The Book_ On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are Part 3

Let it be clear, furthermore, that the ego-fiction is in no way essential to the individual, to the total human organism, in fulfilling and expressing his individuality. For every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree. To manifest individuality, every branch must have a sensitive connection with the tree, just as our independently moving and differentiated fingers must have a sensitive connection with the whole body. The point, which can hardly be repeated too often, is that differentiation is not separation. The head and the feet are different, but not separate, and though man is not connected to the universe by exactly the same physical relation as branch to tree or feet to head, he is nonetheless connected-and by physical relations of fascinating complexity. The death of the individual is not disconnection but simply withdrawal. The corpse is like a footprint or an echo-the dissolving trace of something which the Self has ceased to do.

If, then, the differentiation of individuals is of great value, on the principle that variety is the spice of life, this value is not going to be enhanced by a self-contradictory definition of individuality. Our society-that is, we ourselves, all of us-is defining the individual with a double-bind, commanding him to be free and separate from the world, which he is not, for otherwise the command would not work. Under the circ.u.mstances, it works only in the sense of implanting an illusion of separateness, just as the commands of a hypnotist can create illusions.

Thus bamboozled, the individual-instead of fulfilling his unique function in the world-is exhausted and frustrated in efforts to accomplish, self-contradictory goals. Because he is now so largely defined as a separate person caught up in a mindless and alien universe, his princ.i.p.al task is to get one-up on the universe and to conquer nature.

This is palpably absurd, and since the task is never achieved, the individual is taught to live and work for some future in which the impossible will at last happen, if not for him, then at least for his children. We are thus breeding a type of human being incapable of living in the present-that is, of really living.

For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.

There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!" Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.

In other words, you have been hypnotized or conditioned by an educational processing-system arranged in grades or steps, supposedly leading to some ultimate Success. First nursery school or kindergarten, then the grades or forms of elementary school, preparing you for the great moment of secondary school! But then more steps, up and up to the coveted goal of the university. Here, if you are clever, you can stay on indefinitely by getting into graduate school and becoming a permanent student. Otherwise, you are headed step by step for the great Outside World of family-raising, business, and profession. Yet graduation day is a very temporary fulfillment, for with your first sales-promotion meeting you are back in the same old system, being urged to make that quota (and if you do, they'll give you a higher quota) and so progress up the ladder to sales manager, vice-president, and, at last, president of your own show (about forty to forty-five years old). In the meantime, the insurance and investment people have been interesting you in plans for Retirement-that really ultimate goal of being able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of all your labors. But when that day comes, your anxieties and exertions will have left you with a weak heart, false teeth, prostate trouble, s.e.xual impotence, fuzzy eyesight, and a vile digestion.

All this might have been wonderful if, at every stage, you had been able to play it as a game, finding your work as fascinating as poker, chess, or fis.h.i.+ng. But for most of us the day is divided into work-time and play-time, the work consisting largely of tasks which others pay us to do because they are abysmally uninteresting. We therefore work, not for the work's sake, but for money-and money is supposed to get us what we really want in our hours of leisure and play. In the United States even poor people have lots of money compared with the wretched and skinny millions of India, Africa, and China, while our middle and upper cla.s.ses (or should we say "income groups") are as prosperous as princes. Yet, by and large, they have but slight taste for pleasure. Money alone cannot buy pleasure, though it can help. For enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy.

I live close to a harbor packed with sailing-boats and luxurious cruisers which are seldom used, because seamans.h.i.+p is a difficult though rewarding art which their owners have no time to practice. They bought the boats either as status symbols or as toys, but on discovering that they were not toys (as advertised) they lost interest. The same is true of the entire and astounding abundance of pleasure-goods that we buy. Foodstuffs are prolific, but few know how to cook. Building materials abound in both quant.i.ty and variety, yet most homes look as if they had been made by someone who had heard of a house but never seen one. Silks, linens, wools, and cottons are available in colors and patterns galore, and yet most men dress like divinity students or undertakers, while women are slaves to the fas.h.i.+on game with its basic rule, "I have conformed sooner than you." The market for artists and sculptors has thrived as never before in history, but the paintings look as if they had been made with excrement or sc.r.a.ps from billboards, and the sculptures like mangled typewriters or charred lumber from a burned-down outhouse.(2) We have untold stacks of recorded music from every age and culture, and the most superb means of playing it. But who actually listens? Maybe a few pot-smokers.

