HOW TO BE A GENUINE FAKE.
THE CAT has already been let out of the bag. The inside information is that yourself as "just little me" who "came into this world" and lives temporarily in a bag of skin is a hoax and a fake. The fact is that because no one thing or feature of this universe is separable from the whole, the only real You, or Self, is the whole. The rest of this book will attempt to make this so clear that you will not only understand the words but feel feel the fact. The first step is to understand, as vividly as possible, how the hoax begins. the fact. The first step is to understand, as vividly as possible, how the hoax begins.
We must first look at the form and behavior of the hoax itself. I have long been interested in trying to find out how people experience, or sense, their own existence-for what specific sensations do they use the word "I"?
Few people seem to use the word for their whole physical organism.
"I have a body" is more common than "I am a body." We speak of "my"
legs as we speak of "my" clothes, and "I" seems to remain intact even if the legs are amputated. We say, "I speak, I walk, I think, and (even) I breathe." But we do not say, "I shape my bones, I grow my nails, and I circulate my blood." We seem to use "I" for something in in the body but not really the body but not really of of the body, for much of what goes on in the body seems to happen to "I" in the same way as external events. "I" is used as the center of voluntary behavior and conscious attention, but not consistently. Breathing is only partially voluntary, and we say "I was sick" or "I dreamed" or "I fell asleep" as if the verbs were not pa.s.sive but active. the body, for much of what goes on in the body seems to happen to "I" in the same way as external events. "I" is used as the center of voluntary behavior and conscious attention, but not consistently. Breathing is only partially voluntary, and we say "I was sick" or "I dreamed" or "I fell asleep" as if the verbs were not pa.s.sive but active.
Nevertheless, "I" usually refers to a center in the body, but different peoples feel it in different places. For some cultures, it is in the region of the solar plexus. The Chinese hsin, hsin, the heart-mind or soul, is found in the center of the chest. But most Westerners locate the ego in the head, from which center the rest of us dangles. The ego is somewhere behind the eyes and between the ears. It is as if there sat beneath the dome of the skull a controlling officer who wears earphones wired to the ears, and watches a television screen wired to the eyes. Before him stands a great panel of dials and switches connected with all other parts of the body that yield conscious information or respond to the officer"s will. the heart-mind or soul, is found in the center of the chest. But most Westerners locate the ego in the head, from which center the rest of us dangles. The ego is somewhere behind the eyes and between the ears. It is as if there sat beneath the dome of the skull a controlling officer who wears earphones wired to the ears, and watches a television screen wired to the eyes. Before him stands a great panel of dials and switches connected with all other parts of the body that yield conscious information or respond to the officer"s will.
This controlling officer "sees" sight, "hears" sounds, "feels" feelings, and "has" experiences. These are common but redundant ways of talking, for seeing a sight is just seeing, hearing a sound is just hearing, feeling a feeling is just feeling, and having an experience is just experiencing. But that these redundant phrases are so commonly used shows that most people think of themselves as separate from their thoughts and experiences. All this can get marvelously complicated when we begin to wonder whether our officer has another officer inside his his head, and so head, and so ad infinitum! ad infinitum!
There was a young man who said, "Though It seems that I know that I know, It seems that I know that I know, What I would would like to see like to see Is the "I" that knows "me"
When I know know that I know that I know." that I know that I know."
One of the most important items in our officer"s equipment is his recording and filing system-the memory which he constantly "consults" so as to know how to interpret and respond to his sensory input. Without this equipment, he could have no sensation of constancy-of being the same same officer as he was seconds ago. Although memory records are much more fluid and elusive than photographic film or magnetic tape, the acc.u.mulation of memories is an essential part of the ego-sensation. It gives the impression of oneself, the officer, as something that remains while life goes by-as if the conscious self were a stable mirror reflecting a pa.s.sing procession. This further exaggerates the feeling of separateness, of oneself changing at a pace so much slower than outside events and inside thoughts that you seem to stand aside from them as an independent observer. But memories persist as the whirlpool persists. Conscious attention seems to scan them as computers scan their ever-cycling tapes or other storage mechanisms. officer as he was seconds ago. Although memory records are much more fluid and elusive than photographic film or magnetic tape, the acc.u.mulation of memories is an essential part of the ego-sensation. It gives the impression of oneself, the officer, as something that remains while life goes by-as if the conscious self were a stable mirror reflecting a pa.s.sing procession. This further exaggerates the feeling of separateness, of oneself changing at a pace so much slower than outside events and inside thoughts that you seem to stand aside from them as an independent observer. But memories persist as the whirlpool persists. Conscious attention seems to scan them as computers scan their ever-cycling tapes or other storage mechanisms.
