Notes of Enrique Nassar's talks with Silo - 18/4/97
The technology of the image and the world data network develop. All this makes the planet become more connected. In turn, this will facilitate the transmission and circulation of information, but will not improve the communication among people. At best, it will facilitate the connection of their lonelinesses. One thing is the circulation of data, and another is communication. One thing is the connection through technology, and another is to get out of isolation. The system sees the world as a business. That is, in the people, the system sees labour and consumption. They use all that technology to extract resources from the population. Thus, the fallacy they pursue with the virtual reality is to control the image so as to turn the population into robots, to make them work more and extract resources from them.
To control the images of the population is an unfulfilable pretension. One example of that fallacy is Romania. Ceaucescu naively believed that it was possible to control the consciousness of the population, and while exercising his power, he controlled the means of production, the mass media, the social organisation, the forming institutions (education). In Romania, children called Ceaucescu "Daddy Ceaucescu." Teenagers and youth held events during which they expressed their praise for Ceaucescu. The populations that manifested small disagreements with the regime were destructured, transferred, uprooted, and re-educated. That is, apparently Ceaucescu had control over the objectivity and the subjectivity (i.e., of consciousness) of the population. One day everything changed, and in a very short time, Ceaucescu is toppled, imprisoned, judged and shot. The last photographs of Ceaucescu and his wife show them with expressions of amazement about what was happening. Both dies without understanding what was going on.
The exercise of power in Ceaucescu's manner, is based on the naive theory that, if the means of production are monopolised and the mass media are controlled (monopoly of the image), people -who, it is assumed, are passive consciousness- are going to respond in a mechanical, predetermined and reactive way to the stimuli they are sent. Therefore. always one would be able to foresee what people will do in the future. However, human consciousness is not passive; human consciousness is active. This means that, if a stimulus is launched to the consciousness, expecting a predetermined response, it may happen that this conscious does something totally unexpected, precisely because the consciousness is active, is intentional. The system has a limited and flat image of the human being. It does not learn anything from cases such as Romania. The system does not understand how the human consciousness works.
- Human consciousness can be controlled?
Since the times of the Assyrians, who murdered thousands of people and built pyramids with their corpses, in order to frighten and subject the population through such demonstration; since those times it is known that through brutal methods the collective behaviour of the population can be controlled. It is true that, situationally, through brutal methods the collective behaviours of the populations can be controlled; but it is also true that, in process, there is no way to control the human consciousness.
The formula of bloody demonstrations to a population and then subduing, has been used several times in history. Franco produced in Spain a bloodshed of more than one million people, and then he could subdue the social behaviours of Spanish people without greater difficulties. Stalin produced huge bloodsheds in the Russian people, and could then subdue it without great difficulties. In these cases, there is a subduing of the collective behaviour of the population, since nobody dare to do what is forbidden out of fear. However, there is no control of the consciousness because people do not agree with that- What did not remain clear with these regimes is that they would come to an end, even if the dictators who imposed have not died. Franco's regime would have been dismantled by the new Spanish generations, no matter what the cost in lives that it would have entailed. Stalin's regime could not have been eternal, as the fall and dismantling of USSR showed. Should the nazis have won the Second World War, they would have not remained in power indefinitely in Germany. In all likelihood they would have ended up killing each other, and the population would have risen in rebellion.
We can see an instance showing that violent regimes do not last during the epoch of the Spanish conquest with Cortés. When Cortés reaches Mexico, he finds that the emperor is subjecting the collective behaviours of the population through brutal methods, that the indigenous populations are subjected and very close to rebellion, they are close to rise against that imposition. Cortés arrived with few soldiers, and finds that situation of popular pre-rebellion, and he takes advantage of it; banking on the subjected peoples he manages to dominate the Aztec empire (that was very close to destructuring). Cortés entered History as a military genius, but his talent was truly political. However, those are the forms with which historians see things. Even if the Spanish did not arrive in Mexico, the subjected peoples would have anyway risen, and that culture would have continued its process. At that time, Peru was going through a civil war.
- Why, in the historical process, such deviations in the process of peoples take place?
Human species is a recent one, it does not have much time. Besides, its evolution is not in a straight line; it advances in its development experimenting paths, and according to trials and errors. Notwithstanding all, what has happened historically is that the Homo Sapiens has not disappeared from the surface of the planet; Homo Sapiens is standing, and, let's be sincere, it has improved to some extent since its beginnings. The human being is not finished, but standing; transforming itself and transforming nature. Do imagine the future! The experiments it can make!
- This clarifies how the collective consciousness evolves, but what happens with the evolution of consciousness at an individual level?
