterns of possibility, it shifts to a new successive sequence in which a new age predominates/</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a sense that whatever is at the bottom of the food chain within the horizon of an age, are the first to die out--being squeezed from both above and below. When it starts to give way from beneath, the links in the chain all break in their turn until it reaches to top of the apex, where the meat eating king bereft of any large package prey, begin feeding on one another and their own carrion.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this sense we might refer to the rise and climax and decline of ages of evolutionary civilization--as one form of evolution becomes replaced by another predominant form.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is a horrible dream of a 1950's science fiction thriller when giant insects grow out of the irradiated rubble of the earth to inhabit and colonize the earth, and men are but little rodent like monkeys that hide in the shadows from the light of the day.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Looking back onto a younger, fresher world, it is to be wondered whether there has not been all along a general evolutionary trend from dumb insensate life forms to intelligent sentient life forms. Surely the warm blooded, big brained mammals had something over their cold blooded small brained predecessors and surely humankind must stand at the apex of evolutionary development to look back and down the long evolutionary slope. But perhaps general sentience has been only a rare but not unusual exception to the rule--a relatively infrequent oddity of natural development. Maybe our oversized brains are but extremely overspecialized dead-ends of evolution. If sentience as representing the evolutionary working out of its possibilities is a general and in a sense eventual outcome of evolutionary development, then perhaps evolution has been evolving towards a reflexive state of 'self-control'--from dumb blindness of plants to self reflexive adaptations of human beings. And this is not an 'intention structure' of evolutionary directionality but just programmed into its patterning as an eventual outcome of possibility. Evolution began then as a tiny hole through which light diffracted and then became a window upon a bigger world, and eventually metamorphosed into a door through which evolution could step into another world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are left to reconsider the role of experience in evolution and how experience embodies and becomes embodied in evolution. Is it possible that fragments of mind become genetically transmitted through the generations such that archetypes, memories or sentience of our distant ancestors, or even of different beings, survive in our collective unconscious as a general fund of living human experience--an might many of us share in the same or similar sets of remote experiences, such that we may suddenly have the same thought or feelings, though far removed from one another, or we may dream of distant states of being, or we may have instant reflexive recognition of something or someone even though we had never seen or experienced it before. How shall we account for idiot savants or child prodigies who harbor a treasure of knowledge without the previous lived experience. Where shall we draw the line between natural and 'supernatural' evolution and where shall science leave off and magic take over.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is possible that at any given time and place the environment provides only so many given slots or possible niches which is then the role of natural evolution to fill in in the best way it can. These slots are a consequence of the larger ecological context of adaptation. Evolution itself creates the possibilities of these slots which it then fills in by further evolution. In this way as well evolution can be seen to be a self organizing system which achieves its own directionality and momentum.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a sense though the evolutionary process may be cyclical and repeatable, it is nevertheless an irreversible historical process. The end products of a long sequence of developments are not the same as the in-puts, but like the difference between the rough uncarved stone and the whittled down statue, the former represents the long term consequence of a direction of evolutionary development while the latter represents the potential, yet unrealized seed of such development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Understanding evolution then presents us with the same kinds of paradox of change which culture history presents us. We can establish few if any truly non-arbitrary base lines from which to measure change in a discontinuous way. We cannot say for certain at what point a given line of development actually emerged, began or diverged from another line of development. We can only recognize change from the relative point of recognizable stability, and vice versa. Similarly we cannot know for certain which lines of the evolutionary past were actual dead- ends or which were but precursors to later, and still continuing development. We still cannot tell if Neanderthals was a direct forbearer of modern man or but a short off shoot from the lines of hominid development. And if there were either, how many other types may yet be hidden in the ground or forever lost in our past.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It may be that evolution has long had an effect of accordion equilibrium in which phases of species expansion, or of overall evolutionary expansion, followed phases of contraction, and that during the respective phase, certain predominant selective forces were at work. It is likely that expansion leads to a limitation--a maximum carrying capacity of the environment beyond which predictable 'super critical' events set in to disturb and damage and eventual induce a reversed contraction phase. The contraction phase may proceed as a 'negative feedback loop' until some minimal threshold is reached--at which point the expansion phase kicks in again. The kinds of evolutionary developments accompanying either phase may be quite different and there may be more rapid 'speciation' at one extreme or at an optimal level in the entire process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It follows from this that in the structure of the long run, evolution might exhibit an overall optimal equilibrium of development of which expansion/contractions are but oscillations about an optimum level. This optimum level could be very 'robust' and stable state of the ecological self organization which remains steady inspite of the expansion or contraction of individual groups or species within its continuum.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Adaptive plateaus may be reached within this optimal range of evolution by different species which are able to maintain a static state of slowed evolution for long periods with only an optimal investment in the maintenance of the 'system'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If expansion/contraction and accordion equilibrium are evident, then it must be asked what the 'cohesive' forces are which serve to hold the whole ecological--evolutionary system together over the long term, that normally resists extremes of either contraction or expansion.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What comes up, in terms of investment of stored energy, must eventually come back down in response to the laws of entropy. This principle guarantees that all species to maintain themselves at whatever level of 'energy investment' must store or carry 'potential energy' which must eventually be re-released back into the environment. It is also guarantees that all species must eventually become extinct, and that the process of dying off is always much more rapid and sudden than is the slow and gradual process of evolutionary development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this sense, the whole process of evolution and ecological system can be seen to be a grand energy system in which potential energies are channeled, carried, stored and continuously re-released back into the system. At any given point in time this energy system has an overall limit or capacity--how it uses or becomes expressed in evolution varies. Species represent competition for energy and evolutionary explorations for new sources of energy to augment the entire system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Looked at in terms of a global energy eco-system which maintains a dynamic equilibrium through time, the evolution of life can put its energy resources to more efficient use through the fullerian 'anti-entropic' principle of information--the development of the experience of evolution towards more sentient forms, capable of processing and managing greater information, enables a more efficient use of available energy in environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Evolution can be construed as a total system of life and living which has as its principle aim the maintenance of an optimum level of ecological functioning through time. As a grand system the individual components can be seen to fit and fill important evolutionary roles in certain 'slots' in the eco-system. As a grand system it is self organizing at the edge of chaos. In this sense indirectly different species depend upon the existence and functioning of one another in a mutual symbiosis in order to maintain the functioning of the whole system. The loss of vital components in this system can spell extensive damage and dysfunction for many other interrelated components of the system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this role, competition occurs only in relation to filling the 'same' slots--this is not the basis of evolution so much as local adaptation. The total system depends upon the proper function at optimal levels of each of its organically specialized 'slots'. When one species, or individuals of a group, 'over adapt' or begin by their own success to interfere with the functioning of the total system, selective forces will tend to work against them to either bring them back into homeostatic equilibrium, to readjust the system to fit them into new niches, or to effectively eliminate them from the evolutionary process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this way, 'group fitness of a whole species that outstrips its evolutionary boundaries not only interferes with the survival of other species and the functioning of the whole system, but also becomes maladaptive for the individuals of the group as well. The adaptiveness of the group as a corporate phenomena tends to override survival interests of the individual members of the group, which eventually become selected out of the environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The 'ecologistic fallacy' implicates in this picture of global evolution of life as being 'determined' by a hidden hand which directs the entire process and which maintains a balance by silent selection. In actuality the entire system is robust only in a self organizing ?????????????</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">(THIS SENTENCE ENDS ON PAGE 474! WHAT IS NEXT????</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Speciation can be seen as the epigenetic expression of the selective forces of evolution--as the epi-phenomenal patterning of the principles of its unfolding. In this sense a species can be regarded as a kind of cybernetic system of reproduction which is intrinsically interconnected with a wider ecology of environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Genetics is the total fund of information of life informing its diversity and its toti-potentiality for evolutionary patterning and possibility. A species is a very limited portion of this total genetic fund of life--a partial and limited set of potential possibilities of its patterns. Evolution and life predetermines, species are 'organistically' specialized expressions of evolution, they are also part of the functioning of the larger body of life and evolution and thus are reflective and representative of its developmental possibilities. Species 'evolve' into other species as a result of this expression of the potentiality of life.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this regard we can see that there are multiple levels of selection operating in within a broad evolutionary context--sub-species, species and super species selection. All of these must impact upon the individual organism as a basic carrier of genetic information but all impact in fundamentally different ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Sub-species selection are the intriguing patternings which affect the reproductive expression of the individual or which effective eliminate the individuals reproductive contribution to the whole group. Species selection are those forces which impact more or less uniformly upon the entire group in the same way--and frequently arise from inter-species competition for resources--these forces frequently and effectively, if somewhat randomly, determine every individual's chances for reproductive success. Super species selection are wide ranging forces which may impact upon many different species, though dissimilarly. These are wider events of environmental fluctuation and circumscription. These forces work unevenly but overwhelmingly to influence the reproductive success of numerous different but ecologically interrelated and interdependent species.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It must be seen that selection is systemic at all of these analytical levels and that the ecological webs of interdependency which influence and impact upon the individual and the group are in an evolutionary sense 'self organizing' and to know some random extent 'self determining'. Speciation and inter-species networks create ecological environments and possibilities for evolutionary developments which reverberates at all three levels upon many other species.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">(THE FOLLOWING SENTENCE BEGINS ON PAGE 477 BUT THERE IS NO BEGINNING TO THE SENTENCE). Sense of relational functionality of its individual components--it moves forward in the patterning of its relationships as a 'exploration' of its own environment which is continuous. All of its individual elements are in a state of semi-random flux, and the entire system maintains homeostatic equilibrium only in a gross statistical sense of the stability of the whole in relation to its many parts. As the system grows in size and organizational complexity it becomes more integrated such that minor fluctuations of a few of its components can result in major reverberations among many other elements. It approaches a state of super criticality. The efficiency of the system depends upon its ability to quickly readjust itself to the semi-random fluctuations of its components such that the entire system remains structurally stable over time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is an energy capturing and processing system because it maintains optimal order in the face of entropy and chaos. It must continue ways to efficiently capture and utilize energy from the environment in order to maintain its own 'sense of equilibrium'. Individual components which become overly consumptive of its net energy resources disturb its equilibrium and force the system to reestablish equilibrium at a new level of energy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Selection may favor the short term success of increasing energy consumption of its individual components, it will tend to work against the long term survival of its over consuming species, as a species too costly to maintain. There is an important human lesson to be learned from this relational role of natural evolution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is likely that nature for the most part, maintains fairly wide margins of adaptiveness between its different species--there is enough flexibility of the relations of the system and enough degrees of latitude to afford quite a bit of 'damaging' changes to its components before systemic adaptation can be achieved. This accounts perhaps for the overall robustness and stability of the entire system. The breadth of these wide margins are built into the entire system, from bottom to top, from the cellular and molecular level to the widest system of organismic functioning. The system usually maintains fairly high thresholds and pretty wide tolerance limits before its thermostatic mechanisms are 'kicked on'. Though many local variations and disturbances to create 'critical mass' that would disturb the entire system. Species may come and go as they see fit, but life as a whole continues on its own way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">On the other hand, it is also possible that the system is much more sensitive to minor perturbations and fluctuations of its elements than we would give it credit for, and it has perhaps evolved in a complicated sense to a greater responsive level of environmental sensitivity. To maintain hypersensitivity enhances the stability and survival of the entire system as well, in a much more efficient and cost effective manner than if its tolerance limits were exhausted. Mechanisms of selection and 'counter selection' must kick in fairly immediately in response to local alterations of its patterns of interaction. In this way, there is survival value in evolution 'experiencing' its environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Combining wide tolerance limits with hypersensitive levels of 'stimulus response' renders the whole evolutionary system of life quite stable and dependable. This maintains a steady, optimal rate of change and assures the maximum adaptive value of such changes. This also maximizes the 'adaptive resourcefulness' of the entire system to assure that it can explore all of its possible 'options' in an efficient and timely way. In this way we can easily account for the total fund of genetic diversity of life on earth and for the degree of its symmetry and delicacy of development--given the evolutionary, biological time frames that are involved.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Species are 'allowed' certain directions or adaptive freedoms by the evolutionary system or are restricted by evolutionary pressures from such development. The evolution of a single species never occurs in isolation or alone but is always contexted in a broader environment of ecological relations. Evolution is always constrained by and contingent upon these broader ecological relationships. The pathways of evolutionary development of any given species at any point in time and place are always limited and generally directed by life.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Looking at the evolution of life on earth as a single well integrated 'system' of transformational patterning of which individual species are but components, leads to speculation about the basic understanding of what biological 'life' is and what distinguishes it from inanimate objects. Living organisms cannot exist long apart from the biosphere in which it forms and participates. Living organisms are characterized by their system maintaining functions and by their procreation of these functions in their offspring. These systems maintain a sense of organismic order and integrity against the natural tendencies for chaos and entropy. In order to do so they are 'energy capturing' systems and 'informational systems' which utilizes energy in an efficient manner. In terms of the genetic transmission of the germ plasma of life--the essential 'information' of ontological and evolutionary development is transmitted from generation to generation and preserved. In the process of transmission this information becomes altered and transformed in ways which either enhance or endanger the survival of the species. But it has not just been a matter of system maintenance, but there has been an 'anti-entropic' phenomena of growth, increase in diversity and complexity of life forms which cannot be adequately accounted for merely on the basis of relatively blind genetic mutation. The evolution of life has involved its expansion, its exploration of the earth's environment and its increasingly efficient mechanisms of utilization of energy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Life as an evolutionary systems has had a 'sense of purpose' that has been more than merely blind chance--this 'sense of purpose' is perhaps best described as 'sense' itself, as life evolved in an effort to make sense of itself and its environment. It is this 'senseness' about life which makes its evolution fundamentally different from the growing of crystals from a super saturated solution in a jar. Neither is it enough to describe this kind of 'senseness' as something super organic and merely 'synergistic' though these are definite qualities of its expression. This 'senseness' has involved a continuous 'reading' or 'monitoring' of its environments and an active recreation of itself and modification of its environments in order to improve or build upon its own 'senseness'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this we can speak of the evolutionary development of the 'senseness' or environmental self awareness of natural mind as being the basis of living qualities that human beings share in common with all other life forms. Mind was a natural outcome of the culmination of evolutionary experience--of long ages of evolutionary knowledge and wisdom that has become embodied within and expressed by our own sense of experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We can refer this alternative conception of the evolution of life on earth as a single 'oikological' system to be related ecological notion of Gaia--of the earth as a single living entity. Life, in its many forms has embodied an evolutionary wisdom and intelligence which allows it to respond as a single well integrated system to things which threaten to harm it or prevent it from achieving is sense of purpose.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It makes sense to refer to a certain kind of plasticity of mind as well as morphological plasticity which is characteristic of life and of evolutionary experience--which enables it to become shaped into an infinite diversity of forms and yet still retain its overall integrity of being and sense of purpose. It is this mental and morphological plasticity which has enabled life to continue growing and adapting and evolving on earth inspite of the many changes it has experienced.