31 July 2011
I’ve decided to be considerate to my few regular readers by limiting my discussion of what I’m now calling “The Urceptual Crew” to this side-bar. I need to do a lot of exploratory writing about it that will take a while to achieve even semi-coherence. I strongly feel that now is the time to work it out, though. For one thing, Michael Shermer’s book, The Believing Brain, indicates the empiricists are catching up to where I was 30 or 40 years ago, so a book on the subject may just get noticed. But it seems to be my main interest at the moment. Which is unfortunate because what I really need to work on is my theory of temperaments, for inclusion in my Shakespeare authorship book. I don’t think I’m too far from finishing with what I want to say about that for that book, and once I am, I can put the book in print. With the anti-Stratfordian movie, Anonymous, soon to be out, now it the time for my book.
It probably doesn’t matter which part of my psychology I most feel like working on considering how weary I always feel. I’m barely able to type these few words. I’m typing them because it’s too early for bed, and I can’t think of anything else to do. A few hours earlier I finished reading the latest pot-boiler I’ve been reading and have no others to switch to. Meanwhile, I’m continuing to read Ruled Britannia, which stars a Shakespeare I am finding quite believable. But I’m not in the mood for it.
All I want to do here is get a good starting point for my understanding of the urceptual crew. I know what I want to say, but I’m afraid I’ve just run out of gas. I’m so out of it.
28 July 2011
I say my brain is still working, although the rest of my body isn’t doing all that well, because The Urceptual Judge
I’m writing here of my verosophical ideas. I feel like the ideas I have for new poems (and I’ve come up with two new ones of those the past two nights, too!) are something else, although I don’t see why they should be. Anyway, my latest brilliant verosophical idea is that among the innate Jungian “urceptual others” that I posit neurophysiological exist in the brain, is one representative of the Tribe. “The Urceptual Judge,” I tentatively call it.
It is the most complicated of the urceptual others but could be beautifully explanatory of a lot of questions I’ve been trying to answer for quite a while, including exactly what a person’s internal “god” might be. I’ve always considered the urceptual authority figure to be the basis of that, but not see that it may be a combination of the authority figure and the Judge.
It will take me a while to get all this straight, but I came up with the Judge when thinking about psychopaths. The authorities go along with me in believing such people simply to be those lacking empathy–which for me would be those lacking urceptual others. That got me thinking about altruism, which the authorities again agree with me in taking to be based on empathy and biologically advantageous for the tribe, if not for the individual, not that it can’t be for the individual, as well.
I’ve always had trouble making altruism the sole way an individual can turn collectivist. For some reason, last night, it hit me that another way an individual can work for the good of his tribe in spite of its depriving him of many individual happinesses is the way I keep thinking I do, by working for a sense of making an important cultural contribution. That led fairly quickly to the question of how, neurophysiologically, would an individual experience such a sense of cultural accomplishment, a valid sense of it?
It took longer for me to sort that out, but not too long (if not yet with any thoroughness): his Judge tells him when he’s done good for the tribe. So, do psychopaths lack a urceptual judge, too? Or are there two kinds of psychopaths, each with a different deficit? I’m unsure. I sometimes think that almost no one has a urceptual judge, but that’s silly. I think that because so few have one as extreme as I feel mine is–i.e., while I need to have outdone Beethoven and Aristotle both, most people are satisfied with having raised a family, and helped a reasonably valuable business, or the equivalent, going for a reasonably length of time.
Let me say here, before I forget, that my theory of urceptual puppets, is not the clearest part of my overall theory of psychology. I’ve never worked out a description of it I’m even half-happy with. But I think it worth doing a bad job of describing than keeping to myself until I have a better grasp of it. So here goes try number one to delineate the Urceptual Judge.
He begins before birth as one of an individual’s many urceptual others, each of them a sort of stick-figure puppet with connections to the Primary Urceptual Other and (perhaps) to the Urceptual Self. I’m not sure what I’ve said about this before, so may well contradict myself. Probably have before.
I think I think that the Primary Urceptual Other divides into . . . three? urceptual others, one good, one neutral, one bad. The good one tends to imitate via one’s Urceptual Self’s neuroconnections to it. The bad one either attacks or flees from, unconnected to it. The neutral one, if it exists (I just added it to my crew now), connects to each of the other two Others, but is inhibited from using those connections until its stimulus (some real other in the external environment) proves itself good or bad, which will open the appropriate connections.
Seems to me I’m saying the neutral Urceptual Other is the Primary Urceptual Other.
Anyway, the Urceptual Judge will have neuroconnections to the Good Urceptual Other but not to the Urceptual Self. Damn, to get this right, I really need to establish just about all the members of the urceptual populace, and I’m not up to. But one important Other is the authority figure, which is a good other with neuroconnections to the Good Urceptual Other, but distinguished from it by the cues it picks up from its stimulus to the Self recognizes as authority cues, signals to obey. The Judge sort of secondarily rewards the Self when the Self does obey.
Meanwhile other drives interfere, other others demand attention and allegiance. The judge takes from them, too, emphasizing to the self that making other respect one is important. Eventually one learns what others in general will consider valuable contributions to society and develop a habit of trying to make them regardless of feedback. Through reading about others who made great contributions in spite of winning little or no positive feedback from contemporaries, or inspiring negative feedback, one may overpower the Judge and turn him into a second self. The danger, needless to say, is solipsism. But that seems to me no worse than the danger of respecting judges who call for deadbrained conformity. Better, to tell the truth. But one should be aware of it. And will be if one has the right genes.
Okay, someday I’ll do a better job on the urceptual populace. I hope what I’ve said is at least interesting to anyone capable of being interested.
Miscellaneous Notes from Preceding Writings
September 22
Most, or some, of us have a child in us and put aside our adulthood when reading books like Rowlings, or watching movies based on them. I can even quite enjoy picture books intended for 3- or 4-year-olds. I think I’m probably two or three adult readers of different ages, too. My final adult does sometimes comment on entertainments one of my other readers is engaged with, but rarely upsettingly, unless the other reader agrees with his low view of the entertainment.
I haven’t yet described the thought I had that may be unusual. It is that each of us, or many of us, has chronological awarenesses with appropriate selves. Remember, I conceive of the brain as, in effect, a huge mansion of many rooms, one for mathematics, for instance, another for social interactions, and so forth. I’m now considering the possibility that each of these, or some of these, may have a smaller rooms in it for different periods of a person’s life.
