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FRAGMENTATION OF BEING and the Path Beyond the Void by Kent D. Palmer
copyright 2004 All Rights Reserved. Not for Distribution.
Catastrophic changes are somehow essential to our nature as Westerners. We thrive on chaos produced by these catastrophic changes in spite of the turmoil they produce; we would consider our culture stagnant without these changes. Despite the incredible dislocations caused by these changes in people's personal and social lives, it is our ability to adapt faster than others to totally new circumstances that mark us off from other cultures and give us a major advantage in global competition with other cultures. Because of this advantage, Western culture has become the global culture. Within this global milieu the nation that can be more innovative and adaptive to global changes becomes dominant. We normally think of ourselves as reacting and adapting to changes. But we also generate changes to which others within the global milieu have to adapt. The generation of changes and adaptiveness to changes go hand in hand.
Normally attempts to explain both adaptiveness to change and the generation of change are psychological in nature. However, this type of explanation merely begs the question by pushing back the question to another level of reality. It is obvious that these same phenomena are important in the social realm as well. A sociology of knowledge should deal with how new knowledge is generated and how we adapt to new phenomena. A sociology of knowledge which just deals with the spread of knowledge in a culture such as ours is lame indeed. My point of departure for developing a theory of the sociology of the creation of knowledge is the discussion of the difference between "genuine emergence" of the truly novel and ground breaking in relation to the "artificial emergence" of the apparently new and superficial changes which have no lasting effect. This distinction is crucial, for it focuses us on the key question which is how genuine discontinuous changes in knowledge occur within society.
When we look out at the artifacts produced by our society, it is clear that a great deal of effort goes into producing novelty for its own sake. However, almost all of this effort only serves to produce variations of the same thing with superficial novelty value. It is curious that so much effort is expended to produce novelty, and so little of genuine novelty is actually produced. Let's look closer at this phenomenon and attempt to be more exact. Whether we look at scientific research, production of media programming, production of consumer products, or in the world of fine arts or even academia, we see a plethora of new products or ideas being produced each week. The novelty of these products or ideas for the most part are very superficial. They do not reorganize the field of our perception of all other competing ideas or products. At most they titillate us and attract our interest momentarily. They are not though provoking. They merely add to the variety by changing the diacritical relations between all the competing products or ideas within the field under surveillance. The field of relations between products is constantly seething with these diacritical changes as more superficially novel products or ideas are added to the soup. A genuine novelty would be an emergent event that would reorganize the entire field within which it appeared. All the diacritical relations between ideas or products would drastically change in a single catastrophic event. A new thought provoking patterning of the field would emerge. And we would have to rewrite history to show how that new pattern was related to other patterning regimes that have existed before within the field. In the realm of scientific research such an event is the discovery of a new kind of thing never before seen, or a paradigm shift which restructures the basic concepts which all research springboards from within the field. In media programming the emergent event creates a new genre, or a new relation of the audience to the content of the programming. Within consumer products it is the creation of a new product or service. There are many ways a genuinely new phenomenon can lead to a repatterning of the fields described. The point is we never know how it will occur or when. However, when it does occur, we must hustle to adapt to the new environment. Those who adapt quickest to the genuinely emergent events repatterning of the field generally profit the most from the new opportunities that are exposed. Those who stick to the old ways and do not recognize the new rules of the game tend to lose the most.
The important thing here is to look at the field as a whole. Normally we only concentrate on individual products and their diacritical relations to other products in the field. We do not attempt to look beyond the products to see the patterning of the field as a whole that forms a gestalt. Each product, or point of focus, stands out on the background of the entire field. As we move from product focus, to product focus we are moving across the gestalt of the field. The field presents to us each individual stepping stone of focus complete with its diacritical relations to all the other products in the field. These diacritical relations are constantly changing as superficially new products are added to the field. This constant seething of the changing diacritical relations is an important phenomenon. When we look at a field, we can consider it to be a system. A system is a dynamical gestalt which encompasses many objects. The system forms a gestalt field which manifests the objects that it originates. This system may be described structurally and formally as a formal-structural system. The forms are the products or objects organized by the field. The structural properties describe the movement from one "focused on" form to the next as one traverses the field. The formal-structural system is an important means of describing the dynamics of the field in relation to the products that are organized by the field.
