N141
Professor Toynbee and Father Lonergan help us to understand history, which Alpha-A practitioners discuss using the analogy of an upwards and downwards spiral. Pitrim Sorokin's complementary interpretation of cultural dynamics using the analogy of an oscillating pendulum is equally significant.1 If we identify the Silver and Iron Ages as extreme positions reached by the tic-toc of history, then each Golden Age marks a swing from Iron to Silver, and each Bronze Age a swing from Silver to Iron.
In the preceding Chapters, as well as delineating each of Alpha-A's 32 basic character-types in some detail, we examined the progressive emergence from within this group of no less than 896 specifically distinct adult character-types, and the criteria we invoked in order to arrive at those distinctions by following an empirical path that relied on a painstaking technical analysis of the normal functioning of the human nervous system, considered both as hardware and as software were (even when difficult to apply) essentially very simple and straightforward indeed. Faced with any possible choice, a human being may be:
Ready to say “Yes” but reluctant to say “No”,
- the “Yes” being energetic, but the “No” weak:
- the “No” being energetic, but the “Yes” weak:
- “Yes” and “No” being quasi-automatic and even indifferent:
N142 Ready to say “No” but reluctant to say “Yes”,
- the “Yes” being energetic, but the “No” weak:
- the “No” being energetic, but the “Yes” weak:
- “Yes” and “No” being quasi-automatic and even indifferent:
Ready to say “Yes“ with an acquired willingness to say “No”,
- the “Yes” being energetic, but the “No” weak:
- the “No” being energetic, but the “Yes” weak:
- “Yes” and “No” being quasi-automatic and even indifferent:
Ready to say “No” with an acquired willingness to say “Yes”,
- the “Yes” being energetic, but the “No” weak:
- the “No” being energetic, but the “Yes” weak:
- “Yes” and “No” being quasi-automatic and even indifferent:
N143 Doctor Léon Guérrinckx, a Plato type keenly interested in the ascending spiral, has additionally recommended to my attention a set of distinctions he has found helpful between:
The Beginning of Knowledge is how much you don't…
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1. Cf. Umberto Eco's esoteric novel: Foucault's Pendulum, and Carl Jung's dream of a large penis swinging backwards and forwards periodically across the face of the Sun.
N144
Conditioned reflexes originating at an animal emotional-physical level prevent the stabilisation of conscious systems in any of Alpha-A's lower-level types, so that these are without any authentically personal moral values which they themselves have truly understood and freely accepted.
Nevertheless, there is a discernible difference between consensus ‘morality’ and having no ‘morality’ at all. A Manager, for instance, subscribes to what we have called consensus morality without personally having ever thought things through, and he or she is always ready to make vague moralising speeches, while remaining, moreover, utterly convinced that no insincerity or inconsistency is implied by the obvious and undeniable fact that his or her practical behaviour has frequently already given (and will undoubtedly continue to give) the lie to all the fine sentiments such speeches supposedly express. This is because in types like this the higher conscious system remains disassociated, and no true synthesis or homoeostasis is possible for such persons. An element of hypocrisy frees the Manager from any feelings of guilt or personal difficulty he or she might otherwise have, and this type will point out with quite a clear conscience that practical situations cannot be expected to conform to abstract rules, that even the best rules have justified exceptions, and that circumstances naturally alter cases. Thus, consensus ‘morality’ is a combination of confusion and disassociation.
