PSYCHOPATHY
an attempt at a description
part 13
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The difficult issues discussed in our last episode are those of the [environs] which involve society or rather a wholistic account of psychopathy. That most weird idea which is aired in our last episode is that shifts of history are likely (sadly) related to all of this mess. You are NOT forced to read part 12, but this then must be a quest less for psychotherapy and more toward a discussion of world history.
Here my conception of pseudo-narcissism is a necessary idea to describe what happens in social change.
citing myself from part 12
Ratio, or rationality is emphasised in modernity and the tendency of a leaning to infatilising views on all manner of things (here Richard Heinberg points to our weaning off period from abundant oil in his now classic work TPsO, cf. Heinberg 2003) and the environed individual faces symbolic turmoil or what I call collapse. The resulting outcome I’d argue is 1) messages precede information (see further below; metalogues by Gregory Bateson) and, 2) information becomes unidirectional and at times top-down, if not always (cf. ALSO Overton window). This is the environment in which panem et circences (e.g the biographies of twelve emperors by Seutonius) is tending to mushroom (i.e to be on the increase). As such Lewis Mumford (if not Marvin Gaye, cf. what’s going on…) emphasises the symbolon (my terminology or term not his) nature of gladiators and toga parties and the mime theatre, as well as the lavish spending (cf. Flesh and Stone, Sennett) upon these public facilities (including at one point a weird wooden colliseum) or of what Arendt calls a bloody ABC (the phenomena is often called mass formation, or hysteria etc). My ramblings about ‘sentiments’ must at one level matter less at this larger macro level of things. (end of quote)
Once again this points to the difficult idea that macro-level thinking CANNOT use conceptions that fit inside a lower level or [environs]… I introduce this into my long series on narcissism (called Psychopathy, here at Medium.com) as the word PSEUDO-NARCISSISM. What’s that??? Notably it is fuzzy but fuzzy for a reason, for the zooming of the camera lense has consequence, McLuhan elaborates on 1950s culture, still his conceptions stand as far as I am concerned (McLuhan though biased here has a more general aim which talk of media as a general concept/idea), weirdly Locke is criticised as a ‘modernist’ which might occupy us a whole lot. But let’s not go there my good reader. The main point is as we zoom out a set of problems arise.
THAT MOMENT
As the environment changes transmogrification takes hold, and that my good reader is what this episode is all about (it’s alchemy if you will). The moment of change is preluded by ‘signs’ one being B/W thinking, as it comes to ‘signals’ of the social setting they become increasingly less lathened with content, we have less metalogue (cf. Gregory Bateson) and more simple traffic of signals, we may call this as the social scientist of the 1970s did, a media glut, an appropriate description. Too many signals etc… a din of screaming gulls.
It is true how I purport to have a theory of history which involves a conception I refer to as URGENT or EMERGENT or EMERGENCY, still however that may be the reader may feel that this matters less, we see however that the scaling or blurring of the available information is almost equivalent to turmoil and/ OR turbulence at this juncture (of shift or change). We cyberneticists are not absorbed by this but merely see that this environment is no longer the same as before, so in some sense the ‘object’ of our investigation is muddled with the idea we have called [environs] aka the backdrop of the chain of events. Here the concept of ‘emergent’ properties is both meaningless and useful at the very same instant (since the object is confused with the background noise so that no man or woman can tell them apart, not even a statistician.. giggles). Thus the point at which change happens we may discuss as meta-stable etc, but here and for these purposes I imagine a quick and unrelenting shift into a new state (e.g ice into liquid and etc). Hence we care little for that interstice of the intermediary phase or period, but we reduce it to zero and pay no attention to it. Needless to say such meta-stable states can be sustainable or stick for long to reverse (go back to where it came) but we avoid these notions in this context. Complexity has these properties of rapid change, or rather MAY HAVE these peculiar properties. For a better understanding of my scaling into a larger category or AN AGE OF EMERGENCY as used in renaissance history see my series OH THAT here at Medium.com. Mowing on.
What moment?
The unitarian SYS breaks into a new set, or is reconfigured and takes the form of a Sys (i.e a subset of smaller systems). These two states for ANY system are always at a balance of some sort, they may as I have stated previous, be used as aspects of ANY system at ANY point in the system’s development, rise, shift or demise etc.
