mapsofmeaning - Tumblr blog

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

Rationality

I learned that the meanings of the most profound substrata of belief systems can be rendered explicitly comprehensible, even to the skeptical rational thinker—and that, so rendered, can be experienced as fascinating, profound and necessary. xx

The modern mind, which regards itself as having transcended the domain of the magical, is nonetheless still endlessly capable of “irrational” (read motivated) reactions. 2

The great forces of empiricism and rationality and the great technique of the experiment have killed myth, and it cannot be resurrected—or so it seems. 7

Our great rationalist ideologies, after all—fascist, say, or communist— demonstrated their essential uselessness within the space of mere generations, despite their intellectually compelling nature. 7

Is it not more likely that we just do not know how it could be that traditional notions are right, given their appearance of extreme irrationality? 8

The fundamental propositions of fascism and communism were rational, logical, statable, comprehensible—and terribly wrong. 11

It has become more or less evident, for example, that pure, abstract rationality, ungrounded in tradition—the rationality that defined Soviet-style communism from inception to dissolution—appears absolutely unable to determine and make explicit just what it is that should guide individual and social behavior. 11

Planned, logical and intelligible systems fail to make allowance for the irrational, transcendent, incomprehensible and often ridiculous aspect of human character. 11

Behavior is imitated, then abstracted into play, formalized into drama and story, crystallized into myth and codified into religion—and only then criticized in philosophy, and provided, post-hoc, with rational underpinnings. Explicit philosophical statements regarding the grounds for and nature of ethical behavior, stated in a verbally comprehensible manner, were not established through rational endeavor. 78

Each developmental “stage”—action, imitation, play, ritual, drama, narrative, myth, religion, philosophy, rationality—offers an increasingly abstracted, generalized and detailed representation of the behavioral wisdom embedded in and established during the previous stage. 79

We classify things according to the way they appear, the way they act, and in accordance with their significance to us, which is an indication of how to act in their presence—and may mix any or all of these attributes, irrationally (but meaningfully), in a single scheme. 98

I am not saying that there are no such things as “things”—that would of course be patently absurd. It is also fully apparent that the things we apprehend are rule-governed— the cosmos as we experience it is orderly and rationally comprehensible. 139

Centuries-long cultural elaboration of such production gave rise to the elaborated “existence” of transpersonal beings, of transcendent power, who inhabited the “space” defined by the collective imagination of mankind, and who behaved in accordance with the dictates of their own irrational, myth-predicated souls. 159

Empirical (classical) “objects” are either one thing or another. Nature, by contrast— the great unknown—is one thing and its (affective) opposite at the same time, and in the same place. The novel, primeval experience was (and remains) much too complex to be gripped, initially, by rational understanding, as understood in the present day. Mythic imagination, “willing” to sacrifice discriminatory clarity for inclusive phenomenological accuracy, provided the necessary developmental bridge. The earliest embodiments of nature are therefore symbolic combinations of rationally irreconcilable attributes; monsters, essentially feminine, who represent animal and human, creation and destruction, birth and cessation of experience. 159–60

The hero myth provides the structure that governs, but does not determine, the general course of history; expresses one fundamental preconception in a thousand different ways. This idea (analogous in structure to the modern hypothesis, although not explicitly formulated, nor rationally constructed in the same manner) renders individual creativity socially acceptable and provides the precondition for change. 181

This means that for the social being all individual actions come to be evaluated with regard to their likely current and future consequences, for the self and for the others likely affected. Such evaluation may take place directly—that is, as a matter of “conscious deliberation”; alternatively, the well-socialized individual may act “as if” he or she thought the matter through, by remaining in well-trodden moral pathways . . . It is such arbitrary rules that constitute the implicit information coded in societal structure—information not necessarily placed there by rational means, not necessarily “comprehended” in any declarative sense; but information that is nonetheless transmissible and representable as a consequence of extended-term pattern recognition and analysis. 189

The resultant “hierarchy of motivation” can be most accurately characterized as a personality—the mythic “ancestral” figure that everyone imitates, consciously (with full participation of the semantic and episodic system, rational thought and imagination) or unconsciously (in action only, despite express “disbelief”). 242

Mythologically structured social and individual “presumptions”—articles of faith— provide the environment in which a given culture-specific adaptive pattern retains its conditional validity. This pre-rational mythic environment is analogous in structure to the physical or natural environment itself—as the structure adapted to the environment rapidly becomes a constituent element of the environment itself, with the same essential characteristics. 262

Thus the democratic political theorist, for example, can finally put into words the essence of religious myth after the myth had captured in image the essence of adaptive behavior; can talk about “intrinsic right” as if that notion were something rational. This process of increasing abstraction and representation is equivalent to development of “higher” consciousness (especially if the ever-more enlightened words are in fact—utopian wish—transformed back down the hierarchy to the level of action). 263

Literate individuals, members of cultures contained in express theologies or rational philosophies, can more easily incarnate and/or abstractly adopt or provisionally formulate different positions, with regard to the value of initial assumptions; can also verbalize the beliefs of other people, absorb them, and subject them to critical consideration or (theoretically) guileless acceptance; are fated necessarily to be able to become many other people, in imitation, imagination, and thought. 272

The Edenic serpent occupies the same categorical space in the Christian psyche as Lucifer, “bringer of light,” spirit of “unbridled rationality”—in large part because the anomalous idea (the “product of rationality”) has the same potential for destruction as any other natural disaster. 304

The other “son of God” is the eternal adversary. This “spirit of unbridled rationality,” horrified by his limited apprehension of the conditions of existence, shrinks from contact with everything he does not understand. 312

The devil is the spirit who underlies the development of totalitarianism; the spirit who is characterized by rigid ideological belief (by the “predominance of the rational mind”), by reliance on the lie as a mode of adaptation (by refusal to admit to the existence of error, or to appreciate the necessity of deviance), and by the inevitable development of hatred for the self and world. 316

I also knew, more or less “unconsciously,” that the devil has been long associated with the power and arrogance of rational thought (in Goethe’s Faust, for example). This association has enabled the dogmatic forces of the church to adopt an antiscientific stance, frequently— science=rationality=devil—and to justify unfortunate church opposition to emergent truth. 318

This means that absolute identification with the “known” necessarily comes to replace all opportunity for identification with the process that comes to know. The presumption of absolute knowledge, which is the cardinal sin of the rational spirit, is therefore prima facie equivalent to rejection of the hero—to rejection of Christ, of the Word of God, of the (divine) process that mediates between order and chaos. 321

The option of ruling in hell, rather than serving in heaven, nonetheless appears as an attractive alternative to the rational mind, under a wide variety of circumstances. 321

Tolstoy’s “intellectual faculties”—his rationality—could see no way out of the dilemma posed by his incorporation of an indigestible idea. 327

Recognition of the seemingly arbitrary distribution of skill and advantage adds additional rationally “justifiable” grounds for the development of a philosophy based on resentment and antipathy—sometimes, “on behalf” of an entire class, other times, sheerly for the purposes of a specific individual. 327

Lack of belief in hope and meaning (which appear more than willing to vanish, in the face of rational critique) seldom means commensurate “lack of belief in anxiety and despair” (even though recognition of the pointlessness of everything should also undermine ones faith in suffering). 328

Of course, we are at present unable to take our rationally reduced selves seriously enough to presume a relationship between evil as a “cosmic force” and our petty transgressions and self-betrayals. We believe that in reducing the scope and importance of our errors, we are properly humble; in truth, we are merely unwilling to bear the weight of our true responsibility. 329

The same can be said for adults: the existence of morality—that intrinsic aspect of social behavior—long precedes representation of morality and rational description of grounds for its existence. Morality, at its most fundamental level, is an emergent property of social interaction, embodied in individual behavior, implicit in the value attributed to objects and situations, grounded (unconsciously) in procedural knowledge. 400

Jung’s ideas have remained unexamined because psychology, the youngest, most rational, and most deterministic of sciences, is most afraid of religion. 412

Further, until now the European scientific mind has been possessed by the idea of causality, an idea hitherto accepted without question: everything was causal, and the scientific attitude was that investigations should be made with that premise in mind, for there must be a rational cause for everything. If something appeared to be irrational, it was believed that its cause was not yet known. 413

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

Empirical

Adherents of the mythological worldview tend to regard the statements of their creeds as indistinguishable from empirical “fact,” even though such statements were generally formulated long before the notion of objective reality emerged. 1

Prior to the time of Descartes, Bacon and Newton, man lived in an animated, spiritual world, saturated with meaning, imbued with moral purpose. The nature of this purpose was revealed in the stories people told each other—stories about the structure of the cosmos and the place of man. But now we think empirically (at least we think we think empirically), and the spirits that once inhabited the universe have vanished. 4–5