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Many stories about human evolution have been told, some with more grains of truth in them than others and yet all presented partial and biased pictures of the whole story which exaggerate certain aspects and de-emphasize others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">While all of these are more or less 'just so' stories, none nor all combined are complete or even very accurate in an historical sense. What is sought here is not a more inclusive or 'balanced' story nor is it another attempt to rationalize what actually did happen. There is no way of discovering through our own educated sensibilities what was going on in an age so distant and different from our own--as it is we have few common reference points of understanding or experience to give us much intellectual empathy with the lives of our first forebearers.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What is sought here is a different kind of story, one that hasn't been told before not because of its purported historical accuracy or in its great vision of rationality but merely for the sake of the difference and interest it takes, and the uncommon sense it makes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Several metaphysical and interpretive dilemmas arise in the consideration of human evolution. The first is what has been called the two camps of the 'lumpers' and the 'splitters'. The second kind of dilemma entail the search for 'anthropogenesis'--the first causes or primal factors which inaugurated evolution. The third is the 'gradual take off on a long runway' versus the sudden launch--the gradual evolutionary emergence of human culture or the instantaneous 'bio-cultural' miracle. A fourth dilemma is what might be referred to as the unsolved case of the missing link (or links) and the appearance of definite boundaries or horizons in the fossil record. Fifth and there is a dilemma of having to infer a possible presence from a definite absence--in the absence of solid evidence, we must fill in our understanding with 'just so' stories which no matter how rational or scientific 'sense sounding' they remain never the less mythological and common sense making. A closely related dilemma to this one is the problem of inferring a probable absence from a definite presence--even the solid evidence we have reveal very little and creates so many gaps and questions in our understanding as it fills in. we cannot really know what certain kinds of 'tools' were really used for, or why they were manufactured in the first place--we can conjecture, guess estimate, date and correlate--but we cannot without much doubt fill in the missing pieces of the mosaic jigsaw puzzle when only a few scattered pieces remain and especially when the time frame are a great deal greater than our own--so much so that we are barely capable of comprehending their significance. Related to this is the problem of the immediate presence of many overlapping time frames and spots with very little direct evidence revealing exactly how this frames were interrelated, what the sequences of change may have been or what was the actual historical branching process that did occur. Finally there is the dilemma of what I call 'data boundness' and 'fixed frame' mentality and view of the world which has certain common sense seeming implications for how we view our first ancestors as either very like ourselves or opposite from ourselves.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is this last kind of dilemma which seems especially problematic because of the kind of implicit, stereotypical image it presents of ancient proto-cultures and because of both its fear to stray to far from a rigid interpretation of the facts at hand, or else an obsession to take conjectural flights of fantasy which sound sensible but actually make little sense in relation to the available data. The kind of tacit preconception of early Homo that this dilemma promotes is that of separate, self isolating culture gardens and of early Homo bound by fears, superstitious, ignorance, traditions and the weight of customs. From this standpoint we refer to separate categories of cultural and physical man and promote a sense of boundary consciousness which is more a residue of our own bounded consciousness than anything necessarily real in the past. Homo domesticus was always home bound, hearth bound, cave dwelling. She/he may have had annual per-regrinations or certain regions of hunting--but she/he was always instinctively defensive and territorial and fiercely possessive and jealous of what little she/he had.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Related to this is a 'data boundness' or 'data blindness' which disallows the researcher from thinking between the things at hand, or from straying very far in interpretation from the detail that the data actually represents. This predisposes the researcher to see the past in purely objective and materialistic terms--culture is not symbolic process, but culture is the set of artifacts at hand. Science deals strictly with data sets and the techniques devised for their analysis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The common consequence of this data boundness and fixed frame mentality is that when and if the knower does stray afield into the unknown, they usually do a rather poor job of it--not being used to thinking in more abstract terms about relations existing between the things.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Breaking with bounded data sets and freeing the mind from fixed frames a more open attitude can be cultivated which does not seek the black and white but look to the gray areas in between, and which can see multiple possibilities for the patterning of our proto-people unconstrained by our own implicit limitations which we unconsciously superimpose upon the data.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The first preconception to be dispelled is that our earliest precursors were necessarily sedentary or even semi-sedentary or at the worst trans-human. An extension of this is that there has been time immemorial nice and tidy little 'culture areas' which are characterized by a consistent trait complex and monolithic language and world view. It is for myself a much more interesting picture to see humankind as always being more mobile and migratory than not--that our proto people probably got around a lot more and ventured further afield and 'mixed things' up to a much greater extent than we usually give them credit for. In fact, Homo migratis is a much more likely and fitting image--mobility has long been the rule of human existence and sedentarism the recent exception.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Seen from the standpoint of a great deal of movement the net consequence may have been a very different sense of 'culture' and of identity than what are presupposed in our conjectures--cultures, of there were such things, were rarely fixed by given geographical areas or boundaries, and never situated within a single set of environmental constraints--culture was what individuals and their group carried around with them--their sacred possessions, charm pouches, tool kits, carrying bags as well as secrets, stories and memories. Cultures were then not so much configurational wholes as they were composite conglomerations. Identity was situationally and individually relative, and likely changed with the changing scenery and landscapes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture then may have been more reflective of the natural environment than of any civilized settlement--culture was exterior and extensive and existed in human relation with the environment. The locus of culture was extensive rather than intensive--'wild' rather than 'domestic'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Proto people regularly traveled in culture and traded culture with one another, and their sense of tradition did not fix their frames of reference/inference in relation to their wider world. Cultures were composed on the spot, and then decomposed when inconvenient--groupings were not so much corporate as convenient and individuals regularly shifted loyalties and identities between groupings. Culture was an extemporaneous construction which served the ad hoc purposes of the present needs of the moment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The boundaries between languages, and the core 'structure' of what constituted any language were merely continuums of variation, of different dialects and codes--the boundaries between languages were always porous and semi-permeable--more like Creole or pidgin languages in which borrowing and code mixing as the norm. Few language 'standards' existed, if any. The oral, concrete, semantic structure of language was the situation of the immediate concern for communication and transaction--only geographical and historical difference separated different peoples and prevented their interactions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The net effect of this general situation was that early culture was more of a self operating, 'species wide' phenomena of natural civilization which provides a pan proto human sense of solidarity and cohesion in the struggle for survival. People were not crowded in little communities, victoriously competing with one another for petty resources--this phase of human civilization came much later. Rather people, few and far in between, realized that much more was to be gained in cooperative interaction than in competitive struggle for dominance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Of course there probably always was a we-they sense that the people on the other side of the mountain are the ones who eat grandmothers but this was always probably always tempered by a near automatic intraspecific recognition and respect which meant a 'live and let live' ethos--and if people got too crowded, there was always another mountainside to settle upon. People kept a healthy distance and spacing which tended to neutralize competition and conflict. The struggle for survival was not one of human against human, but one of humankind against the elements and the environments and there must have been a deeply ingrained, near instinctive understanding of this orientation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The living of proto people was not a golden age of a peaceable kingdom--life for most was probably brutal, nasty and short. But proto people made the most of what little they had to work with, must have realized that their next door neighbors made better allies than enemies.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It seems more striking that proto woman/ma was much more of a coward and shrewd scavenger than a fierce and fearless hunter. The age of heroes had not dawned upon the human horizon. Indirection in stalking, tricking and trapping prey was much more saner and safer and simpler than direct face to face confrontations. They would more likely turn and flee in fear than stand and fight with courage. Of course, it was a matter of survival and not honor.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The stereotypical archetype of the proto person is best described as a kind of natural 'socio-path'. Proto people did not have a finely developed sense of justice or an over burdensome conscientious to interfere with their daily activities. Besides the biological bond with mother and child, human bonds of friendship or fictive kin was at best fickle and weak--a matter of convenience but more genuine than spurious. Conscience was more an honor among thieves than among friends. There was probably not even a finely developed sense of familial amoralism--individual amoralism is a more fitting appellation. Because such a selfish and immature way of being is so basic and deeply rooted in humankind, there are so many criminals today in prison behind desks and in positions of authority. We have not evolved all that far after all.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But there is a difference between the proto human natural socio-path and the modern 'deviant' socio-path--the first is a product of survival against natural, impersonal forces of selection, while the latter mode is the by-produce of wholly unnatural, impersonal forces of social selection. While the former is genuine in its naturalness, the latter is ingenuine in its prevention. The former didn't know to lie or deceive, because then there was no such thing as lying and deceit, but only tactful ways of pursuing self interest.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The proto person didn't have much of a deep emotional life--extremes of feeling were to be acquired with the sophisticated sensitivities of being civilized. Suffering, separation, pain and hurt were probably not uncommon, and not unnatural occurrences in a normal lifetime--and desensitization, inerrment and quick acceptance were probably more normal learned traits. Proto people were not without feelings, but feelings served a very different evolutionary purpose than they seem to serve now. Feelings did not so much interfere with the normal process of living, so much as they were a natural part of the process of living. It is possible that emotional expressions so basic to humankind originally served as a paralinguistic and socio linguistic function of empathetic, if not truly sympathetic communication and communion between people. This communication served in place of much talking out and literary rationalization which has become such a part of modern day therapy.. such expression probably also served a very simple and straight forward pragmatic and stylistic function as they still sometimes do today.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is likely that proto people had access to more alternative states of consciousness than do civilized people who put a premium upon scientific rationality. These states were typically sought after not as 'escapes' from harsher realities but for the sense of psychological empowerment and the possibly supernatural meaning which is inherent to their experience. Its sense of 'understanding' which it provided was rooted in the very organic structure of its experience. It is likely that such fuller consciousness and more natural exercise of the mind conferred a greater adaptive advantage in heightening awareness of the environment and in cultivating a spiritual 'intuneness' with natural processes and forces.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If most social bonds were fickle and transient, it is also likely that the only enduring bonds were the 'biological' nature/nurture bonds between the mother and child--and these were not universally strong but that nature probably selected for closer mother child bonding. Women and their children may have formed the first 'families' and social groupings and matriarchal, women-women bonds may have also become quite enduring. By and large males must have been quite undependable and perhaps formed their own somewhat peripheral groups of consociates. Strong attachments to a mother might keep a son close to the 'home' group for a long period, well into the male's adulthood, which might have provided a measure of added support to the adapativeness of the group.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But many men also probably had a 'nurturing' side of their natures and so it was not uncommon to find 'home' groupings in which fathers and brothers were also present, perhaps not so much as strong authority figures than as equal partners and participants in group life. Also a single 'strong' patriarch may have come to dominate such groupings and provided 'leadership' to the group. But besides his exclusive sexual prerogative with the females his contribution otherwise to the support of the group may otherwise have been quite minimal--becoming a burden upon the group's resources rather than a contributor to them. Under such circumstances, it is not unimaginable that the women, or their sons or brothers, being as shrewd and cunning as they were, quickly and quietly eliminated this kind of burden. Another kind of adult male, though, probably did survive to provide more persuasive and genuine direction for the group--this is the elder who by the unusual length of his years and fund of experience and sharpness of mind was a real asset to the long term interests of the grouping. Being beyond his primary, his protein and sexual demands would have been minimal.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This kind of patterning is still present with us today in many regions of the world--it has the name of 'culture of poverty' but probably more accurately represents a 'poverty of culture'. It occurs everywhere that basic interests in individual human survival due to chronic scarcity of basic resources, overrides all other constraints of group solidarity or social identification. The correlated patterns are still there to be fond--sociopathy, absent fathers and irresponsible impulse control disordered miles, habitual substance abuse, single mother families or multi-cultural orientation because they have been doing it time immemorial. In the beginning, it was quite natural adaptation to the exigencies of human survival under conditions of scarcity and material poverty. Today it has become extremely devalued as the 'ugly' side of humanity. The absolute poor today have no other recourse--they can rarely go out and freely hunt game or gather wild fruits. If they cannot find a factory or farm labor job which earns only a threadbare, below subsistence level income, then they must resort to alternative styles and social patterning which acquires the basic resources. It is not surprising that they should have a sociopathic orientation and a poorly developed sense of social conscience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The critical difference between the period of proto culture and the modern era of mass poverty of culture is that in the former case such an adaptive patterning of a rudimentary culture was 'natural' and 'adaptive'--while it remains still adaptive today, it is considered to be quite unnatural and 'deviant' from the superficial normative standards of 'civilized' humanity. From the standpoint of a global civilization, it is considered quite artificial and naturally unnecessary.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a very dangerous element of the modern 'science' of sociobiology which sees the high incidence of 'cads' and prostitutes among the chronically poor as being based upon a higher incidence of certain genetic pre-dispositions. It is clear that such 'common sensical' thinking is rooted in preconceptions which are fundamentally socially racist and the social promotion and engineering based upon such thinking leads to fascist policies of social exclusion and persecution--genetic selection--in the name of enlightened 'reform'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But it must be recognized from this alternative point of view that such a common and pervasive patterning among the worlds poor is not necessarily so much a genetically programmed response, as it is a basic, very deeply rooted cultural patterning common to humankind in adaptation to situations of scarcity and chronic stress. It is an adaptive response that all people, and cast into the black hole of absolute poverty would necessarily 'acquire' if they are to continue 'existing' and 'subsisting' however minimally.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">When it comes to basic interests in human survival, altruists are rare indeed. There are few values so sacred that dire poverty and individual self interest in survival does not override and render contingent and relative-whether it is infant death and mother love in Brazil or Christian self sacrifice at the altar. Altruism came in with later with the age of the heroes, much to the chagrin of the socio-biologists basic theory of inclusive group fitness, and like the values of love, charity, devotion, remain for the most part hypocritical glosses of the collective subconscious where spurious relations of selfish competition, egoism, greed, power abound. We will readily burn witches at the stake, and brain wash gullible young boys into thinking it is best to die for their country and the worlds aristocracy will continue to appropriate for themselves and their offspring most of the worlds best qualities, humanities, opportunities and treasures and resources for themselves and their offspring, but the sad fact remains that there have indeed been far too few Gandhis or Martin Luther Kings in the world, and most of those few have died anonymously in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a sense human beings are biologically and probably genetically preprogrammed, for those kinds of character traits and social patternings which reveal themselves in contexts of impoverished culture and long term access. This 'instincts' regularly reveal themselves at football games, boxing matches, pop rock concerts, situations of social panic, crime scenes, and in bar rooms and on the fastest, busiest freeways. Human beings have been too well adapted and respond all too predictably and naturally in such contexts but this is not a function of deviance or of a particular gene culture correlation. Indeed, it would be the biological rule rather than the human exception. The fact of the matter remains that human civilization has developed inspite of the common and pervasive characteristics and not because of them. And if this psycho social patterning is so basic and natural, then it cannot be so abnormal and the wealthy people who live the illusion of their natural freedom from it, of their own basic 'super humanness' must think twice about the ethical and scientific efficacy of their own common sense and their own positions in life--for they do not have what they have except at someone else's expense.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A culture historical theory which combines ecology with the material evolution of humankind explains the predicament of humankind as being caught between forces of 'micro-parasitism' from beneath and 'macro parasitism' from above--this has left most of humankind in a chronically precarious position which has led to its existential exploration and 'evolutionary experience' to 'escape' these conditions. This has resulted in a positive feedback loop of cybernetic growth which has benefited and increased not only the size of the host body, but the micro/macro parasites which have always fed and depended upon this body.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are other characteristics associated with this basic proto cultural patterning which are still apparent in the poverty of culture today.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One such difference is that associated with 'field dependency' and 'field independence' with the frequency of 'field frequency' being much greater among poorer people.