Our Cognitive Systems

Breaking the Spell (Chapter Three)

Three

Our Cognitive Systems

The influential polymath Ludwig von Bertalanffy wrote that:

…training, education, and human life in general are essentially responses to outside conditions: beginning in early childhood with toilet training and other manipulations whereby socially accept- able behavior is gratified and undesirable behavior blocked; continuing with education, which is best carried through according to Skinnerian principles of reinforcement of correct responses and by means of teaching machines and ending in adult man in an affluent society which makes everybody happy, conditioning him, in a strictly scientific manner, by the mass media to be a perfect consumer—that is, an automaton properly answering in the ways prescribed by the industrial-military-political establishment.[1]

With few rare exceptions all people are brought up within culturally-defined environments. The dominating social milieu attempts to offer a variety of accepted socio-cultural norms of thought and behavior. These operate, for example, through religion; science; education; entertainment; family; language and emotions; longing and doubt; happiness and fear; safety and security (identity and belonging); well-being and materialism. It can be said that such prevailing conditions create forms of submersion and submission. Once ingrained, the person is liable to perpetuate such traits believing them to have been obtained through ‘free thought’. In the end, we reinforce beliefs that have grown into us, accepting and defending them as our own.

Of course, we only ‘believe’ those things that we want, or that fit within our perceptual paradigms. And we wish to support the investment we have made in ‘our beliefs’. For example, a person who likes the music of Leonard Cohen will pay to go to a Leonard Cohen concert but may not pay to see Madonna. Similarly, a person will ‘vote’ for positive online reviews of a book they themselves like but will likely not vote for the disagreeable reviews. Thus, people seek out and promote those activities and experiences that serve to reinforce and validate their own beliefs. People rarely seek out those experiences that will actively challenge their perceptions and thus create uncertainty and/or doubt. How many far-right conservatives would spend time reading the latest communist newsletter? Yet the fixed idea is the enemy of free thinking.

It has been remarked that the person who gets along best in life is usually the one who displays perfect submission to the norms of the multitude. To attempt to live according to other than the ‘norm’ of accepted paradigms has usually led to difficulties and certain degrees of estrangement. It can be said, especially in these current times, that leadership increasingly belongs to the mediocre. And whereas the famous edict of the temple of Delphi stated ‘Know Thyself’, such ideals have been eroded in subsequent generations. Such ancient temples have been replaced by the edifices of education, religion, law, and politics. Certain capacities of the individual have become submerged by a cultural pressure of surrender. Many people may well be able to relate to this situation, yet fewer will have been aware of its steady presence in their lives. The impact is gradual rather than sudden. Since social conditioning serves to strengthen one’s sense of acceptance and belonging, soon the influence of the collective mind reinforces and modifies most physical, mental, and emotional behavior. Thus, the person who becomes deemed most socially valuable is often that person who has demonstrated their ability to adopt (and adapt to) consensual patterns. Such patterning often begins very early in a child’s life and is usually the formative impacts and experiences.

Indoctrination during childhood generally goes through several stages. The first stage has been named ‘Limited Perceptions’ and is where the child comes to believe certain things about the world around them because the child doesn’t see anything else. These initial belief sets are then reinforced by stage two. This stage is named ‘Perceptual Set’ whereby the child’s attention is drawn to those ‘sets’ that reinforce the current programmed patterns.[2] For example, when you buy a new car you suddenly see many of them on the road whereas before you didn’t notice them. Thus, initial impressions are reinforced and further cemented. And the human ‘social animal’ is prone to clinging stubbornly to first impressions, even when they are contradicted by later information (known as the ‘primacy affect’). These processes of early indoctrination might be open to later reevaluation if it were not for continuing sets of social reinforcement.

