Featured in The Map Is Indestructible by O.G. Rose
Coda IV
Consistency and Us
“How do we end up in our ideologies?” — perhaps this question is like asking, “How do we fall in love?” It’s hard to say, but once it happens, it happens. Then, true or false, ideologies, distinct from mere ideas, entail consistency which may or may not correspond, and yet that correspondence is indeterminable because of the very consistency which suggests the possibility of correspondence. And yet maps are unavoidable lest reality be incomprehensible; at the same time, a map that “1 to 1” delineated a territory would be a map that needed a map, and that map would need another map…and so on indefinitely. So it goes with thinking: if thinking didn’t to some degree abstract the physical world, we would need thoughts to understand thoughts…ad infinitum (so it could go with identity: if identity was simply “A is A,” there would be an eternal regression). We cannot avoid abstraction, which means we cannot avoid risk. And while it already seems as if ideology and maps are unavoidable for this reason, if it is also the case that ontology is indeed relational, maps really are unavoidable, so we better learn how to live with them. But we have not, I don’t think, and furthermore maps are indestructible: our problem is double. Did we try to avoid maps through Algebraic Metaphysics, Autonomous Empiricism, and/or Autonomous Rationality? Perhaps, and it’s reasonable we would try to avoid them given how maps can lead to conspiracies, totalitarianism, “the banality of evil,” and worse, but that strategy has proved insufficient.
As discussed in “Factviews, Networks, and Situation Creation,” facts are never “just facts”: if we can think it, it is “situated” and quilted within a great consistency which makes it possible to think. We never see one thing, which is to say that when we look at and think about a tree, it is in a yard, under a sky, against a backdrop of a fence, composed of particles…We don’t experience a tree floating in a vacuum, against a vast sea of nothingness, alone. For good and for bad, to think is to think a multiplicity, which means that all thinking is naturally “toward” generating not just a notion but an entire network and map of ideas. All thinking is naturally postured and conditioned for such if that thinking is to be possible and meaningful, which means that to think is to “bring to us” the problem of maps and to possibly embed ourselves deeper into “an internally consistent system.” We must; we are “always already” in the business of “situation,” either through realization, creation, or gaming situations to benefit us. This means we cannot avoid the problem of maps and ideology by trying to think “stand alones” or “step-by-step”: all facts, pieces of data, and the like are always already “situated,” networked, quilted, and part of some consistency. If we try to approach our thinking “step by step,” perhaps this is a methodology we have chosen and created precisely because it will likely never work (there is ideological incentive to employ this method), and so we will never have to overturn our ideology. What we might call “Non-Geometric or Algebraic Thinking” is impossible, which means that to think is to be in the business of maps. So it goes with acting, for to act I must act as if there is a world “there” according to which I can act. Even if I act thoughtlessly and instinctually, I never act “toward” a single entity: I am always acting toward and in networks (even if the problem of maps might be less and not as bad where I am thoughtless). Thus, we are always in the business of consistency, which means we are always dealing with “the problem of internally consistent systems.” ‘A man can write on [ideology] without being obliged to deal with the whole of it; but he must always preserve the totality, the catholicity of truth in every detail of his thought’ and action — for sanity’s sake, we must always risk losing ourselves.¹
I
Abstractions help humans operate in the world because abstractions are “similar” (not “the same”) to the actual world without being identical. In the same way a map that was absolutely identical to the territory that it mapped would be worthless, so thoughts and abstractions that were absolutely identical to their subjects would be unusable. We can know the world precisely because the means by which we know it are different from things in the world and the world itself, and yet at the same time, this means what we can know of the world is limited by these very differences. Because “the map isn’t the territory,” the map is useful and incomplete. With Gödel in mind, perhaps it could be said that if we can know x is true, then x cannot be (a claim about) “the whole picture”; if x is a claim about “the whole picture,” then we cannot know if x is true. What we can know is what cannot be the whole story, but without an idea of what constitutes the whole story, we cannot readily know how to organize or (meaningfully) understand what we know. We require what we cannot know is true to give meaning to what we can (reasonably) know is true; thus, we can never know if the meaning we derive from what we know is actually meaningful, as opposed to only meaningful to us. And so in a sense we cannot (meaningfully) know anything at all, only be confident (whatever that means) (understanding is (mis(s))understanding — right or wrong).
What Kurt Gödel found about math can be said about all of thought. As numbers are an entire system that cannot be axiomatic beyond its self-justification, so thinking fashions an arbitrary system in which conceptualized phenomena are given “toward-ness.” In thought, the object-cat is made “toward” the idea-of-“cat,” as if this relation is axiomatic, though this particular “toward-ness” itself can never be verified. All thought, like mathematics, is arbitrary, though that doesn’t mean thinking can never be true, just that it cannot be true in the way we tend to think. In line with this thought (as discussed by Neil Postman in Teaching as a Subversive Act), the psychologist Adelbert Ames Jr. shows that our minds shape how we see the world much more than we (let ourselves) believe (a finding that has been confirmed by psychologists, like Joe Henrich, who have studied how Westerners and Easterners perceive the world differently). Ames doesn’t show that what we perceive in the world is necessarily wrong, but that it isn’t necessarily right, and that our very experience of the world is relative to ourselves. This doesn’t mean there is no objective truth, only that we cannot necessarily say for sure what constitutes objectivity, even if we encounter it (in line with Gödel’s thought) (to be is to suffer “The Liar’s Paradox”). And all of this is a reality that encountering — and then being unable to un-encounter — are reasons for why we seek and defend “indestructible maps”: we need our shield to stand firm. Furthermore, reasons why our very experience of the world impacts our ideas of the world and vice-versa might be suggested in the reality that ideas always come in “packages”: with an idea always comes a whole world, as in an idea can be seen traces of a whole self.
