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Humans communicate.
Though the many disciplines of human intellectual and social activity differ
endlessly in a seeming infinitude of detail, they all agree on this point.
There is no school of thought or philosophy that states that all of human
knowledge and experience stays solely and entirely with the individual.
And even if there was one how would we know, since they wouldn't even try
to tell us, not believing it possible.
It is fairly universal to assume that ideas can be passed to
others, and be received as well. The act of communication, being so fundamental,
has spawned many fields of study.
The map is not the road.
The menu tastes very different from the meal (hopefully). A common misstep
in intellectual investigations is the onset of faith, or blind acceptance
that the theory is the truth. This always leads to enhancement of data
supporting the theory, and dismissal of evidential leads that point away
from support. We must always remember that we are only having a discussion
and not describing reality.
Psychospace is a biologically active environment consisting of the some total of all human thought and discourse. It has no material existence except as an active pattern in our neurology and the various communication media we use. It is an ecosystem. It is an ecosystem full of organisms as simple as viruses, and as complex as a 36 acre cottonwood growth. In biology, life is known to grow, reproduce, and show response to stimulus, consume matter or energy, and excrete. Everything we call life has these characteristics. All of these characteristics are shown by ideas. They grow, becoming larger and more complex. “let’s all share” can grow into an international socialist movement. They reproduce, as simply as a few words spoken to elaborate educational systems. They certainly respond to stimulus. Challenge any cherished belief and observe the changes the idea causes in its “environment” in response. Consumption of resource may to some be a littler harder to prove. In a non-material environment, made of patterns of information, pattern is all there is. Space and matter become the same thing. Some may make the argument that the medium of the message is the food of the psycholife. For the last quality, excretion, I only suggest you look all around, the waste products of human thought are only too evident. Some may even say this work is an example.
If for a moment we let ourselves
assume that Psychospace is a living world, we can start to work, thanks
to what herr Doktor Einstein called “gedankenexperimenten” or thought experiments.
Choosing a set of rules, and allowing yourself to picture the results.
For this experiment, our rules are those of biology, our experimental theory
that life exists as pure thought patterns. If there is a biology at work
in the human ultra conscious, we should find forms that make biological
sense. Microbes are simple organisms, multiplying quickly as they encounter
fit conditions and resources. Ideas that simple abound. Observations
about the gross state of our physical world are a good example. “it’s
cold” as an idea can only survive where it is cold, or imbedded in ideas
about other places that are cold, or are said to be. A culture (large
ecological niche, like a forest or a dessert ) may be so infested with
the idea that it is cold, that it colors the entire world view of that
culture, altering their reactions. The microbe “there is not enough of
what you need to go around” has so affected those persons and cultures
carrying it as to have dominated the larger scale of human history. It
just so happens that these days there is “enough to go around” and that
our actions are dominated by an untruth. Microbes in real biology
are the inventors and pioneers. Every more complex organism owes its very
structure and function to its own microbial ancestors. Consider
the “A or Not A” of Aristotle. Most of western thought is based upon
this idea that something is one thing or the other, not both. Physical
reality has shown us otherwise many times, yet it remains a critical part
of all we do. Indeed, without such ideas we could not build things
or discover chemistry.
Evolution is evident in psychospace. We need only examine our
understanding of the physical sciences or history to see where “unsuccessful
life forms” became extinct. The earth and man centered cosmology of
the pre renaissance world has become for the most part extinct, supplanted
by the current model. True, that old model is not extinct, but exist as
a zoological curiosity, used primarily as a teaching example.
Table 1. some theoretical correspondences between biology and Psychospatial ecology
Bio/ecological form Psychospatial Analogue
microbe
simple idea
virus
single image, symbol or sound
multicellular organism
compound idea
ecological niche
social, cultural or professional institution
predation
the “hard sell” or unwelcome prositalyzation
parasitism
a rider attached to legislation, subliminal content
reproduction
education, indoctrination, conversation, gossip
Notice how most of the above examples are not in
the form of nouns, but verbs. It is as though we can see the results of
these life forms without being able to comprehend the life forms themselves.
Tiger prints, tiger droppings, tiger mauled carcasses and tiger smell suggest
a tiger. Another useful biological model may be the model of disease
transmission. In an infection, the resources of the infected are diverted
to the needs of the infectious agent. Bacterial or protozoan infections
occupy sections of the body, consuming resources, and toxifing the environment
with their waste products. Viruses co-opt the reproductive cycle of the
cells, causing them to reproduce the virus. An influenza epidemic has many
features in common with “informational infections". Consider the birth,
evolution and eventual spread of fascism in the 30’s. It is now accepted
that many people who took part in the fascist movement were not themselves
evil. At the time it seemed a wholesome concept to those who embraced
it. It spread through Europe and America like the flu. And like the flu
it changed its host population's activities and health.