The great forces of empiricism and rationality and the great technique of the experiment have killed myth, and it cannot be resurrected—or so it seems. We still act out the precepts of our forebears, nonetheless, although we can no longer justify our actions. Our behavior is shaped (at least in the ideal) by the same mythic rules—thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not covet—that guided our ancestors for the thousands of years they lived without benefit of formal empirical thought. This means that those rules are so powerful—so necessary, at least—that they maintain their existence (and expand their domain) even in the presence of explicit theories that undermine their validity. That is a mystery. 7

We appear to have made the presumption that stories such as these— myths—were equivalent in function and intent (but were inferior methodologically) to empirical or post-experimental description. It is this fundamentally absurd insistence that, above all, has destabilized the effect of religious tradition upon the organization of modern human moral reasoning and behavior. 8

The empirical endeavor is devoted to objective description of what is—to determination of what it is about a given phenomena that can be consensually validated and described. 9

The painstaking empirical process of identification, communication and comparison has proved to be a strikingly effective means for specifying the nature of the relatively invariant features of the collectively apprehensible world. Unfortunately, this useful methodology cannot be applied to determination of value. 9

We lack a process of verification, in the moral domain, that is as powerful or as universally acceptable as the experimental (empirical) method in the realm of description. 10

Accurate specification of underlying mythological commonalities might comprise the first developmental stage in the conscious evolution of a truly universal system of morality. The establishment of such a system, acceptable to empirical and religious minds alike, could prove of incalculable aid in the reduction of intrapsychic, interindividual and intergroup conflict. The grounding of such a comparative analysis within a psychology (or even a neuropsychology) informed by strict empirical research might offer us the possibility of a form of convergent validation, and help us overcome the age-old problem of deriving the ought from the is; help us see how what we must do might be inextricably associated with what it is that we are. 12

Enlightenment thought strove to separate “reason” and “emotion”; empirical investigations into the structure and function of the brain—given great initial impetus by the consequences of that separation—have demonstrated instead that the two realms are mutually interdependent, and essentially integral. 48

This was Jung’s approach. The “causal mechanism” he constructed to account for what he found—that is, the “collective unconscious”—appears insufficiently elaborated, from the modern empirical perspective (although the idea is much more complex, and much less easily dismissable, than generally conceded). 92

Perhaps it would be reasonable, then, to describe the nature of the universal patterns in narrative—while placing a variety of additional and stringent constraints on that description, for the sake of caution (given the difficulty of verifying “interpretive theories”). First, let us make the description rationally acceptable, and internally consistent—that is, let us find a way of making sense of myth that does not conflict with the tenets of empiricism and experimental science, and that appears applicable to stories derived from many different places, and many different times. 98

Before the emergence of empirical methodology, which allowed for methodical separation of subject and object in description, the world-model contained abstracted inferences about the nature of existence, derived primarily from observations of human behavior. This means, in essence, that pre-experimental man observed “morality” in his behavior and inferred (through the process described previously) the existence of a source or rationale for that morality in the structure of the “universe” itself. Of course, this “universe” is the experiential field—affect, imagination and all—and not the “objective” world constructed by the post-empirical mind. 103

We can separate the thing from the implication of the thing, because we are students and beneficiaries of empirical thinking and experimental method. We can remove attribution of motive and affective power from the “object,” and leave it standing in its purely sensory and consensual aspect; can distinguish between what is us and what is world. The pre-experimental mind could not (cannot) do this, at least not consistently; could not reliably discriminate between the object and its effect on behavior. It is that object and effect which, in totality, constitute a god (more accurately, it is a class of objects and their effects that constitute a god).

A god, so considered—more specifically, a potent and powerful god, one with a history—constitutes the manner in which a group or family of stimuli of isomorphic motivational significance reveals itself to or grips the collective (communicated) imagination of a given culture. Such a representation is a peculiar mix (from the later, empirical viewpoint) of psychological and sociological phenomena and objective “fact”—an undifferentiated mix of subject and object (of emotion and sensory experience), transpersonal in nature (as it is historically elaborated “construction” and shared imaginative experience). The primitive deity nonetheless serves as accurate representation of the ground of being, however, because it is affect and subjectivity as well as pure object (before the two are properly distilled or separated)—because it is primordial experience, rather than the mere primordial thing. 113

The unexpected grips behavior and spontaneously generates antithetical affects, varying in intensity with the improbability of the occurrence, creating heightened interest, fear, intense curiosity or outright terror. This motivational significance appears to have been experienced as an intrinsic feature of the unknown, prior to the strict formal modern division of experiential world into empirical object and subjective observer—and is still fundamentally experienced in that manner today. 151

Two things are the same, from the empirical viewpoint, if they share collectively apprehended sensory features. Two things are the same, from the metaphoric, dramatic, or mythical perspective—from the perspective of the natural category—if they produce the same subjective state of being (affect or motivation), or have the same functional status (which is implication for behavior). 153

Empirical (classical) “objects” are either one thing or another. Nature, by contrast— the great unknown—is one thing and its (affective) opposite at the same time, and in the same place. 159

It has been said that Freud merely recapitulated Shakespeare. But it was Freud’s genius, despite his manifold errors, to bring what Shakespeare portrayed dramatically up one level of abstraction, toward the philosophical (or even the empirical). Freud moved information about behavior from the implicit narrative to the explicit theory (or, at least, to the more explicit theory). Shakespeare performed a similar maneuver, like all storytellers, at a more “basic” level—he abstracted from what was still behavioral, from what had not even yet been captured effectively in drama. 178

Mythic thinking, so to speak, is also based on observation—but on observation of behavior in the world of affective experience. This means cyclical observation of action predicated upon an implicit or explicitly formulated theory of what should be, and derivation of procedural, episodic or semantic representations thereof. This is knowledge, as well—and appears, in the light of careful analysis, no more arbitrary than empirical description of the objective world. Perhaps it was necessary for science, struggling to escape from a cognitive world dominated by religious and mythical thinking, to devalue that world in order to set up an independent existence. That existence has long been established, however—but the process of devaluation, implicit and explicit, continues (even in fields theoretically separate from the strictly empirical). 273

The mythical narratives that accompany retention of historically determined behavior constitute nonempirical episodic representation of that behavior and its method of establishment. 390

Since our behavior is motivated—since it serves to regulate our emotions—it is very difficult to construct a classification system whose elements are devoid of evaluative significance. It is only since the emergence of strict empirical methodology that such construction has been made possible. This means that pre-experimental systems of classification such as those employed in the alchemical procedure include evaluative appraisal, even when they consist of terms such as “matter” or “gold” that appear familiar to us. 417

Our psychology and psychiatry—our “sciences of the mind”—are devoted, at least in theory, to “empirical” evaluation and treatment of mental “disorders.” But this is mostly smoke and screen. We are aiming, always, at an ideal. We currently prefer to leave the nature of that ideal “implicit,” because that helps us sidestep any number of issues that would immediately become of overwhelming difficulty, if they were clearly apprehended. So we “define” health as that state consisting of an absence of “diseases” or “disorders” and leave it at that—as if the notion of disease or disorder (or of the absence thereof) is not by necessity a medieval concatenation of moral philosophy and empirical description. 426

It took thousands of years of cultural development to formulate the twin notions that empirical reality existed (independent of the motivational significance of things) and that it should be systematically studied (and these ideas only emerged, initially, in the complex societies of the Orient and Europe). The alchemists were the first to risk this attribution, or something similar to it; but they still studied “matter” in the absence of explicit empirical methodology. 427

The lack of scientific methodology—the inability to conduct formalized comparison of behavior-predicated experience, to determine its generalizability—meant the inextricable admixture of the purely sensory and the subjective, affective, mythological aspects of experience. The purpose of scientific methodology is, in large part, to separate the empirical facts from the motivational presumption. In the absence of such methodology, the intermingling of the two domains is inevitable. 427

The alchemical fantasy provided (and still provides) the motive power for the empirical endeavor, just as the dream of Judeo-Christianity provided motive power for the civilization of the West. 431

Since the alchemist thought analogically and symbolically, in the absence of the empirical method, he fantasized or imagined that the corrupt prima materia shared the characteristics of other corrupt and imperfect creations, including physical man, contaminated by Original Sin and his own transgressions. 436

In the absence of formal empirical methodology, the alchemical adept could only investigate the transformations of matter with the preconceptions of his imagination. The products of alchemy were therefore necessarily structured according to the myth of the way, the primary archetypal manifestation of imaginative fantasy. 438