Again, what we have said on “facts” applies to ideas more generally: ideas seem to come as “Sam’s Clubs versus Food Lions,” if you will, wholesales instead of simple grocery stores. Ideas always come in bundles: we can’t take a position on military spending without also potentially arranging ourselves for a position on marriage, abortion, and taxes (it doesn’t seem as if we can easily buy one idea and one idea alone). We must take bundles to start, and then maybe sell off the parts over time (trash them, customize them, etc. later on, but to start, we have to take them all). The reality that facts and worldviews arise together can give us insight into the question of why so many people keep the beliefs they grow up with, and why so many people who share a few views, tend to share many (a question explored in A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell). What must the nature of reason be and how must it function for such to be the case (for ideas to come in packages, not separately)? As we’ll elaborate on, this is because what people define as “reasoning” arises relative to what they consider “true” (Sowell will discuss “visions” such as “the constrained vision” and “the unconstrained vision”), and what they consider “true” is a “worldview” against which all reasoning is defined (a “worldview” a person cannot select simply “reasonably” or “factually,” only through “you,” per se). As a result, those who share an even somewhat similar “worldview” will easily share very similar reasoning, and so come to similar conclusions about most subjects. Furthermore, since “reason” and “facts” are relative to “worldview,” there is not readily a “rational” or “factual” reason to leave a “worldview.” Reasoning structures reality relative to a “you” (the reason a “worldview” would shift is because there is a shift in “you”).
To accept the Pro-Choice position on abortion (for example), we must accept with it the underlining “being true,” axiom, or “vision” that grounds that position in (a) rationality, (a) rationality we must necessarily accept “as grounded in truth” (rightly or wrongly) in accepting the position. Hence, to accept one position, we must take on a truth that will influence all our rationality (our entire “being rational”). And without trying, this “lens” will lead to us seeing “evidence” for other issues, and hence we will have reason to ascent to those positions, which naturally must be similar in some way to the position of Pro-Choice, since all our positions must ultimately connect to the same “being true.” In other words, since (a) “being true” and (a) “being rational” necessarily come together, to accept one case can be to accept an underlining “being true” that shapes all rationality about all topics, which means we can’t accept one position without it necessarily influencing all our positions. Hence, to take a single position, we find ourselves influencing a plethora of positions, and the reasoning that would lead us to change our view in one issue could easily require a change in fundamental axioms that would then change many of our positions. In this way, there is no such thing as a “small change” in a worldview: every change can be world-changing.
If we can change a person’s mind in one area, we might change them all areas, and people might precisely realize this subconsciously and thus resist shifting. For this reason, “changing minds” might require an emotional change and shift before an intellectual one, which might suggest a way that “The Overton Window” works in social thought and politics (a case study that I think we need to take with the upmost seriousness). Alex Ebert and I discussed “The Overton Window” in light of his tremendous “Fre(Q) Theory” (#183), and Ebert pointed out how a politician might take an extreme position aiming for a moderate position, knowing that doing so increases the probability that the politician actually succeeds at his moderate goal. I agree, and oddly a reason this can work is precisely because extreme positions can feel more than less extreme, and the “nonrational basis” or “vision” by which people operate. We learn in The Conflict of Mind that “ideas are not experiences” and that if we want to change how a person thinks it tends to require an experience; otherwise, we don’t feel enough to truly motivate us to change (furthermore, at the basis of rationality is a nonrational truth that seems more emotive and imaginative than logical, for good and for bad). “The process of total saturation” that Alex Ebert describes can be seen as ultimately an experience, not just an idea, and in that way we could think of “The Overton Window” as an experiential process more than just an intellectual one. We experience an extreme position and feel it, which then motivates us to shift our view more moderately (exactly as the person with the extreme position might have wanted), which also can feel more moderate and reasonable. In this way, the Overton Window might work not because we so must have ideas about the extreme position that we then question and find the moderate position more reasonable, but instead we primarily feel the extreme position and then feel ourselves “not being like that,” which feels centrist (as we might subconsciously know we are supposed to be) and by extension more democratic.
Why is this relevant to our concerns about maps? Emotions can move a person into a new position before they think of all the ramifications, and then they must adjust all their positions, seeing as every position is interlocked with every other, hence why the Overton Window works like it does. If our neighbor is LGBT, kind, and respecting of Christianity, then we as a Christian through interaction can feel convinced that LGBTs can be kind people, but then after this shift we can start to “think back” on all the implications this might have for our interpretation of Christianity. The kind feelings toward our LGBT neighbor lead the way, however, which is critical to note, for it suggests that people don’t readily intellectually change positions before they emotionally shift, and a reason for this can be that people (subconsciously) realize that changing one position can result in needing to change regarding the entire network of their beliefs, and so what seems to be the best way to get people to change their minds is to make them emotionally shift in one area (or to make them through emotions “feel like they must” change positions) before they so much think about what this shift will mean for their entire worldview. There’s a way in which emotional shifts can also seem deterministic, for we don’t readily choose what we feel when we encounter people, but we do find ourselves having to respond to how we find ourselves feeling. Thus, in encountering a kind LGBT, it can be as if we are “forced” to change our perspective through emotions, and then we can start to think about what that means, which can then lead to a shift in our entire foundational views. Emotions seem to lead the way though, precisely because all ideas are networked, and this on another note might suggest that “changing views” is a temporal process that takes time. This suggests a need for a Liminal Web infrastructure to make this “processing” possible if Democracy is going to function, but that must be elaborated on in II.2.