Genuinely non-moral types are at least free of all this confusion. Professional Criminals are a good example. They may behave dishonestly for the sake of some material advantage, but they also readily admit, if caught, that it is ‘a fair cop’; they don't beat about the bush and attempt to justify their own misdemeanours. Non-moral types quite frankly state that the obviously correct course is always to look after Number One, but even this statement is no more than the apparently evident and justified conclusion of an N145 empirically based inductive argument. Personal experience convinces Professional Criminal types they are in the right, not because they are aware of the nature of their own particular convictions and understand what it means to arrive at a consciously free choice, but simply because they sense, like healthy and fully functional animals, that their instincts are inclining them to take whatever steps are needed to satisfy their own perceived needs, as and when these arise. Behaviourally, therefore, these non-moral types are free from confusion, but, whenever anybody tries to get them thinking, they soon become very confused indeed!1
Although it is, I think, usually fairly accurate to describe Professional Criminals, considered as persons, as non-moral rather than as immoral, when we turn our attention to the underlying cybernetic mechanism at work, what we actually observe , of course, is Astrological pseudo-adaptation and Alchemical disadaptation. Now, at this low-level of consciousness, pseudo-adaptation has a certain resemblance to consensus ‘morality’, while disadaptation corresponds to the non-moral state. Cybernetic imbalance and instability is at a maximum in cases of disadaptation, where it implies extreme fragmentation - calling to mind the non-moral individual's confused attempts to provide a completely separate ‘morality’ to match each unique situation which he or she feels some need to ‘justify’. On the other hand, in cases of pseudo-adaptation there can be at least an element of real thinking about the realities of the situation, and so a possibility of some movement in the direction of homoeostasis, never however in the direction of homoeostasis at the level of the entire system as an appropriately integrated whole.2
N146 Pseudo-adaptation is that situation in which the organism, because of some radical tendency of its own, is inclined to welcome rather than to inhibit any impulses of a conditioned and reflex sort that originate at the physical-emotional level. Such impulses are equally insistent in cases of disadaptation, of course, but the organism's reaction is that of trying its utmost to oppose them, even when this is clearly not at all feasible. A disadapted consciousness is, in fact, one that is in a state of conflict with impulses it cannot inhibit, since it lacks access to the counter-reactions availabe only at the higher homoeostatic level - and which alone are adequate to this sort of task.3 Briefly, the difference between pseudo-adaptation and disadaptation is the difference between accepting and rejecting one's own unconscious, and this quite independently of one's own conscious choosing.4 Because disadapted types sense they are the victims of a totally irrational situation, they also feel that nobody else should be exempt from suffering it. Not that the pseudo-adapted type's quite different situation is particularly rosy - in order to avoid suffering, he or she is obliged not only to inhibit ‘thought’ (typically no more than a loosely associative process in such types), but also somehow (i.e., not withstanding the presence of Q-type processes) utterly to repress any stimuli with a physical-emotional origin!
In pseudo-adapted types, then, we find an inhibition by a conscious process of the conscious scrutiny of unconscious reflexes. This lack of a conscious scrutiny is compensated for by recourse to some predisposing conscious cliché which is vaguely felt to justify this lack of scrutiny, and hence (and this strictly from a technically accurate view) itself constitutes the actual inhibition itself…
N147 On the other hand, in disadapted types, the conscious system actually amplifies the disturbing reflexes themselves, since these have not been inhibited, but merely scrutinised in a chaotic fashion. In other words, the physical organism (considered here as an almost effectively separate cybernetic sub-system) in order to avoid sufferings and various intolerable experienced contra-dictions, which would otherwise oblige some thinking to occur (and then to continue indefinitely), has fragmented this character-type's basic structure, and disassociated itself from the higher level of consciousness…
But it is difficult to speak very clearly about matters such as these. Perhaps one of the best ways of expressing things cybernetically is to say that in pseudo-adapted types disassociation is vertical, while in disadapted types it is horizontal. Pseudo-adapted types are, in other words, free from any disturbance in the strictly cybernetic sense, because a loosely associated pattern of surrogate-‘thoughts’ has enabled them to avoid all states of total inhibition,5 making their own, in effect, a well-adapted animal-like life-style (although every time I follow Todeschini's example and use this expression, I feel I need to apologise to the animals) by effectively repressing all their greater specifically human potentialities for higher-level modes of self-adaptation. In disadapted types, however, these potentialities for higher-level modes of self-adaptation remain in constant operation, functionning continually as factors upsetting the individual's lower-level animal-style equilibrium (instead of catalysing the Subject's quantum leap upwards to a qualitatively superior level of consciousness.6
