We appear to have lost the instructions
Composed as a lyrical musing on Similarly …
As a pragmatic, I approach reality with this simple question: within my perceptions, what is there to be known? Instinctively, I look for patterns, for ‘the point’, for ‘take-aways’. Meanwhile, Peter urges: “Merely experience complexity; witness how it cannot be captured.” His ‘point’ is fascinating, yet for the mind who wants to know, it is indeed dizzying.
“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…”
– Preamble to the American Constitution
We — Mark, his guest, Peter and I — enjoyed a leisurely weekend together. We ate amazing food, drank cocktails and shared our thoughts regarding the political and cultural climate of our respective countries. While we walked the beach, soaking in the last remnants of summer, we found that in each of our homelands — UK, USA and Canada — chasms are deepening about what the ‘People’ desire for their future. In the UK, the People want Brexit. In the USA, the People voted Trump into office, electing him in part because so many voters resented the Establishment or didn’t bother to vote. While Canada has remained immune to the rising wave of right-wing nationalism — until now at least — we are no stranger to identity politics: we play them since Trudeau’s father was in office in the 1970s, when Quebec’s nationalism was in full swing!
From an economic perspective, these events express the People’s desire to bring back the past. A slogan such as “Make America Great Again” — as powerful as it might be — cannot roll back the systemic changes brought on by globalizing technologies. Nor, for that matter, a separation from the European Union. Even though leaving the EU is a more tangible and consequential change in the political fabric of a shared social reality, such a reversal of policy still can’t bring back the heyday of industrial production in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. It is noteworthy that both Peoples, more or less explicitly, blame immigration for the decline of their relative superiority.
For who is the ‘We’ we keep referring to? The People used to mean “a group which shared a cultural and linguistic common past, usually inhabiting a particular geography and interacting extensively, thus developing and sharing a particular set of values”. In the last few centuries, this ‘We’ most often revealed itself through nationalism and attempts to exercise cultural hegemony over minorities.
Initially, the hegemonic impulse seeks to convert as many People as possible and therefore expand this cultural ‘We’ to be as large as it could be. In the Age of Empires, strength was a pure numbers’ game: how many square miles, how many soldiers, how many gold mines and share of global GDP. In the Age of Media, it is no longer necessary to administer a country to dominate a population: it is much more efficient to co-opt the People into ‘willingly’ adopting the culture of the dominant ideology.
In reaction, people discover that ‘We’ are not as similar as the Empire wishes us to be. The wave of decolonization revealed that People desire sovereignty over their own lives, laws and ways of living. The right to self-determine — stemming from the inner drive for embodying freedom — is deeply engrained, both at the individual level and in the collective imaginary. Thus, you get fights for independence like in Quebec. Those events, playing out through our political institutions and processes, show that ‘We’ may crystallize at a regional level, where the group can be more clearly defined.
In the Age of Media, this process occurs more subtly. People realize that ‘We’ are not reflected in the dominant culture, that ‘we’ no longer (or never could be) recognized ourselves in the portrayed ideals. This realization creates a sense of alienation. But since ‘We’ can’t pinpoint exactly what is wrong, ‘We’ need to point to an ‘Other’ as the cause of our troubles. And while we’ve now defined ‘Us’ by locating who is ‘Them’, we’ve lost sight that the problem might not be about the People per se but about how the Media intermediates our relationships with each other. Or maybe it was the ideals, which were never professed by the whole People but merely represented its powerful elite.
Characteristics other than nationality can also form the basis of People’s identities. In the 19th century, Marx revealed how the workers became a ‘class’ which should oppose the bourgeoisie. In the 21st century, the Bankers (and Economists) have replaced the Aristocracy as the Elite, holding economic and political influence (in part) because they can articulate their interests more coherently than other groups in society. For the group — ‘We the People’ — necessarily needs a way to communicate. At first sight, it appears as if the group needs characteristics around which to coalesce. And indeed, any group needs to — eventually — articulate what they stand for or against. But it’s not like there is a committee somewhere holding meetings! Nowadays, no one ‘controls and commands’ how the group thinks of itself! What the group most needs is ongoing interactions such that ‘what matters’ can progressively emerge.
Historically, these ‘identity’ groups were constructed through simple proximity and ongoing interactions. They were also built over generations. Now that our World is so small — through easy exchanges of People, goods and information — the ‘We’ is losing specificity in the local environment and yet has not fully emerged in the global cosmopolitan sense. ‘We’ have not yet pledged: “We the People of the Earth, in order to live in Harmony with our Environment…”
For it seems a natural human tendency to ultimately want to define ourselves around a ‘We’. We want to belong to a group which intimately represents us. Within that group, ‘We’ want to be affirmed in the gaze of the Other, to know that we truly exist because we are seen, acknowledged, and recognized as an important member of a community with whom we share a common outlook on life. We also want to learn from the group how we should behave, what is valuable.
As I took the plane to join Peter and Mark at the Boston Airport, I felt a profound need to escape the vacuum of my self — of my condemnation to be free as Sartre puts it — and to find shelter in the comfort of the ‘We’. As part of a People — a group as small as 3 souls — I sought to express my uniqueness without the burden of having to stand alone. I expected my weekend with Peter and Mark to celebrate my belonging to this very select group: the writers of the Essence of Water! Which it did, yet also left me with a profound realization.