This is perhaps a Henry Millerish exaggeration. Nevertheless, it strikes me more and more that America's reputation for materialism is unfounded-that is, if a materialist is a person who thoroughly enjoys the physical world and loves material things. In this sense, we are superb materialists when it comes to the construction of jet aircraft, but when we decorate the inside of these magnificent monsters for the comfort of pa.s.sengers it is nothing but frippery. High-heeled, narrow-hipped, doll-type girls serving imitation, warmed-over meals. For our pleasures are not material pleasures but symbols symbols of pleasure- of pleasure- attractively packaged but inferior in content.

The explanation is simple: most of our products are being made by people who do not enjoy making them, whether as owners or workers.

Their aim in the enterprise is not the product but money, and therefore every trick is used to cut the cost of production and hoodwink the buyer, by coloring and packaging chicanery, into the belief that the product is well and truly made. The only exceptions are those products which simply must must be excellent for reasons of safety or high cost of purchase-aircraft, computers, s.p.a.ce-rockets, scientific instruments, and so forth. be excellent for reasons of safety or high cost of purchase-aircraft, computers, s.p.a.ce-rockets, scientific instruments, and so forth.

But the whole scheme is a vicious circle, for when you have made the money what will you buy with it? Other pretentious fakes made by other money-mad manufacturers. The few real luxuries on the market are imports from "backward" countries, where peasants and craftsmen still take pride in their work. For example, the state of Oaxaca in Mexico produces some of the finest blankets in the world, and American buyers have been trying to import them in huge quant.i.ties.

But no amount of money will give the relatively few craftsmen who weave them time to fill the order. If they want the order, they must begin to cheat and produce inferior blankets. The only solution would be to train hundreds of new craftsmen. But Oaxaca is just getting television and has, for some time, had public education, so what up-and-coming young person would want to waste his days weaving blankets?

The poets and sages have, indeed, been saying for centuries that success in this world is vanity. "The worldly hope men set their hearts upon turns ashes," or, as we might put it in a more up-to-date idiom, just when our mouth was watering for the ultimate goodie, it turns out to be a mixture of plaster-of-paris, papier-mache, and plastic glue. Comes in any flavor. I have thought of putting this on the market as a universal substance, a prima materia, prima materia, for making anything and everything- for making anything and everything- houses, furniture, flowers, bread (they use it already), apples, and even people.

The world, they are saying, is a mirage. Everything is forever falling apart and there's no way of fixing it, and the more strenuously you grasp this airy nothingness, the more swiftly it collapses in your hands.

Western, technological civilization is, thus far, man's most desperate effort to beat the game-to understand, control, and fix this will-o'-the-wisp called life, and it may be that its very strength and skill will all the more rapidly dissolve its dreams. But if this is not to be so, technical power must be in the hands of a new kind of man.

In times past, recognition of the impermanence of the world usually led to withdrawal. On the one hand, ascetics, monks, and hermits tried to exorcise their desires so as to regard the world with benign resignation, or to draw back and back into the depths of consciousness to become one with the Self in its unmanifest state of eternal serenity.

On the other hand, others felt that the world was a state of probation where material goods were to be used in a spirit of stewards.h.i.+p, as loans from the Almighty, and where the main work of life is loving devotion to G.o.d and to man.

Yet both these responses are based on the initial supposition that the individual is the separate ego, and because this supposition is the work of a double-bind any task undertaken on this basis-including religion-will be self-defeating. Just because it is a hoax from the beginning, the personal ego can make only a phony response to life. For the world is an ever-elusive and ever-disappointing mirage only from the standpoint of someone standing aside from it-as if it were quite other than himself-and then trying to grasp it. Without birth and death, and without the perpetual trans.m.u.tation of all forms of life, the world would be static, rhythmless, undancing, mummified.

But a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewards.h.i.+p on the hypothesis of a future future reward, but the fullest collaboration with the world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts-based on the realization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process. This realization is already in us in the sense that our bodies know it, our bones and nerves and sense-organs. We do not know it only in the sense that the thin ray of conscious attention has been taught to ignore it, and taught so thoroughly that we are very genuine fakes indeed. reward, but the fullest collaboration with the world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts-based on the realization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process. This realization is already in us in the sense that our bodies know it, our bones and nerves and sense-organs. We do not know it only in the sense that the thin ray of conscious attention has been taught to ignore it, and taught so thoroughly that we are very genuine fakes indeed.