Autism generally is a developmental thing, that narcissism though is also a lack of normal or expected development towards full development into adulthood for all intents and purposes must be a basic notion. We find this hard to handle, ‘psychos’ seem so intelligent and we cannot imagine they are actually stayed in development. My argument over pseudo-narcissism is much like arguments very current in the 1950s over culture generally. The ambient milieu of Marshall McLuhan is hence one in which technology or the rise of strong mass cultural pressures are often the source of high-brow and/ OR public debate. McLuhan’s generalistic claims about ‘media’ is it seems as strong as ever — a medium is an extension of the PSYCHE or the mental prerequisites of man. The medias are a main focus in McLuhan, still the concept of turmoil is not apparent in mcluhan lore. This however is a notion much similar to how McLuhan discusses hottness or coolness of the early print, namely during the renaissance/ REnaissance period to be specific. Sherry Turkle makes similar claims about the digital world as I did in part 12 of this series; we need real talk and talking to ‘dialogue’ about all the thinking and ideas we share and consume. Still McLuhan makes a case for medias as entering three phases of kneading and massage as the medium is introduced and becomes mainstream. Any medium is ALSO as Chaïm Perelman explains (cf. Perelman 1952) a kind of method into ‘things’ as such talk is a medium too, i.e rhetoric has recieved a kind of misrepresentation. The three phases of any new medium are; worry, opposition and exhaustion finally slipping into too-familiar boredom or overload (cf. McLuhan, Understanding media — the extensions of man, 1964). The ideas at the back of McLuhan’s mind matter, these are the wild swings of ‘hot jazz’ and the waves of revolutionary change in the 1910s and 1920s. My concern is how we can use his ideas if we apply them to our own age? These concerns of ‘fitting’ are aired in my series OH THAT, here at Medium.com. In short does our own time copy in some sense(s) the 1950s? I believe that if we are to adopt McLuhan we must always bear this idea at the back of our mind, with its many faults. As we saw however the cultural sociologists of the 1950s were much concerned over the role of fast-moving technological impositions upon our culture (see e.g Rosenberg ed.; Mass culture 1957). The ideas of Bateson AND McLuhan share this ambient milieu however of a nascent ‘post-functionalist’ approach, voire even Malinowski is showing the way here, as is Margret Mead in her broad categorisations of culture. I have though made the case before that narcissism was a strong prescence in the post-war age, Mead herself being a case in point here the ex-fiancé of Gregory Bateson. Was she a narcissist? We may want to defend her as a scientist but the one does NOT exclude the other. Hence saturation or turmoil is not much discussed in McLuhan but was fRAMED in the 1970s counter-culture debate as information glut.
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BROKEN CLOCK
The institutions may be described as slaughter-houses wherein cattle are handled. Much like the engineered pigs of Douglas Adams who present themselves to the restaurant-goers (at the restaurant at the end of the galaxy) our very own slaughter-houses are reeking of infamy. Why? Since they cover up as nurseries or social security-dispensaries. If all systems are similar then ALL narcissistic family systems were made equal. Here the thing is dual, a dance between ‘order’ and what I call garbage, we may call it ‘discharge’ for lack of a better terminology. This sounds familiar, even a living dog needs ordered stuff like food to be able to live and discharges refuse. This goes to how living systems may contain ‘sick’ sub-loops, the prevailing idea of society is it contains no such sub-loops, or that these are minimised especially by means of our institutions. Sadly all of it is starting to look more and more like a broken clock which tells time twice every day.
As I thunk Simon Michaux proves the words ‘class’ and ‘citizen’ and ‘ideology’ along with the structural organisation inside the melt-down are being refashioned. SYMBOLIC COLLAPSE happens and we would hope such a process to be useful to society but it questions all and everything, in due course following we may add the fabric of society going into the SATURATION mode. Language and history are saviours I thunk, and a way in which we can get a grasp on our new [environs] as they slip into shift and change. My method involves how we can steer a course through periods such as the REnaissance which hitherto has boggled the minds of all experts of the subject. The mechanism we are looking for may involve less an indictment of our institutions and more that gnostic reality of Mani, and the river of life. The turmoil brings out a set of individuals as described in the folklore of narcissim as flying monkeys, these narcs however show up ONLY at the damn dawn my good readers — the stressed-out system my good reader(z) will produce pseudo-narcissism. Check out the vid.
Over and over I have pointed to the hellenic era as a period of so-called turmoil (I call it symbolic collapse) was a similar period to ours, it ALSO points to gnosticism which after all (as Reza Jorjani says) otherworldly in a sense. The bible itself carries SOME of this water…
I thunk though Jesus is an avatar of symbolic collapse, a prism of societal angst.