“The Overton Window” and how it works might be evidence that ideas and worldviews are indeed networks and “quilted,” and this would mean that every idea and fact is laced together into a web of many ideas and facts. Wittgenstein’s famous quote in mind, it is not easy to repair a broken spiderweb, and so “changing the threads” of a spiderweb is a delicate process that people will naturally resist engaging in. The process seems like it must be slow and careful (again, suggesting a need for a new infrastructure like the Liminal Web to make this process); if it is not, there could be significant social and political backlash. It is not naturally pleasant to think of all our beliefs changing, and it is perhaps uniquely disturbing to realize that a single one of our beliefs changing could start a chain-reaction through the network of our beliefs that leads to everything changing (hence why “certainty deterrence” seems easy to employ, and also why we shouldn’t be surprised that people seem unwilling to change their minds about anything).² Alternatively, if all beliefs are linked, then perhaps if we can keep an issue isolated “as if” it was unconnected from everything else we believe, that might position the issue to be invincible, seeing as it is disconnected from the network which situates it and thus which might overturn it. Does this incentivize fragmentation? Perhaps, and certainly there could be an incentive to avoid topics which could risk a “cascading effect” that upsets many of our beliefs.
To think is to network and generate consistencies, for every fact or notion is itself because of another fact or notion, which is itself because of another fact or notion…which means that to think is to map-maze. To approach this topic, we have spoken of “The Heart/Mind Dialectic,” and we might ask: “Is rationality that ignores the heart even rational?” If not, the rational cannot even be itself without the nonrational, which nevertheless can seem rational to ignore. Likewise, if thinking just generates map-mazes, is there a sense in which it doesn’t seem rational to think? Perhaps, and perhaps avoiding thought is precisely what most of us do for as long as we can — until we encounter “The Real,” until something goes wrong, and we are forced to think. Indeed, thinking doesn’t seem to start until things break, and perhaps for this reason we shouldn’t be quick to assume that if there was a lack of thought and rationality in the past, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Things were “given,” as discussed in Belonging Again; little was broke, and so little thought was needed. However, under Global Pluralism, “givens” have been deconstructed in our regular encounter with “otherness,” and as a result we find ourselves having to think (difference), which can just feel like creating map-mazes, which can feel irrational to do (especially if we’re under the impression that rationality can be “autonomously rational,” which isn’t actually the case and risks self-effacement). Pluralism and Globalism make it harder to not think, and if we’re not prepared for thinking to map-maze, this can be a startling and disturbing change. As a result, we might retract and retreat into isolation, tribalism, and worse. The stakes are high, and yet addressing “the problem of internally consistent systems,” of “indestructible maps,” isn’t easy.
II
It has been claimed that “the map is indestructible” in O.G. Rose, but isn’t this simply wrong? People change their beliefs. People don’t stay the same. Thus, maps are destructible — yes? Surely maps are not indestructible, no? Indeed, they are, but many of what we think are “maps” are actually just “notions,” and furthermore people who change maps don’t so much destroy them as much as they “step out of” and “leave” the maps (a significant difference that suggests a need to emphasize “faithful presence” and the social coordination technology of the Liminal Web, though all that must be expanded on in Belonging Again (Part II)). Admittedly, yes, it can seem convenient to make a distinction between “ideology/map” and “notion” (or “mere ideology”), but this distinction is important because if we don’t realize there are structural differences between these, then we can believe everything is a notion and so everything can be disproven, and thus we don’t need to worry about “indestructible maps” (which for me is a very serious problem). We have seen people change their views and leave their beliefs, and this gives us reason to think it is possible, but problematically it also gives us “reason to think” that we don’t need to worry about “indestructible maps” at all: just like democracy, argumentation, and rationality do their work and eventually the truth will be realized and spread. Certainly, let us help rationality do its work, but ultimately it cannot do everything, and if it encounters a Pynchon Risk thinking only “notions” exist, rationality might have us wander into an epistemological situation from which we never return and ultimately within suffer self-effacement. But thinking “everything was just a true or false notion,” we could be unprepared for this possibility and suffer the consequences.
Again, we go through life experiencing “notions being disproven” and people winning debates, so we know people can change their minds and that ideas can be disproven, and for this reason it’s easy to go through life not worrying about things like “indestructible maps” or thinking Pluralism isn’t a situation that rationality “alone” could address — all we need to do is keeping using rationality. But if this is mistaken, and in there being “indestructible maps,” if rationality encounters one of them, not realizing such maps exist, rationality could keep trying and trying to deconstruct the map, only to always fail, and then easily become pathological and totalitarian to stop the map, at the point of which rationality will likely see the map as closed-minded, irrational, and even evil, giving the rationality justification to use force and totalitarianism “for the greater good.” And so goes the history of Modernity, some might argue, which is simply a “rational direction” when faced with maps that rationality doesn’t know are indestructible. What else could be the problem but bigotry, stubbornness… (we likely should protect the children from their parents)? It couldn’t possibly be that there is something in the ontoepistemological structure of thought itself? That’s irrational. (Or nonrational?)