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another common characteristic is the difference between 'primitive' or 'pre-logical' mentality and 'rational mentality' or concrete and abstract thinking.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Basic also is a kind of basic or 'vulgar' orality of culture versus a refined or derived 'literate' culture--with semi-oral and literate cultures coming in between. The differences between oral and literate modes of speech discourse are fundamental linguistic differences between impoverished culture and civilized culture. Everyday patterns of oral discourse provide the kind of social cement of the former way of life, while literacy provides the kind of glue of the latter orientation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To a great extent these differences are reflective of basic 'class' differences and are characteristic of 'class consciousness'. It is important that network patterns of vulgar 'orality' survive in all social groupings, as a basic human way of pragmatic communication, while in poor cultures this is the primary mode of interaction, in civilized cultures this becomes compartmentalized and hidden in 'back regions' of discourse which are distinguished and covered over by literate discourse patterns which occupy 'front regions'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Other characteristics of proto people were worth mention. Aboriginal, natural man was not a noble savage but a fear dominated coward and sociopath primarily interested in self survival. But there was nothing ignoble or abnormal about these adaptations though by modern standards they involve strategies of risk minimization and minimal risk taking. Strategic success is based upon cunning, trickery, deceit and indirection. Witchcraft and magic become common means of achieving results, as well as accusations of sorcery and witchcraft. Cognition and human evolutionary experience are rooted in the acquisitions of patterns of avoidance, vicariousness, pre-occupations with non-being, the symbolic and real fear of death, narrow self interest, small group amoralism. In such contexts it was frequently better to let the child go and soon have another than to lose the whole reproductive mechanism. In this we can see that the need for truth, for love, for good, has been well rooted in the existential realities of the life, or apathy and the evil of natural violence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We still love winners and hate losers.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For an extremely long period in proto human prehistory, it can be said that there may have been a kind of 'gene culture co-evolution'. Culture could be seen as a mechanism of 'super species', species and sub-species selection. What was selected for was just the kind of patterning that has so far been described. It is not so much that humankind is inherently evil, but that inherent evil is well rooted in human nature, and that people must unlearn this 'genetic pre-disposition' in order to learn how to become genuinely 'humanized' and civilized. But from the very earliest, rudimentary culture proved an extremely effective edge for human survival--crude tools, rudimentary social organization, basic linguistic skills, the hearth, all proved extremely effective in selecting for the adaptive success of humankind. Though for most of the long span of proto human prehistory cultural adaptation was severely constrained by the natural exigencies of the environment and as a selective mechanism it created a new kind of human being, however humble and weak of character, culture nevertheless soon 'lifted off the ground' and basically detached itself as more or less independent of natural selection and selective forces of evolution. Though it remained long close to the ground, it soon took off on its own trajectory of developmental evolution as its own kind of 'supernatural' and 'super organic' self organizing patterning. All subsequent patterning of the growth and development of human culture history and of civilization evolution and not because of it--as a self organizing process it developed in its own direction in its own patterning and time frame.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The further off the ground that this development went, the more alternative process of social selectionism in the service of the development of civilization supplanted the role of natural selection in the biological evolution of humankind. But while human feet still touched the ground for the longest time. These different kinds of processes and 'forces' perhaps 'canceled each other out' or else cybernetically 'reinforced' one another to boost certain basic traits of human development and to keep human culture in the air and off the ground.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this different kind of origin mythology which centrally locates the basic source of natural 'self' we can see that the evolutionary experience and development of the sense of self is not lost between the pages of the unfolding story of humankind as so much social and culture historical process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We can see while the evolutionary experience of the sense of self remained organic, its social development as 'ego identity' in reference to civilization became somewhat 'super organic'. Today the tripartite conception of the psyche of the self as 'ego reality' caught between the impulsive forces of the id and the compulsive forces of the superego is a fitting description of the basic 'double identity' or 'duality' of identity of a fundamentally dichotomized sense of self in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is another kind of patterning of a 'complex' of human behavioral phenomena which must be understand in relation to a culture historical understanding of the 'deep' development of humankind but naturally and culturally.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This complex of patternings have to do with 'acquired dependency' or 'learned helplessness' which is related to 'adaptive response disorders' and 'delayed stress disorders' which are due to the experience of extreme stress and trauma. In a sense, social 'evolution' and social selectionism took over the role of natural selection as mechanism based upon and dealing with this kind of organic human experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This kind of behavior is physiologically and psychologically embedded in human responses and reflexes to environmental stimuli. It may be related to the predominant functioning or switching between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such phenomena are also related to 'impulse control disorders' and obsessive compulsive or repetition compulsive behaviors as well as to certain kinds of 'hyper-suggestibility' and psycho somatic, hysterical and organically experienced phenomena of 'spontaneous group reactions'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Susceptibility to techniques of behavior modification, brain washing, to hypnosis, to conversion and persuasion and the stringency of 'socialization' and 'enculturation' of the individual personality, as well as phenomena of 'de-individuation', 'depersonalization' and 'de-realization' are all related to this kind of complex of stress related responses.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To posit a central, focal point role for this kind of complex of behavioral and experiential phenomena in both the evolution of humankind and in the subsequent developments of human culture history requires some amount of qualified explanation especially of the central role and relationship of symbolic process in the mediation of this kind of phenomena, both psycho socially and in terms of environmental and evolutionary experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Nevertheless it can be claimed that natural and social forces of selection 'converged' resonated for an extended period of proto human prehistory to select for a certain kind of characteriological and physiological/psychological orientation of human beingness, organically embedded in the very process of human experience itself, which has had a double and contradictory set of consequences for humankind. On one hand it guaranteed the persistence and permanence of a kind of proto human adaptive orientation which has been a predominant pattern of human prehistory and history, and also it has offered another possibility, or potentiality, for human development, for the incidence of human 'genius', 'creativity' and 'enlightened consciousness' which has contributed to the development of human civilization inspite of, and because of, the predominance of the other patterning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The development of humankind has always been challenged by living a interdependent set of double standards. This internalized contradiction of human beingness has had both god and bad consequences for the development of humankind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Like evolution, the development of human civilization has been both self organizing and to some extent 'directive' and purposeful'. Achieved progress of humankind was not an inevitable statistical probability of chance, or random patterning, but was the long term consequence of the development of human mind as an epi-phenomena of natural evolution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We must understand how the human capacity for symbolization evolved, and then how culture as systems of symbolization, then subsequently developed. We must seek to understand what role and function symbolization served in human adaptation to natural environments and how human adaptation could be used to explain the origin of symbolization as a characteristically human process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A symbol is defined as something which stands for or represents something else. Symbols are characterized by their duality of meaning--of being simultaneously both what they are in a literal sense, and also representing something else. Symbol systems thus have a reflexiveness of their function. Symbols are composed of signs which actuate their physical objective existence in reality, and also represent other things which are primarily abstract and mental. In a sense a symbol is actually a mediating relationship occurring between the thing and its inference or meaning. Symbols, composed of signs and representing 'ideas' stand for both the signs and the ideas simultaneously and reflexively. Symbols also have a third value, which is often hidden, in that they also 'stand for themselves' as a fact of relationship itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Original symbolisms were oriented toward nature and derived from natural signs. They were mostly concrete in function and non-abstract. Symbols were mostly 'sign oriented' and had a 'mechanical' versus an organistic function--they were non-specialized and 'context dependent'. A symbol tended to stand for something immediate and specific, not general and indeterminant.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The limits to the number of symbolisms were the limits of long term memory--several hundred to two or three thousand. Symbolisms replaced one another as need attended to changing circumstances. Out with the old and in with the new.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">At some point, though, symbolisms began to form more complex aggregations--they began to become multiplied and ordered in a more hierarchical arrangement. There was a shift at this point, accompanied by increasing population densities, long term settlement patterns and complex social organization, at which symbolisms shifted their loci of primary function away from the mediation of natural signs in the environment toward group maintenance functions of reinforcing in-group identity and boundary maintenance. Symbolisms shifted from an extensive orientation to a more intensive orientation--mediating cultural environments rather than natural environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This marked a critical turning point in human cultural development. There occurred then fundamental 'change' of human mind and consciousness from an environmental to a cultural focus. This marked a critical shift in human identity from a self oriented identity to a social sense of self. Competition between groups and group life began to take on a 'natural' symbolic function. Nature became 'wild'. There occurred a shift from a 'natural' orientation towards a 'rational' orientation--symbolic focus went from natural signs to rational ideas. Symbolic function differentiated and became specialized and organistic. Some symbols took on cultural sign system function serving to make cultural environments seem as if 'natural'. Other 'symbols of symbols' took on a cultural ideational function. There occurred a naturalization of rationality and a rationalization of nature.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Natural symbol systems represented an organic, experiential encoding of the environment--they allowed the natural sense of self to be merged with the environment. Response to the environment was reflexive and automatic. Perception of the environment was direct and unalienated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbol systems allowed immediate 'pattern recognition' of the environment such that there occurred an 'instantaneous' reading of the environment. They enabled a great deal of information to be processed very rapidly. Symbols serve a 'pattern framing' function.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols worked in an analogical way to maintain 'similarity relations' with diverse and changing contexts of experiential phenomena. They allowed flexibility of natural mind and adaptability of experience. The pattern framing function allowed an experiential continuity between environment and organism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols provided a 'unity of experience' which provided the individual with a sense of self identity in relation with the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">symbols had a paradigmatic function of providing exemplary models by which to experientially frame and understand new phenomena. They were a way of 'learning' a new environment through experience and encounter. It is likely this symbolic process was largely an 'unconscious' and therefore somewhat 'automatic' and reflexive process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is possible that such a natural symbolic function, as an experiential expression of 'natural mind' allowed an 'adaptive radiation' of humankind, to explore and exploit a very diverse range of environments, way beyond the 'phenotypic/genotypic' horizons of any species. It enabled groups of humankind to successfully meet the challenges of moving and entering and adapting to new environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The crystallic structure of symbol systems determines that they are self organizing systems. It is possible that the structural limits of these systems, like all human informational systems, are determined by the structural limits of long term and short term memory. It is also determined that symbol systems would grow to reach a supercritical state when they overreached their own structural capacity. Adding more symbolisms could induce some degree of disintegration of the entire system and a reintegration at a lower level of complexity. Symbolic matrices reached a critical mass beyond which chain reactions might interfere with the mediating functions of the system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbols systems have their own history and evolutionary structure of development. There occurs 'symbolic selection'--symbols which functionally mediate with the environment are selected for, symbols which fail to are selected against. As the environment changed, from natural to cultural, so did the symbolisms.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this we can see that mind evolved as an adaptive mechanism in natural environments. We can refer to natural mind as this kind of extensive orientation of experiential beingness, based on the organic and mechanical functioning of sign symbolisms. Mind served as well then as a 'selective' mechanism allowing the human being to focus attention upon 'important' patterns of phenomena in the environment and to ignore 'noise'. Mind was also a mechanism of selection--it was naturally selected for in the evolution of human intelligence and then became itself a force of selectionism. Mind became a mechanism of 'cultural transmission' as well, through the learning and teaching of symbolisms and symbolic orientations which 'carried' culture through time and across space.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We can speak of the evolution of mind from natural to rational states, construed by rationally minded scientists as a movement from irrationality to super rationality or 'perfect mind'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Symbolisms somewhere, sometime grew in complexity until they began to take on a 'super organic' and synergistic life of their own. At this point they become fundamentally detached from their natural signs and became themselves signs--symbols of symbols. At this point mind was born and then proceeded to develop in its own way. Symbolisms could no longer be easily destroyed and became traded, bartered, diffused over wide areas and whole regions. Symbolism grew on top of other symbolisms--and symbolism became embedded not only in human consciousness but in human social life as well. Once made, symbolisms could not become easily destroyed, but became 'stockpiled' in cultural pools of 'symbolically embodied experience'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the understanding of original symbolisms, it becomes necessary at some point in the story to mention the near universal symbolic process of the insertion of patriarchal authority in the welding together of the family, and by extension, of a society, through marriage; of the 'incest' taboo which serves to symbolically reinforce the social patterning related to reproductive access and the cementing of corporate social relations and finally of the rise and influence of totemic symbolisms as foci of group identity and ritual reinforcement. All of these come more or less together at a point in time in the development of human culture history when the shift from the extensive to an intensive symbolic orientation occurred and all are perhaps symbolically interrelated in the social structuring of human corporate groupings as cultural entities and as an expression of 'world view' of rational mindness which comes to compete with and replace natural mind as the primary symbolic ordering process of human experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In these cases it seems that the appropriate symbolisms relating to the articulation of these 'cultural complexes' served a ritual and mythological reinforcing function and a 'reality' creating or constructing function, which was necessary to foster dominant bonds and social relations and prohibitions which would otherwise be weak.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The insertion and augmentation of the patriarchal authority of the father in both the family and the group and the subordination of the reproductive and nurturing of the mother, was a necessary move in the development of social 'superego' or collective conscientious as 'the law of the father' which overrode individual self interest and the classic myth of Oedipus Rex in which the son overthrows the authority and fear of the father and in the process internalizes the authority of the father as totemic emblem. This is reflective of a natural and basic conflict of self interest between the needs of the individual and the demands of the group and of the psychological process of internal identification with the group and of the psychological process of internal identification with the group in the resolution of this conflict. The Jews have a 'binding over the son' and the Christians have the 'son becoming the father'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Incest taboos are symbolically designed to reinforce patterns of sexual access, complementary to marriage rules and regulations, which serve to unit family units together and reinforce the more general social bonds of a society. Violation of these taboos are considered extremely polluting, not just for the individuals involved but for the whole status of the group. Purification, even expurgation and ritual death are the only resource a cultural grouping has for restoring normal order to group life and relations. The incest taboo in this case represents the symbolic subordination of the love of the body of the mother--the ritually reinforced symbolic rejection of the bond of the mother by the son as a complementary means of reinforcing the authority of the father over the son and the privileged access of the father to the mother. In this case, sisters or certain cross cousins are considered symbolically of the body of the mother. Menstrual taboos represent as well the rejection of the bleeding body of the mother as endangering the ritual purity and threatening to the normal social relations of the group. Symbolically the menstrual blood represents the reproductive wounds of the mother which threatens the fertility of the group, not just in bearing offspring, but in hunting game, cultivating or harvesting foods, fishing, as well as in supernatural propitiousness. The protein taboos of nursing or post-partum mothers is another means of subordinating the body of the mother in reinforcing the law of the father--the father feasts to celebrate the new birth, the mother starves to feed her newborn child. A mother giving birth, the placental afterbirth, the bleeding, and the emergence of the bloody newborn from the womb is a 'dangerous' period for the groups normal relations. Couvade is an attempt by magic for the male to usurp this natural power of the male--a kind of 'birth envy'. The taboo on adultery and the devalued status of prostitutes, primarily associated with women, is related to the incest taboo in that it serves to restrict and regulate the sexual prerogative of the female and make such choices the pater-recht of the father, and the law of the group. Breaking this taboo similar to the incest taboo can have dire consequences for the people involved.