The Reenchantment of the World

by Morris Berman

  As I stated at the end of Chapter 7, the Batesonian paradigm cannot genuinely be formulated in a digital fashion, any more than the alchemical paradigm can. Both recognize that incompleteness is inevitably part of the process of reality itself. The closest we can come to formulating Bateson's paradigm is through the study both of specific examples (as we have done) and the method of his investigation. We thus have holistic answers to questions such as: What is schizophrenia? What is alcoholism? How do mammals learn? It seems to me that the holistic approach can be extended to questions such as, What are light and color? What is electricity? Why do objects fall to earth? Our present mechanistic answers to such questions are clearly insufficient, especially because they incorrectly leave the observer and his entire range of analogue/affective behavior out of the investigation. The research undertaken by a future holistic science would take incompleteness and circuitry as axioms; would seek to uncover the cybernetic properties of a situation, while including the human investigator in the circuit being studied; would show how the analogue and digital patterns interlock; and would consider a specific piece of research "finished" when the nature of the Mind present in the situation had been satisfactorily explicated. Ultimately, the explication may not take a digital form at all, but instead appear as a videotape, a mime, or a book filled with collage. The goal of the research would be to deepen our relationship to nature by demonstrating its beauty -- as was, for example, Kepler's purpose in his study of planetary harmony. The end result would be a better orientation of ourselves in the cosmos. The notion of mastering the cosmos would, in a society built on holistic thought, make schoolchildren giggle, and produce blank, uncomprehending stares in adults.

  What might a holistic society be like? I have argued that the horror of the modern landscape can at least partly be traced to the Cartesian paradigm, and have suggested that its insistence on a split between fact and value, or epistemology and ethics, is particularly to blame. For modern science, "What can I know?" and "How shall I live?" are totally unrelated questions. Science cannot, supposedly, tell us what the good life is. Of course, this modesty is highly suspect: "value-free" is itself a value judgment, amorality a certain species of morality. In Batesoninn holism, as in the Hermetic world view and other systems of premodern thought, this false modesty is happily absent. A certain ethic is directly implicated in Bateson's epistemology; or, as he himself puts it, "the ethics of optima and the ethics of maxima are totally different ethical systems."13 Since we already know a great deal about the ethics of maxima, of trying to master the environment, it will be necessary to conclude this chapter with an examination of the ethics of optima, and the sort of society that might be congruent with the holistic or cybernetic vision (I shall have more to say about this matter in specifically political terms in Chapter 9). >> von Neumann & Morgenstern

  Much of the ethics implicit in Bateson's world view emerges quite explicitly when his epistemology is applied to living systems. Although it would be too much of a digression to discuss Bateson's writings on biology, including his radical revision of Darwin's evolutionary theory, we can nevertheless point to four crucial themes in that body of work which have immediate ethical implications:

  (1) All living systems are homeostatic, that is, they seek to optimize rather than maximize certain variables.

  (2) What we have identified as the unit of Mind turns out to be identical to the unit of evolutionary survival.

  (3) There is a fundamental physiological distinction between addiction and acclimation.

  (4) Species diversity is preferable to species homogeneity.

  Let us consider each of these themes in turn.

  Although it is not at first evident, points (1) and (2) turn out to be variations on the cybernetic themes of circuitry and incompleteness. To review these notions briefly, we might think of Mind as a circle intersected by a plane, such that most of the circle is below the plane and only a small arc remains visible. The Cartesian paradigm holds that this visible portion -- mind, or conscious awareness -- is the sum total of nonmaterial reality. (Alternatively, it is seen as epiphenomenal, reducible to matter, and thus not really even there.) In the Freudian version of this paradigm, the larger reality is recognized, but regarded as dangerous, and the goal of the human system is to maximize the control exerted by the arc to include the entire circle. Ultimately, the Freudian goal is to transform the entire portion below the plane into the type of thinking which exists above the plane; in short, to eradicate it.

  In Jungian, Reichian, or Batesonian terms, the goal of the human system is to make this plane highly osmotic. For Jung, what is below the plane is the unconscious. For Reich, it is the body, the true body, ecstatic and unarmored. For Bateson, it is tacit knowing, the complex set of informational pathways (including the social and natural environment) which constitute any system characterized by Mind. For all three, to make the plane completely permeable is to achieve wholeness, or "grace." This achievement does not dissolve the ego, the visible arc, but rather puts it in context, sees it as a small portion of a larger Self. Wisdom, in Bateson's terms, is the recognition of circuitry, the recognition of the limits of conscious control. The part can never know the whole, but only -- if wisdom prevails -- put itself at its service.

  The relation between these notions and point (1) is that the circuit is a homeostatic system, and should there be an attempt to maximize any single variable, including the one alternatively called "mind," "conscious awareness," or "purposive rationality," the system will go into runaway, stroying itself and its immediate environment in the process.14 Physiological systems are inherently structured in this way. The human body, for example, needs only so much calcium. We do not say, "the more calcium I have in my body, the better," because we understand that past a certain point any chemical element becomes toxic to an organism, no matter how essential it is to its health. In biogical terms, the value systems of living entities are always biased toward optimization.

