005 Maps of Meaning: 5 Grappling with Fear (TVO)

You know, when a computer starts up, it has to boot – bootstrap, is what that means. And that boot straps itself by continuing to engage in more and more complex processes as it starts up. So, it starts up with a simple process, and that triggers a more complex process. And that triggers a more complex process, and that way, the computer boots itself into existence.

Well, that’s exactly what we did, except we did it over like three billion years, right? We started out as these unbelievably simple organisms that can pretty much do nothing at all, except replicate and develop much more and more complex forms over this tremendously long period of evolutionary history, right? So, that’s how we solved the problem that you can’t know anything without knowing something, and that you can’t have knowledge without generating it. It’s: A little knowledge, a little more generation. A little knowledge, a little more generation. A little knowledge-- this huge spiraling process that expends-- extends over vast amounts of time; information encoded in your body, right, and as part of your-- as part of the nature of your being; and information encoded in your culture, reflected inside, you enacted out in the world.

And as scientists, you know, with this 500-year history of science behind us, we always believe that it’s the material substrate of things that’s the reality. But it is more complicated than that because even the material substrate that we consider as scientists isn’t merely unformed stuff, right? It has structure. It’s patterned. It’s full of information, and there are physicists working now who believe that conceptualization of the ground of being – the material ground, uh, of being – as information is a more fruitful metaphor than conceptualization of the ground of being as like unformed matter. It’s not unformed, right? It’s patterned and regular. Informative so that if you investigate it, it reveals order as not just a material structure.

So, if you go back to Democritus, right, the person who originated the atomic hypothesis, Democritus actually says two things – not one. He says: Everything’s made out of atoms – little bits of stuff. But the other thing he says is: Atoms array themselves in space array themselves-- And what that means is that the atomic structure of things is patterned, and that the pattern is just as real as the atoms themselves. It’s the pattern that’s the knowledge, right? It’s the pattern that’s the information. So, what we encounter as conscious beings is this complexly patterned array, which we then turn into knowledge – usable knowledge.

I said: Well, how would this metaphorical representation work? And so, uh, the way I want you to look at this figure is like this: Imagine this as distant, right, as lurking in the background. So, this is the ground of all being manifesting itself as one primordial archetype, or one, one metaph-- one standard motive metaphorical representation.

Why this figure? Well, this is complicated, I think. If you show men a picture of a beautiful woman with her eyes averted, while you’re doing a brain scan mapping of their nucleus accumbens, nothing happens. Why is that relevant? Well, the nucleus accumbens is part of the underlying emotional circuitry that governs approach behavior and pleasure. And approach behavior and pleasure are very tightly intertwined. If you show the same man a picture of a beautiful woman with her eyes locked on his, his nucleus accumbens will light up. Why is that? Well, it’s partly because men are innately in-- attuned to hu-- to female beauty. Female beauty has a standard form. It’s replicable cross-culturally. It constitutes the average human… human female form.

But more than that, the gaze-locking is an indication of shared attention. And it’s also the indication of the initial establishment of a shared attentional space. And it’s an invitation, and that invitation activates approach circuitry, even if it’s just a picture. So, and you can see this if you walk into any drug store, or any-any s-- any drug store that sells magazines. What do you see? Well, in the men’s magazines, you see an infinite array of beautiful women. And in the female magazines, the women’s magazines, you see an infinite array of beautiful women. Now, just exactly why is that?

Well, there’s something absolutely compelling about female beauty. And then, you have to ask yourself: What the hell does compelling mean? OK, so what compelling means is: You’re busily engaged in a goal-directed task and something happens in your peripheral vision, so to speak, that attracts your attention. Now, that attention is attracted by processes that are fundamentally unconscious; which means, processes that occur before you can think. So, you can imagine a loose collection of college-aged males having a conversation in a bar, when someone beautiful walks by. And one or more of them catch her out of the corner of their eyes. Orientation, right? Unconscious.