All cultures, excepting the Western, do not possess a history based on “objective events.” The history of alternative cultures—even those as highly developed as the Indian, Chinese, and ancient Greco-Roman—is mythological, which means that it describes what an event meant, in psychological terms, instead of how it happened, in empirical terms. 472

Mythological renditions of history, like those in the Bible, are just as “true” as the standard Western empirical renditions, just as literally true, but how they are true is different. Western historians describe (or think they describe) “what” happened. The traditions of mythology and religion describe the significance of what happened (and it must be noted that if what happens is without significance, it is irrelevant). 472

Imagination and fantasy allow each of us to deal with the unknown, which must be met before it is comprehended. Fantasy applied to consideration of the unknown is therefore not delusory. It is, instead, the first stage in the process of understanding—which eventually results in the evolution of detailed, empirical, communicable knowledge. 480

Man’s first attempts to describe the unknown cannot be faulted because they lacked empirical validity. Man was not originally an empirical thinker. This does not mean he was self-deluded, a liar. 480

The mythic view of history cannot be credited with reality, from the material, empirical point of view. It is nonetheless the case that all of Western ethics, including those explicitly formalized in Western law, are predicated upon a mythological worldview, which specifically attributes divine status to the individual. 480

It is not the pursuit of empirical truth, however, that has wreaked havoc upon the Christian worldview. It is confusion of empirical fact with moral truth that has proved of great detriment to the latter. 480

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

Redemption

Our very cultures are erected upon the foundation of a single great story: paradise, encounter with chaos, fall and redemption. 31

The Great Mother impels—pushes (with certainty of mortality) and pulls (with possibility of redemption)—development of consciousness and of self-consciousness. The identity of death with the unknown has permanently and incurably destroyed any possibility of final habituation to—adaptation to, more accurately—the world of experience. 161

Habit is a way of being, a general strategy for “redemption” in the “natural” and “cultural” spheres, shaped by the social exchange of affect-laden information, mastered to the point of “unconscious” automaticity. 228

The constant transcendence of the future serves to destroy the absolute sufficiency of all previous historically determined systems, and ensures that the path defined by the revolutionary hero remains the one constant route to redemption. The “revolutionary hero” is embodiment and narrative representation of the action of consciousness itself. 286

This appearance [of self-consciousness] is an event of “cosmic significance,” driving the separation of heaven and earth, making human experience something “eternally fallen,” something ever in need of redemption. 288

Myths of redemption—that is, of the ascent from chaos, of the return to paradise, or of the “flight” to heaven—are tales “designed” to describe the process of remediation for the “prehistoric” fall. Such myths lay out a morality whose incorporation or incarnation constitutes cure for the spiritual paralysis engendered by emergent knowledge of death. 289

The Judeo-Christian tale of redemption is predicated upon representation of the individual subject, marred with Original Sin, fallen from grace, conscious of life and the borders of life, irretrievably blessed and cursed with knowledge of good and evil. 298

The birth of tragedy and the evolution of shame might be considered emergent properties of self-consciousness. The idea of redemption, which compensates for self-conscious existential anxiety, might be considered another, higher-order emergent property. 309

[The mythological hero] faces the unknown with the presumption of its benevolence—with the (unprovable) attitude that confrontation with the unknown will bring renewal and redemption. 312

This “shift in the dominance hierarchy of heaven” [in Milton's Paradise Lost] seems to me to indicate that reason (which, in consequence of its self-recognition as the “highest angel” of God, believes itself capable of single-handedly engendering redemption) must remain subordinate to the processes of the exploratory hero. 321

If the individual or social ideal remains undeveloped, immature in conceptualization, or twisted in the course of development, then aspects of behavior and cognition necessary for redemption—for deliverance from the unbearable weight of tragic self-consciousness—will be suppressed, with intrapsychic and social pathology as the inevitable result. 368

Movement from the group to the individual—like that from childhood to group—follows the archetypal transformative pattern of the heroic (paradise, breach, fall, redemption; stability, incorporation, dissolution, reconstruction). Such transformation must be undertaken voluntarily, through conscious exposure to the unknown—although it may be catalyzed by sufficiently unique or traumatic experience. 376

Finally, representation of abstracted but specific heroic actions give way to representation of the process of heroism, per se. At this point, it becomes possible for the creative individual to mimic, consciously incarnate, the process of world-redemption itself. 405

The horizon of medieval alchemy was modified under the impact of Neoplatonism and Hermeticism. The certitude that alchemy can second the work of Nature received a christological significance. The alchemists now affirmed that just as Christ had redeemed humanity by his death and resurrection, so the opus alchymicum could assure the redemption of Nature. 410

The alchemists lived in a world that had theoretically been redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ—at least from the Christian perspective. But they did not feel at all redeemed— they remained unsatisfied with the present still-too-mortal condition . . . the alchemists identified with the exploratory hero, and turned themselves unconsciously (that is, in procedure, if not always in representation) into “that which redeems.” This identification was complicated by the fact that the alchemist also considered himself as partaking of the state of matter—as belonging in the “state necessitating redemption.” 425

Those things relevant to the transformation of the being of “objects” were therefore also, by logical necessity, relevant to the transformation of his own being. The transformation of base matter into gold, writ large, was the redemption of the world—its transformation into the “state of gold.” 426

The fact of the fallen material state undermined faith in church dogma: apprehension of the unresolved suffering of man made it difficult to attribute to Christ’s actions the final state of redemption they theoretically guaranteed. In consequence, contact with the “matriarchal underworld of matter” (that is, with the “unknown”) seemed very threatening to the church authorities— and for very good reason (at least from the perspectives of conservation and tradition). 428

The alchemist courageously posited that the work of redemption held up as absolute by the church was not yet complete—or at least acted “as if” there was still work to be done. 433

They applied their fantastical reasoning to redemption of corrupt matter, which seems absurd from the modern viewpoint. However, experience of the physical world had been formally damned by the church—for reasons which had their own logic—and the lost value this experience represented stood therefore in dire need of redemption. 436–37

The alchemist did “redeem” himself by studying the “redemptive” transformations of matter—most simply, because exploration “releases” information that can be used to construct personality; more complexly, because the act of voluntary exploration, outside the domain allowed by tradition, constitutes identification with the creative hero. 437

To investigate matter, for the ideal, meant to investigate corruption, evil itself, in the pursuit of value. The alchemist who undertook this investigation already believed he was in need of redemption, that he was incomplete, or he would have never dared step outside the boundaries drawn by the church. His need of redemption, of completion, paralleled that of the corrupt prima materia and further strengthened the “unconscious” analogous identity between the adept and his material. 438

The world and the self are not different places; from this perspective, “all is experience.” The attempt to redeem either necessarily brings about redemption in the other. 454

Formal Christianity adopted the position that the sacrifice of Christ brought history to a close, and that “belief” in that sacrifice guaranteed redemption. 455

Alchemy was a living myth: the myth of the individual man as redeemer. Organized Christianity had “sterilized itself,” so to speak, by insisting on the worship of some external truth as the means to salvation. The alchemists (re)discovered the error of this presumption, and came to realize that identification with the redeemer was in fact necessary, not his worship; that myths of redemption had true power when they were incorporated, and acted out, rather than believed, in some abstract sense. 457

Re-establishment of paradise . . . becomes dependent upon manifestation of an exemplary way of behaving, directed toward a meaningful end—becomes dependent upon establishment of a particular mode of redemption 477

Myths of the fall and redemption portray the emergence of human dissatisfaction with present conditions—no matter how comfortable—and the tendency or desire for movement toward “a better future.” Such myths describe, in narrative format, how human beings think and will always think—regardless of time or place. The most profound of such cyclical myths portray heightening of consciousness as cause for emergent unrest. Simultaneously, such myths portray qualitatively transformed consciousness as cure for that unrest (more profoundly, portray participation in the act of qualitative transformation of consciousness as cure for that unrest). 479

Life without meaning is mortal limitation, subjection to pain and suffering without recourse. Life without meaning is tragedy, without hope of redemption. 481

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

Kingdom of God

Christian morality can therefore be reasonably regarded as the “plan of action” whose aim is re-establishment, or establishment, or attainment (sometimes in the “hereafter”) of the “kingdom of God,” the ideal future. 17

Babylon was therefore conceptualized as “the kingdom of god on earth”—that is, as a profane imitation of heaven. The emperor served this “imitated heaven” as the “imitator of Marduk,” at least insofar as he was conservative, just, courageous and creative. 124

The Kingdom of God, promised by Christ, is in fact re-establishment of Paradise (although a Paradise characterized by reconciliation of opposing forces, and not regressive dissolution into preconscious unity). Such re-establishment closes the circle of temporal being. 144

