009 Maps of Meaning: 9 Becoming a Self (TVO)

We know that the snake is utilized conceptually and metaphorically as representation of transformation, right? Because the snake is something that can shed its skin and be reborn. We know that a snake is something that’s innately attractive and terrifying to human beings and other primates, so that if you come across a snake, you’re likely to be at least startled, if not horrified by it, but also attracted to it in a way that is underneath your voluntary consciousness. Right? Because snakes attract orienting reflexes and they activate the systems underneath your consciousness that actually govern the structure of that consciousness.

We know that the snake can be well represented as well as internal chaos. So imagine this. Imagine that it’s not unreasonable for a self-conscious mind searching for a mode of self-representation to remark on the parallels between the structure of the snake and the spine and the brain, given that a snake is essentially a spine with a brain. And then imagine as well that the most archaic aspects of our nervous system—those that govern novelty and orienting and anxiety responses—are in fact precisely those that were described by McLean as nested inside the reptilian brain.

And then imagine along with the Hindu Yogis that the purpose of Kundalini Yoga is to activate the circuitry that’s associated with that snake, so to speak, to produce a permanent state of alert wakefulness that’s associated with consciousness. So imagine this. Imagine an animal like, like a zebra, grazing mindlessly in the herd with no consciousness whatsoever. And then imagine its relatively undeveloped cortical structures activated suddenly by the movement of a lion off in the perimeter.

And then imagine for that brief moment that that zebra’s actually conscious, a state that requires a tremendous amount of energy and is difficult to maintain, but because the threat and the uncertainty manifest themselves within the zebra’s mode of consciousness, it wakes momentarily. And then imagine that human beings are like that zebra, always. Because we’ve become so conscious, because we note that the unknown is around us all the time, even when we think we’re safe, we’re never safe. Imagine that the reason we’re so conscious is because, as a consequence of our discovery of the possibility of our own mortality, all this underlying circuitry—that in other animals is only apparent when they’re startled or afraid or interested or curious—in human beings, it’s on all the time, and that’s what makes us conscious.

And the reason for that is because we developed enough cortical elaboration to note that we’re always threatened by everything that’s around us. And then imagine that—well that’s pretty awful, isn’t it? Because it’s at the basis of all our innate existential terror. But then imagine as well that without that terror pushing us forward, and our constant reference to the dangerous aspect of the unknown, we would have never been motivated to produce the kind of societies that we’ve produced, which are essentially very remarkably elaborated devices that enable us to find some protection from that unknown and to manipulate it effectively.

And then remembering that story, we’ll return to Genesis. Jung says the snake was regarded by early Gnostic Christians as a kind of deity whose faculties were more developed and advanced than the original Deity that actually structured the world—the idea there being that the world initially was a pretty abysmal place. Everyone wasn’t conscious. We all existed at the level of the animal, and then the snake came along and said, “wake up, wake up.”

And the movement from that state of unselfconsciousness paradise to this profane state of awakening can be regarded not so much as a descent, but as an ascent of sorts, even though a painful one. And then you have Goethe’s commentary from Mephistopheles, his representation of Satan and his capacity for temptation, who says: "follow the adage of my cousin snake / from Dreams of Godlike knowledge you will wake / to fear in which your very soul shall quake." A statement associating the human tendency to attribute to all revolutionary sources of new information a kind of demonic being.

And then you have the problem of the woman. Now we know that within the context of the Judeo-Christian tradition, women have unduly suffered for their role in tempting humanity in the embodied form of Adam towards higher order self-consciousness. And then you think—well, let’s just take a look at how human beings and their mating relationships differ from those of other animals, like chimpanzees, to whom we are very closely genetically related.

And if you look at the mating strategies of female chimpanzees, you see that they really don’t care who they sleep with, so to speak. Any old chimpanzee will do. Now, the less dominant male chimps tend to be chased away by the more dominant male chimps, but if a female and less dominant chimp can get the hell away from the watchful gaze of the dominants already, they’re perfectly happy to mate. Human females are not like that. They’re selective maters.

And there’s a tremendous body of evolutionary psychological information that suggests that although both genders value intelligence and physical appearance, females value the ability to attain dominance hierarchy status in men far more than men admire the ability to attain dominant status in women. Which is to say that men don’t care what a woman has with regards to potential for attaining status, whereas with women it’s one of the strong determinants of mating preference.