In most social interactions, ‘We’ intuitively assume that Other minds function similar to ours. By that, I mean that ‘We’ interpret Others as analogous to ourselves and approach them — implicitly or explicitly — seeking a reflection of how ‘we’ think. Historically, before air travel and mass-immigration, most local-ish groups shared a similar enough socialization and culture that ‘We’ could recognize our worldview in almost every Other we would meet in daily life. Indeed, the conceptual framework ‘we’ use to make sense of the world is learned intersubjectively — meaning that ‘whatever we believe about the world’ exists in multiple minds and is re-enforced by the acceptance of the group. The ‘existence’ of a worldview isn’t a physical reality that can be pointed at and studied. A worldview’s power is to be shared, ‘believed’ and hopefully considered unquestionable by as many ‘carrier minds’ as possible.
This ‘We’ coalesce around an implicit yet widely shared understanding of how ‘we’ are to understand and interpret the world — aka a worldview. Thus, a ‘worldview’ is the core characteristic of a ‘People’. Commonalities of race, language and lifestyle are often embedded into the narrative of the worldview, often acting as ‘indicators’ or ‘signals’ that one shares a particular worldview. Like wearing a cross might (and historically did) mean belonging to the Catholic Church. Or a street gang member wearing ‘blue’ to express their hatred of the ‘red’. We often use external characteristics to differentiate between allies and Others. Yet ultimately, what we ‘screen for’ is a shared worldview.
To diverge from the collective worldview has always carried the risk of exclusion from the group because the group selects its members according to mental ‘outlook’. Our conceptual scheme/framework is one of the most crucial components of our ‘identity’. ‘We’ want to see ourselves — exhibited as how we think — ‘affirmed’ in Others. Thus, we seek to surround ourselves with individuals who experience and think about the world in a fundamentally similar way. It is a ‘natural’ human behaviour in the sense that it brings us pleasure and comfort. As I recently read in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, rejection of the collective worldview — in its extreme form — can lead to insanity because to ‘dislocate’ from a conceptual worldview is to come to believe in concepts so fundamentally different that an individual can no longer be understood by Others.
I’ve come to believe that our mental health is in part based on belonging to a group that shares our worldview. That basic approach to ‘reality’ need not be dogmatic. A worldview can be a belief, or a practice, or even an attitude. It need not be explicitly verbalized. But any conceptual scheme needs some fundamental tenets, such as ‘belief in the human dignity of all’ or ‘the existence (or non-existence) of a deity’ or a particular definition of ‘what the purpose of life might be’. I’ve come to realize that a worldview can be pretty much anything: it can be based on traditions, on reason, on intuition. Moreover, its ‘success’ is measured only in its ability to reach the goals it posits as part of its guiding principles. Ie. what is deemed important and ‘successful’ for a particular worldview are selected/promulgated as part of that worldview. It’s a circular process. And self-reenforcing insofar as it gains power the more widely it is shared.
I’ve found, in my own life experience, that an individual can develop a unique approach to ‘what the world means’ to them. Their idiosyncratic worldview might even be more ‘successful’ in reaching its defined goals — its embedded telos. But living with an individual worldview is lonely.
Identifying one’s values and worldview in Others actually reduces a kind of ‘existential anxiety’ because part of what ‘exists’ as a self is one’s conceptual worldview. In other words, ‘How I perceive myself and the world’ — because it is already a mental abstraction — comes into fuller existence when an Other can perceive it as well. When a worldview escapes the subjectivity of one mind and enters the intersubjective realm of many minds, it somehow becomes more ‘real’. For there is something inherently relational in how we come to understand ourselves and our beliefs. Thus, expressing and discussing our worldviews — the unique bits, the common and the over-lapping parts — helps us, not only to identify who the ‘we’ is and what ‘it/we’ think about the world, but makes us feel an engaged participant in that group. And remember, we long for the safety of the group.
I found our group to be different than any I’ve ever belonged to. First of all, the ‘We’ of Peter, Mark and I emerged around our individual commitment to reflect on the human condition amidst a noisy world. We write about philosophy so that we can think about philosophy. Through this process, ‘we’ question what a life well-lived is and suggest hypotheses as to how ‘we’ have embodied it in our own reality. It is self-interested insofar as we believe that an examined life — even partially or sporadically — is one lived with greater rewards and more profound pleasures. For example, since we must eat to sustain ourselves, why not be mindful of taste, texture and quality at every meal? Why not perfect the recipe for Madeleines? We live intentionally because the goal of life — if a universal goal exists or can ever be articulated — is definitely not to ‘fill the time’ between now and our death!
Thus, the ‘We’ of Mark, Peter and I came together — at last! We cooked amazing food, soaked up the sun, (some of us) braved the sea but we all savoured oysters and lobsters. We started to get acquainted with each other — in real life. Unbeknownst to me, the raison d’etre of our group shifted below my feet. I wanted to know ‘Who are We?’ as a group — as the writers of the Essence of Water, committed to a mindful and reflective life — and to feel that I belong to that particular group !!! What I found was a few human beings, figuring out ‘Who are we for each other?’.
