Holotopia: Socialized reality

H O L O T O P I A: F I V E I N S I G H T S

Here we'll talk about the core of our proposal—to change the very relationship we have with information. And through information, the relationship we have with the world; and with ourselves.

The relationship we have with information, and through information with the world and with ourselves, is founded on unstated beliefs and values. Like the foundations of a house, they hold the entire edifice of our culture, while themselves remaining invisible. That's why we call them simply foundations.

Needless to say, a cultural revival is really just a natural result of a fundamental shift in those foundations. Wasn't that what the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, were really all about?

From the traditional culture we have adopted a myth, incomparably more subversive than the myth of creation. That myth now serves the foundation stone on which the edifice of our culture has been erected.

A clue to cultural revival

As movies tend to, Alain Resnais' "My American Uncle" follows its characters through strained relationships with parents, career ups and downs and love-related hopes and disappointments. But "My American Uncle" offers also a meta-narrative, which (we propose) turns it into a new paradigm art project.

In that way, the movie federates a socially relevant insight of a researcher, neuroscientist Henri Laborit. At the end of the movie, Laborit appears on the screen in person, and summarizes this insight:

The unconscious is a formidable instrument. Not only because it holds all that we have repressed, things too painful for us to express, because we'd be punished by society. But also because all that is authorized, even rewarded by society, has been placed in our brain since birth. We're unaware of its presence, and yet it guides our actions. This unconscious, which is not Freud's, is the most dangerous. What we call the personality of an individual is built up from a grab-bag of value judgments, prejudices and platitudes. As he grows older, they become more and more rigid, less and less subject to question. Take away one single stone from this edifice, and it all crumbles. The result is anguish. And anguish stops at nothing, neither murder, nor genocide, nor war, in the case of social groups.

We are beginning to understand by what mechanism, why and how, throughout the history and in the present, the hierarchies of dominance have been established. To go to the moon, we must know the laws of gravity. Knowing the laws of gravity doesn't make us free of gravity. It merely allows us to utilize it.

Until we have shown the inhabitants of this planet the way their brain functions, the way they use it, until they know it has always been used to dominate others, there is little chance that anything will change.

Reality and beyond

Did Moses really return from Mount Sinai with ten commandments, written in stone by God himself?

For centuries, our ancestors considered this a fact. But to a modern mind, the fact that this would violate certain "laws of physics" makes such beliefs untenable.

When Nietzsche observed, famously, that "God is dead", he did not of course mean that God had physically died. Or even that the belief in God lost its bearings in our culture, which was an obvious fact. What he meant was that we, as culture, lost a compendium of functions that had earlier rested on the belief in God as foundations.

Can we survive in a complex world, develop human quality, renew culture...—without principles to live by? Without even a foundation on which such principles could emerge?

"Reality" is a myth

Our contemporary culture too is founded a popular belief—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality"; that "correspondence with reality" can be rationally verified; and that "the scientific worldview" is a result of such verification, and therefore "objectively true".

"Correspondence with reality" cannot be verified

In "Evolution of Physics", Einstein and Infeld explained why "correspondence to reality" cannot be rationally verified, by using the parable of a closed watch. Einstein, furthermore, held the position that the belief that the results of our speculation or reflection correspond to reality is a common product of illusion. Both arguments are summarized and commented [here].

Since our goal is not to give a new "objectively true reality picture", but only to submit a legitimate way of looking at our theme, nothing more needs to be said.

Our culture too has been founded on a myth

It follows that our culture too is founded on a myth.

This can easily be understood, and forgiven, if one takes into account that the belief that "truth" means "correspondence with reality" is deeply engrained in our 'cultural DNA', and even in our language. When I write "worldviews", my word processor underlines the word in red. The word "worldview" doesn't have a plural; since there is only one world, there can be only one worldview—the one that corresponds to that world.

"Reality" is an instrument of socialization

"Reality" may best be understood as a concept the traditions develop for the purpose of socialization. By socialization, we mean "conditioning"; the results of uncountably many "carrots and sticks", internalized throughout our lifetime, and giving us certain automatic responses that constitute our "personality". Laboriot comments in "My American Uncle":</p>

... the mother embracing a child, the decoration that will flatter the narcissism of a warrior, the applause that will accompany a narration of an actor. All this frees will free certain chemical substances in the brain and result in pleasure. (...) Finally, we need to be aware that what penetrates into our nervous system from birth and perhaps even before, in utero, the stimuli that will enter our nervous system come to us essentially from the others, and that we are the others. When we die, it will be the others that we've internalized in our nervous system, who have constructed us, who have constructed our brain, who have filled it up, that will die.