Why? Because there’s something about that pattern form that grips attentional systems and directs observation towards it. So then, you think: OK. Human beings are really, really complicated pattern processors. And you think: Well, partly what we’re trying to get a handle on here is the nature of the world. And partly what we know already is that there are aspects of the world that you can’t understand always. And then, you think: Well, people are trying to get a grip on the fact that there are parts of the world that you can’t understand.

So, that there’s this transcendent element to being that always escapes encapsulation. How would you represent it? Well, it’s the transcendent element of things that always attracts your attention, implicitly, beyond your control. So, loud noise or a scream, or the cry of a baby or anything horrific, right? Blood, broken bodies… These are stimuli that are so representative of trouble that you can’t help but attend to them. And then, you can imagine that all the stimuli, so to speak, that you can’t help but attend to, can be amalgamated into representations of… the transcendent aspect of reality. And that’s what you see in this representation right here.

So, you see a weird intermingling of female sexuality, plus some very distinct genital symbolism. Why genital? So, imagine that that’s a vulval opening. Why? Before we had any scientific knowledge at all-- let’s go 10,000 years ago. What the hell’s inside a body? Well, we knew that, I guess, a little bit from hunting, right? We knew the interior of a body. What is it about the interior of a body that allows new forms to be generated? How is it that mothers can give birth to children? How is it that one form, that’s complex and attractive and mysterious, can give rise to another form?

Why is that useful knowledge from a representational perspective? Because there’s some association between the feminine form from a metaphorical perspective and the capacity for nature to give rise to new forms. And then you see a representation of a typical monstrous form that’s Kali, the Hindu goddess, the devourer, and in this representation so she’s like a more developed version of Tiamat, that’s a good way of thinking about her.

She's not so much unspeakable anymore, you can actually say a few things about Kali; you could say, well, she’s like a spider because she has eight legs and she weaves a web of fate, and you could say, well, her web is made out of fire because if you get too near to her you'll burn up. And you could say she glares at you with eyes that are unblinking, and you could say she has a tongue like a tiger, and you could say that she carries weapons of destruction and has a headdress of skulls and that her hair is on fire.

And you could say that she’s giving birth to this guy as nature gives birth to human beings and is devouring him at the same time. Intestines first. And then you could say, well, you could imagine that the first few people that made a representation like that shocked themselves quite badly, right? Because this is a representation of fear itself in a sense, not exactly it’s also a representation of those stimuli that if you're human are going to make you both afraid and compelled just like it’s hard to look away from fire even if it’s burning something down, you want to have it around.

Rats, if you raise a rat to juvenile status and then waft in cat odour, it will completely short circuit, why? Well the rat’s never seen a cat, so exactly what the hell is it responding to? You think, well you could say, well it’s not a conditioned stimulus because the rat’s never encountered a cat; there's something deep in the brain of that rat that knows something about cat odour, has never encountered a cat.

So exactly what is it perceiving? Well in some sense I think the notion that it’s perceiving is wrong, it isn't perceiving, it’s just going like this. That’s the representation. Well, with chimpanzees, who are more complex, there are other stimuli that evoke exactly that kind of response. Chimps don’t like snakes. Dead or alive, plastic, rubber, doesn’t matter; they don’t like snakes.

If you put one in their cage, they get as far away from the snake as they can as quickly as possible and then they look at it. Because I suppose if you're a chimpanzee, even if you don’t like snakes, it’s a good idea to know where they are, right? So it’s simultaneously repelling -- Ahh snake! -- plus attractive, well you better look at it and see where it’s gonna go.

Chimpanzees don’t like unconscious chimpanzees, so if you knock a chimpanzee out with anesthetic and you bring the body of the chimpanzee back into the chimpanzee cage, the chimps do exactly the same thing: away from the body, but they look at it. They don’t like masks made of chimpanzee faces. Well, three-year-old kids don’t like masks either. There are these underlying perceptual primitives, so to speak, that likely activate lower limbic mechanisms in our brains that say to us this is a place suddenly where something that you probably do not like or will not like is very, very likely to happen.