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Totemic symbolisms are manifest in practically every society, and have been a mainstay of human culture history. The totem represents the corporate solidarity and the strength, and successful survival of the group. Totem reflects the 'territorial imperative' of a group which defines its boundary-identity 'psycho-geographically' in relation to political domination and privileged access to the resources of a particular region. The annual killing and communion of the totem, like ritual cannibalism or headhunting represents the imbibing into the body of the spirit of the land--the symbolic subordination and incorporation of the power of the spirit familiar. This too assures the adaptive success and productivity of the group.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a similar way, ritual ceremonies involving mutilation and initiation are also symbolic means for either reinforcing the law of the father or else subordinating the natural power of the mother in the service of superimposing corporate group identity upon the self identity of the individual.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In these respects, we can see the power of symbolisms in the mediation of human reality, and of the psycho-social integration of the individual with the group. Symbols have the power of making unreal things seem real, unnatural things seem natural, and nonsensical things to make sense. Symbolisms when ritually enacted by people, create social realities where none before existed, and reinforce social relations in ways which nature never before intended.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In terms of this power of symbolization in the creation of human social structure we are better able to see how the complex of traits associated with adaptive response disorders, 'learned helplessness', the power of linguistic persuasion and the displacement of libidinal ties in 'conversion' experiences. These are the natural organic and psychological human reaction to the symbolic superimposition of authority and social power in their lives. The experience of stress by either ritual separation or else by social ostracism is known to lower thresholds of cognitive resistance to conversion experiences and behavioral modification. Induction of a little stress at regular intervals goes along way in inducing and reinforcing social conformity. The fear and threat of violence or punishment is a similar 'stress' producing ways of making people behave in socially sanctioned or valued ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a way, rape as a form of incest violation, is ore polluting for the victim than for the victimizer, and the symbolic consequences of such violent victimization can be severe and long lasting. In such a way, traumatization, either actual or threatened, produces the same kinds of consequences in the individual.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But internalization of authority, behavior modification, reinforcing social conformity and threatened or actual traumatization has the same long terms kinds of consequences upon the symbolic integrity and identity of the individual cannot function outside of or independently of the symbolisms and structures relations of the group, it leads as well to conversion reactions, somatization disorders or organic displacement of repressed or intense psychic pain and suffering, to delayed stress disorders in which similar environmental stimuli may trigger unexpected 'flashbacks' or the re-experiencing of traumatic or intensely stressful events, it leads to adaptive response disorders--the acquired inability of the organism to respond to the environment in adaptive ways, to impulse control disorders, to borderline psychosis, dementia, psychic disintegration of personal identity, to phases of depression and high levels of neurotic anxiety. In social settings it leads to 'de-individuation' such that individual self controls of personal behavior are completely externalized onto the environment of social relations. Maintaining self control then becomes a problem, and a strategy of maintaining control over one's social environment, whether through manipulation, domination, subordination, etc.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">People in this condition are ripe for the picking of a system, any system, which promises them, if not salvation, at least temporary (THIS SENTENCE ENDS ON PAGE 508. PAGES 509-521 ARE MISSING)</p> <u> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">MISSING PAGES 509-521</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </u> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Relief from their suffering and a symbolic way of ordering their external environment such that they regain a sense of security they have lost in an internal sense. Through projection and repression they can regain their identity through fixed frames and symbolic dependency such that their own neurotic psychoses becomes transferred onto a group orientation as a delusional collective archosis. Such people have reduced resistance and low thresholds to persuasion and conversion to 'impersonal' orientations which become highly controllable and exploitable.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">These people have incorporated the principle of non-being into their lives, and render to the service of power in paradigmatic world views. The basic naked insecurities of their natural condition remains, but it has become disguised beneath the clothes of conformity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The primitive, proto-typical, natural states of being does not remain very far away in any of us--and it has always been just beneath the covers of civilization. It is not difficult to look about in the world and to find many survivals of or primeval beginnings--both in power and powerless.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human mind evolved once or several times in the inauguration of human symbolic functioning, and then conveniently stepped above the ground of natural selection. The culture historical development of human civilization, as the expression of the elaboration of symbolic functioning of mind, became then largely a self organizing and self reflecting developmental process separate from natural evolution. Symbolic functioning proceeded at its own pace and civilization developed as a developing environmental-symbolic context in which mind could find its expression. Similar to the evolving environments of life which created possibilities and pathways of speciation, the slow development of the contexts of civilization made possible the fuller realization of culture historical process. Symbols as paradigms, as models could be easily diffused as 'stimulus-generalization'--just the symbol as the remoted idea could be easily carried throughout the world and easily reconstruct from its templates the basic cultural elements. Civilization developed as a changing environment in which the same basic natural human being found themselves. It was the same flexibility of symbolic functioning which fostered these new environments which allowed the individual within a new group context to adapt to these new environments. In this sense, even tools, technology and material possession are symbols of the new environment--directly expressive of the symbolic functioning in the experiential mediation of environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Civilization grew up organically, through symbolic functioning, as a new world environment around humankind and slowly transformed the psychic functioning of humankind to fit these new environment--humankind became more stabilized as symbols became more and more rational and ideational in function and construction. Such development of symbolic environments of civilization was quite gradual and probably occurred only after many fits and starts. Several pre-conditions must have been met. First, an complete adaptive radiation had to have occurred such that proto people came to occupy most regions of the earth. Secondly, natural population increases in local and regional contexts had to reach a minimum threshold of density before the symbolic process could 'take off'. This natural increase was probably quite long and slow in its development. But once 'critical mass' of human population densities in an area were achieved, symbolic functioning would 'explode' and human consciousness would 'implode' in a self-regenerating cycle of civilization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Once this happened, symbolization and symbolic function then took its own 'super organic' life n terms of a functional momentum of development, which then continued on its own in the environment relatively independently and uncontrollably of individuals or of groupings ability to resist. The environment, now predominantly social, began to transform itself beyond the individuals capacity to control it and the individual has culture historically since that moment been forced either to adapt to the new changes or else suffer the consequences of marginalization. The processes of transformation continue inexorably and uncontrollably in our world today--we call it technological development, modernization, even progress and it cannot be controlled. Individuals or groups may renounce the state of the world, whole nations may go on a backward course in reversing historical process but the world continues towards its own ultimate ends.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Evolution itself has now been stopped, frozen in its tracts and supplanted by the modern process of civilized development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As we have stepped outside of the whole evolutionary ecology of life, we have stepped ideologically and symbolically outside of the horizons of our own natural history. We have substituted our sense of culture history for this natural sense of history and we are paying the price and the cost in terms of our own alienation and the alienation of our environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not without reason that non-being and the problem, indeed the imperative, of power and control have become the central existential problematics of our own civilization and culture history. When our environments are beyond either our own control and the control by nature, then we are genuinely driving blindly into a black night of the future. Non-being and power affect us personally in our everyday lives, and also affect us collectively in all our group life, at every level of social interaction and function. All our symbolisms recursively reiterate about these central meta-themes and our modern mythologies cannot escape their hold upon our imaginations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is necessary to separate the problem of the culture historical development of human civilization from the related, but separate problem of human development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It was A. L. Kroeber who emphasized the correlation between the rise and peaking of civilization with the increased frequency of 'genius' as an expression of the cultural stylizations typifying a civilization, and who noted as well the tendency for societies which are waning in civilization to frustrate and stem the expression of such genius. Certainly the rise of human civilization has at least created the possibility if not probability for human development and has been associated with the increased incidence of its many expressions, but it remains doubtful just how much civilization doesn’t also frustrate or prevent such development in its promotion of spurious relationships.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human development can be defined as the realization of human symbolic functioning in an independent individual sense, and promote the expression of human creativity or 'genius' through symbolization. Associated with this is fostering a non-authoritarian social atmosphere in which human rights are relatively achieved and their violation or usurpation prevented.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The culture historical development of human civilization has certainly created the possibilities for the greater realization of human development, but it has generally failed to achieve this kind of genuine social progress.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It will not be until such a grand achievement is realized that humankind will gain more control over its environment in such a way that preserves the naturalness of its being in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Humankind as a species may throw up only a small handful of genius in the world in any given generation but it is perhaps this small handful which has made the only critical difference between developmental disaster, evolutionary equilibrium and human well being in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What seems clear is that we are in fact not all that different in our natures and our being from our prototypical ancestors. Only our environments and our sense of non-being are different. Individual human beings, as 'ideas' of mind, and humankind, as the expression of mindness in the world, have embedded in their organic experience the very structure and basis of the ecological evolution of all our life. In the understanding of this experience is rooted our natural science and native senseness about the world and the promise of our enlightened emancipation from its merciless dictates.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We cannot change the way the world is headed, nor reverse what has already happened. But we can change the ways that we ourselves go about relating to our world, whether social or natural, in such a way that makes greater evolutionary sense. We can start 'minding' and 'reminding' ourselves of our own natural beingness in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a general implicit pre-supposition that because ecology is largely a synchronic, systemic and space like science, that it must therefore be subsumed beneath the more general problem of evolution as a dynamic, diachronic, time like science. Ecological problems and frameworks are fit like snapshot profiles into the unfolding film reel of evolution. Those who imagine a great scientific synthesis of a space time like 'evolutionary ecology' generally see the relationships between the two general perspectives in such a way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It makes sense, though, to reverse the formula and to fit the problems of evolution into a more general orientation of 'global ecology' in the sense that a total environmental ecology of earth 'evolved' into its present state, and that part of the primary function of evolutionary development has been to establish and maintain an on going dynamic equilibrium of this universal ecology of life on earth. The selective purpose of evolution has been to explore the range of possibilities for exploitation and adaptation to the environments of the earth such that its ecological equilibrium can acquire greater stability through diversity and complexity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this sense, the environments of the earth, having been largely biotic, 'evolved' as the context for the evolutionary events of individual processes of speciation. Life evolved its own habitations and environments by which it could further augment its ecological equilibrium. Environmental contexts evolved as a dynamic equilibrium around separate, single species integrating all of these into a global web of life.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What has been 'dynamic' in a structural sense about evolutionary development that has conferred a sense of selective purpose upon the entire system of life is this sense of earthbound ecological equilibrium.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Life continuously explores its earthbound environments and embodies its evolutionary experiences in the biotic and behavioral expressions of its many life forms, as the patterning of its possibilities of development.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Ecological evolution' has been a self organizing system which periodically approaches 'critical states' of over development--of critical biotic mass on earth which then rapidly despoils and depletes its own geological substrate. Then life generally contracts again and alternative directions for development are discovered. Clearing away of the old, dead wood, makes room for the growth of new, fresh wood.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Like lilies upon a small pond, life does not know its own limits until it experiences them,</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Evolution of life has been the developmental embodiment of the experiences of the earth's environments. Evolutionary experience becomes organically rooted and its 'senseness' of 'ecological fitness' becomes embedded in the very fabric and living environment of life itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the extent that we are a part of this general evolutionary experience, we have ingrained in our own nature's and our own sense of being the very expression of ecological evolution itself. Recognizing and cultivating this organic senseness of our natural experience in ourselves, we can better learn to see it and relate to it in our earthbound environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">HORIZONS OF MIND</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Individual expression or examples of an idea represent the profiles of its range of possibility--the idea itself represents the limits of this range of possibility--an idea is the horizon of the possible patterning of mind as an expression of its environmental experience. Because the range of possible profiles is open ended--the change and variation of its examples are infinite--ideas as horizons of mind are essentially open and infinite, though limited. Thus, prime numbers, though limited, remain infinite and open ended in possibility. Infinity is such that it may be infinitely sub-divided, and each of its divisions still would be infinite as long as they are open ended.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ideas themselves are profiles of the range of possibilities of mind--they ate the exemplary expression of mindness as environmental experience. Thus mind is open ended and infinite horizon of the horizon of ideas. Ideas are 'general symbols' in that they ate non-particular and in their basic abstractness as mental constructs are non-concrete. They typify or represent a class of concrete things or the relations between things. As general symbols, ideas also have sticky and fuzzy edges and thus many different ideas cohere together and 'blend' in indistinctness upon their horizons. Ideas are mental reflections of the phenomenological experiences which they represent.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ideas are mental templates and 'filters' by which we screen selectively experience and arrange it into meaningful, interpretive order. Ideas are flexibly arranged and are polythetically composed of a range of profiles along different sets of traits or distinctive features. It is this which allows ideas to be very adaptable to new environments. Like tools in the hand, they can be carried far afield and allow us to continue to function in an adaptive way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Horizons of mind, like evolutionary horizons of development are always relative to the relational contexts in which they are situated. They always bound the point of view of the present moment of experience, and determines the limits of our conscious and unconscious understandings, but as we approach the edges of our horizons, they continuously recede and vanish into the context of which they are a part. They are always surrounding us, but are forever remote.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The horizons of mind evolved as a natural self organizing system. Though its contexts is unlimited and open ended, its sense of experience is always limited and determined in the present of mindness. Mindness tends toward states of super criticality in which it is always changing and undergoing crises of interpretation of new ideas in new sets of environmental experiences, but mind has remained as a total system flexible and 'robust' and fairly stable. Its evolutionary development, like natural evolution, has been one of a selective exploration and elaboration of its experiential environments. Mind has created its own mental/phenomenological environments for the experience of its mindness. Mind has developed its own possibilities of symbolic patterning through the elaboration of its environmental contexts of experience. Mind has enlarged itself in the world, and in the process, has enlarged our experience of the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The evolution of mind is primarily a culture historical phenomena--the mindscape of multiple horizons of ideas is a function and reflection of human civilization in the world. The fact and act of civilization as a process of the evolution of mind is an expression of mindness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Mind first evolved as a natural possibility--natural mind was a sense of possibility which was rooted in environmental experience--as the evolutionary horizon of humankind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">BEINGNESS AS ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERIENCE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Beingness is a natural ecological/evolutionary state or condition of environmental experience in the world. Environmental experience embodies beingness organically in the world--it merges the organism and its own self awareness with the larger relational context of which it is evolutionarily and ecologically a part. Awareness of this beingness is a natural understanding which is embedded in the phenomenological immediacy of real, unalienated experience. As a natural understanding it is 'enacted' or 'performed' by the perceptual enactment of cognition and recognition. It is the act and the performance of clear and unadulterated perception in the world. In its natural state it is inherently selective--it does not entail a conscious decision of interpretation or deliberateness of the 'will' to experience, nor is it based upon the implicit ground of 'common senseness' of experience. It is the epi-phenomenal expression and end product of many millennium of evolutionary development as such its structure is built in a natural wisdom of deep experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is very difficult for us today to 'get back in touch' with our own innate beingness, because it has been substituted and sublimated both consciously and unconsciously by our own symbolizations which have changed and altered our environments of the world in quite arbitrary and unnatural ways. The alienation of our own natural experience is rooted in the difference of our very experience of the world. We cannot see the difference because it has become virtually the only way we can see the world. The very environments of an evolutionary/ecological nature in which this experience was derived have been irreversible altered and rendered 'unnatural'. But the traces and basis of our own natural beingness remains within us organically.