I’ve missed my writing deadline, so I have to improvise… As you can imagine, over all these months of writing I still have a few drafts lying around that never made it into the series. But maybe some of them should have.
Here is one I ultimately decided to skip, because at the time I really wanted to wrap up the series and close the loop to the beginning. And this one felt more like a little excursion — certainly interesting, but optional, however also powerfully integrating many of the concepts discussed during the series.
It seems a good time to add it now after some time, and maybe it motivates you to revisit some of the other concepts. I’ve tried hard to link everything to the relevant newsletter episodes. Especially, if you subscribed recently and haven’t looked at the archive, this is an invitation to explore thedepths of the series. Enjoy!
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Symbolic processing, cognitive edition
I can have a symbol of a scale, and I could just stay there and think that. What I can do is: I can actually try to participate, perspectivally, I can engage with actually balancing. And then what I can do is reverse that process, to some degree, by which my capacity for balance has been exapted, via some exaptive processing on my cerebellum, so that I actually use it to find complex contingency relationships between any areas of my brain.
What's been happening, in fact, in neuroscience over the last 10, 15 years is this revolution of our understanding of the cerebellum. We used to think the cerebellum was primarily about balance. And now we know that the cerebellum has all these terrific cognitive functions.
Here’s two areas of the brain that are often correlated together. The cerebellum picks up on trying to improve, smooth out, find the patterns of contingency and dependency between them. And so what I can do is I can activate — if you'll allow me this way of talking — my cerebellum and that machinery, which is precisely the machinery I need to practice the skill of being more just. I need the ability to coordinate, to find, to sense complex contingencies between multiple variables and make that better. The cerebellum is exactly the machinery I want to activate — I'm using activation as the reverse of exaptation — I want to activate it, because that will actually allow me to participate in the processing, that will allow me to cultivate the skills that will make me just, that will then ultimately ground my conception of justice.
This “holding in mind” activating process allows me to deeply participate in justice, because I'm literally becoming more just. The symbol is affording me, by making use of the exaptation machinery. Do you see that this [participation] is bi-directional in a way in which the projection isn’t? The symbol is doing that for me in a powerful way. […]
You are much more symbolic, in a participatory fashion, than you might think.
Coordination between sense modalities
Okay, look at these quickly, without thinking:
Which one is “Buba” and which one is “Kiki”?
Overwhelmingly (this experiment has been done by Ramachandran and others), [the right one] is Buba and [the left one] is Kiki.
I do this all the time in my class. What's going on there? Why is this Buba and this Kiki? You've never heard these words before. They don't mean anything to you. And people will say things like, “This is sharp and spiky, and so is Kiki.” And I say to them, “What do you mean? How is this sharp? I can't cut myself on it. And how is [the word Kiki] sharp and spiky?” And they're doing all this bridging and this cerebellar coordination between different sense modalities and different ways of acting. And you're doing it like that! [*claps hands*] There it is!
This is playful. I'm just activating it to no purpose. But of course I can activate this machinery to a purpose. That's what I'm doing when I'm holding up the scales. But you have to participate in it. You have to live with the symbol. You have to internalize it. It's almost like you have to savor it.
In contrast to the limited definition we software people have for “symbol”, as just being some kind of external representation of a concept, often tied to a certain notation, our cognitive system has a much more involved way of utilizing symbols.
Seeing through the symbol
Symbols have a capacity to put us into this relationship with something.
Here's justice, here's the symbol, here's me. We've got the symbol, and what it's doing is it's actually transforming me in a powerful way. It is reactivating, reconfiguring my machinery so that I become capable of interacting with the world, so that I now start to be able to see through this symbol — remember how you’re looking through the pig at Sam? — I'm looking through, which means beyond and by means of, the symbol. I get to see more and realize and make more justice. I'm becoming, I'm activating the machinery of balance that's allowing me that perspectival awareness that’s sensitizing me to the contingent relationships between variables. It's actually helping me to cultivate the skills of justice. And of course, as I start to get better contact with [justice], [it] is disclosing itself in a new way, and it discloses itself more through the processing I'm doing. […]
Let me try and give you another example of this, and let's use something at the other end, something that's not so conceptual, at least in one sense.