Memory is an enduring pattern of motion, like the whirlpool, rather than an enduring substance, like a mirror, a wax tablet, or a sheet of paper. If memories are stored in neurons, there is no standing aside from the stream of events, for neurons flow along in the same stream as events outside the skull. After all, your neurons are part of my external world, and mine of yours! All our insides are outside, there in the physical world. But, conversely, the outside world has no color, shape, weight, heat, or motion without "inside" brains. It has these qualities only in in relation relation to brains, which are, in turn, members of itself. to brains, which are, in turn, members of itself.
Wherever people may feel that the ego is located, and however much, or little, of the physical body is identified with it, almost all agree that "I" am not not anything outside my skin. As Shakespeare"s King John says to Hubert, "Within this wall of flesh there is a soul counts thee her creditor." The skin is always considered as a wall, barrier, or boundary which definitively separates oneself from the world-despite the fact that it is covered with pores breathing air and with nerve-ends relaying information. The skin informs us just as much as it outforms; it is as much a bridge as a barrier. Nevertheless, it is our firm conviction that beyond this "wall of flesh" lies an alien world only slightly concerned with us, so that much energy is required to command or attract its attention, or to change its behavior. It was there before we were born, and it will continue after we die. We live in it temporarily as rather unimportant fragments, disconnected and alone. anything outside my skin. As Shakespeare"s King John says to Hubert, "Within this wall of flesh there is a soul counts thee her creditor." The skin is always considered as a wall, barrier, or boundary which definitively separates oneself from the world-despite the fact that it is covered with pores breathing air and with nerve-ends relaying information. The skin informs us just as much as it outforms; it is as much a bridge as a barrier. Nevertheless, it is our firm conviction that beyond this "wall of flesh" lies an alien world only slightly concerned with us, so that much energy is required to command or attract its attention, or to change its behavior. It was there before we were born, and it will continue after we die. We live in it temporarily as rather unimportant fragments, disconnected and alone.
This whole illusion has its history in ways of thinking-in the images, models, myths, and language systems which we have used for thousands of years to make sense of the world. These have had an effect on our perceptions which seems to be strictly hypnotic. It is largely by talking talking that a hypnotist produces illusions and strange behavioral changes in his subjects-talking coupled with relaxed fixation of the subject"s conscious attention. The stage magician, too, performs most of his illusions by patter and misdirection of attention. Hypnotic illusions can be vividly sensuous and real to the subject, even after he has come out of the so-called "hypnotic trance." that a hypnotist produces illusions and strange behavioral changes in his subjects-talking coupled with relaxed fixation of the subject"s conscious attention. The stage magician, too, performs most of his illusions by patter and misdirection of attention. Hypnotic illusions can be vividly sensuous and real to the subject, even after he has come out of the so-called "hypnotic trance."
It is, then, as if the human race had hypnotized or talked itself into the hoax of egocentricity. There is no one to blame but ourselves. We are not victims of a conspiracy arranged by an external G.o.d or some secret society of manipulators. If there is any biological foundation for
the hoax it lies only in the brain"s capacity for narrowed, attentive consciousness hand-in-hand with its power of recognition-of knowing about knowing and thinking about thinking with the use of images and languages. My problem as a writer, using words, is to dispel the illusions of language while employing one of the languages that generates them. I can succeed only on the principle of "a hair of the dog that bit you."
Apart from such human artifacts as buildings and roads (especially Roman and American roads), our universe, including ourselves, is thoroughly wiggly. Its features are wiggly in both shape and conduct.
Clouds, mountains, plants, rivers, animals, coastlines-all wiggle. They wiggle so much and in so many different ways that no one can really make out where one wiggle begins and another ends, whether in s.p.a.ce or in time. Some French cla.s.sicist of the eighteenth century complained that the Creator had seriously fallen down on the job by failing to arrange the stars with any elegant symmetry, for they seem to be sprayed through s.p.a.ce like the droplets from a breaking wave. Is all this one thing wiggling in many different ways, or many things wiggling on their own? Are there "things" that wiggle, or are the wigglings the same as the things? It depends upon how you figure it.
Millennia ago, some genius discovered that such wiggles as fish and rabbits could be caught in nets. Much later, some other genius thought of catching the world in a net. By itself, the world goes something like this:
But now look at this wiggle through a net: The net has "cut" the big wiggle into little wiggles, all contained in squares of the same size. Order has been imposed on chaos. We can now say that the wiggle goes so many squares to the left, so many to the right, so many up, or so many down, and at last we have its number.
Centuries later, the same image of the net was imposed upon the world as the lines of both celestial and terrestrial lat.i.tude and longitude, as graph paper for plotting mathematical wiggles, as pigeonholes for filing, and as the ground plan for cities. The net has thus become one of the presiding images of human thought. But it is always an image, and just as no one can use the equator to tie up a package, the real wiggly world slips like water through our imaginary nets. However much we divide, count, sort, or cla.s.sify this wiggling into particular things and events, this is no more than a way of thinking about the world: it is never actually actually divided. divided.
