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N1
(Human Cybernetic Typology - Results of a Series of Collective Elaborations)
Comitato Superomeostatico Temperante
Colin James Hamer (British Link-Person) in collaboration with Marco Todeschini
Privately circulated in Italian in 1982
... Please refer when necessary to the overall pattern elsewhere exhibited
N2
“Nature pursues her course by phases, with a tendency to degeneration through inertia. Humanity, left to itself, gains consciousness too slowly, since the natural man avoids educative suffering. Yet from time to time there is a prodigious leap. Suddenly, in an exhausted world, an exceptional being arises, at a time and in a place favourable to his development.”
Ischa Schwaller De Lubicz , in Her-Bak
This work builds on the foundations of Sigmund Freud's and Carl Jung's earlier achievements. Human characters1 are seen to divide naturally into 896 clearly distinct types. Their qualitative differences are presented as keys to an understanding of the rise and fall of all known civilizations, of class differences within society, of religious, sexual, deviant and criminal behaviour, as well as of the more humdrum and commonplace features of our daily lives.2
It was in this setting that in 1982 some comments were made on the then current Polish crisis and that proposals were presented for the improved government of the United Kingdom as well as for a revision of our education system. Although much has happened in the last nineteen years it has, on balance, seemed best to leave all such comments in their original state; they, too, are now part of history.
Whenever a section heading is accompanied by an asterisk*, although much of the material contained in that section has been especially written by Colin James Hamer for this Preliminary Introduction in English to Alpha-A, the major portion of it, although never merely a literal translation from the Italian, is a re-expression in English of something originally written by his distinguished colleague, Signore Marco Todeschini, in the light both of the latter's long and painstaking researches into these matters and of N3 his various discussions of them with a variety of professional associates, including the present writer.3
This book, originally written in 1982, is a revised and augmented edition of the only introduction to Alpha-A currently available in English.4 On 17 January that year, when it was first circulated non-commercially to a small number of persons throughout the English-speaking world, Todeschini's original and considerably shorter Italian text had still not been published; the English order of presentation also differs from that of the Italian manuscript.
Writing from 46a Bellefields Road, Stockwell, London SW9, I openly declared my personal admiration for the person (as distinct from ‘the character’) of H.R.H., Diana, Princess of Wales & Duchess of Cornwall, and expressed to her my gratitude for the interest she had earlier expressed in my proposals for an improved Constitution of the British system of government.5 I also acknowledged my indebtedness to the late Reginald Wrugh6 and to Academician Doctor J. D. Solomon for their encouragement and thoughtful criticism and, in a very special way, to the Argentinian archæologist, Señor Horacio Labat, Director of New Acropolis (U.K.), for his at all times warm interest and support - it was largely thanks to his personal openness and generosity of spirit that, notwithstandings the author's manifold limitations, this Preliminary Introduction to Alpha-A came to fruition.
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1. Several terms are here employed in a quasi-technical, non-ordinary sense. A glossary of special terms has, therefore, been included as Appendix II.
2. A related Letter from the author was published in the Catholic Herald, 10 October 1980.
3. Cf, Todeschini's privately circulated monograph, Tipologia Cibernetica Umana - Risultato di Successive Elaborazioni Collettive.
4. It is, however, worth noting that several implicit references to Todeschini's original research findings occur, albeit without acknowledgment, in Vittorio Hess, Bureaucracy and Well-Being - Towards a non-Western model (Università degli Studi di Camerino - Facoltà di Giurisprudenza: Istituto di Studi Economici e Sociali, 1994). This work will be cited as BAWB followed by the relevant page-number(s).
5. Prior to their incorporation into this study and, in fact, before it was written, these had been submitted to her privately for her personal consideration.
6. Author of The Third Way Out Of The Economic Crisis (London: SPUR 1974) and The Industrial Commonwealth In A New Economic Order (SPUR 1981). Of related interest: Alice Bailey, Money, The Medium of Loving Distribution (a compilation from her writings published by the Lucis Trust).
N4
It is a paradox of etymology that the word suc-cess derives from sub (down) and cadere (to fall). In this way success is simply an alternative form of downfall - which is, surely, the very opposite of ‘success’!
Our astonishment at this marriage of opposites is diminished when we remember that the success of procreation naturally consists in a woman coming down with child. Indeed, this basic fact of human experience highlights the ambiguities that seem the very essence of that mystery we call life. A pregnant woman does not know whether she will give birth to an angel or a monster and, even if her baby is a healthy one, who can say what the future will bring?
And even when that future has become first the present and then the past, many uncertainties remain. In May 1981 Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was displaced by the late François Mitterand as President of France. Did that election result mean success for Mitterand or disaster for France?
To give another example. “Have they won?” was the anxious question printed in bold characters on the cover of the issue of Newsweek magazine for 15 June 1981. Inside was an article about Poland's wave of reforms. The Communist Party was being purged, Lech Walesa's independent labour union, Solidarity, was increasing its strength and influence, and Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski was asking Parliament to strip the socialist straitjacket from Poland's economic and labour laws. The writers of the article commented: “For nearly a year the West has been wondering - ‘How long until the Russians invade?’ It may not be too soon to ask an even more momentous question - ‘What if they don't?’”
1981 closed with the first question unanswered and the second more gruesomely immediate. In mid-December, after seventeen months of labour unrest, General Jaruzelski had declared a national state of emergency, and he had replaced the rule of Party and Parliament by that of a Military Council of National Salvation.
N5 In the opinion of Zdislaw Rurarz, the Polish ambassador to Japan, who shortly afterwards defected to the West, Jaruzelski “played the most dirty game in our history. The nation will never, I repeat never, forgive him for the blood of Polish coal-miners and of others shed these dark days. The Polish nation has already passed the verdict on its traitors.” But may it not be truer to say that the smart General is a national hero and the saviour of his people?
From the point of view of his character (as distinct from his personality) type, Jaruzelski is identical with Archbishop (now Cardinal) Joseph Glemp, the current leader of the Polish Roman Catholic Church. Like Sigmund Freud in his very different circumstances, these two men are basically and energetically committed to the service of the human good, and both hold fast to some sort of mystical ideal of how the human condition could be improved. In addition to this, each of them shows technical polish and patiently meticulous attention to detail in grappling with the practical problems they confront.
Sigmund Freud has taught us how to appreciate our inner conflicts in terms of the struggle between eros and thanatos, the life force and the death wish, and he has helped us to understand the Oedipus myth as a parable of the basic dynamics of all human motivation.1
Archbishop Glemp, as a staunch believer in the Christian ideal, invites the Catholics of Poland to avoid all forms of violence and, if so called upon, to suffer wrongs patiently and even joyfully for the love of the Saviour.
And as Freud illustrated and exemplified his theories in his psychoanalytic practice and in long and very detailed case histories, so the Archbishop's Christian ideal of selfless sacrifice has been inculcated daily throughout the length and breadth of Poland in the prayers, rituals and exhortations of the Roman Catholic Church and her ministers.
General Jaruzelski's rituals were those of military discipline; his exhortations were sometimes emphasised by the rumblings of N6 tanks and the thrusts of rifle-butts - but his sincere prayers rose to heaven on behalf of his beloved Poland, as he campaigned against liberalism, which he saw as the enemy of the historic values of national unity.
Freud has been criticised personally, because contemporary psychoanalysts are beginning to realise the extent to which his achievements had masked his failure, and not only his failure but actually his conscious and deliberate refusal to tackle the real sources in his individual childhood experience of his own hostility towards his father. Such criticisms are foolish. This aspect of Freud's character was as essential to his genius as is the grain of sand to the development of the pearl in an oyster.2
Some will wish to find fault with Archbishop Glemp because he failed to issue a pastoral letter clearly stating that religion ought never to have been and must never be allowed to remain a palliative against protest, a sedation of sedition, an opium of the people, and that superstitious belief, whether in Marxist dogma or in any form of Christianity that remains abstracted from the concrete realities of the social life of men and women, is not only a reprehensible disregard of basic human rights but a sinful abuse of the divine gift of human freedom.