Bourdieu's theory of socialization

In his "theory of practice", Pierre Bourdieu gave us a comprehensive sociological theory of socialization. Here it may be sufficient to just mention his keyword doxa (which he adopted from Max Weber, and whose usage dates all the way back to Plato), which Bourdieu used to point to the experience that the societal order of things in which we live constitutes the only possible one. "Orthodoxy" leaves room for alternatives, of which only one, ours, is "right". Doxa ignores even the possibility of alternatives.

What makes a king "real"

The king enters the room and everyone bows. Naturally, you bow too. Even if you may not feel like doing that, deep inside you know that if you don't bow down your head, you may lose it.

So what is it, really, that makes the difference between "a real king", and an imposter who "only believes" that he's a king? Both consider themselves as kings, and impersonate the corresponding "habitus". In the former case, however, everyone else has also been successfully socialized accordingly.

A "real king" will be treated with highest honors. An imposter will be incarcerated in an appropriate institution. Despite the fact that all too often, a single "real king" caused far more suffering and destruction than all the madmen and criminals combined.

"Reality" is a product of power structure

Symbolic power

What strategy could be more effective for controlling us, for inhibiting our societal and cultural evolution ('keeping Galilei in house arrest'), then to construct the very worldview we collectively share and uphold as "reality"?

The story, which we have not yet told in sufficient detail, is about Bourdieu witnessing in Algeria how power morphed—from censorship, torture and prison (during the Algeria's war for independence, where it was just as it was in Galilei's time), to becoming symbolic power, after Algeria's independence. The point here is that the same power relationships reconfigured themselves, and remained unrecognized as such. This was the insight that made Bourdieu a sociologist.

As a quick illustration, imagine a young Kabylian man who, driven by economic necessity, has just moved to a city. Not only his sense of honor, but even the way he walks and talks are there unappealing, even to the young women who migrated from his very village—because they see something different in movies, and in restaurants...

What is truly revolutionary here is to consider the cultural and societal order of things as a source of power, and hence as a political issue. Even when this power does not manifest itself as ordinary violence, and is not even a result of conscious scheming. Bourdieu's keywords "symbolic power" and "symbolic capital" help us perceive and understand this new sort of power.

We elaborated on these ideas and also on Damasio's that we'll take up next here.

Descartes' Error

Bourdieu's sociological theories synergize most beautifully with the ideas of cognitive neurosurgeon Antonio Damasio.

The point here—which Damasio deftly coded into the very title of his book "Descartes' Error"—is that we are not the rational decision makers, as the founding fathers of the Enlightenment made us believe. Damasio showed that the very contents of our rational mind (our priorities, and what options we are at all capable to conceive of and consider) are controlled by a cognitive filter, which is pre-rational and embodied.

Damasio's theory synergizes beautifully with Bourdieu's "theory of practice", to which it gives a physiological explanation.

Who keeps Galilei in house arrest

We did not really liberate ourselves from the power structure; and from the negative socialization it engender. Our socialization only changed hands—no longer the prerogative of the kings and the clergy, it is now used to subjugate it to new power holders.

This terrain is all too familiar. The anecdotes shared below will serve to remind us how we ended up needing so much human development; and a cultural revival.

Pavlov and Chakhotin

Pavlov's experiments on dogs (for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize) can serve us as a suitable metaphor for socialization

.

After having worked with Pavlov in his laboratory, Sergey Chakhotin participated in the 1932 German elections against Hitler. He noticed that Hitler was socializing German people to accept his ideas. He practiced, and advocated, the use non-factual or implicit information to counteract Hitler's approach (see an example on the right). Adding "t" to the familiar Nazi greeting produced "Heilt Hitler" (cure Hitler).

Later, in France, Chakhotin explained his insights about socializing people in a book titled "Viole des foules par la propagande politique"—see it commented here.

Edelman and symbolic action

Already in the 1960s the researchers knew that the conventional mechanisms of democracy (the elections) don't serve the purpose they were assumed to serve (distribution of power)—because (field research showed) the voters are unfamiliar with the candidates' proposed policies, the incumbents don't tend to fulfill their electoral promises and so on. Edelman contributed an interesting addition: It's not that the elections don't serve a purpose; it's just that this purpose is different from what's believed. The purpose is symbolic (they serve to legitimize the governments and the policies, by making people feel they were asked etc.)