Through dialogue, I tentatively explore those relationships. In our newly-formed mini-community, while we shared some common characteristics — all of us being privileged and highly educated — our sense of belonging stemmed mainly from our attitude toward life and not any outwardly identity-driven characteristics. Mainly, ‘we’ are all engaged in the process of intentional living. But clearly, the pursuit of a well-lived life can take many forms! For while we are still more or less engaged in the same questioning process, the answers we find are significantly different. No better or worse, just attuned to our personality and unique life circumstances.
Our collective ‘vibe’ wasn’t about what we can ‘do’ for each other (or even collectively together) but on a commitment to merely ‘be’ in the presence of others. Huge difference! This was a unique experience because such encounters require a familiarity that usually emerges from physical or social proximity: from having similar lifestyles, a similar profession, a similar educational past or a set of cultural experiences. Mark and I — outside of reading each other’s texts — were newly met strangers!
I had anticipated a celebration of a group, the formation of a ‘We’. Instead, our week-end became a subtle exploration of personal diversity. Whereas I had wanted to focus on our similarities, I found myself deeply different from my counterparts.
It started immediately on the way back from the airport. Shortly after (or before) talking about Stephen Jay Gould (who I had never heard off), I confessed that I have not yet acquired my cynicism. According to Peter, who confirmed my statement, it’s quite unusual — especially compared to a Brit who lear their cynicism quite early in life. In the UK, cynicism “… is steeped in the tea!”. Mark indeed expressed astonishment. For his part, Peter shared a profound ambivalence, describing himself as a reluctantly accepting that cynicism indeed prevails in society today.
By the word ‘cynicism’, I mean the worldview that people in society act selfishly, seek benefits for themselves (money, power) especially with the least amount of work possible (what economists call rent-seeking) and ultimately, with limited or nil regard to the consequences of their actions for others or the collective. Being a cynic implies that we approach Others with skepticism of their expressed intentions (especially altruistic ones). Those adopting this worldview morally justify it by the ‘fact’ that, since everyone else is deemed to do the same, any move “is part of the game!”, where ‘success’ is defined merely by the reaching of one’s goals.
To me, this attitude is profound a ‘win-lose’ model where social status and even self-worth is defined ‘relative’ to Others on the social ladder. It’s not that I don’t understand that People act in self-interest. It’s simply that I do not view (or experience) the world through that lens. I can’t. I refuse to believe that it is ‘normal’ for human beings to be so individualistic, even though I can rationally see that it is the current social ‘norm’, especially in business and politics.
But surprisingly, ‘cynicism’ is one of those words with a very rich history! In ancient Greece, the Cynics were those who rejected all conventions and instead advocated the pursuit of virtue in accordance with a simple and idealistic way of life. (Wiki, Cynicism) Well, that describes me quite accurately!!! Maybe I’m a practicing cynic — part of the resistance, showing an alternative way to live. There might be two sides to every concept after all!
Don’t get me wrong: I think that I understand Mark’s and Peter’s point-of-view — and I certainly don’t judge them for our diverging attitudes. Mark’s whole-hearted acceptance of cynicism — as the structuring modus operandi of how people behave in society — doesn’t imply that he unreflectively adopts this attitude in his own life. He still has choices, which I believe he executes quite willingly. He doesn’t need to adopt the prevailing worldview to share it cognitively. In fact, his awareness of Others’ self-serving tendencies might allow him to best anticipate their reactions, enabling him to fulfill his chosen goals — whatever those are.
Peter struggles. I think that he’d want the worldview to be different because he understands that it could. But since it isn’t, maybe selfishness is in human nature after all. Yet since Peter can’t adopt (or more specifically, chooses not to be co-opted by) the prevailing attitude, he lives in constant dissonance. He cognitively understands Others, yet he himself behaves differently and is not understood by the Others he co-exists with. Obviously, ‘understand’ exists on a continuum and it is rarely all white or all black. We always find small islands of people with whom we can exchange meaning. But how small are such islands, and how fierce and impenetrable is the surrounding sea, will necessarily affect our feeling of belonging to the greater ‘we’.
For my part, I’m not sure to what degree I ‘understand’ the self-serving ethos, because I fundamentally disagree with its values and end-goal. I’ve taken a position — against — which means that I’m no longer cognitively flexible to switch at will between two fundamentally different cognitive schemes. I’ve refused the ‘play by the rules’ merely because these are the rules of the game. As a result, I’m playing a different game. While Peter confronts the prevailing worldview from within — and bravely stands differently on the well-established turf of the ‘self-serving People’ — I behave as if the world was already not cynical, as if People have embraced their universality as ‘One Humanity, One Earth’. This ‘fake-it-till you make it’ approach has disconnected me from the prevailing ‘social reality’; for I do not share the cynical intersubjective ‘understanding’ of how the world functions. Therefore, I’m an outsider to the prevailing worldview.