Many aspects of society are set up to provide each person with successive impacts of like-minded conditioning. For example, the area where a child lives will influence which school they go to and the kind of children they meet and hang around with. This will have an influence on the type of academic progress they make. And all through these early years of schooling the child will likely meet like-minded others who will support their early programming and worldview. On top of this the child will be subject to those beliefs that have been imposed by the parents. These beliefs provide a structure to filter and create a worldview and will be used to interpret all subsequent experiences. The combined effects of these two processes – early childhood indoctrination and parental socialization – are often successful in conditioning an individual to a specific ‘cognitive and perceptual reality’. This in turn may create and strengthen a dependence upon any given belief system(s). The unconscious indoctrination of childhood is liable to leave a person open to further layers of conditioning and indoctrination. It is thus the case that:

…most of us are indoctrinated throughout our lives, often without knowing it. Beliefs almost ‘grow’ into us. They are then sustained and protected, usually unconsciously, by the physiological and psychological processes of perception.[3]

By covering oneself with such patterned behavior the person has, often unknowingly, created many layers of conditioning upon their instinctual selves. Inner ‘senses’ are softened and often silenced through these processes. In the end, conscience may be the only valve still operating within a person. Conscience can function as a channel that bridges a person’s external selves and their interior sense of awareness. Yet conscience has a morass of beliefs to wade through, all vying for pole position.

The beliefs that a person holds are further strengthened by not being called into question. And when beliefs are never, or rarely, questioned it is easier for a person to forget why they hold them. It should be remembered that beliefs are not facts: a belief is a ‘belief’ because it is neither knowledge, nor truth. It is a conviction of faith – a thought- form backed by emotional attachment. Knowing why a person holds a particular belief will not necessary bring knowledge onto the subject. When examined many beliefs are found to result from indoctrination through various processes, such as emotional language and heavily-laden associations.

Examples here include love of country (patriotism; nationalism); love of god; love of family and tribe; love of principles and a sense of moral self. For many of these beliefs a whole group of people – even a nation – may sacrifice much in defense of shared emotional investment. And if a majority of people share the same belief(s) then it is unlikely they will be called into question. To do so could result in a person exhibiting ‘abnormal’ behavior. What actually passes for ‘normal’ behavior is that which adjusts to the biological and psychological collective. To stand apart from mass behavior is often considered ‘abnormal’. Yet rather than these terms being questioned they are accepted as given. Perhaps it would be better to ask: ‘what is optimal human behavior?’

Many beliefs and associated behavior patterns are covert expressions of social conformity. From childhood we have been conditioned to adopt behavioral positions that bring rewards of love and attention from our parents. Some of these programs continue with us into adulthood such that people join different causes and/or ideologies to fulfill a need to belong. The need to be accepted and receive attention is often the greater cause, making the ideological cause superficial. Without realizing it a person is often more likely to desire a sense of ‘social belonging’ which they may have been denied elsewhere.

Within this milieu a person is more likely to be influenced to say and do the same as others around them:

The need to be one with a group, to have group approval and therefore social approval, means that individuals will very often change their attitudes themselves, to fit with the norm, instead of having to be persuaded… the passive power exerted by social norms is all the stronger than overt power because it is bowed to unconsciously.[4]

Such is the powerful pull of social conformity. The danger here is that in such environments a person is more likely to give away their personal responsibility than act upon it. A group more generally exhibits a lack of responsibility on the part of its members since each person thinks that the overall responsibility can be shared. Since there is no individual blame to be accrued, a person tends to relinquish their own personal responsibility. The result is that each person reinforces the other’s inertia. Thus, non-action actually becomes the accepted norm within the group. This inertia is then reinforced and validated, often through personal rationalization, since so much has been invested in the group. To be wrong could inflict much angst upon an individual; it is therefore better to rationalize one’s actions as correct.

These processes of indoctrination are rife within many ‘civilized’ societies. It is in this way that cognitive systems beneficial to a particular society are created and sustained. Part of this system entails the deliberate programming of obedience to authority figures.ii A child from a young age is exposed first to parents, then to school teachers; next to uniformed civil servants; and finally to bosses. An individual is thus trained how to operate, and respond correctly, within the established hierarchical social system. This creates the ‘belief’ that a person is never totally free in their behavior; they are almost always under the authority of someone above them who influences events. Paradoxically, many people insist to themselves that they have personal freedom, yet externally they fear exhibiting ‘too much’ freedom. It has been found that people who conform most are likely to have the least tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. Social conformity has thus inculcated a feeling of safety: belonging is a safe haven from where a person is protected. To be submerged in the mass makes people feel normal: no one is staring at them. Yet such emotions – of comfort and dis-comfort – are often programs socially conditioned from birth. These processes form our cognitive systems and arrange how we perceive the world around us. Much of our ‘human behavior’ thus stems from the influences that have shaped us. We are, after all, social animals. Yet what is often not realized is the degree to which these social forces are deliberately constructed in order to mold and govern a collective mass. Our cognitive knowledge systems are thus frequently lacking in genuine stimuli.