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It was flash frozen in its evolutionary development when the evolutionary environment itself became 'frozen' by human culture history. In a very real sense, it is always just beneath the surface of our own sense of ego, expecting to burst out and blossom. Because it is now fundamentally alienated, what little of it we can recover in ourselves, through the modification of our own experiences, is but a shadow, a remnant, an artifact and a fossil of its original beingness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But by holding it, feeling it, looking at it, touching it and turning it over and over in our mind's eyes, we can get a sense of its experience--its 'senseness' and we can learn to value and emphasize this senseness in every aspect of our existences on earth. It must always seem strange and primitive and perhaps frightening in its nakedness and rawness of power--but by familiarizing ourselves with its remnants we can rekindle its evolutionary fires.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">NATURAL SYSTEMS, SCIENTIFIC RULES AND ORGANIC EXPERIENCE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Part of the problem of dichotomization between a Naturwissenschaften, a Geisteswissenschaften and a Kulturwissenschaften has been the hypothesis of fundamentally different and inimical 'modes of experientiality' which lead to different criteria of 'tolerance'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It must be recognized that there is a fundamental difference between natural phenomena and 'system of mind' which are purported to reflect the structure and function of the patterning of such phenomena, and of the difference between the organic experience of natural phenomena, which is itself the primary and underived inductive ground of empirical science, and the scientific rules which seek to explain and account for such organic experience. The language and symbolic generalizations, the ideas and symbolizations which compose our scientific theories are representative and reflexive of natural phenomena, but they are not the natural phenomena itself. Thus there is no reason to suppose that nature evolves or composes its patterns, whether this is the motion of subatomic particles about a nucleus or the acquisition and biological substrate of human language competence and performance, according to a basic 'set of rules' which our sciences comprehend. As such, we can say there is no necessary or demonstrable or provable reason for presuming the a priori existence of a 'deep structure' of mind or logos which accounts for and results in the pattern that we then observe. It is enough that the organic experience of this patterning is evolutionarily/ecologically rooted--is an epi-phenomenal expression of the dynamic processes of nature. Our scientific rules and theoretical 'systems of mind' are themselves a posteriori constructions which imperfect reflect and seek to better explicate our understanding of these organic experiences, indeed even our own experience, or 'senseness' of this natural experience. The sets of rules and principles which we do elaborate of our own mindness, which we confuse with the natural evolution of our organic experiences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is a grand paradox that the evolution of organic experience and the evolution of the experience of mindness are both 'self organizing' systems which do not follow basic structural rules or principles but are based upon basic relational functions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We can seek to explain our dual experience of reality through our scientific systems, but we cannot seek to non-relatively describe and define our experience in non-arbitrary ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The only principle of patterning which could be held to be a priori to both natural experience and our experiential systems of mind is the principle of change and entropy and we can never explain change or know change in an ultimate, absolute way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It seems that the basic distinctions between a Naturwissenschaften, a Kulturwissenschaften and a Geisteswissenschaften are more apparent than actual--a result of the paradox of mind which afflicts our own experiential beingness in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As Naturwissenschaften, our systems of mind require relational rules of organic, experiential phenomena. As Geisteswissenschaften, we seek to describe and define the unknown hidden behind organic experiential phenomena in basic ways of our language. As Kulturwissenschaften, we seek to see how our systems of mind and languages of reality are both reflexive of the organic experiences of reality in relative ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We cannot escape the existential dilemmas of our own senseness and beingness in the world. Natural phenomena evolved in the world for reasons which we then give to it in the name of understanding.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Nature's beginning is our scientific ends, and our scientific beginning has been nature's end.</p> <hr> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PART X</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="5">PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOLOGOS</font></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><b><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="2"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/hughmlewis/">by Hugh M. Lewis</a></font></b></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">When a cultural group suddenly notice an eclipse of the moon, they all respond to the same belief that a dog is eating the moon in the same manner, even though no words of instruction are exchanged between them. A western observer sees the same phenomena and rationalize it as an eclipse of the moon.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Simultaneous invention of the same theory or machine occur independently of one another in the same cultural context.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though many people may realize that the social system they are working within is doing harm, they consistently fail to see the very roles they themselves are playing in the promotion of harm, and so continue to do so.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">How do we explain culture historical synchronicity of the same kinds of behavioral phenomena, even though there may be no active communication or deliberate intention between the participants.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">How do two strangers have immediate recognition of one another even though they may have never met each other ever before.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In such ways we can say that understanding is embedded in the environment and that people may act upon such silent understandings without having to exchange words or communicate their intentions except by their actions. In such ways do we say that experience is embedded in the environment and that our environments are always symbolically mediated.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Wisdom is expressed by words but imperfectly even though words are always encompassed by wisdom. But without our words wisdom must remain mute and limited to the narrow range of organic experiences in our relation to the world. Words are the only other ways we have of understanding our world, and allow us to communicate this understanding in a way which is independent of the contexts in which organic experience is always situated. Words 'lift' wisdom from the contextual relations of the real world and allows a more general range of understandings and a more inclusive view of the world to be transmitted.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But words also have a morphological history of organic experience of their own, and do not come un-situated within their own linguistic environments. Words embody their own kind of wisdom, usually left implicit in their etymologies and hermeneutical definition.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">When we speak of history of ideas or a history of consciousness or a culture historical understanding of mind, we are referring to the kind of wisdom embodied in words--the understanding of the organic experience which they have come to symbolize and represent in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The problem of language and understanding is central to the study of culture history and is at the heart of human symbolization. Language is the principle mechanism of culture historical transmission--it allows the communication of experience and thus its 'stimulus generalization' in the world. Without it experience would perish with the passing of each person and each generation. The only other mechanism available for the transmission of culture would be the thin and fragile line of imitative learning and of course genetic transmission, what comes with the overlapping of the generation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Language may facilitate the understanding of experience and allow its transmission, but language may also be used to distort such understanding and to prevent its transmission. Words are deliberate and are integrative while experience is automatic and undeniable. Words are subject to the whims of the speaker and listener while wisdom remains imperviously rooted in the ground of experience. To the extent that words and wisdom overlap in their dialectical middle ground, such that wisdom is difficult to think at its extremes without words, and words without wisdom appear nonsensical and trivial, we can say that wisdom becomes relatively manipulable by the words of its expression and that words become to some extent 'non-arbitrary' by the experiential understandings which 'embed' them in the ground of the environment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is this 'middle ground' of meaning between the arbitrariness of words and the essential non-relatively of wisdom rooted in organic experience that we find the relative 'non-relativity' and the non-relative 'relativity' of our culture historical and scientific understandings of the world, as somehow stable and enduring through the many preparations and as the focus for the dialectic between our words and our wisdom.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is upon this more or less stable middle ground of meaning that we find the convergence of both our philosophical interests in both the words of wisdom and the wisdom of words. It is in this region of interrelationship between philosophical and philological concerns that we are to find the central methodological fulcrum of the study of culture history as a 'third culture' bridging the sciences and the humanities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This set of essays is entitled 'Philosophos and Philologos' instead of 'Philosophy and Philology' to de-emphasize these as fields of study and to emphasize the general subject of such study. This is to avoid the influence of many preconceptions surrounding the terms of philosophy and philology and the traditions (both western and eastern) which these terms represent.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a sense, it is the philosophos of philosophy (and the philosophy of philosophos) as well as the philologos of philology (and the philology of philologos) with which these essays are most concerned and even more importantly, the middle ground of meaning between these areas of mind, or the philplogos of philosophy and the philosophy of philologos and the philosophos of philology and the philology of philosophos.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is another way of understanding this set of common interests between wisdom and words, and this is in the attempt to systematically elucidate the semanticity of language and how language comes to embody the 'truth' of real experience and how wisdom of the ways of the world comes to be dependent upon the expression of words for its sense of experience. Without language and wisdom, we cannot be fully human in our world of experience. As human beings , we cannot have complete wisdom without words, and we cannot have words without wisdom.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If we drop the prefix 'philo' meaning 'love for' and just consider the Greek etymology of the roots 'sophos' and 'logos' we can perhaps come to a closer understanding of the implications and paradoxical twist, of their interconnections. 'Sophos' originally meant clever, skillful and wise, and has come down to us in the forms of 'sophism' and 'sophistry' which means 'a fallacious argument…an ingenuous statement and arrangement of propositions devised for the purpose of misleading' and 'fallacious reasoning, sound in appearance only'. 'Logos' meant 'speech or reason' or 'ration or proportion' or 'word or discourse' and is related to the forms 'logos' or the 'word by which the inward thought is expressed, the inward thought itself' and meaning 'reason thought of as constituting the controlling principle of the universe and as being manifested by speech' and as 'logic' or 'the science which deals with the criteria of valid thought, correct reasoning, way of reasoning' or 'the system of principles underlying any science or art'. What is a twist of fate is that philosophy has come down to us today as embodying more the original meaning of 'logos' while philology has generally become associated with the skillful play of words, or the logodaedaly and sophistry of words.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Logos, in Greek thought, designated the ordering of the cosmos, even the cosmos itself, making possible human understanding of the world and of human relations within it. Philology, (the love of words) before the advent of scientific linguisticality, was passed down as the study of 'logos' or 'mind', especially as this is expressed through words and texts. Textuality was the state or condition of mindscape which was the domain of philologists. 'Sophos' was a Greek term for cleverness' skillfulness and being wise, and has come down to us in terms of 'sophistry, sophism, sophistication and sophomore'. 'Sophia' skill or wisdom, was the combining from meaning 'knowledge or thought'. Philosophy (philosophos, or 'the love of wisdom') has been received as the study of thought and mind in terms of understanding the relations between ideas. Philology and Philosophy combine in the 'understanding of mind' and the 'mind of understanding' forming a critical dialectic (from the Greek dialektikos or dialect) fundamental to the workings of the western 'rational mind' or 'rationalism' which is believed to inhere in science as 'world view'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Linguistics, as a science informed by such rationalist world view, has become the modern substitute for the traditional form of philology, which had become widely regarded as an esoteric and pedantic exercise in epigraphy, classical scholasticism in the idiom of dead languages and literary minutia and trivia without scientific relevance. Exegetical hermeneutics became a matter of trying to mine texts to uncover hidden associations between different texts and to reveal the 'essential' structure of spirit which informed these texts. The loss of culture historical studies has been an unfortunate one to the modern western world, as it leads to a collective blindness of the modern world view to the interpretative importance of such study, incapacitating the modern mind in its ability to encounter adaptively new earthbound environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Not to denigrate the importance of scientific linguistics, the loss of philology has meant more than the loss of dead languages or trivial pedanticism, it has meant the permanent loss of a hermeneutical and culture historical world view which provided the dialectical counterbalance to scientism in our appreciation of the contextuality of words and the basic linguisticality of mind. This has resulted not only in a collective myopia or blindness of general relevance, but in sanctioned 'forgetfulness' of the collective mind (mind comes from the Anglo-Saxon 'gemnyd' or 'memory') which has served well the ideological principle of 'progress' as the scientific substitute for 'logos'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The burden of understanding in and of the world has fallen to philosophers, exclusively relegated to the scientifically unimportant world of the academic humanities. Philosophers substitute 'logic' for 'logos' in the vain hope of recover their relevance to a world predominated by scientific rationality, and the central hermeneutical 'raison d'être' of the humanities is lost in the modern age of the machine.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Traditional academic scholasticism focused tuition around the three Aristotelian subject areas of logic, dialectic and ertistic (or rhetoric). It is interesting that the traditional curricula of 'logic' has come down to us in the form of mathematics and scientific theory, while the study of ertistic has lead to the humanities--speech, literature, philosophy and history. Dialectic as a formal respondent-questioner question and answer forum for debate, has largely fallen by the wayside in academic praxis. This is noteworthy because it is precisely in the kind of dialogue set of up in such dialectic that the kind of understanding which informs the middle ground between words and wisdom is to be found. Between the sciences and the humanities, between the logic of the former and the ertistic of the latter, exists a third culture based upon the philosophical/philological efficacy of linguistics. This third culture might be referred to as culture history, and today is occupied primarily by those fields identified generally as the 'social sciences'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Understanding the middle ground between words and wisdom has something to do with the difference between formal syllogistic reasoning of logic, and the kind of formal fallacies based upon two value truth theorem logic, like modus tollens or ergo hoc, ex post propter hoc, and the many kinds of informal fallacies rooted in common sense preconceptions of normal linguistic praxis--fallacies of deriving an ought from an is, of anthropomorphizing or overemphasis, of hypostasis. Many of these kind of fallacies are rooted in the difference between the parole of 'natural linguistic discourse' and the 'language of formal linguistic syntax' that are rooted in the organically derived pre-understandings of a 'folk psychology' and 'folk taxonomy of the world'. Furthermore these are differences between a primarily oral mode of linguistic transmission and a literate mode of transmission.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Linguistically speaking, part of this central problematic is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammar, or more precisely, basic selective difference of linguistic style and design which maximize the efficiency of communication of important information while simultaneously optimizing the individual interest of stylistic expression--accentuating the 'unique' and the 'unusual'. Elements of style and features of design stand as basic paradigmatic examples of 'good' linguistic praxis versus 'poor' linguistic performance. While there are no absolute standards for such roles, there are general 'working' rules and their noteworthy exceptions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From the standpoint of pragmatics, or linguistic function, this middle ground is apparent in which statements stand ambiguously in two or more functional categories or between such categories--as when statements may be both descriptive and performative, or when a statement may be by its structure simultaneously a command or a request, or statement of logical conclusion and a prescriptive principle or a directive statement.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another dimension which tests the boundaries of both 'normal' language and reason is the occurrence of linguistic code switching and code mixing, and the overlapping or mixing up of different speech styles within a single context of performance. This may lead to differential 'densities' of switching points and to mixing up of different values of marked or unmarked or covert and overt values of language.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this way we may refer to the overlay of different experiential 'topographies' of mindscape which creates a dynamic tension or conflict of basic significance between different values of metaphorical salience or metaphysical relevance or importance of interest.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This becomes a basic problem of interpretation and translation and the hermeneutical 'distanciation of surplus meaning'. Two speakers may be talking to one another about the same central subject, and each may be interpreting the other in each's own way and yet both may simultaneously be talking past one another or through one another to an idealized or projected sense of self. Such discourse is reflective, but non-reflexive, as it does not turn the meaning system of each speaker upon itself in testing it or contrasting it against the meaning system of the other.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In all instances linguistic communication is never unmediated by a process of interpretation of different topographies of metaphorical and metaphysical salience. There are not objective standards or criteria for determination of such salience, and there can be no purely neutral, scientific, 'etic' language or 'meta' language which can adequately serve the function of inter-linguistic translation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All linguistic encoding of environmental experiences is 'institutional' within a culture historical context, and all involve some arbitrary measure of linguistic interpretation and translation of events.