Again, it isn’t so black and white. From where I stand, at the margin of that big ‘world-melee’, I can comprehend intellectually what is going on. I see the trends, the news; I can stay informed. I just get emotionally all worked up! I’ve repeatedly tried and failed to belong to groups whose ideals I don’t believe in. In other words, I don’t wear the armour very well. I find it too constraining. Anyway, it’s been my life-journey that I end up exploding from within and destroying all that I’ve built on false premises. Hence I realized that I could fight against the current, getting exhausted trying to affect the tide, or simply ‘be’. In stepping aside, I’ve given myself space to live by an alternative understanding of ‘what reality is’. Yet, this has also caused me to be an alien to (and feel alienated from) Others. It’s a price I’ve been willing to pay, but it is still a toil.
This is how I got to where I am today: searching for a ‘we’ to whom I belong. I’ve searched hard and for so long that I can’t help but send radar ‘pings’ into the noosphere. In flying to Boston, my hopes were high — probably unrealistically so.
Over a lovely weekend, I made new friends and ate so well! Feeling awash in mutual acceptance and respect, I could be authentic, perceptively open. We talked about both serious and mundane topics. What I discovered was the depth of our diversity. For human diversity is not merely about where we grew up, our interactions with family and colleagues, our formative experiences, it’s also about our values and worldview. Since Mark, Peter and I share a commitment to intentional living (a guiding value), I expected they might share my worldview. I don’t think we do — though to verbalize how our attitudes and beliefs differ would require more ongoing interactions.
We certainly did — cognitively and through empathy — build a bridge of understanding between our individuality, because we cared enough about each other to get to know each other as unique Others. But we didn’t merge into a ‘we’. ‘We’ didn’t even attempt to. We tried to ‘be’ — each as our own — ‘together’. This seems so simple, but it ain’t easy, for it requires being receptive to subtle differences and, even harder, a commitment to stop ‘projecting’ our worldview onto others. We are not analogous, and yet our differences need not be threatening. And we achieved a sense of collective peace with our sense of diversity because we were able to communicate. Moreover, maybe the result more communication would actually result in a narrowing of the differences between our worldviews, not to an identical dogma but to a set of shared values.
This weekend left me seriously wondering: who is this ‘we’ to which we aspire to belong? In the ‘self-serving’/cynical worldview, there is an embedded ‘we’. For even though the worldview is extremely individualistic, it still assumes that everyone else behaves accordingly to it. Therefore, it is somewhat stable. Life gets messier when ‘we’ realize that it is false! Some altruistic individuals are really altruistic, acting either unselfishly or seeking a synergy between their own goals and that of the community. There are alternatives. One is not morally justified to jump off a bridge just because everybody else does it.
We are at a point in our cognitive evolution where we — humanity as a whole and possibly each individual personally — either analytically or intuitively know that ‘we’ no longer share a common worldview. We can’t deny the evidence coming from all around the globe! We live according to different values, different paradigms, and they constantly clash. In the intimacy of our inner self, ‘we’ are confronted by this absence of ‘we’ yet still long to congregate, to belong. The more anxious we get about not knowing who the ‘we’ is anymore, the more we seek the safety of the tribe — even an illusory one.
With the degree of freedom we have today, with the countless opportunities we have for being, experiencing, and holding beliefs according to our own ideals, ‘we’ are losing touch with that equally important need: to belong to the intersubjective ‘social reality’. The more unique each of us gets, the fewer characteristics we share by default, the more we need to communicate in order to understand each other. FYI: This trend is accelerating.
==> Here I mean genuinely communicate: through ongoing interactions based on a receptive and non-interfering attitude — not just shouting louder at each other in the hope that forcefulness will prevail.
I don’t know where this leads, but I’m investigating. For it seems clear to me that ‘we’ need a sense of who the ‘we’ is before we can collectively achieve anything.
I just came back from a few days at Peter’s and it was lovely to witness his life: with his son and his parents near by, his new dog and his new house. We ate fried clams, walked Rosie, played Uno. No one won but we enjoyed ourselves. When I crossed back into Canada, the border agent seemed doubtful that I hadn’t bought anything. Even with the weak Canadian dollar, tourists shop in the USA by the mere habit of it. I was too busy being present with my dear friend and his family to indulge in consumerism. We didn’t even go to a proper sandy beach and yet, I’ll forever treasure the normalcy of these few days.
When Alan was asleep and Rosie finally calmed herself, it was bluntly apparent that Peter and I are atypical individuals. Amidst the daily acts of living, which Mark aptly reminded us can be either joy or a grind depending on the meaning we assign to the routine maintenance of our lives, we etched out precious minutes to delve into existential questions. The Nature of Love. What is Religion: a cultural system or something more? If more, what differentiates it from ideology? We asked tough questions and evaluated hypotheses. We didn’t solve the equations of the Universe, but we discerned the known from the known-unknown, questioned ourselves as to the unknown-unknown and even accepted a category of unknowables. We acknowledged the magic and unpredictability of our recursive sentience. And yet, we still ate, drank and slept like all those unaware or unwilling to face the complexity of our social world.
We debated: what prevents ‘typical’ individuals from questioning the meaning of their lives — individually or collectively? Peter claimed circumstances: that everyone has the potential to fathom their inherent personal complexity and our emergent collective one, but not everyone has the education or intellectual and emotional resources to do so. I am more defeatist and existentialist at my core: culture indeed might prevent greater social enlightenment, but individuals still choose what becomes the focus of their attention. But in hindsight, I think that we might have been saying the same thing: who is morally responsible for a life spent sleep-walking? The unconscious agent or its repressive culture?