One need not be restricted to pathological
models. Consider the process of colonization of new land. Oceanic volcanoes
produce new land and we have observed the process where first one and then
another life form gains a toehold. Hawaii is the perfect example. What
was once a savage rocky outcrop is now a lush tropical ecosystem. Also
we can consider what has occurred in Australia and the Americas with the
introduction of new species. A new organism arrives and either exploits
a niche as yet unexploited, displaces an organism already in place, or
dies out.
These last two models are exemplary of the movement of more complex organisms in psychospace. Democracy, Christianity and other religions, Darwinian evolution, the cubist movement in art, existentialism, punk rock, tabloid journalism, the mid-east peace process among others are all involved in these bio-analagous events.
Everyone has suspected this for a long time.
We use language and take positions based upon this understanding.
We have head or the “toxic environment of Washington politics”. Parents
worry about the “exposure” of children to dangerous thoughts. We are told
of a fashion that is “sweeping the nation” or that a political belief has
“taken root”. Indeed we live in a time where people are as protective of
their cultural territory as they are of their own homes. Languages are
said to be in danger of “extinction”, moral codes are “threatened”.
In America we hold that freedom of expression is
held sacred, but that sacredness is always challenged when an idea is considered
antithetical to the cultural status quo. Some may think our speech freedoms
equate to an unsanitary environment. I suggest that a person raised away
from all potential pathogens never develops a robust immune system.
I have seen this as well in the practice of trying to isolate populations
from competing ideas. In both the Biological and Psychospacial practices
of this discipline, once the protected population is exposed to the more
diverse/less sterile environment, the result is usually catastrophic to
the original status quo. Eventually those beings and idea sets that are
flexible and to a degree tolerant, are the ones that survive. Most are
quickly overwhelmed by the new environment. I suggest that the procedures
used by animal husbandry and horticulture can be used on the intellectual
process itself .
Ideas are as dependent upon us as we are upon the places we live, and the things we consume to live. As I have allowed my research to continue, I have found that the number and complexity of “Higher life forms” is enough to suggest that the diversity of these forms may rival our own biology. In some way, all of the gods and demons of human imagining are real and alive. They are accompanied by creatures both base and sublime, passing through us with no more consideration of us than a flu virus or head lice. I have encountered more that a few persons , exposed to this idea, that have worriedly asked me if I thought any of these things were “Alive”. I have always responded, to the affirmative, that is the heart of this theory. "No", they say, "I mean more like us, aware, conscious perhaps". I can only reply to such queries that real biology has given rise to us, and perhaps others, that seem to have awareness. Given the richness and flexibility that seem to pervade in psychospace I can only concede that it is possible. They are then very concerned to know whether or not they may be aware of us. Could some idea “wake up” and smell our coffee? At this time I am satisfied to observe the bioactivity as it presents itself. Should evidence ever surface to suggest that there is a non-corporeal intellect, I will certainly pay attention.
They live and move through us, As alive as any thing made of chemistry. And though they are still as new as we, in that short time they have developed a richness that has mirrored the explosion of life on our planet, and at a rate that puts that original explosion to shame.
So now we can assume that madness may become
infectious. I have performed experiments showing that moral behavior codes
can modify the actions of those around us, causing those codes to be written
into new territory. Consider the fate of the small town, discovered and
developed by the larger city. The “neighborliness” goes away, people
cut you off in traffic like in town. And it is not just the newcomers,
the locals quickly give way to the lower grade behavior. In another case,
I found tipping to be contagious. A person who gets tips as part of their
regular income is much more likely to tip themselves. Grumpy people
can bring down others moods, jollity can be infectious, or irritating .
And now there is one more life form out there. Or
should I say in there. Inside your head dear reader. Now you know about
it. It is alive, and just reproduced itself into your head space. Ignore
it as you wish, I have found it very likely that you too will be compelled
at some time to pass this organism on to another appropriate habitat.
At this stage in my research, I have only opened
the door to what may well prove a world as large as our own, and fraught
with wonders and terrors to sate the wildest appetites. I welcome your
observations and experiments
And no , I have found no antidote.