“Maps” and “notions” in immediacy and “on the face of it” are experienced as identical, and that means we are always at risk of encountering a Pynchon Risk without realizing it, all while thinking such a risk doesn’t exist because “indestructible maps” don’t exist; after all, all we’ve experienced are notions, and notions can change. Haven’t people left Christianity? How is it “an indestructible map” then? Indeed, people have, but just because maps are indestructible doesn’t mean people can’t leave them (they just can’t destroy them), or that they can’t make a “mistake” of not reading apologetics and thus thinking there is an “essential contradiction” when there is not — that’s not the issue. The issue is that if people don’t want to leave Christianity, they never will have to encounter “good reason” to do so against their wants: rationality will always support their decision, for there will always be “internal consistency” to justify their decision. And this is the point: if there are maps, it’s only a matter of time before Pluralism and history test, organize, and coordinate people into groups, and there will be some significant percentage of people who ascribe to x map, others y map, others z map…and these Pluralistic distinctions will prove indestructible. Once this happens, we either must learn to live with these differences, or we will not learn how to live with one another. Oh, and some of these “essential differences” might describe others as wrong, “sinners,” or the like…
Also, if we don’t know there is a difference between “notion” and “map,” if we are in a map and one day decide we have to examine and be critical of our beliefs, we might find them indeed to be “internally consistent,” which could easily function as evidence to us that we are critical thinkers, non-ideological, and “different” from everyone else. After all, our beliefs don’t entail essential contradiction, so how could anyone not think like us unless they didn’t care for the truth and had failed to critically examine their own beliefs (otherwise, by now, they would have found reason to move into our “internally consistent” worldview)? None of this follows, of course, but if we don’t realize it’s possible for something to be “internally consistent” and yet still false (a mistake that is easy to make if we don’t know there is a difference between “map” and “notion”), then we might take examining our map and finding it consistent as evidence of its uniqueness; furthermore, in thinking and working ourselves to the place where we could make this conclusion, we could easily conclude we are “critical thinkers” and don’t need to think so much anymore, when actually it could be argued that critical thinking starts with realizing “the problem of internally consistent systems” (for this suggests the primacy of “empathy,” which could be the most difficult intellectual act, as O.G. Rose discusses in “On Critical Thinking”). To simply come to this realization is arguably to “open up the possibility of critical thinking,” but this doesn’t constitute the whole of its activity. But if we don’t know the distinction between “map” and “notion,” this mistake and interpretation is easy to make.
To stress, I am not arguing that people can’t leave a map (versus “destroy”), only that “internally consistent systems” are maps that people never necessarily have to abandon. Indeed, people do change their views, but it wouldn’t seem like mere rationality is the means by which people make that change, for it seems rationality must necessarily preserve the ideology/truth on which it is based (perhaps something like emotional intelligence is more useful). But knowing this, as discussed in “On Critical Thinking” by O.G. Rose, is a point at which we might understand the intellectual and critical role of empathy (and arguably empathy is critical thinking); we must know the need to entertain different truth premises which we don’t agree with from within them, best we can. Also, if we’re Christian, for example, the recognition that rationality must be “practically predestined” by its truth can lead us to concluding we need to “assume different truths” in order to better examine our own worldview, that we can’t accurately critique Christianity assuming Christian truths. We could understand the need to master the art of thinking in terms of “assuming x” then “assuming y” — a philosophical art. However, at the end of the day, no matter how much “philosophical reasoning” we engage in, unless we equally as seriously assume the premises of y like we assume x, won’t our critical thinking ultimately just prove be a farce, an indirect act of ideology preservation? Perhaps, but understanding that we must reason not just from “the ground up” but from “new conditions” entirely.
III
What is “being rational” to us necessarily strikes us as “being true,” in the same way that “the signifier” necessarily strikes us as “the signified,” unless we stop and think otherwise, which might freeze us up and paralyze us with uncertainty. The reality that “the map is not the territory” is “practically forgotten” for good reason: it would be too difficult to function if we thought about this all the time. Likewise, by extension, we necessarily believe we are justified to formulate “the deterrence of certainty” over what we believe, and then to go about our lives “situation creating” that which confirms our ideology, making our “factviews” (our “ideology” and “human drive”) appear to us increasingly “axiomatic,” “grounded,” and/or “objective.” But then we learn of Anselm and something haunts us, something we can’t shake. And then we learn with Korzybski that ‘we have had no scientific functional non-el definition of man,’ that there has been no “science of subject” (Hegel).³ And then we realize the costs and stakes are high of changing this situation.