On the spur of the moment, I had decided to drive to Peter’s because I needed to let my ‘existential’ soul loose. I knew that Peter would welcome my inquisitions: that he would listen and welcome my seriousness. This is my one life — my rapidly dwindling finite days on Earth — and there is nothing more serious to me than figuring out what I shall do next. But this attitude is often a ‘mood killer’ and I genuinely respect those who don’t want to anticipate further than their next dinner. Still, I am in the early days of a new path and I know perfectly well that the choices I make now will ripple into the future in unknown and unknowable ways. I needed my friend to tell me that it’s ok to be scared… but that it’s not ok to resist my radical authenticity. Embrace. Breath. Release. Repeat.
We talked about the fascinating ways in which our minds work. This is not an easy topic to approach because we usually assume that another mind functions just the way that our own does. At the onset, it is the best assumption we can make — for we don’t have direct access to another person’s introspective subjectivity. To gain hints at another’s experience of living, we must communicate — build an intersubjective understanding — and even then, our experience of another person’s mind will only be indirect. Our human super-power of empathy merely opens the door to ‘other minds’; yet already, it is intermediated (and transformed) by the need to put lived experiences into words.
Peter expressed his amazement at my dualistic linguistic abilities. I confirmed that my French and English consciousnesses ‘understand’ different things for a text even when ‘literally’ translated. Languages are indeed irreductible to one another — there is always something lost and something else created when we transform meaning across parallel symbolic systems.
I shared that my mind functions less rationally than others seem to think. For the most important decisions in my life, I feel my way forward. With rationality (left side brain), we seem to be able to justify one thing and its opposite. Knowing that rationality can lead me astray, I never give it the final say.
There is a place in my brain that ‘feels’ like a deep well. I can look at its surface and I may see two different things: 1) as a mirror, it reflects what I project. This inner-mirror presents what my rationality has already constructed. Reflecting on this reflection is useful but I must nonetheless be careful — for there is no reason to believe that Rationality is fundamentally ‘True’ simply because the very best it can be is ‘Internally-Coherent’. ’Truth’ comes from somewhere else… From deep within the well.
When I make the conscious effort to see beyond my inner-reflection, beyond what I have already chosen and how I have defined myself, I can see the well for what it is: 2) my unconsciousness. The 90% of my brain that doesn’t use words to express itself. It acts like an oracle to whom I can pose questions, yet one that I must decipher. The well expresses itself in impressions that cannot be justified. To be able to feel them, I must be silent. Therefore, my mind doesn’t live in endless chatter. Thoughts emerge, bubble over. They come fully formed, with the strength of a conviction. Or tentatively, as potential solutions. My psyche is only another sense-organ which processes, as inputs, those impressions emerging from my unconsciousness.
To feel my way forward, I cannot dictate what I expect to find. I must be sensitive to my impressions. I embrace, interpret, hypothesize them and then wait to see how a proposal ‘sits’ within my well. If it re-emerges later on with the same outline, then I know that I’m on the right path. If not, I must ask a better question. It’s definitely an iterative process. I’ve changed circumstances many times in my past because my well told me that ‘I was wrong’. The well is never wrong — only my capacity to read the tea leaves, to listen to its wisdom… Already, giving a verbal explanation of this fundamentally pre-reflective process distorts it slightly. But it also frees me! How joyful is it to be known that intimately!
Peter told me about his fundamentally mathematic mind. As empathetic as I am, I could not relate as fully as I wished. I do not dream in differential equations. The closest I come to thinking through mathematic equations is through complex optimizations. I see curves of future potential, opening and closing according to the choices we make today. I try to anticipate the shape of these curves. My decision-making abilities have slowed to a snail’s pace because I’ve reached the kink in the curve of exponential complexity. I am consciously embarking on a journey that — I hope — will change not only my consciousness but that of Many. Because of the recursive nature of human sentience, I cannot anticipate how my choices will affect other people’s choices. I do not have access to the second degree feedback loop that may or may not ‘kick in’ as I live a more public life. As a contributor to the creation of intersubjective understanding, I can only (and barely) control how to present my contributions. Their effects extend infinitely beyond my reach.
When I resolve to be less shy, it means that I will be more brave. Less paralyzed by my optimizing mind. I vow to proceed with my a-typical path in full awareness that I cannot optimize the consequences of my actions. I’m emerging. I must leap with unjustifiable faith into an unknowable future, one that my words and praxis will stir based on imperfect knowledge. This is scary but the best I can do.
I have fond memories of Gordy – he was such an attentive and loyal dog. We lived together for less than a week, and yet he learned my habits – seeking me out in the basement where my own dog rarely ventures. Tobey was a younger pup at the time, always eager to chase and play. His behaviour changed in Gordy’s presence – as if he took clues from the wise Gordy. Maybe Gordy ‘told’ Tobey that being a dog was more than just enjoying the fresh air of the farm. Gordy seemed to live for me – for people and especially Peter – as if ‘to be’ in each other’s presence was the greatest, most valuable good of all.