Christians, critics of this sort sometimes claim, are entitled to believe that G-d permitted Jesus to suffer for the sake of suffering humanity, but they may not pretend it was right of Pontius Pilate to authorise his crucifixion, nor for Herod to arrange the murder of the innocent babes of Bethlehem. Why, then, did Archbishop Glemp never publicly denounce General Jaruzelski's at least toleration of and connivance in the torturings and the killings that took place in his regime?
It is a silly question.
I am not a Machiavelli putting forward the view that private morality has nothing to do with the conduct of public affairs by persons of state. Neither am I an advocate of the dice-roller's non-moral vision of life in terms of some ultimately meaningless interplay of blind forces. To arrive at a correct moral or, to be more precise, æsthetic N7 evaluation of any individual person's behaviour, whether public or private, is frequently a difficult enterprise, but it can nevertheless be a legitimate one, and the fourth Chapter of Voice I+N The Darkness3 may still suffice to illustrate my own concern with questions of morality. It remains true, however, that moral codes are not sufficient guides to public conduct.4
Lech Walesa has also been a key-figure in Poland's more recent turmoils. As a character, the former Solidarity leader, like President Roosevelt, has all Freud's, Glemp's and Jaruzelski's patient dedication, but none of their mysticism; his religion is in the soil more than in the soul. Though a natural leader of others, he needs guidance himself, but has insight enough to realise that adequate guidance in critical situations is rarely if ever provided by a summary review of the consensus of public opinion. Only too predictably, many of his fellow trade-unionists have, like so many reporters and commentators in the U.K., failed to recognise this important and fundamental truth.
This book will, I trust, contribute towards putting them right on certain points where hitherto even the best amongst them seem to have gone wrong.
At the time when President Reagan was imposing sanctions on Poland, many criticised the conduct of the Polish Pope John-Paul II (Karol Wojtyla). His fervent pleading for the recognition of the human rights of all was, they suggested, not enough; they claimed that it was also necessary to recognise human evil, to denounce it, and to fight against it with all the vigour at our command.
As it happens, John-Paul II is, like the psychologist Carl Jung, a born warrior and, whatever darkness there may be in his own perception of the contours of the heavenly Jerusalem, he has the experienced campaigner's accurate measure of what is practically required in the contemporary crusade for humankind's spiritual survival.
N8 Those are mistaken who feel this Pope is allowing his own Polishness to blunt the thrust of his onslaught on the enemies of Jesus Christ, whether Marxist or capitalist. John-Paul II has never been a man to be straitjacketed by the conventions of his office. Neither have his words ever been unduly restrained by fears of the retribution an offended government might exact from his fellow believers in his home country. It is simply that he is a genius who happens to be well aware of the difference that exists between moralising, political discussions, and the effective conduct of diplomacy.
Genius does exist, and it is of different types. This fact has many and far reaching implications, with some of which the rest of this work is principally concerned.
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1. Cf. R. D'Albiez, La Méthode Psychanalytique et la Doctrine Freudienne (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer 1936); “Saint or sinner? Sigmund Freud” in The Sunday Telegraph Magazine (5 May 1996, p.43).
2. Cf. A. Ehrensweig, The Hidden Order of Art (London: Paladin 1970).
3. First published by United Writers (Zennor) in 1978; also on-line electronically as a companion volume in this Neith Network Library series.
4. The question “Should I?” only arises if the answer to the prior question “Can I?” is affirmative, and any affirmative answer to the question “Should I?” remains hypothetical pending an affirmative answer to the question “May I?”
N9
Stimulated by the challenge of crises both at home and abroad, women and men committed to the quest for a better future may well welcome some creative alternative to both capitalism and totalitarian nationalisation. Politics must stop hampering industry, and industry must leave politicians free to give adequate attention to the higher social and cultural values which it is their proper function to promote. Only in this way can there be a lasting improvement in the general quality of life. Those, moreover, who produce the nation's wealth must be liberated from the iniquitous control of politicians and financiers. At the same time, the whole nation must be purged of another malignant and cancerous growth, the multitude of parasites in the state's bureaucratic apparatus. How is all this to be achieved?
Fundamentally, by the enactment, promulgation and implementation of a revised Constitution for the United Kingdom whereby, in the first place, it shall become the main function of the House of Ladies & Lords to be the whole nation's mouthpiece on all matters of supreme human values, moral satisfaction, scientific discovery and æsthetic creation. In other words, the House of Ladies & Lords will become the major National Forum for cultural discussion and debate. Its membership shall comprise Cardinals, Archbishops, Chief Rabbis, Imans, Chairpersons of Atheist Associations, etc., in proportions corresponding to the relative sizes of their declared followings in the community, together with Nobel prize-winners, leading academics, outstanding sporting personalities, leaders in the arts and such others as its members may, in their collective wisdom, co-opt.
The House of Commons, elected by universal suffrage and on the basis of proportional representation, will have as its mandate the preparation and enactment of viable legislation, and the full and free debate of alternative solutions to the problems of our living together in society - both as individuals and in our various smaller than national groupings, in so far as these issues be matters of national import. It shall, however, not be open to the Commons to N10 fritter away the time of the House (knowing this to be the case) on matters of less than national importance, or on proposals out of tune with the nation's culture as reflected in the House of Ladies & Lords or, finally, on such schemes as the House of Economics has not already declared to be practically viable in the concretely prevailing circumstances of the nation's life.
The House of Economics shall comprise experienced and expert members of all the crafts, trades and professions possessed of national importance, together with a sufficiency of computer experts, statisticians, academics and research workers. Its function shall be the objective, dispassionate and detailed discernment of the various alternative concretely possible scenarios for the national economy - the choice between these (and only these) alternatives lying, as already stated, with the House of Commons. When economic debate is warranted, not because those involved in the discussion are (as currently all too often happens both in the Lords and in the Commons) ignorant of the issues, but because the principles at stake are unclear, the House of Economics is the proper place for their eventual clarification.
Parallel to these three national Chambers there shall be provision for three regional Assemblies, cultural, political and economic, in each of the several major areas of the Realm. Having due regard to differences of scale and scope, their composition, authority and function shall be similar in all essential respects to those of the national Chambers. In this way the relationships between Chambers and Assemblies shall exemplify three organic principles: the integrity of the National Unity, the operative reality of Devolution to the Regions, and what may be described as a happy Confederalism.
Likewise, there shall be constituted three Councils, cultural, political and economic, to deal with local interests in each city, town or other functionally viable local unit within the nation, since it is wrong to withdraw from the individual or smaller group and to commit to the larger group or to the whole community what private enterprise and local endeavour can accomplish.
Once we acknowledge in practice that it is unjust and a gravely harmful disturbance of right order to turn over to a greater society of higher rank functions and services which can be performed by N11 lesser bodies on a lower plane, we shall so organise our nation that all the social undertakings within its bounds by their very nature promote the well-being and true freedom of the various members of the body social, but never either destroy or absorb the legitimate freedoms whether of individuals or of smaller groups within the life of the nation.
It is immediately obvious that the foregoing arrangements give central government far fewer problems to deal with, and much more hope of dealing with them satisfactorily. They also place all citizens in effective control of the regions in which they reside. Likewise, it is the craftspersons, tradespeople and professionals who exercise functional control over their own work. Surely, this is only as it should be. Obviously, however, the implementation, with Her Majesty the Queen's gracious assent, of such a revised Constitution for the United Kingdom will not solve all problems at a stroke.
Existing banking houses, other than the Bank of England, shall be dissolved, and each major craft, trade or profession shall establish its own bank, operating strictly on a brokerage commission basis. During the transitional period, existing banks may continue, if they are willing, to operate as clearing-houses, but only on a brokerage commission basis, usury being once more recognised as a terrible social evil, and wage-slavery (in which people sell services in order to buy money!) being outlawed once and for all.
The greater part of the civil service shall be phased out, useful portions of it being gradually assimilated into the new social organs above referred to.
