Some of the most important works in the field of
consciousness has been done by mathematicians.
Even to name a few: Lewis
Carroll, Arthur Koestler, Buckminster Fuller, Alfred Korzybski, Heisenberg,
Bertrand Russel, and P D Ouspensky; all mathematicians. According to Korzybyski, founder of the
Science of General Semantics; mathematics
is a language.
So what is language, then?
Language is a model. It is an
internalized conceptualization of the world around us. Thankfully, as an internal map, it takes up no physical space. But as a map of an observer-observed based reality,
it must include the observer within it. In
other words: your own all-inclusive map of reality includes you. And here we
are then, back to the concept of self-reflexivity, one of the major tenets, I
believe, of consciousness. *Note: All-inclusive in this context should be understood as "not leaving anything out" or attempt-at all-inclusive internal map. Korzybski stressed the importance of the fact that our internal map does not cover all possible experience or sense-data. The reader must be willing to go up and down the ladder of abstraction, so to have "Consciousness of abstraction."
According to Korzybski, the internal map is a generalization,
or mental projection, based on experience.
As such, it cannot contain all experiences. Korzybyski also stresses the importance of
awareness of the level of abstraction present in a given conceptual model,
which is what he means when he states “the map is not the territory.” There is a component of abstraction present
in all verbal models.
Not
only is math a language, but as such a model,
it is a more accurate representation of reality than is accessible through the
semantically-flawed colloquial English most of us have used since birth. The
reason these men, these mathematicians, were able to see straight to the core
of the consciousness issue was because they were given a sixth sense, that
is: an alternative conceptual model with
which to view Universe.
“As words are not
the objects they represent, structure,
and structure alone, becomes the only link which connects our verbal
processes with the empirical data.” - Korzybyski
One of the fist impasses I came across when I began to read
Buckminster Fuller were his bizarre coinages, omni-inclusive concepts, and
strict attention-to-precision. Bucky’s language-model
of the universe was a direct result of his own concept-model of the
universe. Simultaneity and
all-inclusiveness, relativity of motion, space-time, inside-outness, (rather
than upside-down-ness, as there is no up/down in a relative system) these are
all concepts that Buckminster Fuller had internalized as part of his world
view. Buckminster Fuller understood the
importance of concept-models, real and imagined.
It’s no good to shoot holes in somebody’s battleship if you
aren’t going to even give him a dingy to paddle home in. Such is the state of General Semantics
today. There is no ready-made language
that one might learn which would solve all the ills of our outdated (Korbzbyski
called them Aristolean) language systems.
You can’t discuss the state of politics in the Middle East in pure
mathematics.
According to Korzybski, the best ways to understand his
theories are to explain them to others.
Frank Herbert might have taken this idea to heart when he took some time
out of his own schedule to write articles for General Semantics advocates in
San Francisco. Of the many ideas that
Herbert fused together to create Dune, such as Ecology, Politics, Eugenics,
Natural Selection, and so on, General Semantics is often forgotten on the
wayside. I think what impresses people
most of all with Dune is this: Herbert’s Dune
appears to have the complexity of a real universe: Vastness, Intrigue, but most of all: (and
important enough to repeat) Dune is
COMPLEX.
There is already an article written on Dune and General Semantics,
by Ronny Parkerson. It appears in the
magazine “A Review of General Semantics.” It is available online, but it doesn’t cover
a lot of the connections which I saw between Herbert’s and Korbzybski’s
work. Considering that this is a topic
which droves of books could be written about, I think this scholarly article
falls short, at least in my way of thinking.
Following are some of my own thoughts on the Dune-General Semantics connection.
Dune has always
sent the semi-mystical neurons of my brain firing: What is the Weirding Way? What are the secret inner- teachings of the
Bene Gesserit? How did Paul become the
Kwisatz Haderach?
G.S. themes are all over Dune, and their influence is subtle, but
Frank Herbert turns subtlety into a force, a theme even. For example, when Paul chooses his name among
the Fremen, he chooses the name “Muad'Dib” after the Jerboa mouse, a subtle,
silent, and omnipresent creature, which is “wise in the ways of the desert.”
If you read Science
and Sanity, Korzybyski’s major G.S. text, you will observe a specific,
almost Nietzschean delineation he makes between two types of possible people:
Human and Animal. This, mind you, is the
same exact wording that Reverend Mother Gaius Mohiam uses when she is testing
Paul with the pain-box. “We Bene
Gesserit sift people to find the humans.”
Now this is a highly loaded remark, considering the Bene Gesserit are
the orchestrators of a Universe-wide Eugenics program, breeding for certain
traits. Subtlety-upon-subtlety, we later
find out that these three people present, before testing with “the box,” are
actually grandmother, mother, and son. (Mohiam, Jessica, and Paul,
respectively) This scene is the first
and probably most memorable happening in the entire book.