So then let’s say, look, we don’t know why the hell our cortexes expanded so rapidly somewhere between five and three million years ago. Let’s offer this as a hypothesis. The women started to get choosy, and because they were so damned complicated, the whole human species had to exaggerate its cortical growth prior to any even use for that cortical growth, just so that the men had an even hand in the competition, right? So women put tremendous selection pressure on the human being to develop tremendous, tremendous cortical expansion.

Now, we already know that from the mythological perspective, that women are frequently cast into the same conceptual domain—the temptress domain— as the benevolent aspect of the unknown, and we know as well from representations of hero mythology that it is the individual who goes out to confront chaos who’s most likely to free from the dragon not only treasure, but a virgin, say in the case of mythological representations like say George and the Dragon.

So then we close with the notion of voluntarism. And in the Old Testament in Genesis, there’s now this notion that not only did people become self-conscious because they did something, but they did this voluntarily, right? They made this decision on their own. So Milton puts words into God’s mouth and says, "So will fall / He and his faithless progeny: whose fault? / Whose but his own? / ingrate, he had of me / All he could have; I made him just and right, / sufficient to have stood, though free to fall."

And then you think—if you think, well, maybe the notion of the heritable sin of Adam characterizing human beings and their fallen existential condition isn’t just the black-hearted ravings of fundamentalist southern Baptist lunatics. Right? There’s something to this. Human beings are the only creatures that seem to live at odds with their own experience, and it’s not so unreasonable to suppose that it’s our dawning capacity for self-consciousness that put us in that uncomfortable position.

So why do I associate the eating of the apple with self-consciousness? Well, it’s because that’s how the story lays itself out. You have the collateral evidence of the Buddhist story of enlightenment, right? His contact with death. You have multiple medieval representations of Eve offering to Adam, not an apple, but a skull. You have multiple representations of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the medieval iconography as not containing apples, but containing skulls.

And you have the statements that are within the context of Genesis itself: "And the eyes of both of them were opened. And they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons." Well, there’s a lot of information packed into those two lines, right? What does it mean to have your eyes open? Well, half your brain is visual cortex. It’s not unreasonable to presume that that means a quick magnification of consciousness.

You’re conscious during the day. That’s when your eyes are open. But what happens when your eyes are open? Well, you know you’re naked. Well, what does that mean? Well, you know you’re vulnerable, right? To social comment, to social judgment, to dominance hierarchy, status maneuvering, and to all the terrible things that the unknown world can heap upon you.

And so then what do you do? Well, you create culture. Right? And that’s what this little sentence said: "And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons." That’s a pretty eventful sequence all crammed up in two little sentences.

So then what happens? Ah, I think it’s extremely interesting. So before Adam and Eve figure out that they’re naked, they’re cruising around the garden having a fine time doing whatever they want. They don’t take any thought for the future, right? They don’t have a prefrontal cortex. They’re living in a paradox-less environment like an animal lives.

Well, what happens after they become self-conscious? Well, prior to this, Adam’s walking around with God. Right? And you think about what that means. Does it mean something like this? An animal isn’t in the world of good and evil. An animal, like Nietzsche points out, is beyond good and evil, right? Enraptured in tea, entirely by the actions of automatic instinct, governed by processes that are completely transcendent.

The animal’s nothing but a force of nature. There’s no opposition between the animal and the world. The animal is the world. And just as in the case of the animal prior to the eating of the apple, Adam walks around the garden with God. There’s no discontinuity between Him and the transcendent world as such, but as soon as he becomes naked, he hides.

Well, why? Well, that doesn’t need to be answered. All you have to do is think about it. Why would you hide if you know you’re naked? Well, it’s simple. You hide because you think you can get hurt. You think that whatever you are is so vulnerable that if it shows itself to the transcendent, to others, to the natural world, that something terrible will happen.

And then you think, well that’s a pretty logical presupposition, right? Look at us. So God comes cruising around the garden after Adam and Eve eat the apple in the cool of the day, and Adam and Eve hide themselves among the trees of the garden. And God says, “Hey Adam, hey, where are you?”

And Adam says, “I heard your voice and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.” And that story has bottomless depth because it means something like this. At the beginning of Genesis, there’s this notion that there is a transcendent relationship between the individual and God, right? The identity of logos and the individual, right? A notion, by the way, that our entire idea of intrinsic human right is predicated on, as we’ve been at some pains to demonstrate.

A relationship between the limited and the limitless, eradicated by the dawn of self-consciousness. Well, what does that mean? Well, let’s say you have a destiny, just for the sake of argument. Right? Because you are a being with a tremendous history and an unbelievable potential. So let’s say you have a destiny, just for the sake of argument. What would cause you to hide from that destiny? Well, obviously your own reflections on your mortal vulnerability, right?