Another powerful image is the Ceramic Model of the universe, in which we think of it as so many forms of one or more substances, as pots are forms of clay, and as G.o.d is said to have created Adam from the dust. This has been an especially troublesome image, bewildering philosophers and scientists for centuries with such idiotic questions as: "How does form (or energy) influence matter?" "What is is matter?" matter?"
"What happens to form (the soul) when it leaves matter (the body)?"
"How is it that "mere" matter has come to be arranged in orderly forms?"
"What is the relationship between mind and body?"
Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way, like the problem of cause and effect. Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together. So with "form" and "matter." Because no one ever discovered a piece of formless matter, or an immaterial form, it should have been obvious that there was something wrong with the Ceramic Model. The world is no more formed out of matter than trees are "made" of wood. The world is neither form nor matter, for these are two clumsy terms for the same process, known vaguely as "the world" or "existence." Yet the illusion that every form consists of, or is made of, some kind of basic "stuff" is deeply embedded in our common sense.
We have quite forgotten that both "matter" and "meter" are alike derived from the Sanskrit root matr- matr-, "to measure," and that the "material" world means no more than the world as measured or measurable-by such abstract images as nets or matrices, inches, seconds, grams, and decibels. The term "material" is often used as a synonym for the word "physical," from the Greek physis physis (nature), and the original Indo-European (nature), and the original Indo-European bheu bheu (to become). There is nothing in the words to suggest that the material or physical world is made of any kind of stuff according to the Ceramic Model, which must henceforth be called the Crackpot Model. (to become). There is nothing in the words to suggest that the material or physical world is made of any kind of stuff according to the Ceramic Model, which must henceforth be called the Crackpot Model.
But the Crackpot Model of the world as formed of clay has troubled more than the philosophers and the scientists. It lies at the root of the two major myths which have dominated Western civilization, and these, one following upon the other, have played an essential part in forming the illusion of the "real person."
If the world is basically "mere stuff" like clay, it is hard to imagine that such inert dough can move and form itself. Energy, form, and intelligence must therefore come into the world from outside. The lump must be leavened. The world is therefore conceived as an artifact, like a jar, a statue, a table, or a bell, and if it is an artifact, someone must have made it, and someone must also have been responsible for the original stuff. That, too, must have been "made." In Genesis the primordial stuff
"without form, and void" is symbolized as water, and, as water does not wave without wind, nothing can happen until the Spirit of G.o.d moves upon its face. The forming and moving of matter is thus attributed to intelligent Spirit, to a conscious force of energy in form form ing matter so that its various shapes come and go, live and die. ing matter so that its various shapes come and go, live and die.
Yet in the world as we know it, many things are clearly wrong, and one hesitates to attribute these to the astonishing Mind capable of making this world in the beginning. We are loath to believe that cruelty, pain, and malice come directly from the Root and Ground of Being, and hope fervently that G.o.d at least is the perfection of all that we can imagine as wisdom and justice. (We need not enter, here, into the fabulous and insoluble Problem of Evil which this model of the universe creates, save to note that it arises from the model itself.) The peoples who developed this myth were ruled by patriarchs or kings, and such superkings as the Egyptian, Chaldean, and Persian monarchs suggested the image of G.o.d as the Monarch of the Universe, perfect in wisdom and justice, love and mercy, yet nonetheless stern and exacting. I am not, of course, speaking of G.o.d as conceived by the most subtle Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theologians, but of the popular image. For it is the vivid image rather than the tenuous concept which has the greater influence on common sense.
The image of G.o.d as a personal Being, somehow "outside" or other than the world, had the merit of letting us feel that life is based on intelligence, that the laws of nature are everywhere consistent in that they proceed from one one ruler, and that we could let our imaginations go to the limit in conceiving the sublime qualities of this supreme and perfect Being. The image also gave everyone a sense of importance and meaning. For this G.o.d is directly aware of every tiniest fragment of dust and vibration of energy, since it is just his awareness of it that enables it to be. This awareness is also love and, for angels and men at least, he has planned an everlasting life of the purest bliss which is to begin at the end of mortal time. But of course there are strings attached to this reward, and those who purposely and relentlessly deny or disobey the divine will must spend eternity in agonies as intense as the bliss of good and faithful subjects. ruler, and that we could let our imaginations go to the limit in conceiving the sublime qualities of this supreme and perfect Being. The image also gave everyone a sense of importance and meaning. For this G.o.d is directly aware of every tiniest fragment of dust and vibration of energy, since it is just his awareness of it that enables it to be. This awareness is also love and, for angels and men at least, he has planned an everlasting life of the purest bliss which is to begin at the end of mortal time. But of course there are strings attached to this reward, and those who purposely and relentlessly deny or disobey the divine will must spend eternity in agonies as intense as the bliss of good and faithful subjects.
