Individualism and Collectivism: Schismogenesis and #occupywallstreet

Most social systems require a balance between symmetrical and complementary relationships or patterns.

A symmetrical pattern is characterised by ‘tit for tat’.  You hit me, I’ll hit you back. Obviously, this pattern has its uses, but unchecked would lead to the destruction of one of the parties in the relationship, and thus end the relationship too.

A complementary relationship is characterised, crudely, by a sadist and masochist, where the behaviour of one party complements that of the other. Again, this type of relationship can be useful, but unchecked, this pattern can lead to destruction as the sadist becomes increasingly sadistic and the masochist becomes increasingly masochistic.

Gregory Bateson (1972) referred to these runaway patterns that lead to destruction as ‘schismogenesis’ and argued that most relationships need to have a balance between complementarity and symmetry patterns. This balance could be thought of as a form of homeostasis. For example if a relationship is tending towards more ‘tit for tat’ (symmetrical) patterns, for example both partners becoming more violent, if one party becomes submissive (complementary), this would disrupt the runaway pattern and lead to a balance. Of course this new complementary pattern will, in time, need to be balanced by more symmetrical behaviour and so on.

In an earlier post (I seem to have deleted by accident) I wrote about how privileging personal gain over co-operation can ultimately become self-defeating, and I wonder if there are parallels in the current political context where we might think of balancing patterns of behaviour on a societal level.

Short term, personal gain seems to be the raison d'être of the individualist culture; characterised by politicians whose policies are influenced by terms of office, popularity and benefitting themselves and where corporations are motivated by keeping profits up and shareholders happy. It has become increasingly evident with recent revelations regarding News International and the scandal involving Liam Fox and his friend Adam Werritty that politics and corporate desires are intimately connected, adding more weight to suspicions that there is small elite of people who conspire to serve their own needs.

The benefits of this culture are of course, competition (although sometimes this is faux), comparatively cheap prices and a reasonable standard of living for many people (in the developed world).

The downside to this type of culture is that the addiction to short term gains for the few is leading to future consequences that are self-defeating and destructive.

Cheap, unhealthy processed food has led to phenomenal numbers of people becoming obese, and diabetes is likely to be a massive burden on future health care services.

The environment is exploited without regard to the long term consequences of pollution and deforestation. The fact that global corporations sponsor climate change deniers is significant. Their addiction to short term profits over-rides any responsibility for future generations.  Automobile manufacturers and oil companies have a vested interest in lobbying governments to keep citizens dependant on cars rather than other forms of mass transit.

The developed world’s addiction to oil is almost certainly the reason for US intervention in the Middle East, with countless dead and injured. The concept of transgenerational trauma (Shevlin & McGuigan, 2003) indicates that relatives of people affected by trauma, including those born after traumatic events, have symptoms of post traumatic stress. This does not bode well for the future health of states so significantly impacted upon by conflict.  A dominant narrative of the developed world’s rapacity is likely to feed the emergence of more dissent and violence from poorer states.

A balance is required to counter what I believe is a runaway pattern of individualism, where a more collectivist, long term approach might privilege and prioritise differently, considering more closely the long term ethical and environmental consequences of behaviour. I hope that the #occupywallstreet movement is the beginning of this counter-balance. It is, so far, a peaceful and determined protest and it is to be hoped that it remains so.

I’d like to close with these words from Gregory Bateson’s daughter, Nora; words which I believe offer a wider understanding of the situation:

“When you peel back all of the lovely accomplishments of the great revolutionaries what do you find? At the center there is this: They did the impossible. They risked everything, and changed the unchangeable. Occupy Wall St...This is the exhale we have been waiting for. This movement is the release of all we have held back, and all we have deferred: the fatal complications of poverty, ecological disaster, and political injustice against. Until now, we have been betting away our futures to keep this monster from tipping over; we have been covering for it, nursing it, convincing ourselves we were even proud of it. Like children of abusive alcoholic parents-- we have been silenced for so long. Finally the unsayable is being said, giving the unmovable boulders of this illusion of subservience to economic structures an opportunity to crumble. We were as my father said, “double binded” by the loop of needing the corporate body to both employ us and then relieve us of our earnings for what we thought was survival, but is actually destroying our real survival in our environment and with each other. Now, the thing that has kept us rapt and bound is grotesque: oozing greed, eating its young, poisoning us, the earth and even itself. If we can remember, that these structures are constructs of our imagination, not forged in nature, we can begin to re-imagine the system. Ideas... are what we are working with, and they can grow, change, evolve. We can live better, but first, we occupy. Don’t be distracted by the deeds of the change-makers, the “what” in what they changed, really, the key is THAT they did not wrap themselves in the practicalities of reason. Of course it’s impossible, that is why we have to do it.”  Nora Bateson

 Shevlin, M. & McGuigan, K. (2003) The long-term psychological impact of Bloody Sunday on families of the victims as measured by The Revised Impact of Event Scale.

British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 42: 4, 427–432.

News International and the myth of power

Lord Acton famously said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The English anthropologist and social scientist Gregory Bateson argued that power does not exist in relationship and that, in fact, it is a myth. He said, in Steps to an ecology of mind (1978) that

‘…the myth of power is, of course, a very powerful myth, and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it. It is a myth, which, if everybody believes in it, becomes to that extent self-validating. But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to various sorts of disaster’.

Bateson’s view on power was critiqued at the time, particularly by other social scientists and therapists who felt that to deny power was to deny the experiences of abused people, particularly women. On the surface, this seemed a reasonable critique; what reasonable person could deny that an abuser has power over the abused? However, this critique misses the wider point of Bateson’s argument, which is that the conventional (erroneous) use of the term power is that of a metaphor drawn from the language of physics (along with terms like energy, force, impact and so on), which have no place in a biological, social world of information, context and meaning. Instead of thinking of power in human relationships, we would be better served by reflexive dialogue about the metaphor of power, and see ourselves as simply parts of a larger situation. For this to be necessary, both sides in a conflict would need to be proud and humble rather than arrogant.

The sort of disaster that Bateson alluded to, and that humanity is facing is, in part, linked to the self perpetuating pursuit of the myth of power. Hand in hand with the myth of power is the concept of profit. To be rich, in the conventional epistemology, is to be powerful, and therefore, to control resources is seen as an imperative by states that wish to maintain and increase power.

Noam Chomsky recently wrote (available here) ‘there is every reason to suppose that today's policy-makers basically adhere to the judgment of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s influential advisor A.A. Berle that control of the incomparable energy reserves of the Middle East would yield "substantial control of the world." And correspondingly, that loss of control would threaten the project of global dominance that was clearly articulated during World War II, and that has been sustained in the face of major changes in world order since that day’.


Later in this article Chomsky writes:

‘Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative. Business leaders who are conducting propaganda campaigns to convince the population that anthropogenic global warming is a liberal hoax understand full well how grave is the threat, but they must maximize short-term profit and market share. If they don't, someone else will.

This vicious cycle could well turn out to be lethal. To see how grave the danger is, simply have a look at the new Congress in the U.S., propelled into power by business funding and propaganda. Almost all are climate deniers. They have already begun to cut funding for measures that might mitigate environmental catastrophe. Worse, some are true believers; for example, the new head of a subcommittee on the environment who explained that global warming cannot be a problem because God promised Noah that there will not be another flood’.

 In short, the pursuit of the myth of power with its attendant need to maintain profits and control resources has led to the loss of countless lives in the Middle East, active denial of the reality of global warming, and as I have indicated elsewhere, the abuse and misuse of ‘evidence’ in rushing through incompletely trialled medicines for the sake of short-term gain.

Relevant to the current situation with News International, Bateson (1978) also wrote

‘What is true is that the idea of power corrupts. Power corrupts most rapidly those who believe in it, and it is they who will want it most. Obviously, our democratic system tends to give power to those who hunger for it and gives every opportunity to those who don’t want power to avoid getting it. Not a very satisfactory arrangement if power corrupts those who believe in it and want it…Perhaps there is no such thing as unilateral power. After all, the man ‘in power’ depends on receiving information all the time from outside. He responds to that information just as much as he ’causes’ things to happen… it is an interaction, and not a lineal situation’.