By bringing the observations of the dynamics of emergence together with the description of the formal-structural system, an important step has been taken. Suddenly we see that what is being described by the formal-structural system is a dynamic gestalt. The gestalt is a nonlinear dynamical system. This is to say that it changes continuously as diacritical changes occur ongoing, but occasionally the pattern of the gestalt as a whole changes radically, setting up a new and different global pattern within the dynamical system. These pattern shifts are the nonlinear aspect of the dynamical system. Suddenly the formal-structural system is more interesting because we can see how it applies to actual nonlinear dynamical systems within our environment that we interact with every day such as the field of philosophy, or software engineering, or television programming, or even Hi-FI electronics. Each of these fields forms a gestalt which is continually changing as new ideas or products are introduced. Each time a new product is introduced, all the diacritical relations between the objects in the field change. These diacritical relations may be viewed synchronically in any one-time slice or diachronically as they change over time. However, occasionally the field as a whole is repatterned. This repatterning is the meaningful event against the background of significances which are constantly changing. The significance of diacritical relations is different from the meaning of the nonlinear repatterning of the whole field.
The important thing is to see that the nonlinear dynamical system of the entire field is actively reorganizing the field continuously. Most of the time this reorganization occurs by the introduction of slight changes of diacritical relations between everything encompassed by the field. At other times the nonlinear dynamical system of the entire field acts to repattern the entire gestalt of the field. In both cases it is the dynamical system of the field as a whole that is acting. This dynamical gestalt may be described as a formal-structural system in order to attempt to map its changes across time. But it is the nonlinear dynamical properties of the whole gestalt of the field that are important, not the formal-structural description. However, since the formal-structural system description is completely in line with the form of the field gestalt as a nonlinear dynamical system, we can use the two terminologies interchangeably.
There is no doubt that all the fields we have described are social in nature. The field is essentially a social milieu within which symbolic interaction is taking place. From the point of view of social reality the minds of individuals are an epiphenomena of the dynamics of the field as a whole. In fact, it is interesting to note that Arthur Koestler's Act Of Creation posits that novel associations between already existent objects is the life blood of creativity. Zwicky turned the association model into a method called "Morphological Analysis." We can easily see how this associative model of creativity could account for superficial novelty of changes in diacritical relations within the field. The innovator takes two things not normally associated within the field, and associates them in a new way. This changes the diacritical relations within the field as a whole without really changing anything. What Koestler's associative model of psychological creativity does not explain is the repatterning of the field as a whole. A deeper model is what Persig calls "gumption" and de Bono calls "lateral thinking." In this model one attempts to force repatterning within one's perception of the field as a means to repatterning of the external field. In this model one strains to solve a problem associated with the field. Then one allows one's mind to "go blank." Sometimes this purposeful emptying of the mind after intense concentration serves to catalyze the repatterning of one's perception of the field. This model is equivalent to being open to a reorganization of the field. However, "going blank" cannot cause the repatterning of perception or external field. "Going blank" merely recognizes the activeness of the field itself rather than one's self. Being open to the action of the field appears to facilitate recognition of changes in the field. Thus, the "gumption" or "lateral thinking" model tends to support the contention that the field itself as a social phenomenon is primary, and the psychology of the participants in the field are epiphenomenal. To say epiphenomenal is not to say insignificant, but to attribute fundamental causality to the field itself.
Human endeavors within our society are spread over a range of incredible diversity. What has been called a field above is a particular realm of endeavor. Such a realm has its own universe of discourse, or what Wittgenstein called its own "language game." The universe of discourse includes a specialized vocabulary, a taxonomy of objects within the field, a conceptual structure of relations between objects, a relation between vocabulary items and objects, and a praxis which describes the acts of the practitioner within the field toward the objects. Each field is a reification of some particular aspect of the lifeworld. Husserl first described the "lifeworld" as the realm of everyday lived experience. Alfred Schutz took this term and elaborated on it, developing the analysis of the structures of the lifeworld. Each field takes some aspect of the lifeworld and builds upon that aspect a superstructure of idealized constructs which allows a subgroup of society to focus its attention upon that aspect. This abnormal focus of attention creates an abstract gloss which filters out most of the rest of the lifeworld and highlights certain aspects to an unprecedented degree. We will refer to this gloss as a technological system. Technology is not just machines laying around in our environment. Technology is an approach to the lifeworld which causes it to become fragmented. An artificial perspective focused on a part of the lifeworld causes this fragmentation as these perspectives proliferate. Each gloss abstracts the aspects of the lifeworld as is significant to that perspective while filtering out whatever is irrelevant to that perspective. Our lives are broken -- one could even say shattered -- between these many perspectives. Each has its own specialized language game, its own rules, its own concerns which it organizes in terms of a particular praxis. Our lived experience is distorted under these abnormally high resolution focuses on particular aspects of life with concomitant high filtering of irrelevant information. The high resolution focus can not exist without the stringent filtering. Both are distortions of the essentially fuzzy and ambiguous nature of the unadulterated lifeworld.