The problem of this image of G.o.d was that it became too much of a good thing. Children working at their desks in school are almost always put off when even a kindly and respected teacher watches over their shoulders. How much more disconcerting to realize that each single deed, thought, and feeling is watched by the Teacher of teachers, that nowhere on earth or in heaven is there any hiding-place from that Eye which sees all and judges all.
To many people it was therefore an immense relief when Western thinkers began to question this image and to a.s.sert that the hypothesis of G.o.d was of no help in describing or predicting the course of nature. If everything, everything, they said, was the creation and the operation of G.o.d, the statement had no more logic than "Everything is up." But, as, so often happens, when one tyrant is dethroned, a worse takes his place. The Crackpot Myth was retained without the Potter. The world was still understood as an artifact, but on the model of an automatic machine. they said, was the creation and the operation of G.o.d, the statement had no more logic than "Everything is up." But, as, so often happens, when one tyrant is dethroned, a worse takes his place. The Crackpot Myth was retained without the Potter. The world was still understood as an artifact, but on the model of an automatic machine.
The laws of nature were still there, but no lawmaker. According to the deists, the Lord had made this machine and set it going, but then went to sleep or off on a vacation. But according to the atheists, naturalists, and agnostics, the world was fully fully automatic. It had constructed itself, though not on purpose. The stuff of matter was supposed to consist of atoms like minute billiard b.a.l.l.s, so small as to permit no further division or a.n.a.lysis. Allow these atoms to wiggle around in various permutations and combinations for an indefinitely long time, and at automatic. It had constructed itself, though not on purpose. The stuff of matter was supposed to consist of atoms like minute billiard b.a.l.l.s, so small as to permit no further division or a.n.a.lysis. Allow these atoms to wiggle around in various permutations and combinations for an indefinitely long time, and at some some time in virtually infinite time they will fall into the arrangement that we now have as the world. The old story of the monkeys and typewriters. time in virtually infinite time they will fall into the arrangement that we now have as the world. The old story of the monkeys and typewriters.
In this fully Automatic Model of the universe shape and stuff survived as energy and matter. Human beings, mind and body included, were parts of the system, and thus they were possessed of intelligence and feeling as a consequence of the same interminable gyrations of atoms. But the trouble about the monkeys with typewriters is that when at last they get around to typing the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, they may at any moment relapse into gibberish. Therefore, if human beings want to maintain their fluky status and order, they must work with full fury to defeat the merely random processes of nature. It is most strongly emphasized in this myth that matter is brute and energy blind, that all nature outside human, and some animal, skins is a profoundly stupid and insensitive mechanism. Those who continued to believe in Someone-Up-There-Who-Cares were ridiculed as woolly-minded wishful thinkers, poor weaklings unable to face man"s grim predicament in a heartless universe where survival is the sole privilege of the tough guys. they may at any moment relapse into gibberish. Therefore, if human beings want to maintain their fluky status and order, they must work with full fury to defeat the merely random processes of nature. It is most strongly emphasized in this myth that matter is brute and energy blind, that all nature outside human, and some animal, skins is a profoundly stupid and insensitive mechanism. Those who continued to believe in Someone-Up-There-Who-Cares were ridiculed as woolly-minded wishful thinkers, poor weaklings unable to face man"s grim predicament in a heartless universe where survival is the sole privilege of the tough guys.
If the all-too-intelligent G.o.d was disconcerting, relief in getting rid of him was short-lived. He was replaced by the Cosmic Idiot, and people began to feel more estranged from the universe than ever. This situation merely reinforced the illusion of the loneliness and separateness of the ego (now a "mental mechanism") and people calling themselves naturalists began the biggest war on nature ever waged.
In one form or another, the myth of the Fully Automatic Model has become extremely plausible, and in some scientific and academic disciplines it is as much a sacrosanct dogma as any theological doctrine of the past-despite contrary trends in physics and biology. For there are fashions in myth, and the world-conquering West of the nineteenth century needed a philosophy of life in which realpolitik- realpolitik- victory for the tough people who face the bleak facts-was the guiding principle. Thus the bleaker the facts you face, the tougher you seem to be. So we vied with each other to make the Fully Automatic Model of the universe as bleak as possible. victory for the tough people who face the bleak facts-was the guiding principle. Thus the bleaker the facts you face, the tougher you seem to be. So we vied with each other to make the Fully Automatic Model of the universe as bleak as possible.