In his youth, Gordy suffered from hardship and neglect. He knew scarcity, was rescued, and eventually Peter adopted him. I’m trying not to anthropomorphize him – still, I strongly sensed Gordy’s gratitude emanating from his every gesture. During that week, I could feel his mood – his ‘acknowledging’ that he was at the mercy of his ‘humans’, and yet his complete acceptance of this ‘state of affairs’. Peter and Gordy had developed a pact – an implicit ‘social’ contract between an aware owner and a sentient ‘owned’. More importantly, they formed a pack – a collaborative group interested in meeting each other’s needs. I suspect that it is precisely this ‘aura’ of welcomed interdependence that made Gordy’s death hit Peter so hard.
My own dog Tobey is not so solicitous. In general, he behaves as if only pure abundance exists in the world. We wanted him free to run about and only somewhat disciplined. Yet even without training, he can easily sense his ‘humans’ emotional states. If someone feels despair – or any form of emotional unease – he calms right down and stands guard, offering his body warmth as comfort. I could argued that Tobey has a dog’s ‘good life’ – he runs free in our fields and has never needed for anything. Yet even before conception, he was ‘engineered’ to suit our ‘human’ needs – to be hypo-allergenic (poddle), medium size (golden), intelligent (poodle) and pleasant with families (golden). We paid dearly for this ‘design’ – he didn’t randomly happen! Moreover, we bought him explicitly to be my companion – to ‘be’ the warm ‘thing’ I would hug when I needed comfort during a tougher time of my life. Maybe it was already in his temperament, or maybe he learned that I needed from him. Either ways, he knows exactly what is expected of him.
Given a sample size of 2, I can’t hardly deduce general conclusions. But both Gordy and Tobey showed how their ‘education’ – their formative experiences – shaped their behaviours later in life. I could have described many more examples, or even tales from the lives of countless human individuals. But speaking of humans would have been less clear – for my point is that past and present circumstances shape everyday instincts. As humans, we imagine ourselves so much better because of our words, our verbal reasoning, and moral justifications. And yet, as Nietzsche declared, “By far the greatest part of our spirit’s activity remains unconscious and unfelt.” Both Gordy and Tobey – as sentient but non-verbal creatures – live without the added layer of verbal reasoning. Nonetheless, they understand and interact with the world in complex ways – even forming strong habits – all without using any systems of symbolic meaning. (That I assume – for I have never been in the mind of a dog to ‘know’ for sure!)
Still, in rationalizing our ethnocentricity, human beings often feel superior to all others sentient but non-verbal creatures because we have this very unique ability to create common symbolic systems. Through them – languages and mathematics being great examples of symbolic systems – humans can collaborate and share their subjectivity in complex ways. As Peter shows with his innovation function, these points of connection – between individual consciousness, mediated by shared symbolic systems – allows the creation of more understanding (or at least, the potential for it!). Rationality is our human competitive advantage over other species – or at least, our most distinctive feature. Yet symbolic systems are our ‘edge’, our weapon. For without intersubjectivity, the connections Peter assumes in his function would not happen. And indeed, since language is created by its usage amongst a population, we may lack the vocabulary to describe ‘emerging’ phenomenas. Like you said in the [4] – we may not have the vocabulary to comprehend what is going on!
As a species, we ignore all forms of beings whose consciousness we do not understand (mostly because it doesn’t resemble our own). Of course, I generalize – not everyone is oblivion to other minds, and even different forms of ‘mind’. Dog owners – or at least I – often wonders what goes on in the mind of their furry friend. While I don’t think that Tobey has the capacity to formulate a mental thought such as “I want a carrot, Mommy” – I still know that cognition is still ‘in-there’, for he sits next to the island when I indeed cut carrots. Therefore, he sensed his desire, he located the opportunity – most probably through scent – and exhibited the behaviour most likely to have his desire fulfilled – remembering past experiences.
My point here is that ‘consciousness’ need not be a verbalized state of mind! Sentience, which is Peter’s favourite word, is broader than what we usually refer to when we think of our rational, linguistically-mediated, mental consciousness. Sentience is defined as the capacity to feel, perceive and experience subjectively – subjectivity here being best understood as using one’s own sensorial apparatus (whatever that happens to be). Scholars of phenomenology, the study of subjective experiences, talk of intentionality – the consciousness ‘of’ something. Consciousness is not a ‘thing’ – it’s more like a ‘prism’ through which our sentience feels, perceives and experiences. I haven’t delved deeply enough into phenomenology to assess if that ‘prism’ needs to be ‘mediated’ by symbolic system. My personal gut-feeling is NO! To be ‘conscious of’ something doesn’t require ‘words’ per say. I can see the beauty of the mountains and feels the awe. I can actually be left speechless faced with such beautiful or sublime sight! Therefore, ‘consciousness’ need not be mediated through symbolic systems – and hence maybe doesn’t even need to be restricted to human beings!
This question seems to big to thoroughly explore herein. It seems a matter of definition – as in: what features does consciousness requires to be called ‘consciousness’? Is it sentience? It is awareness? Is it apprehension? Comprehension? The ability to describe ‘consciousness of’ to someone else? Each of these words have distinct though related meanings – and yet I cannot be sure that you, dear reader, will grasp the nuances that I am trying to get at. (For I’m not sure that I do either!)
