Gregory Bateson

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 01 Sep 2022 04:17
Open in Logseq
    • If you allow purpose to organize that which comes under your conscious inspection, what you will get is a bag of tricks-some of them very valuable tricks. It is an extraordinary achievement that these tricks have been discovered; all that I don't argue. But still we do not know two-penn'orth, really, about the total network system.
    • But what worries me is the addition of modern technology to the old system. Today the purposes of consciousness are implemented by more and more effective machinery, transportation systems, airplanes, weaponry, medicine, pesticides, and so forth. Conscious purpose is now empowered to upset, the balances of the body, of society
    • He actually equates conscious purpose with the fall from Eden:
    • There was once a Garden. .... In that garden, there were two anthropoids who were more intelligent than the other animals.
    • On one of the trees there was a fruit, very high up, which the two apes were unable to reach: So they began to think. That was the mistake. They began to think purposively.
    • By and by, the he ape, whose name was Adam, went and got an empty box and put it under the tree and stepped on it, but he found he still couldn't reach the fruit. So he got another box and put it on top of the first. Then he climbed up on the two boxes and finally he got that apple.
    • Adam and Eve then became almost drunk with excitement. This was the way to do things. Make a plan, ABC and you get D.
    • They then began to specialize in doing things the planned way. In effect, they cast out from the Garden the concept of their own total systemic nature and of its total systemic nature.