Nevertheless it remains a myth, with all the positive and negative features of myth as an image used for making sense of the world. It is doubtful whether Western science and technology would have been possible unless we had tried to understand nature in terms of mechanical models. According to Joseph Needham, the Chinese-despite all their sophistication-made little progress in science because it never occurred to them to think of nature as mechanism, as "composed" of separable parts and "obeying" logical laws. Their view of the universe was organic. It was not a game of billiards in which the b.a.l.l.s knocked each other around in a cause-and-effect series. What were causes and effects to us were to them "correlatives"-events that arose mutually, like back and front. The "parts" of their universe were not separable, but as fully interwoven as the act of selling with the act of buying.(1) A "made" universe, whether of the Crackpot or Fully Automatic Model, is made of bits, and the bits are the basic realities of nature.
Nature is therefore to be understood by microscopy and a.n.a.lysis, to find out what the bits are and how they are put together. This was the view of the nominalist philosophers of the late Middle Ages, who strongly opposed the then-called realists for maintaining that such ent.i.ties as Mankind or Human Nature were real "substances" underlying the "accidents" of particular men and women. Every individual was therefore an example or case of the human "substance," though the word as then used did not mean matter or stuff but a kind of essence standing ( stance stance) under ( sub sub) its particular manifestations. The nominalists maintained that this was nonsense. For them, Mankind was no more than the sum total of individual people. Mankind was not a substance but simply a name for a cla.s.s of creatures; it was not real but merely nominal.
Nominalism, as we know, became the dominant att.i.tude of Western thought and especially of the philosophy of science. In the eighteenth century Rousseau went so far as to suggest that Society and the State had originally been formed by a contract between individuals. Society was an a.s.sociation, like the Rotary Club, which individuals had at some time joined and thereby abandoned their original independence. But from the standpoint of modern sociology we feel that man is necessarily a social thing, if only for the reason that no individual can come into being without a father and a mother-and this is already society. Until quite recent times it has been the prevailing view of Western science that animals and plants, rocks and gases, are "composed" of such units as molecules, cells, atoms, and other particles in much the same way that a house is composed of bricks.
But a consistent nominalist will have to be forced into the position that there really is no such thing as the human body: there are only the particular molecules of which it is composed, or only the particular atoms-not to mention electrons, protons, neutrons, and so forth.
Obviously, these particles do not by themselves const.i.tute the human body. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts if only for the fact that a scientific description of the body must take account of the order or pattern in which the particles are arranged and of what they are doing.
The man behind the microscope Has this advice for you: "Instead of asking what it is is , , Just ask, "What does it Just ask, "What does it do? do? "" ""
But even this is not enough. We must also ask, "In what surroundings is it doing it?" If a description of the human body must include the description of what it, and all its "parts," are doing doing-that is, of its behavior behavior-this behavior will be one thing in the open air but quite another in a vacuum, in a furnace, or under water. Blood in a test-tube is not the same thing as blood in the veins because it is not behaving in the same way. Its behaviour has changed because its environment or context has changed, just as the meaning of one and the same word may change according to the kind of sentence in which it is used. There is a vast difference between the bark of a tree and the bark of a dog.
It is not enough, therefore, to describe, define, and try to understand things or events by a.n.a.lysis alone, by taking them to pieces to find out "how they are made." This tells us much, but probably rather less than half the story. Today, scientists are more and more aware that what things are, and what they are doing, depends on where and when they are doing it. If, then, the definition of a thing or event must include definition of its environment, we realize that any given thing goes with goes with a given environment so intimately and inseparably that it is more and more difficult to draw a clear boundary between the thing and its surroundings. a given environment so intimately and inseparably that it is more and more difficult to draw a clear boundary between the thing and its surroundings.
This was the grain of truth in the primitive and unreliable science of astrology-as there were also grains of truth in alchemy, herbal medicine, and other primitive sciences. For when the astrologer draws a picture of a person"s, character or soul, he draws a horoscope-that is, a very rough and incomplete picture of the whole universe as it stood at the moment of that person"s birth. But this is at the same time a vivid way of saying that your soul, or rather your essential Self, is the whole cosmos as it is centered around the particular time, place, and activity called John Doe. Thus the soul is not in the body, but the body in the soul, and the soul is the entire network of relationships and processes which make up your environment, and apart from which you are nothing. A scientific astrology, if it could ever be worked out, would have to be a thorough description of the individual"s total environment-social, biological, botanical, meteorological, and astronomical-throughout every moment of his life.
But as things are, we define (and so come to feel) the individual in the light of our narrowed "spotlight" consciousness which largely ignores the field or environment in which he is found. "Individual" is the Latin form of the Greek "atom"-that which cannot be cut or divided any further into separate parts. We cannot chop off a person"s head or remove his heart without killing him. But we can kill him just as effectively by separating him from his proper environment. This implies that the only true atom is the universe-that total system of interdependent "thing-events" which can be separated from each other only in name. For the human individual is not built as a car is built. He does not come into being by a.s.sembling parts, by s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g a head on to a neck, by wiring a brain to a set of lungs, or by welding veins to a heart. Head, neck, heart, lungs, brain, veins, muscles, and glands are separate names but not separate events, and these events grow into being simultaneously and interdependently. In precisely the same way, the individual is separate from his universal environment only in name.