But I’ll still go out and stake a few claims:
I meant this essay to be an echo of Peter’s Adolescence. I feel that I failed in addressing its key points – and might try again at some later date. But since this entry is already long, I’ll simply echo its title for now:
I personally do not remember the moment that my magical childhood ended. It must have been at the age of eight, as my parents told me that they were separating. From this life-altering event, I must have concluded that life is not only pure joy – and that ‘what is’ not always ‘what appears’ to be. Yet, with the hindsight provided by writing my memoir, I don’t think that their separation was so traumatic. I had sensed their malaise probably long before they verbalized it to each other. As children do – apt as they are to perceive their surroundings in pre-rational, pre-verbal fashion – I understood clearly their silences, all that they meant by what they left unsaid. Maybe I was particularly sensitive to this ‘intuitive’ way of being ‘conscious of’ . Maybe every child starts there – with non-verbal sentience – before they learn their land’s language, symbolic system and cultural references.
I’m currently in Austria, looking at the majestic Alps. It’s been interesting to immerse ourselves into a foreign land – for people speak German here and use different signs and symbols. I’ve felt like a child again. Looking at displays on the highways and relearning the words for ‘warning’, ‘room’, and ‘day’. I didn’t come prepared but I still picked up quite a bit of German, especially in embedding ourselves with Walter’s long-lost relatives. It is surprising how much context and gestures provide much more ‘meaning’ than we assume when we are immerse in a symbolic meaning that we already share.
After childhood, when we move from this intuitive learning to a more rational one, we tend to ‘get lost’ inside our heads. Our mental states tends to get centerstage – often in the most self-absorbed ways. An adolescent’s wants, needs and desires are so ‘important’ that ‘consciousness of environment’ is largely absent, or at least severely skewed by selection or confirmation biases. Humanity, as a whole, might very well be in this ‘era’ of its development. After all, our global culture pursues self-pleasuring and group status, all the while discounting future cost. Some are so oblivious, so concerted by how their image is outwardly represented, that they fall off cliffs in the pursuit of the perfect selfie!
Adolescence is marked by developing rationality, but refusing the use it. For the adolescent can comprehend many things – arguably he or she can learn anything that they are interested in. The brain plasticity – from which consciousness emerges ‘somehow’ – peaks at some point in the early twenties. Therefore, adolescence is a period of rapid expansion of consciousness – at least potentially! For the only real limits of an adolescent’s learning ability is ‘access to information’ and ‘interest’. However, adolescents are known to care only selectively!
Moreover, the period of adolescence is characterized by the crisis of self-identification. Who am I? What am I? What am I meant to be or do? To answer these questions, adolescents explore – almost recklessly. They throw authorities out the windows – in our metaphor, that would be religions as well as traditions. They are overly concerned with their belonging to a group – maybe that could explain the rise of nationalism in the 20th century. In their interactions with their peers, adolescents either refuse to engage – dismissal of others and their point-of-views – or connect so completely that they want to merge with the object of their idolatry. And there is no such thing as ‘enough’ – though that characteristic might be a remnant of childhood…
Hence, I think Peter’s analogy is instructive. Adolescents eventually emerge of a period of chaos, more self-aware then they were when they left childhood. They have tested and developed values. They have integrated their cultural demands, and chosen to accept, reject or modify the roles expected of them. Maybe adolescents, more than at any other period’s of one’s life, learn how to think and judge adequately – based on their own understanding and the symbolic systems they share with others. Adulthood is not the same amongst all individuals, but it is somewhat defined by a ‘balancing act’ between competing goals, demands and desires. If adulthood is about pursuing multiples objectives, then adolescence is about exploring all that could matter and decide what actually does matter…
If indeed, we – humanity – are deeply steeped into this tumultuous period, we are bound for tall highs and deep lows. Like Peter, I am optimistic that “in the end, all will be well.” But like Keynes said: “In the end, we are all dead.” The current ‘Us’ – me as I am today – care about the next half-century, because that will be the one I live most intensely (God willing).
So if our humanity is really in its adolescent phase, I will do my part. I will give words and concepts to what I sense intuitively – giving a verbal form to what I am ‘conscious of’. I will bring to the fore of rationality all that I am sentient of, with as child-like sensitivity as I can. I will interest myself with my environment and my education, expanding and sharing my understanding of myself, others and the world – testing my ideas against those of others. I will do so such that our inter-subjectivity corpus of knowledge more realistically represent reality – with objectivity becoming understood as the mere consensus of subjective consciousnesses in a constantly emerging dialogue. I will rebel against dogmas and establish new norms – not only by living through example but also verbalizing how and why.
I was silent in high school – minding my own business and hoping not to be noticed. But I have faith now that the person that I am is an important part of this whole called Earth. I am insignificant only insofar as I reject my significance – as one psyche experimenting with the ‘prism’ of consciousness. As an individual, I have survived adolescence – so maybe I can help humanity do the same!