Paradise as place or state is perfected interpersonal interaction—the harmony of the lion and the lamb—as well as spiritual harmony (is the “internal kingdom” and the “external kingdom” simultaneously united as the “kingdom of God”). Paradise is also the world before it became profane—before innocence was lost. 290

We presume the existence of a final barrier between “subject” and “object,” but a standpoint exists [in alchemy] that gives to all aspects of individual experience—whether “subjective” or “objective”—equal status, as aspects of experience. Redeeming any aspect of that experience, then—whether “material” or “psychological”; whether “self” or “other” is then regarded as the same act—as the act whose purpose is establishment of the “kingdom of god” (which is simultaneously psychological and social state). 454

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

Unbearable Present and Ideal Future

We evaluate the “unbearable present” in relationship to the “ideal future.” We act to transform “where we are” into “where we would like to be.” 19

Errors in representation of the unbearable present and the ideal, desired future are inevitable, in consequence, as are errors in implementation and representation of the means by which the former can be transformed into the latter. 47

The “higher” cortex controls behavior until the unknown emerges—until it makes a mistake in judgment, until memory no longer serves—until the activity it governs produces a mismatch between what is desired and what actually occurs. 54

The end or goal of a given planned sequence of behavior constitutes an image of the desired future, which serves as point of contrast, for the unbearable present. 82

More rarely, but equally necessarily, adaptation is reconceptualization of “what is known” (unbearable present, desirable future and means to attain such) because what is known is out of date, and therefore deadly. 135

This pattern [of cultural behaviour] is the “corporeal ideal” of the culture, its mode of transforming the unbearable present into the desired future, its guiding force, its central personality. 193

All the individuals in a particular nation agree, fundamentally, about the nature of the unbearable present, the ideal future, and the means to transform one into the other. Every individual plays out that conceptualization, in terms of his or her own actions... 259

morality: description of unbearable present, ideal future and means of transformation 280

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

'Spiritual'

This vision of perfection is the promised land, mythologically speaking—conceptualized as a spiritual domain (a psychological state), a political utopia (a state, literally speaking), or both, simultaneously. 13

The material structure of Homo sapiens is ideal for exploration, and for the dissemination of the results thereof; spiritually—psychologically—man is characterized by the innate capacity to take true pleasure in such activity. 65

The state is not merely cultural; it is also “spiritual.” As custom and tradition is established, it is inculcated into each individual, and becomes part of their intrapsychic structure. 135

In the Orient, the world and its meaning springs from the encircled interplay and union of the light, spiritual, masculine yang and the dark, material, feminine yin. 144

The serpent of chaos can be seen lurking “behind” the Great Mother, as we shall see, and she often “adopts” reptilian (material) or birdlike (spiritual) features. 155

No static political utopia is therefore possible—and the kingdom of God remains spiritual, not worldly. 216

...the long spiritual will to interpret all events under a Christian schema and to rediscover and justify the Christian god in every accident... 222

Slavery is, as it seems, both in the cruder and in the more subtle sense, the indispensable means of spiritual discipline and cultivation, too.

The universally disseminated rituals of initiation—induced “spiritual” death and subsequent rebirth—catalyzes the development of adult personality; follows the fundamental pattern of the cyclic, circular cosmogonic myth of the way. 224

Baptism is spiritual birth (rebirth), as opposed to birth of the flesh. 227

The transmission of what is generally regarded as spiritual wisdom is in fact able to take (to be “reduced to”) narrative form precisely because the word . . . has this deceptively simple, yet infinitely meaningful “triggering” property... 257

Shamanism is prototypical of those religious practices designed to modify human behavior and interpretation—to induce and regulate the processes of spiritual reconfiguration. 275

Such myths lay out a morality whose incorporation or incarnation constitutes cure for the spiritual paralysis engendered by emergent knowledge of death. 289

To depart from the light means to choose the path of evil—spiritual death—or to perish bodily altogether. 292

He entered a vast forest (the spiritual home of the unknown), 298

The many gods of archaic conceptualization became the single ruler of more modern religious thinking as a consequence of spiritual competition—so to speak. This competition is the battle of ideas with implication for action—fought in abstraction, image and in the course of genuine earthly combat— portrayed in mythology as spiritual war, played out in heaven (which is the place where transpersonal ideas exist). The deity who came to prevail over all is One God, with a complex set of attributes, “surrounded” by a panoply of angels and divine “echoes” of previous gods (who represent those transpersonal and eternal psychological processes rendered subordinate in the course of the spiritual phylogenesis [Rudolf Steiner] of man). 319

It is the act of denying that stupidity exists, once it has manifested itself, that is evil, because stupidity cannot then be overcome. Such denial brings spiritual progress to a halt. 322

Spiritual reality plays itself out endlessly in profane reality (as man remains eternally subject to the “dictates of the gods”). 325

Active suppression does not mean intrapsychic “repression,” in the classic sense, but aggressive action undertaken in the world to forcibly eliminate evidence of error. This may mean treachery, spiritual cruelty, or the outright application of power 333

Anomaly is, therefore, spiritual “food,” in the most literal sense: the unknown is the raw material out of which the personality is manufactured, in the course of exploratory activity. 347

...a deep- rooted spiritual sickness, endemic to mankind, the consequence of unbearable self-consciousness, apprehension of destiny in suffering and limitation, and pathological refusal to face the consequences thereof. 353

the Philosopher’s stone: something that could turn “base matter” into spiritual gold 377

the interregnum of pain and confusion that precedes the re-establishment or improvement of stability can be tolerated only by those fed on “spiritual bread” 383

History protects man against overwhelming material and spiritual onslaught. It performs this function by providing a framework of meaning for those enmeshed within it. 391

As the Word “made flesh” (John 1:14) there “in the beginning” (John 1:1), he represents, simultaneously, the power that divides order from chaos, and tradition rendered spiritual, abstract, declarative, semantic.

Christ, in fact, appears as a second Moses, who offers a spiritual (intrapsychic) kingdom as the final version of the land promised to the Israelites by God. 394

Adherents of tradition rely on the attribution of superhuman value to ancestral figures and, equally to their current temporal and spiritual representatives. 399

The law allows for the application of such potentiality to the task of creative and courageous existence— allows spiritual water controlled flow into the valley of the shadow of death. 406

Christ presented the kingdom of heaven (the archetypal goal) as a spiritual kingdom, which is to say, a psychological, then interpersonal, state. 406

[The Tao] places the individual firmly on the path to intrapsychic integrity and spiritual peace 408

The lapis philosophorum [philosopher's stone] had the ability to turn “base” metals into gold; furthermore, it conferred upon its bearer immortal life, spiritual peace and good health. 417

To perfect nature, it was necessary to harbor the correct attitude—to undertake the appropriate rituals and processes of spiritual purification; to become pure as the thing desired. 426

The attractions of the material world also posed a threat to identification with the church, as the pull of sensuality, for example, or the desire for material instead of spiritual wealth. 428

Alchemical fascination with “matter” developed antithetically to the early Christian valuation of the “spiritual” and the “established” (developed as an antithesis to the domain of the known). 428

a form of desire for redemption. . .—through material means—. . . . may be unexpectedly transformed into a more purely spiritual pursuit in the course of maturation, or through the unpredictable actions of fantasy and circumstance. 430

Formulation of the idea that God might be known in material form meant positing the possibility that the highest conceivable value might be embodied concretely in “matter”—rather than in the established, patriarchal, “spiritual” world. 432

Broadly speaking, the alchemist wanted to transform every subordinate element in the category “matter” (the unknown, fallen, corrupt world, including man as “material” being) into the category “gold” (the Apollinian, spiritual, sunlike, incorruptible state). 433

So the alchemical “story” rapidly turned into something more complex; something that essentially recapitulated the “union of the gods” (something like a process of initiation or spiritual transformation). 433–34

The therapist then has no other course than to confront the ego with its adversary and thus initiate the melting and recasting process. The confrontation is expressed, in the alchemical myth of the king, as the collision of the masculine, spiritual father ruled over by king Sol with the feminine, chthonic mother-world symbolized by the aqua permanens or by the chaos. 439

The holy pilgrimage in its abstract or spiritual version is the journey through “elements” of experience and personal character that constitute the subjective world of experience (rather than the shared social and natural world) . . . A “journey to the place that is most feared,” however, can be undertaken spiritually much as concretely. What “spiritually” means, however, in such a context, is a “peregrination” through the rejected, hated and violently suppressed aspects of personal experience. 447

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

The Word

The process that mediates between unexplored and explored territory—the Divine Son, the archetypal individual, creative exploratory Word and vengeful adversary. xxi