What we have called fields, might also be called disciplines. They are from another perspective technological systems of various kinds. The changes within these fields are organized by varieties of technological systems within the milieu of the lifeworld. The "technological system," per se, does not appear anywhere. Instead, we see fields of specialized endeavor as all self-organizing within the multifaceted whole of the lifeworld. Each discipline runs independently, bringing abnormal focus to some aspect of the lifeworld while filtering out everything else. These disciplines may not produce special artifacts which we would immediately recognize as examples of technology. The technology may be how to use the human body to excel in a particular sport. The technology need not have any artifacts to do this, yet it will focus abnormal attention on the performance of the individual within the arena of the sport, reducing all other aspects of life of the individual to this end. The sport will have its own language game, its own conceptual structures, its own praxis dealing with significant objects including the human body. Once we realize that technology is a way of looking at the world which produces a caricature of certain aspects of the lifeworld, then it becomes clear that the changes in any discipline are organized by the technological system which is ultimately a social system. Thus, it is the socio-technical system that produces constant diacritical changes that appear as superficial novelty. It is also the socio-technical system that produces occasional reorganizations to the patterning of the entire discipline which are the genuine emergence of novelty. Socio-technical systems are nonlinear dynamic gestalts that organize various fields of human endeavor within and as glosses on the lifeworld. Thus, there is an inherent relation between technology and the phenomenon of emergence. Emergence, together with the production of superficial novelty, are two moments of the dynamic of socio-technical systems.
Now that the connection between emergence and technology has been clearly made, we can focus in on these two moments of dynamism that characterize the change in the technological system over time. The first moment is the production of artificial novelty that changes diacritical relations between entities within the field. This moment is very important. We can view this moment of the dynamism as the socio-technical system maintaining its visibility. The analogy for this is in the movement of the eye. The eye has four specific movements that it makes continuously. Only one of these movements is voluntary. The other three are nonvoluntary -- the saccade, the drift and erratic motion. As the eye jumps around a figure, scanning, these three nonvoluntary motions are continuously producing a substrate of disorderly motion upon which the voluntary scanning motions must exist in relation to it every moment. In visual experiments elaborate mechanisms have been produced to reproduce the disorderly, erratic motion of the eye in the object looked at. When this is done, the visual object that is moving in precise synchronization with the eye's movements disappears. This is very significant. First, because vision is itself a minimal system of four randomly connected motions. Second because this minimal system of motions allows vision to occur. Transfer this idea to the dynamism of the socio-technical system within a particular field and you get a thought-provoking picture. The number one priority of the socio-technical system is to maintain itself in existence which is to maintain its visibility to the intersubjective social cohort. To maintain itself in visibility, it does the same job as the eye producing an erratic substrate of minimal changes that constantly rearranges the diacritical relations between entities in the field. Going further, we may say that the socio-technical system is like an artificial visual device which is focused on a particular aspect of the lifeworld to the exclusion of everything else. To maintain its artificially high resolution and filtering it must maintain its own existence by producing artificial erratic change. The visual device is looking for one thing -- genuine emergence within the field. The erratic changes are necessary to support the socio-technical system; keeping it focused; constantly looking for the appearance of genuine emergence. Keeping the socio-technical system in existence takes a lot of effort. But this effort is nothing to the effort involved in producing all the artificial novelty as diacritical changes necessary to see genuine emergence when it occurs. From this perspective erratic change, which continuously occurs in the socio-technical system, is the necessary background for genuine emergence. The socio-technical system produces this erratic change to maintain itself in existence -- which means to maintain its own ability to see what is occurring within the field -- which means its ability to see genuine emergence when it occurs against the background of superficial novelty.
This way of looking at socio-technical systems gives us a completely different perspective on what is going on in the lifeworld as it is dominated by socio-technical systems. These systems take lots of energy and effort to maintain because of the rigors associated with high resolution focusing and filtering. Further, they demand even more energy to continuously produce artificial novelty. This overproduction of artificial novelty could also be called excrescence (abnormal growth). It is the counter entropic growth necessary to keep the self-organizing dynamic of the field working. If this excrescence were to stop, the field covered by the socio-technical system would begin to degenerate at once. It would cease to be able to focus the combined attentions of the cohorts involved in the field, and it would cease to be able to filter out irrelevant interference. The socio-technical system could no longer see what was within the field, and its gestalt would vanish. Thus, no genuine emergence within the field would be observable. This failure of the dynamic of the socio-technical system would cause it to fade back into the lifeworld, no longer a unique and refined perspective, but just a disorganized set of ambiguous phenomena related by family resemblances.
