Essay 3: Membership & Origins

Essay 3

Membership & Origins

In the last essay I noted the qualities and experiences associated with the mirror. A criticism may be lodged that the mirror is external to the primal relationships first listed, or is late in the record of human behavior.

Well yes, the mirror is a different kind of thing from the relationships exhibited, and why the mirror is not listed with them. But the criticism that the mirror is late in human record is faulty since the experience which the mirror provides is present in other natural objects (polished stone, metal, liquid surfaces) before and throughout the written record.

There is also the similar instance of imitation addressed earlier as Effigy presented either consciously or unconsciously in animalia. But under this ability we have also conscious imitation by one member of another as a trial of a new behavior. This occurs most often in families and occupies a large part of childhood education happening there and ever afterward, in increasing pace, to adulthood. Imitation is so useful to general life that cross-species imitation is observed in the wild and more intimately in domestic pet relations.

This activity is currently called mirroring in psychology and remains as superficial as the other uses of effigy. Each example represents attempts to send a message to produce or modulate response that attract or pacify another in a group context. The medium of the message can be auditory, visual, chemical, tactile. Examples of message may contain the sentiment “I feel good,” “I belong here,” “I can help.” To be clear, the content is non-physical, encoded material, presented in a sensorial context.

Clearly then this property of mirroring has a place in a discussion of membership, identity, or belonging, that extends the boundaries of natural identity presented in plain anatomical composition and appearance, without coded effigy.

Membership

Membership is by definition the basic correspondence or congruence of each and every member. This agreement produces coordinated effort which augments the power of the group by bringing disparate querants into proximity. Thus, regardless of the function of the whole organization, the agreement of members is utmost, while the motive of the whole can diverge from the membership’s objectives. There are in nature wholes which are created with their parts intact that carry out an inherent function, like the egg which divides. Contrarily there are organizations which must attract their members as in symbiotic combines which include significant contents of cellular bodies, then at scale, social groups and institutions such as pelagic reefs or urban centers.

While in the first instance the grouping is infixed, in the second some kind of attractor and retainer must attain for the group to persist, aside from the possible presence of a cell wall or office. Attractors, retainers are coded into messages that stimulate ‘associative’ response around the ‘agreement’ which we simply call ‘group invariance’. Attractors have the special function of being effective at distance, while retainer messages are intimately effective at close quarters.

The retaining message may differ from the attractor in ways that acknowledge the membership commonality or bond. Or, the retaining messaging may diverge in character from the attractor, emphasize hierarchy, extort work or value, or obstruct a willful exit. In any case, mirroring of those that are the object of invariance produces the attractive act and later provides the foundations for subsequent retaining messages. These two phases essentially contract the member to the group function without formal agreement beyond the initial invariance.

We can think of the human family as a group which must acquire its members. And yes, the couple may have a child naturally; a process which does not have the appearance of attracting a member to the family. However, the parental relationship afterward comprises both attracting and retaining messages though all the senses of the infant, that draw the new human to its family, and then provide stability and energy for it.

Once we move beyond the family, then we are in the greater “adult” realm of social groups and institutions, where the function and rules of member acquisition are available to public query, even if the retaining structures are not obvious.

The history of human interests is the history of groups tethered to them, and so we can expect a bewildering variety of groups & messaging structures. Some such message structures are based in long-term traditions over many generations that transmit required responses we call social conventions. Some of these may have clear purpose, while other do not, other than member binding through souvenir acts.

Some message structures effectuate a dual purpose for activity of the membership. Here, the goals of the whole & membership are divergent. It is not necessary that there be a partition of awareness between the whole and membership but there can be. We can image perhaps grades of such groups from non-divergent organizations where the goals of membership are the same as those of the whole, to the most opaque, divergent ones where the goals of the whole are secret and shockingly divergent from those of membership agreement.

One kind of convergent organization is the fiduciary brokerage house where the whole is pledged to the same investments that their members are, which engenders trust amongst the whole, while perhaps limiting the irrational wishes of individual investors. This solid state, if you will, situation brings long-term stability and does not add to market volatility.

Yet a type of divergent messaging occurs to the membership of television watchers within programming scripts and especially within advertising whose purpose is to increase activity. The ad presents an argument suggesting their product for an embarrassing problem you might have, but the corporation purchasing the ad physically cannot have, like athlete’s foot. In fact, that corporation may fund a politician you don’t like.

This kind of divergent messaging is a serious problem for those like to keep things transparent, which apparently freezes businessmen in place and they don’t like it. One place where things get murky is within a cult where power not money is the medium of transaction. My definition of cult concerns a regime of replacement, within a (potential) member, of prior time, landmark memories & people for a new time, group of landmarks and people. There can also be a kind of so-called “amnesia,” which is really a typical exercise of ‘focal avoidance’ over issues often related to the group’s invariant argument.

So, this last realization brings into view the tooling of message structures for focal avoidance issues to produce an outcome for the whole.

Focal avoidance is the ability to diminish the memory of -- or possibility of -- reexperiencing an unpleasant event. This is the more benign version of aphasia that comes from some physical or emotional trauma to the body. In avoidance, there have been sufficient stimulus to produce the near-precognitive ability to remove perceived danger from awareness stream without serious trauma.

