schismogenesis
Schismogenesis literally means “creation of division“. The term derives from the Greek words σχίσμα skhisma “cleft” (borrowed into English as schism, “division into opposing factions”), and γένεσις genesis “generation, creation” (deriving in turn from gignesthai “be born or produced, creation, a coming into being”).
The concept of schismogenesis was developed by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson in the 1930s.. In his 1936 book Naven, Bateson defined schismogenesis as “a process of differentiation in the norms of individual behaviour resulting from cumulative interaction between individuals“.. The crux of the matter for Bateson was that, left unchecked, either form of schismogenesis would cause Iatmul society simply to break apart. Thus some social or cultural mechanism was needed by society to maintain social integration.
in natural resource management: Bateson’s treatment of conflict escalation has been used to explain how conflicts arise over natural resources, including human-predator conflicts in Norway and also for conflicts among stakeholder groups in shared fisheries, In the latter case, Harrison and Loring compare conflict schismogenesis to the Tragedy of the Commons, arguing that it is a similar kind of escalation of behavior also caused by the failure of social institutions to ensure equity in fisheries management outcomes.
rather.. tragedy of the non common
in medicine: The feedback loop process of Schismogenesis has been identified by Jacques Aviles..as the mechanism of action behind several psychological conditions, including Autism. It is theorized by him that autism functions as a combination of schismogenic stress-fueled vicious and virtuous cycles that are mutual-causal in nature and which grow and reinforce each other over time, throughout the affected individual’s development. Once environmental stressors and the defense responses they provoke in the autistic person are counter balanced with each other the individual’s general mode of function enters into a relative state of “stasis”, where said stasis or equilibrium represents the point upon the spectrum the individual falls on.. This feedback loop process is initiated during the earliest stages of development; when the child finds themselves continuously unable to effectively communicate any hidden and non obvious stressors they may be confronting. The constant presence of stressors and their failed attenuation give rise to avoidant behaviors in the child that create cascade effects.. The amplification of such schismogenic feedback loops cause the autistic individual to lose levels of trust in guardians and peers (whom they enter into these cycles with); and thus progressively deteriorates their relationships in ways that mostly go unnoticed and which further exacerbate the cycle.
oi.. 1\ higashida autism law and the reason i jump (film).. have us in a rat cage.. in sea world.. then think we need medicine to get us all to speak whalespeak 2\ not yet scrambled ness and language as control/enclosure.. there’s a nother way
in war: as attempt to polarize/undermine
Bateson, in Steps to an Ecology of Mind describes the two forms of schismogenesis and proposes that both forms are self-destructive to the parties involved. He goes on to suggest that researchers look into methods that one or both parties may employ to stop a schismogenesis before it reaches its destructive stage.
1\ complementary: best characterized by a class struggle, ..Given two groups of people, the interaction between them is such that a behavior X from one side elicits a behavior Y from the other side, The two behaviors complement one another, exemplified in the dominant-submissive behaviors of a class struggle…Conflict can be reduced by narrowing information asymmetries between the two groups
2\ symmetrical: best shown by an arms race. ie: us and soviet union each sought to amass more nuclear weapons than the other party, a clearly fruitless but seemingly necessary endeavor on both sides.. A form of symmetrical schismogenesis exists in common sporting events, such as baseball, where the rules are the same for both teams.
in communication: a force that can take effect in a conversation where people have different conversational styles, “creating a split in a mutually aggravating way”. The effect causes two well-meaning individuals having a conversation to ramp up different styles, resulting in a disagreement that does not stem from actual difference of opinion. For example, if one person’s conversational style favoured louder voices, while the other favoured softer speech, the first person might increase the loudness in their voice while the other spoke softer and softer, each trying to lead the conversation towards their style’s conception of normal talking
in systems of holding back: defined as “mutually aggregating spirals which lead people to hold back contributions they could make because others hold back contributions they could make.” ie: because both parties might feel other party is not giving enough and thus they will themselves hold back what they in the best case could give. It has been suggested that systems of holding back are “the single most important key to life-decreasing, reciprocity-trivializing and vitality-downgrading mechanisms in human life.”