This is the first time I’ve written about this, after having had the idea within 24 hours, so I can’t vouch for the coherence of what I’m saying. Wanna get it down before trying to get it right. The basic idea is what if the brain is programmed to recognize changes in kind of maturation, and reflexes seal off sub-awarenesses that thus become limited to the period they’ve been active in–while each is replaced by a newly opened replacement sub-awareness that will cover the next stage of maturation? A person could still remember things out of the sealed-off sub-awareness, or earlier age, and use them in later-age awarenesses. But, as I see it, the present-age sub-awareness would be the default sub-awareness, any earlier-age sub-awareness unavailable unless defenses against intrusion break down, and appropriate stimuli help.
One example of appropriate stimuli would be fairy tales. One could not be a rigidnik for these to put you in your child-sub-awareness. Unless ill. Or drugged. When in the child-awareness, your adult sexual awareness would have to be turned off, I should think. Critical analysis, too, since that’s adult.
What I propose is that one in one’s child-awareness will become a child rather than feel a child. Albeit not completely, usually. I’m sure there’s an adolescent sub-awareness, too. Perhaps an infant sub-awareness that few of us ge exclusively into. One point: that in one of these, one will experience mostly memories laid down in the period that the sub-awareness was active. So will lose touch with “mature” thinking, which must be based on later memories. But when in a adult sub-awareness, a different problem crops up–loss of contact with childish thinking. This is a problem because childish thinking, for most people, will be more spontaneous, sensual, simple (and thus able sometimes to cut Gordian knots adult thinking can’t). One who can visit different age-based awarenesses frequently, should have an advantage over those who cannot. Just being able to escape adulthood into a book like the latest Harry Potter is a not unimportant one.
* * * * *
JEHOVAH
September 23: Today, I’m hoping to define God.
My definition of Him issues from my theory of psychology, mainly from that portion of it I spoke of yesterday, and in other entries during the past year or so. I consider Him to mainly be simply the cerebral Authority Figure I believe we all have–the internal Father. My first problem is to show how he differs from human authority figures. I suddenly feel like I may be able to pull off an interesting essay about him after not quite feeling I could for the past twenty years or more because of an idea I had that seems laughably dumb: that we reflexively attribute all movements in the external enviornment to some conscious being. Of course, our reason more and more overcomes that reflex as we mature. Still, its contributions always underlie our final understandings.
THE GOD WITHIN
For many years I’ve been arguing with people who believe someone other than Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare. I began because (a) I liked the idea of a self-educated commoner’s becoming a great writer (as I, a self-educated commoner, hoped to do) and (b) because the evidence for Shakespeare and against all those put up against him was huge. There was also (c): my belief that I could make a name for myself by permanently ending the Authorship Controversy, as it’s called, in Shakespeare’s favor by arguing it better than anyone else ever had. Needless to say, I never came close to accomplishing (c): my arguments never made any kind of impression on any of the “anti-Stratfordians,” as they’re called, and they are still very visibly amongst us–witness, for example, I Am Shakespeare, the recent highly publicized anti-Stratfordian play by Mark Rylance, famous Shakespearean actor and recent artistic director at the Globe Theatre in London, and the similarly highly-publicized “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt” on the authorship of Shakespeare’s work signed by a number of wacks, including Rylance, Derek Jacobi, and several professors.
Although I soon realized the anti-Stratfordians were undefeatable, I continued to argue with them (and still argue with them) because of (d): I like to argue. But also because of (e) my interest in the question that quickly became more interesting to me than who wrote Shakespeare, the question of why so many people who seemed sane, and were generally intelligent, likable people, could believe in something as nonsensical as anti-Stratfordianism–in something, that is, for which there was no direct hard evidence, and which required all kinds of mental gyrations to accept, such as a belief in the existence of the incredibly implausible conspiracy theory they all ultimately had to believe in. Consequently, when I finally wrote a book about the authorship question, Shakespeare and the Rigidniks, its central subject was my explanation of what I described as the “psitchosis,” or “psituational psychosis” of the anti-Stratfordians (although I also spent 170 pages or so of it demonstrating that Shakespeare’s authorship of the works ascribed to him is beyond reasonable doubt).
Another controversy I’ve been interested in since I could reason at all was the one between Christians and non-believers. I was a fiercely partisan member of the latter group during my late adolescence and early adulthood, but quieted down substantially when I found how much my view of religion bothered others (much less than my views on Shakespeares). I don’t have the personality to be a Madalyn Murray or even a Richard Dawkins. I tend to keep my political views to myself, too.
My interest in what I came to view as the religion versus materialism debate continued, however. But its central question soon evolved the same way the Shakespeare Authorship Controversy later did, from a question about people’s belief to a question about the people rather than the belief, in this case from “Does God Exist?” to “Why do so many otherwise seemingly rational, intelligent people believe some sort of God exists?”
One such person was the very Catholic William F. Buckley, Jr. He was one of my idols way back when–for his libertarianism and style. Strangely, it was he who provided me with what still seems the most important constituent of my understanding of religious psitchosis. It happened when he described his first meeting with Ayn Rand (in a memoir or on a talk show, I’m can’t now remember which). He was laughingly describing Rand’s first words to him, a question as to how a person as intelligent as he could believe in God. I believe he was too surprised by what he took to be Rand’s tactlessness to reply to her, but his remembrance of the event led to his answering her question. He said something to the effect that he was born with a mechanism in his brain that made him able to perceive God.
I probably thought that silly at the time that I read it, but as I developed the theory of psychology I’ll soon be discussing here, it began to make excellent sense. For my theory included the existence of something very much like such a mechanism, something I’ve come to call, “the Jehovacule.” The name comes from “knowlecule,” which rhymes with “molecule,” and represents a molecule of knowledge. In simplest terms, the Jehovacule is, in effect, a little man inside each person’s brain whose actions can be interpreted as the actions of an external god. A more sophisticated way of putting it is that the little man is a Jungian archetypal Other. But I posit him or it to be something material in the brain, an arrangement of brain-cells, not something fantasized. Details to follow. First, though, quite a bit of introductory material is necessary for any kind of understanding of what I’ve talking about.
Perhaps the best thing to start with is the . . . ANTHROCEPTUAL DICHOTOCEPTUAL SUB-AWARENESS. Here dwelleth the Jehovacule.
September 23: Today, I’m hoping to define God. My definition of Him issues from my theory of psychology, mainly from that portion of it I spoke of yesterday, and in other entries during the past year or so. I consider Him to mainly be simply the cerebral Authority Figure I believe we all have–the internal Father. My first problem is to show how he differs from human authority figures. I suddenly feel like I may be able to pull off an interesting essay about him after not quite feeling I could for the past twenty years or more because of an idea I had that seems laughably dumb: that we reflexively attribute all movements in the external enviornment to some conscious being. Of course, our reason more and more overcomes that reflex as we mature. Still, its contributions always underlie our final understandings.