The eternal knower, finally—the process that mediates between the known and the unknown—is the knight who slays the dragon of chaos, the hero who replaces disorder and confusion with clarity and certainty, the sun god who eternally slays the forces of darkness, and the “word” that engenders cosmic creation. 20

The word enables differentiated thought and dramatically heightens the capacity for exploratory maneuvering. The world of human experience is constantly transformed and renewed as a consequence of such exploration. In this manner, the word constantly engenders new creation. 66

“Divine Son” (the Knower, the generative Word, the process of exploration. 90

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is the Logos —the word of God—that creates order from chaos, and it is in the image of the Logos that man [“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26)] is created. 100

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, creation depends on the existence and action of Logos, mythically masculine discriminant consciousness or exploratory spirit, associated inextricably with linguistic ability—with the Word, as St. John states (in what was perhaps designed to form the opening statement of the New Testament, structurally paralleled with the beginning of Genesis): In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The explicit stress placed by the Judeo-Christian tradition on the primacy of the word and its metaphorical equivalents makes it somewhat unique in the pantheon of creation myths. The early Jews were perhaps the first to clearly posit that activity in the mythically masculine domain of spirit was linked in some integral manner to the construction and establishment of experience as such. It is impossible to understand why the Judeo-Christian tradition has had such immense power—or to comprehend the nature of the relationship between the psyche and the world—without analyzing the network of meaning that makes up the doctrine of the Word. 111

The gods place “the starry garment of the night sky” in their midst. At the command of Marduk’s mouth—on his word—it appears; at his command, it disappears, “as the night sky on the passage of the sun.” . . . Marduk, the last-born “child” of instinct, is the hero who voluntarily faces the creative/destructive power that constitutes the “place” from which all things emerge . . . It is a relatively small step from this dramatic/imagistic portrayal of the hero to the most explicit Christian doctrine of Logos—the creative Word (and from there to our notion of “consciousness”). 121

In the earliest Egyptian cosmology (circa 2700 B.C.), the god Ptah, a spiritualized manifestation of Atum, the all-encircling serpent, creates “by his mind (his ‘heart’) and his word (his ‘tongue’) . . . The Egyptians viewed Ptah—the spermatic word—as the original, or primordial (read “heavenly” king). 127

More rarely . . . adaptation is reconceptualization of “what is known” (unbearable present, desirable future and means to attain such) because what is is known is out of date, and therefore deadly. It is the sum of these processes that manifests itself in the Judeo-Christian tradition as the mythic Word of God (and which is embodied in Christ, the Christian culture-hero). 135

More serious representations of this type are deities, gods borne of human experience, possessed of quasi-objective transpersonal status—like the Word —manifestations of the unfamiliar, the other, the unknown and the unpredictable. 158–59

This is exploration-predicated “creation of the cosmos” from the precosmogonic chaos, and the fostering of implicit identification with the Logos, the creative and redemptive Word. 172

This “body” is ritually devoured—that is, incorporated—to aid the ritual participants in their identification with Christ, the eternally dying and resurrecting (sun) god. Construction of this awful ritual meant furtherance of the abstract conceptualization of a permanent structural aspect of (every) human psyche—the heroic aspect, the Word—as active, individually doomed, yet mythically eternal, destined to tragic contact with threat and promise of unknown, yet constant participant in the creative adaptive redemptive process. 177

The optimal “desired future” is not a state, however, but a process: the (intrinsically compelling) process of mediating between order and chaos; the process of the incarnation of Logos—the Word—which is the world-creating principle. 187

Furthermore, the ability to upset ourselves—to undermine and revitalize our own beliefs—is an intrinsic, necessary and “divine” aspect of the human psyche (part of the seminal “Word” itself). The Word—in its guise as painstakingly abstracted action and object—can create new worlds and destroy old; can pose an unbearable threat to seemingly stable cultures, and can redeem those that have become senescent, inflexible and paralytic. To those who have sold their souls to the group, however, the Word is indistinguishable from the enemy. 249

It is primordial separation of light from darkness—engendered by Logos, the Word, equivalent to the process of consciousness—that initiates human experience and historical activity (which is reality itself, for all intents and purposes). 292

The presumption of absolute knowledge, which is the cardinal sin of the rational spirit, is therefore prima facie equivalent to rejection of the hero—to rejection of Christ, of the Word of God, of the (divine) process that mediates between order and chaos. 321

It is capacity to voluntarily face the unknown, and to reconfigure accordingly the propositions that guided past adaptation, that constitutes the eternal spirit of man, the world-creating Word. 378

Christ embodies the hero, grounded in tradition, who is narrative depiction of the basis for successful individual and social adaptation. As the Word “made flesh” (John 1:14) there “in the beginning” (John 1:1), he represents, simultaneously, the power that divides order from chaos, and tradition rendered spiritual, abstract, declarative, semantic. 393

According to Gichtel, “we not only receive a new soul with this regeneration but also a new Body. The Body is extracted from the divine word or from the heavenly Sophia.” 409

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

The world of experience

Myth is the distilled essence of the stories we tell ourselves about the patterns of our own behavior, as they play themselves out in the social and impersonal worlds of experience. 75

The world of experience is composed of the known—explored territory—in paradoxical juxtaposition with the unknown—unexplored territory. 107

The world as experienced in totality is made up of the material things we are familiar with, and the valences we consider epiphenomenal; of the objects of experience, and the fact of the subject, who does the experiencing. The world brought into being in archaic myths of creation is phenomenological, rather than material—it includes all aspects of experience, including those things we now regard as purely subjective. 108

The explicit stress placed by the Judeo-Christian tradition on the primacy of the word and its metaphorical equivalents makes it somewhat unique in the pantheon of creation myths. The early Jews were perhaps the first to clearly posit that activity in the mythically masculine domain of spirit was linked in some integral manner to the construction and establishment of experience as such. 111

The Mesopotamian culture-hero/deity Marduk represents the capacity of the process of exploration to generate the world of experience; the Egyptian gods Horus-Osiris represent the extended version of that capacity, which means not only generation of the world from the unknown, but transformation of the pattern of adaptation which constitutes the known . . . [such] adaptation is reconceptualization of “what is known” . . . 135

The Sumerian and Egyptian myths portray ideas of exceeding complexity, in ritual, drama, and imagistic form. This form is not purposeful mystification, but the manner in which ideas emerge, before they are sufficiently developed to be explicitly comprehensible. We acted out and provisionally formulated complete, “impressionistic” models of the world of experience (which was the world we always had to understand) long before the “contents” of such models could be understood in the way we currently conceive of understanding. 135

Such myths typically describe the genesis of the world of experience by relating the existence of a primordial god, portraying the division of this god into the world-parents, and detailing the separation of those parents by their own “son. 139

The uroboros stands for, or comprises, everything that is as of yet unencountered, prior to its differentiation as a consequence of active exploration and classification. It is the source of all the information that makes up the determinate world of experience and is, simultaneously, the birthplace of the experiencing subject. 141

The pleroma might be described as the subjective world of experience, in remembrance—the episodic world, perhaps, from the perspective of modern memory theory 154

The identity of death with the unknown has permanently and incurably destroyed any possibility of final habituation to—adaptation to, more accurately—the world of experience. 161

It was the emergence of the heroic stance, mythically represented by man as equal in divinity to the unknown or Nature, that provided the precondition for the generation of concrete behavioral adaptations to the world of experience. 207

Myth equates the origin with the dawning of light, with the emergence of consciousness: equates the universe with the world of experience; assumes that the subjective is a precondition of the real. . . . . From this perspective, consciousness is fundamental to the world of experience—as fundamental as “things” themselves. 293–94

After leaving the “walled garden” of his childhood, Gautama became a master of tradition, in his attempt to make sense of the world of experience as it now presented itself to him. 298

Adam and Eve immediately cover themselves up—erect a protective barrier, symbolic of culture itself, between their vulnerable bodies and the terrible world of experience. 308

Our constantly emerging self-reference (our constantly developing self-consciousness) has turned the world of experience into a tragic play 309

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

Development of mythic theology

All the original children of Tiamat are potent and impersonal elder gods, “psychological forces”—the “deities” that eternally rule or constitute human motivation and affect. The question of the proper ordering of those forces (“who, or what, should rule?”) is the central problem of morality, and the primary problem facing human individuals and social organizations. The Sumerian “solution” to this problem was the elevation of Marduk—the sun-god who voluntarily faces chaos—to the position of “king” (and the subjugation of the other gods to that “king”) . . .