As we learn from Anselm, we must enter an ideology to determine if it is true or false according to its own internal logic and consistency, but it is possible that we never encounter something which would unveil the ideology to be “essentially inconsistent” (even if it was false), and so we would then be trapped forever. Perhaps we do successfully deconstruct the ideology, but then we have to move on to the next one, then the next one…until one day we perhaps encounter a map that is indeed “internally consistent.” And once this happens, on what grounds could we ever leave the map? It’s internally consistent, after all — shouldn’t we believe it? On what grounds could we conclude otherwise that wasn’t just stubbornness? And so our “epistemologically responsible” act of investigating maps has arguably lead us to a trap: we’re now stuck in a map that doesn’t seem like we have any justification to leave. In a sense, like Anselm, we tried to disprove God from a prayer. We have no rational justification to stand back up. But perhaps a “nonrational reason”? Indeed, perhaps…⁴
How Bertrand Russel described Anselm’s argument coming and going in his mind, floating around, seeming valid in one moment and then invalid the next — so can be our relationship to any and all “internally consistent systems” and/or “maps.” We can never be entirely done with them; “maps” haunt, and in doing such can make us “mentally ill.” As God is not in the world and so Anselm’s argument is possible, so the fundamental axioms of most ideologies are not in the world, meaning their plausibility can always be maintained (perhaps markets just haven’t been “free enough” yet; perhaps Communism just hasn’t been “given enough of a chance” yet — they’ve not been “given their shot in the world enough yet). To avoid this “problem of internally consistent systems,” it’s reasonable that we attempted “autonomous rationality” — once we are “on our knees,” it could be too late, a haunting trap — and yet that path has not worked, leaving us exposed to Dynamics (Illich) and self-effacement. If Anselm is right, we must enter something to destroy it that entering removes our capacity for destroying it. We can be in or outside of maps, but we cannot destroy them, and once inside them we can find “no reason” not to stay. And yet “epistemic responsibility” compelled us to enter the maps (for doing “what was right,” we can seem punished) — should we have ignored ethics? And while this question lingers, we are compelled by map-drives to make more maps, always adding more possible map-mazes to the problem. Humans can seemingly ever-generate maps which poise epistemic problems to us that we cannot “rationally” address, as we must to avoid existential anxiety most likely won’t be able to handle.
Anselm leaves us with a choice, one that we cannot know is right or wrong ahead of time, and a choice that once we make we might never have “good reason” to unmake even if we should.⁵ Anselm can “hauntingly” so make us face this situation because “relations are real,” facts are always “factviews,” there are “monads” more than “atoms,” and so on: avoiding Anselm would require us to live in an Algebraic Universe, in which we could not exist as we are, necessarily having to be more like “flatlanders.” Anselm unveils that “ontology and epistemology” are “always already” “ontoepistemology,” and further Anselm can help us understand why it is not best for “autonomous rationality” to “lead the way” when it comes to the issue of Global Pluralism. Why? Because rationality is a matter of consistency, and if our problem is “internal consistency,” rationality cannot prove sufficient, only reinforce and worsen. This is what Anselm can help us understand (which is to say he can point toward “The Liminal Web,” social coordination, “faithful presence”…), and in Anselm haunting us, perhaps we might see a grace.
IV
Why exactly did we bring the thinkers together like we did in “The Map Is Indestructible” essay? Partly to show the many ways “the map is indestructible,” given that reality is situational and relational, and also because we cannot handle too much of the Real all at once, but also to suggest that “maps” are a residual of “givens” that we are still left with after “the loss of givens” — a major topic of Belonging Again. We can associate “the loss of givens” with “the death of God” in Nietzsche, and also from Nietzsche we can associate “the shadow of Buddha” with “maps.” Nietzsche spoke of Buddha’s shadow lasting for many years after Buddha’s death; similarly, after God’s death, we are still left with God’s shadow, which is to say the majority have not yet realized that the paradigm shifted long ago. “Maps” are like “givens” as “the shadow of Buddha” is like God, but there are distinctions, and furthermore the persistence of maps beyond and without “givens” can employ Gödel and Žižek for us to better understand, all while we keep in mind that reality is relational, and hence why we cannot avoid the problem of maps by say stressing “facts” or empiricism. Furthermore, avoiding maps means we stay in A/A, leading to the “insanity” which concerned Korzybski (for our Symbolic is inadequate to prepare us for the Pynchonian truth that “everything is connected”). And ultimately all this means we must face the kneeling Anselm who haunts us and asks how it is we can avoid kneeling ourselves?
We learned from Gödel that “incompleteness is fundamental,” and so that means we realize that everyone is working with maps. Well, if that’s the case, why should we leave our map? Nothing we enter will be any better than what we already have, which is to say that Gödel in an act that seems to destroy worldviews can actually remove the incentive to move beyond them. Sure, perhaps we are wrong believing our given conspiracy, but everyone is ultimately wrong, yes? This can lead us to the relativism of Postmodernism that has been so problematic, where everyone “has a right to their beliefs and convictions,” but even if we don’t fall for that trap, Gödel can still be used in ways to maintain maps that make them “practically function” like “givens” even if we know they are not such. This is because if all maps are incomplete, the fact our beliefs “are not given” then does not automatically undermine them; in fact, they should be “just as given” as anything else. Truth claims are “incomplete,” and so suddenly we have found a way to maintain “givens” even while we acknowledge their impossibility. Our maps are incomplete, and though that means they aren’t the territory or “given” in that sense, they can still have authority over us, precisely because we can believe they “could still be true” even if we can’t prove them. In this way, the “vividness of incompleteness” levels the playing field, while at the same time Gödel does not give us the tools to say maps are false, only a tool that leaves us acknowledging that we can’t say a map is false (in terms of correspondence), only if it is consistent and coherent — which is a state which could describe both a true and a false map. If our map is consistent (and a map that isn’t a mere notion is indeed that), then nothing more can be said for or against it (until history shifts, perhaps). The map could be true. Indeed, it could be. Anselm haunts.