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Cultural constructivism by discursive praxis (and critical destructionism by discursive analysis) depends upon, indeed, even demands, the definite delimitation of 'contexts', but fails to resolve in any constructive manner the concomitant 'dilemma of context'--how much or how little 'context' is necessary and sufficient to 'describe and explain' an 'event'. (Ben-Ami Scharfstein, 1989)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The related dilemma of interpretation involves the question of who's translation of metaphorical salience and metaphysical importance of distinguishing between 'loaded' and 'unloaded' meanings (Roger Keesing, 1985) in the 'taken for granted' definition of inference, reference and transference of meaning in particular metaphors and statements and in generalized 'codes' and 'schemas'. Are inferences and implications about 'invisible' or 'entangled' or 'hidden' realities the speaker/actors own or may they in fact be the listening/interpreter's own invisible presumptions. One must only consider the possibility of multiple translations to reveal the hidden ambiguities of determining the necessarily 'correct' or best or only translation possible. (Daniel Rosenberg, 1990)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Rendering visible the apparently 'invisible', revealing 'hidden' feelings (and enlightening 'back regions' and 'deep structures') and the consistent transparency of cultural codes presents an antinomial paradox shared by both participants and observers, speakers and listeners and this 'invisibility' of shared contexts and connotations tends to undermine the whole 'hidden' agenda of superimposing rational order upon apparent empirical disorder. This is a dilemma far greater for the observed than for the participant, because the former must successfully disentangle at least two or more differing, but equally invisible cultural codes, entailing a deliberate estrangement (distanciation, critical indifference, objectification, disinterested inquiry) divorcing or divisively sundering the 'dialogical betweeness' or intermediacy or 'togetherness' of the dyadic relation. In allusion to the notion of scientific psychology's 'epistemo-pathology' (Sigmund Koch, 1981) I will refer to this inherent antinomality of cross cultural, cross situational, and inter-personal realities and the existential predicament of the 'participant observer' as 'anthropology'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Precise statistical description helps to precipitate the rarefied and invisible and fixes inferences and frames and thus brings enhanced resolution and clearer 'visibility' to the inherently invisible and apparently ambiguous, but statistical realities often depend upon superficial one to one correspondences between the term and the thing, a frequently fractitious precision between the fact and the act, and its presumed facticity and precision may only be spurious and superfluous. In the process of rendering the abstract concrete and the concrete abstract, transforming cultural schemata into statistical data, and vice versa, statistical measurements may hide more than it reveals, obfuscate more the disambiguate, rendering invisible the possibly visible, saying nothing about intentions, meanings, emotions of purposes behind its silent facts, and in the process providing the ultimate reification of human reality--turning 'beingness' into the 'thing-ness' of non-being by transforming real people into abstract numbers. Then statistical descriptions and their superficial realities become the defense of the insecure and their authoritarian status quo.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The implicit critique of 'structuralism' and the description of its terminological rationalism as spurious, Euro-centric categorical coherence superimposed upon apparent indigenous inconsistencies of 'other-ness', poses the final question of whether the authoritative ethnographer, as textual translator, might not yet be substituting one brand of 'struktur' for yet other, opposite kinds of 'structures' (schematas, codes, frames, events) smuggling into the 'hidden agenda' of making the strange familiar, the invisible visible, and the concrete abstract, yet one mode of information to replace of another, yet one form of fixed purpose for another, superimposing yet another arbitrary, transparent, and categorical sense of organization, order, constraint and purpose upon other people's subjectively constituted and shared realities. Analytical destruction of 'common senseness' whether strange or familiar, self or other, always begs the question of 'whose common sense categories'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Might not the native's hidden inconsistencies and cultural contradictions and apparent arbitrariness be our own, and might not our own invisible inconsistencies and contradictions and arbitrariness become theirs in the process of disentangling our shared realities. I suggest this is always so. Human reality is always entangled, our meanings remain always invisible, submerged like ice bergs beneath the surface, our motives always hidden, and intentions always transparent.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The kind of linguistic problem in understanding the middle ground of meaning between words and wisdom is to understand the basic problem of description and definition in the fitting of limited words to virtually unlimited contexts of reality--descriptions are always simplifying models of a larger more complex reality of experience. If many profiles of possibility within a given objective experiential horizon present themselves, then that many more possible descriptions of each profile also must be available. No two descriptions of the same event will be the same, and all descriptions of even a single event will not exhaust the complete picture of the profile, much less the whole horizon, of understanding. There is thus an optimum value in description between expressiveness, interest, detail and communication, such that beyond a certain threshold of reiteration there are diminishing returns of the value of added descriptive accuracy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">No non-arbitrary rules exist to guide us in the process of selecting elements in our descriptive designs. We may formulate rules of thumb to guide our descriptive practice, founded in our fund of experience. As we grow in experience, we gradually come to modify our 'rules' to better suit us in the process of description. We come to rely upon our sense, sensitivities and sensibilities in guiding us in our choices and judgments as to what elements of design are important to select and what to eliminate. Similarly, we rely upon our judgment to help us to interpret and translate the wisdom of the descriptions which others present to us. To a certain extent, our own wisdom is at the mercy of our ability to deploy and manipulate words in ways that seem to fit or frame our experiences of reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a sense, the middle ground of meaning between our words and our wisdom in the world is a function of the embeddedness of 'common sense' in our experiences. It is the embeddedness of common sense which makes it normally invisible and left implicit in our understandings of the world and in our descriptions of the world. We can say that our words of wisdom and the wisdom of our words are always 'situated' by a tacit context of 'common senseness' in our selves and in our social environments with which, if we are able to eliminate its effects upon our understandings, we must excoriate and bring to conscious awareness and come to terms with the basic preconceptions and presuppositions, value orientations and prejudices, in which such common senseness is always embedded. Common sense informs our pre-understandings of the world both unconsciously and contextually in or environments and if we cannot control for its pervasive presence and persuasive influence in our words and wisdom, then it will control our words and our wisdom in ways which prevent us from ever really transcending the narrow ethnocentric horizons which they reinforce. The horizons of common sense are the culture historical horizons of world view and power in the world. They are the non-reflexive reflection of our own value and prejudice, and more important of our own ignorance in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Philosophos and Philologos are an attempt to excoriate and reexamine our common sense pre-understanding and the ignorances that render us blind to new experiences and to seeing the world in different ways. Philologies is concerned with words and their definitions, such that they reflect the reality of experience from which they came and which they symbolically, ideationally represent. Philosophies is more concerned with the 'relations' between words which we attribute to them or which we find attributed to them in our culture historical contexts of understanding and to render the patterns of these relations in a way which corresponds to the ways that the things that the words purported represent are also related. To some undetermined extent such definitions and their relations are non-arbitrary in that their basic referents are always grounded in experiential realities--but the ways that these are so grounded are never obvious and never direct to our senses.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our own experiential horizons are bounded by our pre-understanding which precondition how we experience the world. The linguisticality of our understandings is rooted in the experiential structure of the world in which our lives are situated. Our descriptions are drawn from experiences which themselves are rooted in the common senseness of our world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Culture history always frames the world in which we live--it creates the cultural contexts and the symbolic experiential environments by which we configure our constructions of reality. Unless our language and our constructions are situated within a symbolic field of culture history, unless the culture historical contexts surrounding our understandings are present, then our understandings will be unavailable to us and our efforts to make them will come to nothing.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is critically important to understand our culture history provides the environment which must always situate and render relevant, our descriptive understandings of the world. This environment is always composed of many interrelated symbolic elements which become more or less available for our use. In a sense, these culture historical environments are evolving. They create possibilities of expression and patterning and provide the selective sanctioning for the determination of the success and survival of ideas of mind. The horizons of the profiles of our understanding are thus created by the environments in which we find ourselves always, inescapably situated. Culture historical contexts can be construed as the normal 'institutions' of our symbolic experience and linguistic expressions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We must learn to see the world in such a way that our environments which always surround us and predetermine the linguisticality of our experiences are changing very rapidly in ways which we cannot control but yet which exert a measure of control over us by defining our existential and experiential possibilities. These changing environments are rapidly and irreversible altering every dimension of our lives--or identity, our linguisticality, our ways of seeing and understanding and relating to the world. As our world changes, so it also changes us.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Always being situated within and by the culture historical contexts of our pre-understandings we are thus confronted with an irresolvable dilemma that, though we must exercise our normative capacity to make choices in the world, in a sense all of our possible choices are always pre-selected for us and are indirectly constrained by the very symbolic environments in which we are acting. If we fail to choose wisely, then the selective forces of our environments will work against our choices. If we choose wisely, the environments of our choices will provide the necessary elements for their success. We cannot choose possibilities which lie outside the experiential 'event' horizons of our culture historical contexts--even if we could, we would be wiser not to want to, because they are predetermined to end in our failure. The selective forces of our culture historical environments situate us with in a web of contextual relations and determinations which function as indirect constraints upon the possibilities of our normative development in life. They are our existential horizon as well as our experiential and linguistic horizon of understanding.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though we may never step outside of the horizons of our culture historical environments, or escape their existential imperative in our lives, we can consistently and constantly enlarge and expand these horizons by challenging them and seeking to always 'comprehend' them through the discursive activity of our question and answer dialectic. It is in such a way that we may augment the fund of our common experiences in the world, and enlarge our experience of the world, and thereby create more possibilities for our own choices. By expanding our horizons of experience we can become more aware of the world and more 'wiser' of it--that the relations encompassed within our horizons in better measure reflect the relations of the unknown world beyond them.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We can say that the linguisticality of our culture historical environments is the very fabric of our collective consciousness and unconscious, of our universal 'mindness' and pan humanness. We may have wisdom and understandings and experiences which cannot be put into words, but they are therefore not part of this culture historical fabric by which the understandings in the world are constructed and by which its environments develop.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is by the word, by the linguistic enactment of communication, that we gain relationship with the world, that we are rendered relevant in the world, from which experience and our wisdom of the world come. Through our deceit and our deliberate distortions we may rend this fabric into tattered pieces, but only by the honest and open use of our words in the service of or wisdom can we mend it and reserve it into a single meaningful whole.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our dialectical praxis of our language to express our understandings, through question and answer dialogue, is the enactment of our language in the weaving of this fabric of both our consciousness and our experience. Words and wisdom are the worf and weft of the loom of life. Language and experience are the interwoven threads which create the tapestry of meaning in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our linguistic activity, the very linguisticality of our world and our lives, is always functional in orientation--it always serves a purpose or intention of human enactment in the world--even if this is only passive perception or symbolic suggestion. Language, even in its play and nonsense, always serves a human purpose in the world, whether it is prologue or epilogue, precursor or postscript, justification or obfuscation. It is the communicative functionality of linguistic activity, its pragmatic purposes, which provides the middle ground between words and wisdom.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As symbolization, language functions to intermediate our experiences of our environments in selective ways which allow us to cope with and respond to changes in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The functionality of language entails that linguistic activity is always framed by 'intentionality structures' which inform and direct the selectiveness of our experience and our understandings of the world. Intentionality structures situate our linguistic activity within the culture historical contexts of their pre-understanding, and are also situated by these very contexts. Intentionality structures pre-structures and directs linguistic praxis in way which serve human interests in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is through language that humankind is able to live simultaneously upon more than one level of meaning, of experience, of understanding. Besides the natural environments which are presented to our senses, we have to deal with the symbolic experiences of our culture historical environments as well, as well as with the psycho-geographic environments created by our own individual minds. The problem becomes a matter of how to order these parallel worlds of experience such that they articulate with one another and make sense, rather than contradict with one another and create noise. These parallel worlds of experience are not independent of one another, but are reflexive of one another and interrelated in many ways such that change in one world creates reverberations and resonances in the others. It has fallen to the functionality of language to inter-integrate these different sets of realities into a reasonably coherent and consistent whole. It achieves this through its on going dialectic which continuously brings the different worlds of experience to focus and 'tests' them for their degree of fit.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All on going dialogue between the speakers, whether casual conversation or more formal debate or even literary jousting, consists of the same basic pragmatic structure. In informal, casual conversation, there is a stringing together of set of five or seven syllable phrases paratactically.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The conversation as a whole will be arranged into 'syllogistic sets' headed or concluded by a key statement--a general statement of truth--which then becomes 'tested' or evaluated by the shared experiences of the speakers. At some point, a metanymically related idea will be turned up, at which point the direction of the conversation will turn and a new set of examples of experience will be elucidated. In such a 'chain link' fashion an entire dialogue between two speakers may exhibit quite a great deal of drift, twisting and turning in many directions such that the final topic of the conversation is not even remotely related to the original subject. If two speakers are wanting to establish symmetrical rapport in the conversation, the drift may be quite unrelated. If two people are trying to maintain a neutral distance between each other, the conversation may touch only briefly on topics which are of neutral relevance to either speaker. If a person is attempting to establish dominance or is clearly superior, they will attempt to control the overall directionality of the conversation in a way suitable to their own sets of experiences and interests. More formal dialogues proceed in the same way, but generally their topic and developmental framework is more rigid and has less natural drift, such that the concluding sets provide a conclusive understanding to the opening topics of the dialogue. More formal syllogisms following fairly precise principles of syllogistic reasoning may also constrain such formal discourse and these principles may provide criteria for the evaluation of the relevance of such discourse.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But whatever the context of the dialogue, there always occurs a calling up of general ideas or statements of some relevance or interest to the speaker, which then becomes tested in the course of conversation by the relating of different or shared experiences. Such 'testing' sooner or later exhausts itself, or reaches a point of diminishing returns during which some alternative general statement of interest is touched upon and turn the direction of the conversation. If a problem is especially important, it may be reiterated and explored at some length, exhausting may different dimensions of its experiential understanding, or it may provide a sense of center of gravity from which the conversation may drift in its exploration and 'reality testing' but to which the conversation eventually rebounds when it stretches to far from center.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such is the dialectical structure of all discourse as it attempts to integrate the different levels of reality in which we live.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In referring to intentionality structures embedded in our everyday discourse and in the linguisticality of our experiential realities, it may be said that such structures are rigid and inflexible, then they will result in a strong tendency to direct or dominate and control linguistic praxis in ways which suit its purposes, but it will also result in many frustrating and failed attempts at the pragmatic and functional integration of reality. But if such intentionality structures are not so rigid and more flexible and open to varieties of experience then it will result in the capacity to linguistically 'transact' and negotiate experience in reality and will eventuate in establishing compromises with experience in which its interests are served in a limited way but which does not end in frustration and failure.