XX
Picking up where we left off at the end of Part Four, there is another kind of directions best referred to as meta-directions.
These are directions not for performance but for generating directions for performance. An explanation will help clarify this.
When we look up the hierarchical regress of explanation, we see theory emerging from specific directions (or exemplary statements). But, when we look down from the top, we see specific directions emerging from theory; we see meta-directions giving birth to specific directions, or to more specific directions.
For example, by generating increasingly specific directions the physicist moves from a theory of the electron to specific instructions for building equipment and performing an experiment. So, in an economic institution, in this case, the Corporation, a policy, or theory, is generated at the top of the hierarchy and is then successively broken down at each level of the hierarchy into more specific directions, the order downward at each level taking the form of, This is what you must do (observe the domination or power term) but how you do it is up to you. The meta-directional level, then, is the theoretical level.
Revelation - Resolution
In theory-construction and in institutional organization alike it is the level at which policy or theory is generated by the transformation, manipulation, permutation, and innovation of highly regressive explanatory systems. It is the level at which the flow of information reveals incoherences in the theory and it is the level at which such incoherences are resolved (or not).
It is, in short, the level of High Culture, from which social management emanates. It is the level which supports the high intellectual, humanistic, scientific, and artistic enterprises of man and on which such enterprises are economically dependent.
Note: Or, rather, it's the level that used to support the high intellectual, humanistic, scientific, and artistic enterprises of man. But not anymore. Because the hostile elite which began to emerge during the 20th century have simply and aggressively eliminated High Culture all together. The result? Cultural Stagnation, followed by Cultural Impoverishment, followed by Explanatory Collapse, Societal Collapse and Civilizational Collapse. Proof? Well, as I like to say, Just look around.
All that the words High Culture do is subsume these human enterprises under a single term. So, with that we are now ready for an even more precise definition of High Culture itself:
High Culture processes and manipulates the rhetoric which hierarchical power uses for social management. It justifies and validates the decisions of social management and power.
As I said in Part One this function of High Culture must not be thought of as occasional. On the contrary. The task of High Culture is to be sensitive to the constancy of situational change and therefore to the constancy of cultural crises, which may range from mild to severe. Information flows to High Culture, where it is applied to critical aspects of the cultural situation.
The important function of High Culture is to perceive the disparities within and between information, the current mode of structuring that information, and the general cultural situation.
And now, as promised at the beginning of Part Four, we’re ready to spell out what is meant by aristocratic culture and the relation of that culture to the attributes of wisdom.
All High Culture and High Power Centers are alike characterized by psychic insulation and social protection - as could be seen by the more traditional office of a corporation president often surrounded by spacious, even luxurious, noise-free surroundings.
There's also the quiet, secluded laboratory of the scientist, the study of the philosopher, the library of the humanist, the remote studio of the artist, and the silent museums and theaters and dark concert halls in which the high arts are presented and performed.
The processing and innovation of meta-directions require problem exposure and solution postponement, and these in turn require situations in which decisions can be postponed until theoretical manipulation is exhausted and information is processed, sifted, and integrated into theory. As our partners, friends and readers know, this is what PRC is all about.
High Corporation policy making, the construction of scientific theory, and the listening to music composed at and for the High Cultural level all involve elaborate techniques for prolonging a behavioral sequence, for postponing decision, and for theoretical conclusion, and for the sense of psychological closure.
They involve the postponement of gratification and the ability not only to sustain tension but to seek it out, the ability of the individual to impose upon themselves extreme pressure.
And now we’re back to our question asked in Part One - Can it be done? Can we teach and learn the attributes of wisdom?
XXI
First we might ask, Why aren’t we already learning this? We’ll answer that shortly. But before we do we should ask ourselves exactly what is involved in learning the attributes of wisdom?
Well, the same thing that is involved when learning anything.
What a child learns might not be innovative to an adult, but it’s an innovation to the child. And all learning amounts to a personality reorganization and a value reorientation. Simply put, it means that the child has to grow up and learn what matters.
Ideally, we all have to learn what matters, all of the time, always.
And what matters is the intellectual, social and moral maturity of the individual, the ultimate objective of all teaching and learning.
The ultimate purpose of education is to learn how to continuously learn. Needless to say, indoctrination is the exact opposite of this.
Which is why, at its core, all indoctrination is a form of violation.
In any event, all learning is a maturing process. So, the kind of learning that goes on when acquiring the attributes of wisdom is the same kind of learning that happens with a child, only it’s learning that is operating at the highest possible cultural level.
Hence the term, High Culture. And if High Culture = high level problem-solving and significant innovation and if these require the attributes of wisdom, then the personality reorganization and value reorientation involves the whole human being, physically, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally and socially. Who wouldn’t want to be part of an education like that, and why?
We’ll answer that question later, because there is an answer.
XXII
Normally, individuals in any institution are rewarded for solving problems and answering questions. In our economic institutions this activity is generally associated with the management level.
But, with the extraordinary changes and rapid growth that have taken place over the last 200 years this is no longer sufficient.
High Culture involves not only answering questions and solving problems, but asking questions and posing problems. And also, deciding what questions are worth answering and what problems are worth solving. As far as the institution is concerned, one is promoted to a higher level in order to do something completely different from what they had been doing successfully. And this explains why training in the attributes of wisdom involves a personality reorganization and value reorientation. It’s exactly because the problem engages the individual in every way, physically, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally and socially that High Culture is the exact opposite of brainwashing.