Where “givens” were maintained, the depths of the ontoepistemological quandary that Anselm presents us with did not have to be fully faced. We could read Anselm, nod, and go about our business, but now where nothing is “given” and ideology with maps try to “fill the gap” left by “givens,” we find ourselves having to think about “getting on our knees” or not (“thoughtlessness” cannot save us — thankfully/horrifically). In a way, “givens” helped us not have to consider Anselm, precisely because we could live “thoughtlessly” and that was good enough; now, the structure and form of Anselm’s argument turns out to be present in all maps, not just theological ones. We cannot avoid internal consistency by avoiding God; if anything, the death of God unleashed Anselm. That, or needing something to “practically function” like “givens” with their loss, we have turned to maps, and there found Anselm waiting. What now?
Consider the following, with the movement between (“practically similar”) “givens” and “maps” basically being marked by “the loss of givens,” which brought about the realization (not “creation”) of “the problem of internally consistent systems” (which could then seemingly accelerate and multiply):
“Age of Givens”
“The problem of internally consistent systems” was present but not faced, for thinking and rationality did not have to consider it, able to maintain a state of “thoughtlessness.” Maps and ideologies were still present, of course, but their need for internal consistency was not so necessary for the public. Consistency easily played a role for intellectuals, and ideologies which lacked “internal consistency” struggled to spread and survive “ideological selection” over time, but “the problem of internally consistent systems,” thanks to “thoughtlessness,” did not have to be generally faced.
“Age of Maps”
After “the loss of givens” with Globalization and Pluralism, thinking and rationality find themselves unable to maintain “thoughtlessness” and so must consider and explore the internal consistency of themselves and their beliefs. This is perhaps accelerating “ideological acceleration,” but it is also making “vivid” to people the fact that all beliefs and ideologies cannot be verified (that Gödel is right). As a result, this gives people a way to make their maps indestructible, as well as give them permission to create and explore new systems of internal consistency, leading to an explosion of Pandora’s Rationality (as unleashed by the internet).
“Post-Secularism” (as it can be called) is perhaps defined by moving into “The Age of Maps” and the facing of the reality that “maps are indestructible.” Charles Taylor suggested that it is impossible to get people to cease creating and believing in “Master Narratives,” and that the effort to keep Pluralism from ripping the world apart by erasing Master Narratives is doomed. Under Post-Secularity, this truth is faced, which means we also face that we must work with maps, which are dangerous. We then seemingly come to face a “meaning crisis,” not only because “all meanings feel arbitrary like maps,” but also because there is no necessary way to stop us from ever-generating sources of meaning through ever-generating maps — causing radical fragmentation. Where “givens” collapse though, and where maps can “race in” and help stabilize us faced with the resulting anxiety, the motivation to ever-generate maps could be strong. A map “nova effect” then is likely; Pluralism will ever-pluralize. For better? For worse? That seems up to us. Could we just avoid ideology entirely? No. ‘We are in and of [an ideology] before we can think about it.’⁶ We are at risk before we can think about risk.
History is the process by which “maps” and “notions” can be divided, and with time we should expect increasingly more governments, institutions, people, etc. to organize and back their lives on “maps” (it’s only practical), which means “the problem of internally consistent systems” should become more pronounced with time institutionally and socially, even if on the outskirts there is a multiplication of notions. And yet even while this occurs, the number of “possible maps” will multiply with the growth of notions, as enabled by the internet. This was discussed in The Conflict of Mind when it was argued that in infinite information over enough time, all ideas lacking internal contradiction would be discovered, plausible, intellectually dishonest to outright dismiss, and possibly wrong. This reflection was pointing ahead to “the problem of internally consistent systems” which confronts us now, but what it means is that the internet greatly multiplies the number of notions/maps we must confront and consider (like Anselm), ever-intensifying our problem Perhaps considering and deconstructing all these notions will keep us busy as some “map” moves in ever-closer to the centers of power, and then by the time we notice the governments, economies, and the like have already recalibrated themselves in light of the map, making the map all the more difficult to correct and stop. And even if we were to encounter a map before it reached the centers of power, how could we stop it? It’s “internally consistent.” Violence? Censorship? Indeed…
History plays a pivotal role when it comes to consistent systems, for there is an inherent test that comes with time that helps sort what “seems to be a map” from what is “actually just a notion,” that is not just a matter of argument but experience, unexpected challenges, and the like (and if indeed “losing stickiness” is critical for changing worldviews, as discussed in “Compelling” by O.G. Rose, that is also a process that inherently requires time and hence history). History entails an “Ideology Naturel Selection” or a “Map Natural Selection,” which is to say the “notion/map(s)” (we’re not sure which they are yet) are gradually sorted and realized as either “notions” or “maps.” The major religions are clearer examples of “notion/map(s)” that have through testing and time been found to be (in all probability) “ideologies” and “(indestructible) maps,” which is to say they are “internally consistent” and so lack any “essential contradictions,” though ideologies like Communism and Capitalism are also “maps.” We can’t know what “notion/map(s)” are which “on the face of it” before testing and time, but once maps emerge and prove indestructible, we find ourselves with a new problem: how should “indestructible maps” relate?