All you can eat
The use of McLuhan may itself appear out of date. The historian and especially the historian of recent history faces an intricacy, for we must note this ‘history’ is itself history. Allow me. In short we can become experts in e.g 1930s culture or that of the second world war period in the U.S. but man is capable of all manner of great feats, still as Egon Friedell shows the closeness makes it difficult. My comparisons (not unlike those of universal history and toynbean or mumfordian forms) when these rely on McLuhan in fact rely on 1950s and earlier culture via a back-route, we 1) can avoid it by ever avoiding explicit strong links, still 2) in the long run to avoid arrogant lies we must duely recognise this bias in McLuhan (I myself am a product of the 1980s, widely true of any person is how our history is always present), as a third 3) the ramifications are possibly wide but all I can do is to warn the reader of this deficiency. All historians aught always declare to an extent who they are. The fact of the matter is that as one uses Bateson one goes into a realm quite devoid of historic relativity and into one of philosophical timelessness, still my explicit nod to McLuhan brings us back perhaps to what I believe to be a much more fleshy character of cultural criticism — the middle ground I thunk looks a lot like Lovejoy’s attempts or struggles (cf. as a corollary the French word essaie which in its original sense in Montaigne pointed to moral struggle with oneself, not as we imagine of a struggle WITH PEN AND PAPER). I find the history of ideas a kind of linchpin of my entire edifice.
If it be true that McLuhan fingers a kind of paradox it is NOT clear what it is, it is more obviously true that Bateson breaks with functionalism (in social science, in sum cybernetics is some kind of post-functionalism, E.E. Evans-Pritchard and whatnot) than to say McLuhan is doing this. The paradox may well be that McLuhan stays in a range of his contemporary world (of TV, telephones and newspapers) only to gaze through or beyond it. This gazing far into the future was not incommon at that time, these dreams where overall most happy. Still the academic writings (as well as our own in a future might do so) of the 1950s smell of something different, inside a kind of functional order and still gazing back at an era now lost of the dust-ball or to silent movies, as if these were now dreamscapes already. The 1950s projects its thoughts strongly ahead with certain optimism, if tainted at times (cf.Packard or Riesman, and C.Wright-Mills). Modernity as McKenna claims in his last publicly recorded interview races to some type of ‘sigma’ event or an end-station and seems to non-linearly be racing on faster (a thing he identifies as the cycles seen in the Maysa calendar, and connects to the I-Ching). The paradox may just be one Gerth and Mills point to as well, one of freedom inside modern or Western life. The ideal (likely stupid yet ideally defendable through e.g Rousseau, but as the historians of ideas well know indeed in the 1500s as well) of the savage as noble or as nobleman of sorts. A recurring avatar or nightmare of our phantasmagorial psyche. Hence the supposed freedom of the 1950s was in part real, real in terms of the urban dystopias as described by James Ellroy or to some lesser degree by the somewhat earlier Raymond Chandler. For whatever it’s worth the invention of the bomb was pivotal to some rather large extent (i.e 1945 and the discovery of Trinitite), this exact date is a misconception and James Kunstler along with Vance Packard more adequately point to suburbia as that land of sublimated dreams (i.e of an impossible utopia or of wastefulness). But McLuhan looks for paradox even if we may find that much like Packard his sublimation belong where it belongs. McLuhan’s search for a mechanical bride (cf. The folklore of industrial man) is not all-surprising given contemporary concerns of the academics at the time, following a similar script or zeitgeist. Either we’re wrong altogether about all this or just maybe they presage our present time of opulent leisure, one it seems we are about to lose. We can assign scientific ‘truth’ to Gerth and Mills’ classic study of biological traits as they inform or show inside social organisation, still this smacks of the four-letter word functionalism. We read it with a smile, but its intent is clear. On the other hand the all-encompassing idea of insight shines through of the human story and is ‘romantic’ and ‘scholastic’ and decidedly stamped by its ‘wholist’ contemporary functionalist thought. McLuhan falls neatly into this contemporary world of his, yet has had lasting imprint on studies of technologies and media, hence possibly pointing to our own world.
see you in our next episode!
A very curious idea we may explore later (see further episodes) is the scale insensivity, i.e disingenious understanding of scales in the agressor-narc, here we can see or begin to recognise the source of the non-real which the narc imputes or induces into the victim (i.e the person which is being manipulated). Narc-science exist as a folk science that weilds concepts as such source of supply, gas-lighting, discard, love-bombing, victim, flying monkey, cycling, etc etc.
Happiness HQ