I had a couple of breakthrough thoughts today, one is that what makes people worship anything suddenly became my question, replacing what makes people worship a god. My subject, in other words, is the instinct to worship rather than the instinct to follow some god or gods.
I also recognized a truism, which I nonetheless think worth restatement: 90% or more of a solution to a problem is the recognition and detailed description of the problem. Define the problem and it’s almost always easy to solve it. Truth is something you have to name your way to–with interactive names. In the case of my god theory, today’s problem was that whereas I believe acceptance of a god is instinctive, I realized that my theory could only put a potential god into the environment; the only explanation my theory had for a person’s surrender to that god was that someone told him to surrender to it. Religion was taught, not instinctive, which contradicted what I was trying to demonstrate.
Once I defined, the problem, another breakthrough thought solved it (I think): the possibility that we each instinctively recognize and find out appropriate place in a hierarchy. From this, and the fact that we instinctively obey our parents (as authority figures), made it easy to hypothesize that we instinctively obeyed any entity that was an authority figure for our parents–a political leader, say . . . or the unseen entity who causes storms that kings fear.
All day I had a god who resulted from animism, and the god a person’s father generally is, and no way to connect. Instinctive recognition of hierarchy took care of that. As for the instinct to worship, that may simply be the instinct to obey authority. I’ll have to think more on it.
But wait. I should back up and let you know that, according to my theory, the brain is divided into ten general awarenesses, or semi-independent cerebral subdivisions, each with its own way of looking at things and/or processing data. They have a lot in common with Howard Gardner’s “multiple intelligences,” but too much not in common with them for me to use his name for them.
The ten awarenesses are:
1. The Urceptual Awareness
2. The Fundaceptual Awareness
3. The Behavraceptual Awareness
4. The Evaluceptual Awareness
5. The Cartoceptual Awareness
6. The Objecticeptual Awareness
7. The Reducticeptual Awareness
8. The Sagaceptual Awareness
9. The Anthroceptual Awareness
10. The Combiceptual Awareness
The fancy names are not intended to impress halfwits but to indicate their meaning as clearly–and as inter-relatedly–as possible. They all derive from the word “percept,” which means, “an impression of an object obtained by use of the senses,” in standard English, according to my copy of Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (1994).
1. The Urceptual Awareness
Where innate knowledge is stored–what a human face looks like, for instance, for instance.
2. The Fundaceptual Awareness
Where we experience all the stimuli we encounter in either our internal or external environment.
3. The Behavraceptual Awareness
Where we sense what our muscles and glands do, and where our voluntary motor actions are initiated.
4. The Evaluceptual Awareness
Where we experience pleasure and pain caused by our other experiences, and evaluate the latter on the basis of the ratio of pleasure to pain that results from them.
5. The Cartoceptual Awareness
Where we experience our sense of where we are, up/down, forward/backward, east/west, then/now, chapter 2/chapter 9, etc.
6. The Objecticeptual Awareness
Where we experience specifically those stimuli in our internal or external environoment that are inanimate objects, or seem to be such.
7. The Reducticeptual Awareness
Where we experience numbers, numbering, concepts, words (spoken and written)
8. The Sagaceptual Awareness
Where we experience out sense of destiny, of going somewhere meaningful, of life as a narrative, or saga.
9. The Anthroceptual Awareness
Where we experience ourselves as beings separate from the rest of existence, and other human beings–and as social beings
10. The Combiceptual Awareness
Where we experience everything we are aware of at any given instant–in other words, our consciousness
Each of these is divided into sub-awarenesses, sometimes many, that I won’t go into here except for the dochotoceptual sub-awareness of the Anthroceptual Awareness since it is pivotal for my explanation of why intelligent people believe in a god of some sort.
SELF AS OTHER AS
child/slave father/master
father/master * child/slave
nonconformist anti-model
conformist model
befriendee friend
friend * befriendee
vicariant hero
mother/nurturer ** child
child mother
combatant * enemy
pet-owner dog/cat
male or female sex-object
anthroceptual dichotoceptual awareness: SELF versus OTHER
anthroceptual dichotozones, one for each of the ten specialized versions of self-versus-other
The theory is outwardly simple: our brains have little men in them, each a puppet with strings connected to our behavioral centers. Execuceptual. Let’s take that first. Again, simple. That part of the brain–really, those interrelated parts of the brain–in which all the physical acts that a person can to do are initiated–via muscles, mostly (glands seem to react to what’s going on with the rest of a person, not to commands from theis center)–are located. The center of voluntary behavior. In effect, a gigantic mechanical replica of the person with a control panel that can make a hand form a fist, or extend a forefinger to push a button in the environment, and so forth.
The Execuceptual Self.
* * * * *
ANTHROCEPTUALITY
Self-Consciousness, Empathy, Antipathy, Subordination, Dominance, the Mating Drive, the Friendship Drive
The anthroceptual awareness has to do with an individual’s concern with other beings and even things as persons. Its function is to simplify existence by making of it a collection of people (as opposed to the ideas the intellect translates existence into, or the objects that the sensual awareness makes of it) to embrace or war against, depending on their behavior. In other words, anthroceptuality personifies, starting in infancy with what we consider the appropriate personification of parents and siblings and continuing to the not-so-appropriate personification of rugs that trip us, corners that bump us and electric light bulbs that shock us later in life.
I used to enjoy playing with the baby daughter of friends of mine. She was less than a year old but seemed quite bright. One of our little games consisted of my doing something like clapping her imitating what I’d done. It didn’t surprise me that she was easily able to clap as soon as she saw me clap, or make a fist, or cross her arms, or the like after see me do one of those things. But she was as easily able to copy my making a fist and then hitting myself in the nose with it. How could she do that, I wondered. I could understand her clapping because she could see that what her hands were doing in the process were the same as what my hands had done, and she could see that her hands were more or less the same as mine.
Similarly she would be able to imitate me making a fist and my knee with it. But how could she copy my hitting my nose with my fist? She couldn’t see her nose and know that it was the same as mine in the way that she see the sameness of our hands.
On thinking about it, I considered the possible effects of simple learning: that she could have learned that everyone’s hands were similar by seeing them, feeling hers and others’ hands, and hearing all hands called by the same name, and gone on to learn what a nose in general was through the sense of touch and verbally. I wasn’t satified with my reasoning, though. The copying seemed too easy for her to have required such a complicated background. Moreover I had read that infants start imitating adults very early–long before they seem to have any language function. It is also known, I eventually found out, that the brain apparently recognizes faces as faces. That is, a child doesn’t slowly learn that oval shapes with dark curves near the top over dark circular shapes in sideways small white ovals, etc., are faces; he automatically registers faces as faces–the brain is hard-wired to register combinations of eyes, eyebrows, noses and mouths as faces. In any event, certain kinds of brain-damaged adults lose their ability to recognize faces but remain otherwise visually more or less normal, and can recognize other kinds of objects from their visual appearance.
