Steps to an Ecology of Mind
We may joke about the way misplaced concreteness abounds in every word of psychoanalytic writing – but in spite of all the muddled thinking that Freud started, psychoanalysis remains as the outstanding contribution, almost the only contribution to our understanding of the family – a monument to the importance and value of loose thinking.
Experiments in Thinking About Observed Ethnological Material | Gregory Bateson
There’s a collection of Bateson’s papers and essays which I’ve already mentioned a couple of times on this blog. It’s called Steps to an Ecology of Mind and I recommend you track it down with all haste, dear reader. It ranks up there with Einstein’s Ideas and Opinions as one of the most important collections of writings of the 20th century.
Like Ideas and Opinions, Bateson’s papers are sometimes far from the cutting edge of the subject they address (the earliest being over 70 years old now). But he writes with a similar piercing clarity and wisdom to Einstein and so provides a deep yet rounded understanding of his subject. He demonstrates methodologies and ways of thinking, rather than merely providing information.
For instance, the article Cybernetic Explanation cleared up a rather abstract area of confusion that had bugged me since university – but that I’d never been able to elucidate – regarding proof by reductio ad absurdum. And while his essay Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art may not contain the most up-to-date theories on primitive art (being almost 40 years old), it nonetheless forced me to re-evaluate some of my beliefs about the nature of consciousness and of human psychology.
No mean feat for an essay about cave paintings.
And it’s fair to say that it’s my views on psychology that have been most influenced by Bateson. Probably the most mind-blowing essay – for me – is Morale and National Character. In it Bateson very clearly presents the reasons why it’s not only legitimate to view and analyse nations using the tools of psychology, but why those tools are actually far better suited to that task than they are to the task of analysing the individual.
This was like an explosion going off in my mind. For years I’ve been of the opinion that what cognitive theorist Douglas Hostadter (dunno if he coined the phrase, but he’s where I first read it) calls “emergent intelligence” plays a far more significant role in the behaviour of corporations, institutions and nations… any large, organised group of people in fact… than is acknowledged.
Not only that, but I’ve always felt that although the tools of modern psychoanalysis are often too blunt to deal with the absurd complexity of individual human consciousness, that they actually have great relevance when examining the motivations and behaviour of the infintely simpler consciousnesses of groups of people.
Incidentally, there may be those who are a little puzzled by the idea that an individual human consciousness would be significantly more complex than a consciousness consisting of multiples of those individuals. It seems vaguely counter-intuitive. But actually the complexity of a consciousness is primarily (though not entirely) a factor of the number of constituent members (or “neurons”). The internal complexity of each individual neuron is a far smaller factor, though conversely it is a far larger factor in the likelihood of systemic failure (mental illness).
All of this seemed to make perfect sense to me… and whenever I applied my theory to the world, it appeared to work. The larger the organisation, the more prone to irrationality and dysfunction it becomes as the collective instabilities in the constituent members get amplified. Two perfect examples being, of course, globalised capitalism and modern China which have both descended into extreme psychosis… in the sense that they are unable to function sustainably in the environment in which they find themselves; the real world.
However, I’ve long become suspicious of assuming that just because something made perfect sense to me, that it did – in fact – make perfect sense. Too often have I been greeted with blank incomprehension as I explained why something obviously had to be a certain way. So it’s a joy to read an essay like Morale and National Character and discover that not only is someone thinking about the world in exactly the same way as you (albeit drawing different conclusions on occasion), but they can explain succinctly just why this way of thinking about the world is so very informative and so very valuable.
Anyways, I didn’t want to write a traditional review of this book as it’s far from a traditional book. I thought instead I’d explain just why it’s so important to me, and why I think anyone interested in anthropology, psychiatry, psychology, evolution, the history and function of art, epistemology or what it means to be human should read this important collection.
Sounds like a must for me.
In a similar vein to the “psychoanalysing groups” bit, I’ve just read the Ramsey Dukes’ brilliant Little Book of Demons. He’s talking about the magical technique personifying problems (e.g. runs of bad luck, or a broken photocopier) as demons in order to relate to them and strike deals with them. What’s interesting is his main explanation as to why this should be effective and not just some regressive superstition. He argues that our most powerful cognitive abilities relate to social interaction (and indeed many current theories see the monkey brain as having expanded so much on its way to us as a result of the need to cope with larger groups and more complex social interactions). So, the idea goes, if you personify something – whether it’s abstraction or something material that isn’t human – it’s like flipping a switch to bring all that social sophistication to bear on your relationship to it.
This reasoning makes me wonder if I’m human sometimes – am I really the inheritor of anything like “social sophistication”?! But in general it’s persuasive. Slightly different to the Bateson thing, but another reason why using analysis meant for individuals might also work well for groups.
August 2nd, 2006 | 7:26pm
by Gyrus
Definitely sounds intriguing.
As humans function together in bigger and bigger groups some character traits get magnified and concentrated, and others diluted, which I suppose is why nation-states and large corporations often act like single-minded psychopaths, displaying an indifference to ethical considerations that very few individuals could otherwise manage.
What’s the problem with reductio ad absurdam? Is he advocating intuistionistic logic? In some spheres I guess it’s appropriate, but from a technical point of view, I really can’t be arsed with it.
August 4th, 2006 | 10:01am
by Larry Teabag
displaying an indifference to ethical considerations that very few individuals could otherwise manage.
I believe it goes far further than that Larry. I would argue for instance that Israel is a nation suffering from paranoid psychosis as a direct result of amplified post-traumatic stress disorder.
Bateson doesn’t say that, but he does offer a coherent justification for describing a non-human mind in terms usually applicable only to humans. And a reason why the tools of psychoanalysis can be of use when dealing with non-human minds.
With regards to reductio ad absurdum, it’s merely that he uses “cybernetic thinking” (analysis by ‘restraints’) to illustrate proof by reductio ad absurdum in a way which cleared up a misunderstanding that I’d always had.
He builds conceptual bridges and links between disciplines and ideas that are both breath-taking and – only in retrospect – very obvious. And you have to like a collection of papers that includes one entitled: On Empty-Headedness Among Biologists and State Boards of Education.
August 4th, 2006 | 2:28pm
by Jim