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adding page because m of care – aug 5 and m of care – aug 19 talking so much about it.. term from gregory bateson..
and because of what david wengrow shared here:
David Wengrow (@davidwengrow) tweeted at 1:59 PM on Mon, Jul 15, 2019:
“Schismogenesis” – where large-scale cultural patterns arise through reverse mimicry, one group acting as different as possible from the other – is an underrated concept in anthropology, and has great potential in archaeology. About the man who invented it, by @TimParksauthor https://t.co/N2A7BSgszM
(https://twitter.com/davidwengrow/status/1150857470342041600?s=03)
sound like david on creative refusal et al
link in tweet is to july 15 article: g bateson changed the way we think about changing ourselves
..following his brother’s suicide in 1922, turns out to be extremely relevant to us today, for it eventually led him to revolutionise the study of anthropology, bring communication theory to psychoanalysis (thus undermining the Freudian model), invent the concept of the ‘double bind’, and make one of the first coherent, scientifically and philosophically argued pleas for a holistic approach to the world’s environmental crisis. Seeking to condense Bateson’s work into one core concept, one can say that, above all, he proposed a paradigm shift in the way we think of ourselves as purposeful, decision making actors in the world
need to change that up as well.. decision making is unmooring us
ie: curiosity over decision making
Rather than suggest technical solutions to the world’s problems, Bateson hoped that he might inspire us to start thinking about changing ourselves. For, ‘the major problems in the world,’ he wrote ‘are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.’
rather .. the way nature works and the way whales in sea world appear to think
we need a legit re\set..
The potentially unstable nature of this process, which he referred to as schismogenesis – an interaction that generates difference between individuals –
what we need is to do is quit trying to interact/process/engineer.. these ideas we keep coming up with.. aka: let go of that hard won order.. and see what legit free people are like.. ie: hari rat park law et al
It is not what we learn, he went on to reflect, that makes us who we are, but the manner in which we have learned to learn. This explained why one might imagine that people from other cultures were less intelligent: it was a question of our cultures training us to develop different kinds of intelligence.
manner.. or place.. aka: sea world.. where we’re intoxicated with thinking intellect ness is essence to life.. we need to let go of that .. thinking we need to understand/know things..
But if societies and individuals were indeed self-correcting systems, why would the appropriate feedback fail to get through? How could disaster happen? Considering recent studies on the distinction between digital and analogical information, Bateson decided that in human terms this might be compared with language on the one hand, where words have no real relation to the things they refer to, and physical gesture or tone of voice on the other, which has a different kind of reality. What would happen if the context that the body creates around a linguistic communication were out of synch with the words, if someone said one thing, but appeared to mean another?
we need to get back to not yet scrambled.. idiosyncratic jargon ness.. let go of meaning.. and focus on augmenting us back/to our interconnectedness
lit & num as colonialism.. language as control/enclosure.. et al
In 1953, .. leading a team of researchers looking for a new model for treating mental illness, something that might offer an alternative to the Freudian approach, which often led to long and inconclusive periods of psychoanalysis hardly sustainable for many sufferers. If, Bateson’s sponsors reasoned, psychiatric symptoms could be attributed to a malfunctioning system of communication – the way that families talk to each other – perhaps *quite simple interventions could have therapeutic effects.It was the beginning of the move to cognitive behavioural psychotherapy,
higashida autism law et al.. shaw communication law
perhaps we need to strip down to just 2 conversations.. that *simple.. to get back to the essence of us.. via a means to undo our hierarchical listening
Rather than looking for the cause of this disturbance in the traumatised psyche or in an organic dysfunction of the brain, Bateson suggested that the schizophrenic has ‘learned’ to ‘live in a universe where the sequences of events are such that his unconventional communication habits will be in some sense appropriate’. *His ‘disorder’, that is, is part of a larger system. Indeed, Bateson now began to think that the illness might itself be the way that the large social system self-corrects; the family can continue as it is because one child is ill.**The ‘system’ at the individual level is sacrificed to maintain the system at the family or society level.
*yeah that.. again.. entropy law and autism law
**yeah.. not that.. other way around – autism law – listen deeper for the not yet scrambled ness
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from david on creative refusal:
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In other words, each ethnic group emerges in opposition to their own particular group of heroic semi-outsiders, who in turn mediate, for better or worse, between the Malagasy population itself and the temptations and depredations of the outside world. By such arrangements, the original schizmogenetic gesture of definition over and against the values of port cities like Mahilaka could become, for each new emergent group, a permanent process of definition against their own specific collection of permanent heroic outsiders.
marsh label law et al
I have tried to outline in this essay, somewhat schematically, a cascading series of gestures of refusal, reincorporation, and renewed refusal. Heroic societies emerge as a rejection of commercial bureaucratic ones. Some of the logic of heroic society becomes recovered and reincorporated into urban civilizations, leading to a new round of schizmogenesis whereby they are rejected and social orders created around the very rejection of those heroic elements. It would be interesting indeed to see, if we were to re-examine world history as a series of such acts of creative refusal, just how far such an approach could ultimately go.
seems like an energy suck ad infinitum.. but seems like we’re doing something.. so even more addicting/perpetuating to/of the thing/system we’re hoping to refuse/leave
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be you. 