Hence, we can only truly speak of authentic conscious awareness when we reach the superior homoeostatic levels of the nervous N148 system, viz., when this is quasi-automatically functioning harmoniously, overcoming not merely any disturbing influences from the external environment (which even a pseudo-adapted type can manage to do), but also radically transcending the conditioning nature of the environment as such, by subsuming it into a human totality which integrates it with psychological and social relationships that make it meaningful - so that no anxiety or imbalance results (as occurs in the case of a disadapted type). Any system which lacks the genetic-functional potential to assimilate harmoniously the reactions of the higher-level psychological and social environment must perforce opt for either pseudo-adaptation or disadaptation, but even a system possessing this potential may, if its development is frustrated, regress to a disadapted position. Therefore, adaptation demands not only the right potential, but also its appropriate actuation. Nevertheless, whenever that potential exists, at least pseudo-adaptation can be excluded, and, provided there are no misfortunes, adaptation will usually take place.7
Philosophically speaking, the very nature of ‘human consciousness’ implies that a majority of men and women are not now truly conscious, since the human organism's natural potential always needs to be adapted to a reality that is essential open to further development both as Object and as Subject (i.e., both as computer and as programme, both as hardware and as software) - not excluding the eventual inclusion of additional elements which, relatively to the present state of the organism, are deforming influences at present. Hence, it is only, as J. D. Solomon has often repeated with increasingly vigorous optimism, by existing (or better, becoming) in a state of potentiality that human consciousness can be related to, and can relate itself to a sufficiently wide range of processes, so as to include within its intention an actuality that always is potential as such. History also confirms that man (whether male or female) necessarily always retains an essentially potential intention…
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1. If you invite a Professional Criminal to justify his or her behaviour, and to clarify the rules and principles on the basis of which he or she is actually regulating his or her personal conduct, this type never even realises that you are simply asking for a statement of some generally applicable moral or ethical norms. The Professional Criminal imagines that a completely fresh set of principles very probably has to be worked out from scratch to match the special circumstances and requirements of each particular case!
2. As also holds true of consensus morality, pseudo-adaptation does not exclude the presence of a reasoning process of sorts, but the required synthesis is never arrived at, the different levels of consciousness (and unconsciousness) are held apart (even when one happens to be aware of them simultaneously). In other words, there is a psychological split, hypocrisy, partial disassociation at least.
3. Persons with a disadapted consciousness typically react to such unconscious and impulsive occurrences with some sort of chaotic attempt to uncover their supposed conscious significance, or else by trying to find some way of rejecting them completely - possibly denying their very existence, or at least rationalising their presence. Panic reactions of this sort can easily lead to neurosis or psychosis, if, instead of resolutely seeking to overcome all this psychic turmoil and suffering experienced, the individual (at least unconsciously) accepts and permits the continuing operation of these conditioned and conditioning reflexes, thereby progressively giving rise to new and more frequent anxiety-states and psychic pains…
4. The disadapted consciousness often inquires of itself: “Why did I decide that way?” No answer of any sort being available, it suffers more than if this question had never been raised! Disadapted types are, indeed, often given to moralising on the fact that everybody must be feeling bad, since they are feeling bad.
5. The undeclared real goal of psychoanalytic ‘education’ and of much that counts as ‘philosophising’ in the tradition of rational enlightenment is precisely that of avoiding any inhibition of conscious-unconscious processes, by encouraging more and more ‘thinking’, i.e., mist! Education can never do very much for individuals at a low level of consciousness; the most they can hope for is a transition from a non-established to an established state.of disadaptation or pseudo-adaptation…
6. It is well known that the mental ‘forgetting’ of some particular symbolic association that has provoked unconscious emotional disturbances not only does not stop the recurrence of similar disturbances, nor lessen the Subject's emotional insecurity, but even aggravates the situation. This is because whatever has not been differentiated by the conscious system is eo ipso present in the unconscious without differentiation.
7. Even a nervous system lacking the higher-level homoeostatic potential has some residual possibility of reacting, because of the presence of elements which, although not integrated, nevertheless properly and naturally pertain to this homoeostatic process; these can occasionally be used, albeit only incompletely and imperfectly. The almost total absence of such element appears to be limited to certain forms of madness and criminality (either genetically determined or subsequently induced).
All numbers here listed are references to pages (and sometimes footnotes) in the 1996 A4-size pre-publication privately circulated text of this research paper where a particular special term has been either explicitly defined or so used as helpfully to clarify its special meaning within the present context.
For the benefit of web-surfers viewing this text on a colour-monitor "N" immediately followed by an arabic number in the same shade of blue has been introduced at intervals into the present text to indicate on which particular A4-size page of the 1996 edition the immediately following portion of main text can also be found.