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Via our intentionality structures--the deliberate, arbitrary sense of purpose or design--which we bring to our linguistic praxis, the functionality of our language 'transacts' our realities in directive ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The kind of normal syllogistic structure of discourse, of question and answer dialectic, as being that which informs and expresses our 'intentionality structures' whether formal or informal, are basically 'frames of reference/inference' by which our ideas about reality--our statements, words and their relations--are tested and evaluated against our sets of experiences in reality, our wisdom, our knowledge, our understandings. Frames of reference and inference work in two general ways--either 'deductively' by the posing of a general opening statement to be regarded as the central 'problem' of subsequent discourse. Which then becomes referentially regarded in relation to relational sets of experiences or understandings, or 'inductively' by 'searching' or questioning a general set of inferentially regarded experiences or relationships which then becomes open to a concluding 'general statement' which summarizes the sequence of evaluations. Such inferential frames create 'gaps' of information which then must be filled n by reason or generalization in order to be completed. Frames of references tests general ideas against sets of related experiences, leading to the reevaluation of ideas. Frames of inference tests related sets of experiences against preconceived ideas, resulting in the reevaluation of experiences to fit ideational structures. Actual discourse always contain elements of both kinds of frames in either tandem oscillation or working both ways simultaneously. Conversations may open as a general statement posed as an open problem but which in the process open up another problem of experiential 'gaps' of understanding, which then become resolved by general concluding evaluations drawn from implicit pre-understandings. Such is the general dialectical structure of all linguistic discourse between two or more speakers, whether formal or informal, two way or one way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It can be said that the general syllogistic structure of discourse as a whole is basically adductive in working both ways at once, and that depending upon the contexts or environmental 'situatedness' of the discourse, different sets of criteria may be working in the evaluation of experiences/statements. In casual conversation the criteria may be somewhat loose and basically 'relational' in an analogical or metaphorical way, whereas in more formal dialogue the criteria become more stringent in a rationalizing and analytical way following principles of two value causal logic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such a discursive structure is general and flexible enough to account for either 'magical' or 'mythical' thinking and for 'scientific' rationality and method, as well as for the full gamut of legalistic, artistic and religious structures of meaning in-between these extremes and yet it is particular enough not to be irrelevant and to provide evidential substantiation for the consistent differences and similarities of linguistic patterning and structure between different 'modes of discourse'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Within such a general dialectical structure, many different kinds of linguistic strategies may be pursued, whether cultural, bureaucratic, small group or individual idioms of expression, whether code switching, standardization, euphemization, formation of argots and jargons and slangs, exaggeration of speech styles or dialectical differences, etc.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In such ways the basic discursive structure of linguistic praxis may be manipulated in many different ways to serve many different kinds of interests, to fit many different sets of intentionality structures and to articulate many different experiences and ideas about reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A difference exists between the natural functions and natural 'structures' of a natural linguistic praxis, versus more 'rational' functions of rational 'structures' of rational linguistic praxis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Natural linguisticality in general follows an open structural patterning with a general non-fixedness of its frames or a non-standardness of its structural variations. Such natural praxis may only serve very vague or general purposes, rather than specific purposes associated with rational praxis. In the most general sense, natural linguisticality serves the purpose of the expression and articulation of beingness in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The idea of linguistic boundary is inimical in natural linguisticality--boundaries separating speech styles, dialectics, languages and codes with the rationalization and standardization of language. When no single 'correct' way of linguistic patterning exists, people are much freer to pick and choose between different codes, dialects and languages and even surface 'structures' of language in way which fit their individual capacities, interests and personalities. It was possible that before the rise of 'standard' languages, associated with the stratification of classes within a society, and the functional classification of languages along ethno-national lines, and the superimposition of corporate bureaucratic controls over linguistic praxis in the preservation of the legalistic and ideological 'nomos' of societies, that natural languages were a lot less rationally structured and neatly boundable--that continuous variation among languages was more the rule than discontinuous boundaries between languages, and that there was much more give and take, borrowing and structural free-play than is evident today with the political-territorial superimposition of rigid borders separating peoples, their cultures and their conversations.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If this were the case, then the history of language must reveal an evolution and development of linguistic praxis which is much more open minded, more flexible, self organizing and 'environmental' in the same way that natural evolution and the development of human civilization can be said to be--it happened around and to different linguistic groupings, creating the indirect constraints, degrees of freedom and choices for linguistic change. linguistic change may have been much less systematic than modern comparative linguistics believes, and the principles and structures underlying linguistic change may be a lot less 'universal' and basic and much more epi-phenomenal and ex-temporaraneous in the patterning of linguistic praxis. As a process of development, once it was inaugurated in the world, its functionality and patterning began happening in many different way which were essentially beyond the control of any group or individual.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The boundaries separating different languages and speech patterns may have been more of relative culture historical distances of differences/similarities between speakers or groups or of 'betweenness' or relative proximity to competing 'centers' of linguistic civilization such that the linguistic identity could be easily changed given changing contexts of its instanciation. Linguistic contexts were not frozen and inflexible but were culture historically fluid and dynamic. Similarly, linguistic structures were not indefinitely fixed and forever embedded within the human psyche, but were variable and relationally interdependent with changing contexts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This argument emphasizes the relativity, the instrumentality, intentionality, the experientially and the functionality of linguistic praxis, and sees cultural and linguistic competence as generally behavioral, acquired and performative--skills of wisdom of words--rather than as innate, universally the same, deep structure of 'logos' which follows a definable, scientific set of principles or a basically 'deterministic' model of understanding language in the world. The acquired skills of linguistic performance becomes like typing, reflexive coordination and organically embedded in human experience such that its remarkable speed, agility, capacity cannot be explained by rationalistic or cybernetic models.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Given the chance interaction between two 'mutually unintelligible speakers' we see the basis for the evolutionary beginning of linguistic praxis itself in the Creololization of pidgin languages, in linguistic 'syncretization' and the synthesis of a new independent language. And this beginning is rooted in the environmental experiences--such that these hypothetical different speakers share whole frameworks and environmental contexts of their normal linguistic praxis which are basically different from one another, such that their 'native speaker intuition' no longer adequately function in the 'culture historical clash'. But the beginning occurs in signing and in non-verbal, paralinguistic behaviors which expresses overtly the individual's intentionality structures. From this there is an inferential/referential exchange of words and meanings, of experiences and understandings and in the process of translation and inevitable distortions new words are coined to replace old words and to serve new relational functions of a newly emerging culture historical environment. In such a way, a new language is slowly built up out of the ashes of old languages, beginning with its roots in environmental experiences, in pragmatic and paralinguistic praxis, and working up through the metaphorical hierarchy of words and wisdom to embrace new metaphysical understandings and orientations in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The process of linguistic emergence can occur quite rapidly given the appropriate culture historical circumstances of consistent contact and interaction--it can occur within the space of two or three generations and even within a single generation and this can be quite rapid from a larger framework of historical linguistics.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This process can be referred to as natural linguistic integration. It is rare in a modern world of historical civilization because the power structures and paradigmatic processes have lead to patterns of domination, subordination between groups such that linguistic segregation, extermination or assimilation become 'normally' evident and process of Creolization and integration become exceptionally evident. The kind of relational reciprocity and structural symmetry necessary to the development of such integrative process are normally absent in a world of nation states preoccupied with power and domination and control of historical and cultural change such that integration as a natural process of linguistic praxis and development has lead instead to an overlay and substitution of other kinds of patterns.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But even in the process of linguistic assimilation the rapidity and relative completeness of substitution of one language by another one can be seen, such that if strongly reinforced it can be effected within a single generation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This has dramatic implications for the understanding of linguistic change and historical patterning challenging the current status quo of the morphological structural conditioning of language which is held to be steady, continuous and which downplays the role of inter-linguistic contact and diffusion, in other words, which stresses 'evolution' of languages as a homogeneous, corporate 'systems', like 'species', rather than the actual 'history' of relations between languages.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Natural, original language had a fundamental 'extensive' orientation and functionality in the world, in that it was without any necessary 'center' or locus of power of its change, and that it served primarily the function of individual and group adaptation to changing environmental circumstances which were themselves more or less random and 'unstructured', rather than an 'intensive' orientation towards a socio-structural incorporation and reinforcement of social interrelations of power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The basic difference between an extensiveness of natural linguisticality and the intensiveness of derivative, rational linguisticality can account for many differences and theoretical problems in the understanding of language change, history and structural or patterning dynamics, between language of competence and parole of performance, between etic of the speaker and the emic of the listener, in basic problems of translation and interpretation, etc.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this we must also see that hierarchical structures of relations are always situating and situated in the larger, encompassing environmental contexts of our experiences--there is nothing necessarily or sufficiently innate in hierarchy, structure, dominance or power which makes it an inevitable feature of the human world of experience. Social relations of hierarchy reinforcing and emphasizing non-beingness and difference in the world are always contextually situated in the environments of the world, and are only secondarily, subsequently internalized into our own organic experience. We learn how to become hierarchical and structured through our relations with our world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this we can find cultural and linguistic features of the patterning of such cultural historical dominance and hierarchy of human interrelations between people and groups of people. We can see the long terms effects of subordination of a group in real, experiential terms of a 'collective inferiority complex' which has many negative, socio-pathological problems associated with it. We get a 'poverty of culture' complex which comes to be reflected in a 'poverty of language'--linguisticality may continue to serve extensive, general functions, but cannot be deployed to serve special, rationalistic functions which are instrumentally effective in the realization of 'intentionality structures' in the world, when the contents of relations are always working to frustrate, inhibit, and prevent such realization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In such ways do the relations of violence and inequality and the socio pathological patterns, and the complexes of acquired inferiority become culture historically embedded in the contexts, the environments and the experiences of people, in such a way that it gains the power of common sense, of innateness, implicit givenness, which makes a 'self fulfilling' prophecy seem like a law of natural evolution. This becomes a vicious, regenerative cycle of cultural 'degeneration' and regression which becomes, if structurally, intensively reinforced, virtually impossible to escape.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We have at hand an alternative framework of understanding culture historical processes of development other than the structural dynamic understandings which are currently predominant. In this language and culture is always constructed and contexted within larger environments, constituted symbolically as 'corporate' ideational and ideological entities, and composed of many basic elements of schemas, frames, 'strips', and the patterned relations between such elements. These basic elements form a mosaic or tapestry in the active weaving of the cultural fabric of on going experientiality. People borrow, pool, and construct these elements on a day to day basis, deconstruct and reconstruct cultural life in a manner which preserves customary consistency yet which also accommodates environmental changes. Discursive practice, whether verbal or non-verbal, is the basic functional means of such construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. Symbolisms serve the basic function of paradigmatic exemplaries as basic representational models for stimulus generalization and diffusion of such re-constructive activity. Change occurs through the individual variations and modifications to the basic elements--new elements may be created and old elements may be selective discarded or re-employed. Syncretization of elements is continual and unending. Culture as 'environmental contexts' and frameworks for such recursiveness, reiteration and redesigning, are relatively stable and self organizing in their overall robustness--individual components may be altered, but the whole system and super organic whole exerts a 'whole relational' influence which serves to constraining such changes in conservative yet flexible ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">People regularly configure and reconfigure their worlds, their experiences and their environments from the elements which are available to them in their culture historical contexts. In the process of such reconfiguration they create consistency of a shared constructions. This process of dialectical construction is fundamentally experiential, interpretive, symbolically mediated and linguistically articulated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This process can become rigid and inflexible when over determined. It becomes then pathological. Part of the linguistic praxis of reiteration and reformation of experience and ideas can become ideologically 'blind' as a closed system which perseverates inspite of environmental changes, or which continues to maintain long term structural relations of dominance of control over change through many sets of environments or circumstances.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In this role, we must understand the potential for prevarication of language, and for linguistic patterns of denial and ideological illusion which reinforce the status quo, which dichotomizes the world into front regions distinguishing hidden back regions in which there occurs a vicious degenerative circle of deceit. The circle of deceit rends the fabric of natural linguisticality because it fosters distortion and illusion of non-being in the world and leads to greater deceit and distortion. The natural function of linguistic praxis in making sense and experiencing the world, then becomes deviant and perverted in the promotion of intentionality structures rooted in dominance and power of control over change in the world. Ideological diatribe, disguised as 'truth', hides the dishonesty and distortion of reality which is involved and begins to 'embed' this kind of pathology of non-being in our environments and our experience.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the functional pragmatic view of linguistic parole as discursive praxis in the construction and reconstruction of culture historical environments of experience, we can see that the automatic, reflexive function of 'native speaker intuition' in filling in inferentially the gaps of understanding between words in conferring a consistency and coherence to the encounter with the world. It accounts for the unspoken synchronicity and non-verbal communication between actors within shared environmental contexts. This process is basic to the instrumentality of 'frames of reference/inference' in interpreting, reinterpreting, translating and transacting 'intentionality structures in the world'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We can say that there are available 'working rules of thumb' which generally guide and serve to render such discursive praxis relevant, interesting and functionally pragmatic in a shared social reality. These rules of thumb are the acquired fold wisdom which confer performative competence to individual behavior. They are practical 'rules' rooted in experience and are usually, customarily left implicit or tacit in their directive function of discursive praxis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">These rules are not structurally so much as they are historical--inductively, inferentially derived rules based upon the consistency and efficacy of their functioning. They may not be learned or explicit understood so much as 'worked out' and understood from a standpoint of their experiential and adaptive success and proficiency in operating them. They are derivative and operational rules, rather than basic and primary. If asked to reiterate or explicate these rules, their best performer might be wholly unable to do so except by relating actual experiential examples of their function or general rationales for their strategic purpose. They are relational rules of general historical efficacy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The study of culture history aims at such generalistic rules of understanding based upon experiential efficacy of their patterning. It is the central dialectical problematic of understanding and explicating such working rules which is the middle ground between wisdom and words.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In distinguishing between natural and rational forms of linguisticality, it is apparent that we are touching upon examples of basic linguistic relativity as this culture historically rooted in contextual environments. There are several basic kinds of linguistic 'orientations' which are related to this kind of relativism. One is the basic difference between 'vulgar' orality and derived literacy. Another is the difference between concrete and abstract relations, between analytical and synthetic languages. Another basic difference is between 'verbality' of a language which elaborates the transitive, performative verbal relation in its sentence structure rather than the modification of nouns, or basic nominality, predominant in other languages. Verbality confers a basic 'time like' orientation to a language which makes sense of change. nominality confers a 'space like' orientation to language which reveals structure and synchronic system, but hides the understanding, or coming to terms, with change. Hopi is regarded as a language emphasizing verbality and is very different from English which is regarded as a language of nominality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another kind of difference is that between languages which stress direct subject-object relations, and which emphasizes the difference between subject and predicate, and languages which are 'flat' and which emphasize the relation between subject and object. In this regard we may refer to 'active' languages versus 'passive' languages, and to 'direct' languages versus 'contextualizing' or indirect languages. Similarity, tonality and homophony may confer a kind of spontaneous word play to some languages--a musicality which can translate into 'languages of love' and which exaggerate the basic paradoxicality of its meanings, while other language may promote a nomothetic and monothetic, rationalizing view which is intolerant of paradox. Again, Vietnamese and German are two fitting examples of such differences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Understanding these basic kinds of differences rooted in the functionality and environments of languages bring us upon the thorny theoretical dilemmas of understanding linguistic change and how languages change through time. In this regard we again have a contrast between comparative views of relatively stable, systematic changes of all languages in terms of consistent allomorphic shifts and morphological conditioning which views language as internally homogeneous in structure and as 'species' with their own evolving dynamics of change. this kind of viewpoint supports a structuralist understanding that views all languages as having the same, universal deep structure and that this structure is the innate to all speakers. This has yielded some very systematic and consistent scientific results, and has enabled scholars to build a 'phenetic' structure of linguistic evolution based on relatedness between languages.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Contrasted with the view is the semantic emphasis of socio-linguists who view language shifts dialectically and historically as being rooted in social structural patternings and which sees language primarily as 'situated discourse'. This viewpoint de-emphasizes a strict dichotomy between spatial language and temporal parole, and sees structure as intrinsically embedded in learning and culture historical environments--language is not so much as it is 'structured' or enculturated behaviorally in linguistic environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Neither view of language is wholly correct or complete, and both viewpoints from the extremes of a basic dialectic in linguistic understanding and thus are dialectically complementary to one another in terms of a rational, scientific discourse about the problematics of language and understanding.