Be that as it may, I eventually concluded that we are each born with a face-center in the brain which contains Universal Faces. The first such face’s associated m-cells are activated by sufficient stimulation from the r-cells reporting on the presence of any face, and simply identifies it as a face. This is the Innate Objective Face. The second universal face is the Innate Subjective Face. It is connected with r-cells responsible for the feel of one’s facial muscles and also to facial r-cells responsive to sensual stimuli such as warmth or tactile pressure. In other words, the Innate Subjective Face is the main way one perceives one’s own face.
I propose that there is a third Universal Face in the brain which is actually a sort of double-face. It consists of a duplicate of each of the other two Universal Faces–inter-connected in such a way that the objective’s part concerned with what the eyes of others look like, say, activates, when it is active, the subjective’s part concerned with one’s own eyes. So a child seeing his mother’s eyes automatically registers: (1) not-me eyes and (2) a sense of his own eyes being repeated externally. That is, he recognizes his own eyes in his mother’s eyes. Ditto with noses, mouths, ears, and so own. Ditto, too, I’m sure, with the entire body. If my hypothesis is right, we each have a whole body crudely sketched within us which stands for all human bodies, and another which stands for his own, and a third which connects his sense of body-out-there with his sense of his own body. And the details link up in a similar fashion in more detailed objective/subjective areas–for noses, hands, feet, etc.
So the child I played with, seeing me make a fist, would weakly feel her own hand make a fist. If she then wanted to copy me, she would simply let the feel of her own hand making a fist build up in energy until it activated behavior appropriate to actually making a fist. And seeing me strike myself in the nose with my fist, she could easily copy me, for she would recognize my activity as being the same as her own behavior v89 (hitting oneself in the nose with one’s left fist, say), and carry out v89, if she wanted to.
The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that such hard wiring exists. It would explain how animals without language teach each other various non-instinctive behaviors, as they surely do. It would explain the common experience of picking up something much faster when it is demonstrated than when it is explained. And it would mean that learning would not be as intricate as it would otherwise have to be.
Later I found still more areas it seemed nicely to explain. Particularly the seeming need, sometimes pathological, to be like others. And, of course, empathy–the ability to put oneself emotionally in another’s place.
Indeed, the idea of objective/subjective linkage centers in the brain led eventually to my development of the anthroceptual awareness. That is where we perceive people as people, and as human objects, and as ourselves repeated.
It explains why most people, even children, vicariously feel the pain and joy of others. This leads to what some call altruism–but also to the joys and miseries of being a sports fan. And of our ability to so strongly identify with characters in books or on television. This vouyeurism, which is at bottom felt in a way no learned experience in my experience is, is another indication of the validity of my suppositions. Observe the people who watch game shows, observe their joy when a contestant they’re rooting for wins. (I myself hate game shows because I feel they reward trivial cleverness and luck more than brilliance is EVER rewarded, so eny blots out empathy for me.) Surely those spectators are feeling what it means to win, not just recognizing all the things they’ve learned to associate with material success and through them remembering similar experiences of their own (which many of them would not have had), which is the only other way to explain the situaiton that I can think of.
Further thoughts on conformity. The Inner Self and the Inner Other are interconnected, as already stated (I think). The outside of the Other’s stimulus’s actions are felt by the Self as described–but the Self’s actions are also projected to the Inner Other. For example, if I see the outside other salute, my inner other will salute as a result, and my linked inner Self will have an urge to salute as well–will feel the salute as though it were doing it. In reverse, if I salute, I will automatically transmit energy to those cells in the inner other concerned with saluting, and “make” my inner other salute.
Thus, if I salute and the outside Other does not, a contradiction will arise–Non-conformity, in other words. My background and the situation will dictate whether it is his fault or mine. In the first case, he will become a non-conformist or Stranger and I will be angry with him, or fearful, or both. In the second case, I will be the inadvertant non-conformist, the fuck-up, and feel embarrassment.
Many further remarks to make. One is that all this conformity need not be very visible or consequential. Much of it, particularly one’s own part, is “subliminal.” That is, one carries out one’s imitations in a token, partial way by making the initial cerebral acts only, but inhibiting their actual manifestion in true behavior, or perhaps doing them only so minimally that they are too weak to become true behavior.
Another point: much of social behavior is not just conformity of one person to another; it is alternate, approximate conformity. There is a golden compromise–one no more wants the over-expected absolute mimickry than one wants total refusal to conform. It is like any other situation so far as plus/minus goes. Just as a song is irksome if too unfamiliar, pleasant if neither too unfamiliar or too familiar and boring if too familiar, so it is we an other’s behavior, or our own with that other.
Conversation should given the gist of what happens, as I theorize. I talk with you. I say something–and @$you repeat it in your mind, you copy my words@%. This you do subvocally and quickly and so immediately after hearing my words that you don’t notice it. But you effectively conform while listening. But, of course, you probably don’t listen intently and therefore don’t perfectly conform. But you hear syllable one and it activates your cells for saying syllable one, but they don’t make you say syllable one aloud (usually) because you are in a listening mode–which inhibits speech. (There is probably a mechanism which compares the activity of one’s passive auditory speech center with one’s motor auditory speech center, and inhibits the latter if the former seems dominant. But other systems, awarenesses, come into play.) The cells active in you for saying syllable one would prime but probably not activate the cells for hearing syllable one (again), incidentally.
Anyway, social custom and other considerations would finally require me to stop talking and listen to you, so I would then become the conformist, you the one conformed to. Actually, we would be sharing a route to which we are both conforming.
One could consider the talker the dominant personality, and the listener the subservient one, though. In most cases, that would be untrue–as I just said, people usual compromise on a route, neither dominating. But in many situations one person @$is@% dominant. Further, I think that most people are designed to be dominant or subservient–as other commentators have speculated. In my theory, it’s possible that the Inner Self might be fashioned so as to send comparatively more stimulation to the Inner Other than the Inner Other sends to it. Thus one would be inherently predisposed to want actual others to conform to him than the other way round. The extra stimulation he sent to his inner other would cause comparatively greater pain if an actual other failed to do as expected than would his own failure to act as the actual other directed.