Every major craft, trade or profession will also create for itself a Training College for its future apprentices, working in concert with duly reinvigorated schools, technical colleges and universities, with all young persons normally spending an educational year in some branch of industry or commerce and a further year in horticulture, agriculture or arboriculture before making their choice of a definite career for which to train, so that these two years come after school and before the period of specific industrial training, which may last some years.
N12 Besides this, cultural and political requirements call for improved provision of adult education for creative leisure, and the need for this will undoubtedly grow as the present cybernetic revolution proceeds.
In due course parallel international institutions would, almost necessarily, need to be established and developed, both inside the British Commonwealth of Nations and beyond its boundaries.
Such, then, is the vision of peace I here and now proffer for your consideration, not, of course, imagining that I have provided any sort of blue-print or detailed recipe, but trusting that in and through these words you may hear some sort of parable and invitation to a greatly improved quality of life…1
I have mentioned education, by which I mean initiation into human community; its purpose should be the advance of the human good. The educational process is the strategy from rudimentary apprehension and modes of choice towards apprehension and commitment at the level of our present age in this contemporary context. Essentially the educational programme is: be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, develop and, if necessary, change.
The organization of education should not depend on a traditional authority maintaining the historical procedures of existing institutions, nor on the stereotyped manintenance of the familiar machinery, nor on the spontaneous intuitions of gifted personalities, nor even less on the blind following of the developing interaction patterns of evolving, intra-group, relational networks. Instead, it ought to be consciously organic, a living system continually adapting itself in its complex and changing circumstances, knowing what it is about, capable of rapid adjustments and adaptation, displaying expert initiative in the correction of its goals, able to preserve its living unity despite experienced threats to its own non-survival.
N13 Because we all share one world, questions about the organization of education can never be utterly divorced from the individual problems of the persons who serve that organization or whom it exists to serve. Neither can they be divorced from the many other present problems of the United Kingdom as a whole, of our entire planet Earth, or of the wider Cosmic Community. A question in the relevant sense exists whenever there are compelling reasons for both affirming and denying one and the same proposition, and the term “problem” has been used to indicate that the questions confronting us are neither insoluble mysteries nor mere puzzles.
In 1974 about 3,300 international agencies and associations were working on some of the 7,444 world problems that had already been identified as such. Thinkers and researchers were studying 1,845 different subjects in an effort to solve some of these. 931 multilateral treaties and agreements had been made to overcome some of the difficulties these problems had created. 704 different human values were believed to be involved in any worthwhile attempt to reach a thorough agreement about appropriate methods of solving them, and about those values themselves there was also a very great deal of disagreement. 1,197 international periodicals were being published to try and iron out some of the difficulties. 228 human development concepts had been worked out and put forward as a contribution to some sort of progress. Another 421 inter-disciplinary concepts had been invented to connect together the ideas and ways of thinking of specialists in different fields. The problems that at that time needed to be tackled already included 775 human diseases. 606 multi-national corporations with lots of problems of their own also existed and were creating additional problems for the rest of the world - the annual turnover of General Motors was greater than the Gross National Product of Belgium; Standard Oil's GNP was greater than Denmark's; Ford's was greater than that of Norway and New Zealand put together; Chrysler's was the same as that of Greece; and eight British companies accounted for more than a quarter of the British GNP. To talk in 1974 about the problems of the world economy was to talk about 132 industrial sectors, 241 traded commodities and 739 different sorts of jobs. This year's corresponding figures are, of course, notably different in almost all respects from those given above, but both actual changes and emerging trends indicate that the overall picture is one that is increasingly rather than less problematic. Such, then, is the real context in which our questions N14 about education and the organization of education have arisen and continue to arise, and it is in that context alone that the problems of individual and community education can properly and effectively nowadays be faced.2
Now, when from any chosen point of view we compare two events, two things, two persons or two points of view, our brain, at its best, can only comfortably decide that the two are not significantly different, or else that one is slightly, considerably, very much or extremely different in some way from the other. The brain, as a glucose-powered, 15-watt computer with 10,000,000,000 logical elements and an output of 3.2 bits, is just not good enough to cope by itself with the problems of complexity that arise throughout the contemporary world situation. We need, therefore, the help of a better ‘computer’.3
Meanwhile, in each sector and at every level of that production process we call education, actual performance tends to fall below productive capability, and even when it does not, learning or teaching capability usually lies well below optimum educational potential - in output, in avoidance of waste, in the wise use of human resources. Naturally, the actual picture changes from day to day, but we cannot, by ourselves, immediately discern whether the changes that occur are (a) random variations, (b) explicable but passing phases, (c) expressions of a steady upward growth or downward decline, or (d) sudden yet permanently significant leaps forward or unfortunate downfalls.
According to Sir Stafford Beer and in the light of his concrete experience as a working cybernetician, help can be provided by a real-time control-system founded on: a cybernetic model of any viable system; a cybernetic analysis of the real-life systems appropriate to each level of recursion, and their iconic representation; the design of a large number of interlocking N15 homoeostats; the provision of a communications network capable of operating on the basis of continuous input; variety engineering throughout the system to incorporate filtration on the human brain's scale and to safeguard security; and the Cyberstride or some other more effective computer program suite capable of monitoring inputs, indexical calculations, taxonomic regulation, short-term forecasting by Bayesian probability theory, autonomic exception reporting, and algedonic feedback - with this whole NOW system appropriately linked up with a compatible FUTURES system.
He offers a strong argument for concluding that such a system would enable us effectively to resolve the outstanding problems not of education only but, provided good-will is present, all our other problems as well. He denies that only the United States of North America have the money and knowledge needed. He denies that the introduction of such a system would erode freedom. He denies that it would take too long to be feasible. He denies it is science-fiction. He denies it would open the door to corruption on an even larger scale than that which prevails under the present ‘system’. He denies that it would cause management to over-react to change even more than it is already wont to do. He denies that it would result in our having too much data to handle…
Without being a cybernetician, I found his arguments sufficiently convincing to feel it worthwhile referring to his position, and also to his ideal of a total education system to be promulgated independently of all surrogate systems of education - a system coming in two parts, each with five units.
Part the First contains a basic knowledge of the systemic universe. Its first unit deals with the concept of system. The next three units expound respectively a contemporary understanding of the physical, biological and social aspects of the world. These divisions make necessary the fifth unit, which integrates the first four.
Part the Second would begin with a restatement ab ovo of mathematics adequate to deal with these concepts. It would be close to Spencer Brown's Laws of Form. The second unit would encompass the systems approach to management at every level (by a logical recursion) from the local community to the world entire. Thirdly, one would tackle æsthetics, design and the quality N16 of life; this unit would invent new systems for living - including a new kind of house, and a new kind of city. The fourth unit would consider the human heritage, history and the classics, not with a nostalgic scholarship that clearly has a surrogate existence within the ages under discussion, but with a forward orientation that projects us onward. The fifth and final unit would put together a new philosophy, comprehensible only to students of this total work.
If senior management within the spheres of culture, politics and economics choose to devote their energies to preparing the ground for a revolutionary but peaceful innovation of the sort here envisaged, they will find it necessary to devolve totally to selected subordinates the necessary task of meanwhile maintaining the present structures in operation. Both the innovating senior management and the subordinate maintaining-the-fort-in-the-interim management may be helped by the contributions of thinkers and researchers in general - and, I believe, especially by work of the sort exemplified in this Neith Network Library series of books and papers on-line…
Economic freedom is controlling your own craft. Political freedom is caring for your own region. Cultural freedom is the state of mind to do these wisely. Economics should be subordinated to politics, and politics to culture - not vice versa; to be is more important than to have or to do.
