Part Five: The Circuits and communication

The reader of this book can probably remember, somewhat dimly, the imprinting and conditioning of each of these circuits.

We all began as infants in a one-dimensional world, orally hooked to Mommy. The further away from Mommy we crawled, the greater was our bio-survival anxiety, and we generally returned to Mommy as quickly as possible. The key imprint incidents of this period, together with associated conditioning, determine, concretely, how much we currently exhibit of:

ANXIETY OR SELF-CONFIDENCE
ROOTEDNESS OR EXPLORATIVENESS
DEPENDENCY OR INDEPENDENCE

Then, when the DNA sent the appropriate RNA messenger molecules to the glands, endocrine system, etc. a mutation occurred. Our gross morphology -- our whole body -- changed, and our "minds" changed in the process. That is, our reality-tunnel dilated into two-dimensions, when we rose up and began to walk around the house, and started learning who we could dominate, who could dominate us, who could be dominated (emotionally bullied) at some times and not at others, etc. We developed out of amorphous bio-survival consciousness into stubborn individual ego. We were imprinted and conditioned with a particular style of emotional-territorial "politics."

At this stage we were imprinted and conditioned for:

DOMINANCE OR SUBMISSION
SELF-CONFIDENCE OR SELF-DOUBT
STRONG EGO OR WEAK EGO
HIGH PACK STATUS OR LOW PACK STATUS
GIVING ORDERS OR TAKING ORDERS
"HERRENMORAL" OR "SKLAVMORAL"

We were subsequently conditioned to switch between these reflexes depending upon whether the person we were dealing with was Higher in the pecking order or Lower in the pecking order. (Middle class people, e.g., Reagan conservatives, John Birchers, etc. will always revere those Higher in the pecking order; and, equally, will always have some reason to persecute -- peck at -- the poor, who are Lower in the pecking order. Hence, they will say and even believe, that they are being robbed by the poor on Welfare -- who get about 4% of the tax dollar -- and never "notice" that the military-industrial complex is getting 72% of their tax dollar. This is normal mammalian sociobiology.)

After this second-circuit reality-tunnel is wired in, the organism molts and mutates again into the verbal stage, and a third circuit style of mentation is imprinted. That is, on top of protoplasmic consciouness and mammalian ego, we acquire human mind, which is created by and creator of human artifacts and speech.

Feral children, who survived in isolation from human society (artifacts and speech), have no "mind" in the human sense; which is why they are called feral.

In the semantic stage of imprint vulnerability we acquire either:

FLUENCY OR INARTICULATENESS
DEXTERITY OR CLUMSINESS
"GOOD MIND" OR "DUMB MIND"1

1 Why do we say "dumb" (mute) for stupid? Because a "good mind means a good mouth," and the human mind is a verbalizing circuit.

At puberty, another DNA trigger fires and RNA messengers initiate anotehr morphological mutation of body-mind. The "adult personality" is imprinted and conditioned. We become:

"MORAL" OR "IMMORAL"
ROBOT-OBEDIENT OR ROBOT-DISOBEDIENT
SOLID CITIZEN OR SEXUAL OUTLAW
"PARENT" OR ANARCHIST

Lack of understanding these morphological changes, and their persistence in imprint circuits in the brain, is responsible for most failures in communication, and for the general sense of exasperation with which we too often confront each other. Since everybody's imprints are a little bit different -- the average is that which nobody totally is -- we all feel at times like the legendary Quaker who told his wife, "All the world is mad but me and thee, and sometimes I wonder about thee."

Reichians, disciples of Dr. Spock adn the Summerhill School, etc. have called attention, with some impatience, to the brutality and stupidity of many of our traditional child-rearing methods. These methods are "brutal" and "stupid" only if, like the above mentioned heretics, one regards the goal of child-rearing as the production of a sane, balanced, creative (NOT CRATED) human being. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN THE GOAL OF ANY SOCIETY IN THE REAL WORLD. The traditional child-rearing methods are quite logical, pragmatic and sound in fulfulling the real purpose of society, which is not to create an ideal person, but to create [CRATE] a semi-robot who mimics the society as closely as possible -- both in its rational and its irrational aspects, both as the repository of the wisdom of the past and as the sum total of all the cruelties and stupidities of the past. Very simply, a totally aware, alert, awakened (unbrainwashed) person would not fit very well into any of the standard roles society offers; the damaged, robotized products of traditional child-rearing do fit into these slots.