The same happens in the individual. He advances in his development, experimenting paths and according to trials and errors. The individual can always advance always provided he does not remain blocked by error, that is, if the individual consciousness remains blocked in a bend where it cannot get out of a system of contradiction, it does not advance. Thus happens with individuals; they transform continuously their difficulties and errors, and advance or remain blocked. Besides, since human life is brief, they cannot afford the luxury of remaining stopped by their problems for long. The human being has to die advancing; and regarding what he believes, that he could die and everything would end, there does not seem to be any need to believe such thing. Today, the Human Being is coming. The Human Being is already appearing.
- What do you mean by "Today, the Human Being is coming"?
During the last centuries, the Positivistic vision has reduced the Human Being to an organism, to a rational animal, to something that is born, grows, gets trained, works, reproduces itself, gets ill and dies. You go to your office, and sit next to your work companion, what do you feel about the other? You feel that he was born, that he grew, that he was trained, he is working with you, he has children (reproduced himself), is ill or may get ill, and may die or necessarily he will die. What you feel is the vision that the system has about the Human Being: it is an organism that is born, grows, gets trained, works, gets ill and dies.
The real Human Being, that which goes towards the infinite, that which discovers and manipulates the atom, that which transforms the universe into bits, that which decodes and can manipulate at will the genetic code -and, with it, will transform his nature even further-, that which, when he is told that technology generates unemployment, is ready to restructure the social organisation to free the human being from labour and to enable technology to keep on developing, that which rebels against being considered just a rational animal that is born, grows, reproduces himself, works, gets ill and dies, that which looks at his body and considers it a primitive antique for the development of his consciousness, that which rebels against death, that human being that still neither philosophy, nor psychology or the social sciences define... That human being, the real human being, is already appearing. Will that human being make mistakes? Of course he will make mistakes, but it could not be otherwise. No way that process will stop. Although antihumanist forces may try to stop those processes, those processes will open their way. Human consciousness will get rid of many bonds that today are limiting it, i.e., the labour, the body limitations, etc.
- What may happen in the immediate coming years?
The systems create the substratum of basic beliefs which the average citizen adheres to. From that substratum of basic beliefs the average citizen thinks and makes science, politics, culture, economy. A primitive system (such as the existing one) can only generate a field of primitive beliefs so that the citizen adheres to it. For instance, neoliberalism is a production based on that primitive substratum. The analysis of the present phenomena is based on a methodology characteristic of that substratum. Everything very reduced, very primitive, very limiting, ...
The neoliberalism will fall (this is difficult to see with the instruments for analysis characteristic of the substratum of basic beliefs), and for us the problem is not that it falls, but all the social mess that the crash of the finance system may generate. Do imagine the system of production and distribution of food stopped, public services blocked, millions of people in the cities trying to get out from there, the psychosocial disorders of all sorts that may take place... A crash of the system without anything to replace it would not be useful for anything. We are not only interested in the fall of the system, but in its replacement.
- Do we need to take power to prevent a crash without a way out?
That is an option that is not very interesting for us. For us, the interesting option is that people change.
- What do you mean by people changing?
You do remember The Winged Lion, don't you?:
"- That is so, Mr. Ho. That is so. No one on this Earth will support any effort, until the monstrosity ends by which a single human being remain below the living standards we all enjoy.
- I am very glad to hear that Mrs. Walker. I am very glad! But tell me, when did everything start to change? When we realised that we existed and that therefore others existed? Right now, I know that I exist. How stupid! Isn't it Mrs. Walker?
- It is not stupid at all. I exist, because you exist and vice versa. This is the reality, the rest is stupidity.
- I think that the guys of The Committee for the Defence of the Weak Nervous System managed to set things in clear. Actually, I don't know how they did it, but they did it. Otherwise, we would have been converted into ants, ...
- That's right, that's right. The whole social organisation, if it can be called such, is collapsing. In so short a time, it is breaking down completely.
- Come on, Come on, Mrs. Walker. We are living in a new world, and still it is difficult for us to find free forms of personal communication.
- Will your read me your poems? I imagine that they are inefficient, arbitrary and, above all, heart-warming.
- That is right, Mrs. Walker. They are inefficient and heart-warming. I will read them to you anytime. Have a marvellous day."
People change, if their apparatus of basic beliefs change. Let's see an example with a belief of the apparatus of basic beliefs that has lasted for centuries. Remember geocentricism, the earth was the centre of the universe, and that was an epoch in which everybody agree that it was so. Thus people believed and lived.
In course of time, all that changes. First, they tell that the Sun is the centre of the universe. Then, a clarification is made, and they tell that the solar system is one among many within a larger system called galaxy. Later on, more explanations are given and they tell that such galaxy is part of a system of galaxies, and that, in turn, this system of galaxies is one among many in the universe. As of late, they explain that there are several universes. All this makes ideas change. Nowadays nobody dares to tell that we are the centre of the universe. But let's pay attention to the way we speak. We say "The Sun rises on .. The sun sets on ..." as though we were the centre of the universe.