(1) "Until the middle of the 17th century Chinese and European scientific theories were about on a par, and only thereafter did European thought begin to move ahead so rapidly. But though it marched under the banner of Cartesian-Newtonian mechanicism, that viewpoint could not permanently suffice for the needs of science- the time came when it was imperative to look upon physics as the study of the smaller organisms, and biology as the study of the larger organisms. When the time came, Europe (or rather; by then, the world) was able to draw upon a mode of thinking very old, very wise, and not characteristically European at all." Needham, Science and Science and Civilisation in China Civilisation in China. Cambridge University Press, 1956. Vol. II, p. 303.

(2) This is not to be taken as a rejection of "modern art" in general, but only of that rather dominant aspect of it which claims that the artist should represent his time. And since this is the time of junkyards, billboards, and expensive slums, many artists- otherwise bereft of talent-make a name for themselves by the "tasteful" framing or pedestaling of objets trouves objets trouves from the city dump. from the city dump.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE WORLD IS YOUR BODY.

WE HAVE now found out that many things which we felt to be basic realities of nature are social fictions, arising from commonly accepted or traditional ways of thinking about the world. These fictions have included: 1. The notion that the world is made up or composed of separate bits or things.

2. That things are differing forms of some basic stuff.

3. That individual organisms are such things, and that they are inhabited and partially controlled by independent egos.

4. That the opposite poles of relations.h.i.+ps, such as light/darkness and solid/s.p.a.ce, are in actual conflict which may result in the permanent victory of one of the poles.

5. That death is evil, and that life must be a constant war against it.

6. That man, individually and collectively, should aspire to be top species and put himself in control of nature.

Fictions are useful so long as they are taken as fictions. They are then simply ways of "figuring" the world which we agree to follow so that we can act in cooperation, as we agree about inches and hours, numbers and words, mathematical systems and languages. If we have no agreement about measures of time and s.p.a.ce, I would have no way of making a date with you at the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue at 3 P.M. on Sunday, April 4.

But the troubles begin when the fictions are taken as facts. Thus in 1752 the British government inst.i.tuted a calendar reform which required that September 2 of that year be dated September 14, with the result that many people imagined that eleven days had been taken off their lives, and rushed to Westminster screaming, "Give us back our eleven days!"

Such confusions of fact and fiction make it all the more difficult to find wider acceptance of common laws, languages, measures, and other useful inst.i.tutions, and to improve those already employed.

But, as we have seen, the deeper troubles arise when we confuse ourselves and our fundamental relations.h.i.+ps to the world with fictions (or figures of thought) which are taken for granted, unexamined, and often self-contradictory. Here, as we have also seen, the "nub" problem is the self-contradictory definition of man himself as a separate and independent being in in the world, as distinct from a special action of the world. Part of our difficulty is that the latter view of man seems to make him no more than a puppet, but this is because, in trying to accept or understand the latter view, we are still in the grip of the former. To say that man is an action of the world is not to define him as a "thing" which is helplessly pushed around by all other "things." We have to get beyond Newton's vision of the world as a system of billiard b.a.l.l.s in which every individual ball is pa.s.sively knocked about by all the rest! the world, as distinct from a special action of the world. Part of our difficulty is that the latter view of man seems to make him no more than a puppet, but this is because, in trying to accept or understand the latter view, we are still in the grip of the former. To say that man is an action of the world is not to define him as a "thing" which is helplessly pushed around by all other "things." We have to get beyond Newton's vision of the world as a system of billiard b.a.l.l.s in which every individual ball is pa.s.sively knocked about by all the rest!

Remember that Aristotle's and Newton's preoccupation with casual determinism was that they were trying to explain how one thing or event was influenced by others, forgetting that the division of the world into separate things and events was a fiction. To say that certain events are casually connected is only a clumsy way of saying that they are features of the same event, like the head and tail of the cat.

It is essential to understand this point thoroughly: that the thing-in-itself (Kant's Ding an sich Ding an sich), whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, is not only unknowable-it does not exist. This is important not only for sanity and peace of mind, but also for the most "practical" reasons of economics, politics, and technology. Our practical projects have run into confusion again and again through failure to see that individual people, nations, animals, insects, and plants do not exist in or by themselves.

This is not to say only that things exist in relation to one another, but that what we call "things" are no more than glimpses of a unified process. Certainly, this process has distinct features which catch our attention, but we must remember that distinction is not separation. Sharp and clear as the crest of the wave may be, it necessarily "goes with" the smooth and less featured curve of the trough. So also the bright points of the stars "gowith" (if I may now coin a word) the dark background of s.p.a.ce.