Example: Breath in meditation
I'm meditating, and I'm following my breath in meditation — breathing in and out, following my breath. (Some of you have seen, perhaps, the videos I've given on the instruction on how to practice vipassana.)
What's happening is: Normally, I am focusing on my breath, and that act of focusing and following my breath is helping me to scale down my attention. And for a long time, it can stay that way. But what can happen is: I can become sensitized by scaling down, because you increase your sensitivity, to how much in process my mind is.
I'm normally thinking of my mind as a thing. I might even think that my mind is a container that contains things. Like, here's my mind, and in it is an experience of pain, for example. But when I practice watching my breath, I start to realize that that's not actually how my mind is unfolding.
My mind really isn't like a container in that sense. It's much more like my mind is a very fine grained process. And even something like pain isn't a thing, there's “paining”. And it's multiple. When I'm watching my pain, for example, I've got a pain in my leg while I'm meditating, there's all these different layers. There's all these things unfolding and happening in a complex fashion. It really isn't a noun as much more like a verb. And it's really not something I possess. It's really much more something I participate in. Do you see what I'm saying?
The breath starts to become a participatory symbol of the impermanence of things, how much they are interconnected and flowing. And that can then have an impact on my sense of myself. That maybe I am much more impermanent and interconnected. And so the breath can become, in that sense, symbolic for me. I can start to see through the breath into impermanence and interconnectedness, and I start to look back. And so what's happening — you can also train this deliberately — is in addition to scaling down, I might suddenly find myself scaling up, seeing how all of reality, including myself, is impermanent and interconnected.
Example: American flag
[…] Let's take another symbol: Here's the patriot looking at the [American] Flag. Polanyi says, when you're looking at a flag — of course, you're always doing that thing he talked about: all their subsidiary awareness is being integrated together into your focal awareness. Normally, I'm doing all of this because what I'm interested in is what I'm focally aware of.
Normally, when I want to drink, I'm doing all of this subsidiary integration into my focal awareness of the bottle, because what I'm actually interested in is the bottle. I need to get the bottle to drink. But sometimes — and again, notice my language; we play with this — we look at the flag, not because we're actually intrinsically interested in using the flag in some fashion, we’re using the flag symbolically. I'm looking at the flag, because by looking at the flag I’m actually integrating different aspects of myself together.
Although I'm doing this process, normally what I'm inherently interested in is the focal object. But sometimes, when I'm acting symbolically, although I'm focusing my attention on [the flag] — like focusing my attention on the breath — what I'm actually interested in is playing with the process.
By contemplating the flag the patriot is bringing up all kinds of emotions and associations and other things — and think about the cerebellar activity here — and integrating them together. By looking through all of these — and think about the metaphor “by looking through” — by looking through all of these things, I'm looking through all of these different subsidiary things onto the flag. And by doing that I'm actually integrating all of these aspects of myself together and I'm becoming more patriotic. I'm actually participating in patriotism.
That's powerful. Now, put that together with what I just did: I'm looking at my breath, and I'm doing all this. And the point about all of this is to integrate all of my processing together. And that's one way in which my breath is symbolic. One way in which my breath is symbolic is: It gives me a focal thing that I'm aware of. I can activate all of this stuff and I can integrate myself onto the thing. I’m becoming somebody else. But, as I just said a few minutes ago, the thing is the breath can also suddenly disclose reality to me. The breath can also reveal an aspect of reality.
Let's try and put this together very carefully here.
At one stage, I'm doing this and what I'm interested in is this, this is my inherent interest. Although my focal awareness is here, I'm focusing precisely because I'm trying to, via a metaphorical process by looking through all of these subsidiary elements, I'm actually integrating them together. I'm not actually trying to get an insight like I normally do in metaphor, but what can happen is: I can actually get an insight!
This can suddenly reveal aspects of the world to me — the impermanence and interconnectedness. And now I'm actually interested in my breath, because my breath is a symbol in another sense. My breath is a symbol in that it allows me to see into the impermanence and interconnectedness of reality. Notice what could happen is I can resonate between these.