According to Korzybyski, the term “time binding” is a non-elementalistic
term which refers to any and all factors which “as a whole make man a man and which differentiate him from animals.” (My own emphasis)
Therefore what we are seeing in the “pain box test” is verification
that the teachings took root, so to speak, in Paul’s consciousness. To answer the above posed question “What are
the secret inner-teachings of the Bene Gesseret?” I believe these are the teachings of General
Semantics. Herbert goes on to add a
little sci-fi extrapolation to these semantic skills and states that the Bene
Gesserit can use them to manipulate people against their volition and even
without their knowledge. Frank Herbert
calls this ability “Voice.”
Another byproduct of an advanced Semantic model, in Dune may be “Truthsense or Truthsay” The most common example of this concept in
the real world are “poker tells,” which are a result of the physical body (or
perhaps right brain) rebelling against its own conscious verbal deception. This concept has been brought to full
extension in the “lie detector machine.”
Frank Herbert implies that a mastery of semantics could result in a human lie detector. This Truthsense, as Herbert calls it, should
be understood as separate from Paul’s developing oracular sense, such as he
experiences in precognizant dreams.
Additionally, we will remember, Paul was being trained as a Mentat. Now, this is really important, and I’ll refer directly to
Dune for the definition of Mentat: “that
class of Imperial Citizens trained for supreme accomplishments of logic. “Human computers.”” Paul was trained from youth as a Mentat, and
we see the fruition of several mutually complementary disciplines in Paul,
culminating with drinking the water-of-life and becoming Kwisatz Haderach. The Kwisatz Haderach is said to be the “male
Bene Gesserit who could bridge space and time.”
According to Korzbyski, the mathematical semantic model is
vital for understanding the problems of the world. “…without the help of professional
mathematicians who will understand the general importance of structure and mathematical models, we shall not be able to solve our human
problems in time to prevent quite serious breakdowns, since these solutions
ultimately depend on structural semantic considerations.”
Korzybyski believed that only young people (as opposed to retrained older-people) who had not
been permanently altered by the Aristolean semantic model would be able to
employ the new semantic models intuitively and seamlessly, to their fullest
value.
Duke Leto explains to Paul, that they have been, without Paul's own knowledge, training him
as a Mentat: "Your mother wanted me
to be the one to tell you, Son. You see, you may have Mentat
capabilities." Paul stared at his
father, unable to speak for a moment, then: "A Mentat? Me? … [] …the special training from Hawat and
his mother --the mnemonics, the focusing of awareness, the muscle control and
sharpening of sensitivities, the study of languages and nuances of voices -- all
of it clicked into a new kind of understanding in his mind.” -Dune
Paul was the Kwizach Haderach, but born a generation too
soon. Mohaim states that Jessica was
ordered to bear only Female Children, and the plan of the Sisterhood (Bene
Gesserit) was to marry a “female Atreides to a male Harconnen” and bridge the
gap. Another couple of concepts come
into play here. We will remember that at
the time of Jessica’s conception of Paul, she was Bene Gesseret, but was not yet
a Reverend Mother. This is a significant
fact. While every single Reverend Mother
has a slight varying volition, there appears to be among them a common will.
This collusion could be interpreted as representing the common will of the
entire female line, or even the Anima of the human species. When Jessica chose the sex of her child,
Paul, she did this as a personal
choice, out of love.
In the later novels in the Dune Series, Chapterhouse,
especially, we see that the Sisterhood uses more than just Voice (Semantics) to
manipulate Kings. At the time of Chapterhouse Dune, the Sisterhood is
practicing a well developed method of sexual bonding and enslavement. When the Sisterhood states that they want a
Kwisatz Haderach that they can control,
this is one nuance of the meanings present.
You can also see some structural similarities between the
writing styles of Dune and Science and Sanity. S&S starts all of its chapters with a few
cerebral quotes, often from mathematicians, sometimes from philosophers. Herbert takes the same format by heading his
chapters in Dune with fictional
excerpts from fictional holy-books, historical documents, or quotes/commentary
from relevant characters. This has the
effect of setting the mood and also proving the validity of ideas that may not
be familiar to the general reader.
What is the Spice?
How does it change consciousness?
The Spice is an amalgam-symbol for the relationship that
human beings have with drugs. There are
similarities between “the spice” and Aminata
Muscaria, which has a history of Shamanistic and Mithraic use (that is, use
in the worship of Mithra), possibly due to the function of muscimol as a GABA
agonist. But really, the way that Spice
is used in Dune, it really appears to bear just as much a resemblance to
Caffeine or Nicotine. Paul states at one
point that the spice is in everything on Dune.
In our everyday life, humans are coevolving with a huge, innocuous, and
ever-present prevalence of
mentally-altering substances, in just about everything
we eat.