That is, there is a neuro-sociological "logic" to the illogical. Are traditional schools very much like mini-prisons? Do they stifle imagination, cramp the child physically and mentally, and run on various forms of overt or covert terrorism? Of course, the answer is an unambiguous yes; but such schools are necessary to train people for roles in the ordinary office or factory or profession, which are also very much like mini-prisons, stifle imagination, cramp the person physically and mentally and run on terror (threat of loss of bio-survival tickets, in the form of pay-cheques or tenure).

The permissive movement in child-rearing appeared only when it did, and has succeeded only to a limited extent, because society has always needed and still thinks it needs human robots. Utopian child-rearing will advance further, necessarily, only as society itself evolves out of authoritarianism. That is, as accelerated changes now occurring propel us into the most rapid periods of social evolution in all human history, we will then need citizens who are not robots, who are creative, who are not docile, who are innovative, who are not narrow-minded bigots, who are explorers in every sense of the word.

Traditional child-rearing began to falter only when society began to enter into the present period of accelerated change and technological omni-transformation of all traditional values.

Failures in communication generally derive from sending a message to the wrong address. That is, your husband has an ego problem and you send a message to his mind. The message is addressed from Circuit I to Circuit IV. It means "I feel weak; help bolster me up." If the answer comes back from Circuit III to Circuit III, "Well, let's analyze the problem..." there has been a Wrong Address.

Of course, this example is deliberately untypical, although not impossible. It is untypical because women traditionally are trained not to make this kind of mistake -- to be "emotionally sensitive," to be "supportive," etc. It is much more likely, statistically, that this kind of Wrong Address will go the other way -- husband to wife. That is, the wife signals "Help!" and the husband on Circuit III says, "Let's analyze the problem..."

We have said that the imprinting of the circuits contains a large element of accident (within genetic parameters). Society, everywhere, without understanding this theory, understands enough pragmatically about imprinting processes to attempt to program each individual for his or her assigned role. Hence, traditional girl-rearing is different from traditional boy-rearing, so that women will have more Circuit II "sensitivity." Again, Women's Liberation, like modern child-rearing, arrived only when we were evolutionarily ready or nearly-ready for it. The traditional system worked in traditional societies.

Similarly, class structure, like the caste structure in an insect hive, works to produce the "right" imprints in each class. The third circuit of the servile class or proletariat is imprinted chiefly for manual dexterity, while the same circuit in middle-class or ruling-class children is imprinted for verbal, mathematical or other symbol-using skills.

Democracy has been less than a total success -- and the intellectual's half-shamed cynicism about democracy is justified -- to the extent that traditional society did not need, could not use, and in many ways discouraged the development of high verbal ("rational") skills in the majority of the population. That is, concretely, most people are not encouraged to be very smart, and are rather heavily programmed to be comparatively stupid. Such programming is what is needed to fit them into most traditional jobs. Their bio-survival circuitry works as well as that of most animals, their emotional-territorial circuitry is typically primate, and they have little third-circuit "mind" to verbalize (rationalize) with. Naturally, they vote for the charlatan who can activate primitive bio-survival fears and territorial ("patriotic") pugnacity. The intellectual looks at the dismal results and continues to believe in "democracy" only by an act of Blind Faith similar to the way beliefs in Catholicism or Communism or snake-worship are maintained.

Again, the traditional system works, for traditional society. A mass of people who have intense curiosity about why Beethoven went in for string quartets after the Ninth Symphony, or whether Kant really refuted Hume satisfactorily, or what the latest quantum theories mean in relation to Determinism and Free Will, is not a mass that will easily be led into dull, dehumanizing labor at traditional jobs.