 Clearly the Murdoch entertainment/propaganda machine has been intimately linked with, and and has been a mouthpiece for, the political/corporate elite who routinely have been committing crimes against humanity. The stone that has been lifted by the telephone hacking scandal has shed light on some worrying relationships between the elite and the media and sent all sorts of people scurrying for cover. Perhaps now is the time to challenge the world order typified by the pursuit of power by the elites.


Bateson discussed how Goebbels, the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, believed he was powerful and in control of the Nazi propaganda machine when in reality he was guided by informants (effectively Goebbels was dependent on feedback) and ultimately his belief in his control of the system ultimately led to its destruction. The arrogance and confidence of a mileau where the hacking of telephones and bribery of police was condoned (or even encouraged) would indicate that News International, like Goebbels, was lured into believing in its own 'power'.

Let us not fall into the same fallacious trap that power can be overcome with more power, but instead through humility, dialogue, persistence and by recognising our own part in this very dangerous situation.

References:

Bateson, G. (1978) Steps to an ecology of mind. London: Paladin.
Chomsky, N. (2011) Is the world too big to fail? The contours of global order. http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20110421.htm accessed 18th July 2011.

The context of crime, neglect and ill health

In the news recently has been coverage of the story of the sad death of seven year old Khyra Ishaq, who may have died of starvation. Her mother and stepfather will be charged with neglect, a criminal offence.

Several sources recognise that poverty and neglect are linked, and it can be argued that poverty is not a matter of choice, but neglect is. Also linked to poverty are issues of crime, drug and alcohol use and obesity, all of which are considered major topical social issues, and all of which have an element of choice to them. But is it that simple?

I have often considered that crime and ill-health are linked by wider contexts, yet politically, both are treated as very different issues.

In the UK our jails are full; the population bulletin for May 16th 2008 states the population in prisons in England and Wales stands at 82,682. This represents around 148 per 100,000 of the national population. In contrast, the United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 738 per 100,000.

Some people argue that we should be increasing our capacity to incarcerate criminals, for example Stephen Pollard writing in the Spectator suggests: “Britain certainly imprisons a higher percentage of its population. But this is a meaningless measure, since it takes no account of the proportion of the population who commit crimes. Allow for the extraordinary proportion of the UK population which commits crimes, and Britain has a low imprisonment rate. Whereas Britain imprisons 12 people per 1,000 crimes, Spain imprisons 48 and Ireland 33”

Taking Pollard’s argument further, we would need to quadruple the amount of incarceration, having spaces for a third of a million inmates, representing around 590 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population.

This raises a question for me. If it is true that such a large proportion of the British population commits crimes, why is this so?

Our understanding of crime itself may lead to problems. Crime is not the name for an action – it is the name given to a class of actions performed in a particular context. Some of these actions are directed at the authorities who forbid them. The punishment of the actions will not remove the context that characterise those actions. You can’t stop someone from being a criminal by punishing what he or she does. If that was the case, we wouldn’t need larger prisons. If punishment was a viable solution, crime would have ceased thousands of years ago. In the film KPAX, when the character Prot is asked by his psychiatrist why they don’t have laws on his planet, he replied ‘Because every sentient being in the universe knows the difference between right and wrong’.

Most humans know the difference between what is right and what is wrong, so why do so many choose to do what is wrong? More importantly, what is the context that these actions take place in? I would argue that it is the same context that gives rise to drug and alcohol problems, obesity and neglect. Nacro’s 2006 briefing paper suggests crime impacts upon health, which may be true, but they miss the point that crime is a symptom, as is poor health, of a wider contextual problem. And the context isn’t simply inequalities, social exclusion or poverty; in fact, these are as much symptoms as crime or illness.