Symbolic resonance
Let's do it: I'm looking at my breath. I become more integrated, and precisely because I'm much more integrated, my processing becomes more powerful. And then suddenly what happens is: I see something in my breath. I get a realization. The world is disclosed to me and that opens me up in powerful ways.
And then, when I refocus on the breath again, I'm reintegrating all of that. But then what can happen is: As I re-integrate and re-coordinate again, I can more deeply see into what the reality of my breath is disclosing to me, and I move more deeply.
Do you see what I'm saying? You get this symbolic resonance that's going on. As I see more deeply into the object, it draws me in, and then that affords much more powerful integration. But the much more powerful integration actually coordinates my cognition much more so I can see more deeply into the reality, if I'm relating to it symbolically.
Symbols are in this sense capable of affording anagoge. They are capable of giving you this capacity whereby I get inner optimization and then I see more deeply into the thing. And then by seeing more deeply into the thing, I get more inner optimization, and the whole process flows anagogically.
So, I'm looking at the balance, and then I activate all of this machinery, and then I look through it at the symbol, and I'm looking through it at justice and coordinating all the things. But then I start to see aspects in the balance that I hadn't seen before, precisely because of how sensitized I am to the symbol. I start to see how it's actually never completely stable. If you look at the pictures of the scales, they are often always off. Balance is something very much a process, not a thing. And then that causes me to activate different aspects of myself. […]
Symbols have the capacity to do this.
Music
Let's return back to something that I think is purely symbolic, in the sense that I mean, which is music. You're listening to the music. It's not like when you're listening to a sound and you're trying to make out, “What's that? What's causing that sound? Is it a tiger? Is it a noise in the bush?” You're listening to the music and although you're focusing on it, you're not trying to get behind it. You're focusing on it because the way in which you're being integrated in, together by, onto the music is crucial. But then what happens, of course, is that aspects of the music are disclosed to you, and you realize things, you see things that you haven't seen before, and that changes and alters how you can then understand and listen to the music. And so you get drawn in, in a very powerful way.
Transcending your framing
Let's put all of this machinery together with another aspect of the symbol that I've already hinted at, which is, of course, the way in which symbols are putting you into confrontation with what is potentially mysterious.
Here's your frame, and here is a frame you aspire to, a more comprehensive one. And you need something that can reach you inside this frame, but it can't be totally captured by this frame, because if it's captured by this frame, you'll stay in this frame. It has to insinuate itself into this, but change stuff such that it actually drives you to expanding your frame. It has to both activate you, but draw you beyond yourself. […]
What a symbol has to do is: It has to reach into your worldview — but remember what the Gnostics were talking about here, remember how you are existentially entrapped — you want to be in another worldview, you want to find that worldview viable. You need something that can come into this worldview, but won't be stable within it. It has to be transgressive. It has to shake things up and then put you into all of this machinery — all of this machinery that we've been talking about — but in a way that is making you move to and become capable of dwelling within that more expansive worldview.
In this sense, symbols are deeply ecstatic — we got our word “ecstasy” from this — but what this literally means is: A symbol helps you to stand beyond yourself.
Let's go back to the example. I'm trying to use as many examples as possible. I've got the scales, I'm activating balance, that allows me to start doing the skills that gets me some sense of justice. I start to be able to see justice and realize justice in the world that I couldn't before, because of my sensibility change, my skill acquisition, my sensibility transcendence. And that starts to make me more just.
And then what's happening is: My world is being opened up and, in a coordinated fashion, I'm being transformed to fit that expanding world. This is of course why symbols often are associated with wonder and awe, etc.
Symbols are ecstatic in that fashion. As I've tried to show you throughout this, they're participatory. And I’ve tried to show you how they're integrative, not just in a simple part-whole but in the anagogic sense — sensibility transcendence.
They're integrating you together, they're integrating a new world together, and they're integrating that new world together as they're integrating you together in an integrated fashion.