  Somehow, although Western society is aware of this truth in biological terms, it pays very little attention to it otherwise. We cannot have too much rational consciousness, too much profit or power, too many accomplishments, too gross a Gross National Product. In cybernetic terms, such thinking is self-destructive, unwise. Bateson notes that the cybernetic nature of the self gets obscured to the extent that we become mesmerized by considerations of purpose. Cybernetics has a significant insight into the nature of stability and change. It understands that change is part of the effort to maintain stability. Purposive behavior, or maximizing behavior, on the other hand, limits the awareness of circuitry and complexity and leads to progressive change -- runaway.

  What is an example of an optimizing system, one that understands the facts of circuitry, and successfully preserves its own homeostasis? In response to this question, Bateson draws on his knowledge of Bali. The Balinese recognize that stability requires change and flexibility, and have created a society that Bateson appropriately calls "steady state." The emphasis is on balance -- no variable is deliberately maximized -- and the ethics of the situation is "karmic," that is, it obeys a law of nonlinear cause and effect, especially with respect to the environment. As Bateson puts it, "lack of systemic wisdom is always punished." If you fight the ecology of a system, you lose -- especially when you "win."

  Our second point, that the unit of Mind is identical to the unit of evolutionary survival, is a variation on point (1). In cybernetic theory the circuit is not a single individual, but the network of relations in which he or she is embedded. Of course, any living organism satisfies Bateson's criteria of Mind, but there are always Minds within Minds (see Plate 19). A man by himself is a Mind, but once he picks up an axe and starts to chop down a tree, he is part of a larger Mind. The forest around him is a larger Mind still, and so on. In this series of hierarchical levels, the homeostasis of the largest unit must be the issue, as the evolution of species has demonstrated. The species that cannot adapt to changes in its environment becomes ex
tinct. Thus "person" or "organism" has to be seen as a sub-Mind, not as an independent unit. Western individualism is based on a confusion between sub-Mind and Mind. It regards the human mind as the only mind around, free to maximize any variables it chooses, free to ignore the homeostasis of the larger unit. Batesonian ethics, in contrast, is based on relationship, the recognition of the complex network of pathways. The posture of "Invictus," of the independent self so clear to Western thought, is foreign to Bateson's way of thinking. He regards this independence as a superficial freedom that, once surrendered, reveals a different sort of freedom which is much more comprehensive. Thus he holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection was correct -- the fittest do survive -- but that Darwin misidentified the unit of survival. "The unit of survival," writes Bateson, " -- either in ethics or evolution -- is not the organism or the species but the largest system or 'power' within which the creature lives. If the creature destroys its environment, it destroys itself."

  Plate 19. M. C. Escher, Three Worlds (1955).

  Escher Foundation, Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.

  Mind, he continues, is immanent in the ecosystem, in the total evolutionary structure. "Survival" means something different if it is extended to include the system of ideas in a larger circuit, not just the continuation of something bounded by skin. The ecosystem, in short, is rational (in the sense of being reasonable), and there is no violating its rules without suffering certain consequences. In pitting his own survival against the survival of the rest of the ecosystem, in adopting the Baconian program of technological mastery, Western man has managed, in a mere three centuries, to throw his own survival into question. The true unit of survival, and of Mind, is not organism or species, but organism + environment, species + environment. If you choose the wrong unit, and believe it is somehow all right to pollute Lake Erie until it loses its Mind, then you will go a little insane yourself, because you are a sub-Mind in a larger Mind that you have driven a bit crazy. In other words, says Bateson, the resulting insanity becomes part of your thought and experience, and there are clear limits to how many times you can create such situations before the planet decides to render you extinct in order to save itself. The Judeo-Christian tradition sees us as masters of the household. Batesonian holism sees us as guests in nature's home.

  To conclude points (1) and (2), then, the world view advocated by Bateson, in both its ethics and its epistemology, is in direct contrast with secular humanism, the Renaissance tradition of individual achievement and mastery over nature. Bateson regards this sort of arrogance as completely unscientific. His own humanism, like that of Claude Lévi-Strauss, is based on the lessons of myths, the wisdom of "primitives," and the archaic algorithms of the heart. It is not opposed to the scientific intellect, but only to the inability of that world view to locate itself in a larger context.

  The third point, that of the basic physiological distinction between acclimation and addiction, describes what happens when a homeostatic system is disturbed.15 Bateson illustrates acclimation as follows:

  If a man is moved from sea level to 10,000 feet, he may begin to pant and his heart may race. But these first changes are swiftly reversible: if he descends the same day, they will disappear immediately. If, however, he remains at the high altitude, a second line of defence appears. He will become slowly acclimated as a result of complex physiological changes. His heart will cease to race, and he will no longer pant unless he undertakes some special exertion. If now he returns to sea level, the characteristics of the second line of defence will disappear rather slowly and he may even experience some discomfort.

