Dialectics of Delirious Thinking Antonio Rossin, 1985 Reifications (like biological entozoic infections of the gut) are proto-socio-neurological enculturations and as useful fictions are not necessarily symbiotic with, nor necessarily benignly adjuvant to the welfare of their unwitting and often naive hosts. Jud Evans. "Reification and the Philosophy of the Unreal" Freedom in humans consists of the ability to liberate oneself from the tyranny of reificationalist imprinting. Antonio Rossin. "Democracy, Religion, Drugs".

Under the item "delirium", I read in my dictionary that this product of the human mind is a "pathologic formation of wrong convictions, absurd in its contents, holding out against every criticism". This definition appears right, if one looks at the delirium as a condition that interests the human being as a single individual. If instead one considers the individual as the simple element of a more complex system whose structure is the final result of the interactions of all the single individuals who compose it, and between these and the surrounding environment, that is, if one adopts a holistic concept of the existing reality, it should be clear that the delirium, even if ethically unacceptable, does still potentially possess the substantial characteristics of a dialectical invention as regards the axioms of the dominant thinking. Delirium seems therefore to fulfill the logical requirements of the system's adaptive variability, thus presenting itself as a dialectical moment of potential change concerning the ways of 'how we can be Humans.'

Gregory Bateson, in its essay "The Roots of Ecological Crisis" (in: Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 498, University of Chicago Press, ed. 2000) states: "We believe… (3) that all of the many current threats to man's survival are traceable to three root causes: (a) technological progress, (b) population increase, (c) certain errors of the thinking and attitudes of Occidental culture. Our 'values' are wrong. We believe that all three of these fundamental factors are necessary conditions for the destruction of our world. In other words, we optimistically believe that the correction of any one of them would save us… [because] …these fundamental factors certainly interact…"

Agreeing with Bateson's positions, here I want to advance the hypothesis that a criticism to the possible errors of Occidental Thinking could take advantage from the evaluating of what the 'Occidental Thinking' takes for erred: therefore - paradoxically - from a pragmatic logics of the 'delirious thinking.'

With this intention of introducing "delirium" as a factor of variability and most of all of flexibility of the system, in the First Part of this analysis I will try to define some axioms regarding the "delirious thinking" based upon the relationship of the latter with the current "dominant thinking". In the Second and Third Part, the concepts regarding the relationship between delirious and dominant thinking are extended to analyze the inter-individual relationships, and the implications of the latter onto the system's social arrangement.

Note Differently from the common English usage, the terms 'Subject' and 'Object" are used here in accord with the Latin parsing: that is, in any practice the 'Subject' is the actor of the action whose target is the 'Object'.

I - Defining

I/1 The 'subject' who autonomously expresses a representation of reality, has expressed a 'subjective' truth. A representation of reality is called 'delirium' when it is expressed inside a social system, composed of leaders and followers and made homogeneous by the convergence of the collective consent to another subjective representation of the same reality which does not coincide with that, just for this reason, is called 'delirium'.

I/2 On the other hand, when the collective consent converges on a subjective representation of reality, this last is usually taken by the collectivity as the common 'objective' truth. Hence, every representation of reality becomes 'delirium' if it does not coincide with the subjective representation of the same reality that has been taken as 'common objective truth' by the collectivity. Thus, what differentiates the delirium of a single individual from the 'objective truth' is the non-coincidence of the single individual's subjective truth with the subjective truth of the collectivity.

I/3 The necessary condition making a subjective representation of reality be taken as the 'objective truth', with function of command information regarding the steadiness requirements of the system, is the collective consent converging on it; all of this, clearly, quite independently from the adherence of this subjective truth of collectivity to objective reality. Therefore, the criterion making the social system steady and homogeneous with reference to a representation of reality is neither given by the adherence of the collectivity to objective reality, nor it appears likely that the collectivity may resort to formally unexceptionable methodologies - like math calculus - to establish the verisimilitude ratio that is necessary to its own believing procedures. Indeed the homogeneity necessary to the dynamics and to the steadiness of the system can be given by the simple approval of all single individuals to the representation of reality having been made by one only authority: the individual who chairs the hierarchical role of the leader, independently from the latter's adherence to objective reality. By the individual followers, such an impulse of approval acts at a subconscious mind level because, actually, no practice being arranged at the level of consciousness seems compatible with the economy of the psychical system, when the same practice could have been arranged at a level of instinctive automatisms thus becoming a meme.

I/4 What is taken by the social system as an 'objective truth' can therefore result as the outcome of a collective delirium, as the sum of subjective representations of objective reality in a social system made homogeneous by the coinciding of the collective approval on the subjective representation of reality given by one single individual - the leader - acting in itself as a command message without being necessarily bound to be adherent to the objective reality of the system. The last condition seems to be allowed by the relation of psychological dependence that binds the gregarious fellows to the social authority, with reference to the steadiness requirements of the system based on social hierarchy.