Not all ideas are structurally equivalent: there are “internally consistent systems” (“maps”) and “internally inconsistent systems” (“notions”), and there is a genuine accomplishment to the degree humanity can look back on its history and see consistent successes in deconstructing and freeing itself from mere notions. But the strategy that got us to this point in history will no longer suffice and only overfit: a negation/sublation” is in order. All this suggests Belonging Again and the need for a new “social coordination system” — this suggests our great challenge. Indeed, but our point for now is that if History is the prime agent (with a capital “H” even), every change of “conditions of possibility” must go through a “faithful presence” (that can feel too slow, immoral, inactive, etc. to be right). If History is a process and perhaps the only process through which “notion/map” can be shorted apart (and who knows, perhaps every “map” will, in the end, turn out to just be a “notion”), then our role is to steward and protect this process so that History might so unfold. This suggests Hegel and The Absolute Choice. This suggests a commitment to “the encountered Other and surprising Face.”
V
To list out and review points we have touched on in this work:
1. The only way ultimately to tell if x is a map or notion is to enter it (Anselm).
2. If x is a map, it’s indestructible, meaning there will never be “good reason” to leave it from within it.
3. Every notion which arises could be a map and hence internally consistent.
4. With the internet, there is an explosion of notions, and with time every possible “internally consistent system” is likely to be found and spread (possibly setting up countless traps).
5. At the same time, through the “trials and errors” of history, it is likely civilizations will be increasingly founded on “internally consistent systems” versus mere notions, precisely because they are indestructible and thus better for long-term sustainability.
6. In both of these senses — the multiplication of maps/notions and increasing movement of maps to civilizational centers — is what we suggest in speaking of “the problem of internally consistent systems.”⁷
Following Anselm, the only way to tell if a worldview is a map or a notion is to enter it, and if it is a map, this act could mean we end up stuck in it forever. If it’s a notion, we might succeed at deconstructing it, but then what are we left with? Nothing, possibly an unmediated “Real” that overwhelms us. And so then, unless we’re to end up in a deconstructed nihilism which could cause us madness, we must go “kneel into” another worldview, then another, then another…until we find one that we cannot deconstruct. But maybe we can’t simply because it is “internally consistent,” not because it is “correspondent” with reality and actual? Can we be certain of otherwise? How could we derive a sense of otherwise (“a sense of the vertical”)?
A world of conspiracy, psychosis, totalitarianism, etc. — products which reflect human psychological states — suggest a people which are stuck “moving horizontally,” which is to say “stuck in consistency”: we require “vertical movement,” which is to say “considerations of the vertical.” But that’s impossible, isn’t it? Haven’t we established that on our journey so far? So it seems, and ultimately maybe that is what we will conclude, but for now we can at least posit that we need a sense of “vertical movement” to at least psychologically calm us, some sense that we can believe in and find “plausible,” even if we can never be completely certain in it. How is that possible? Well, I think this “sense of the vertical” can emerge from “the encounter” and “surprise” of the Other, which is to say in the event of a relation that “comes upon us” and that before its Face we are able to stand tested in and for our worldview and find it not deconstructed. “The Surprising and Encountered Face,” we might say (alluding to Levinas), could provide “a sense of the vertical” (perhaps at some “Gödel Point”), which is to say that if we can learn to handle the anxiety and difficulty of Others, we might find an existential means for addressing “the problem of internally consistent systems.”
Perhaps, sure, but why should we even consider that strategy? What is it in the structure and quality of human epistemology which makes this even a possibility? It is in the reality that the Face and “encounter” are nonrational, and ultimately all rationality must be organized and made possible as itself thanks to a “(nonrational) truth,” precisely because “autonomous rationality” is impossible. But this is a claim that needs elaboration and defense, which we will do next before outlining dangers we face if rationality fails to acknowledge its ultimately reliance on a (nonrational) truth. That point will take us into the world of Benjamin Fondane and then conspiracies, but for now let us unpack what we mean when we claim that “the true isn’t the rational.”
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Notes
¹Balthasar, Hans Urs Von. Word and Redemption. New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1965: 17.
²It has been noted that a reason it is hard to lie is because one lie leads to another, which leads to another, and eventually the network of deception is so vast that it’s hard to keep up with and eventually there is a point of failure that brings the whole thing down. Are all beliefs structured similarly? Perhaps, but perhaps the difference is that beliefs are easier to remember precisely because we believe them and they align with what we think reality is like; in lying, we must remember something we said that is not supported by our beliefs or facticity (we don’t find support so easily). Perhaps it’s harder to lie than align with our beliefs but that doesn’t mean the conceptual structure is much different.
³Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity. Fifth Edition (Second Printing). Brooklyn, NY: Institute of General Semantics, 2000: 40.
⁴How can we unveil an ideology to only be a “bad idea,” seeing as we must “step into it” to find a contradicting inconsistency, but once in, we’re not “where” the justification is found and determinable as true or false? We’d ultimately need to show that the (“Transcendent-of-the-system”) justification is false; otherwise, even if we do realize the supposed ideology is only a “bad idea,” we cannot say that the “bad idea” cannot become an ideology again with a little adjustment (the ideology can easily “come back” with some creativity, if you will). For example: until its fundamental axioms about human nature are proven wrong, even if we find some errors in the theory of Capitalism, we cannot completely destroy the ideology of Capitalism — a new thinker can easily revive it, perhaps by redefining what drives Capitalism from capital to creativity — the “consistency” can easily be restored. What is realized as a “bad idea” can suddenly become an ideology again at any moment. Destructible ideologies are easily repaired into indestructible maps.