The physical ‘reality’ is that we enroll in systems of imitation through which we are trained to memorize information which is passed as knowledge. This information is then reinforced through socio-cultural institutions, making it appear as true. Even that which is labeled as ‘common knowledge’ may not be what it claims to be: ‘The more you look at ‘common knowledge’, the more you realize that it is more likely to be common than it is to be knowledge. No real knowledge is common.’[5]

Alternative systems of thought are often labeled as subversive and subject to human acts of modification and/or dismissal. In this manner specific physical, mental, and emotional patterns are engrained, reinforced, and modulated by human institutions. Human beings are perceivers, yet the world that we perceive is an illusion. This illusion has been reinforced from birth to adulthood. This is the ‘reality’ that human reason wants to sustain and validate. It is also the ‘reality’ that many fight to defend and to disseminate.

In the end, we can say that culture is, to a large degree, a prefabrication that serves interests not always within the individual’s favor. The cacophony of our consumer-led societies acts like whale calls that lull us into sleep. Our modern- age AD (‘Attention Distracter’) serves to annul the anxieties that we manifest by our common assent to a pacifying society.

The pacification of human creativity and vital energy is aided by the constant bombardment of audiovisual stimuli. These continual impacts powerfully influence the human psyche. Although on the one hand they create fascination within complex lives, they also generate trancelike states. These states are then maintained and reinforced between the individual and their environment through constant processes of feedback. It is a cycle from which it is hard to break away and to detach from. It can be said that culture ‘encages, limits, obliges, impels, hypnotizes, and possesses the individual with irresistible power, shaping him in accordance with one single pattern.’[6] This ‘single pattern’ involves the great subtlety of imitation.

People serve the external world in a way that vastly absorbs their vital energy. The collective energy of the cultural consciousness is thus imprinted by reinforcing energy patterns. In other words, cognitive conditioning is maintained and supported by the conscious energy that is radiated by the masses. This conscious energy actually imposes a ‘vibratory pattern’ upon an individual which then impels them to act according to its particular vibration.

The human environment is constantly irradiated with the nervous energy of dissonance and static. The airwaves are a sea of discord, grating with the hum of artificial signals. The human spectrum in which a person functions is now an electromagnetic chamber. The human species has altered its electromagnetic background so drastically that ‘the density of radio waves around us now is 100 million or 200 million times the natural level reaching us from the sun.’[7] It can be said that the greatest polluting element in the Earth’s environment during our present era is the rapid growth in electromagnetic fields. These are caused by such sources as power lines, satellites, and mobile phones. Those in the West especially live in a world swamped by electrical appliances. The rapid rise in mobile phone usage worldwide has contributed significantly to our exposure to electromagnetic energy above and beyond our normal limits. It has been said that:

…life in a mechanized, industrialized, digitalized environment has a deadening effect on our mental processes. The concrete, the plastic, the metal, the electrical impulses bouncing off the screen become internalized, resulting in a sterile waste- land that does not regenerate itself.[8]

And within this electromagnetic distraction the inner creative energies become capped and submerged in the face of progressive dehumanization. Perhaps within the matrixes of noise and conditioning lurks the fear of freedom?

Social and cultural necessities include the need for a person’s dependency. Without such ‘conditioned loyalty’ a nation/state/region loses its regenerative capacity. In this context, freedom causes concerns for social/state institutions. Thus, the habit of obedience is factored into conditioning processes. This engrained obedience fixes perceptual patterns that famously resist paradigm change. The battlefield for such change occurs between a person’s inner self and exterior institutions. This conflict creates a form of cognitive dissonance that is common in cultures of obedience. Long periods of dependency and protection serve to cultivate a person’s need for belonging. This biological and psychological conditioning has become an inherent part of human culture. Inward vulnerability is thus compensated by attaching to, or giving away responsibility to, an external power.