Why did Adlai Stevenson lose to Ike Eisenhower, George McGovern to Trick Dicky Nixon, etc.? It was the Wrong Address problem again. Stevenson, McGovern and other darlings of the intelligentsia were speaking to the third circuit, which is not very highly developed in most domesticated primates yet. Eisenhower in his Fatherly way, and Nixon in his bullying Big Brother way, knew just how to push the right Second-Circuit emotional-territorial buttons to get a mob of primates to follow them. They were genetically programmed alpha males, in ethological terms.

Similarly, the Moralist (i.e., the Adult Personality who has imprinted heavy Ethical imperatives on Circuit IV) is often totally unable to communicate with the scientist or the technologist. The Moralist may even decide -- many already have -- that the scientist per se is "inhuman." In fact, morals are fairly irrelevant to the Third Circuit analytical mind, which is the brain function the average scientist has imprinted most powerfully. To the third circuit, the only morality is accuracy, the only immorality is sloppy thinking.

Again, the rise in "social conscience" among scientists is happening only when it was evolutionarily necessary that it happen, i.e., after Hiroshima. If it doesn't seem to be happening widely enough and quickly enough, well, the same can be said -- also in error, I think -- about modernizing education and child-rearing, about Women's Liberation, about racism, etc. The rebellion against all the follies of the past is succeeding, and will continue to succeed, only as we evolve into a society which needs each human to function well on all circuits. We are moving with ever-increasing speed, into such a society.

What the impatient radical forgets is that many of the "injustices" of the traditional primate society were not even perceived as such by the best minds of 1,000 years ago or even 100 years ago, or in the case of institutionalized sexism, even 30 years ago. If we can see injustice and absurdity in many age-old institutions, it is only because we are evolving out of robothood, at precisely the point in evolution when it is necessary for us to become smarter and more sensitive on all circuits.

Each of us has a "favorite" circuit -- that is, a circuit that has been more heavily imprinted than the others. Miscommunication, misunderstanding and general misjudgment of one another is vastly increased by the fact that few of us know about these levels of circuitry, and we all tend to assume that the person we are interacting with is on the same circuit we are.

Thus, there are narcissistic (oral) first-circuit types in every social group. Present them with a problem and they will immediately look for somebody else to handle it, since the oral stage is robotically imprinted for dependency. (Or, if they have imprinted hostile weakness instead of dependent weakness, they will explode into anger -- infantile tantrum -- raging that a problem exists and that is has been imposed on them.)

A second-circuit type, in the same fashion, will attempt to frighten the problem away by barking and blustering at it, mammalian-fashion.

A third-circuit type will try to reason out the problem. This is the best approach only with problems that are themselves rational, i.e., "How do you make this machine work?" It can be blind and futile, when the "problem" is another human being acting out one of the more destructive second-circuit rage programs.

A fourth-circuit type will try to be rational (third circuit) and to sense the emotional dimensions of the problem (second circuit) but will basically try to impose a moral solution: "Now this is the decent, fair thing to do..." This may or may not make sense to the third-circuit Rationalist, looking for objective justice; and it will usually make no sense at all to the totally second-circuit type dominated by emotionalism and territoriality.

What is true of the group is true of the individual. While we all have our favorite circuit, and tend to see that circuit as "superior" to all the others, we can be pushed out of it by shocks or stresses, in which case we jump to another circuit.

The most robotic Rationalist will descend to the first circuit, eventually, if threat to bio-security is forcibly enough presented on the screen of consciousness. And, if prevented from "leaving the room when the fight starts," the Rationalist will even descend to second-circuit mammalian howling and barking, under sufficient pressure. (Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to this as "the hydrostatic principle in controversy," whereby the fools drag everybody down to their own level.)

The most robotic Emotionalist may also move up to the third circuit, temporarily, if a problem remains intractable to every form of emotional bullying or con-artistry.

All of us will move into fourth-circuit Parent role or Super Ego -- even little children will do it, imitatively -- if it seems that the only way to get what one wants is to appeal to tribal morality: "Why, it would be positively, indecent not to do it the way Grandfather would..."