Negating a justification would ultimately necessitate stepping into “the (Transcendent) system” of the justification, which might not be possible (making the map indestructible). But even if it was, to “step out” the ideology is to leave the system which we need to search to find a (possible) contradicting inconsistency (for the sake of realizing the system as a “bad idea”). Hence, to undermine the ideology, we must leave the consistency intact, as to undermine the consistency, we must leave the justification standing (not “stepping into it”). And if we prove the consistency is flawed with a contradiction, “the base” might still remain, from which a new consistency (“being rational”) might emerge at any time, replacing the old system with a new one. Like when a weed is removed but the roots are still present, the weed can grow back, anew, stronger, continuously.
So be it — that just suggests we should focus on the undermining the justification (the “being true”) instead of finding a contradiction in the consistency (the “being rational”), for when a foundation collapses, so collapses the building as well. Who cares if the ideology is “stepped out from” if the justification of that ideology is undermined: that act takes out both the “being true” and the “being rational,” does it not? Well, true, but this assumes first that a justification can be “stepped into” (that it isn’t Utterly Transcendent), which if it can’t be and the ideology is apocalyptic, it doesn’t bode well for the human race. But even if the justification can be “stepped into,” a question remains: is it possible to falsify a justification? Maybe, but how?
If I believe the presence of human DNA is grounds for realizing an entity has human dignity, how could we prove this premise false (or true, for that matter — the axiom seems to transcend the dichotomy, a kind of basis which such dichotomies require to exist)? Yes, we might “feel” as if the premise “humans deserve dignity” is empirical, and arguably humans seem to “wear on their face” that they are deserving of dignity (as the phenomenon-of-cat seems to “wear on its face” the word “cat”), but the perceived doesn’t “wear” the thought, though the thought can “color” the perceived as if it does. That doesn’t mean “the thought” doesn’t accurately reflect “the perceived” — just because we wouldn’t realize “humans deserve dignity” without thought doesn’t mean that humans actually don’t (though it might be meaningless to say they do, not because it isn’t true, but because we couldn’t understand this truth) — but this does suggest that disproving the premise would require not challenging the perceived, but challenging the thought, and how might we do that? Where do we go to challenge the thought? Logic, I suppose, and yes, some axioms might be undermined because they are logical contradictions — there is hope for taking out some ideologies by taking out their justification. But not all, and if those ideologies are “apocalyptic,” this could be a major problem, especially considering that stopping apocalyptic ideologies could require taking a Pynchon Risk.
Is there a logical contradiction in the premise “humans deserve dignity”? No: it’s an axiom, a justification of a whole system (of “being in the world”). It cannot be undermined “in of itself,” but instead must be undermined because “it doesn’t work.” Alright, but how and where might we determine if an idea doesn’t work? In the perceived? In the world? Hence, we must “step into” the world to determine if the justification of a system works, but what did we say before? To “step into” the world is to “step into” where we can only show, at best, the contradictory inconsistency of a system, but even if we succeeded in this, the justification would remain, and hence a new ideology and system could “grow like a weed” again, consisting of a new consistency, that if undermined, could be replaced by another “weed” — ad infinitum.
Two more points should be noted here on “the indestructibility of maps.”
First, what constitutes “working” is relative. For example, in the time of the Confederacy, one could have argued that the premise “blacks are human deserving dignity” didn’t work because it would destroy the Southern economy, and hence, the premise wasn’t true. But to someone else, the premise “blacks aren’t humans deserving dignity” cannot be true, for it doesn’t work at creating a better and more moral society: it results in blacks being abused on all levels. Hence, what functions to one person as evidence against a set of axioms doesn’t necessarily function as such evidence to everyone, which makes destroying “a map” incredibly difficult. For someone bent on believing in this premises could argue that even if we succeeded at making everyone agree with us, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. And that person would be right, and there would be little if any evidence relative to his or her framework that the axioms the person holds don’t work, for “working” is conditioned. In fact, that person could easily believe that he or she has “objective” reason to believe the premises do work, for they contribute to the thriving of the Southern economy. If we offered evidence that this was false, someone might simply suggest that we haven’t gathered enough evidence yet to prove our case, for no amount of evidence could ever force a person to jump from “case for” to “the case” (in line with the thought of Hume).
Second, not all “consistency” can be undermined, even if absurd. For example, if I believe humans are from the future and don’t realize it, this is a justification for viewing the world “as full of time travelers,” and nothing that happens in the world could prove my system wrong. If I never see a time machine, I can claim it’s because time machines haven’t been invented yet; if someone tells me I have no evidence for my claim, I can claim that the rate of technological advancement makes it clear that time traveling will be invented eventually, and that it’s only proper that time travelers amongst us today wouldn’t let us discover their true identities lest they ruin the course of history; and so on. Ascribing to the absurd, I can live my life happily and my ideology will “work” well enough. “The map is indestructible.”
⁵Might we think of Anselm as the patron saint of “The True isn’t the Rational” and “The Absolute Choice”?
⁶Edward Said on Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. “Labyrinth of Incarnations: The Essays of Maurice Merleau-Ponty”. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 4.
⁷As Benjamin Studebaker has written on in “The Triangle of Essentialism,” please note this point has ramifications for particularist political projects represented by someone like Dugin or Premodern Japan, for it suggests that peoples could be defined across not different essences but “indestructible maps,” suggesting that greater information and rationality could help particularism precisely when particularism seems doomed before a (technological) universal — or at least help the rationalization of particularist projects (perhaps a useful distraction to Capital and Nick Land’s AI)…
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