The Enuma elish states, essentially: “When things are normal, any god might rule. However, in the case of a true crisis, everyone turns to the sun-god (the embodiment of “consciousness”). Perhaps it is reasonable to presume, therefore, that he should always reign supreme.” The “formulation” of this “hypothesis” was a work of unsurpassed genius, and a decisive move in the history of the Western mind. (Chapter 2/pages 118, 120-121)

[Marduk] was in fact addressed by fifty names by the Mesopotamians. Each name signified an independent valuable attribute or property (likely at one time separate gods), now regarded as clearly dependent for its existence upon him. It seems evident that the attribution of these fifty names to Marduk parallels the movement toward monotheism described in the Enuma elish itself (with all the gods organizing themselves voluntarily under Marduk’s dominion) and occurring in Mesopotamian society, at the human and historical level. It might be said that the Mesopotamians “came to realize” (in ritual and image, at least) that all the life-sustaining processes that they worshiped in representation were secondary aspects of the exploratory/creative/rejuvenating process embodied by Marduk. (2/127)

Horus does the unexpected, descending voluntarily to the underworld to find his father . . . It is representation of this move—reminiscent of Marduk’s voluntary journey to the “underworld” of Tiamat—that constitutes the brilliant and original contribution of Egyptian theology. Horus discovers Osiris, extant in a state of torpor. He offers his recovered eye to his father—so that Osiris can “see,” once again. They return, united and victorious, and establish a revivified kingdom. The kingdom of the “son and father” is an improvement over that of the father or the son alone, as it unites the hard-won wisdom of the past (that is, of the dead) with the adaptive capacity of the present (that is, of the living). (2/131)

Horus unites himself with his father and becomes the ideal ruler—the consciousness of present youthful life, conjoined with the wisdom of tradition. (2/133)

Development of monotheism thus parallels intrapsychic and intracultural moral integration. As the average citizen identifies more and more clearly with this monotheistic, integrated pattern . . . It becomes more clearly an attribute of the individual human being, and more like what we would conceive of as a psychological trait. . . and the possibility of “personal relationship” with the deity emerges as a prospect at the conceptual level of analysis. The process is just begining, in abstraction, in Mesopotamia and Egypt; the ancient Israelites bring it most clearly to fruition, with potent and lasting effect. (2/134)

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

Transpersonal deities

The original “children of Tiamat and Apsu”—the “elder gods”—should therefore be regarded as embodiments of the archaic transpersonal intrapsychic phenomena that give rise to human motivation, as well as those aspects of the objective world that activate those intrapsychic systems.

The Sumerians considered themselves destined to “clothe and feed” such gods, because they viewed themselves as the servants, in a sense, of what we would call instinctive forces, “elicited” by the “environment.” Such forces can be reasonably regarded as the Sumerians regarded them—as deities inhabiting a “supracelestial place,” extant prior to the dawn of humanity . . .

We no longer personify such “instincts,” except for the purposes of literary embellishment, so we don’t think of them “existing” in a “place” (like heaven, for example). But the idea that such instincts inhabit a space—and that wars occur in that space—is a metaphor of exceeding power and explanatory utility. Transpersonal motive forces do wage war with one another over vast spans of time; are each forced to come to terms with their powerful “opponents” in the intrapsychic hierarchy. (Chapter 2/page 113).

Marduk, the last-born “child” of instinct, is the hero who voluntarily faces the creative/destructive power that constitutes the “place” from which all things emerge. He is the martial deity, role model for the culture of the West, who violently carves the unknown into pieces, and makes the predictable world from those pieces. (2/123)

1 note · View note

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

Understanding myth

Careful comparative analysis of this great body of religious philosophy might allow us to provisionally determine the nature of essential human motivation and morality. (1/12)

We are protected from such conflict—from subjugation to instinctive terror—by the historical compilation of adaptive information generated in the course of previous novelty-driven exploration. We are protected from unpredictability by our culturally determined beliefs, by the stories we share. These stories tell us how to presume and how to act to maintain the determinate, shared and restricted values that compose our familiar worlds. (2/52-53)

Myth is the distilled essence of the stories we tell ourselves about the patterns of our own behavior . . . The central features of our (socially determined) behavior thus become key elements—characters—in our stories. The generation and constant refinement of these stories, told and retold over centuries, allows us to determine ever more clearly just what proper (and improper) behavior consists of. (2/75)

We can learn to imitate not only the precise behaviors that constitute adaptation, but the process by which those behaviors were generated. This means—we can learn not only skill, but meta-skill . . . It is the encapsulation of meta-skill in a story that makes that story great. (2/75)

This telescoping, the “mythologization” of history, is very useful from the perspective of efficient storage. We learn to imitate (and to remember) not individual heroes, the “objective” historical figures of the past, but what those heroes represented: the pattern of action that made them heroes. That pattern is the act of voluntary and successful encounter with the unknown, the generation of wisdom through exploration. (2/81)

It might still be objected: attempts to attribute comprehensible patterning to such narratives cannot be demonstrated, without a theory of interpretation, and that theory may be merely “reading in” patterns, where none actually “exist” . . . There is no reason, however, why such faith [in our interpretations] cannot be informed, and critically assessed. It seems reasonable to presume that cross-cultural analysis of systems of belief, and their comparison with the essentially literary productions of the humanities, might constitute a means to attain such information. This was Jung’s approach . . . Great modern minds, working in areas outside of psychology, have also concluded that stories have universal structures. (2/92)

The “collective unconscious” that constitutes the basis for shared religious mythology is in fact the behavior, the procedures, that have been generated, transmitted, imitated, and modified by everyone who has ever lived, everywhere. (2/94)

We have spent hundreds of thousands of years watching ourselves act and telling stories about how we act. A good story has a universal quality, which means that it speaks a language we all understand . . . about those aspects of experience that we all share. (2/94)

A good theory about the structure of myth should let you see how a story you couldn’t even understand previously might shed new and useful light on the meaning of your life. (2/98)

The figures of myth . . . embody the world—“visible” and “invisible.” Though the analysis of such figures, we can come to see just what meaning means, and how it reveals itself, in relationship to our actions. It is through such analysis that we can come to realize the potential breadth and depth of our own emotions, and the nature of our true being; to understand our capacity for great acts of evil—and great acts of good—and our motivations for participating in them. (2/99)

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

On the stages of abstraction

Narrative description of archetypal behavioral patterns and representational schemas—myth—appears as an essential precondition for social construction and subsequent regulation of complexly civilized individual presumption, action and desire. It is only after behavioral (procedural) wisdom has become “represented” in episodic memory and portrayed in drama and narrative that it becomes accessible to “conscious” verbal formulation and potential modification in abstraction . . .

Explicit (moral) philosophy arises from the mythos of culture, grounded in procedure, rendered progressively more abstract and episodic through ritual action and observation of that action . . . Generation of such information was necessary to simultaneously ensure accurate prediction of the behavior of others (and of the self), and to program predictable social behavior through exchange of abstracted moral (procedural) information.

(Chapter 2/page 78)

Adaptation through play and drama preceded development of linguistic thought, and provided the ground from which it emerged. Each developmental “stage”—action, imitation, play, ritual, drama, narrative, myth, religion, philosophy, rationality—offers an increasingly abstracted, generalized and detailed representation of the behavioral wisdom embedded in and established during the previous stage . . . Language turned drama into mythic narrative, narrative into formal religion, and religion into critical philosophy. (2/79)

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

On representational adaptation

We all produce models of what is and what should be, and how to transform one into the other. We change our behavior, when the consequences of that behavior are not what we would like. But sometimes mere alteration in behavior is insufficient. We must change not only what we do, but what we think is important. This means reconsideration of the nature of the motivational significance of the present, and reconsideration of the ideal nature of the future. This is a radical, even revolutionary transformation, and it is a very complex process in its realization—but mythic thinking has represented the nature of such change in great and remarkable detail. (Chapter 1/page 14)

Creative exploration of the unknown, and consequent generation of knowledge, is construction or update of patterns of behavior and representation, such that the unknown is transformed from something terrifying and compelling into something beneficial (or, at least, something irrelevant). (2/20)

We strive to bring novel occurrences back into the realm of predictability or to exploit them for previously unconsidered potential by altering our behavior or our patterns of representation. (2/28)

The processes of revolutionary adaptation, enacted and represented, underlie diverse cultural phenomena ranging from the rites of “primitive” initiation to the conceptions of sophisticated religious systems. Indeed, our very cultures are erected upon the foundation of a single great story: paradise, encounter with chaos, fall and redemption. (2/31)

The unexpected appearance of a predator [a cat] where nothing but defined territory previously existed terrifies the rats—badly enough that they “scream” about it, persistently, for a long period of time. Once this initial terror abates . . . the rats return to the scene of the crime. The space “renovelized” by the fact of the cat has to be transformed once again into explored territory as a consequence of active modification of behavior (and representational schema), not by passive desensitization to the unexpected. (2/60)

More sophistication in development of the prefrontal centers means, in part, heightened capability for abstract exploration, which means investigation in the absence of actual movement, which means the capacity to learn from the observation of others and through consideration of potential actions before they emerge in behavior. This means increasing capability for thought, considered as abstracted action and representation. (2/62)

The chaos that constitutes the unknown is rendered predictable—is turned into the “world”—by the generation of adaptive behaviors and modes of representation. . . .Patterns of behavioral and representational adaptation are generated in the course of active exploration and “contact with the unknown.” These patterns do not necessarily remain stable, however, once generated. They are modified and shaped, improved and made efficient, as a consequence of their communicative exchange. (2/70).