A picture of the colonization of the lifeworld by the socio-technical system arises from this analysis. The socio-technical system is a parasite on the lifeworld, using its energy and resources for its own specialized ends; ignoring the integrity of the lifeworld as a whole. This is much the same as first and second world nations prey on the third world nations by economic colonization after political colonization has long since ceased. This makes us want to ask about the integrity of the lifeworld itself and the distortions caused by its colonization by various socio-technical systems. We live everyday in this distorted lifeworld which Arguelles calls a Kakatopia. It is our educational system which adapts us to switching between different spheres of influence of various socio-technical systems (as we switch classes) with which we are forced to interact. In each of these spheres of influence we continuously encounter excrescences of these socio-technical systems producing superficial novelty. The excrescences are the life blood of these socio-technical systems. Yet to the inhabitant of the lifeworld, the excrescences produce a nihilistic landscape devoid of meaning. Nihilism is the direct result of the excrescences of the socio-technical system. Superficial novelty is an attempt to produce a field of differences upon which "differences that make a difference," as Gregory Bateson calls genuine novelty, can be seen. This makes sense in the confines of a particular socio-technical system. But from one in the lifeworld, outside all socio-technical systems, this production of arbitrary differences merely sucks all meaning out of the world, leaving a vacant meaningless landscape. Occasionally an emergent event occurs, and a little meaning comes back into the world. But that soon dissipates in the onslaught of excrescences by myriad socio-technical systems vying for dominance over the resource of the lifeworld.
Nihilism has long been recognized as the essence of technology. This is because nihilism is the effect within the lifeworld of the production of excrescences in multiple socio-technical systems which are attempting to dominate the lifeworld. Fandozi's book Nihilism & Technology is an excellent summary of these issues. In that book he lists several attributes of technology.
These attributes apply to the socio-technical system as it dominates the lifeworld.
Technology is pervasive because it is applied to many aspects of the lifeworld, each the focus of a different socio-technological system. The principles of technological control in these different fields is the same. First a narrow field of interest is delineated. Then all other aspects not relevant are filtered out. Then a theoretical structure is applied to the conceptualization of the phenomena within the field. A particular language game is played and associated refined praxis applied. The theoretical structure controls action within the field of interest. Praxis is optimized toward the achievement of a narrowly defined goal couched in terms of the theoretical structure controlling the observation of the field. This approach may be applied to any aspect of the lifeworld. By successful application to many aspects of the lifeworld over a period of time, the lifeworld has been fragmented into a series of specialties. The wholeness of the lifeworld known in many traditional societies has been lost. Wherever one turns, the principles of technological control are already ensconced. The content being controlled by the formal-structural system is different, but the means of control is the same. Thus, we see the technological system as all pervasive, but cannot pin it down to a single source of control. This is because different socio-technical systems are working independently, controlling different specialty fields. It appears orchestrated, but in fact is not. It is merely many successful applications of control of the same kind being exercised independently by different socio-technical systems. The real pervasiveness is that the lifeworld has become saturated by this kind of control. There is hardly any aspect of the lifeworld not under some kind of technological observation channel or control channel. Pervasiveness is apparent because we meet the same control structures over and over again in relation to many different phenomena.
