Q: Let’s turn our attention from Interpretation to Learning. Ok?
A: Ok.
Q: We left off with a discussion on the factors of learning, then you added, to restate, the brain’s capacity to produce randomness of response is the termination of the explanation of human behavior offered here. So, could we begin today by talking about the connection between randomness and learning?
A: Sure. The task of any learning situation is to channel the learner’s behavior. In fact, it’s the basis of all socialization.
Q: Why is that channeling necessary?
A: Because if left to itself the brain will continue to produce random responses.
Q: Could you say a bit more about that?
A: Sure. One helpful way of understanding this is to look at that randomness from two extremes. Schizophrenia, which is a millions responses to any one stimulus, and Psychosis, which is one response to a million stimuli.
Q: So, basically, we’re talking about behavioral control?
A: Yes, of course. But there’s nothing sinister or conspiratorial about it. After all, and since you mentioned having two children and because I know you and your family and that your wife breastfeeds, the most important part of that, obviously, is that she has had to control the baby’s body in relation to hers, specifically by putting the baby’s mouth to her breast. Hardly conspiratorial behavior and certainly not sinister.
Q: Haha. No. Not at all. Not at all. And your point would be that this is something that a culture, any culture, absolutely has to do?
A: Yes.
Q: Could you say more about channeling?
A: First, channeling depends upon unreliable remembering, which has to be supplemented by constant reiteration and in various modalities of the same instructions, in other words, cultural redundancy, which is supplemented by policing.
Q: Policing? WTF?
A: Yes. Policing as a verb means in this case, the limitation of the range of behavior, or, to put it bluntly, the use of force.
Q: To control the randomness of response.
A: Exactly.
Q: To return for a moment to Part I, you said at the very beginning of our talk that the only useful comprehension of “meaning” is a behavioral comprehension, the place of meaning in human behavior. How does that tie into what we’re talking about now, to learning, channeling, and behavioral control?
A: Well, the connection is the stabilization of meaning itself.
Q: Could you explain that?
A: Meaning has to be stabilized or the culture falls apart. So, meaning is ultimately stabilized by the ultimate sanctions of economic deprivation, imprisonment, torture and death.
Q: Wow. Now that does sounds unfriendly and sinister.
A: Haha! Yeah, it does. And it certainly can be. Depends.
Q: Please continue. I want to hear where this is going.
A: Ok. Well, in the first place, it’s going to sound familiar because in one way or another we live with this every day.
Q: Really?
A: Yes, of course. In modern societies the first three are constantly used in the socialization of children and in the past the fourth was available, as it still is in less developed societies (a place the USA is fast becoming; in fact, now that the process has started, there will be no pause in the fall; we have the crazy Left and the ever clueless Right to thank for that, well, in part).
Q: Ok, well, that’s a discussion I hope to have with you in the future. For now, could you say more about control and force?
A: The most important thing to know about force in regards to any culture or civilization is that if it fails there is no alternative.
Q: So what does that mean for us?
A: It means culture (or civilization) has as its principal task the maintenance of behavioral stability:
Q: How does it do this?
A: By circumnavigating the use of force.
Q: Is that why you say that the United States is now in free fall?
A: Yes, of course.
Q: Before continuing could you say a word on that?
A: Sure. The United States is in free fall because its leaders are not at all interested in circumnavigating the use of force.
And their use of force is failing. Not so much because people aren't doing what the elite tells them to do, but mostly because the directions coming from the elite are so hopelesly inadequate, incompetent, chaotic, confused and corrupt.
They might know what they want, but they don't know what they're doing. So the performance, so to speak, of the public in response to the elite's directions reflects those directions.
Q: My impulse, or gut response, as you like to say, is to agree with you. But if someone were to ask me why I agree with you I'm not sure I could give a satisfactory answer. So, how would you respond if someone were to ask, How do you know that the elite's use of force is failing and the country along with it?
A: By looking at its social institutions.
Q: What about them?
A: They're all in free fall.
Q: Could you be more specific?
A: They're all dysfunctional and maladaptive. They're all falling apart. Literally.
Q: They sure are. But, again, why?
A: The Directions-Performance Complex is so fucked up.