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In the Gestalt theory of perception this is known as the figure/ground relations.h.i.+p. This theory a.s.serts, in brief, that no figure is ever perceived except in relation to a background. If, for example, you come so close to me that the outline of my body lies beyond your field of vision, the "thing" you will see will no longer be my body. Your attention will instead be "captured" by a coat-b.u.t.ton or a necktie, for the theory also a.s.serts that, against any given background, our attention is almost automatically "won" by any moving shape (in contrast with the stationary background) or by any enclosed or tightly complex feature (in contrast with the simpler, featureless background).

Thus when I draw the following figure on a blackboard- and ask, "What have I drawn?" people will generally identify it as a circle, a ball, a disk, or a ring. Only rarely will someone reply, "A wall with a hole in it."

In other words, we do not easily notice that all features of the world hold their boundaries in common with the areas that surround them- that the outline of the figure is also the inline of the background. Let us suppose that my circle/hole figure were to move through the following series of shapes: Most people would thereupon ascribe the movement, the act, to the enclosed area as if it were an amoeba. But I might just as well have been drawing the dry patches in a thin film of water spread over a polished table. But the point is that, in either case, the movement of any feature of the world cannot be ascribed to the outside alone or to the inside alone. Both move together.

Our difficulty in noticing both the presence and the action of the background in these simple ill.u.s.trations is immensely increased when it comes to the behavior of living organisms. When we watch ants scurrying hither and thither over a patch of sand, or people milling around in a public square, it seems absolutely undeniable that the ants and the people are alone responsible for the movement. Yet in fact this is only a highly complex version of the simple problem of the three b.a.l.l.s moving in s.p.a.ce, in which we had to settle for the solution that the entire configuration (Gestalt) is moving-not the b.a.l.l.s alone, not the s.p.a.ce alone, not even the b.a.l.l.s and the s.p.a.ce together in concert, but rather a single field of solid/s.p.a.ce of which the b.a.l.l.s and the s.p.a.ce are, as it were, poles.

The illusion that organisms move entirely on their own is immensely persuasive until we settle down, as scientists do, to describe their behavior carefully. Then the scientist, be he biologist, sociologist, or physicist, finds very rapidly that he cannot say what the organism is doing unless, at the same time, he describes the behavior of its surroundings. Obviously, an organism cannot be described as walking just in terms of leg motion, for the direction and speed of this walking must be described in terms of the ground upon which it moves.

Furthermore, this walking is seldom haphazard. It has something to do with food-sources in the area, with the hostile or friendly behavior of other organisms, and countless other factors which we do not immediately consider when attention is first drawn to a prowling ant.

The more detailed the description of our ant's behavior becomes, the more it has to include such matters as density, humidity, and temperature of the surrounding atmosphere, the types and sources of its food, the social structure of its own species, and that of neighboring species with which it has some symbiotic or preying relations.h.i.+p.

When at last the whole vast list is compiled, and the scientist calls "Finis.h.!.+" for lack of further time or interest, he may well have the impression that the ant's behavior is no more than its automatic and involuntary reaction to its environment. It is attracted by this, repelled by that, kept alive by one condition, and destroyed by another. But let us suppose that he turns his attention to some other organism in the ant's neighborhood-perhaps a housewife with a greasy kitchen-he will soon have to include that ant, and all its friends and relations, as something which determines her her behavior! Wherever he turns his attention, he finds, instead of some positive, causal agent, a merely responsive hollow whose boundaries go this way and that according to outside pressures. behavior! Wherever he turns his attention, he finds, instead of some positive, causal agent, a merely responsive hollow whose boundaries go this way and that according to outside pressures.

Yet, on second thought, this won't do. What does it mean mean, he asks himself, that a description of what the ant is doing must include what its environment is doing? It means that the thing or ent.i.ty he is studying and describing has changed. It started out to be the individual ant, but it very quickly became the whole field of activities in which the ant is found. The same thing would happen if one started out to describe a particular organ of the body: it would be utterly unintelligible unless one took into account its relations.h.i.+p with other organs. It is thus that every scientific discipline for the study of living organisms- bacteriology, botany, zoology, biology, anthropology-must, from its own special standpoint, develop a science of ecology-literally, "the logic of the household"-or the study of organism/environment fields.

Unfortunately, this science runs afoul of academic politics, being much too interdisciplinary for the jealous guardians of departmental boundaries. But the neglect of ecology is the one most serious weakness of modern technology, and it goes hand-in-hand with our reluctance to be partic.i.p.ating members of the whole community of living species.