The control structures which are applied to many diverse fields and phenomena independently have as their goal the maintenance of the order within which the technological system can successfully function. This order can break down easily. Thus, tight control is necessary within the boundaries of the field. This control is part of the filtering system that protects the field from interference of different irrelevant aspects of the lifeworld. The control structure tends to take on a life of its own and spreads across the lifeworld dominating as many aspects as possible. The taking on a life of its own, or autonomy of the control structure of the socio-technical system, becomes a positive feedback which keeps increasing without bounds. The control structure is repressive because it excludes all differences not produced by the technological system itself. Here an important fact becomes clear. The lifeworld contains myriads of differences which, like all differences between natural complexes, are ambiguous and multifaceted. The technological system takes these ambiguous and multifaceted differences and reduces them to a uniformity and homogeneousness. Then the socio-technical system produces its own kind of differentiation artificially to fill the void it has created. This is a curious phenomenon. From the point of view of the technological system, the differences inherent in the traditional culture are bad (i.e. inefficient). It gets rid of these traditional distinctions and substitutes its own arbitrary theoretically motivated differences which appear as artificial novelty. This is, of course, is part of the action of the technological control structure. The cultural differences of traditional societies are difficult to control and manipulate. The artificial differences produced by the socio-technical system are easy to control and manipulate. These artificial differences, excrescences, drown out the differences which occur in traditional cultures. We know these artificial differences as, for instance, the competition between brands. There are usually only slight differences between competing brands. Competition causes uniformity which is masked by superficial difference. Interestingly, those brands which do not change are normally of higher quality and reserved for the elite. This has been called the snob syndrome within the realm of cultural imperialism. We attempt to get traditional practices replaced by consumer goods, yet the elite of Western society pays more to get what was common in traditional societies. The disparity between the organic differences intrinsic to traditional society, and the artificial differences produced by the socio-technical system, is an important phenomenon. Artificial differences, excrescence, destroy the meaning which inhabits the organic differences of traditional societies. To those who have had their societies colonized by socio-technical systems, it is as if all the meaning had been sucked out of their lifeworld. Artificial differences do not contain meaning. The significance of artificial differences cannot replace meaning complexes. The pulverization of meaning complexes and their replacement by excrescence renders life meaningless. The result is the existentialist dilemma. Beyond the "progress" of the socio-technical system itself, there is no meaning in life. Yet, as Victor Frankl has demonstrated, men cannot really live without meaning. Those whose lives did not have meaning were the first to die in the concentration camps. The socio-technical system itself cannot continue to exist totally without meaning. Meaning goes beyond the significance derived from diacritical differences within the field dominated by the socio-technical system. Meaning implies a ground for making distinctions. Within the plenum of pure diacritical difference there is no ground for making distinctions. Diacritical differences, defined by F. Saussure in his Course On General Linguistics, mean that each difference has significance only in relation to all other differences within the field. Meaning implies that differences are based on something that goes beyond visible differences. Traditional societies normally attribute visible differences to invisible distinctions. This meaning of visible differences normally derives from distinctions between invisible realities. The technological system does not accept invisible distinctions as having any validity. The socio-technical system is inhabited by what Plato calls the "men of earth" who only believe what they can hold in their hands. Thus, the socio-technical system transgresses over the invisible boundaries [that anthropologists call taboo] which are "designated as real" in traditional societies. When these boundaries are transgressed, the world becomes unanchored, and meaning evaporates. Human beings are stuck having to search for meaning in their lives instead of living in a lifeworld which vibrates with meaning. Meanings are rooted in designated-as-real invisible realities to which people in traditional societies respond by regulating their own behavior according to non-nihilistic distinctions. Within the plenum of pure difference created by the socio-technical system all distinctions are inherently nihilistic. There is no real difference to bound behavior or choice. Any behavior or choice is equal to all others except by rules of efficiency and profit dictated by the socio-technical system. To the inhabitant of a traditional society rooted in distinctions between unseen designated-as-real differences all choices and behaviors must be bounded and derive meaning from these bounds. To them the behavior of the socio-technical system is immoral and meaningless.
The technological system is rooted in the visible phenomenal aspects of the lifeworld. Yet the technological system itself is nowhere visible. The technological system is based on human ideation. Within the Western tradition ideation has been developed to a fine art. When we consider the socio-technical system, we must further trace its effectiveness of operation to the nature of ideation as developed in the West, starting from Greek origins. Ideation is not very well understood even though it is the basis of our constitution of the world within which the kakatopia of the technological society is a natural outcome. Ideation is the production of ideas or concepts. These are abstract glosses which serve as filters for our experience of the world. This is a social phenomenon in which we all participate everyday. In order to live in a technological system, we must see the world in terms of ideas and concepts we produce and use together to guide our praxis. What is interesting here is that although the technological system outright denies the invisible reality in traditional societies, it has its own set of invisible designated-as-real "concepts" or "ideas" which governs its own constitution of the world which are equally ephemeral.
The key is understanding the significance of cinema as the concrete representation of ideation. In cinema images appear to be continuously flowing through time. We become totally absorbed in the combination of sound and apparently continuous animated images in a movie theater. The apparent continuity comes from the flashing of slightly different images at a subliminal rate of 25 frames per second. Since we cannot perceive the difference between flashed frames at that rate, we "see" continuous motion in the images on the screen. Ideas are produced by a similar mechanism. Ideas are glosses or abstractions which have illusory continuity. These glosses are used to produce a conceptual picture of the field dominated by the socio-technical system and to govern abstracted behavior guided by theory called praxis. The conceptual picture of the field dominated by the socio-technical system acts to govern abstracted behavior guided by theory called praxis. The conceptual picture of the world maintained in the form of ideational glosses both abstracts (i.e. filters) lived experience and serves to give uniform control over the field by the socio-technical system.
