The Aristotelian Ape Mind vs the Humean Human Mind – A
Revisit, a.k.a. WHAT CAUSALITY CAN DO TO YOU!
by
Dennis K. Chong & Jennifer K.
Smith Chong ©
What is an ape mind? What is a being, who has an ape mind?
Alfred Korzybski first discovered
the roots of the ape mind in us in 1933 in his work, Science and Sanity,
when he realized that our reality and our responses unfold out of the language
system that we use to think with, feel and talk by. He also realized that the
language system we use are the formats of the system of Causality or Cause and
Effect that Aristotle had discovered and formulated. In turn, our nervous
system would be concordantly configured by it. However, being mesa to it, we
are completely habituated to it and we are simply unaware of its consequences.
These consequences can be very serious:
Investigations further show that such nervous reactions in man lead to non-survival, pathological states of general infantilism, infantile private and public behaviour, infantile institutions, infantile ‘civilizations’ founded on strife, fights, brute competitions. , these being supposedly the ‘natural’ expression of ‘human nature’, as different commercialists and their assistants, the militarists and priests, would have us believe.
Alfred Korzybski: Science and Sanity AN INTRODUCTION TO NON-ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEMS AND GENERAL SEMANTICS The International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company Fourth Edition 1958 Sixth printing, page 24.
This paper examines what happens when we think by Cause and Effect. It examines how it compels the conditions for “brute competition” that Korzybski speaks of and which are so typical and characteristic of apes. We take it for granted that we are civilized and cultured. Are we?
We mean no offense to anyone, but you have to wonder when you see the picture below – whether this is a picture of a human being or is it of an ape?
So what is an ape mind. Here is a proposition about what it is:
The social imaginings and
plans contemplated by apes would be linear, forward-looking, limited and
probably coarse-grained permutations from current situations.
The ape mind is situated, reflex, confined to present perception and motivation (the fixed point), yet able to imagine on-line forward-looking but partial alternative to current states of affairs. The imagining is probably cued by genetic priming as well as past experiences and expectations about standard multilateral arrangements of the zero-sum sort (kinship, reciprocation, alliances, dominance).
Radu J. Bogdan: Minding Minds MIT Press page 62.
Firstly, for the ape mind to be situated means that it can only think within the spatial frames where it is at a given moment in time. It is trapped within its space/time co-ordinates. It cannot think of what it would be like to be in Leeds from Doncaster.
It is also trapped within time boundaries of the present relative to the future, see below. The α-ape cannot conceive of a five-year economic plan for his troop.
From the behaviours of the dominant apes of ape troops, everything and every other ape belongs to it. It can mate with any female of its choice and fancy. All prime sites are his. All members of the troop are subservient to him. If you have followed the saga of one of the more eminent international CEOs, a.k.a. Lord Conrad Black, you can glean a sense of what a man becomes when he becomes an α-ape. If this is true of Lordship, and he is known for his culture and civilization in society, you really have to wonder what the others are really like, e.g. Ken Lay of Enron, Dennis Koslowski of Tyco, John Rigas and sons of Adelphia, Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom Inc. et alia.
If you poise yourself as superior and dominant over all others because, “I am the king and lord” and it is ALL MINE, MINE, MINE, all you will get is the resentment of other people.
The ape mind clearly, by this proposition can imagine wants in a future of limited time scope. It does so by its crude linear logic. We say limited time scope because human beings can plan for things literally many years ahead. The ape can only do so in a limited forward time span. In a sense it operates within a frame with the co-members of his group. However, it is clear it is not by cooperation and collaboration. It is by dominance and tyranny. Yes, just like Saddam Hussein.
What then is a human mind?
Here is a proposition about what it is:
Metamentation builds on
formats of interpretation and imagination which are unsituated, explicit,
fine-grained . off-line, meta-ascending, and back looping.
This apparently unique
development (documented in later chapters) allows human minds to engage each
other in open-ended and non-zero-sum or contractual forms of coordination
in which what an agent would plan or choose to do and do, depends on what other
agents would plan and choose to do and do. In this sort of coordination, agents
succeed if and only if each does what others expect each to do. This is to say
that the gambit works only if each agent shares with others the recognition
of such expectations and of the contexts in which they work. Sharing
recognitions is an absolute novelty in primate mentation. It is an ability that
totally redesigns the human mind. Suppose that these patterns of mutual
engagement, based on such mental sharing, displays regularities that the
participants recognize and conform to, and recognize that others recognize and
conform to them, also recognize that such mutual recognition and conformity
ensures the success of their collaborative efforts. The conformity in question
is to rules and norms mostly cultural, of which social and linguistic
conventions are a distinguished subclass.