As I said in so many words in another entry, the elite's attempt to impose a social order that's totally free of control (beyond audit) and sustained by force, has only increased the uncontrolled exercise of not just power, but of naked power - power for the sake of power - not for the sake of directing the culture in ways that are, in the judgment of its people, productive. They don't care what the people think. In any event, it's exactly that force - constantly applied - that undermines the healthy functioning of the social institutions that the elite's power now controls. It's what I like to refer to as The Physics of Social Management. The result? Everything they control is in free fall. Just look around.
Q: Ok. That’s a conversation on its own. No?
A: Sure is. And we need to limit the range of this Q & A.
Q: Haha! Yep. Ok, so, in that case, How about we talk a bit more about circumnavigation itself? What does that involve?
A: We could start with the two basic rhetorical modes of circumnavigation, which are seduction and intimidation.
Q: And these are the two rhetorical modes available to any culture or civilization?
A: That’s right.
Q: Speaking of culture, how would you define it?
A: Behaviorally, culture may be defined as those semiotic, directive redundancy systems in response to which behavior is controlled, and patterns of behavior are maintained through time.
Q: And culture is what channels behavior?
A: Yes, but it can’t do it by itself.
Q: Why not?
A: In the first place, because culture is constantly threatened with disintegration, with undermining, and with impoverishment.
Q: Why is that?
A: Because I said so.
Q: Haha! I thought that might be the reason. But seriously, I think I know the reason because we have talked about this before. It has something to do with meaning. Right?
A: That’s right. It’s exactly because meanings are not in the words we use. Wedetermine those meanings. That’s called non-immanence of meaning, or nonimmanancy. And the result or consequence of that nonimmanency is the instability of meaning.
Q: And the nonimmanency that is the source of the instability of meaning is why any culture is constantly threatened with disintegration, undermining and impoverishment?
A: That’s right. But it's important to add that culture not only channels behavior; it’s also responsible for the delta-like spread of behavioral deviance.
Q: Deviance from the norm?
A: Ah, deviance from a position of relative stability, so the culture can function enough to meet its adaptational needs. And I put it that way because so many people assume that the norm is given, that it's automatically and always good, and for this reason only the deviant needs to be explained. But that's not true at all. And, by the way, the position that only the deviant, or deviant behavior needs to be explained and that the norm is given, is the position of just about every Psychologist you'll read online or whose videos you watch. And that norm very much needs to be explained, because it's a judgment made in error.
Q: So the norm is not a given?
A: The norm is not a given, or automatically and always good.
So it also needs to be explained, just like deviance, which itself might be good or bad. It depends on the culture's needs.
A: It's adaptational needs?
A: That's right.
Q: What causes that deviance, or is it more than one thing?
A: The most important reasons are:
1. Inadequate Teaching and Learning
2. Cultural Incoherence
3. Negation (when people negate the validity of the culture)
4. Negative Feedback
5. Innovation
So it would be more appropriate, or more accurate, to say that culture is not just threatened with disintegration, it is in fact constantly disintegrating. But it is likewise constantly being renewed by the introduction of innovative redundancies. The problem is, even this renewal may itself be disintegrative.
Q: Why?
A: Because any innovation can threaten the integrity of any interlocking set of redundancy systems, since the meaning of those redundancies, consisting of observable signs and their conventionalized responses, is not immanent. So, if culture maintains performance, and if culture is constantly threatened with disintegration, the question now is, What maintains culture?
Q: Good question. What does maintain culture?
A: Well, we’ve already seen some of the answer in our talk so far. Which is, the validation of culture by naked force, physical compulsion, and the four sanctions. But we haven’t talked about how that force is put into action, how it controls behavior.
Q: That’s right we haven’t. But isn’t the answer, or at least one answer to the question, What controls behavior?, society?
A: That’s certainly one answer that’s often given in this context. But it’s too vague for any real understanding of human behavior.
Q: So what would be a better answer?
A: Well, if someone were to ask, What observable does the word “Society” direct me to look for?, we’re at a loss to respond with an appropriate answer that we could all agree on. But, if it’s asked, What is verbally subsumed by the word “society”? certainly one appropriate answer would be “social institutions.”
Q: Nice. In fact, that would be a perfect place to begin Part VII.
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