What then, is context is it that gives rise to the symptoms I have described? Part of the context is our way of thinking, characterised by ideas that ‘more is better’ in terms of money, material possessions and power. To begin to challenge the global high rates of crime and illness we urgently need to think differently about ourselves and the worlds we inhabit, and, as Bateson put it, make steps towards an ecology of mind.

In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth, and the top 1% controlled 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth. Similar distribution patterns are found in other countries. Those people that control the wealth also control the media, at the very least have a major influence upon governments, and they control the prices we pay for everything, from food to petrol.

Unfortunately, those with power tend to want to retain it. They have absolutely no reason to change the way they think; after all the current mind-set works for them. This is western democratic society and it is the context that inculcates crime and preventable illness; a combination of our epistemology, one that values power, and a society that manifests power through wealth.

Putting myself in opposition with Gregory Bateson who was an atheist (I would call myself agnostic), I also believe that as spiritual beings (even atheists might appreciate the sacred), we may be able to challenge this context through a quiet revolution, a revolution of showing love, kindness and forgiveness. The wealthy cannot take their money or their power with them on the next stage of their journey, and I doubt that any of them will be much happier; that is assuming that they are happy at all.

Conscious purpose and the environment

Most people who enjoy natural history series such as Planet Earth will appreciate the incredible balance that is found in nature between different species that depend on each other for survival. This balance has evolved through thousands of years. Yet this balance is not conscious; blackbirds don't think 'It's going to be a poor summer so we'll lay fewer eggs'. Gregory Bateson, the English anthropologist appreciated that this balance reflected an inherent wisdom. Mind, he suggested, was an integral apsect of this interrelationship. A multitude of diverse creatures have survived, as part of the environment, for millenia. This graceful and unconscious balancing act between the parts of the larger system comprised of species and the environment has been incredibly successful.

But now we are threatened by our own conscious purpose. As a species, we don't live in unconscious harmony wth the environment, in fact, we tend to think of ourselves as separate from the environment; having 'dominion' over the whole of creation. Perhaps this has worked for a few thousand years. However, I doubt anyone affected by the effects of global warming would agree that we still have dominion over the earth.

As a species we are dependant on exploiting the resources of the planet to maintain the lifestyles we have become accustomed to. In a sense, we are addicted to these finite resources, resources that when used create carbon dioxide and other pollutants that are contributing to global warming. To be blunt, most of the things that governments are doing to address this problem are inadequate. Whilst I have railed against speeding fines that seem inconsistent, I would not object to speed limits being imposed to reduce emissions. But changing a society through taxes is hardly adequate considering the potentially disastrous global effects of climate change.

What is required is something more drastic than carbon taxes. We urgently need to think about how we think. One of the first things we can do is begin to appreciate that we are part of the environment, not separate from it.

We need to begin to appreciate that perhaps there is a wisdom inherent in nature that is greater than ours. Some might even wonder if some kind of deity may be discerned in this ecological wisdom.

We can begin to think more systemically. Bateson called this a cybernetic epistemology. "The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It is immanent also in the pathways and messages outside the body; and there is a larger mind of which the individual mind is only a subsystem. This larger mind is comparable to God and is perhaps what some people mean by 'God,' but it is still immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology."

Bateson saw the problems we were heading for overy 40 years ago. In his words (From Brockman) "Perhaps all exploration of the world of ideas is only a searching for a rediscovery, and perhaps it is such rediscovery of the latent that defines us as "human," "conscious," and "twice born." But if this be so, then we all must sometimes hear St. Paul's "voice" echoing down the ages: "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."

I am suggesting to you that all the multiple insults, the double binds and invasions that we all experience in life, the impact (to use an inappropriate physical word) whereby experience corrupts our epistemology, challenging the core of our existence, and thereby seducing us into a false cult of the ego—what I am suggesting is that the process whereby double binds and other traumas teach us a false epistemology is already well advanced in most occidentals and perhaps most orientals, and that those whom we call "schizophrenics" are those in whom the endless kicking against the pricks has become intolerable."

Is it too late to change our ways of thinking? Perhaps the technological advances charactaristic of our 'false epistemology' may help to forestall climate change, but will they buy our species enough time to ensure our survival?