Radu J. Bogdan: Minding Minds MIT Press page 63.
What this quote says is that the principal goal of human thinking and therefore human language is to ensure “that such mutual recognition and conformity ensures the success of their collaborative efforts.” But it can never be accomplished by the Aristotelian language system of Cause and Effect. It is about the kind of mutual cooperation by which the co-existence of the participating members of the group can grow, thrive, co-prosper, co-develop and co-evolve. This mutual cooperation is a derivative of the finesse in human metamentation, i.e., thinking.
This
clearly is not so in many countries today, especially in Africa, when one
person comes into power and he is the α-ape. Like the real α-ape,
everything is his. All are his “things” and he can dispose of them as he
wishes. His mind is “situated, reflex, confined
to present perception and motivation .” Today2004,
we can see a touch of this in Vladimir Putin. Everything is here and now
and what I want I get. The forward thinking is “limited
and probably coarse-grained.”
It is clearly comparable to what is happening in many business corporations today, when one person is like an α-ape. Everything is by such an ape-CEO’s fiat and fancy and everything is to satisfy his whim and greed. There is a notorious case of an American corporate α-ape who celebrated his wife’s birthday in Italy. It turned out to be like a Roman Saturnalia. The party cost millions of dollars and he just took it out of the company. The money was not his. This α-ape is currently in some difficulty before the law.
When nations have an α-ape running it, then its society will be compelled to develop and evolve in a corresponding manner. There will be no economic plans or projects. There will be no provisions for any unforeseen contingencies. It is a society of grab what you can now, if you can; and you grab the most of what you can. There will be no forethought of provisions for future contingencies.
Of recent fame in this manner was Idi Amin Dada of Uganda. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe would commandeer an airplane of the national airline at any moment of his whim to satisfy a shopping trip in Rome or Paris or London. Mobutu of the Congo raped and pillaged the wealth of his country. He did so by the billions of dollars. It would seem that but for the extreme fundamentalist religiosity of their Islamic Wahabism, the Saudi Royals would have been even more blatant robbers of their nation’s wealth. Sir Hassanal Bolkiah Muizzaddin Waddaulah, the Sultan of Brunei, equals their rapacity. His brother, Prince Jefri had the distinction of being his pimp!
When you have companies run by an α-ape, you will have the kind of outrageous financial shenanigans that are the mother of the scandals that are going on today. Some of these companies were in the end destroyed by these α-apes.
We in the west need to be aware of how we are. We tilt towards wanting more material possessions, more wealth, more property, more power and better positions. It is all about “ME!” “ME!” “ME!” We become α-apes. What after all are people like Ken Lay of Enron, Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco, Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom Inc., or Lord Conrad Black of Hollinger Inc. but α-apes.
Their blatant thievery is nothing but a metaphor for their “linear, forward-looking, limited and probably coarse-grained permutations from current situations.” They could not go beyond seeing the stupidity that their unbridled ego and greed was trapping them into.
For all of us it is a continuing choice – an Aristotelian ape mindz or Humean human mind», love or greed, want or restraint, culture or savagery.
For a Neuro-Linguistic Programmer and especially a Neuro-Semantic Programmer, it will always be the aim to use the power of the Non-Aristotelian language system. It is only by it is it possible to set well formed goals and formulate ways that in a collaborative frame in which all co-operate together to achieve the desired outcomes that the community agrees on. And if in the process, there are significant financial returns to create the structures that will ensure that the cry of the Lord’s Prayer is attained:
. . . and lead
us not into temptation but deliver us from all evil, Amen.
The NLP community at some level has the power to thrive and grow in even more incredible ways. However, it will, recurrently and repeatedly, be handicapped and shortchanged if its positions of power and influence are by men and women who do not understand the basic point in the evolution language by our hominid antecedents. It is to have the ability to create the framework by which all co-members can work together for its common objectives and to share the benefits that unfold from such successes.
For this, we must have the Non-Aristotelian language system*. Without it we shall continue the language of the Aristotelian system of Cause and Effect. And every NLP-er knows that despite the signal opposition to Cause and Effect because of its semantic ill-formedness, Bandler and Grinder went on to configure the Meta Model in Cause Effect. By this, they left the NLP community in the helpless thralldom the language system of Cause and Effect. So, across time various NLP communities across the world has seen and suffered the emergence of the insanity, a.k.a. semantic ill-formedness of Cause and Effect.