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Related to this dialectic is the contrasted between relativistic and deterministic perspective of language and the general 'world view' problem. How much does language influence thought, and how much is language influenced by culture?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What is important to understand is that language change is inevitable and unpreventable because language is a natural, self organizing system of 'making sense' from the nonsense of random entropy and chaotic disorder. If there is an over determined, dynamic structure to such change--a theory of linguistic 'genetics'--it remains to be either explicitly understood or precisely proven. On the other hand, from the socio-linguistic perspective of the long run, it makes more sense to view the 'structure' of language as social discursive activity, as a corporate, super organic social phenomena of communication, as itself changing in different ways. We can hypothesize that humankind's organic capacity, or 'biological basis' for language evolved only once, or even emerged slowly, but that it eventually stopped evolving with the substitution of human culture historical development for the process of natural evolution. Language as a social, intensive phenomena of discursive praxis then emerged and acquired its own sense of 'structure' as a genuine system of symbolic communication.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Innate human linguistic capacity has remained rather limited. Social language and its 'distanciation of surplus meaning'--created potentially unlimited reservoirs of terms and concepts with which to give virtually unlimited expression to our open ended imaginations and possibilities of patterning.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The hypothetical structure of language, as a preeminently social and culture historical phenomena of communication is not synonymous with the genetic and behavioral structure of thought. Though the other two realm of reality must overlap and must be interrelated in important ways, they are not isomorphic with one another. Thought may work beyond the experience of language, and language may work beyond the experiences of thought.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though linguistic change is contextually constrained, it is through the active process of imperfect interpretation and the exercise of linguistic choice, that we create the possibility for changing the linguistic contexts by which our choices are situated in the world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Linguistic change is perhaps inevitable, but the structure of its patterning is not changeless or inevitable, or over determined or innate to human consciousness. Our shared realities are the long term consequence of the kinds of mutual understandings and agreed upon meanings as part of a pan human social contract which we implicitly make during the history of our linguistic praxis and performance. We inherit our language culturally and historically not genetically. It is so ingrained in our experience and so embedded in our environments that it appears to be organic, innate and non-arbitrarily, non-relativistically inevitable.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A wolf child grows up without the possibility of human language because its existence is situated outside of any normal contexts of this linguisticality. Though it may miss important stages of its growth and development, and thus remain irreversibly linguistically retarded, this by itself cannot disprove the presence or absence of an innate predetermining structure of human language. It is clear that gazelle boy grew up learning a very different kind of language with perhaps a very different kind of basic structure, unless we want to also posit a species nonspecific structure of all communication system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We can define and enumerate the basic 'design features' of any or all communication systems, but we are not thereby explaining or revealing of the eidetic, a priori, Cartesian structure of any particular language occurring in nature. Definition and understanding of such design features of communication systems are themselves rooted inextricably in the very linguisticality of our own very human language.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not entirely clear that language acquisition is too rapid and complex to be explained by behavioral/environmental acquisition. Surely, the basic organic and biological capacity for speech is already there to be developed. Perhaps if follows certain inevitable natural sequences or stages of development. But the several years of basic primary language acquisition is not faster than the similar amount of time it is required for complete immersion in second language acquisition. And the ten or more or lifetime it requires for linguistic mastery of a first language is no different from the same necessary involvement in the mastery of other languages. It has been documented that socio-linguistic differences in language acquisition emerge as early as the twelfth week of neonate. Learning a first language from scratch, without any prior experiential reference points, but with complete, natural intuness and attentive focus upon the environment, may follow the same basic steps and rely upon the same basic kinds of working 'meta-rules' as any process of secondary language acquisition. The differences may in fact be more the inherent or acquired skills or talents for 'code switching'--the flexibility and reflexiveness of automatic linguistic praxis. Rules require time for working out and are learned through trail and error. Certain kinds of rules and attendant skills must be learned before other, more complex rules and skills can be acquired. We might rationalize the entire process but this is not the same as the actual organic process of acquisition.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There may be innate individual differences in linguistic capacity such that some persons perform or learn languages better than others. It is like typing, though it occurs with great speed and accuracy in most people who learn how to do it, it can be better learned by a select few who have a greater capacity for it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Similarly, there may be basic differences, as previously mentioned, between different languages--differences of relativity which make it more difficult to express some kinds of understandings or to even embody some kinds of experiences, in some languages rather than in others. Such languages may have different basic orientations or overall 'structures' from one another. Similarly, some languages, situated as they are in either more natural or more rational contexts, may have different capacities or competencies for expression of experience in the world. The hypothetical equality of languages in the world is more ideological than it is empirically validated. Nevertheless all languages share a general evenness and similarity in that they all function with equal facility in their respective linguistic environments to articulate and intermediate with the world. All languages are equally natural, equally symbolical, equally pragmatic in their functionality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">While it is extremely philosophically problematic and yet scientifically unproven, the hypothetical 'deep structure' of human language has proven itself to be ideologically unifying of a linguistic paradigm which sees itself as primarily scientific. It is ideologically satisfying as it is theoretically simplifying of the problematics and realities of language. While it is yet unclear whether there is a structure, and if so, than exactly how it functions, it is not unclear that no human language occurs or can occur, outside of its culture historical contexts and experiential environments as a natural and social phenomena of inter-human communication.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Noam Chomsky's generative grammar has become the predominant orthodoxy of American linguistics. It holds that all speakers have universally the same competence for language, that all languages have equivalent capacity and complexity of expression, and that all language acquisition is too complex and too rapid to be easily explained in terms of environmental conditioning--the structure of language is innately programmed in the human brain in terms of transformational rules. This theory depends upon the Saussurian dichotomy between language (competence) and parole (performance). This theory has promised a great deal more than it has actually provided.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Linguistic heterodoxies come from socio-linguistics, the ethnography of speaking and Marxist theory, and hold that all languages are structurally the same. Languages are not only functionally different and historically separate, but languages are structurally different in morphological conditioning--agglutinative, compounding or isolating--and in grammatical sentence structure (SVO or SOV, etc.) and also in terms of 'verbalization' as with Hop, or 'nominalization' as with English. Not only does emphasis upon language lead to ignorance and devaluation of parole, but stress upon a hypothetical universal grammar leads to systematic indifference to important differences between languages. Not only do not all linguists agree that there really is a fundamental dichotomy between language and parole--that language as it is experienced and expressed is universally integrated and undichotomized--but that the discursive practice of language always occur within a larger culture historical context which can account for the 'structural' nature of language and language change. Focusing upon the language centers of the brain explains the human capacity for speech production, but does not fully explain language as a social phenomenon. The distinction between understanding the 'structure' of the engine of a car and the skilled performance of a car's operation does not account for the fact that the 'engine' itself is a by-product, and an extended instrumentality, of human performance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is interesting to note that the primary contexts of intercultural contact in which primary and secondary language acquisition is understood has yielded both the principle evidence in support of a generative structure in the form of the process of 'Creolization' but also it is in such multi-lingual contexts of code switching/mixing that the principle evidence for the refutation of 'generative structure' may be found.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The paradox of tracing the history of language to a single common ancestor or 'proto language' runs into the same kind of paradox of human evolution--the question of an 'Eve'. This paradox is more apparent than real, stemming from a failure to view the process of evolution of an entire species as an on-going process of continual selection, differentiations, diffusion, etc. Language and culture did not evolve from a single 'ancestor', to be revealed in the excoriation of its hidden structure. Rather, the structure of language and culture evolved from a 'base-line' and from its beginning exhibited phylogenetic diversity and variation. While major language families are found to exist, among the 3,000-4,000 extant languages some important categorical anomalies exist, and there are many more 'in-betweenies' whose cladistic or phenetic position of the tree of language cannot be precisely determined--a residue no doubt of the tremendous amount of borrowing, acculturation, Creolization. Diffusion between different languages throughout human prehistory and history. Language is yet evolving today in more subtle and complex ways than we yet understand. Not only is the substance of language changing continuously, but its very 'structure' has also been evolving in both the brain and in the ways it becomes articulated in social historical contexts.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It remains a moot point whether there is in fact a 'universal' generative structure underlying all languages. It also remains a moot point whether exact translation is in fact an impossibility.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One final question remains. We are left to speculate on whether mind itself may not have some kind of historical relational structure, if not basic evolutionary or universal structure. Asked another way, is human consciousness itself pre-structured in some important, definite ways, or are its general patternings reflective of a fundamental isomorphism with an a priori, noumenal structure of logos or mind.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is evident that the patterning of mind may follow certain relational rules of historical efficacy which tend to cross cut and undermine the traditional academic boundaries and distinctions between different fields of inquiry. There may be a more or less general 'metaphysical' and 'epistemological' structure of mind, such that its criteria of validity and truth are translated empirically into criteria of ways of 'knowing' human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From a culture historical perspective, it is interesting to speculate that there are five interrelated 'meta-paradigms' of mind, all sharing the same basic truth criteria. These five 'meta-paradigms' may be referred to as the philosophical, the aesthetic or artistic, the scientific, the religious or ideological, and the 'humanistic' which would include studies of culture history itself, the histories, literature, as well as the social 'sciences' of anthropology and sociology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is possible that these five 'meta-paradigms' are all interrelated in different, but definite ways and that each offers a fundamentally different way of knowing and 'translating' human reality based upon alternative translations of basic truth criteria for human understanding.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Whether this kind of meta-paradigmatic patterning of mind actually reflects the order of a 'psychic unity of humankind' or is merely an epi-genetic, epi-phenomenal patterning of the culture historical development of mindness--the long term consequence of our collective history of consciousness-remains to be finally resolved.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What is clear is that the universality, if any, and the structure, if there is really such a thing, of the patterning of mind is to be found always 'situated' within given culture historical environments of experience and contexts of linguistic understanding. If it evolved, it evolved as a history of changes of such contexts and environments.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THINGING AND THINKING</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Thing-ness' might well be defined as 'the state of quality of being a thing'. Thingnessing might mean 'the act of making a state or quality of being a thing'. Such a term designates well the imperfect fit between our words and our meanings, if not knowing the right word for what we may intend to mean, or not knowing the right meaning for the word we may want to use. It denotes the vague mismatch between an indefinite 'thing' and its proper term. 'Thinging' might well designate the appropriate and approximate substitute for the process of mind we normally refer to as 'thinking' which we define as '…1. To have a thought; formulate in the mind. 2. To ponder. 3. To reason. 4. To believe; suppose. 5. To remember; call to mind. 6. To visualize; imagine. 7. To devise or invent. 8. To consider. (American Heritage Dictionary, 1983)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Thinging' is the kind of 'thinking' we normally engage in when our thoughts are unclear, vague, loose, imaginative or especially difficult or slippery. We engage our minds in indefinite meanings, metaphors, similes, analogies, 'as if' 'suchness' when we cannot remember the appropriate word or put our finger upon an exact meaning. Most of us, most of the time, engage our intellects in 'thinging' throughout our normal lives, complicated as it usually is by so many subtleties, innuendoes, uncertainties, vagaries and vicissitudes. We only like to flatter ourselves and one another that we are really 'thinking' clearly, even when we seem to be hard at it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But thinging is a nice and often necessary place to begin in our thinking--bringing the chaotic to a sense of order is a matter of bringing the thingness of thoughts to the thoughtness of things. Thinging between words and definitions and their interconnections and connotations, in lieu of more precise and ratiocinative 'thinking' is what human thought and language has been about. In thinking, we point to 'things' and say we have a thought. In thinging, we point to thought and say we have a thing. Thinging is a prerequisite process in clarifying our thoughts prior to their reformulation as clearer, more concise, 'thinking'. This is a preliminary step towards both 'an ecology of mind' and an 'economy of words'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Thinging is also a nice designation of our first enactment of 'defining' or of definition, as we are concerned primarily with the approximate correlation between words and their denotations and connotations. Our thinging about some problematic topic is our 'defining' of that topic to render it more 'definite'. Thinging thus is an enactment of basic translation and description of our experiences. From thinging we then proceed to thinking as basic interpretations and explanations or our understanding of our environments and our world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Thinging though our definitions of 'what is human reality' involves putting a clear, sharp outline of what that vague thing is by a brief description of the meaning of words.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Thinging up' our definitions of 'what is human reality' involves literally and figuratively the very 'meaning' of that reality to ourselves.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">DIALECTICS OF CHANCE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The paradox of change is that our understanding of it is always relative and non-arbitrary. Our baselines by which to measure change must themselves be the product and function of change. change relativizes our world, rendering our understanding of it fundamentally imprecise and indeterminant.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Even so, the paradox of change is also that it is the principle logos of the natural universe. Everything changes--evolving entropically from order to disorder and evolving systematically from chaos to patterned order.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The paradox of change is that we have no fixed reference points for its comprehension. We have no ground for coming to terms with its understanding in our lives. In a sense, it is a priori to our own existence and understandings. It just happens to us and around us.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dialectics of change revolve around this paradox, as all dialectics revolve around the resolution of paradox. In order to understand change, it must be viewed from the standpoint of hypothetical, isomorphic structure. To understand 'structure' entails concomitantly an understanding of change in terms f such changes 'making a difference'. "Cultural change can be studied only as a part of the problem of cultural stability; cultural stability can be understood only when change is measured against conservatism--perhaps the basic difficulty arises from the fact that there are no objective criteria of permanence and change…" (Herskovits:20)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dialectics of change involve us in the relative understandings of identity, or similarity, and difference. This understanding is fundamental to our understanding of 'relation' in the world--the explication of difference and similarity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE DILEMMA OF STRUCTURE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dilemma of 'structure' is the paradox of change. we cannot understand the natural process of change in reality without the superimposition of some sense of structure and yet such 'structure' cannot always 'capture' change in the world in non-relative ways. Change happens to structure, around structure and through structure.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our words provide structure to our wisdom of the world. Without such structure, without such coming to terms, things must remain only silently understood as experience and 'happening'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Structure can mean any sense, order, meaning, significance, idea, system, non-random pattern, process, direction, limit, boundary, organization that we superimpose upon our experiences by which to configure and arrange them in ways which are then understandable and communicable. "Patterned structure, regularized form, we recognize, can be described as can any structure, since all structures has form and every form has describable limits." (Herskovits, 1947: 202)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dilemma of structure is that though we need it to configure change, change must inevitably 'happen to it' to 'destructure' it as it is itself a relative part of the process of change. So we are led by the dialectics of change to construct, destruct and reconstruct the linguistic structures of our understandings such that our newest 'interpretations' better reflect the changes and 'fit the facts' of changes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The dilemma of structure is that we need it in order to make sense of our reality--we cannot live well without it, and yet it must always be partial, imperfect, imprecise and in the act of its creation, destructive of the very meanings, of the very change, which it seeks by design to embrace.</p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p> </p> <hr> <p><a name="Copyright">Blanket Copyright</a>, Hugh M. Lewis, © 2005. 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