So you can imagine that an environment characterized by unconscious bodies or blood or the presence of spiders or snakes, etcetera, might be a place where a primate such as yourself may encounter things that they don’t know how to cope with, therefore afraid, right? Same with fear of the dark, and then you can imagine that the dark is populated with all of these monsters of the unknown, and you get some notion of what's happening to children who are afraid of the dark. Why are they afraid of the dark? Because in the dark, which is the place you don’t know, lurk things that could hurt a creature like you.

What things? Well, we can’t exactly say, but if you give children exposure to books and to adult conversation and the television, soon those limbic structures that are populating the darkness with unnamable fear start to populate it up with skeletons and vampires and monsters and so forth and so on. The representational structures that the brain is capable of generating say well fear-inducing things are like that: they're bloody, they're dangerous, they look like serpents, they look like insects, they lurk in the dark, they sneak up on you, etc., all mangled together into some sort of monstrous form.

Now, I wanna read you a story. So lemme give you a little background on this story. This story popped into my head in one chunk like complete, which I thought was kind of interesting, but… it was also a story that emerged in solution to a problem I’d been thinking about for a long time because I was dealing with this guy who didn't wanna grow up. So, he’s caught in a kind of Peter Pan situation and Peter Pan, pan means everything, pan like pantheistic.

And Peter Pan is a child who won’t grow up; now he’s magical. Well okay fine, children live in the magical world, right? They're ripe with possibility, he’s magical. He doesn’t wanna grow up. So, he lives in Neverland with the lost boys; Neverland doesn’t really exist and the lost boys are obviously boys who haven't managed to establish some mode of being, and he’s in constant battle with Capt. Hook, and Capt. Hook’s a tyrant, right? A pirate, a negative, a manifestation of the negative archetype of social order. Hook is always fighting Peter Pan because Peter Pan represents childhood and vulnerability and he doesn’t wanna be vulnerable, so they're locked in this sort of eternal battle.

And lots of people, I think more commonly men, but not necessarily, get caught in this Peter Pan problem. So, I was dealing with a person who was caught in this situation, didn't wanna grow up, wouldn’t sacrifice childhood. And so this story popped into my head. It’s called Cockadoodledo.

Once upon a time, there was a man who had a long hard journey ahead of him. He was trudging along the way over waters and through brushes when he saw a little shiny gnome with big white teeth and a black toupee sitting by the side of the road. He was drumming on a log with two white bones and humming oddly to himself.

The little gnome said, "John, why work so hard? Why walk so fast? Who knows if you'll ever get there anyway? Come over here I have something to show you." So John walked off the road. He was sick of walking anyway because people kept throwing sticks and stones at him.

The little gnome said, "I have a shiny red jewel that I would like to sell you. Cheap. Here it is." And from beneath his cloak, he pulled the biggest ruby that the man had ever seen. Must’ve weighed 100 pounds and shone like the sun. The gnome said, "Do you like it? It’s an enchanted stone; what will you offer me for it?"

And the man said, "I don’t have much money, but I’ll give you everything I have." And the gnome looked displeased. So John added, "I could pay some more monthly." So the gnome accepted, "Fair enough; buy now, pay later, sounds good for me, I'm all for the installment plan."

So the man gave the gnome all his money and promised to pay the rest later, and the gnome walked back into the bush by the road, clacking his teeth and giggling and twitching. The more the man thought about this ruby and the great deal he got, the happier he became; he started back on the road with a light heart.

But soon discovered that he couldn't make much progress because 100 pounds was a lot to carry. He said to himself, "Why continue anyways? I have what I want; I’ll just stand here holding my ruby and when people walk by they could see how well I've already done." So he stopped.