Our imaginative representations actually constitute our initial adaptations. Our fantasies comprise part of the structure that we use to inhibit our responses to the a priori significance of the unknown (even as such fantasies facilitate generation of more detailed and concrete information). There is no reason to presuppose that we have been able to explicitly comprehend this capacity, in part because it actually seems to serve as a necessary or axiomatic precondition for the ability to comprehend, explicitly. (2/71)

The process of creative exploration—the function of the knower, so to speak, who generates explored territory—has as its apparent purpose an increase in the breadth of motoric repertoire (skill) and alteration of representational schema. (2/72)

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 5 months ago

Text

On objective reality

The world as forum for action is composed, essentially, of three constituent elements, which tend to manifest themselves in typical patterns of metaphoric representation [ie. Great Mother, Great Father, Divine Son]. . . We are adapted to this world of divine characters, much as to the objective world. The fact of this adaptation implies that the environment is in “reality” a forum for action, as well as a place of things. xx-xxi

The modern mind, which regards itself as having transcended the domain of the magical, is nonetheless still endlessly capable of “irrational” (read motivated) reactions. We fall under the spell of experience whenever we attribute our frustration, aggression, devotion or lust to the person or situation that exists as the proximal “cause” of such agitation. We are not yet “objective,” even in our most clear-headed moments (and thank God for that). 2

Even if the medieval individual was not in all cases tenderly and completely enraptured by his religious beliefs (he was a great believer in hell, for example), he was certainly not plagued by the plethora of rational doubts and moral uncertainties that beset his modern counterpart. Religion for the pre-experimental mind was not so much a matter of faith as a matter of fact—which means that the prevailing religious viewpoint was not merely one compelling theory among many. . . The new phenomena produced by the procedures of experimentalists could not be, could not exist, from the perspective defined by tradition. Furthermore—and more importantly—the new theories that arose to make sense of empirical reality posed a severe threat to the integrity of traditional models of reality, which had provided the world with determinate meaning. 5

The “world” of the Sumerians was not objective reality, as we presently construe it. It was simultaneously more and less—more, in that this “primitive” world contained phenomena that we do not consider part of “reality,” such as affect and meaning; less, in that the Sumerians could not describe (or conceive of) many of those things the processes of science have revealed to us. 8

The mythic imagination is concerned with the world in the manner of the phenomenologist, who seeks to discover the nature of subjective reality, instead of concerning himself with description of the objective world. Myth, and the drama that is part of myth, provide answers in image to the following question: “how can the current state of experience be conceptualized in abstraction, with regards to its meaning?” 13

We may construct models of “objective reality,” and it is no doubt useful to do so. We must model meanings, however, in order to survive. Our most fundamental maps of meaning—maps which have a narrative structure—portray the motivational value of our current state, conceived of in contrast to a hypothetical ideal, accompanied by plans of action, which are our pragmatic notions about how to get what we want. 23

You are unceasingly involved in attempts to transform the present, as you currently understand it, into the future, as you hope it will be. Your actions are designed to produce your ideal— designed to transform the present into something ever more closely resembling what you want. You are confident in your model of reality, in your story; when you put it into action, you get results. 24

It appears, indeed, that the categorization or characterization of the environment as unknown/ known (nature/culture, foreign/familiar) might be regarded as more “fundamental” than any objective characterization—if we make the presumption that what we have adapted to is, by definition, reality. For it is the case that the human brain—and the brain of higher animals—has specialized for operation in the “domain of order” and the “domain of chaos.” And it is impossible to understand the fact of this specialization, unless those domains are regarded as more than mere metaphor. 48

The orienting reflex, and the exploratory behavior following its manifestation, also allows for the differentiation of the unknown into the familiar categories of objective reality. However, this ability is a late development, emerging only four hundred years ago and cannot be considered basic to “thinking.” [Ref: Mircea Eliade] 53

0 notes

mapsofmeaning · 6 months ago

Text

Morality

I have become convinced that the world-that-is-belief is orderly; that there are universal moral absolutes (although these are structured such that a diverse range of human opinion remains both possible and beneficial). I believe that individuals and societies who flout these absolutes—in ignorance or in willful opposition—are doomed to misery and eventual dissolution. xx

The mythological perspective has been overthrown by the empirical; or so it appears. This should mean that the morality predicated upon such myth should have disappeared, as well, as belief in comfortable illusion vanished. 5

This “problem of morality”—is there anything moral, in any realistic general sense, and if so, how might it be comprehended?—is a question that has now attained paramount importance. 10

There appears to exist some “natural” or even—dare it be said?—some “absolute” constraints on the manner in which human beings may act as individuals and in society. Some moral presuppositions and theories are wrong; human nature is not infinitely malleable. 11

We also presently possess in accessible and complete form the traditional wisdom of a large part of the human race—possess accurate description of the myths and rituals that contain and condition the implicit and explicit values of almost everyone who has ever lived. These myths are centrally and properly concerned with the nature of successful human existence. Careful comparative analysis of this great body of religious philosophy might allow us to provisionally determine the nature of essential human motivation and morality—if we were willing to admit our ignorance and take the risk. Accurate specification of underlying mythological commonalities might comprise the first developmental stage in the conscious evolution of a truly universal system of morality. 12

Integration means active balance of competing subjectively grounded motivational demands within the context of the social environment, means internalization of socially regulated behavioral expression of subjective desire. Such internalization constitutes construction of a value (dominance) hierarchy; means determination of the relative contextual propriety (morality) of imitated or otherwise incorporated patterns of action. 80

Carl Jung attempted to account for the apparent universality of world interpretation with the hypothesis of the “collective unconscious.” Jung believed that religious or mythological symbols sprung from a universal source, whose final point of origin was biological (and heritable) 92

Narrative/mythic “reality” is the world, conceived of in imagination, comprising imagistic representation of the behavioral pattern central to “morality,” played out in an environment permanently characterized by the interplay of the known and the unknown. This “reality” is the world as place of action, and not as “place of objective things.” 102

Before the emergence of empirical methodology, which allowed for methodical separation of subject and object in description, the world-model contained abstracted inferences about the nature of existence, derived primarily from observations of human behavior. This means, in essence, that pre-experimental man observed “morality” in his behavior and inferred ... the existence of a source or rationale for that morality in the structure of the “universe” itself. Of course, this “universe” is the experiential field—affect, imagination and all—and not the “objective” world constructed by the post-empirical mind. 103

The question of the proper ordering of those forces (“who, or what, should rule?”) is the central problem of morality, and the primary problem facing human individuals and social organizations. 118

The pattern of behavior characteristic of the hero—that is, voluntary advance in the face of the dangerous and promising unknown, generation of something of value as a consequence and, simultaneously, dissolution and reconstruction of current knowledge, of current morality—comes to form the kernel for the good story, cross-culturally. That story—which is what to do, when you no longer know what to do—defines the central pattern of behavior embedded in all genuinely religious systems (furthermore, provides the basis for the “respect due the individual” undergirding our conception of natural right). 181–82

Culture is therefore the sum total of surviving historically determined hierarchically arranged behaviors and second- and third-order abstract representations, and more: it is the integration of these, in the course of endless social and intrapsychic conflict, into a single pattern of behavior—a single system of morality, simultaneously governing personal conduct, interpersonal interaction and imagistic/semantic description of such. 192–93

. . . all genuine religious and cultural traditions and dogmas are equivalent, regardless of content: they are all masters whose service may culminate in the development of self-mastery, and consequent transcendence of tradition and dogma. . . Adoption of this analytic standpoint allows for a certain moral relativism, conjoined with an absolutist higher-order morality. 218–19

Transformation of childhood dependency entails adoption of ritual behavior (even regular meal-and-bed-times are rituals) and incorporation of a morality (a framework of reference) with an inevitably metaphysical foundation. 223