Reading Mark’s post last week, a rush of ideas washed over me. My first thought was: ‘How delightful!’ Mark talked about phenomenology – the study of subjective conscious experience – without ever getting bogged down in the jargon of academia. Obviously, he knows the language that philosophers use to describe the experience of feeling the wind on one’s face, or the coldness of the sea, or even the sensation of music in one’s body. But scientists and philosophers tends to analyze in a way that keeps them ‘inside their heads’, removed from the actual experience – which was not Mark’s intention. Mark wanted us ‘in our bodies’ – to feel the wind, to hear the roar, to envy him the experience of being attentive to one’s experiences, and inspire us to do likewise.
Right after reading his post, my mind immediately started to compose a reply. An echo, really. I didn’t want to argue with any of his thoughts, but rather show how they had unlocked some of my own. But I didn’t have time to sit at my computer, or even to scribble my first few paragraphs. My husband and I had prior a commitment – an experience to enjoy. Thus we went on a nature walk with a group that was too large to see much wildlife, but it made me appreciate that our home is a sanctuary for more than Walter and I.
As we returned, I looked outside and saw the goslings – we harbor a large number of Canada geese families this year – 13 at last count. At about two weeks of age, their 50 or so babies look like miniature dinosaurs. I thought: “Spring is in full swing – the goslings have hatched and the greenery is shining. But summer has not yet arrived – as the lake is still rising.” I’m lucky to live close to nature – somehow its raw beauty inspires us to stay alert to our surroundings. Still, I realize how easily human beings get lost in their heads – so focused on our conceptual understanding that we may stop seeing, hearing, and noticing what is actually there to be experienced. On that glorious morning, Mark reminded me to be attentive. I thank him for that.
I know that when I lived in the city, I was much more ‘closed’. There is nothing meditative in the randomness of city sounds, so I’d donned my headphones as a buffer (sometimes even without any music). I knew that I shut out more than the noise of ambulances. I consciously constrained my field of perception because I didn’t have enough energy to discern the chaos. My mind was (is automatically) looking for patterns where very few commonalities remain. We live in the midst of so much stimulation, so many ‘inputs’. I obviously don’t mind the diversity of our cosmopolitan city life. But the connections that I shares with my fellow city dwellers were merely to exist in the same subway car, living in parallel – often while not even speaking the same language…
A day later, now unconsciously, Mark’s text still simmered. As I walked with my dog Tobey, I was amazed at the range of ‘mental states’ that I can experience. I can be in the moment, or lost in thought. I can remember things I’ve read, but only sometimes the fleeting thoughts that they provoked in me. More vivid in my memories are my emotions. I’ve known giddy joy, and pain – both psychic and physical. I’ve experienced love – both as the inner peace associated with its emotional safety, the rush of energy of its touch, the urgency of desire, and the anguish of its uncertainty. How amazing it is that I can recall particular moments of my past and how they made me feel! I guess this means that I was ‘fully present’ when experiencing them. And yet, while I think of such memories, right now, am I less ‘present’ to what is currently surrounding me? I caught myself slipping into my mental domain, and redirected my attention to my breath, the warmth of the sun on my face, the spring in my step.
Every second day, I walk the same 3 miles. I’m comforted by its familiarity. I still make an effort to notice the blue jay and the rabbit skittering away. In fact, this year I discovered that a fox family has their den under my neighbor’s seacan. But like Mark expressed, the relative sameness of my walk tends to somewhat dull my senses – unless I make a conscious effort to stay alert. Yet this repetition allows more thoughts to bubble onto the surface of my conscious. I become ‘reflective of’ instead of ‘immersed in’. I realize that these are not opposite states of mind, but actually two ways of subjectively experiencing.
Wow, how complex is our consciousness, when we bother to pounder its mysteries!
On that walk, I also had an epiphany. I realized that, amongst the seemingly infinite ‘things’ that I can experience, there are also things that I cannot experience. My husband’s thoughts is a prime example – but that also applies to all other minds. The ‘content’ of his mind will forever be out of my conscious reach – unless he expresses it to me. Moreover, I realized that what I know of my husband – his tendency to worry for example – is distorted by my familiarity with him. Maybe that today, he has not worried at all! Maybe that, on average, he is worrying less as months go by. But until and unless I choose to rediscover him anew, I might not notice that his thoughts have changed. No wonder that so many people can drift apart imperceptibly – it takes effort and diligence to perceive with fresh eyes.
Obviously I know that I am not the first person to have that particular epiphany. Now that I am reading heavily from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I’m realizing that my thoughts are sometimes eerily close to those of my long dead predecessors. In other words, I have ideas that I didn’t know had been thought previously! I’ll have to be on my toes to not be accused of intellectual dishonesty. How is it even possible for an ‘Other’s mind’ to think along similar ‘lines’ – even recreate an argument, or through empathy, an emotion – and yet be so impenetrable in a ‘direct’ experience?
That is a paradox – that we cannot ‘experience’ the thoughts of others unless they are shared, and yet our human minds can experience similar thoughts ‘independently’ (for lack of a better word).
My wandering mind is now quite far from Mark’s original words… But his ideas still echo within – opening metaphorical doors in my own psyche. As I hiked and swam with him, as I sat in my home feeling the wind and cold, Mark succeeded in reminded me of how incredibly intimate the ‘act of living’ can be… and that we have to calm the ceaseless roar of our thoughts in order to pay attention.
Pay attention… What an odd idiom? Peter, is ‘attention’ part of your new system of value?!? Maybe it should.