A little while later, one of his friends came along, saw him standing there. His friend said, "John, why don’t you come along with me? I've just opened a new business and I could really use some help, come along quick. It will be opening soon." John thought that sounded good.

But his friend was in a hurry. Besides, couldn't he see the ruby? How could he speed along beside him; where would he put his jewel? So he said, "Thanks but I have to take care of my jewel. Maybe I’ll see you later." His friend looked at him like he was crazy, but he was trying to get somewhere quick so he just shrugged a bit and said, "Okay John, see you later."

And he sped on down the road. A little while later, another friend came by and he said, "John, nice to see you. I'm going back to school. There are lots of wonderful things to learn, great things to do. The world is full of unsolved problems. I could use some company. Would you like to come along?"

John thought that sounded pretty good, but this friend too looked like he was in a hurry. Besides, standing beside the road holding the jewel was tiring, and he needed all the energy he had for that. So he said to his friend, "Thanks but I have to take care of my jewel. Isn't it beautiful? Maybe I’ll see you later."

His friend looked at him like he was crazy, but he was trying to get somewhere quick so he just shrugged and said, "Hope everything goes alright with you, see you later."

Many friends came and went and the years went by. The jewel got heavier and heavier. But the man got more and more attached to it. The only thing was nobody seemed to notice how beautiful it was. People would rush by and talk about their plans, and nobody had a ruby as big and nobody seemed likely to get a ruby as big.

If you'd think that someone might have said something like, "At least nice ruby, John. Sure wish I had one like that," but it never happened. Then one day someone new came down the road; he was bent over and he was thin and his hair was gray, although he didn't look that old. He was carrying a big dirty rock carefully in his arms and he wasn’t making much progress.

The strange figure approached and glanced up at John, then he grinned and said, "Why are you standing there so stupidly with a big ugly rock in your tired old hands? You look pretty daft. I bet you wish you had a big ruby like the one I'm carrying."

And John thought this poor man is deluded; he’s carrying a rock. I have the ruby! So he said, "Excuse me sir, but you are sadly mistaken. I'm the one with the jewel. I met a little gnome by the side of the road and he sold it to me. I’m still paying for it. Although not so very much, you are carrying a rock."

The tired stranger looked annoyed and said, "I don't know what game you're playing, mister. You have a rock; I have a jewel. Little gnome you described sold it to me. And he said it was the only one. I've been carrying it for 20 years. And I’ll never let it go."

And John said, "But I’ve been carrying mine for 20 years too; it can’t be just a rock." Rock or jewel, on and on they argued. Suddenly, out stepped the little gnome as if he’d never left. Only this time he wasn’t so little; he was bigger and redder and menacing and his laugh sounded like the rattling of chains.

"Quit arguing you two. I've never seen a sight quite so pathetic. You're carrying rocks, both of you. And if you would've ever had the sense to put them down for a second or two, you would've seen that."

"Oh well, at least you were diligent. I played a mean trick. I feel bad. So I'm gonna give you what you really deserve. Do you want what you really deserve?" And John and the thin stranger nodded eagerly, finally they thought.

"You haven't seen anything yet. Throw down your rocks." So John and the thin stranger obeyed. Each rock split down the middle and it hit the ground, out flowed a river of ravenous white worms which rushed towards the men and devoured them whole while they thrashed about and screamed. Soon nothing was left except a leg bone from each.

The little gnome picked them up and walked off the road. He sat down by a hollow log and started to drum. He drummed and he waited. And he hummed an odd little tune. "Picture of food feeds the whole hungry clan, the image of good makes the whole healthy man, why walk for miles, why do the work, just smile the smile, success after all is a quirk, life isn't real that’s the message I give. It’s easy that way, plus who wants to live?"

So needless to say, the guy that I was telling this story to never listened to it and things really didn't go well for him for a long, long time, and they really didn't go well for him until he was willing to give up some of the things he was carrying along. So he had acquired, for example, a number of things that he couldn't afford.