The reverse would be true of a natural serf, or subservient person. His Inner Other would be stronger than his Inner Self, and so he would be predisposed to conform to others.
Which reminds me of something else: that we are too large, have too many awarenesses, to be the slaves necessarily of our anthroceptual awarenesses, so needn’t conform even if we are natural conformists. And as previously indicated, our conformities may be very superficial. It’s a matter of doing approximately and just sufficiently what another is doing. He sings one song, maybe it will be enough for us merely to sing.
Still another point: we probably vary from context to context, and from mood to mood, in the ratio of our inner Self’s strength to that of our Inner Other’s.
More about dominance/subservience. It depends on two things: the ratio of self-to-other strength, which sets “natural dominance,” and which I suspect is low for most people; and one’s awareness hierarchy–how strong each awareness is to the others.I’ve already touched on both these points. About the second, I could be a natural conformist but only weakly anthroceptual. If, say, I’m highly intellectual I could then push on to something like . . . this theory, which does not conform to yours, and not change my mind on it however vigorously you attack it, even though you might be naturally much more dominant than I. Or in that case you might convince me to back down because I’m a serf–but you yourself recognize the validity of my theory after all–and force it back on me. The awarenesses influence each other, in other words, so your intellectual need for truth might overcome your anthroceptual need for domincance in this case–perhaps even if your anthroceptual awareness is much more important to you than your intellectual. The latter might still be strong enough to defeat the former due to the overwhelming correctness of my insights.
There is another factor: mentality. This is interesting. In earlier models of my system, I took mentality to be the determinant of servility. A low Taurus Factor would cause others’ opinions to swamp one’s own. One would have to be other-directed: percepts would cancel retrocepts. High Taurus factor would do the opposite, would cause one to rigidly adhere to one’s one perceptions regardless of others’ views, valid or not. My new thought is that these would influence the equation.
Here’s something: if I have a weak Self but high character, I might activate my self so strongly that it would in effect outperform my inner other–lots of weal singals versus a few strong ones. Generally, though, I think high character/ low dominance would make one a very rigid conformist. Maybe tradition-directed–conforming inflexibly to remembered others.
Which reminds me of something else of importance: that often anthroceptuality takes place when one is alone because of remembered people. We obey laws in part even when alone because of our conscience, which is our inner other activated retroceptually. And we might conform to such a retroceptual other against a perceived outside other if the actions of the two conflict.
Consider how many normal social behaviors are copying rituals. The hand shake, for instance. The Salute mentioned. Dancing–which women are so fond of and I’m not–because, I now hypothesize, I’m not that big on conformity, from either side of it–because not anthroceptual. Consider also religion–repetition of prayers, chants, songs, etc. Marching. So much doing things with enjoyment simply because one is doing them more or less in rhythm with someone else.
I want to emphasize the shared quality of the best of all this. It is probably accidental who starts a chian of conformities between two friends–but once the chain starts, they conform to it not to each other.
Back to the effect of mentality on conformity. Flexible minds (due to mentality) will naturally be flexible in thought and behavior, and thus flexible about conforming and not conforming, despite natural tendencies.
Being high in Aries Factor will allow one to plow through natural conformity; being low in it will cause one to be dominated by someone low in dominance while he is using a high Aries Factor even if you are high in dominance. When one is under the sway of one’s Pisces Factor, one will be naturally subservient in all awarenesses despite one’s dominance factor.
Passive conformity is watching someone do something and not then doing it but doing it in a minimal internal way–conforming to it. As in the conversation I described. I watch someone play tennis and feel what he is doing, and enjoy it–or perhaps no and again am bothered by it because it is wrong.
The Inner Stranger comes into this. There might be two of these: the innocuous Inner Stranger, and the Dangerous Inner Stranger. But no, the former would be a weakly accepted Universal Friend–because one could identify with his nonconformity. I’m thinking of a foreigner whom we accept even though he can’t speak English and thus does not conform vocally because we identify with being that kind of stranger ourselves. And usually he must conform in other ways to make up for it. He still bothers us slightly.
One might be naturally dominant but fail to get others to conform to one’s directions because of other considerations–being too different, etc. When one is anthroceptually dominant, one has a need for social power. When one is cerebrationally dominant (high in character and/or brilliance), one has a need for intelligential power, which is different. Of course, one might have both or neither. I feel I have the latter to a strong degree but very little of the former. I might be a natural conformist I now for the first time think. But conformity works against all the best things in life–e.g., perhaps I’m anthroceptually desirous of liking best-seller novels because everybody does but that works against my sensoriceptual need for good novels, and the latter is stronger in me.
But I doubt that I’m very conformist, naturally. Probably just average–neither conformist nor non-conformist. But tensions can develop in a person whose mentality clashes with his natural dominance level. In my case the clash, if it exists, might be what makes me less social than most people: I don’t want social considerations interfering with what to me are higher pleasures. But I could be both naturally dominant and cerebrationally dominant, and avoid social situations because the latter must make me original and thus a non-conformist people have trouble with, and the former will make me very upset with that. The point of all this I hope is clear: it is that many things interact in determining where one is on the serf to tyrant continuum.
Additional thought: probably mentality would not alter natural dominance for high character would make the inner other as much stronger as it would the inner self; the ratio should remain the same between the two regardless of the cerebration level. So high character/low dominance would make one a strong, loyal serf; low character/low dominance would result in a shiftless serf–a non-conformist due to incompetence; high character/high dominance would make one a strong manager; low character/high dominance would result in a weak manager, I would guess–one who needed to dominate but was incompetent at it.
Yes, low character would tend to cancel high dominance. The inner other would be strong due to perceptual activation while the inner self, stronger due to dominance, would nonetheless be retroceptually weak, so that the outside other would tend to dominate. But that contradicts what I said about high character/low dominance. I need to think this over more.
If the Other says A.B.C while the self, exposed to the other’s A and thus repeating it (regardless of dominance level or character), tries to say X.Y, what will happen? If one has high character X will occur with B, Y with C. Otherwise A.B.C will result. In the first case, if one also has high dominance, B.C will be weaker for the self than X.Y will be for the Other. In the first case if one has low dominance, though, the opposite will be the case, so one will remain subservient despite one’s high character. (In all cases X, Y, B and C will be equal retroceptually.) But the self will continue the chain begun by X.Y and so tension will continue, for a weak attempt to dominate will continue in force.