Modern society is thus constructed in a way that seemingly bestows independence upon the individual while simultaneously binding them to external restraints. Over time this relationship functions to weaken a person’s reliance upon their inner realms and upon their own flashes of intuition. The habit of obedience becomes an unseen tether that quells the inner need for self- awareness. In this way ‘freedom’ becomes a fasci- nation when it relates to powers outside of an individual.[9] Yet it blinds people to the condition of their own inner restraints. The exterior realm thus becomes the only sphere of influence and importance within a person’s life. The ‘Master’ exists as physical flesh and blood, concrete and plastic, demanding servitude.

All too easily we give our power away. It is as if our own internal power is something we cannot use, or do not know how to use. Yet by giving power away a person is attracting external power to be used against them. It is as if a person is signaling their submission. Naturally, such offers attract distasteful buyers. It is so easy to become a prey to external authorities that sap our vital energies. This only furthers the illusion that a person exists as a self-willing individual. And this illusion is often maintained through our incessant inner talking. We often talk to ourselves incessantly about the world. In this way the world we experience daily is maintained by our internal talk. A person thus renews and reinforces the external realm that is likely to be different from how it is actually perceived. Yet such inner perceptions are overridden by an incessant superficial internal talk. And we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over like a nursery rhyme. It is as if we fear a vacuum inside, a silent space. Our conditioned ‘reality’ continues to revolve external to us because we fuel it by our internal chatter. And so, it is the case that the world we experience on a daily basis is a reflection of the nature of our inner talk. We project ourselves upon the external environment, as if viewing a mirror that chatters deep through us.

We are never allowed to forget that we are all physical human creatures. Thus, each person faces a physical struggle as well as a mental, spiritual, and emotional one. Little do we realize what kind of power lies within each of us. And everybody has enough personal power for something.

Let us be reminded that the future is open. And in these unfolding times it is important that the future not be about categorization, competition, or colonization. Rather, it is about creation, collaboration, and consciousness. And in order to create, we must first break our own spell.

A TALE TO FINISH:

The Apple of Understanding

The teacher always told a parable at the end of each class, but not all the listeners would understand the meaning of it. One day one of them confronted the teacher and said:

- You tell us stories but do not explain the meaning to us.

The teacher apologized for this and then continued by saying:

- Let me recompense you by offering you a juicy apple.

- Thank you master, the disciple replied flattered.

- First, I would like to peel this apple myself, would I allow it?

- Yes, thank you very much, replied the disciple.

- Since I already have a knife in my hand, let me take advantage of this and cut the apple into pieces so it will be more comfortable for you to eat.

- Thank you teacher, I hope it is not too much trouble?

- Not at all, I just want to please you. Also, allow me to chew it before to make it easier for you to swallow.

- No teacher!, don’t do that! shrieked the surprised student.

The teacher paused and said:

- If I explain the meaning of each parable .... it would be like feeding you a fruit chewed. You yourself have to find and savor its exquisite flavor

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Taken from the book ‘Breaking the Spell’ (published 2013/2020)

[1] Cited in Baines, J. (2002 – 2nd Edition) The Stellar Man (Hermetic Philosophy, Bk 2). New York: John Baines Institute

[2] Toch, H. (1965) The Social Psychology Of Social Movements. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co

[3] Winn, D. (1983) The Manipulated Mind. London: Octagon Press

[4] Winn, D. (1983) The Manipulated Mind. London: Octagon Press

[5] Shah, I. (1969) Reflections. London: Octagon Press

[6] Baines, J. (2002 – 2nd. Edition) The Stellar Man (Hermetic Philosophy, Bk 2). New York: John Baines Institute

[7] Becker, R.O. (1998) The Body Electric. New York: William Morrow

[8] Black, J. (2008) The Secret History of the World. London: Quercus Publishing

[9] See Fromm, E. (1960) The Fear of Freedom. London: Routledge