And the fact that he was carrying them, right, paying for them month after month, meant couldn't afford to get an education; was perfectly willing to sacrifice the possibility of getting an education for the image of success. Rather than the reverse, right? And he was completely irritated at the world because he had all these trappings of success which no one he admired also admired, and he absolutely wasn’t getting anywhere and he thought that was tremendously unfair.

But the truth of the matter was that had he put down what he was carrying for even a moment, he would've been able to get to where he wanted to go. And that’s a motif that succinctly and dramatically describes the necessity for sacrifice. Now one of the things you see in psychotherapy very, very commonly is that the person who’s coming for help does the same damn thing over and over and over and every time they do it, it has the same consequence. Bad.

So they end up with the same kind of relationship. Right? Starts out well, then the person turns against them and starts to abuse them; they get abused repeatedly, then it ends, then they meet someone else, and the cycle continues. It doesn’t seem to matter who they're out with; either they pick a person like this or they turn the person into someone like that. They lose jobs the same way or their educational hopes fail the same way, why?

Well, the person thinks, "Man… the structure of the world is so unfair. Everyone else seems to be getting along just fine, but me I get hit in the head over and over." Exactly the same way. And then you think, well… what is the structure of the world, exactly? And then you remember, well, you know there's the things you don’t understand and the things you do understand, and the things you do understand structure you and protect you; but you know, sometimes the things you do understand aren't the right things.

You're valuing something, you're carrying something that’s an impediment to your further progress, and it’s frequently the case that it’s the kind of impediment that under no conditions do you wanna give up because there's something about you that says, like John says about the ruby, "Look, it’s a ruby, who the hell cares if it weighs 100 pounds and I have to stand by the road? I still got the ruby!"

And all you'd ever have to do is put the damn thing down and wander off and everything would be just fine, but you won’t do it, why? Because you don’t wanna give up what you know. Because you don’t wanna sacrifice anything. Well, long before people had any psychological acumen or any psychological knowledge, they already figured out that if you were gonna take on a figure like this and expect to get absolutely anywhere with her, right, the horrors of the world, you bloody well better be willing to sacrifice whatever’s necessary to keep you going along your path.

Right? Unfortunately, the things that you have to sacrifice are often those things that you're most particularly compelled by or gripped by or value, the things that you wanna give up least. Which is why in archaic societies, where all this is dramatized, people sacrifice an animal that they value particularly. Or eerier than that, even a child that they value particularly, right? Dramatically portraying the idea of sacrifice; you have to give something up if you wanna make an inroad on what she represents.

And so then you say the purpose of sacrifice is to turn the terrible aspect of the world into the benevolent aspect of the world. And this is Diana, not a Hindu goddess but a Greek, a Roman goddess; same idea applies in the Hindu case. If you make the appropriate sacrifices, then the terrible aspect of the world turns into the benevolent aspect of the world.

And it is the case that even empirical studies of success indicate that intelligence is a handy thing to have, but hard work and dedication is a handy thing to have too. And what that means is that you're constantly willing to sacrifice the impulsive pleasure of the present for the hopes of payback in the future. For example, the sacrifice of immediate gratification to obtain an appropriate social role; take your place in society.

It’s definitely a sacrifice, right? Because you put off pleasures in the moment to obtain long term stability and productivity. To turn the world into this. And so then you can say, this is how the world falls apart as it’s explored, right? So first of all, there's the thing that you can’t even name that only fills you with dread but also with the sense of possibility and that manifests itself in your life as something concrete.

That you don’t know promising and threatening and that divides itself up into those aspects of the world that you value and admire and that hold promise for you, and those aspects of the world that don’t, and that’s a differentiation as a consequence of exploration. It’s not a differentiation of the world into objects; though it’s a differentiation of the world into categories of emotion, those things that are good for you, those things that are bad for you and the source that they're derived from.

That’s the background of the world. We'll stop!