Teaching should be on a professional and not an amateur basis.4 Remedial education should be defined as comprising an adequate grasp of English and of basic mathematics together with a sufficient range of essential social skills and, as so defined, it should be given priority throughout the educational world. Vocational training should be given substantial priority in the allocation of resources beyond the remedial stage, and recreational education should be related to an informed5 costs-N17benefits analysis. All students in full-time education should at least three times a year assemble together for a joint discussion with teaching-staff of their needs and aspirations. Inter-departmental discussions and teach-ins should be as broadly based as possible in the interests of increased mutual understanding and support. In each educational establishment a detailed prospectus should be available for reference and consultation by educational staff and other persons legitimately requesting access to it.6
Any real adult understanding of the scope and potential of the philosophy I advocate calls for a sufficiency of individually accumulated and patiently matured experience; it cannot be generated overnight. So the first rule is: parables are not blue-prints!
Read as a blue-print for action, all the foregoing remarks may seem naïvely impractical, but read as verbal expressions of an idle dream or as typical samples of abstract academic theorising they are grossly undervalued. What I have issued is a genuine invitation to concrete and urgent action on your part, even though I have deliberately chosen to express that invitation as an allegory and a parable.
It only remains for each person of genius individually to work out the practical, incessantly changing, here-and-now concrete implications of this parable.7 The succeeding rules are also offered as pointers in the right direction.
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1. Cf. R. WRUGH [aka BASIL WARAKER], The Third Way Out Of The Economic Crisis and The Industrial Commonwealth In A New Economic Order (London: SPUR 1974; 1981).
2. For some more recent figures (e.g., now 12000 world problems) cf. Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, 4th edition, 2 volumes or CD-Rom (UIA, Rue Washington 40, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium; tel:+32-2640-1808, e-mail: UIA@UIA,be - 1996. US$350).
3. Cf. Alan Mayne, Resources for the Future - An International Annotated Bibliography for the 21st Century (Adamantine Press 1993; ISBN 0-7499-0077-8); David Bohm, Thought as a System (Routledge 1994); John Hitchcock, The Web of the Universe - Jung, the ‘New Physics’ and Human Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press 1995); J. D. Solomon, The Mind's Ear (Hounslow: Bibliagora1979).
4. I.e., an analysis resulting from research based on a methodology congruent with the various principles here advocated and described.
5. A good class-room teacher typically manifests, in order of practical importance:
6. Much of the material in the preceding section originally formed part of a report I made to the Home Office Prison Department's Senior Education Officer at the request of the Education Officer in H.M.P. Brixton, while serving as a part-time teacher in that establishment and immediately prior to my undertaking effectively full-time educational duties at H.M.P. Wormwood Scrubs in 1976. While writing it I was principally inspired by the educational wisdom of Saint John Bosco (1815-88) and guided by the methodology of Father Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1904-84). I am also particularly indebted to Professor John Wren-Lewis, who first introduced me to cybernetics and to the work of Stafford-Beer. Nothing that I have written above is meant to detract from the importance of special methodologies in the education of young people; I have dealt with some specific issues in my earlier, and now electronically published catechetical monograph, Christian Education in Schools, and there is no shortage of available relevant literature.
7. Other works I have found especially helpful are: Meditations on the Tarot - A Journey into Christian Hermeticism (Element Classic Editions); Joan D'Arcy Cooper, The Ancient Teaching of Yoga and the Spiritual Evolution of Man (London: Research Publishing Co., 1979); Sallie Nichols, Jung and Tarot - An Archetypal Journey (New York: Samuel Weiser 1980).
N18
Not only astrologers but, in their different way, students of human biorhythms draw attention to the existence of periodic fluctuations in the likely patterns of the responses of each of us to particular situations. Our physical, emotional and intellectual energies are said to rise and fall in regular 23-day, 28-day and 33-day cycles, and it is claimed that we are each of us less stable and more vulnerable to troubles on ‘critical days’ when one or other of our cycles is passing from an upward to a downward trend or vice versa - which happens on about 20% of the days in our lives.
If such claims are true, and a typical study showed 60% of accidents occurring on critical days, then the timing of, for instance, a private discussion between Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger and President Jacques Chirac of France might be regarded as an affair of some considerable importance; its degree of significance might be thought to depend on the overall biorhythmic compatibility or otherwise of the two men.
The former British Prime Minister, Lady Margaret Thatcher was born on 13 October 1925. Hence, since I was born on 18 April 1934, she and I would appear to be 65% physically compatible, 93% emotionally compatible, and 58% intellectually compatible, with an overall mutual compatibility of 72%, the emotional component being the dominant component in any relationship we might happen to develop between us.
However, it hardly needs genius to identify the weakness underlying this theory of biorhythmic compatibility. No doubt we each of us do have our ups and downs, and it may even be true that these are, at least to some extent, predictable, but it may, nevertheless, also prove to be the case that my ups are lower than your downs, or that my physical ups are lower than your physical downs, while my emotional downs may be higher than your emotional ups, or vice versa. In other words, our average energy levels also vary considerably, and such differences may be of N19 much more importance than the differences due to cyclical fluctuations of one sort or another.
Because my own approach is structural and global, rather than being narrowly either economic or political or cultural, I ask to be exonerated from any charges of élitist snobbery, and I invite you to consider, at least as a preliminary working hypothesis, that here and now (in 1982) I am quite simply enunciating a sober truth when I state that ‘the many’ (by which I mean about 99.99% of the present population) live at a much lower average energy level than ‘the few’ (by which I mean the remaining 0.01%) among whose ranks I number myself, and in whose ranks ‘genius’ is to be discerned.1
In ancient times Galen distinguished between phlegmatic, choleric, melancholic and sanguine ‘personalities’. More recently Sheldon differentiated endomorphs, mesomorphs and ectomorphs as basic ‘body-types’, associating certain temperamental qualities with each. Jung, in addition to his well known distinction between introverts and extroverts, contrasted ‘sensation’-oriented, ‘instinct’-oriented, ‘thought’-oriented and ‘feeling’-oriented types of individuals.2 Helen Palmer has popularised a Gurdjieff-inspired distribution of the human population into nine functional categories: perfectionists, givers, performers, tragic romantics, observers, devil's advocates, epicures, bosses and mediators.3
I shall endeavour to show that the Alpha-A classification of human beings into 896 functionally (or dysfunctionally) different ‘character-types’ is both more useful and more in keeping with your own real experience of life, and that Alpha-A's explanation of the dynamics of social change and of the historical process of human affairs is N20 far more satisfactory than classical Marxist or any other rival theory so far brought forward.
Two hypotheses are central to Alpha-A. First of all, there is a classification of human types on the basis of their qualitative differences. Secondly, there is an attempt to draw up a programme of action based on these differences for the guidance of the better types of persons in a society currently dominated by the worst. My terminology will unavoidably present some initial difficulties, since notions derived from everyday usage are here being transferred to a context that is both novel and less immediately empirical.
Why, for example, have I selected Alpha-A as the name for this new technical system to enable us to generate new insights into the many urgent and important personal and social questions now confronting us? One justification is that the distinction between ‘Astrologers’ (a term derived from a Greek word beginning with the letter Alpha) and ‘Alchemists’ (a term derived from Ancient Egyptian via Arabic that begins with the letter A) is a central feature in this system - provided only you realise that in the present context the term “Astrologer” functions in almost the same special quasi-technical sense as do the alternative expressions “Artist” and “Extrovert”, while “Alchemist” similarly fulfills much the same rôle as the words “Scientist” and “Introvert”.4
Individuals Carl Jung would usually quite properly have classified as ‘Introverts’ are, for reasons to be explained later, here quite naturally acknowledged to be ‘Extroverts’ in the Alpha-A meaning of “Extrovert”, and those Jung would have considered to be ‘Extroverts’ are here with at least equal correctness identified as being ‘Introverts’. Care is needed, therefore, if unnecessary and unhelpful forms of confusion are to be avoided.
However, the language here employed need occasion no difficulty, provided the reader remembers that ‘Artists’ and ‘Scientists’ in the context of Alpha-A are not necessarily persons to whom philosophers, artists, scientists and others would normally apply the labels “artist” or “scientist”. In other words, like “Astrologer” and N21 “Alchemist”, the quasi-technical terms “Artist” and “Scientist”, as here used, have at best no more than a provisional and somewhat tenuous connection with the more customary uses, both past and present, of the only apparently identical, familiar, ordinary expressions: “astrologer”, “alchemist”, “artist” and “scientist”.