Readers of this electronic on-line edition may alternatively find it helpful (a) to select any one of the below listed special terms, (b) to return to the head of this entire web-page, and then (c) to use the computer's FIND facility within the document-browser to review in sequence different passages in which the selected term appears.
Capitalised expressions within square brackets are alternative and quasi-identical technical terms NOT employed here, but which may be encountered in Professor Vittorio Hess's invaluable monograph: "Bureaucracy & Well-Being" (Camerino 1994).
Notice, finally, that while footnotes in the 1996 edition were usually placed at the bottom of the page carrying that portion of the main text to which they most directly referred, in this present electronic edition they appear instead only at the end of each main section.
ACHIEVEMENT 108, 137 note 5
ADAPTATION 21, 51-52, 144-48
AFFABILITY 108
AGE, AGES 30-31, 66-71, 76, 97, 100-05, 133, 141
AGGRESSIVITY, AGGRESSION 41, 107, 118
ALCHEMICAL, ALCHEMIST [EMPIRICIST] 20-21, 23, 27
ALPHA-A 19-20
ALPHA-a = ASTROLOGER-MANAGER (and see CODES)
alpha-A = ALCHEMIST-SLAVE (and see CODES)
ANGEL, ANGELIC 62
APPLICATION 108
ARCH-CRIMINAL = BOHEMIAN, DESPERADO, LUCIFER or SATAN
ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION 36
ART, ARTIST 20-21, 27
ASTROLOGER [ORGANICIST], ASTROLOGICAL 20-21, 23, 27
ATTUNED, ATTUNEMENT 63, 98, 107, 133
AWARE, AWARENESS 143 (and see ATTUNED)
BASIC CHARACTER-TYPES
BAWB 3 note 4, 104 note 1
BIRTH 39 note 13, 41 note 2, 51, 76, 98
CODES, CODING 29, 32, 42 note 5, 53-59, 100-02, 107, 118, 120
CONGENIAL 48
CONSENSUS MORALITY 144-48
CONSCIOUS [STATICITY + REASON], CONSCIOUSNESS 26-7, 106
COOPERATION 109
CYBERNETIC MECHANISM 23, 28-9, 33, 72, 145
DISADAPTATION, DISADAPTED 51-2, 74, 144-48
DISTURBED 128, 144-48
DOMINANT 30, 70, 128
[DYNAMISM = UNCONSCIOUS INTROVERSION]
ÉLITISM 19, 30-31, 35
ESTABLISHED 46, 76, 111, 120
EXTROVERT [INTUITIVE & STATIC] 20, 24-7, 30, 107, 123
FORMALISATION 54 note 12
FUNDAMENTAL = BASIC
GENETIC MANIPULATION 36
GENIUS 8, 19 note 1
HARDWARE 24, 105, 116
HARMONIC CONVERGENCE 70 note 11, 132
N151 HOMOEOSTASIS 22, 74-5
HORIZONTAL RELATIONSHIP 33
INFERIOR, INFERIOR LEVEL 38
INTROVERT [RATIONAL & DYNAMIC] 20, 24-8, 30, 107, 123
[INTUITION = UNCONSCIOUS EXTROVERSION]
LOVE 41, 107
MASOCHISM, MASOCHISTIC 109
MODULATION 38, 117
MORAL, MORALITY 60-61, 65, 144-48
NARCISSISM, NARCISSISTIC 125 note 13
NEGATIVE 31, 35 note 9, 51, 60
NERVOUS SYSTEM 72, 106
NEW ACROPOLIS 3, 133
NEW HUMANITY 36
NON-ESTABLISHED 46, 76, 111, 120
NON-MORAL 144-48
OBJECT 24, 116
OCTAGON 35, 64, 96
OVAL, OVALS, OVOID SHAPES 27, 31-2, 41-2, 48-50, 60-63, 99
POSITIVE 31, 51, 65
PSEUDO-ADAPTATION, PSEUDO-ADAPTED 73-4, 144-48
[RATIONALITY = CONSCIOUS INTROVERSION]
RECESSIVE 30, 33, 70
SADISM, SADISTIC 108
SCIENCE, SCIENTIST 20-21, 27
SENSATION 53
SEX, SEXUALITY 41, 75, 126
SOFTWARE 24, 105, 116
SPIRITUAL, SPIRITUALITY 108
SPIRITUAL PROCREATION 36
[STATICITY = CONSCIOUS EXTROVERSION]
SUBJECT 24, 34, 116
SUPERIOR, SUPERIOR LEVEL 25, 36, 38, 52
SUPERHOMOEOSTASIS 22, 37, 52, 73, 96, 117 note 9, 133
THRESHOLD EFFECT 33, 72
UNCONSCIOUS [INTUITION + DYNAMISM] 75, 110, 123, 144-48
VERTICAL RELATIONSHIP 33
VIRTUE 65
“YES”/“NO” 100, 106, 129, 141-42 .