II Systemizing

II/1 Let's think of a social system where the 'common truth' is actually a collective delirium inasmuch as the gregarious people - because of the system's requirements for steadiness - have assumed as a command message the representation of reality made by a leader who doesn't adhere to objective reality. (I/4) If in this context any individual one produces one's own subjective representation of reality gifted with more adherence to objective reality, this last cannot obviously coincide to the common subjective truth assumed as 'objective truth' by the system's dominant thinking. The affirmation of one's representation of reality becomes therefore a source of tension, and the individual who expressed it - even if gifted with more adherence to objective reality - is paradoxically judged to be a delirious person.

II/2 On the other hand, every non-psychodependent individual one who feels the need of affirming one's own non-gregariousness, is likely to feel obliged to distinguish oneself anyway from the collective 'truth', thus any dialectical expression of one's own 'different thinking' puts unavoidably that individual into a logical dimension of delirium. In such a social system, made steady and homogeneous by a 'collective truth' - be this last adherent or detached from objective reality - the single individual capable of creative invention is allowed no possibility of expressing one's own representation of reality by using the logical means of current language in which the values of the dominant thought are expressed, not to find oneself having expressed objectively a delirium

II/3 The steadiness of the social system seems therefore to be assured by both the non-autonomy of the gregarious people that forbids them to express themselves in a delirium, and the adherence of the leader to the objective reality, which condition forbids the rising of adaptive tensions up to the charge of the collectivity. The factors of instability that vice versa increase the adaptive tensions of the system are the lack in adherence to objective reality as regards the leader, and the impulses of potential autonomy present in the gregarious people.

II/4 To maintain his role of command upon the consent of the gregarious people, the leader is therefore bound to show a representation of reality that must not originate tensions. This last condition is made possible if the truth shown by the leader is adherent to objective reality, being thereby consistent with the adaptation necessities of the system and with the satisfaction of the ethical requirements of the collectivity. Otherwise the steadiness requirements of the system would require an excessive degree of psychological dependence to the leader from the gregarious people.

III Ethics

III/1 In a social system, the individual having been adjudged 'delirious' because he/she expressed a representation of reality that did not coincide with the so-called 'collective truth', is therefore a non-gregarious one, psychically independent, who expressed his/her own exigency of autonomy in the only possible way. Being no gregarious person, the social role that may be suitable to such an outsider, could be that of a leader. But to be able to achieve this role, this outsider should be able to overcome the competition of the other leaders already existing in the system.


III/2 A leader can be beaten in his social system if only he/she failed the ethical duty of assuring his collectivity a good level of adherence to objective reality (II/4), and led instead his/her followers down to a condition of non-adaptability which they feel as a tension increase. In this case a new piece of information with a 'command' effect becomes necessary, allowing the system's order to be shifted towards positions more adherent to the objective reality, thus bringing the adaptability tensions back to the minimum level of the system. Such a piece of information can be a new representation of reality, invented by an individual capable of creative autonomy, and certainly not by a gregarious one who, just because he is dependent on the leader, cannot give autonomously any logical answer aimed at solving the adaptability tensions of the system. (II/2) To unload its tensions, the collectivity must therefore apply to a new leader, or to some individual aspirant such, in the hypothesis of drawing from the latter a new representation of reality more adequate to the real common exigencies of adaptability.



III/3 In this case, the collectivity would express a demand external to the 'subject' aspirant leader. Hence, it can be conveniently called "Objective Demand".

III/4 To be able to replace the former leader, the aspirant leader must therefore pay a great attention to the adaptive tensions being eventual present in the system, so as to be able to seize the time when these tensions are felt by the gregarious people as an indefinite demand. Only at that time will this individual be able to show his/her subjective representation of reality in purposing and ethically favorable terms up to the collectivity, without being thereby adjudged 'delirious' by the latter. (II/2) If the new subjective 'truth' being shown that way does answer the collectivity's "objective demand" (III/3), the psychically independent individual will get the gregarious people's consent into coinciding with the representation of reality that would have been otherwise adjudged 'delirious thinking', and that is now vice versa assumed as 'common truth' by the collectivity. In this case, every subjective statement which profitably answered the collective demand, would actually assume the characteristic of the system's 'objective truth'.

The creative individual, aware of his/her own potential delirium, would thereby solve his/her own existential problem because, together with the consent of the gregarious people, the objective truth of the system would become consistent with the subjective truth of the creative individual.

III/5 Hence the conscious 'delirious subject' must know how to choose rationally the best time he/she may put the invented representation of reality into action, to be able to express his/her own proposal after an "objective" demand external to the 'subject' of the practice. (III/3) This practice, because it relies on the objective' demand outside the subject, can be called "Objective Practice."

Conclusion

To conclude, the delirious thinking seems to express a logical requirement being essential to the ethics of human evolution. This requirement can be conveniently fulfilled through a dialectical practice that centers on the 'objective' demand, external to the thinking 'subject'. All of this belongs to the Ethics of the system. In an aesthetic dimension, a similar function is performed by the act of artistic creativity taken as the expression of the deepest 'subjective' requirements of autonomy and independence in humans - otherwise inexpressible in a condition of ethical steadiness - that in the last analysis presents as a greater degree of the system's adaptive flexibility.

The immediate usefulness of the ethical expression of adaptive flexibility - up to the same 'delirium' - seems to be ultimately dependent on the degree of freedom, that is of the civilization, owned by the system.

(Antonio Rossin, 1985)