Man aspires to govern govern nature, but the more one studies ecology, the more absurd it seems to speak of any one feature of an organism, or of an organism/environment field, as governing or ruling others. Once upon a time the mouth, the hands, and the feet said to each other, "We do all this work gathering food and chewing it up, but that lazy fellow, the stomach, does nothing. It's high time he did some work too, so let's go on strike!" Whereupon they went many days without working, but soon found themselves feeling weaker and weaker until at last each of them realized that the stomach was nature, but the more one studies ecology, the more absurd it seems to speak of any one feature of an organism, or of an organism/environment field, as governing or ruling others. Once upon a time the mouth, the hands, and the feet said to each other, "We do all this work gathering food and chewing it up, but that lazy fellow, the stomach, does nothing. It's high time he did some work too, so let's go on strike!" Whereupon they went many days without working, but soon found themselves feeling weaker and weaker until at last each of them realized that the stomach was their their stomach, and that they would have to go back to work to remain alive. But even in physiological textbooks, we speak of the brain, or the nervous system, as "governing" stomach, and that they would have to go back to work to remain alive. But even in physiological textbooks, we speak of the brain, or the nervous system, as "governing"

the heart or the digestive tract, smuggling bad politics into science, as if the heart belonged to the brain rather than the brain to the heart or the stomach. Yet it is as true, or false, to say that the brain "feeds itself"

through the stomach as that the stomach "evolves" a brain at its upper entrance to get more food.

As soon as one sees that separate things are fict.i.tious, it becomes obvious that nonexistent things cannot "perform" actions. The difficulty is that most languages are arranged so that actions (verbs) have to be set in motion by things (nouns), and we forget that rules of grammar are not necessarily rules, or patterns, of nature. This, which is nothing more than a convention of grammar, is also responsible for (or, better, "goeswith") absurd puzzles as to how spirit governs matter, or mind moves body. How can a noun, which is by definition not not action, lead to action? action, lead to action?

Scientists would be less embarra.s.sed if they used a language, on the model of Amerindian Nootka, consisting of verbs and adverbs, and leaving off nouns and adjectives. If we can speak of a house as housing, a mat as matting, or of a couch as seating, why can't we think of people as "peopling," of brains as "braining," or of an ant as an "anting?" Thus in the Nootka language a church is "housing religiously," a shop is "housing tradingly," and a home is "housing homely." Yet we are habituated to ask, "Who or what is housing? Who peoples? What is it that ants?" Yet isn't it obvious that when we say, "The lightning flashed," the flas.h.i.+ng is the same as the lightning, and that it would be enough to say, "There was lightning"? Everything labeled with a noun is demonstrably a process or action, but language is full of spooks, like the "it" in "It is raining," which are the supposed causes, of action.

Does it really explain running to say that "A man is running"? On the contrary, the only explanation would be a description of the field or situation in which "a manning goeswith running" as distinct from one in which "a manning goeswith sitting." (I am not recommending this primitive and clumsy form of verb language for general and normal use.

We should have to contrive something much more elegant.) Furthermore, running is not something other than myself, which I (the organism) do do. For the organism is sometimes a running process, sometimes a standing process, sometimes a sleeping process, and so on, and in each instance the "cause" of the behavior is the situation as a whole, the organism/environment. Indeed, it would be best to drop the idea of causality and use instead the idea of relativity.

For it is still inexact to say that an organism "responds" or "reacts" to a given situation by running or standing, or whatever. This is still the language of Newtonian billiards. It is easier to think of situations as moving patterns, like organisms themselves. Thus, to go back to the cat (or catting), a situation with pointed ears and whiskers at one end does not have a tail at the other as a response or reaction to the whiskers, or the claws, or the fur. As the Chinese say, the various features of a situation "arise mutually" or imply one another as back implies front, and as chickens imply eggs-and vice versa. They exist in relation to each other like the poles of the magnet, only more complexly patterned.

Moreover, as the egg/chicken relation suggests, not all the features of a total situation have to appear at the same time. The existence of a man implies parents, even though they may be long since dead, and the birth of an organism implies its death. Wouldn't it be as farfetched to call birth the cause of death as to call the cat's head the cause of the tail?

Lifting the neck of a bottle implies lifting the bottom as well, for the "two parts" come up at the same time. If I pick up an accordion by one end, the other will follow a little later, but the principle is the same.

Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in s.p.a.ce.

And, right now is the moment to say that I am not trying to smuggle in the "total situation" as a new disguise for the old "things" which were supposed to explain behavior or action. The total situation or field is always open-ended, for Little fields have big fields Upon their backs to bite 'em, And big fields have bigger fields And so ad infinitum ad infinitum . .

We can never, never describe all all the features of the total situation, not only because every situation is infinitely complex, but also because the the features of the total situation, not only because every situation is infinitely complex, but also because the total total situation is the universe. Fortunately, we do not have to describe any situation exhaustively, because some of its features appear to be much more important than others for understanding the behavior of the various organisms within it. We never get more than a sketch of the situation, yet this is enough to show that actions (or processes) must be understood, or explained, in terms of situations just as words must be understood in the context of sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, libraries, and ... life itself. situation is the universe. Fortunately, we do not have to describe any situation exhaustively, because some of its features appear to be much more important than others for understanding the behavior of the various organisms within it. We never get more than a sketch of the situation, yet this is enough to show that actions (or processes) must be understood, or explained, in terms of situations just as words must be understood in the context of sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, libraries, and ... life itself.

To sum up: just as no thing or organism exists on its own, it does not act on its own. Furthermore, every organism is a process: thus the organism is not other than its actions. To put it clumsily: it is what it does. More precisely, the organism, including its behavior, is a process which is to be understood only in relation to the larger and longer process of its environment. For what we mean by "understanding" or "comprehension" is seeing how parts fit into a whole, and then realizing that they don't compose compose the whole, as one a.s.sembles a jigsaw puzzle, but that the whole is a pattern, a complex wiggliness, which the whole, as one a.s.sembles a jigsaw puzzle, but that the whole is a pattern, a complex wiggliness, which has has no separate parts. Parts are fictions of language, of the calculus of looking at the world through a net which no separate parts. Parts are fictions of language, of the calculus of looking at the world through a net which seems seems to chop it up into bits. Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time. to chop it up into bits. Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time.

Once this is clear, we have shattered the myth of the Fully Automatic Universe where human consciousness and intelligence are a fluke in the midst of boundless stupidity. For if the behavior of an organism is intelligible only in relation to its environment, intelligent behavior implies an intelligent environment. Obviously, if "parts" do not really exist, it makes no sense to speak of an intelligent part of an unintelligent whole. It is easy enough to see that an intelligent human being implies an intelligent human society, for thinking is a social activity-a mutual interchange of messages and ideas based on such social inst.i.tutions as languages, sciences, libraries, universities, and museums. But what about the non-human environment in which human society flourishes?

Ecologists often speak of the "evolution of environments" over and above the evolution of organisms. For man did not appear on earth until the earth itself, together with all its biological forms, had evolved to a certain degree of balance and complexity. At this point of evolution the earth "implied" man, just as the existence of man implies that sort of a planet at that stage of evolution. The balance of nature, the "harmony of contained conflicts," in which man thrives is a network of mutually interdependent organisms of the most astounding subtlety and complexity. Teilhard de Chardin has called it the "biosphere," the film of living organisms which covers the original "geosphere," the mineral planet. Lack of knowledge about the evolution of the organic from the "inorganic," coupled with misleading myths about life coming "into"

this world from somewhere "outside," has made it difficult for us to see that the biosphere arises, or goeswith, a certain degree of geological and astronomical evolution. But, as Douglas E. Harding has pointed out, we tend to think of this planet as a life-infested rock, which is as absurd as thinking of the human body as a cell-infested skeleton. Surely all forms of life, including man, must be understood as "symptoms" of the earth, the solar system, and the galaxy-in which case we cannot escape the conclusion that the galaxy is intelligent.

If I first see a tree in the winter, I might a.s.sume that it is not a fruit-tree. But when I return in the summer to find it covered with plums, I must exclaim, "Excuse me! You were a fruit-tree after all." Imagine, then, that a billion years ago some beings from another part of the galaxy made a tour through the solar system in their flying saucer and found no life. They would dismiss it as "Just a bunch of old rocks!" But if they returned today, they would have to apologize: "Well-you were peopling rocks after all!" You may, of course, argue that there is no a.n.a.logy between the two situations. The fruit-tree was at one time a seed inside a plum, but the earth-much less the solar system or the galaxy-was never a seed inside a person. But, oddly enough, you would be wrong.

