I take a bird and release it. At first the results seem as chaotic as the butterfly’s, but then I discover patterns of interaction. Under certain circumstances (as with homing pigeons) the bird will fly toward me. More typically it will flee away in fear. And so on.
I take my wife and release her. An even wilder universe of possible results emerges, and yet my supreme pattern recognition skills begin slowly to map that territory: there is coming toward me in love, or coming toward me in anger; there is indifference, laughter, torrents of abuse... and there are multiple layers of conscious or unconscious simulations of such reactions in order to make a point or express something which may arise from any region of her soul or the interactions between us.
Four years of marriage and, although I still pay more attention to my wife than to any bird, butterfly or stone, there remains so much to explore. For I do believe that our fellow human beings form the most complex patterns of all.
I quote above what I was taught in my formative years, about mankind’s steady rise to the mastery of science. It went with a belief in our defining trait as: “Man—the toolmaker”. The idea being that we alone learnt to make and master tools and this lead to every evolutionary advantage including enormous brain development. However, as the above example illustrates, no tool can be as complex as another human being. No mechanical process can match the perversity of an individual or group of people.
I therefore propose that it was not tool-making, so much as social interaction that went with the evolution of our larger brains. (And I note the recent discovery3 that certain crows have been shown to possess remarkable tool-manipulation skills to confirm that tool-making is not so closely linked to brain size as was taught.)
You see it in a growing baby: picking things up and releasing them over and over. Smiling and observing the world smiling back. At some point nearly every child makes the vital leap and recognises that certain patterns of reaction are so complex that they can only be accommodated by projecting some of its own conscious awareness out into the pattern—in other words, by assuming that other people too are conscious, intelligent beings. “Mama must be a person—just like me!”
This is the very assumption that is helping me to map the territory of wild and wifely behaviour patterns. It would also help me to model the bird’s behaviour to some degree.
This book argues that there is no more powerful technique for handling our environment. This is far from being a reversion to primitive and outmoded behaviour. Look for conscious intelligence in phenomena and you awaken the greatest powers of the human brain to assist your exploration or mastery. Whereas those who insist on hording “conscious will” inside themselves, and seeing only mechanical processes outside themselves, are closing down most of their brain connections.
This is the true “dumbing down”—a simplification of thinking that does indeed give sharper focus but offers little greater advantage. Like abandoning the fork for a knife—it cuts better but the peas of wisdom roll off and you risk cutting your tongue within the mashed potato of success.
Superstition thrives on absolutes, not relatives. Religion and science teach us to look for absolutes and so we lose trust in what is relative. Magic teaches us to walk on the shifting sands of relative or workable truth and that is a great skill. Without that skill we can only kid ourselves that truths must be absolute. Superstition is not the result of magic, but rather the result of people wandering into magical territory armed only with the tools of religion and science.
That is why our culture has become so deeply superstitious and why I refuse to cloak my ideas in pseudo scientific or religious terminology—even though it would improve my status among the gullible.
So... a slight adjustment to the phrasing of the opening paragraph of the previous section:
Aren’t we turning our back on outmoded superstition when we talk of demons instead of falling back on clumsy scientific jargon and psychobabble to describe what are, after all, the exquisite complexities of human experience?
WE ARE ENSNARED IN AN EVIL WEB OF DARK FORCES
Baby pushes Spoon to edge of Table and... over it goes. Spoon hits the floor with a satisfying tinkle, leaving a charming little splash of white and gold— milk and cereal—to relieve the monotonous pattern of the dining room carpet. Baby gurgles with joy.
Baby is discovering the delightful mastery that Will exercises over the environment. It’s the tenth time spoon has hit the floor with unfailing obedience during this meal—not that Baby knows anything yet about the number ten nor of its intimations of Pythagorean perfection and cabalistic or even ordinal significance.
Spoon never lets Baby down. Not like Mama. Sure enough, Mama is now bending down to retrieve Spoon, and will put it back in the dish with one of those delightful little sighs but—uh oh—she has stopped to rinse it under the tap this time, and stands arms akimbo scowling for a few seconds before returning Spoon to its launching pad.
Mama is a problem to Baby. She is clearly controllable—like everything else—but seems to malfunction at times. It’s a tiresome responsibility for Baby, who has so much work to do without the added burden of learning to operate a defective Mama.
Baby is forced to sacrifice vital learning/growing time and energy to the contemplation of this problem—and Baby eventually comes up with a stunning, mind-blowing solution. Is it possible that Mama might contain a Me inside her? Until now it has been obvious that there is only one Me in the world, and that is Baby; but if Mama is being operated internally by an invisible Me—a Me that can be feeling happy one minute, bored or angry another— then it might explain her erratic responses.
Baby begins the most dramatic experiment of a lifetime—pretending that other people are being operated by a Me and asking “how might Me behave if it was out there rather than here?”—and Baby’s world is, as a result, being enriched with the warmth and light of human interaction.
Two great forces are now locked in battle for Baby’s soul.
One force says “GIVE! For I am the path of Magic and Art! Give meaning to the world and it will repay you an hundredfold! See patterns in everything, for pattern adds value. Trade Self for Understanding and Nature will become your mirror, reflecting back the many facets of your infinite complexity, for everything is alive and longing to teach you. Personify the world and I will grant you WISDOM!”
The other force says “TAKE! For I am the path of Religion and Science! There are no patterns, there is no life, save only the will of God or the laws of physics. Guard your soul within you—never trade it—for it is not yours but God’s, an illusion woven from the laws of physics. Objectify the world and I will give you POWER!”
Should Baby move forward from the discovery of Mama’s soul? Should Babe look again at the family pets and realising that they too might possess volition and be better understood in those terms? As a grown up, might he not speak of a sailing vessel as ‘she’ and seek to divine her moods and subtle handling characteristics under changing tide and weather patterns in such terms? When the office photocopier persistently misbehaves just when the pressure is on, might he not ask the question “but how does it know we are in hurry to meet deadlines?”
And next time the spoon hits the floor so satisfyingly, might not Baby peer over the edge of the table—a second chance to appreciate the aesthetics of the situation—and actually thank the spoon for being so co-operative? Do this, and Baby’s world grows richer and more nourishing day by day—an ever-ready breast inviting Babe to suck the milk of wisdom.
Or should Babe rather retreat from all this sharing of complexity and concentrate attention on the compliant Spoon? Gadgets can be much more complicated than Spoon, and take longer to control, but eventually they give in without the need to bargain with them by sharing out Me. Family pets might seem to have minds of their own but, as Pavlov has shown us, they can also be coerced into mechanical patterns of behaviour. It might take a long time, but even Mama has buttons that can be pressed—and the whole