The mechanism for keeping ideational glosses in apparent presence is oscillation between nihilistic opposites. Within the field governed by the socio-technical system there is a constant arising of nihilistic opposites. Nihilistic opposites appear superficially different, but are really the same thing in two slightly different forms. From a structuralist point of view it is the same form with its structural content rearranged. The socio-technical system oscillates between these nihilistic opposites, and in so doing produces the illusory continuity of ideational forms. Oscillation, or compulsive repetition, is the root cause of ideational illusory continuity. Ideas come out of the dialectical movement between nihilistic opposites. If this dialectical movement were to stop, the ideas would vanish. So now we get an even deeper picture of why artificial novelty must be produced and how. The nihilistic opposites -- formally the same but structurally differentiated -- arise continuously within the dominated field. They must continuously be differentiated by the production of artificial novelty because they are really the same. This artificial differentiation allows the nihilistic opposites to appear and remain visible in the dominated field. The mesmerized subject repeatedly oscillates between the two nihilistic opposites looking back and forth between them. If there weren't small novel differences between the nihilistic opposites being produced, the mesmerized subject would see that what was presented as two opposites were really the same thing. The oscillation between nihilistic opposites gives apparent significances based on diacritical differences. If there were a recognition of the sameness of the nihilistic alternatives, then obsessive repetitive behavior would cease, and diacritical differences would be seen as no real difference at all. The significance of artificial diacritical difference would vanish, and ideation would stop. The socio-technical system would grind to a halt. Control would cease. The lifeworld would begin to reappear with its family resemblances instead of sharp artificial distinctions. The lifeworld is, in fact, just the submerged world of similarities which Foucault calls the medieval episteme. In that way of organizing knowledge it is resemblances that are used to make connections between things in the world. The weakness of the lifeworld is that its "common sense" cannot stand up to the onslaught of the formalism of logic. The technological system is a layer of control and domination laid on top of that old strata. Whenever the technological system breaks down, we revert first from structuralism to formalism then finally to the pre-formalistic thought patterns based on metaphor and analogy.
Unless we trace the action of the socio-technical system back to ideation, we miss the crux of the matter. Ideation produces "concepts" or "ideas" which are composed into theoretical structures. These concepts are generalizations from concrete experiential phenomena within the lifeworld. Concepts seem to have continuity over time so they can be used as a reference for controlling and judging phenomena. As generalizations they serve to filter out phenomena that don't fit. As abstractions they serve to highlight non-filtered phenomena and render them prominent in the dominated field. The apparent continuity of concepts is in fact and illusion. The illusion is created by oscillation between nihilistic opposites that arise in the dominated field. These nihilistic opposites themselves can only be seen as long as artificial novelty is being generated. The concepts are forms which appear containing structural content. The structural content is embedded "form" within the forms. Structural content only appears against the background of constantly changing diacritical "differences that don't make a difference." Over time these artificial significant differences organize perception of the dominated field and behavior within the dominated field. The apparent continuity of concepts over time is measured against the changes in the flux of diacritical change by artificial emergence. Here we see that the socio-technical system is producing its own temporality. Artificial emergence is the background for artificial continuity of concepts. Concepts are forms that don't change in the field of excrescences. The flux of diacritical changes are channeled to preserve conceptual forms. This channeling is the control mechanism of the socio-technical system. Control occurs by forcing the theoretical structure on the dominated field. The conceptual structure is the filter and the highlight of relevant phenomena. When the conceptual structure is enforced by abstracted behavior, called praxis, then the dominance of the socio-technical system becomes complete.