There undoubtedly are, of course, associations, links and family resemblances connecting Alpha-A's use of language with other usages both technical and straightforward of what unavoidably seems to be the same language, although it is not. The reader is requested not to rely too much on these connections when attempting to understand and interpret this preliminary introduction to the system.
Whenever, to take another instance, I use the expression “adaptation” in connection with certain human types achieving an optimum state, my frame of reference is not simply that of biological evolution in the customary sense. Whether a certain person is or is not ‘well adapted’ as a type is, within the Alpha-A context, primarily a metaphysical question, even though it undoubtedly remains convenient to refer to certain empirical criteria when making a tentative assessment of a given individual's ‘character-type’. In other words, each species has its own proper sort of adaptation, which depends on its environment to a certain extent but, no less importantly, also reflects the nature of that species, its metaphysical quality. Hence, the adaptation or otherwise of human types does not occur purely on the physical plane but also at a psychic level, and successful adaptation depends even more on the nature of the complex interrelationship between these two levels.
It is not the unconscious in itself that is important, but its dialectical relationship with consciousness. This provides the key to understanding the movement of our thoughts and for arriving at a satisfactory level of adaptation so that, instead of being conditioned almost mechanically by physical forces, our conscious processes achieve effective autonomy. Although many persons are puzzled and even disturbed by the nature of the mechanisms involved in the untrammeled operations of our higher consciousness, empirical psychologists such as Luria and Piaget have already suggested some sort of explanation. Complete adaptation and full consciousness are said to result from the N22 homoeostasis of the nervous system, in other words, from the full and stable equilibrium in the cybernetic sense of all its constituent elements.
A certain level of homoeostasis which is shared by all animals as well as by men and women generally is physical, and this has been studied by Ross Ashby, but my more immediate concern here is with a higher-level and qualitatively new form of homoeostasis, a superhomoeostasis that most human beings do not attain and which, unlike the general homoeostasis operating on the physical plane, is not rooted in each individual's instinct for survival. Human beings of all types, including the many who lack any sort of superhomoeostasis, possess physical homoeostasis as ordinarily understood. However, because full adaptation requires what is here called superhomoeostasis, most persons, since their psychic functioning remains somewhat conditioned by the limitations of their physical constitution, fail to achieve superhomoeostasis, and hence they never attain either to complete equilibrium or to full autonomy. Indeed, unless certain genetic requirements have been satisfied, any complete equilibrium of this sort is naturally unobtainable.
Consequently, when studying the variety of human types, it is of fundamental importance that we learn to acknowledge the distinction between what can be transformed by training and education, and what cannot - because it is naturally fixed once and for all by the circumstances of a person's birth.
For this reason, the present classification of human types differs very considerably from those utilised by several currently popular systems of characterology. While exhibiting notable differences in method, one feature such systems have in common is that they never focus on the idea that consciousness exists on different levels which are qualitatively distinct. The Alpha-A classification of human ‘characters’ into 896 types is, by contrast, based on a consideration of metaphysical values, these being regarded not as quasi-Platonic transcendentals but rather, as with Ruyer, as elements within an axiology that is realised in the empirical data as such.
These values and their associated qualitative elements lie at the root of the differences in levels of consciousness just mentioned. N23 They, therefore, explain the stable nature of the distinctions that are found to exist between different human character-types. Since cybernetics studies the interrelations of distinct stable qualitative forms, it thus becomes possible to combine a metaphysical approach with an approach from the standpoint of cybernetics.
Even the qualitative meaning of any human character-type cannot properly be appreciated without reference to its metaphysical significance, but qualitative differences can, nevertheless, be studied empirically as cybernetic mechanisms, just as one can measure empirical variations in the intensity of an electric current without entering at the same time into a profound study of the nature of ‘electricity’.
Indeed, it has also already proved possible to correlate behavioural variations predicted on the basis of the Alpha-A classification with actual differences in everyday behaviour exhibited by various persons well known either to Marco Todeschini, to the present writer, or to one or other of those among our professional colleagues who had also been invited to share in this work of research during its preliminary phase. It was, in fact, those earlier observations of such differences that orginally motivated the researchers to engage in those subsequent labours from which this present study has now emerged.
Undoubtedly there is ample scope for much more and for much more detailed research. Nevertheless, even in its present form, Alpha-A, although no more than a preliminary achievement, is already the fruit of more than twenty years of patient and sometimes painful experience, research and meditation. At this stage in the theory's development, its fundamental and central feature is the working hypothesis that every human being is from birth until death either primarily an Astrologer and only secondarily an Alchemist, or primarily an Alchemist and only secondarily an Astrologer.
The better to appreciate the intended meaning of this unashamedly strange assertion, consider the series tabulated immediately below. From an Astrologer's point of view, as the word “Astrologer” is here used, the earlier items in the series are less important than the later ones; for the Alchemist, however, as here N24 defined, the earlier an item in the series, the greater the attention it merits:
Vegetation and Plant life
Animals and their Instincts
Psychic phenomena and experiences
Ideas and Theories
Doctrines and Beliefs
Freedom and Will
Cosmic attunement and The Mystical
Those who accept Alpha-A do not deny that there are moments for all of us when mysticism may predominate and moments when the claims of matter are obviously sovereign, but they do acknowledge that from birth onwards some individuals are mainly Astrologers (ALPHA-a types), while others are primarily Alchemists (alpha-A types). Thus, the first important distinction within this system of classification is that between ‘extroversion’ and ‘introversion’, representing a sort of horizontal dialectic, since these two forms of self-expression, although mutually opposed, have a value that is substantially identical.
This is because in Alpha-A we do not define extroversion and introversion as psychologists ordinarily do, when they allow for quantitative differences, with different individuals being reckoned to be more or less extrovert, and more or less introvert. Within the context of Alpha-A ‘extroversion’ and ‘introversion’ are qualities; about 50% of existing persons are extroverts, and the other 50% or so are introverts.
This distinction, if considered from the point of view of the empirical mechanisms involved, corresponds quite simply to the mode of operation of the dialectical interrelation between the two levels of the human nervous system. On the one hand, there is the higher level, the subject (“S”), which is the software, the level of the creative and symbolic activity characteristic of human beings with their capacity for abstract thought; on the other hand, we find the lower level, the hardware, the object (“O”), in other words, the physical basis of our perceptions to which each subject must N25 constantly refer in order to develop his or her activities dialectically.5
The identification of a higher level in the activities of the human nervous system has been one result of recent neuro-physiological studies, such as those of Benedetti, which acknowledge the existence of a higher-than-animal level of functioning (in the sense of a complete creative and symbolising capacity), even though this is usually regarded as the result of a gradual evolution out of the animal level of operation. In fact, it is only in human beings that these two levels, which are here referred to as the ‘subject’ and the ‘object’, are capable of functioning cybernetically as complete and autonomous entities. The dialectic between them is such, however, that the subject cannot impart information to the object without the object almost at the same time feeding back information to the subject, and vice versa:
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(a) |
S |
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O |
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O |
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(b) |
S |
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O |
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S |
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O |
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What is here called introversion and extroversion is simply the horizontal component in a dialectical relationship between two levels. No attempt is being made at this stage to decide whether or not the higher level has achieved cybernetic autonomy with respect to the lower level, so that it is able to control the latter to a greater extent than it is conditioned by it, this being characteristic of the superior type of consciousness, or whether the reverse is, in fact, the case; that is something it will become necessary to consider later, when discussing the problem of qualtitative levels within consciousness. From the point of view of extroversion and N26 introversion, the process of interaction between the two levels clearly yields values that may be regarded as substantially identical. In other words, S = O.