“[G]overnmental authority needs not be, and typically is not, based on competence but rather on skill in manipulating the spectacle of building audiences and keeping them entertained.”

Have you been wondering what makes one qualified to become the President of the United States?

To political science, Edelman contributed a thorough study of the "symbolic uses of politics". A half-century ago.

Freud and Bernays

While Sigmund Freud was struggling to convince the European academics that we, humans, are not as rational as they liked to believe, his American nephew Edward Bernays had no difficulty convincing the American business that exploiting this characteristics of the human psyche is—good business. Today, Bernays is considered "the founder of public relations in the US", and of modern advertising. His ideas "have become standard in politics and commerce".

The four documentaries about Bernays' work and influence by Adam Curtis (click here) are most highly recommended.

Socialized reality in popular culture

As always, this core element present in our 'collective unconscious' (even if it has all too often eluded our personal awareness) has found various expressions in popular culture—as the following two examples will illustrate.

The Matrix

The Matrix is an obvious metaphor for socialized reality—where the "machines" (read power structures) are keeping people in a media-induced false reality, while using them as the power source. The following excerpt require no comments.

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.

Oedipus Rex

King Oedipus was not really a young man troubled by sexual attraction to his mother, as Freud may have made us believe. His problem was a conception that he was socialized to accept as reality—which drew him ever closer to a tragic destiny, as he was doing his best to avoid it.

A parable for our civilization?

"Reality" is a product of socialization

Bourdieu's "theory of practice"

We have now come to the first of the three main components of the socialized reality insight—that what we consider "reality" is really a product of socialization. But what exactly does this mean? What is socialization?

While a wealth of academic insights may be drawn upon to illuminate this uniquely relevant idea, we here represent them all by the work of a single researcher, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. His "theory of practice" is the theory of socialization.

Specifically, the meaning of Bourdieu's keyword doxa (which he adopted from Max Weber, and whose usage dates all the way back to Plato) points to an essential property of what we call socialized reality. Bourdieu used this keyword to point to the common experience that people had through the ages—that the societal order of things in which they lived was the only possible one. "Orthodoxy" implies that more than one are possible, but that only one ("ours") is the "right" one. Doxa ignores even the possibility of alternative options.

Two other Bourdieu's central keywords, "habitus", and "field", will provide us what we need to take along. Think of "habitus" as embodied predispositions to act and behave in a certain way. Think of "field" as something akin to a magnetic field, which deftly draws each person in a society to his or her "habitus". Instead of theorizing more, we provide an intuitive explanation in terms of a common situation, which is intended to serve as a parable.

From Bourdieu's theory, "reality" emerges as a structured 'turf'; each "habitus" ("king", "page", "cardinal" and so on) is a result of past structuring—and the starting point of new socialization into these roles; which can of course change with time, as results of future 'turf strife'.

What makes a real king real

The king enters the room and everyone bows. Naturally, you bow too. Even if you may not feel like doing that, deep inside you know that if you don't bow down your head, you may lose it.

So what is it, really, that makes the difference between "a real king", and an imposter who "only believes" that he's a king? Both consider themselves as kings, and impersonate the corresponding "habitus". In the former case, however, everyone else has also been successfully socialized accordingly.

A "real king" will be treated with highest honors. An imposter will be incarcerated in an appropriate institution. Despite the fact that all too often, a single "real king" caused far more suffering and destruction than all the madmen and criminals combined.

"Reality" is a basic human need

Aaron Antonovsky and salutogenesis

Among the women who survived the Holocaust, about two thirds later developed a variety of psychosomatic problems. Aaron Antonovsky focused his research on the ones that didn't. He found out that what distinguished them was their greater "sense of coherence"—which he defined as "feeling of confidence that one's environment is predictable and that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected". Today Antonovsky is considered an iconic progenitor of "salutogenesis"—the scientific study of conditions for and ways to health.

We mention Antonovsky to point to what is perhaps intuitively obvious: That a shared "reality" is a basic human need. Every social group provided its members with a shared "sense of coherence" (a predictable environment, a relatively stable role and "habitus" recognized by others, a shared way to comprehend the world...) But at what price!

Socialization determines our awareness

Antonio Damasio and Descartes' error

The second main component of the socialized reality insight represents a major turning point from the self-image which the Enlightenment gave us, humans; and which served as the foundation for our democracy, legislature, ethics, culture... Here too we represent a large body of research with the work of a single researcher—Antonio Damasio.