Conceptual structures held by different cadres within the socio-technical system may be very different. In fact, they must be different because they must produce nihilisticly opposite conceptual structures. There is a dialectical relation between competing theoretical structures within the dominated field. Out of this dialectical interplay syntheses arise which are paradigm changes. In "paradigm changes" the connections between fundamental concepts that everyone accepts change. When the concepts everyone accepts is basic change then all previous conceptual structures become obsolete. Everyone in the dominated field must begin building again. When the accepted means of making connections between concepts changes, this is an episteme change as Foucault has described. When we change how we connect concepts, our way of knowing the world has changed. But even more basic is the nature of the entities and relations themselves. We say "A is B" correspondence, "A is A" identity, "A is" attribution of existence. If we change our interpretation of the IS in these statements, we change how the world is constituted and how things are "designated- as-real, or true, or identical." This kind of change is an inauguration of a new epoch of Being. Conceptual structures are the locus of all these types of discontinuous changes discussed earlier. Conceptual structures produced by the social process of ideation, called by G.H. Mead symbolic interaction, are the teleonomic filter for the socio-technical system. The teleonomic filter is the heart of every dynamic formal-structural system. Jacques Monod coined the concept in his book on the application of structuralism to biological evolution called Chance And Necessity. A teleonomic filter is composed of layers of deterministic filtering categories interleaved with pools of chance mutation. As a structural system changes, diachronically random mutations are incorporated into its deterministic filtering categories. This added component to the filtering reduces the possibilities for future change. The teleonomic filter drives the dynamic structural system toward a goal, but not one which is predetermined. Thus, the structural system is not teleological. Its goal is not predetermined. Its goal is honed in on as its filtering becomes more rigid and narrow over time. The mutations which exist in Monod's model correspond to the artificially generated novelty. The layering of the filter corresponds to the deeper and deeper forms of nonlinear change. When a mutation becomes part of the filter, it causes that layer of the filter to alter the diacritical relations between categories within that layer of the filter. The higher level of generality of the concepts at that level of filtering, the more widespread are the effects of filter mutation. As the filter changes, what can be seen by the technological system is the dominated field changes as well. This picture from Monod of how the nonlinear dynamic formal-structural socio-technical system evolves over time is very important. What he calls the teleonomic filter is the theoretical, or conceptual, structure which is held in existence by ideation. With ideation the socio-technical system bootstraps itself. It produces nihilistic opposites as structurally differentiated forms, then oscillates between them giving a fundamental temporality to the system. The oscillation rate between nihilistic opposites is measured against the rate of production of artificial novelty by crossover or mutations. The oscillation must be far faster that the mutation rate. The mutation rate renders the nihilistic opposites visible. The oscillation between nihilistic opposites in quick succession makes continuous forms or concepts visible. The artificial continuity of the concepts allows the phenomena within the dominated field to be seen and controlled. The temporality of the socio-technical system is bound to the relations of artificial continuity of concepts, oscillation between nihilistic opposites, the rate of crossover or mutation (i.e. artificial emergence), and the rate of phenomenal change. This minimal system of temporal changes is the basis of the temporality of the dynamic socio-technical system. By this temporal minimal system the socio-technical system maintains itself in existence over time and maintains its restricted visibility of the dominated field.
The temporality of the lifeworld is different from that of the socio-technical system. Traditional societies exemplified the temporality of the lifeworld which were based pre-eminently on natural rhythms: night and day, birth and death, marriage and child birth. These fundamental cycles of human life dominate the temporal experience within the lifeworld as in traditional societies. In fact, what we call the lifeworld may be seen as what is left of our own traditional society beneath the domination of the technological superstructure. This remnant lives on in our concepts of family, neighborhood and community. It is exactly these more organic patterns of life that are attacked by the dominance of the technological system. Families become first nuclear then single parent households. Neighborhoods are redeveloped or remain blighted. Communities become lost in urban sprawl. The rhythms of these traditional social groupings are lost beneath the temporal tyranny of the technological system. Jeremy Rifkin describes these and related phenomena well in Timewars.
Meaning within the lifeworld is different from the significance of diacritically related concepts. Also, the temporality of the unfolding of meaning is different. We have lost touch with meaning and its unfolding so that we are no longer sure how to distinguish meaning from diacritical significance. This is the legacy of the dominance of the technological system within Western civilization. The kakatopia is a world without meaning. Our access to the invisible realm from which meaning arrives has been blocked. The life blood of meaning has been frozen by the chill of the artificial temporality of the technological system. Meaning had bubbled up from the unseen to give depth to our existence. But no longer. It has been cut off by the functioning of ideation's production of interference. The interference of ideation traps us in the surfaces of phenomena, and we lose all access to the depth.
Yet, sometimes meaning shines through this veil of senseless control and domination by the technological system. Meaning shines through at those times when the socio-technical gestalt repatterns itself. Those are the points when cracks appear in the control structure's facade. At times of repatterning meaning comes flooding back into the lifeworld until the technological system regains control. The discontinuous catastrophic realignments called paradigm changes, episteme changes, and epochs of Being are moments when meaning floods back into our sterile world. These emergent events are the other "moment" to the dynamic of the technological system. At those points new conceptual structures, or new phenomena, come into existence. When genuine novelty occurs, it is clearly distinguished from excrescences. The artificial novelty fades from view, and our gaze is now mesmerized by the epiphany of the truly novel. The truly novel suddenly emerges, giving new meaning to everything in the dominated field. The crystalline structure of the field becomes molten and then resets in a new more fantastic structural pattern. Meaning appears in everything for a moment before the technological system can begin generating artificial novelty as interference again. This glow of meaning clings to the emergent phenomena for some time, but eventually fades as nihilism again spreads its deadly pall.