However, in order to classify the different psychological character-types it is necessary to consider not only the horizontal relationship or exchange between these two levels, but also their vertical relationship or the hierarchical order present in their mutual interaction. Figure 1 exhibits contrasting psychological types using the horizontal relationship as a criterion; in figure 3 are show the differences between types of consciousness Alpha-A classifies as superior or inferior from a qualitative viewpoint.
As can be seen from figures 1 and 2, where character-type (a) is the extrovert-Astrologer-Artist and character-type (b) is the introvert-Alchemist-Scientist, since all human thought processes are the result of the two factors here referred to as Subject and Object, each individual person will, depending on his or her type, either attach more weight to the interplay consisting in the flow of information from Object to Subject and less weight to that flowing in the opposite direction, this being regarded as if it were a mere by-product of the primary flow or, alternatively, a person will give greater importance to the flow of information from Subject to Object and less to the secondary flow in the opposite direction. In the first instance, the person is classified in Alpha-A terms as being of an extrovert character-type but, in the second case, he or she is said to be of an introvert character-type.
The terminology here adopted may seem paradoxical, Jung, as has been mentioned, having chosen the opposite usage, which is, indeed, a more faithful description of the empirical mechanisms involved, so that he named introvert the type with a preference for information flowing from Object to Subject (interiorisation), and extrovert the type preferring information flowing from Subject to Object (exteriorisation). Our present purpose is, however, quite different from Jung's. We are not attempting to describe a psychological mechanism merely in empirical terms, but to understand its significance in terms of the life of each conscious subject and of his or her related capacity for communication with other individuals he or she experiences as distinct and autonomous centres of consciousness. Since, therefore, our main point of reference is a very different one, viz., the conscious N27 subject rather than the object, it seems both natural and appropriate to invert the terminology.
Besides, it is also a fact of ordinary daily experience that the character-type identified as being in Alpha-A terms an ‘extrovert’ is usually found to be open and communicative, in other words, to be what everybody else (with the exception of those who happen to have made a special study of Jung's preferred terminology) takes to be an extrovert, while, on the other hand, the Alpha-A ‘introvert’ character-type, who is felt to be more self-contained, corresponds in common experience not to the type of person Jung called introvert, but precisely to the one he identified as extrovert! Hence, once it has been sufficiently explained, Alpha-A usage ought not to occasion any special difficulties, and it seems perfectly reasonable to adopt a usage opposite to Carl Jung's.
(a) ALPHA-a (b) alpha-A
Figure 2
In figure 2 Alpha-A's two basic character-types, the Astrologer-extrovert and the Alchemist-introvert, have been represented by ovals in which one segment is dominant (the extrovert process in the Astrologer, and the introvert process in the Alchemist), and the other recessive (the introvert process in the Astrologer, and the extrovert process in the Alchemist), the recessive process being present merely as a secondary or indirect by-product of the dominant one.
The Astrologer type may also be described as an Artist because of his or her gifts of intelligence and intuition, while the Alchemist may be appropriately described as a Scientist because of his or her attention to concrete detail and to patient, step-by-step logic. Alpha-A's first claim, then, is that from birth till death every human being is either an Astrologer or an Alchemist, even though there is a bit of the Alchemist in every Astrologer and a bit of the Astrologer in every Alchemist. However, the terms “Artist” and “Scientist” can, whenever we prefer them, be substituted for the quasi-synonymous expressions “Astrologer” or “extrovert” on the one hand and “Alchemist” or “introvert” on the other, provided we never lose sight N28 of the special meanings which are being assigned to these various terms in their present context.
Before proceeding further, it may be as well to emphasise another point that has already been mentioned; I mean the paradoxical fact that the extrovert mechanism is the flow of information from Object to Subject, while the introvert mechanism is the flow from Subject to Object. Unless this point is firmly grasped and properly appreciated, confusion can easily result. From a practical point of view the difficulty is that of distinguishing within a single individual the operation of these two quite distinct processes, which are rather like two hands available to one single nervous system. Indeed, all one ever actually witnesses is the combined result of the contributions made by each of these two hands when, as is always the case, they are working together.
Nevertheless, a cybernetic analysis of such phenomena, which alone can shed light on qualitative differences between persons in a way that enables us appropriately to classify them according to character-types, depends for its success on our ability to discriminate within the same mental transaction between the elements determined by one process and those resulting from the other. Although considerable practice in the application of Alpha-A methods is needed for adequate expertise to be developed, I remain convinced that without such skill in distinguishing these two processes there can be no real progress in our understanding of human character-types.
At the same time, of course, it is also important never to lose sight of an overall and integrated view of the various phenomena involved, but this should not mean that pitch-dark night of what commonly passes for ‘characterology’ in which all cows are black! Alpha-A offers instead a dynamically integrated philosophical appreciation of stable qualitative differences between types, wedded to the sober realisation that, in the concrete, human behaviour is at times expressive of some quality diametrically opposed to the one it more usually signifies, this fact of human experience being something many can appreciate intuitively but which, nevertheless, they may have difficulty in expressing, whenever they try to put it into words. Phenomenology has faired ill by the standards of Linguistic Analysis, but it undoubtedly retains its value as a philosophy of intentionality.
N29 For such reasons as these, whatever terms we use to describe the different character-types can never be entirely satisfactory, and so I have preferred also to introduce a special code, using, for example, “Alpha” to designate the extrovert process and “A” to designate the introvert process. This code or sign-system is here meant to be interpreted in cybernetic terms in the light of an empirical appreciation of the actual mode of functioning of the human nervous system.
Any phenomenon or individual piece of behaviour may occur in a person of any character-type whatsoever, but its appropriate psychological interpretation will vary as a function of the type of subject exhibiting it. That is why, despite their continuing respect both for psychoanalysis and for the philosophical analysis of the structures of human functioning, the developers of Alpha-A regard both those lines of approach, which are complementary to their own when considered as contributions towards the shared goal of a scientific understanding of specifically human behaviour, as being, nevertheless, quite inadequate tools for the understanding of human character typology.
The scope of Alpha-A is, as was mentioned earlier when discussing Jung's terminology, not merely to study the empirical reality and to leave it unchanged; the aim is to exploit it to advantage in daily life and in all our relationships with persons of different character-types. I at least hinted at this in the Foreword, and also at the very beginning of the Introduction to this presentation.
I hope, therefore, that what has so far been said will suffice to steer the reader clear of two possible misunderstandings, the mistake of thinking that, while this method has something in its favour, the differences we are considering are always fluid and inprecise, or the opposite mistake of straitjacketing the qualitative differences here specified inside some excessively rigid ‘system’ of classification with ‘descriptions’ ready made in advance to match any possible piece of individual human behaviour! Instead, a balance needs to be struck between both these extremes, so that the various cybernetic mechanisms are understood and codified on the basis of character-type differences, while individual behaviour is interpreted in the light of the observed facts with a certain degree of elasticity, taking variations of intention into account in each case, and avoiding any over rigid ‘rules’ in applying the system.
N30 The difference between extroversion and introversion is a fundamental one, and as such it may be regarded as present at birth. In a musical composition there is a keynote to which the rest of the composition relates; similarly in human thinking one system is dominant and the other remains in the background. With the possible rare exception of certain cases of madness, human beings have no option but to make either one or the other system dominant; there are no in-betweens. This being the case, from a statistical point of view, we are justified in assuming that approximately the same number of individuals belong to each of these two basic character-types.
Notice, by the way, that but for this dominance of one of the two systems in each individual, human thinking would lose its sense of direction. The extrovert is all the time being drawn to give symbolic form to his thought and to express it, while the introvert is more inclined to relate to sense data as perceived through the channels of action and experiment.
Rule Two states: Different from the many are the few. For, although Alpha-A postulates that currently (in 1982) perhaps as many as 9,999 persons in 10,000 are content to do their best to scratch out some sort of an existence, whether as Astrologers or as Alchemists, within the context of whichever sort of society they happen to have been born into, it also suggests that by some accident of birth 1 person in 10,000 has been gifted with some sort of superawareness or superior consciousness, either a special vision or a special concrete perception of life or both, so that this person is not confined within the limits of that particular ‘Age’ in which he or she happens to have been born but may, as it were, participate simultaneously in the qualities of each of the ‘Four Ages’.