The “demand to satisfy, protect and adapt, individually and socially”—and to do so over vast and variable stretches of time—places severe intrinsic constraints on the manner in which successful human societies can operate. It might be said that such constraints provide universal boundaries for acceptable human morality. The nature of what constitutes such acceptability fosters direct conflict or debate, in terms of the details, but the broad picture is necessarily clear. That picture is presented and represented in ritual, mythology and narrative, which eternally depict intrinsically meaningful themes. 230

Of course, identification of what constitutes the basis for establishing the nature of morality or the comparative value of objects is no simple matter. In fact, such judgment comprises the constant central demand of adaptation. No fixed answer solution to this problem can be offered—this question, “the nature of the highest ideal” or “the nature of the highest good”—because the environment posing the query, so to speak, constantly shifts, as time progresses... The constant fact of eternal change does not eliminate the utility of all “moral” answers, however, as such answers must be formulated, before any action or interpretation can take place. 231

Human beings, as social animals, act “as if” motivated by a (limited) system of more or less internally consistent and integrated set of moral virtues . . . The nature of much of what we think of as moral behavior is still . . . embedded in unconscious procedure. 231–32

The moral structure, encoded in behavior, is too complex to completely consciously formulate. Nevertheless, that structure remains an integrated system (essentially, a historically determined personality, and representation thereof), a product of determined efforts (procedural and declarative) devoted toward integrated adaptation, and not a merely random or otherwise incomprehensible compilation of rituals and beliefs. 232

Human morality is exploratory activity . . . embodied in action, secondarily represented, communicated and abstractly elaborated in episodic and semantic memory. Such morality—act and thought—is nonarbitrary in structure and specifically goal-directed. It is predicated upon conceptualization of the highest good (which, in its highest form, is stable social organization allowing for manifestation of the process of creative adaptation). 234

Verbal theories of morality (explicit rules) match traditional images of moral behavior, and action undertaken remains in concordance with both. This integrated morality lends predictability to behavior, constitutes the basis for the stable state, and helps ensure that emotion remains under control. 235

The motivational relevance of an object or situation is dependent . . . upon representation of a (hypothetically) ideal state . . . and upon generation of an action sequence designed to attain that ideal. [Underlying this model are] “articles of faith” . . . axioms of morality, so to speak—some explicit (represented declaratively, in image and word), most still implicit—which evolved in the course of human exploration and social organization, over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. 238

The imagistic representation of the morality constituting a given society is likely to be incomplete, as the complexity of the patterns emerging consequential to the totality of social interaction exceeds (current) representational capacity. The semantic representations perched above the images are likely to be even more incomplete . . . So, while some of the rules governing behavior have become completely explicit and understood, others will remain partially implicit (and poorly understood). 256

The alternative or foreign viewpoint is in fact reasonably considered evil (although this consideration is dangerously one-sided), when viewed in terms of its potential destructive capacity, from within the strict confines of the historically determined social-psychological adaptive structure. It is only within the domain of meta-morality (which is the morality designed to update moral rules) that the strange may be tolerated or even welcomed. 262

Once the nature of morality is coded semantically, so that the implicit hierarchically structured presuppositions of behavior have been rendered explicit, they can be considered, debated and altered in their essential nature. Such alteration is capable of resonating down the cognitive chain to procedure itself. 264

Every culture maintains certain key beliefs that are centrally important to that culture, upon which all secondary beliefs are predicated. These key beliefs cannot be easily given up, because if they are, everything falls, and the unknown once again rules. Western morality and behavior, for example, are predicated on the assumption that every individual is sacred. This belief was already extant in its nascent form among the ancient Egyptians, and provides the very cornerstone of Judeo-Christian civilization. Successful challenge to this idea would invalidate the actions and goals of the Western individual; would destroy the Western dominance hierarchy, the social context for individual action. In the absence of this central assumption, the body of Western law—formalized myth, codified morality—erodes and falls. There are no individual rights, no individual value— and the foundation of the Western social (and psychological) structure dissolves. 264

Group identity—inculcated morality and accepted interpretation—serves to constrain the motivational significance of experiential phenomena. When that identity . . . is challenged, such constraints vanish. 267

morality: description of unbearable present, ideal future and means of transformation 280

Individual intrapsychic representation of cumulative historically predicated human experience makes the one into the many, so to speak; makes the individual into the embodiment of group experience, to date. Development of moral sense, and moral choice, constitutes an emergent property of such incorporation of knowledge. Knowledge of morality, of good and evil, presupposes the presence of alternative possibilities for action in a given situation—means capacity for conceptualization of alternative ideals, toward which behavior can be devoted. 309

The morality of an aggressive act . . .depends on the nature of the context in which it is manifested, just as the meaning of a given word is defined by the sentence, the paragraph—even the book or culture—in which it appears. Evil is a living complex. Its nature can be most clearly comprehended through examination of the “personality” it has “adopted” in mythology, literature and fantasy, elaborated in the lengthy course of historical development. This personality consists of those “meta”-attributes of evil that have remained stable over time despite dramatic shifts in the particulars of human existence and human morality. 318

The heroic act of updating current morality, however—through the promotion of uncomfortable contact with the unknown—creates chaos only in the service of higher order. To repress that process and cling “patriotically” to tradition is to ensure that tradition will collapse precipitously—and far more dangerously—at some point in the not-too-distant future. 322

The fact, regardless of content, is not evil; it is mere (terrible) actuality. It is the attitude to the fact that has a moral or immoral nature. There are no evil facts—although there are facts about evil; it is denial of the unacceptable fact that constitutes evil—at least insofar as human control extends. The suppression of unbearable fact transforms the conservative tendency to preserve into the authoritarian tendency to crush; transforms the liberal wish to transform into the decadent desire to subvert. 361

From within the confines of a particular conceptualization, certain behaviors, productions of the imagination and ideas are attributed status of good and status of evil, in accordance with their perceived utility, with regard to a particular goal. Any act or idea that interferes with current individual desire becomes the fool, or worse—the enemy. . . What may be regarded as useful and necessary from a higher order of morality may look positively useless and counterproductive from a lower—and will come to be treated in that manner. 366

The child and the primitive are both concerned primarily with how to behave—how to organize behavior, contra nature, in the social community, to simultaneously and continuously meet ends deemed desirable. It is only much later, after these most fundamental of issues have been resolved, that the means of resolution themselves can be questioned . . . This more abstract ability allows for answer to the meta-problem of morality, posed (much) earlier: not “how to behave?” but “how can (or is or was) how to behave be determined?” 381

Translation of tradition into law makes verbally abstract what had previously been, at best, encoded in image—makes the morality of the culture and the moral individual “conscious” for the first time. 386

Mythic narrative offers dramatic presentation of morality, which is the study of what should be. Such narrative concerns itself with the meaning of the past, with the implications of past existence for current and future activity. This meaning constitutes the ground for the organization of behavior. 390

To what end are all behaviors (and representations of those behaviors) archetypally subjugated? Toward establishment of a state—a spiritual kingdom—that allows the behavioral processes that transform and establish morality to flourish. Historical cultures, after all— at least those expressly open to change—organize behavior such that the self and the other are treated, in the ideal (implicit or explicit) with the respect due to the mediator of order and chaos. . . . Establishment of such organization, however, poses threat to morality predicated strictly upon adherence to tradition. 392

The New Testament’s description of the passion of Christ . . . portrays the process and consequences of revolutionary restructuring of the axioms of Western morality. . . His manner of being is that which moves morality itself from rule of law to rule of spirit—which means process. 393

Once a certain clarity of spirit is attained, as a consequence of conscientious, disciplined adherence to tradition, it becomes possible to determine what the good is, what should be done—rather than merely what should not . . . The capacity to act in a disciplined manner—to follow the rules—is a necessary precondition to adult flexibility, but should not be confused with truly adult morality, which is the capacity to produce new sets of rules, with updated adaptive utility. 395

Morality of tradition is not predicated upon the same presumptions as morality of cooperation. Rigid traditionalists assume that the answer to the question “what is the good?” can be—has been—answered permanently, and concretely, with the list of laws. Such a list is always insufficient, however, for the purposes of complete adaptation. 399

Socialized children, in complex human societies, embody the morality of their culture in their behavior long before they are able to abstractly represent or semantically describe rationale for that morality, and before they can consciously (episodically or semantically) remember learning how to behave. The same can be said for adults: the existence of morality—that intrinsic aspect of social behavior—long precedes representation of morality and rational description of grounds for its existence. Morality, at its most fundamental level, is an emergent property of social interaction, embodied in individual behavior, implicit in the value attributed to objects and situations, grounded (unconsciously) in procedural knowledge. 400

0 notes