I have tried to explain that the relation between an organism and its environment is mutual mutual, that neither one is the "cause" or determinant of the other since the arrangement between them is polar. If, then, it makes sense to explain the organism and its behavior in terms of the environment; it will also make sense to explain the environment in terms of the organism. (Thus far I have kept this up my sleeve so as not to confuse the first aspect of the picture.) For there is a very real, physical sense in which man, and every other organism, creates his own environment.

Our whole knowledge of the world is, in one sense, self-knowledge.

For knowing is a translation of external events into bodily processes, and especially into states of the nervous system and the brain: we know the world in terms terms of the body, and in accordance with its structure. of the body, and in accordance with its structure.

Surgical alterations of the nervous system, or, in all probability, sense-organs of a different structure than ours, give different types of perception-just as the microscope and telescope change the vision of the naked eye. Bees and other insects have, for example, polaroid eyes which enable them to tell the position of the sun by observing any patch of blue sky. In other words, because of the different structure of their eyes, the sky that they see is not the sky that we see. Bats and homing pigeons have sensory equipment a.n.a.logous to radar, and in this respect see more "reality" than we do without our special instruments.

From the viewpoint of your eyes your own head seems to be an invisible blank, neither dark nor light, standing immediately behind the nearest thing you can see. But in fact the whole field of vision "out there in front" is a sensation in the lower back of your head, where the optical centers of the brain are located. What you see out there is, immediately, how the inside of your head "looks" or "feels." So, too, everything that you hear, touch, taste, and smell is some kind of vibration interacting with your brain, which translates that vibration into what you know as light, color, sound, hardness, roughness, saltiness, heaviness, or pungence. Apart from your brain, all these vibrations would be like the sound of one hand clapping, or of sticks playing on a skinless drum.

Apart from your brain, or some brain, the world is devoid of light, heat, weight, solidity, motion, s.p.a.ce, time, or any other imaginable feature.

All these phenomena are interactions, or transactions, of vibrations with a certain arrangement of neurons. Thus vibrations of light and heat from the sun do not actually become light or heat until they interact with a living organism, just as no light-beams are visible in s.p.a.ce unless reflected by particles of atmosphere or dust. In other words, it "takes two" to make anything happen.

As we saw, a single ball in s.p.a.ce has no motion, whereas two b.a.l.l.s give the possibility of linear motion, three b.a.l.l.s motion in a plane, and four b.a.l.l.s motion in three dimensions.

The same is true for the activation of an electric current. No current will "flow" through a wire until the positive pole is connected with the negative, or, to put it very simply, no current will start unless it has a point of arrival, and a living organism is a "point of arrival" apart from which there can never be the "currents" or phenomena of light, heat, weight, hardness, and so forth. One might almost say that the magic of the brain is to evoke these marvels from the universe, as a harpist evokes melody from the silent strings.

A still more cogent example of existence as relations.h.i.+p is the production of a rainbow.(1) For a rainbow appears only when there is a certain triangular relations.h.i.+p between three components: the sun, moisture in the atmosphere, and an observer. If all three are present, and if the angular relations.h.i.+p between them is correct; then, and then only, will there be the phenomenon "rainbow." Diaphanous as it may be, a rainbow is no subjective hallucination. It can be verified by any number of observers, though each will see it in a slightly different position. As a boy, I once chased the end of a rainbow on my bicycle and was amazed to find that it always receded. It was like trying to catch the reflection of the moon on water. I did not then understand that no rainbow would appear unless the sun, and I, and the invisible center of the bow were on the same straight line, so that I changed the apparent position of the bow as I moved.

The point is, then, that an observer in the proper position is as necessary for the manifestation of a rainbow as the other two components, the sun and the moisture. Of course, one could say that if if the sun and a body of moisture were in the right relations.h.i.+p, say, over the ocean, any observer on a s.h.i.+p that sailed into line with them the sun and a body of moisture were in the right relations.h.i.+p, say, over the ocean, any observer on a s.h.i.+p that sailed into line with them would would see a rainbow. But one could also say that if an observer and the sun were correctly aligned there would be a rainbow see a rainbow. But one could also say that if an observer and the sun were correctly aligned there would be a rainbow if if there were moisture in the air! there were moisture in the air!

Somehow the first set of conditions seems to preserve the reality of the rainbow apart from an observer. But the second set, by eliminating a good, solid "external reality," seems to make it an indisputable fact that, under such conditions, there is no rainbow. The reason is only that it supports our current mythology to a.s.sert that things exist on their own, whether there is an observer or not. It supports the fantasy that man is not really involved in the world, that he makes no real difference to it, and that he can observe reality independently without changing it. For the myth of this solid and sensible physical world which is "there,"

whether we see it or not, goes hand-in-hand with the myth that every observer is a separate ego, "confronted" with a reality quite other than himself.