I shall discuss what Alpha-A understands by the Four Ages later. What I have just said clearly implies that Alpha-A is undoubtedly in some sense an élitist system, since it rules out all possibility of even the very best education available ever raising any of ‘the many’ to the level of ‘the few’. Notice, however, that Alpha-A élitism is limited to the claim that certain individuals sharing our common human condition are born with some sort of privileged access to the possible full appreciation of life's enormously varied but nevertheless intrinsically limited potentialities.
N31 In other words, even the élite cannot change, although they may accelerate or retard, the cyclical mutations of our social structures from Golden Age to Silver, from Silver to Bronze, from Bronze to Iron, from Iron to Golden, and so on. Neither are the élite necessarily either more or less moral, spiritual, religious, or metaphysically gifted than the rest of us.
Hence, when an Alpha-A practitioner refers to Jimmy Carter as ‘a nonentity’, to General Jaruzelski as ‘a positive type’ or to Margaret Thatcher as ‘an evil genius’, this evaluation, whether or not accurate, is offered not as a moral judgment but purely as a typological assessment.
In other words, anything, no matter howsoever valuable and important it may be, which goes beyond the limits of social dynamics is not the province of Alpha-A. None of the moves within this system are made either in heaven above or in the secret recesses of the individual human heart; they all take place on the chequer-board of history. Hence, I venture to suggest, their sometimes very considerable significance and moment.
I turn now to the classification exhibited in figure 3.
(a) ALPHA-a (b) alpha-A
(c) ALPHA-a (d) alpha-A
(e) ALPHA-a (f) alpha-A
(g) ALPHA-a (h) alpha-A
Figure 3
N32 This diagram focuses on the qualitative differences that distinguish the inferior from the superior levels of consciousness. The possibility of an individual's being either extrovert or introvert is independent of the variables now to be examined. Hence, in practice, both the vertical and horizontal methods of classification need to be combined. Extroversion and introversion as such are capacities of equal value, but when the actual level of consciousness is superior, its value and potentiality is also increased.
As can be seen quite easily from the diagram, Alpha-A postulates that from birth both those who are mainly Astrologers and those who are mainly Alchemists (the two fundamental classes of individuals) may, as is almost always the case, be born without any special awareness or superior consciousness to lift them outside the confines of whichever Age (Golden, Silver, Bronze or Iron6) or condition (as an Astrologer or as an Alchemist) has characterized their birth, but it also postulates that they may also be (and very occasionally actually are) born with this special quality of super-awareness - this quality being present either on each side of their character-type structure, or else merely on its Astrological side, or else only on the Alchemical side of the same structure.7
So, whether the type we are considering is the Astrologer or the Alchemist, there are four possible levels of consciousness.8 From a metaphysical point of view, this distinction is the most radical and important - and Alpha-A theory postulates that it is already present at birth.
Several points needs to be made clear.
As was the case when I made a distinction between extrovert and introvert character-types, so here, too, there is no room available in the Alpha-A system of classification for degrees of “more” and “less”. In other words, Alpha-A makes no provision for intermediate character-types. This is because we are here considering the N33 qualities of cybernetic mechanisms, with each individual definitely belonging to one clearly defined type.
In the horizontal dialectical interplay of extroversion and introversion only one of the two processes involved can be dominant, and the other process (the recessive one) simply has to take second place. When we consider the vertical dialectic, however, a level of consciousness sufficiently adapted to have achieved full autonomy of function vis-à-vis the physical level may be found either on both sides, on neither side, or only on the extrovert side, or else only on the introvert side.
In order better to appreciate the nature of such qualitative processes, it may be helpful to refer to such studies of systems-theory as Bertalanffy's. The human body, for instance, is, as a system, much more than the mere lumping together of its constituent parts, the individual organs, etc. Wherever there is a system, as the quantity of the parts increases, so there is a threshold effect, in other words, a need to break through qualitative barriers. This holds true of the various cybernetic mechanisms involved in the functioning of the human nervous system, so that there is no room for intermediate cases in Alpha-A's related classification of character-types, since such cases would not correspond to any possible mode of operation within the system being examined.
In addition to this fact which regards the empirical mechanisms involved, the existence from birth of the eight possible character-types above referred to can also be assigned a reason based on the overall metaphysical order of Nature in terms of mathematical harmony in the esoteric sense. Every movement in its own natural environment is characterised as a dialectical relationship between twin polarities. In modern physics this applies in cybernetic terms: one takes account not of isolated ‘particles’, but of their interrelationships. Therefore, in order to arrive at an integrated appreciation of the complexity of any natural phenomenon, one has to consider not only each polarity in itself, but also both aspects of their reciprocal movements - as was shown in figure 1 for the Subject (“S”) and the Object (“O”).
Thus, there are always four aspects to be considered: the flow of information from the first to the second element seen from the N34 point of view of the first; the feedback of information from the second to the first element seen from the point of view of the first; the flow of information from the first to the second element seen from the point of view of the second; the feedback of information from the second to the first element seen from the point of view of the second. Obviously, then, unless these four aspects are clearly distinguished, our analysis of the phenomenon remains incomplete.
Symbolically these four aspects may be represented by a cross, a figure exhibiting internally the horizontal dialectic of the relationship between the two sides, and also a vertical dialectic showing the relative hierarchical importance of the two elements by indicating which of them is to be considered as primary, and which secondary.
Because the human nervous system functions by association, it is not merely or primarily a self-contained objective empirical phenomenon, but a symbolising Subject encountering itself in its own repetition. This means that it is never a simple but always a twofold phenomenon. Numerologically, therefore, the nervous system has to be represented by twice four, and not simply by four (as would be the case, if it were a single phenomenon).
Although there is a sense in which each individual human being recapitulates the Cosmos in his or her own person, even the gender-differentiated possessive adjectives I have just used remind us that each of us has to take one particular reference-point vis-à-vis the whole, since, without some such focus, individuality as such vanishes.
In this way, right from birth there exists a range of eight distinct possible reference-points on the basis of the nature of the human mechanisms above referred to. From the very outset, then, there are eight different ways of understanding and feeling; but for this, the Cosmos would appear to lack any scope for a development truly dynamic, and would be possessed of the vacuous totality of its own stable unity. In the event, each existing individual finds relative stability in terms of his or her choice of one of these eight basic types, which is one way of giving the Cosmos concrete embodiment.
N35 It follows from this that Alpha-A's élitist view of the superaware or superior levels of consciousness does not imply an absolute superiority of certain persons in comparison with others, since each individual in one way or another effectively recapitulates the totality. This is a crucially important point, and it chimes in with the religious view that everybody is a ‘child of G-d’ called to grow into an adult son or daughter of G-d, made in His or Her or Its or Their ‘image and likeness’, as the Bible puts it.9
The existence of individuals with different levels of consciousness has unfortunately given rise to serious problems. Individuals in particular whose consciousness is of the inferior sort have denied the existence of the problem outright, for fear of being labelled inferior, and this has induced ‘scientific’ researchers to neglect this area of inquiry. On the other hand, some individuals, often persons enjoying a superior level of consciousness but morally negative types,10 have tried to exploit the advantages of their own position, even going so far as to recommend the extermination of individuals whose consciousness remains at the inferior level. This, for example, is the theory that favours the bringing into prominence of a so called ‘New Humanity’.11
The Alpha-A vision of a balanced octagon of eight basic character-types is not a logical abstraction. Cosmic rhythms, even in their empirical detail, reflect the abstract order of mathematics, as the chaoticists are making increasingly clear to us and, as has already been mentioned, in order to attain to a concrete understanding we need to combine this overall vision of union in diversity with a feeling for the dynamic nature of the incessant cosmic flow. There is not the slightest contradiction between an approach that emphasises the unity of all things and one that places the stress on the value of classifying differences; synthesis and analysis are N36 complementary as well as being (as I shall explain later) characteristic of specific psychological character-types that are themselves both divergent and mutually enriching.