Subtlety and accumulation, the difference between a poison
and a medicine is only the dose. "The
spice," [Said Paul], "It's in everything here--the air, the soil, the
food. The geriatric spice. It's like the
Truthsayer drug. It's a poison!" [Jessica]
stiffened. His voice lowered and he
repeated: "A poison--so subtle, so insidious . . . so irreversible. It
won't even kill you unless you stop taking it. We can't leave Arrakis unless we
take part of Arrakis with us." The
terrifying presence of his voice brooked no dispute. "You and the spice," Paul said.
"The spice changes anyone who gets this much of it, but thanks to you, I
could bring the change to consciousness. I don't get to leave it in the
unconscious where its disturbance can be blanked out. I can see it." -Dune
From S&S: “Any
factor capable of altering the colloidal structure of the living protoplasm
must have a marked effect on the behavior of the organism. Experiments show that there are four main
factors which are able to disturb the colloidal equilibrium” [are:]
1.
Physical
2.
Mechanical
3.
Chemical
4.
Biological
5.
Semantic
Crucially, Korzybski believed the semantic reaction to be equally
important as the other four categories!
The Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers, are able to effect the
actions of their internal metabolism on the “colloidal” level by a combination
of physical and mental conditioning, as well as by their use of the Spice Drug. The Spice, were it real, might well fall
under more than one of these five categories, by Frank Herbert’s definition of
it.
Within the fictional realm of the Dune universe, eugenics is portrayed favorably, as one of the
contributing factors to the creation of this Kwisatz Haderach Superman. Similar undertones (or perhaps overtones) are
present in Korzybski’s work:
“…besides the moral and ethical gains to be obtained from
the use of correct symbolism, our economic system, which is based on symbolism
and which, with ignorant commercialism ruling, has mostly degenerated into an
abuse of symbolism (secrecy, conspiracy, advertisements, bluff, ‘live wire
agents,’ etc.) would also gain enormously and become stable. Such an application of correct symbolism
would conserve a tremendous amount of nervous energy now wasted in worries,
uncertainties, etc, which we are all the time piling upon ourselves, as if bent
upon testing our endurance. We ought not
to wonder that we break down individually and socially. Indeed, if we do not become more intelligent
in this field, we shall inevitably break down racially.”
Dune is eminently the most quotable book I’ve ever
read. It reads like a collection of aphorisms
put to narrative. Many of these aphorisms
within Dune are prefigured in Korzybski’s
Science and Sanity.
For example, compare these two quotes:
“Growth is limited by
the necessity which is present in the least amount. And naturally, the least favorable condition controls
the growth rate.” –Dune
“In all of these cases, [of vitamin deficiency] it is important
to notice that the lack of a minute amount of some factor may have the most
varied, pronounced and seemingly unrelated consequences. The symptoms can now be produced deliberately
on experimental animals, by diets free from the particular ‘vitamins’ and can
also be cured at will by feeding them with the proper ‘vitamins.’” -S&S
The chart above shows
Korzbyski’s “levels of abstraction” model.
There is a famous line in Dune where Paul is chastised by
his combat instructor for not fighting up to his aptitude, Paul states “I guess
I’m not in the mood for it today.” Halleck
responds “What has mood to do with it?
You fight when the necessity
arises-no matter the mood! Mood’s a
thing for cattle or making love or playing the basilet. It’s not for fighting.”
Reaction is faster
than action-this deceptive statement is important for a number of
reasons. With higher levels of expertise,
and under the action of stress or time-restraint, you default to your “un-speakable,”
reactive levels of action. This is to
say, when pressed, your reactions become first-order, thoughtless, and
fast. Heisenberg discussed that reaction
is faster than action, and used gunfighting as an example.
Heisenberg poses this scenario: Two gunfighters “draw” on each other, one
drawing/initiating the action, and the other reacting/drawing on the first, both
shooting as fast as they can. The
reaction-based draw “shoots and kills” the other every time. The reason for
this surprising, and demonstrably-provable result, is that “reaction” draws
upon more semantically first-order mechanisms to complete the task.
When Gurney Halleck admonishes Paul about bringing “emotions”
into the fight, what he is saying is, semantically, emotions, thoughts, feelings,
etc. are third order events(see Korzybski’s
chart, above) while the happening itself is a first order event. Therefore, first-order reaction
is faster than third-order action.
“The majority of [] creative men reported that they
"think" in terms of visual structures.” Korzybski, here, is talking about a more
first-order experience, which is why he puts the word “think” in quotations. Korzybski is here referring to nonverbal thinking processes.
“[Paul]Muad’Dib
learned rapidly because his first training was how to learn. [General Semantics] And the first lesson of all was the basic
trust that he could learn. It’s shocking
to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more
believe learning to be difficult. Maud’Dib
knew that every experience carries its lesson.”
Sources:
Science and Sanity, Alfred
Korzybski
Dune, Frank
Herbert
http://esgs.free.fr/uk/art/ak3.htm The Role
of Language in the Perceptual Process, Alfred Korzybski
Dune and General Semantics, by Ronny
Parkerson