  As Bateson points out, the process of acclimation manifests an impressive similarity to learning, especially Learning II. In fact, acclimation is a special case of the latter. The system becomes dependent upon the continual presence of a factor that was initially regarded as extraneous; it deutero-learns a new context. The same thing is true of addiction, but the factor in that case is actually inimical to the survival of the system, and -- as we have seen in the case of alcoholism -- reversibility is impossible without undergoing severe symptoms of withdrawal or, when the situation finally hits bottom, a shift in the entire world view (Learning III).

  The problem is that the line between the two types of learning, acclimation and addiction, can prove to be somewhat blurry in the long run. What began as an ingenious adaptation can evolve toward pathology. The saber teeth of a tiger can have short-range survival value, but they vitiate flexibility in other situations that ultimately prove to be crucial. The rest of the system adapts so as to make the innovation less and less reversible; interaction with other species creates further innovations that push the situation towards runaway; flexibility is destroyed, and finally, the "favored" species is so "favored" that it destroys its own ecological niche, and disappears. In addiction "the innovator becomes hooked into the business of trying to hold constant some rate of change." What began as a gain at one level became a calamity in a larger context.

  Human social systems provide many illustrations of this problem, and Bateson cites the history of DDT as a case in point. Discovered in 1939, the pesticide was deemed essential to increase crop yield and to save overseas troops from malaria. It was, Bateson says, "a symptomatic cure for troubles connected with the increase of population." By 1950, many scientists knew that DDT was toxic to many animals, but too many other variables had rearranged themselves to enable us to get "unhooked" from the pestidde. A vast industry had grown up around its manufacture; the insects at which the chemical was directed were becoming immune; the animals that fed on those insects were being exterminated; and in general, the use of DDT permitted an increase in world population. So now, we are addicted to its use, and nature is attempting a correction in ways that are frightening. DDT is now appearing in mothers milk; fish, if they do not become poisonous as carriers of mercury, may soon become so as carriers of DDT; forty-three species of malaria-bearing mosquitoes are now resistant to major insecticides, and the incidence of malaria in some countries has increased a hundredfold during the past fifteen years. What began as an ingenious ad hoc measure wound up exacerbating the original problem, eventually plunging us into an addictive spiral that now threatens our existence.16

  For the time being, our reaction to this situation is to seek an increasingly larger "fix." Like the alcoholic we still believe that the answer lies in "rational mastery," and so escalate our insecticides to greater levels of toxicity, thereby making more dangerous insects immune, and so raising the battle to the next higher level. Perhaps when, as in some science fiction horror movie, giant mantises come knocking at the door, we shall finally comprehend that "rational mastery" was the problem; but by then it will be too late.

  The so-called energy crisis is an equally cogent example of the addictive spiral. The columns of our newspapers are filled with articles that express concern over the coming disappearance of fossil fuels, and insist on the need to develop new sources of energy -- especially nuclear energy -- to meet the increasing demand. The voices suggesting that we might be "hooked" on energy, and that we had better move toward withdrawal rather than the next available "fix," have been largely drowned out by industrial interests that are committed to increasing the dosage of the "fix." Meanwhile, the negative feedback is becoming louder and louder, the near meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 1979 being only the most spectacular example. People living near freeway systems, according to one study done in Switzerland, are more likely to contract cancer than those farther away from high pollution density. Radioactive wastes are leaking out of containers buried deep in the ocean. Major blackouts' occur in industrial areas, accompanied by widespread looting, while international conflicts over oil supplies and prices grow more intense. In short, the economy based on ever-expanding energy consumption is showing signs of severe strain. Modern industrial society is in effect trying to cheat the First Law of Thermodynamics, which says that it takes energy to deliver energy; that you never, in physi
cs, get something for nothing. Using energy to solve the problems of industrial society is all of a piece with the mental framework of addiction. If Blake told us that energy was eternal delight, he also said that wisdom can be the result of pursuing folly to the limit. But once again, it may be too late. Our addiction may have brought the planet to the point of extinction.

  Finally, the question of addiction can be applied to the whole style of Western life since 1600 A.D. To take an example from our earlier historical discussion, the Hermetic traition was one of self-corrective feedback. Rational consciousness, especially in its emphasis on manipulating the environment, was kept in check (optimized), because it was simply one variable in a system organized around the idea of sacred harmony. With the advent of the Scientific Revolution came the attempt to maximize this particular variable. It was abstracted from its sacred context, and within a few generations what was once regarded as perverse came to be seen as normal. Unlimited expansion, ideologically ratified by the French Enlightenment and the economic theory of laissez-faire, began to make sense, and the need for an increasingly larger "fix" was regarded as part of the natural order of things rather than as aberrant. We are by now completely addicted to maximizing variables that are wrecking our own natural system. The emergence of holistic thought in our own time might itself be part of the general process of self-corrective feedback.