This is now well understood. It joins behavioral arts and public relations to effect social movements, buying habits, war preparations. And, since we’ve admitted a wide variety of human interests, there are then also the extreme examples which demand a look.

Origins

In The Republic, Socrates moves the conversation to origins; that is, perceived origins. (For ultimate origins we would consult Idiom of Time, Eleatic Atomism, the Timaeus Dlg.)  After an intriguing interlude on orientation of the person in space, as well as in thought and opinion, he remarks in c.600 BC that there are certain groups, not tribes, who have forgotten their parents and now believe that they are from various things and places.

In history we read that such and such person or group came from a cave somewhere, or the Moon, or a wolf, or lion--- even bat. Or failing to realize this belief, the hope to regain a lost existence or status in the future equally serves as a fulcrum to place a lever and message structure. This ability to shift shape is one and same with imaginary landscape that overlays the actual one in the mind and heart.

How are potential members moved, then, to abandon their parentage? Nor is this matter viewed as simple rebellion against parental oversight. I’m talking about a total removal from priority or denial of existence. I also note that not knowing one’s parents is a classic situation for tragicomedy, as it tickles the imagination into forgetting one’s parent(s) for another better one, or to imagine a vicarious experience of extreme solitude. Indeed, a monastic phase of life or life dislodges the familial to an objective stage, that can illuminate them and by association, you.

Generally, if indeed the cultist ever truly knew their parents, such an abandonment would come by very unpleasant events, and interpretations of same concerning parents in general. Therefore, any bridge leading away from this unpleasantness to a better future, perhaps a victorious one, toward wealth and happiness, is for the defensive mind, soul and body rather easy. This is so because this incarnate is not standing on books of wisdom, on the beauty of the roses, but the stomach, heart and head are planted, retained, on Earth.

Of course, it is the psyche that is in position of adjudicating the possible courses in life given what the mind gathers before it. In extreme examples of cult behavior then, the theater of perceptions gathers around an extreme but typical commonality. It is usually through grievance issues that all other matters receive a new perspective and context change, often drawn from an imaginary lokah, that has been disseminated in writing & oratory. These describe where redress is possible in theory. All this began by mirroring the avoidance profile of prospective members.

Once the group messages the locale beyond, then the same mirroring and attractive forces begin to draw, acquire members. Next the retaining messaging begins to hold those who’ve been drawn up. Soon, obligations will be related to membership that serve to yoke them to the function of the whole, which is usually to enrich cult leaders, whose goals diverge from actual redress for their followers.

A less dramatic example of avoidance within groups does concern true, not imagined, origins. Here the actual cultural origins are forgotten, abandoned but not for a fantastic fellowship. Instead, they are purposely forgotten in order to carry on ‘normally’ in a process of forgetting and normalization within an entirely new context.

In Europe this avoidance happened to the last barbarians that invaded which erased the Keltic inhabitants and Roman provinces. The effort of theft is held up as license to steal in raider societies, but not tolerated within the tribe, of course. The warrior’s effort is allowed to obliterate or modulate the gravity of theft in a social convention & cultural lokah.

This avoidance happens in the New World, United States too, where the citizen membership accrues due to displeasure with former lives in different countries. A pledge of loyalty to a new society & symbolic abandonment of a former loyalty are expected along with traditions that are not “American” or democratic. This rite of conversion makes a transition easier by marking it, letting the psyche avoid thinking of former problems or regimes that are left behind.

After generations the origin of the family is forgotten until some context change makes investigation interesting to some grandchild. Usually though, people take their origin point as their personal home, wherever that is in time. Most become aware of their origin only within the features of a holiday. There may be medical reasons for investigation of origin that are helpful. Or racist motives, seeking purity of belonging against others, move the study of origins.

Hitler himself delved into anthropology to prove himself superior. But he was oblivious to the realities of his culture until anthropology revealed to him something less advanced than hoped for. Hitler halted the science, but not the fantasy which promoted a return to perfection; one that obscures a barbaric, violent past. Germany itself was beleaguered by the great migrations of the Voelkerwanderung in the Dark Ages that caused the agrarian German inhabitants to defend their space against a horde that now lives there. Following that same tradition, the Caucasian wave over-took and decimated the New World inhabitants who’ve all but disappeared in the USA.

Hitler also made drugs available to his associates and forces believing them to enhance what was already perfection, make them forget their painful, left-behind, lives, and tether them to him.

Drugs were in use by various groups in history to keep membership.  The assassins were paid in the hashish that kept them happy.  Some cults used poppy or lotus to draw and keep members for various purposes aside from selling drugs. With drugs, the reality of lokah, imagined spaces, times and people, have the odd ability to gain in reality but lose in importance, along with everything else, as drugs run out. Thus, the person is retained by pharmaceutical means where origin is completely replaced by addiction, and is relegated to unimportance.

But it is much better if these consolidative techniques are drugless, not depending on outside commodity. It is better to acquire & keep souls bound by doctrine.

And, if the function is unpleasant requiring sudden change for an invader, then edicts will do for the installation of dogma, accompanying lokahs, conventions and punishments.

Next time, Dogma, Illusory aspect of message structure, disillusionment, regression, polarization.