However, that is not all. Today, after researches that tell about solar systems, galaxies, groups of galaxies, universes and several universes; today, notwithstanding the evidence of the immensity of the universe, we assert three things, namely, that we are the only form of life, of intelligent life and of human life. We believe ourselves to be unique, the whole universe is for us, we are the centre of the universe. That is, we keep on being geocentricist. It is a belief of the apparatus of basic beliefs that we have not yet modified.
What we are observing today is that the human being wants to break that basic belief. This is observed in the efforts science and technology make in their interstellar research and in their search for other forms of extraterrestrial existence. This is observed in people's desire that extraterrestrial life exist. So strong is people's desire that there are collective illusions of UFO sightings, and it is a generalised issue. People are making such an effort to see that extraterrestrial intelligence exists, that we are on the brink of this taking place. The Homo Sapiens is making an effort to open up his universe, to go beyond his apparatus of basic beliefs. In that search, the human being is going to discover the consciousness.
- What do you mean when you say: "the human being is going to discover the consciousness"?
Since Descartes, consciousness was defined as a thing, as something with extension. Since then, consciousness is considered as one more case of evolving matter, as an organ that can be manipulated through drugs and electric stimuli. Consciousness is not a reactive passive organism, is much more than that, it is an intentional evolutive structure. The real dynamics of consciousness is to transform itself, to transform the body, and to transform the world.
The fact that through astronomical research they go on discovering that the world does not move mechanically, as they wanted to explain it through the Big Bang theory, of the chance mechanical clash that later on ends up, thanks to chance, in the evolutive process we know, but that there are universes that group together and move with a direction that is not mechanical, but intentional, that is to say that the universe has a meaning in its development;
To make evident that there are other forms of intelligent life in the universe;
To comprehend that consciousness is not something mechanical and reactive, but a intentional evolutive structure;
To be on the brink of accepting that the human body is a primitive antique the development of which does not match the evolution rate of consciousness, and to count on the knowledge and technology for modifying it;
To be close to free the human being from the slavery of work;
All these are clear signals that the Human Being is trying to get rid of his apparatus of basic beliefs.
When all these things become evident, the apparatus of basic beliefs is going to get destructured: that there is an intention in the universe, that there are other forms of intelligent life, that individual consciousness is intentional and evolutive, that the body is a primitive antique that can be modified, that it is convenient to stop working and make the machines work... The human being does not feel himself according to his ideas, he feels himself according to his beliefs. Along with the destructuring of the human being's basic apparatus of beliefs, his image of the world will crack, and, with it, a whole new system of possibilities of development for the consciousness will open up.
After the last 50 years of paralysis, science and thought are once again trying to open their way. The human being is on the brink of transforming himself, not only technologically but in his consciousness. Everything proceeds as a structure. Imagine in the future a human supercivilisation, a world in which the human beings will agree on the basic premises, and each one will be a diversity. We are not talking about diversity of cultures, we are talking about diversity of individuals. that is, every person is a world. Multiplicity, diversity is what is normal in evolution. Although the evolution of consciousness follows a direction, there may be thousands of paths towards that direction.
To understand the behaviours of today's human being, the human beings of the future will have to study thoroughly the apparatus of basic beliefs of this epoch, and, then, they will not tell that he made a mistake in his reasoning, but that he perceived, analysed, predicted, planned, and decided on the basis of a very primitive system of reasoning, generated by a very poor field of beliefs.
The thought of this epoch, from the perspective of future human beings, will be a primitive thought straight-jacketed in a very narrow mental line from which certain phenomena were not visible, certain relations could not be made, certain consequences could not be predicted. It will be told that this absurd improvisation in the decisions, analyses and foresights, corresponded to a nihilistic mental behaviour on the basis of which it was impossible to build something, and that its basic resource of action was the brutal imposition through physical, economic, and other means. It will be explained that all those were the Cro-Magnon's remains that were still remaining unresolved.
Today, power is in the hands of a gang of primitive, ignorant and irresponsible ones -very brute. The stupid way of acting of these primitive ones is causing so serious mistakes in the social construction of the world, that they go on creating a field of catastrophe. This catastrophe may happen, and this would delay the process of human development. Since human consciousness is intentional, the apocalyptic visions of entropies, crashes, catastrophes (nihilistic vision), are not inexorable.
The human being of the future will not want to win and possess things; he will want to feel, create, build, learn without limits. He will not want to possess, have, control. That human being will comprehend that there are millions of forms of developing the emotion and thought, that there is an unimaginable diversity of ways of feeling and thinking. Now the vision of the human being is very behavioural and reduced; but in the future EVERYTHING WILL GO WELL, EVERYTHING WILL GO TOWARDS WHAT IT HAS TO GO.