When this is not recognized, you have been fooled by your name.
Confusing names with nature, you come to believe that having a separate name makes you a separate being. This is-rather literally-to be spellbound.
Naturally, it isn"t the mere fact of being named that brings about the hoax of being a "real person"; it is all that goes with it. The child is tricked into the ego-feeling by the att.i.tudes, words, and actions of the society which surrounds him-his parents, relatives, teachers, and, above all, his similarly hoodwinked peers. Other people teach us who we are. Their att.i.tudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviromnent. We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. We copy emotional reactions from our parents, learning from them that excrement is supposed to have a disgusting smell and that vomiting is supposed to be an unpleasant sensation. The dread of death is also learned from their anxieties about sickness and from their att.i.tudes to funerals and corpses. Our social environment has this power just because we do not exist apart from a society. Society is our extended mind and body.
Yet the very society from which the individual is inseparable is using its whole irresistible force to persuade the individual that he is indeed separate! Society as we now know it is therefore playing a game with self-contradictory rules. Just because we do not exist apart from the community, the community is able to convince us that we do-that each one of us is an independent source of action with a mind of its own. The more successfully the community implants this feeling, the more trouble it has in getting the individual to cooperate, with the result that children raised in such an environment are almost permanently confused.
This state of affairs is known technically as the "double-bind." A person is put in a double-bind by a command or request which contains a concealed contradiction. "Stop being self-conscious!" "Try to relax."
Or the famous prosecuting attorney"s question to the man accused of cruelty to his wife "Have you stopped beating your wife yet? Answer yes or no." This is a d.a.m.ned-if-you-do and d.a.m.ned-if-you-don"t situation which arises constantly in human (and especially family) relations. A wife complains to her husband, "Do you realize that since we were married two years ago you haven"t once taken me to the movies? It wasn"t that way when you were courting. I think you"re beginning to take me for granted." When the penitent husband returns from work the following evening he says, "Darling, what about going to the movies after dinner?" And she replies, "You"re only suggesting it because I complained!"
Society, as we now have it, pulls this trick on every child from earliest infancy. In the first place, the child is taught that he is responsible, that he is a free agent, an independent origin of thoughts and actions-a sort of miniature First Cause. He accepts this make-believe for the very reason that it is not true. He can"t help accepting it, just as he can"t help accepting membership in the community where he was born. He has no way of resisting this kind of social indoctrination.
It is constantly reinforced with rewards and punishments. It is built into the basic structure of the language he is learning. It is rubbed in repeatedly with such remarks as, "It isn"t like you to do a thing like that." Or, "Don"t be a copy-cat; be yourself!" Or, when one child imitates the mannerisms of another child whom he admires, "Johnny, that"s not you. That"s Peter!" The innocent victim of this indoctrination cannot understand the paradox. He is being told that he must must be free. An irresistible pressure is being put on him to make him believe that no such pressure exists. The community of which he is necessarily a dependent member defines him as an independent member. be free. An irresistible pressure is being put on him to make him believe that no such pressure exists. The community of which he is necessarily a dependent member defines him as an independent member.
In the second place, he is thereupon commanded, as a free agent, to do things which will be acceptable only if done voluntarily! "You really ought ought to love us," say parents, aunts, uncles, brother, and sisters. "All nice children love their families, and do things for them without having to be asked." In other words. "We demand that you love us because you want to, and not because we say you ought to." Part of this nonsense is due to the fact that we confuse the "must" expressing a condition ("To be human you must have a head") with the "must" expressing a command ("You must put away your toys"). No one makes an effort to have a head, and yet parents insist that, to be healthy, a child "must" to love us," say parents, aunts, uncles, brother, and sisters. "All nice children love their families, and do things for them without having to be asked." In other words. "We demand that you love us because you want to, and not because we say you ought to." Part of this nonsense is due to the fact that we confuse the "must" expressing a condition ("To be human you must have a head") with the "must" expressing a command ("You must put away your toys"). No one makes an effort to have a head, and yet parents insist that, to be healthy, a child "must"
have regular bowel movements, or that he must try try to go to sleep, or that he must make an effort to pay attention-as if these goals were simply to be achieved by muscular exertion. to go to sleep, or that he must make an effort to pay attention-as if these goals were simply to be achieved by muscular exertion.
Children are in no position to see the contradictions in these demands, and even if some prodigy were to point them out, he would be told summarily not to "answer back," and that he lacked respect for his "elders and betters." Instead of giving our children clear and explicit explanations of the game-rules of the community, we befuddle them hopelessly because we-as adults-were once so befuddled, and, remaining so, do not understand the game we are playing.