Physically in the most basic way, to sit still in one place for extended periods of time so as to expose oneself to the intellectual tension, psychological disorientation and emotional disturbance involved in all learning, but especially at this level.
Socially it involves both cooperation and a healthy competition.
Now, in one sense, an argument could be made that people are doing this, that they are asking questions and posing problems at the executive level and maybe they are. But it can not be doubted for a moment that in no way are they receiving any real training to do that. If they were, our teaching-learning institutions wouldn’t be in the state they’re in right now. So, to the extent they are doing this they’re involved in a pretence.
Pretending to do something that, in fact, they can not do. And, for the most part, of course, without even knowing it - at all.
That being the case, it should come as no surprise that many do not react well when this is pointed out to them. But, that bad reaction in itself is proof that what is being pointed out is true.
But, more proof is found in the fact that, since the immediate psychological and emotional aim of High Culture is self-criticism without anxiety, their reaction (overreaction) to the fact that they do not have the training to do what they are doing and because of that might not be doing what they are doing well, is proof that they’re no good at self-criticism without anxiety. And they’re no good at it because they have no practice at it. And they have no practice at it because they’ve never heard of it.
XXIII
I can’t resist sharing at this point a personal story that happened in August of 2016 in New York City. Through a mutual friend I met a woman who worked for a well-known media corporation. She also has a parent who is a member of the US Congress.
Long story short, she asked me what I was doing in Argentina and I explained that I had converted my English class into an educational consultancy and that our method was questions and our goal was self-criticism without anxiety. She just looked at me stunned and said Wow! She then repeated it again, Wow!
Of course, those two Wows! made my day, but what was really important about that was that she had never heard of that phrase.
No one has that I've ever mentioned it to. And though I prefer to avoid using personal anecdotes in this Journal, the fact is that I have tons of stories like the above with people in management and executive positions from all over the world. Which means self-criticism without anxiety is not something in operation, not just at the highest levels of our most important institutions, but anywhere. Obviously, it’s the position here that it should be.
But, why isn’t it?
We’ll answer that shortly. But, before we do, let’s question our own assumption that self-criticism without anxiety is good.
Is it good? And if so, why? Why is self-criticism so important that PRC International makes it the basis of our consultancy?
My objective is to train each individual to be independent of validation by their institution, whether it’s an oil company, a software start-up, a government agency, a hospital or whatever.
Why?
Because, if the individual identifies themselves in terms of their institution, they must necessarily accept entirely the values of their institution, and this disqualifies them from the primary task of executive social management, which is to see when the values of their particular social institution have become inappropriate.
Inappropriate to what?
Inappropriate to the situation that they are currently in and whose problems they are attempting to identify and respond to.
XXIV
Now, if as we said in section XXII, the immediate psychological and emotional aim of High Culture is self-criticism without anxiety, and if university students are not learning this, if they're not receiving any training in the values of High Culture, if High Culture is essential to the survival of our social institutions as adaptational mechanisms, and if we think it is possible to teach and learn the attributes of wisdom and the values of High Culture, what would such an educational program look like?
Well, it would look a lot like PRC International.*
*Of course, this statement has to be qualified. Because such a program would cost money and involve a lot of people it's not something PRC can do. Obviously. But what I can do is offer a sample size, if you will, of the ideas involved in such a program. For a summary of how PRC's partners have responded to what they are offered see our entry Relationships Part I.
The method of such a program would be to expose the individual to extreme cultural incoherence, and in particular to subject their principally middle-class values to the corrosive analysis of High Culture - that is, to the whole world of meta-directional processing and manipulation.
The courses would be drawn from history, philosophy (particularly the philosophy of science), the various arts, and the behavioral sciences (especially anthropology and sociology).
They would be so arranged that problems of a similar nature appear simultaneously but in different ways (as they do in life).
No effort would be made to put all of this together for the participant. Instead, they would be put in a situation in which they are encouraged to penetrate through the intellectual barriers between various disciplines. For example, the beginning of such a program could be devoted to a simultaneous and intense study of logic and history, so different in method and content that the program participants would be disoriented right from the get go.
Later on in such a program participants could pursue an intense study of a great and difficult novel, like, for example, Ulysses.
Why? What would be the value of this? Because such literature presents simultaneously the most complex mode of linguistic behavior and the most difficult and complex problems of interpretation. And both of these - language and interpretation - are at the heart of rhetorical manipulation, so closely allied, as we said in Part One, to the power centers of our social institutions.
I have concluded after years of extensive and intensive personal experience that High Culture literature should be at the heart of any education aimed at developing the attributes of wisdom.
If not, all you'll get is what you have today, Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, Grievance Inc, that sick and twisted aberration of reason Critical Theory and its obnoxious mini-me, CRT. The spread of this pseudo-intellectual, anti-social and amoral cancer and the collapse of our social institutions go together. Of course.
The idea in a program designed to develop the attributes of wisdom, like the one we're suggesting here, would be that in a situation of social protection and psychic insulation participants would be trained in that endurance of tension, problem exposure, and solution postponement, which are the attributes of activities of social management, and of the use and innovation of high level meta-directions. Though the situation would be full of intellectual and cultural anxiety and tension (purposefully full, of course), the participants would feel a freedom from the immense power of institutional life and would be able to focus on developing the attributes of wisdom that would enable them to solve the many problems that those now running our institutions have caused.
So then, why isn’t any of this happening?
We’ve asked this question more than once and in different ways, but have yet to get around to actually answering it.*
So, we’ll do just that in Part Six.
Until then!
*Obviously, this delay is intentional. Just for fun, see if you can guess why.
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