The existence from birth of extroverts and introverts can be looked upon as rather like the male and female, the outgoing and the receptive forms of the nervous system. Neither this character-type difference nor that based on levels of consciousness from birth offers any justification at all for experiments in genetic manipulation, since what is involved is the overall harmony characteristic of each type - each type providing, as it were, its own intrinsic criterion of value in terms of the dynamic pattern of internal relationships that specify and define it as such. This is why artificial insemination is quite absurd as a means of increasing the likelihood of someone's being born with more than average intelligence. Intelligence as such has no genetic basis.
More generally, scientific methods cannot replace the natural process of procreation. In determining the level of consciousness of the offspring what counts is the parents' actual desire of the child, and also their own union being expressive of a mutual spiritual attraction and not merely the result of some isolated physical impulse. While, as I have already said, there is no sense in our hankering after a 'new humanity' made up only of certain types of characters with individuals of the other character-types excluded, it is nevertheless highly desirable that we should achieve some increase in the proportion of persons born with a superior level of consciousness - a fact which may be observed in those periods of history when procreation takes place in a more spiritual setting than seems at present usual.
On the other hand, in periods like the present one, in which spirituality can scarcely be said to be dominant, society enjoys certain other advantages, notably the greater effectiveness of its technology and of its relatively abundant material resources. This state of affairs is one more proof that even persons of inferior consciousness are of just as much value, provided we consider the whole picture. Alpha-A therefore accepts the significance and sees the advantages of esoteric and religious teachings regarding alchemy in the traditional sense and regarding spiritual procreation, subject to the proviso that all fanaticism is to be avoided.
N37 One particular feature in the Alpha-A system of character-type classification that some may at first find it a little hard to accept is the existence of types whose consciousness is at a superior level on one side of their character-structure, but not on the other.12 Newcomers to Alpha-A might easily be inclined to suppose that once a mechanism of superior consciousness is established in any given individual, it ought to be able to function on both sides of that person's character, the extrovert and the introvert. However, as previously stated, superior consciousness consists at the empirical level in a superhomoeostasis of the human system. I offered the analogy of our two hands in order to explain how this system functions quite separately in its two distinct modes, those of extroversion and introversion, and that is why individuals can have a superior level of consciousness in one sector and, at the same time, a low level of consciousness in the other.
To recall our basic Alpha-A classification into eight human character-types as indicated in figure 3:
I have now indicated the essential differences as well as the underlying identity between the many and the few. Human beings, whether male or female, in their physical-psychological constitution, which contains those concrete mechanisms that allow us to distinguish persons according to their character-type into various categories, form a bridge between twinned orders of reality manifesting themselves in the sum of two physical-natural complex transfers of information, each of which, therefore, considered in its N38 own order, is invested with a twice twofold nature. That fact allows us to think in terms of the integration of two different foursomes, viz., an octagon, and the genetic patterning of the information-transfer process does, indeed, allow of eight distinct possibilities. Hence, it permits a qualitative distinction to be made between persons of eight different character-types.
Conscious and unconscious phenomena have great importance in each of these different types. Nevertheless, it is characteristic of the functioning of the superior level of consciousness that the specifically human level of operation achieves a higher degree of autonomy, becoming conscious of many phenomena that ordinarily remain unconscious and, more to the point, succeeding on the whole in controlling the individual's physical processes.
However, at this early stage in our exposition the reader has not yet been equipped to use Alpha-A to make any actual evaluation of any individual person as an adult human of this or that specific character-type, with his or her particular moral capacities, life experience, adult awareness, etc. The eight types of basic character given at birth represent a greater or smaller potential awareness - that is the cash-value of the terms “superior level” or “low level” of consciousness. After birth, during the long period of each individual's interaction with the environment and as a result of consequently emerging subjective phenomena, other type-differences come to light, so that we never find adults who simply exemplify the eight genetic character-types in a pure state but, instead, only instances of their subsequent modulations into a notably larger number of derivative, specific subdivisions of these eight natal types.
Indeed, true ‘superior consciousness’ and true ‘low-level consciousness’ is, properly speaking, characteristic only of the different adult individuals to be classified according to character-types in later Chapters. What we have so far been referring to by using such expressions was, strictly speaking, no more than the potentiality of, or the capacity for such-and-such a level of consciousness.
Within the real limits determined by his or her inborn potential, each individual person, even the one with a low level of consciousness, has scope for positive development. Moreover, N39 unless the development that actually occurs is a positive one, even a person gifted from birth with superior consciousness is in danger of slipping down to a low level of consciousness in practice - this, indeed, is what happens in the case of those superior character-types who are, in Alpha-A terms, judged to be morally negative.
So, as I have said, it is his or her basic character-type at birth that allows the development of the superhomoeostatic consciousness and without that potential being originally present at birth nothing can be done to produce it later. On the other hand, even when this higher potential is present, there may be later obstacles along the way that prevent the full actuation of this cybernetic mechanism and replace it in practice by some alternative, inferior mode of operation. In that sense, nobody is ever born either good or bad.13 Many philosophers have, I agree, held the opposite opinion, but there is no available evidence to suggest that they are not mistaken.
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1. “Genius” is one of several terms here used in a quasi-technical, non-ordinary sense. Baroness Margaret Thatcher is a genius of sorts; President Jimmy Carter was not a genius.
2. Fundamental aspects of Jung's outlook are expressed in his 1925 privately printed Septem Sermones ad Mortuos more sensitively and effectively than in his more widely known published writings, and such works as W. B. Yeats's A Vision and Carlos Castaneda's Tales of Power also deserve to be taken into account.
3. Cf. H. Palmer, The Enneagram - Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life (San Francisco: Harper 1991). For a more authentically traditional approach to the ancient Sumerian forerunner of this much more recent and clearly derivative enneagram, cf. Joan D'Arcy Cooper's already cited The Ancient Teaching of Yoga and the Spiritual Evolution of Man. Also interesting: C. Markert, Let Yourself Grow (London: Wildwood House 1978); Lailan Young, Secrets of the Face - Amazing Chinese Art of Reading Character from Faces (Hodder & Stoughton 1987); Byron Lewis & Frank Pucelik, Magic of NLP Demystified - A Pragamatic Guide to Communication & Change (Portland, Oregon: Metamorphous Press 1990).
4. In BAWB there is also a tendency to equate extroversion with ideology and introversion with consumerism.
5. This distinction should never be confused with that between the conscious and the unconscious, a distinction which applies on each of the two levels in question - subjective and objective.
6. Each of these non-ordinary quasi-technical terms will be explained at the appropriate moment.
7. In figure 3 types (a), (c), (e) and (g) are Astrologer-extroverts; types (b), (d), (f) and (h) are Alchemist-introverts.
8. In the ovals in the figure the use of a double line in any segment of the oval indicates the presence of consciousness at the superior level.
9. An appropriate exegesis of this biblical expression cannot be accommodated in a footnote. Zecharia Sitchin's books can help us to develop a fuller and richer appreciation of what is involved, but the New Testament is still the best available key to a proper understanding of the Old.
10. As I shall explain in detail later, the possession from birth of a superior level of consciousness does not suffice to make a person of a certain sort a good and positive type in his or her maturity.
11. There is, of course, nothing at all wrong in talking about a ‘New Humanity’, if one merely wishes to recommend the creation of improved surroundings and of better conditions after birth for all eight types of human beings born into this world, so that all can develop in the best way possible for each of them. On the other hand, to dream of any sort of society from which evil is completely eliminated is to entertain a futile utopian hope.
12. These were represented in figure 3 (c), (d), (e) and (f).
13. The potentiality we acquire at birth, whatever it is, is neutral, though it certainly has important differences within it as a potential to be developed, and it is entirely up to us whether our walk through life is along the path of good or of evil, whether the person into which we each of us make ourselves is, in the final analysis and synthesis, postive or negative.
- Shalom & Welcome! - 
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