"Give us the child until he is five, and we will have him for life," bragged some 18th Century Jesuit. The Jesuit order of that time, as Aldous Huxley later noted sardonically, educated Voltaire, Diderot, and the Marquis de Sade; obviously their techniques of brain-programming were not perfect. Nonetheless, most people in most societies do grow up as fairly accurate replicas of the previous generation. Most children educated by the Jesuits have remained Catholics. Most children of Democrats do not become Republicans. Etc.

Considering the wide variety of philosophies available to any of us -- nudism and Buddhism, scientific materialism and snake worship, Communism and vegetarianism, subjective Idealism and Existentialism, Methodism and Shinto, etc. -- the fact that most people remain in the same reality-tunnel as their parents does indicate that acculturalization is a mind control process.

There is a Zen story about a monk who, having failed to achieve "enlightenment" (brain-change) through the normal Zen methods, was told by his teacher to think of nothing but an ox. Day after day after day, the monk thought of the ox, visualized the ox, meditated on the ox. Finally, one day, the teacher came to the monk's cell and said, "Come out here -- I want to talk to you."

"I can't get out," the monk said. "My horns won't fit through the door."

I can't get out...

At these words, the monk was "enlightened." Never mind what "enlightenment" means, right now. The monk went through some species of brain change, obviously. He had developed the delusion that he was an ox, and awakening from that hypnoidal state he saw through the mechanism of all other delusions and how they robotize us.

Introduction
Part One: The Bio-Survival Circuit
Part Two: The Emotional-Territorial Circuit
Part Three: The Semantic Circuit
Part Four: The Socio-Sexual Circuit

Taken from the book Prometheus Rising, by Robert Anton Wilson.

If you're interested in reading more of the book, you can find it on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Prometheus-Rising-Robert-Anton-Wilson/dp/1561840564/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231466211&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.ca/Prometheus-Rising-Robert-Anton-Wilson/dp/1561840564/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231466328&sr=8-2

C.

raise your hand if you just went cross eyed! hee hee

Quoting God:“ The reader of this book can probably remember, somewhat dimly, the imprinting and conditioning of each ... [snip!] ... C.”

Interesing.I especially liked this:

Miscommunication, misunderstanding and general misjudgment of one another is vastly increased by the fact that few of us know about these levels of circuitry, and we all tend to assume that the person we are interacting with is on the same circuit we are.

I think that's so true. We often forget that not everyone is wired the same.

What if you exhibit characteristics from more than one circuit?

Everyone does, but one will generally be dominant.

I don't know how "true" any of this is, but it's certainly helped me understand how other people's brains work (and how my own works) and helped me to communicate more effectively.

C.

Quoting God:“ Everyone does, but one will generally be dominant. I don't know how "true" any of this is, but it's ... [snip!] ... helped me understand how other people's brains work (and how my own works) and helped me to communicate more effectively. C.”

Which circuit would you file a person under who cannot read implications? You know who I'm talking about...the people who have to have everything spelled out for them in every part of the conversation...and who feel that everything must be said in order to ensure effective communication. I seem to come across these people often.

Quoting EmmaGrace:“ Which circuit would you file a person under who cannot read implications? You know who I'm talking about...the ... [snip!] ... who feel that everything must be said in order to ensure effective communication. I seem to come across these people often.”

Hmm, good question. I guess it would depend upon what subject was being discussed, and how the person was presenting it. The subject matter would, I think, make a difference in which circuit it was being received on by any person.

C.

Quoting God:“ Hmm, good question. I guess it would depend upon what subject was being discussed, and how the person ... [snip!] ... it. The subject matter would, I think, make a difference in which circuit it was being received on by any person. C.”

I suppose. Chit chat...friendly banter...is often what we're doing whenI encounter these types. My mom is one, my FIL another. Many gaga-ers. Drives me crazy. People who think they have to say everything...3 different ways...in order for you to "get" what they're saying. Now I'm probably doing it, lol. They say you notice in others what you don't like about yourself.

I wish I had time to read this, but I don't. *Sigh*

I've read a lot of cognitive theory. Many of the authors I've read reject the computer model for the brain. I'd be interested to find out more about what they are rejecting.

*files book title away for later consumption*