In the second case if one has low dominance one’s weak attempts to activate X.Y will be even weaker translated into an attempt to activate one’s inner other’s X.Y, and the Other’s activation of one’s self’s B.C will conquer. If one has high dominance, however, one’s weak attempts to activate X.Y will mean, possibly, that one’s self will not experience anything: low retroceptual energy will prevent either X.Y or B.C from occurring. Meanwhile one’s other will experience B.C perceptually, and X.Y retroceptually (if the help of dominance in raising its energy is sufficient, in which case let us simply define less than that sufficiency low dominance, meaning low in this context), X.Y will be a stronger force on the Other than B.C will be on the self, so low character/high dominance will cause an attempt to dominate. But it will flicker on and off because the self will not be able to keep X.Y going.
High/low and low/high thus compromise. It’s fuzzy. But what if A.B.C does not try to make the self experience B until the third event of the sequence, while A.X.Y does not try to make the inner other experience X till the same event? High/high and low/low are unaffected, but high character/low dominance will mean the self will experience A.X.BY–but all will be as just described. But low character/high dominance would be significantly different, for X would be prevented by low character from occurring for the self, so the self would have no instructions to pass on to the other and thus, despite its tendencies, would be forced to serve. But that again is as before. Ah, I think what would happen is that whatever retrocepts (or percepts) formed in the self would be “forced” on the other–even if they originated from the outside other!
The highdom/low character would try to manage but arbitrarily, foolishly, and superficially, content to seem to force his will on others. The kind who will do anything you tell him to so long as you convince him it was his idea.
Call this type the beta managerial type, or b-manager. His self will have weak self-direction but also weak other-direction so will not be very servile. His inner other will have strong directions coming from his self.
Now a thought strikes me. Let high dominance be defined as stimulation from self to other which is stronger than that from other to self (as already stipulated) but also stronger than that from other to other. Ah, let high dominance equal self to other stimulation being higher than current retroceptual stimulation (or both other to other and self to self). Let low dominance equal other to self stimulation being higher than current retroceptual stimulation. Call high dominance simply dominance and low dominance subservience. Why? Because one could be the new definition have both. Call the interaction of the two assertiveness. If one is higher in dominance than in subservience, one is high in assertiveness; if one is lower in dominance than in subservience, one is low in assertiveness; if the two are equal one is neither assertive nor unassertive.
Okay. High in C and A equals high in assertiveness. Low in both equals low in assertiveness. High in C and low in A means still high A because other to self stimulation will because of low A be higher than self to self while self to other will be lower in comparison to other to other than other to self will be in comparison to self to self. In other words, the other will have a stronger effect on the self than the self will have on the other, so one will remain subservient. This is again the same as before. How about Low in C and high in A? Self to other stimulation will be higher than other to other stimulation while other to self will have comparatively less effect on the self, so one would remain dominant. Ready because of low character to be pushed around but more ready to push around because of high assertiveness.
This is confusing. I still haven’t worked it out. Of course, there will be all kinds of levels of dominance, but other things being equal, a person having higher A (the difference between his D and S) will dominate a person having a lower A.
(Extraneous note: one mustn’t forget pseudo subservience, the ability of gifted manipulators to suppress their natural dominance until they can use it to the full.)
Latest thought (24Sep89): The self-to-other (dominance) circuit meets the other-to-self (submission) circuit in a center which compares the strength of the stimulation of the first with that of the second. If dominance energy is the greater by some amount, then the person goes into his dominance mode. If the reverse, he goes into his submission mode. If neither, he remains in a neutral mode.
In the dominant mode, his other-to-self transmissions are inhibited (completely); in the submission mode, his self-to-other transmissions are cut off. In the neutral mode both transmissions are cut off. (But both self and other continue to transmit to the dominance/submission center.) All transmissions allowed to continue continue at full strength. That full strength will be great (per cell) than the person’s retroceptual level.
Therefore, high character/high dominance and low character/low dominance are as previously described. High character/low dominance is also as before since high character will boost both self and other transmission to the center equally, but low dominance will reduce the self’s tranmission. Thus, other things being equal, the other will win out and the person will go into the submission mode. But his high character will keep his stronger retroceptual options active and so he will have more of a chance of changing to dominance than other low dominance types.
A person with low character but high dominance will be predominantly dominant. His low character will transmit his self’s options weakly to the center but the other’s input will be equally weak. Meanwhile his high dominance will raise the comparative strength of his self’s material, causing it to come out stronger than the other’s at the center, all else being equal. So he’ll be a managerial type, but an unstable, impulsive, foolish one. His low character will mean his directions will come from any old where while his dominance will try to enforce them, despite reason. The bossy woman is typical of this kind of person–has no real goal but must have her way at all costs anyway.
Note: in deciding on the center and its nature, I wanted, of course, to make my system work, and work in a simple way. But it wasn’t all arbitrary. It seems to me reasonable to assume Nature will wants things simple since simplicity means less expenditure of energy. In this case, too, Nature would strive for social simplicity. It would not be biologically efficient for the self-to-other and the other-to-self transmissions both to occur at the same time and then the self and other fight each other confusedly for a long time to determine one’s dominance/submission mode. Better a quick either/or.
This would facilitate social interactions, too, by allowing a short minor dominance superiority on the part of one person (in a situation where it was important to determine a leader) efficiently to knock a rival into a submission mode. In any case, this kind of “Darwinian” thinking is important and helpful in deciding whether some element of theory makes sense or not. It should always make some kind of sense biologically: a hypothesized trait must be something Nature could logically have selected. And it ought to obey Ockham’s razor because Nature tends to, in biological matters.
* * * * *
A brief thought about how the selves I hypothesize function in the evaluceptual center. Possible chapter-length explanation of the natural evolution of morality there, I now believe. How, in particular, we don’t need a God to tell us not to murder to develop a natural disinclination to do so. I should probably try to write up just this chapter as it should be pretty self-contained, and not hard–even fun–to write.
Owner-Self? And an urcept having to do with ownership–and the territorial imperative.
Cartoceptual Awareness has an Ur-Property Urplex containing a property urcept, and a Cartoceptual Self and Other, or Owner and Trespasser. Or maybe this is in the Carto-Anthroceptual Association Zone. The property urcept automatically accompanies anything one’s eyes show to be within a foot, say of one, wherever one is. It is one’s personal space, in other words. It travels with one. It strengthens for a given location the more one is in that lacations–and for what stays in that location. It establishes one’s “direct property.” Society can establish one’s “indirect property” by means of rules. Natural versus aritificial Property.
Complications. The objecticeptual awareness identifies objects in a property space as primary property. The anthroceptual awareness identifies persons as non-property, by inhibiting the property urcept and stimulating the not-property urcept which is also in the ur-property urplex.
The Authority-Figure will reverse connections in a property zone to the degree it is strong compared to one’s self.