Genuine emergence is the opposite of the temporality of the socio-technical system. Like the temporality of the technological system. It has four phases. In fact, for each of its phases there is a different stage of existence. In one event the entire functioning of the technological system is expressed. These are the four phases of emergence already discussed.
During the first state a genuine emergent eventity appears on the horizon of consciousness. It appears as a premonition of foreboding. Nothing that can be pinpointed. Somebody senses something is wrong, but they are not sure what it is. The continual production of diacritical change is disturbed by the emergence of a meaningful distinction within the dominated field. Once this occurs, artificial novelty is seen to be an obvious sham. Significance fades before the advent of genuine meaning. At the second phase an identifiable locus of anomaly is located. The characteristics of the anomaly begin to be noted. The continuity of ideation is broken, both temporally and spatially. Temporal ideation cannot explain the emergent event causally, so it is clear that ideation is not the source of all images in the dominated field. Spatially ideation created a logical web of concepts into which the anomalies do not fit. The anomaly represents disruption of the web of explanations which ideation has spread over all things in the field. The anomaly is recognized to be a discontinuous event that disrupts the continuity and the web of ideation. In the third stage the blank mind of the stymied theorist is repatterned. Persig's "gumption" and de Bono's "lateral thinking" is the stopping of the self talk of the exhausted mind. When it stops, the oscillation between nihilistic alternatives ceases. Ideation stops working. No longer is artificial continuity produced. At that point a repatterning of the conceptual system occurs. A new gestalt is formed. Depending on which layer of the teleonomic filter is repatterned, the effects could be narrow or wide. Once this repatterning has occurred, ideation starts again working with new material. Suddenly what were anomalies are staunch supporters of the new vision of the world order. The universe is full of wonderful new things, or rather the old things seen in a completely new light. The true depth of meaning is seen in our wonderment. We are astonished at our new vista for understanding the world. We begin to understand the world in a totally different and unexpected way. We begin exploring new continents of knowable things using the faculty of ideation. We begin again.
Emergence may occur at several levels. It may repattern a theoretical structure in which case a completely new theory is born. It may repattern a basic assumption to a dialectically related set of theories in which case a paradigm change occurs. It may repattern the relations between aspects of the structure of ideation itself so that the way we "do ideation" changes. This means the way we know everything changes. Foucault calls this an episteme change. Or finally, the change can be to our worldview because we reinterpret "Being" which is our most general concept. Being is the concept on which the whole world is founded. Our worlding is our projection of "Being" on everything. Emergence can occur at all these levels which constitute different levels to the hierarchical teleonomic filter of the socio-technical system.
Emergence is the central phenomena in the western intellectual and social tradition. Our history is a series of emergent events. Arguelles' Transformative Vision pictures this series of events as intensifications of nihilism. Our kakatopia becomes more and more a hell on earth because with each emergent mutation the teleonomic filtering becomes more stringent and our possibilities more narrowly delimited. Each emergent event briefly infuses meaning back into the world, but its wake is a more reified technological system honed in ever more finely on its own goals of global domination. As Fandozi suggests, the technological system has its own agenda which is raised above the agendas of everyone else. Since the technological system is not human, the destruction of the lifeworld is a small price to pay for global dominance. Emergence is the deepest type of change which is the central dynamo giving life to Western civilization. But Western civilization is not in control of the dynamo. It is literally out of control, careening toward its teleological goal of self-destruction. Freud's death wish gathering in epidemic proportions. With each emergent event, more meaning is sucked out of the world. The remnants of traditional societies are more thoroughly squelched. Families, neighborhoods, and communities are devastated. Emergence and genuine creativity we prize are the most precious possession of Western civilization. Yet this prize has a high price. Just look at our history. It speaks for itself as a legacy of death, genocide, destruction, and ruined lives. No matter what we say about our great achievements, no one can look on the history of the acts of our civilization except in shame. There is no us and them. It is all us. The Indo-European legacy is a bitter tale. The bright spots of emergence and creativity are dim lights on a sea of ever gathering darkness.
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