Last week N. Arthur Coulter told us we were caught in THE MACHINE. Held there by powerful protodynes and sociodynes. A protodyne is a strong unconscious belief that a human individual holds. This belief is programmed deep into the mind by one’s life experience. For any individual a protodyne is “real”. We humans will act as if these beliefs are true whether they are or not. An acrophobic believes that being in the open is very dangerous. They will not leave their homes. They cannot be convinced that it is safe to go out into the open. The root word “-dyne” is from physics it means force. Strong unconscious beliefs held by individuals that force them to behave in specific ways are called protodynes.
When a strong unconscious belief is held by a group of people or a nation of people, it affects the whole group or the whole nation. Sociodynes force groups of people or nations of people to behave in specific ways. Coulter coined these terms in the late 60s and early 70s. Independently of Coulter, Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene to describe the same forces. The term meme has survived and become much better known than the term protodyne although they have the same meaning. Protodynes are individual memes. Sociodynes are collective memes. As Coulter explains:
The endless repetition of the Machine is nothing more than the projection, upon the screen of social consciousness, of the Identic mode of function.
This insight provides the basis for understanding why the Machine has such power over us. It is because we unconsciously give it that power. It is as if the Machine were under the control of a pseudomind, operating entirely in the Identic and Reactive modes. Like the Freudian Id, which imposes its protodynes to control the perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and actions of the individual consciousness, this pseudo-mind imposes its sociodynes upon our social consciousness.
It will be useful to give this pseudo-mind a name. I call it Dysergy Prime because it is a primary source of dysergy upon the planet earth.
The opposite of synergy is dysergy. Dysergy is working against. If we are to escape from THE MACHINE AND DYSERGY PRIME, we must break the trance that our individual and collective memes–that our protodynes and sociodynes–hold us in.
Breaking the Trance!
The success of humans on Earth has been won by consuming the life of the natural world. We are co-opting the energy of ecosystems that once allowed for a resilient and thriving biotic community. The collective and individual human “part” of life’s existence resolutely chants the mantra of growth for the continuation of this ongoing plunder – even as we become informed that we are reaching the limits of said plundering. We have been hearing Cassandra’s cry of catastrophic consequences to the living matrix – stories of the life support system undergoing unprecedented deterioration. Yet we take this information in passing as if it mattered of little consequence. The blizzard of entertaining distractions and sensations of modern day life soon overtake the few voices of warning. Sooner or later we tune these jeremiads out as irritants. Our day to day awareness reduces the eco-catastrophe to an incidental epi-phenomena in a world committed to consumption.
For those more attuned to the reality of ecological catastrophe it appears that a radical change in human behavior is needed. A lone voice or two calls for a vast effort of co-operation of the whole human world with the whole natural world. But the voice passes in the wind and the human world goes on in the same old way. It is understood that extinctions, poisonings, and the plundering of ecosystems must not and will not stand in the way of Progress. As long as the economic incentive system keeps paying-off, the Death of Nature is denied and the human juggernaut rolls on.
There is an almost gravitational pull toward putting out of mind unpleasant facts. And our collective ability to face painful facts is no greater than our personal one. We tune out, we turn away, we avoid. Finally we forget, and forget we have forgotten.
—Daniel Goleman
The central predicament facing contemporary American society: how to live a “normal life” in a society that requires that we all “not know” what most of us do know -namely, that the world is deeply screwed up and that we are keeping it that way by playing along as though nothing could possibly be different, even though deep down we know everything could be very different.
—Michael Lerner
We keep this civilization narcotized, for otherwise it could not endure itself. That is why its sleep must not be disturbed…
—Stanislaw Lem
Instead of advising others that “we must change”, perhaps it is more to the point to ask why we stay asleep, as if in a spell, collectively hypnotized, drugged to the trance of normality? Even if normality brings with it, the death of nature, how is it that we dare not break this Trance? How is it that we so easily surrender to this collective hypnosis?
Investigating the nature of this Trance, its varied manners of hypnotic control, and determining if there is a way to “Break the Trance” appears to me as an essential key to real change in the human ability to respond.
The ongoing Trance induction appears to have many strong components. It appears to be grounded in the nature of the human psyche – in the genetic legacy of our primate conditioning, as well as arising from the long history and conditioning of “progressive” culture.
You are always in some state of hypnotic trance, for hypnosis does not mean to be asleep or an unresponsive object of manipulation. It means that your mind and body function in a particular way dictated by what you think and believe.
—Walter Orlowski
If trance is defined as fixated thinking, then nearly all human activities create some type of trance. The bounded circles of thinking that keep us in trances are countless. The entire “ordered universe” is a trance. But there is an escapists pleasure in remaining in trance and a deep human fear of the chaos which can result if there were no trance “order” to life.
—Dennis R. Wier
The Trance as “Schema”
In “The Story of Stupidity” James F. Welles describes the fixated trance-like thinking as “schema” that can lead to dysfunctional behaviors. For Dr. Welles, a schema is much more than a worldview.
(A) Schema (a system of belief), (is) a master cognitive plan by which each person organizes information. It is both a mental set which provides a context for interpreting events in the perceptual field and a program for behavior. The schema plays a role of binding groups of people together. It is not only a behavioral/belief system for an individual; it also acts as a unifying force for society. Stupidity (dysergy) is induced when linguistic values, social norms, groupthink and the neurotic paradox promote a positive feedback system which takes schematic behavior to extremes unjustified by and often at odds with external conditions.”