Pets will be part property to the degree they are objects, as all partly are. Other people will be part object, too, the more so they are subordinate to one. In everyday situations, this means, roughly, the younger they are compared to one.
One’s fundaceptual self is property, too. And one’s actions.
* * * * *
THE ANTHROCEPTUAL AWARENESS
The anthroceptual awareness is also an abstracting awareness, for it abstracts the urceptual man out of the environment. With the help of the evaluceptual awareness, it goes farther and derives an urceptual enemy and an urceptual friend from every image of u ceptual man it processes. The appreceptual awareness, which controls pain and pleasure and thus can be said to decide whether a thing is good or bad, simply attaches sensations of good or bad to each urceptual man a person experiences and thus makes him friend or foe. This, of course, allows the person quickly to react–to flee from a foe, for instance, for he will be stimulated by a simple archetypal figure of emnity rather than a difficult and ambiguous particular enemy.
The origin of this, I believe, is ancient–possibly back with the protozoa we came from, with their recognition of what to flee, what to pursue (and devour, if possible). Our anthroceptual awareness, I’m sure, contains animals and insects, some of which are tagged enimical, and from which women automatically shrink–snakes and spiders, and so on. But one need not be the slave of one’s instincts. One can learn, for instance, that spiders are good people, mind their own business, and keep down the population of whiney, annoying bugs.
More important than dividing friend from foe is anthroceptuality’s social adhesion properties. I divide the anthroceptual awareness into four zones: the dominance, the empathy, the subordination and the autonomy zones. The urceptual man dwells in all four–along with the urceptual self. The urceptual self is very important in one’s self-image. It is a twin of the urceptual man, but is connected, literally, to one’s own body.
Here’s how it works: certain representative musclaceptual and viscraceptual sensors are hooked up with the stick-figure urceptual self in such a way that when that self moves and arm, say, one musclaceptually experiences the movement as his own arm moving. Certain of one’s voliceptual sensors are also hooked up with the urceptual self so that when one wills one’s real arm to move left, say, one will also will the arm of one’s urceptual self to move left–and be disturbed if it doesn’t.
What does all this mean? It means, for one thing, that one can objectively view oneself, one can experience oneself both from the inside, and as a stick-figure external to oneself that one controls. The existence of the urceptual self also makes possible the four zones I listed. In the dominance zone the urceptual self connects to the urceptual man the same way one’s body is connected to the urceptual self–that is, the self’s limbs are connected to homologous limbs of the man, and so forth, so that when the self moves a leg, so will the man. The self thus tends to force the man to copy him.
The opposite is the case in the subordination zone. The same connections are made between self and man, but going the opposite way, so that everything the man does (based on some human being in the actual environment–or remembered) the self will attempt, as the man’s subordinate, to copy. There is more to it than that, needless to say.
The Urceptual Foe
The Urceptual Foe’s stimulus is first any stranger, including a wild animal–or even a thunderstorm or something else inanimate. But mostly, especially at first, a stimulus suggestive of a man. It becomes a foe when it has carried out activities sufficiently threatening: loud noises, snarls, baring of the teeth, and looks formidable. And not-human, an animal being almost automatically considered a foe.
21 August 2011
A Sudden Simplification
(Note, one of my flaws is that I’m as interested in how I think as in what I think so constantly complicate my discourse with asides about the former. This will happen often if the following material.)
For a long time I thought each of us had Urceptual Personae in our head, each more or less resembling a human being, and connected to an inner puppet representing a self-image I call the Urceptual Self. Very complicated. Well, suddenly last night I junked all the personae as puppets but two, the Urceptual Self and the Urceptual Other.
The Urceptual Self is a puppet crudely resembling its subject (i.e., the person in whose brain it dwelleth). It tends to copy all its subject actions, and is taken by the subject as the subject’s “me.” When I type and think, “I type,” I’m really expressing my knowledge of what my Urceptual Self is doing (except in not common circumstances when I actually see what my body is doing).
I claim that the Urceptual Self is connected with the equivalent of puppet strings both to its subject’s body (puppet finger to real finger, puppet nose to real nose, etc.) but also the the Urceptual Other, a puppet identical to it.
The Urceptual Other also has puppet strings to an Urceptual (innate) inner picture of a generic human being which is activated by any human being in the external environment. When activated, the picture tends to use its strings to the Urceptual Other to make the Other copy its actions, which are duplicates of the actions of its stimulus. The Other at just about the same time uses the strings to the Urceptual Self it controls to make it carry out the same actions.
I used to think that environmental cues would cause the Urceptual Other to transmit to many other Urceptual Personae which would have various effects, but last night I saw that it didn’t have to. Why: because I could replace those extra personae with simpler urceptual bundles, each sensitive to environmental stimuli indicating the environmental presence of a particular kind of consequential living being, such as a child, a cat, a femal human being, a bad man. . . . The stimuli that I hypothesized turned on the various urceptual others, or casued the central urceptual other to turn on. They would now turn on not puppets but urceptual tags.
But they would all turn on the Urceptual Other. So a subject’s little brother would activate his Urceptual other and urceptual-child-tag. The latter would cause him to carry out big brother actions (assuming other instincts or needs were not complicating factors). He would form a small knowleplex representing his understanding of his little brother which included the Urceptual Other with a child-tag to make up the equivalent of an urceptual child, plus all the unique specifics about the little brother such as his name, favorite dessert, etc. Thereafter, simply glimpsing his little brother would activate his urceptual instincts concerned with taking the role of a father toward the child.
The child-tag would activate his Urceptual Other plus his father-tag. His accelerance would be stimulated to push his cerebral energy high enough for his self to dominate the Urceptual Other. ???
He becomes a father-figure.
Urceptual Self plus father-tag dominates Urceptual Other plus child-tag. He instinctively carries out father activities with little brother as their object.
He can identify with father-figures, which is to say with the knowleplex for one or more of such figures, each of which will contain a father-tag and Urceptual Other.
For one thing, there are certain urcepts that mean authority, certain ones that mean submissiveness, just as in the dog world when a certain kind of bark means I am king here, and lying on one’s back means I submit to you. In the human world tallness, depth of voice, and certain other masculinities probably mean authority, and genuflection, etc., mean submissiveness. The combination of authority urcepts with the urceptual man tend to push a person into his subordination zone while submissiveness urcepts combined with the urceptual man will push a person into his dominance zone. In the first case he will tend to do submissive things, in the latter he will tend to act dominant.
Moreover, when in his dominance zone, his mental energy will increase and he will become literally more assertive while the reverse will have in the subordination zone.