The Logician or Scientist: thin, intellectual, awake, inventive, analyses, scrutinizes, examines what a thing is, and appears artificial, complex, cerebral (Air + Fire: a star, the Sun).
Mother Nature: but not necessarily a woman - fat, organic, drowsy, instinctive, wholesome, simple, repetitive, settles down, functions, grows (Earth + Water: mud, a bog).
The Flippant Joker or Trickster: superficial, obvious, light, cynical, clever, witty, sneering, insensitive, a manipulator (Fire + Air: hot air, heat).
The Sensitive Enchantress or Siren: deep, mysterious, dark, sincere, appreciative, serious, slow, intuitive, has inner feelings, has values (Water + Earth: deep water, a well).
The Patriarch or Master: cold, pure, refined, precise, superior, civilized, conceited, inflexible, reserved, dignified, aloof, formal, opinionated (Air + Water: ice, snow, crystals).
The Slave or Worker: warm, dirty, crude, messy, sociable, primitive, humble, submissive, cooperative, adaptable, pliant, casual, self-sacrificing (Earth + Fire: forge, kiln).
The Child or Angel: vague, soft, tender, impressionable, small, fragile, beautiful, loving, innocent, compassionate, selfless (Water + Air: dampness, mist, clouds).
The Soldier or Devil: definite, hard, brutal, impressive, big, powerful, ugly, suspicious, confident, determined, selfish (Fire + Earth: eruptions, volcanoes).
The Doctor or Observer: calm, impersonal, objective, open-minded, dead, cool, detached, distant, forgetful-of-self (Air + Earth: gas, space).
The Actress or Goddess: emotional, personal, subjective, self-centred, alive, dramatic, involved, close, self-indulgent (Water + Fire: steam).
The Old Woman or Organizer: both this and the preceding type may just as easily be a man - methodical, boring, tired, careful, concerned, reliable, sober, calculating, self-sufficient (Earth + Air: dust, a desert, a track).
The Fool or Clown: chaotic, spontaneous, lively, carefree, extravagant, irregular, happy, forgetful, silly, heedless (Fire + Water: a geyser, boiling water).
Richard Gardner (in The Purpose of Love) says that as TV-sets can tune in to many different channales, so can we communicate among ourselves on more than one of twelve different personality-channels he has identified - if we learn how to open the doors to conscious perception at different frequencies: by study to airy ones, by day-dreaming to watery ones, by skill and action to fiery ones, by practicality to earthy ones. Thus:
When Fire gains the upper hand, feelings are suppresed, individuals sneer at the feelings of others, and dismiss imagination, eventually becoming incapable of loving anyone or anything; feelings are just ‘silly’. However, if you manage to free these feelings, a terrible, quite terrifying mess confronts you. Men, unfortunately, have been trained to suppress their feminine elements, and vice versa.
If Earth gains the upper hand, aspiration, ambition, novelty and desire for change will be lacking. The person goes on in the same old way, seeing no way out of breaking the pattern. Enlightening these sorts of people is also no mean task.
If Air gains the upper hand, it tends to give vast quantities of ineffectual, even though accurate knowledge - a know-all who can't do a thing! Air is a great dryer up of Water (feelings), and exhauster of Fire (action). However marvellously intellectual these people may be, they must do something, if their humanity is to be preserved. Their dried up faces become apparent over the years, with no feelings left. They need to think less, and act!
If Water gains the upper hand, we have spinelessness, preciousness, drifting, dreaming, ineffectiveness, vagueness, seeing the world as we subjectively feel, rather than as it is. Such people need to be taught decisive action as the way out of their morass. Shock is often necessary to bring any element which has been neglected into play.
- Shalom & Welcome! - 
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