How could I be characterized by any transcendent power whatsoever when I’m susceptible to social alienation, right? When I have this body which is capable of terrifying degeneration that will eventually decay into old age and that is bounded by death? How could I be good for anything, which is precisely what this little story says?

And so God figures out that Adam and Eve ate the fruit, and that’s a pretty decisive move because once you wake up—sorry, you’re awake. And he says, and this is not an injunction, by the way. This is a description. All right, you’ve done it now. “And to the woman he says, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.”

Why? Why? Well, we have a big cortex, right? Really big. It grew fast, and what that meant is that there was an evolutionary arms race between skull size, date of birth, and pelvic diameter girth. The wider the pelvis, the less effectively you can walk. The larger the skull, the bigger the brain. The younger the baby, the more dependent and vulnerable.

So what do we have in the case of human beings? The female human pelvis has already stretched to the limits of its structural capacity. So the hole in its center is as big as it can get without compromising the structural integrity of the pelvis while still allowing women to walk and run. So how have babies adapted to that? Well, that’s simple. A mammal of our size should have a gestation period of two years. We have a gestation period of nine months. Why? You gotta get the damned baby out before its head gets too big.

What does that mean? Well, it means it’s vulnerable, right? Nothing more vulnerable than a baby human being, except maybe a baby kangaroo, right? But it’s got a pouch to hide in at least. So we’re born vulnerable, right? Characteristic of the birth of the hero. Who suffers in childbirth? Women. Why? Baby skulls just a little bit too big. Has to be crunched and compacted during birth, right? The skull bones aren’t joined together so that the baby’s head can be squashed and visibly deformed during the process of birth.

Prior to the twentieth century, what was the death rate among women giving birth? One in three? One in five? Terrible. Why? That’s the price you pay for self-consciousness. "And thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee." This is not an injunction. This is a description. The additional burden that dependent offspring place on women puts them at a disadvantage.

What’s the consequence of that from a historical perspective? Well, any feminist can answer that question, right? "And unto Adam he said, because you listen to your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying don’t eat that, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it for all the days of thy life." Fair enough, right? Once you’re self-conscious, you work. Why? Well, animals don’t work.

Why do people work? Well, because we know, right? We know that if it isn’t going to happen today, it’s going to happen tomorrow. And if it isn’t going to happen tomorrow, well, it’s going to happen next week or the week after or the month after the year after. And we bloody well better prepare. So that’s what we do—constantly. Prepare and prepare and prepare.

So we’re not bounded and motivated by what’s happening from second to second, like the animal is in its still paradisal state. We’re constantly tormented by an endless string of what if questions because when we look at the unknown, we can see the possibility for everything, including our own punishment, our own torment, our own demise. And so we’re motivated like no other animal to work.

And so we work. But that is another aspect that alienates from paradisal being. "Thorn and thistles shall it bring forth for thee and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return." Right? Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken.

So he drove out the man, and he placed to the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the Tree of Life. Adam and Eve, right? The Mother and Father of all humanity. So you can give them a mythological slant, and you can say Adam is culture and Eve is nature because they’re the archetypal parents.

It’s a perfectly reasonable interpretation. They have twin sons, Cain and Abel. So let’s read first-born creatures: first-born human creatures in the new self-conscious world. So what are the first two individuals in the new self-conscious world like? And let’s find out. "And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bare a son, Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And again she bare his brother Abel, the younger brother. And Abel was a keeper of sheep but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

And in the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord." Okay. So, we’re going to remove this story from its entrapment in a particular temporal domain and within a temporal culture. We’re going to say something like this: Well, if you work, you make sacrifices, right? That’s what work’s all about. And the reason you make sacrifices is because you’re offering up to the unknown the fruits of your labor in the hope that as a consequence of your diligent effort, you’re going to be favored, right? Because otherwise, why work?

The point of working is to transform the transcendent into something benevolent. So you work, and you work, and you work, and you say, is that sufficient? And the answer you get from the transcendent is the answer. Now, it’s certainly true that lots of people work, and it doesn’t go all that well, right? They make sacrifices, and they do what they think they have to do, and their life is one string of catastrophes after another. All right?

So we have this situation: "In the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering." So what that means is that old Abel, working away, may have things that are going great for him, right? Fortune smiles on him. He’s doing wonderfully. He’s got everything he needs.