Language functions not only as a communication system for a group but also as a value system which defines the mental life of the members and thus is a prime contributor to stupidity. It appears that the verbal nature of our schemas shapes human perception by blurring the boundary between unwelcomed fact and desired fancy. Perception is actually quite an active process in which the perceiver selects certain aspects of his environment as worthy of his attention. Many important events may be simply ignored because they are not deemed significant or interesting.”
We each really build our own reality by this process of sorting out perceptions into categories. These are our own schematic constructs based on our specific language group. These constructs then determine each person’s psychological world, the rules of tongue used to assign percepts to the given categories and the hypotheses created to explain how various events and objects perceived relate to one another.
People commonly have dysfunctional beliefs because their conscious schemas are shaped by the verbal values of their reference group-i.e., their nation, religious organization, professional association, etc. With everyone using the same biased language, it is unlikely that members could develop original, self-correcting ideas. Hence, it is difficult for an insider to form and usually stupid of him to offer an objective, critical analysis of his reference group, whatever it may be. Any attempt to do so would most likely be regarded as heresy and the critic shunned or dismissed as a threat to group integrity. (In fact, the only thing more aggravating to a group than a critic is an idealist who lives up to its stated creed.)
To the extent that conformity is induced by both language and norms, objective criticism is inhibited and stupidity induced when people strictly adhere to forms of thought and behavior which are irrelevant to the problems at hand or self-defeating for those involved.
The development of the cognitive norms of socially approved ideas and shared illusions that interfere with critical, analytical thinking can also promote group cohesion. However, when this process goes to the extreme, reality testing is suspended and the condition of “Groupthink” leads members to overestimate their collective power and righteousness.
People indulging in groupthink find themselves not only invincible but invariably right according to their own standards. This presumption of inherent morality usually means that no one in the isolated group will question its basic beliefs. Thus, members are likely simply to ignore ethical and moral consequences of their acts, since they assume they are right and what they are trying to accomplish is obviously good.
Basically, groupthink is a way for closing the minds of members of a cohesive unit. Policies are rationalized rather than scrutinized; data conflicting with such policies are ignored rather than evaluated; warnings of impending or possible failure are dismissed rather than discussed. By such means, the group schema is maintained intact, which is obviously the most important thing of all. Whether or not behavior is appropriate or successful is a distinctly secondary consideration to the maintenance of group image and ideology.
In this context of an inability to learn, life may be viewed as a dynamic imbalance. Social life, particularly, is often a compromise state between goal achievement and group survival. Either may be sacrificed for the other but usually with results deemed stupid by anyone judging according to the criteria of the function sacrificed.
Judgment is shaped not only by the viewpoint of the perceiver but also by the time scale used to evaluate effects. In this context, stupidity’s most reliable ally is the “Neurotic paradox”-a self-destructive learning pattern that occurs when an act is reinforced with an immediate short-term reward although its long-term consequences will be maladaptive.
During this process, incoming information is likely to be dismissed or misinterpreted if it conflicts with and cannot be adjusted to fit the existing belief system.
In either case, the resultant mental set is a function of our biological heritage and cultural environment.
In “The Future of Life” biologist E.O. Wilson describes how he sees the neurotic paradox as hardwired by evolution in the human psyche.
The relative indifference to the environment springs, I believe, from deep within human nature. The human brain evidently evolved to commit itself emotionally only to a small piece of geography, a limited band of kinsmen, and two or three generations into the future. To look neither far ahead nor far afield is elemental in a Darwinian sense. We are innately inclined to ignore any distant possibility not yet requiring examination. It is, people say, just good common sense.
Why do they think in this shortsighted way? The reason is simple: it is a hardwired part of our Paleolithic heritage. For hundreds of millennia, those who worked for short-term gain within a small circle of relatives and friends lived longer and left more offspring–even when their collective striving caused their chiefdoms and empires to crumble around them. The long view that might have saved their distant descendants required a vision and extended altruism instinctively difficult to marshal.
In a recent lecture, Richard Dawkins agrees and emphasizes the trance-like neurotic paradox is a basic part of our genetic legacy.
The values of sustainability are important to all of us here, and I enthusiastically include myself. We therefore might hope that these too are built into us by natural selection. I shall tell you today that this is not so. On the contrary, there is something profoundly anti-Darwinian about the very idea of sustainability.
From a Darwinian point of view, the problem with sustainability is this: sustainability is all about long-term benefits of the world at the expense of short-term benefits. Darwinism encourages precisely the opposite values. Short-term genetic benefit is all that matters in a Darwinian world. Superficially, the values that will have been built into us will have been short-term values, not long-term ones.
Humans are no more selfish than any other animals, just rather more effective in our selfishness and therefore more devastating. All animals do what natural selection programmed their ancestors to do, which is to look after the short-term interest of themselves and their close family, cronies and allies.
Psychologist Robert Ornstein reflects upon the hardwiring of this schema in his book “The Evolution of Consciousness”.
The mind evolved great breadth, but it is shallow for it performs quick and dirty sketches of the world. This rough-and-ready perception of reality enabled our ancestors to survive better. The mind did not evolve to know the world, or to know ourselves.
He says that we are biologically equipped to detect and react to a leopard looming in the cave mouth, but not to the global changes that threaten us today.
The assumption that we easily and simply change our minds and rationally respond to the oncoming die-off also fails to take into account the most recent findings about human awareness as posited by neuroscientists.