The point here—which Damasio deftly coded into the very title of his book "Descartes' Error"—is that we are not the rational decision makers, as the founding fathers of the Enlightenment made us believe. Damasio showed that the very contents of our rational mind (our priorities, and what options we are at all capable to conceive of and consider) are controlled by a cognitive filter, which is pre-rational and embodied.

Damasio's theory synergizes beautifully with Bourdieu's "theory of practice", to which it gives a physiological explanation.

George Lakoff and philosophy in the flesh

Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, and Johnson, a philosopher, teamed up to give us a revision of philosophy, based on what the cognitive science found, under the title "philosophy in the flesh". The book's opening paragraphs, titled "How Cognitive Science Reopens Central Philosophical Questions", read:

The mind is inherently embodied.

Thought is mostly unconscious.

Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

These are three major findings of cognitive science. More than two millennia of a priori philosophical speculation about these aspects of reason are over. Because of these discoveries, philosophy can never be the same again.

When taken together and considered in detail, these three findings from the science of the mind are inconsistent with central parts of Western philosophy. They require a thorough rethinking of the most popular current approaches, namely, Anglo-American analytic philosophy and postmodernist philosophy.

</div> </div>

The mirror points to a leverage point

Our brief sketch points to academia (and not the Wall Street) as the systemic leverage point, which holds the capability to recreate our society's 'headlights', and hence "reality". The Mirror ideogram we use to summarize the academia's situation, pointing to a course of action—in a similar way as the Modernity ideogram summarizes the situation our society or civilization is in.

Our point

Mirror ideogram

We Mirror ideogram as a visual shorthand symbolizes two pivotal changes in academia's situation: the ending of innocence, and the beginning of accountability.

The end of innocence

It is no longer legitimate to claim the innocence of "objective observers of reality". By seeing ourselves in the mirror, we see that it has along been just us looking at the world, and creating representations of it.

The beginning of accountability

When we see ourselves in the mirror, we see ourselves in the world.

We must pause and self-reflect

As a symbol for the situation, which the academia's evolution so far has brought us to, the mirror demands that we interrupt the academic business as usual and self-reflect—about the meaning and purpose of our work. A genuine academic dialog in front of the mirror is the core of our practical proposal, our call to action.

Enormous gains can be made

The change of the relationship we have with information, which is the core of our proposal, is here symbolized as a perfectly feasible yet seemingly magical next step—through the mirror!

To the proposed dialog in front of the mirror we are offering our two prototypes—of the holoscope and of the holotopia—as models of the academic and the social reality on the other side of the mirror.

Hence our overall proposal—the way we've federated the results of The Club of Rome as summarized by Peccei—is that the academia should step through the mirror; and guide our society to a completely new reality, which awaits on the other side.

Truth by convention and design epistemology

Truth by convention is the truth that suits the design order of things. It is the new foundation stone, to CONSISTENTLY replace reification. 'Archimedean point' for giving knowledge once again the power to 'move the world'.

Design epistemology is what the Modernity ideogram is suggesting—information, and the way we handle it, are considered pieces in a larger puzzle or puzzles. Not the "objective reality" puzzle, but the REAL reality...

Information and implicit information

Information is defined as "recorded experience". The point is that any kind of record of experience is information. So information can be either explicit (where something is explicitly stated or claimed), and implicit (such as the mores of the tradition, beliefs, values etc. etc.). The point of this definition is to broaden the scope.

Visual literacy definition

Visual literacy

In 1969, four visionary researchers saw the need, and initiated the International Visual Literacy Association. What exactly did they see? We introduce their ideas by the following ideogram, see it commented here.

In the above picture the implicit information meets the explicit information in a direct duel. Who wins? Since this poster is a cigarette advertising, the answer is obvious.

And so is this conclusion:

While the official culture is focused on explicit messages and rational discourse, our popular culture is being dominated, and created, by implicit information—the imagery, which we have not yet learned to rationally decode, and counteract.

This prototype is a systemic intervention on a number of levels:

It showed how an existing academic discipline can be given an explicit definition—and hence a (non-traditional) purpose and orientation
It showed how to make a definition whose purpose is not reification (defining X to allow for distinguishing what "is" and "is not" X), but perspective (understanding the big point, the purpose of it all)
It defined visual literacy as literacy concerned with implicit information—and implicit information as the way in which culture tends to be created, as we saw above

Furthermore, like a similar initiative to define "design", this initiative was well received by the corresponding academic community.