Well, okay, and he’s scrounging away in the ground and things aren’t going as well for him at all, right? Plagues, locusts, you name it. Farm life isn’t going well. So what happens? Well, "Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell." Well, precisely right? Because if you work diligently towards a certain end and you don’t get there, then your countenance falls, right? You’re angry, frustrated, disappointed, hurt, anxious, threatened, ashamed, guilty—the whole panoply of negative emotions.

And that’s fair enough because, of course, if you fail, that’s what’s going to be the consequence. But then there’s this little twist on it, right? This specifically human twist that’s like that kind of moral of the whole story. And so you find the Lord saying, “What, you know, what’s up with you? Why are you so unhappy? If you just got your act together, then you’d be accepted. If you really got your act together…” which is a statement something like this: If you keep making sacrifices and the same terrible thing keeps happening, there’s always the possibility that you’re just actually not doing it the right way.

And if you’d just get yourself straightened up, tapped together, right? And drop the preconceptions that you don’t really need, and adjust your behavior accordingly, then fortune would smile on you. And that’s exactly what the Lord says to Cain, right? “You don’t walk around with such a crabby look on your face. If you did, well, you’ll be accepted, and if you don’t do well, sin lies at the door.” So what does that mean?

Well, this is a deep motif in ancient Hebrew thinking. If the world isn’t laying itself out in a manner that you find acceptable, you’re faced with a tough choice. Either the world is a terrible place, bent on your destruction, or you’re doing something wrong. And it bloody well better be that you’re doing something wrong because if the world is a terrible place bent on your destruction, you’ve got absolutely no hope.

“And Cain talked with Abel his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.” So what does that mean? Well, it’s pretty easy. It’s simple. It means this: Well, say things aren’t that well for you? And it’s really not because life’s unfair and everything’s stacked against you. It’s because you’re kind of an arrogant, stubborn, quasi-totalitarian, cowardly idiot.

And as a consequence of that, the world is turning into something resembling a wasteland around you. And you have this auction. Change. Or continue. Oh, you have another option. Man, look around. There are all those people doing well. The world’s a terrible place bent on my destruction. Couldn’t it be just the most interesting thing if, as things are going to hell for me, I could take along for the ride some of those successful people who are successful just for unfair reasons?

Anyways, right? Instead of using all that negative emotion as a cue that there’s something about me that might need to be transformed, I can say, well, why not just eradicate the target of my resentment? Right? Not only because that sort of removes the problem of comparison, but more profoundly—and I think sort of again—limitlessly, profoundly. Let’s say you make the decision that the world’s a terrible place and it’s bent on your destruction.

And then you think, well, what’s the logical response to that? And then you think something like this: Goethe, Faust, Mephistopheles credo. “The spirit I that endlessly denies, and rightly too; for all that comes to birth is fit for overthrow as nothing worth. Wherefore the world were better sterilized; thus all that’s here is evil recognized—is gain to me and downfall, ruin and sin; the very element I’d prosper in.”

And Goethe draws our attention to this credo not once, but twice, in his writing of Faust, and has Mephistopheles say, right, once again: "Go on, to sheer nothing. Passed with null made one./ What matters our creative endless toil / when at a snatch oblivion ends the coil? / It is by gone, how shall this riddle run? As good as if things never had begun yet circle back existence to possess. I’d rather have eternal emptiness."

And so then you think about Cain-like figures, like Stalin. And you think, well, what exactly was he motivated by? And on the one hand, you think, well, he was trying to extend his cultural dominion, plagued by his own self-conscious neuroticism. He wanted to extend the borders of his totalitarian certainty to every corner just to not be plagued by the unknown.

And you think, fair enough, we're all pretty nervous and a little stability is a pretty good thing. Why? Because they make a fundamental judgment, which is the judgement of Mephistopheles. Look: life is terrible. Terrible. Terrible. We're self-conscious, we get sick, we go insane, we're going to die, children—innocent children—suffer everywhere. How in the world is it right to let such a state continue? Maybe it will be better, all things considered, to just bring the whole thing to an end.

And then you think again with Eliade that the reason human societies fall apart is twofold. One is that things go from bad to worse in their own accord, right? Thermodynamic reality. Pure entropy. Structured entities decay. But then there’s a twist: structured entities constructed by humans are sped in their process of decay by the participants of the individuals within that society who have essentially decided that the game is not worth the price.

And that under such conditions, the only reasonable thing for a self-conscious—painfully self-conscious—individual to do is to work as hard as he or she possibly can to take the maximum amount of revenge on the conditions of existence and to ensure that the entire game folds up and that consciousness disappears and that being is eradicated.