A double-bind game is a game with self-contradictory rules, a game doomed to perpetual self-frustration-like trying to invent a perpetual-motion machine in terms of Newtonian mechanics, or trying to trisect any given angle with a straightedge and compa.s.s. The social double-bind game can be phrased in several ways:
The first rule of this game is that it is not a game.
Everyone must play.
You must love us.
You must go on living.
Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role.
Control yourself and be natural.
Try to be sincere.
Essentially, this game is a demand for spontaneous behavior of certain kinds. Living, loving, being natural or sincere-all these are spontaneous forms of behavior: they happen "of themselves" like digesting food or growing hair. As soon as they are forced they acquire that unnatural, contrived, and phony atmosphere which everyone deplores-weak and scentless like forced flowers and tasteless like forced fruit. Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith-in life, in other people, and in oneself-is the att.i.tude of allowing the spontaneous to be be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time. This is, of course, risky because life and other people do not always respond to faith as we might wish. Faith is always a gamble because life itself is a gambling game with what must appear, in the hiding aspect of the game, to be colossal stakes. But to take the gamble out of the game, to try to make winning a dead certainty, is to achieve a certainty which is indeed dead. The alternative to a community based on mutual trust is a totalitarian police-state, a community in which spontaneity is virtually forbidden. spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time. This is, of course, risky because life and other people do not always respond to faith as we might wish. Faith is always a gamble because life itself is a gambling game with what must appear, in the hiding aspect of the game, to be colossal stakes. But to take the gamble out of the game, to try to make winning a dead certainty, is to achieve a certainty which is indeed dead. The alternative to a community based on mutual trust is a totalitarian police-state, a community in which spontaneity is virtually forbidden.
A Hindu treatise on the art of government, the Arthashastra, Arthashastra, lays down the rules of policy for the complete tyrant, describing the organization of his palace, his court, and his state in such fashion as to make Machiavelli seem a liberal. The first rule is that he must trust no one, and be without a single intimate friend. Beyond this, he must organize his government as a series of concentric circles composed of the various ministers, generals, officers, secretaries, and servants who execute his orders, every circle const.i.tuting a degree of rank leading up to the king himself at the center like a spider in its web. Beginning with the circle immediately surrounding the king, the circles must consist alternately of his natural enemies and his natural friends. Because the very highest rank of princes will be plotting to seize the king"s power, they must be surrounded and watched by a circle of ministers eager to gain the king"s favor-and this hierarchy of mutually mistrusting circles must go all the way out to the fringe of the web. lays down the rules of policy for the complete tyrant, describing the organization of his palace, his court, and his state in such fashion as to make Machiavelli seem a liberal. The first rule is that he must trust no one, and be without a single intimate friend. Beyond this, he must organize his government as a series of concentric circles composed of the various ministers, generals, officers, secretaries, and servants who execute his orders, every circle const.i.tuting a degree of rank leading up to the king himself at the center like a spider in its web. Beginning with the circle immediately surrounding the king, the circles must consist alternately of his natural enemies and his natural friends. Because the very highest rank of princes will be plotting to seize the king"s power, they must be surrounded and watched by a circle of ministers eager to gain the king"s favor-and this hierarchy of mutually mistrusting circles must go all the way out to the fringe of the web. Divide et impera Divide et impera- divide and rule.
Meanwhile, the king remains in the safety of his inmost apartments, attended by guards who are in turn watched by other guards hidden in the walls. Slaves taste his food for poison, and he must sleep either with one eye open or with his door firmly locked on the inside. In case of a serious revolution, there must be a secret, underground pa.s.sage giving him escape from the center-a pa.s.sage containing a lever which will unsettle the keystone of the building and bring it crashing down upon his rebellious court. The Arthashastra Arthashastra does not forget to warn the tyrant that he can never win. He may rise to eminence through ambition or the call of duty, but the more absolute his power, the more he is hated, and the more he is the prisoner of his own trap. The web catches the spider. does not forget to warn the tyrant that he can never win. He may rise to eminence through ambition or the call of duty, but the more absolute his power, the more he is hated, and the more he is the prisoner of his own trap. The web catches the spider.
He cannot wander at leisure in the streets and parks of his own capital, or sit on a lonely beach listening to the waves and watching the gulls.
Through enslaving others he himself becomes the most miserable of slaves.