Of course many other factors will determine which zone, if either, he goes into in the presence of another person. People who aren’t particularly anthroceptual will probably not go into either zone. Strong-minded people–that is, people high in character–will be hard to force into their subordination zones, hard, in fact, to knock out of their dominance zones. People low in character will spend most of their time, if they are also anthroceptual, in their subordination zones. Not necessarily unhappily. But very superior people may, if anthroceptual, also become subordinate relatively easily if they have high accomodance, and are in a situation in which accomodance is called for.
Submissiveness and accomodance are the basis of learning–social learning, that is, and learning from others, which is the most important way we learn, probably. So we are all submissive at times, even past childhood when we are more or less programmed for submissiveness (however rebellious at times we can get).
Now I also spoke of the empathy zone. There, as in the subordination zone, the urceptual self is linked up with the urceptual man in such a way that what the latter does the self will attempt to copy. The only difference is that authority urcepts have no power in the empathy zone. Hence, when one is in his empathy zone, one’s mental energy is at its normal level. He submits–or his urceptual self submits–or attempts to copy the urceptual man–but only up to a point. If the copying pushes the self into disliked paths, and with the self, the person himself, linked as he is to the self, and predisposed to do as the self does (when anthroceptually active), one can easily refuse to imitate further.
Hence, one mainly experiences the other as one’s self rather than as an authority to obey. One lives vicariously through the urceptual man, and empathizes with what happens to him. If he hurts himself, one truly feels it oneself. This is the source of the cliche the parent tells the kid about the spanking hurting the spanker more than the kid. It is true, because the spanker’s urceptual self is being spanked as surely as the kid, who is activating one’s urceptual other in the empathy zone.
I also spoke of the autonomy zone. Here there are no links between the urceptual self and the urceptual man, hence now dominance/submission struggle. The two are more or less equals–mainly because no authority or submission urcepts are present. Here the person feels represented by his urceptual self in alliance with an urceptual other. They share the world.
All of this is far more complicated than I have made it, but I’m trying here merely to suggest what my theory is all about, and–I hope–get a few people interested in it.
Further thoughts
I now posit that the stimuli activating an urceptual tag will also activate the urceptual other if appropriate, and influence the Urceptual Self in appropriate, as well–to be responsive or unresponsive to the signals of the Urceptual Other.
The Archetypal Example would involve the mother tag that a mother will activate in an infant. She will also activate the Urceptual Other–and, possibly, the child’s anthroceptual awareness, and its accommodance. Once in its anthroceptual awareness, the child will be sensitive to the mother, and the urceptual other activated. It will turn on its Urceptual Self–or, more likely, bring it more strongly into its consciousness. Its accommodance will lower its cerebral energy so that will not resist the “orders to imitate” the Urceptual Other, once active, will automatically transmit to its Urceptual Self. There will be no Urceptual Mother, just an Urceptual Other acting as an Urceptual mother because accompanied by a mother-tag when active.
This combination of tag and Other will have a second important effect: it will tend to double the strength in the child’s memory of the mother, because that memory will consist of the record of the environmental stimuli entering the child as “mother” plus the record of the Urceptual other and the mother-tag (which will be added as automatic memeries to the memory formed).
25 August 2011
Now for a little controversy: my discovery of God. I thought I’d sneak it in here where no one would see it. Just the surface of it at the moment, but I think I have it pretty well mapped out. It’s tricky, and I’m ungainly at exposition, so be patient.
1. I posit the existence of a Urceptual Father that consists of the Urceptual Other plus a “father-tag.” The Urceptual Father’s stimulus is an human being revealing dominance signals and strength in comparison to the subject. The subject will tend to do the Father’s bidding, and imitate him, to the degree that the stimulus activates the father-tag through various cues. The subject will record a memory of the Urceptual Father’s stimulus and a vaguer memory of his internal Urceptual Other, to the degree that he imitates, as that puppet’s puppet, the actions of the stimulus of the Father. In time, the subject will build a memory of an authority figure consisting of his memories of the Urceptual Other plus the father-tage always with the Other when it is activated as a father figure, plus various stimuli who perform as authority figures–the subject’s actual father, an older brother, an uncle, a male neighbor, etc. Females, too, although to less of an extent because females’ cue are mor nurturing than authoritarian.
Result: the subject will gradually build an inner representation of an Urceptual Father with few clear specific features–a figure much like the Judea-Christian God, in fact. What priests and other elders indoctrinate the subject with will strengthen this internal God who must be obeyed.
Oh, the Urceptual Other and whatever tags are activated with him when he is activated are retroceptually stronger than most other matter that we remember–by which I mean that that result in stronger memories. So a memory of one’s father telling one not to kick one’s little sister will make one’s memory of the event stronger than one’s memory of a pretty flower.
2. Meanwhile, there is the Urceptual Judge whom I posit. The Urceptual Other plus a judge-tag. The judge causes (if need be) one’s memories of one’s deeds that the judge favors, generally moral acts, almost always acts having to do with other people, to be pleasurable, or more pleasurable if they’d be pleasurable without his assistance; his has the same effect on one’s deeds he is against, except that he makes them painful or more painful. In other words, he encourages us to be good. His stimulus is sometimes the same stimulus of the Urceptual Father, but can be any human being the subject acts morally or immorally to. Various elders will stengthen his judge-related actions, as eventually will characters he reads or hears about. His Urceptual-Mother (and actual mother) will likely be more important in this area than the Urceptual father. So, an internal God who bestows rewards and punishment–and is vague the same way the authority-figure is.
3. Various instincts make animists of all of us–that is, we think thunderstorms have intent. We tend often to attach an Urceptual Other to animate objects in the environment, to give us memories of them with a bit of the Urceptual Other in them–legs and arms, for instance–certainly a mind. Ergo: a God who is everywhere, but immaterial (since being in the sky, ocean, trees, etc., will cause his material identifying characteristics to fade–except for hints of the Urceptual Other than will always be aroused to some degree.
Conclusion: the Urceptual Father and the Urceptual Judge and innate animism will combine to form in most of us a natural anthropomorphic deity that priests will exploit, and the majority will accept–because everyone else does.
Is there an escape? Sure. Innate general intelligence. Perhaps more important, strong abstract intelligence than social intelligence. Life experience that gradually makes reason stronger than instincts. Much else. Complicated topic. A meagre start here, but I did better than I thought I would.
Oh, and this god will be a part of most conspiraplexes, I believe–even those believed in my agnostics or atheists–many of whom believe in the state, or some other secular god.
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To the poet who is still a ROCK STAR in our eyes! Let me know if you see anything that needs correcting! I enjoyed the article in Scientific American.
http://blogs.neisd.net/dlashe/stories-from-our-blog/