When a Christian sees the cross, first of all the cross is tapping into that exaptive machinery, it's taking all this perceptual machinery and it's playing with it — the vertical and the horizontal. That's being exapted, and all of that machinery that we normally look through is being exapted and is being used, and then we're looking into there. And if we are receptive — and of course the question is why some people are and why some people aren’t — but if we are receptive, then that interaction starts to affect us. We start to become a different kind of person as we are integrated in our attention on the cross.
But that, of course, starts to also disclose to us aspects of reality that we normally might not be able to hold in mind, like suffering, like the relationship between eternity and time. And those goes from being ideas to things that we are confronting, engaging with. And they can draw us in, which then of course integrates me more powerfully while disclosing a world.
And if I'm willing to play the serious play with the symbol, I will start to be transformed in a coupled fashion to my world, such that perhaps Christianity becomes viable for me, for example.
This is how symbols work. They're integrative in the anagogic sense. […]
Finally, symbols are complex. And we have to remember: I'm using the scales to stand for justice, but justice isn't a single thing. And even when I talk about the breath and it's showing me impermanence and interconnectedness, those aren't single static things. They are complex unfolding realities.
Symbols often are multifaceted. You'll get Athena, she's the symbol of wisdom. But she's also the symbol of weaving. She's the symbol of warfare. All these different areas are actually being drawn together, because the symbol is also the potential for radically reconfiguring the shape of your salience landscape, connecting things that you normally do not connect together, such that you might have an insight into reality.
Notice how the symbol is trying to do all of this, because it’s trying to set you in motion. It's trying to get you to do this. And in that sense, if you'll forgive the little bit of playfulness, it's “epic”, it's trying to draw you into something
ecstatic
participatory
integrative
complex
It's trying to afford a way in which you can radically open up your world in meta-acommodation — triggering it, participating in it, confronting it — but also trigger your best machinery for being able to draw it into, relate it to who and what you are, so that you can become capable of dwelling within that expanded world. So meta-accommodation and meta-assimilation are both at work within the symbol.
I couldn’t help myself and did a quick full-text search through my notes about Christopher Alexander’s The Nature of Order, to check if he had anything interesting to say about symbols that I could add here. Well, sort of… I wrote down this excerpt from The Nature of Order, book 4, The Luminous Ground, chapter 12, A modified picture of the universe, which includes the term “symbol”:
A few years ago I went to mass in Salzburg's great cathedral. It was, at that time, one of the only places left where Mozart and Haydn’s masses were still sung every Sunday. There was a Haydn mass. The church was filled with people thronging, crowding, pushing, to be there while the great mass was sung.
The high point of this mass was the Sanctus. Full choir, slowly increasing rhythm, deep sounds of the organ and the basses, high song of the trebles, the church filled, the air became tense with the presence of this mass… poised, in the Sanctus, as if on the edge of some awakening, and the enormous cave of the building, allowing the sound to roll and fill our minds.
I stood there with my thoughts. At the most awe-inspiring moment, a young man pushed forward to a telephone mounted on one of the columns of the nave. He picked it up, and listened. The telephone was tied to a tape-recording, giving interesting facts for tourists. He listened to the tape-recording of dates and facts, while the Sanctus blazed around him.
This man became a symbol for me of the loss of awe and of our loss of sense. Unable to immerse himself in the thing which filled the air and surrounded us, perhaps even unaware of the beauty which surrounded him, unaware of the size and importance of the sounds that he was hearing, he was more fascinated to listen to a tape-recording reeling off the dates when the cathedral was built. For a while, during the 20th century, this had become our world: a place where the difference between awe and casual interest had been sanded down to nothing.
But I realized on that day, that this young man's behavior could summarize what my efforts as an architect have been about. All the efforts I have made have, at their heart, just this one intention: to bring back our awe… and to allow us to begin again to make things in the world which can intensify this awe.
Mirror of the Self is a fortnightly newsletter series investigating the connection between creators and their creations, trying to understand the process of crafting beautiful objects, products, and art.
Using recent works of cognitive scientist John Vervaeke and design theorist Christopher Alexander, we embark on a journey to find out what enables us to create meaningful things that inspire awe and wonder in the people that know, use, and love them.
