MASOCOLOGY – Chapters Six & Seven

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LOST HORIZONS

I have portrayed mankind as a form of villain; a vandal forever tampering
with nature. But as any criminologist will tell you, criminal behaviour can
usually be understood in terms of psychological inadequacies. One of the
primary causes of such inadequacies concerns the relationship between
mother and child.

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Should a child be ripped away from the maternal influences of the mother, psychological trauma can ensue, which, in adulthood, can lead to outbreaks of criminality.
This concept could well apply to the species of man, for our global criminality seems aimed directly at nature; our Mother Earth from whom we were apparently ripped away in our civilised infancy.
Hence, rather than seeing our environmental criminality as a form of blatant vandalism, it could well be that it is due to psychological illness.
The writer Colin Wilson would no doubt agree. Fundamental to his philosophy is his belief that man lives in a state of mind he calls ‘close-upness’. To Wilson, man has a very small view of reality; he sees the world from the ‘worm’s eye view’ unable to complete a world picture in his mind.
Basically, if man had a wider view of reality in normal life, he would be flooded with so much meaning that concentration would be impossible. Such ‘close-upness’ causes a natural state of ‘upside-downness’. This shortsighted state of mind makes man suffer the delusion that the trivia of life is important.
Negative values impinge upon his intellect and his values turn upside down. Hence, boredom results in further boredom, rather than giving man the impetus to rise out of his lethargic state and grasp true meaning within the world.
In the above we have the sad lot of humanity. Bored and disinterested with true meanings in the world about them. And what of Wilson’s idea that ‘upside-downness’ gives us the delusion that the trivia of life is important?
Is it not trivia we now seek with our global pleasure industry? Is not trivia, then, a form of masochism in its own right? Wilson encapsulates the lot of modern man. In his identification of the state of ‘close-upness’ he graphically describes our sickness.
But why have we become so separate, not only from nature, but from society and ourselves? Perhaps a clue is provided when we realise we live in such a state due to our need to concentrate.

Concentration is a vital element of our survival. From studies of hypnosis it is becoming apparent that we input vast amounts of information through our senses. However, information that is deemed of no relevance to our immediate needs is sieved out of consciousness into the unconscious.
In survival terms, if we were aware of every piece of information we perceive, concentration would be impossible. We simply would not be able to prioritise and arrange information in such a way as to allow rational thought.
However, there are times when the information we input is severely restricted and our need to concentrate wanes. Such times are known as altered state of consciousness, or ASC.
The most prevalent ASC we experience is when we go to sleep. It is the dream state, when the conscious and unconscious seem to merge, and unconscious imagery is played out as a dream.
Hypnosis is another ASC. Here we seem to have access to the complete input of information perceived in wakefulness. At its most fantastic, the hypnotic state can manifest the phenomenon of cryptomnesia, where entire texts previously read have been recalled.
And going on to deeper ASCs, we have the deep trance where people have spoken of undergoing the mystical experience. Here, the mind is truly filled with information. Indeed, literature of such mind-invasions speak almost unanimously of the wholeness with which the mind flooded.
We could, of course, dismiss such invasions as mere unconscious delusion. But could it be an appreciation of the wholeness of, not only nature, but the universe itself? However, as concentration is vital to our survival, it is perhaps a good job that we don’t live in such an ASC all the time.
Or is it? In 1976 a lecturer at Princeton University – Dr Julian Jaynes – caused an academic storm with the publication of his book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral mind.
The central theme of his book concerns his observations of ancient writings such as the 0ld Testament, the Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer’s Iliad. He observed that the authors of such books appeared to have no form of self-consciousness.
Basically, man did not have ‘… subjectivity as we do; he had no awareness of his awareness of the world, no internal mind space to introspect upon …’ To Jaynes, the books of ancient times depicted the gods as the conscience, indeed, the very consciousness, of ancient peoples, as if they didn’t have a conscious mind of their own.
Infant, it was as if our ancestors lived within a collective unconscious, with the gods, or archetypal images, directing our lives.
This is a significant observation which can be associated with the dream state we appreciate today. In the dream state the unconscious seems to direct the dream for us, with us having little say in how the dream plays itself out. Similarly, as Jung noted, archetypal images rise in the dream state, holding significance within the dream.
Indeed, not only do we have archetypal images in dreams, but the dead can also rise from the unconscious to play a part in the dream as memory. Which prompts the question, if, in earlier times, man did not have a conscious mind as he does now, would his mind state be similar to our present dream state?
If we decide this could be possible, then ancient man was controlled by instinctual, unconscious imagery which, as in the dream state, he perceived. Is there any wonder, then, that a king, upon death, became a god? For chances are, upon death, he was still seen.

Looking at the monumental building works of ancient times such as the pyramid; the ancient beliefs in animism, or nature’s spirits coming alive; the possibility of such ‘spirits’ being, in fact, a waking dream state becomes attractive. However, if such a mind-state did exist at the dawn of known history, why is it not appreciated today?
Perhaps our need to concentrate is the key. At some point in prehistory, our evolutionary ancestor, Homo Erectus, picked up a stone or branch or bone and realized it could be used to aid him as a tool or weapon. In doing so, he set humanity on the road to technological advancement. He had learnt to adapt nature to his needs and begun the process towards the hi-tech world of today.
Before this event, however, he had no need to concentrate. He was, essentially, an animal and subject to the instinctual drives of the rest of nature. He was locked into a communal conscious that was all he needed to function.
He was an intrinsic part of nature and his own species within nature. But in discovering technology he had begun to break away from nature and needed to learn how to think for himself.
In a word, he had to learn how to ‘concentrate’ on the increasing information his technology was creating above the information endemic to instinctual nature. And to concentrate, he had to have a mind of his own; a consciousness of his own; a consciousness that was separate to nature.
So his brain began the massive explosion in size we know to have occurred during this period, creating the ‘human’ brain as his mind evolved into conscious and unconscious elements – a conscious to allow concentration, and an unconscious in which to store information not required for the present task in hand – thus prizing himself away from the wholeness and instinctuality of nature.
And the more information he created through technology, the greater the need to concentrate, and the more distant man became from his natural harmony with nature, the only remembrance we have of our natural state being a gulf, a longing, deeply rooted in the unconscious; and a longing that manifests in us our sickness.

THE END

From the viewpoint of both psychology and history, the above suggests that mankind is sick. Indeed, the whole of civilised history has been a process of the gathering anxieties of our illness.
We have been a species ripped from the succour and guidance of our mother nature; a lost race, knowing our mother is here, but feeling neglected and, bearing in mind the Christian idea of us having fallen from the grace of God, knowing that we are sinners.
In order to combat our deep longing for the mutualistic life our mother offered, we birthed the human Ego, just as the school bully, locked in his feelings of inadequacy, HAS to show that he is powerful. But also like the bully, we are not.
We are still, after all our attempts to find confidence, to break free, a part of our mother through the unbreakable umbilical cord of nature. It is time we understood our inheritance. It is time we remembered our place, for, just as an adolescent rebels against its mother, lashing out, we are the adolescents lashing out and hurting nature. And we are about to be punished.
All around us the scars of our endeavours are present. Our mother has developed, not just City Pox, but cancer. Like never before she needs our help and love, for she is dying. And what is more, we need her. Just as a child, when growing to manhood, turns to look after his mother, it is time we began to look after ours; to bring her back to health, to nurture, to bring fully alive once more.
This is our only destiny, for if we follow the other road – the road we have trodden for so long – we have only one future in store. Extinction.

© Anthony North, March 2009

The End

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