Perhaps we can accept this reasoning without too much struggle when it concerns things like rainbows and reflections, whose reality status was never too high. But what if it dawns on us that our perception of rocks, mountains, and stars is a situation of just the same kind? There is nothing in the least unreasonable about this. We have not had to drag in any such spooks as mind, soul, or spirit. We have simply been talking of an interaction between physical vibrations and the brain with its various organs of sense, saying only that creatures with brains are an integral integral feature of the pattern which also includes the solid earth and the stars, and that without this integral feature (or pole of the current) the whole cosmos would be as unmanifested as a rainbow without droplets in the sky, or without an observer. Our resistance to this reasoning is psychological. It makes us feel insecure because it unsettles a familiar image of the world in which rocks, above all, are symbols of hard, unshakeable reality, and the Eternal Rock a metaphor for G.o.d himself. feature of the pattern which also includes the solid earth and the stars, and that without this integral feature (or pole of the current) the whole cosmos would be as unmanifested as a rainbow without droplets in the sky, or without an observer. Our resistance to this reasoning is psychological. It makes us feel insecure because it unsettles a familiar image of the world in which rocks, above all, are symbols of hard, unshakeable reality, and the Eternal Rock a metaphor for G.o.d himself.

The mythology of the nineteenth century lead reduced man to an utterly unimportant little germ in an unimaginably vast and enduring universe.

It is just too much of a shock, too fast a switch, to recognize that this little germ with its fabulous brain is evoking the whole thing, including the nebulae millions of light-years away.

Does this force us to the highly implausible conclusion that before the first living organism came into being equipped with a brain there was was no universe-that the organic and inorganic phenomena came into existence at the same temporal moment? Is it possible that all geological and astronomical history is a mere extrapolation-that it is talking about what no universe-that the organic and inorganic phenomena came into existence at the same temporal moment? Is it possible that all geological and astronomical history is a mere extrapolation-that it is talking about what would would have happened have happened if if it had been observed? Perhaps. But I will venture a more cautious idea. The fact that every organism evokes its own environment must be corrected with the polar or opposite fact that the total environment evokes the organism. Furthermore, the total environment (or situation) is both spatial and temporal-both larger and longer than the organisms contained in its field. The organism evokes knowledge of a past before it began, and of a future beyond its death. At the other pole, the universe would not have started, or manifested itself, unless it was at some time going to include organisms-just as current will not begin to flow from the positive end of a wire until the negative terminal is secure. The principle is the same, whether it takes the universe billions of years to polarize itself in the organism, or whether it takes the current one second to traverse a wire 186,000 miles long. it had been observed? Perhaps. But I will venture a more cautious idea. The fact that every organism evokes its own environment must be corrected with the polar or opposite fact that the total environment evokes the organism. Furthermore, the total environment (or situation) is both spatial and temporal-both larger and longer than the organisms contained in its field. The organism evokes knowledge of a past before it began, and of a future beyond its death. At the other pole, the universe would not have started, or manifested itself, unless it was at some time going to include organisms-just as current will not begin to flow from the positive end of a wire until the negative terminal is secure. The principle is the same, whether it takes the universe billions of years to polarize itself in the organism, or whether it takes the current one second to traverse a wire 186,000 miles long.

I repeat that the difficulty of understanding the organism/environment polarity is psychological. The history and the geographical distribution of the myth are uncertain, but for several thousand years we have been obsessed with a false humility-on the one hand, putting ourselves down as mere "creatures" who came into this world by the whim of G.o.d or the fluke of blind forces, and on the other, conceiving ourselves as separate personal egos fighting to control the physical world. We have lacked the real humility of recognizing that we are members of the biosphere, the "harmony of contained conflicts"

in which we cannot exist at all without the cooperation of plants, insects, fish, cattle, and bacteria. In the same measure, we have lacked the proper self-respect of recognizing that I, the individual organism, am a structure of such fabulous ingenuity that it calls the whole universe into being. In the act of putting everything at a distance so as to describe and control it, we have orphaned ourselves both from the surrounding world and from our own bodies-leaving "I" as a dis content content ed and alienated spook, anxious, guilty, unrelated, and alone. ed and alienated spook, anxious, guilty, unrelated, and alone.