Nothing fails like success-because the self-imposed task of our society and all its members is a contradiction: to force things to happen which are acceptable only when they happen without force. This, in turn, arises from the definition of man as an independent agent- in in the universe but not the universe but not of of it-saddled with the job of bending the world to his will. No amount of preaching and moralizing will tame the type of man so defined, for the hypnotic hallucination of himself as something separate from the world renders him incapable of seeing that life is a system of geological and biological cooperation. Certainly, the system it-saddled with the job of bending the world to his will. No amount of preaching and moralizing will tame the type of man so defined, for the hypnotic hallucination of himself as something separate from the world renders him incapable of seeing that life is a system of geological and biological cooperation. Certainly, the system contains contains fights: birds against worms, snails against lettuce, and spiders against flies. But these fights are contained in the sense that they do not get out of hand, that no one species is the permanent victor. Man alone is trying to fights: birds against worms, snails against lettuce, and spiders against flies. But these fights are contained in the sense that they do not get out of hand, that no one species is the permanent victor. Man alone is trying to eliminate eliminate his natural enemies in the conviction that he is, or should be, the supreme species. Just as we cultivate vegetables, cattle, and chickens for food in the realization that we depend upon these creatures for our life, we should also realize that enemy creatures which prey upon man-insects, bacteria, and various fungi-are in fact enemy/friends. his natural enemies in the conviction that he is, or should be, the supreme species. Just as we cultivate vegetables, cattle, and chickens for food in the realization that we depend upon these creatures for our life, we should also realize that enemy creatures which prey upon man-insects, bacteria, and various fungi-are in fact enemy/friends.
A New York hostess entertaining a statesman from Pakistan brought up the problem of the urgent need for birth-control in Asia, and what was being done about it in Pakistan. She was utterly nonplussed with the reply that all the propaganda about birth-control was merely the white"s man"s attempt to maintain his superiority over the colored races.
I told her that she should have answered, "No, indeed. We only want to help you to prune your beautiful fruit-trees."
For the enemy/friends of man are his pruners. They prevent him from destroying himself by excess fertility, so that a person who dies of malaria or tuberculosis should be honored at least as much as one who has died for his country in battle. He has made room for the rest of us, and the bacteria which killed him should be saluted with proper chivalry as an honorable foe. The point is not that we should forthwith abandon penicillin or DDT: it is that we should fight to check the enemy, not to eliminate him. We must learn to include ourselves in the round of cooperations and conflicts, of symbiosis and preying, which const.i.tutes the balance of nature, for a permanently victorious species destroys, not only itself, but all other life in its environment.
The obvious objection to an argument against "wiping out" such natural enemies of man as cancer or mosquitoes is our sympathy for the individuals who get caught. It is all very well to reason, in the abstract, that the human population has to be pruned, but when disease puts its finger on me I run for the doctor. What would be the success of a call for "volunteers for pruning"? In Western civilization we do not abandon sickly babies, shoot the insane, let the hungry starve, or leave diseased people to die on the streets. (At least, not in our better moments). For the most sacred ideal of our culture is the right of every individual to justice, health, and wealth, or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." To suggest that the personal ego is a hallucination seems to be an attack on this most sacred value, without which civilized people would fall back to the level of coolies or ants to become an organized ma.s.s where the particular person is expendable.
During World War II a friend of mine used to fly Chinese laborers over the Hump to work on the South end of the Burma Road. The long flight was, of course, ideal for gambling, but since there was not enough cash between them to make the game interesting, the stakes were that the final loser should jump off the plane. No parachute. Our natural reaction is that such people aren"t fully human. Like the families and servants of ancient kings who were buried alive with their deceased lord, they seem, as Thomas Mann suggested, to be faces with no backs to their heads-mere masks, mere roles of no further use or meaning; bees without a queen. Whatever villainies the British may have committed in India, their Christian consciences balked at the practice of sati sati, which required a widow to commit suicide at her husband"s funeral.
Truly civilized people are-we feel-not faces on the sky but fully enclosed heads containing souls, each one of infinite value in the sight of G.o.d.
At one extreme, then, we have the sacred individual-the unique personal ego, separate from both nature and G.o.d-defined as such by a society which, almost in the same breath, commands him to be free and commands him to conform. At the other extreme is the coolie, the cog in the industrial-collectivist machine, or the mere "hand" (as the factory worker is often called). If one believes that the personal ego is a natural endowment of all men, as distinct from a social convention, then the lot of the coolie is bleak indeed-for one sees him as a repressed and frustrated person, though his own society may never have defined him as such.
However, there is a third possibility. The individual may be understood neither as an isolated person nor as an expendable, humanoid working-machine. He may be seen, instead, as one particular focal point at which the whole universe expresses itself-as an incarnation of the Self, of the G.o.dhead, or whatever one may choose to call IT. This view retains and, indeed, amplifies our apprehension that the individual is in some way sacred. At the same time it dissolves the paradox of the personal ego, which is to have attained the "precious state" of being a unique person at the price of perpetual anxiety for one"s survival. The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of separate ident.i.ty, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash!