In the last post we discussed Bergson’s (2001) observation that categories and abstractions condense reality into fragments. To illustrate this point, we used the visual color spectrum available to human beings. If a researcher watched an object changing from red to violet, they are likely to use the spectrum to record what they have seen- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. However, between each category is the transition. The colors in reality flow into one another, they are not as distinct as the categories (red, orange etc.) suggest.
According to Bergson (2001) categorical accounts are divorced from reality. Categories produce a perspective of the world based on a series of fragments and boxes; they strip out the flow of reality (McGilchrist, 2021). An over reliance on the categorical perspective removes nuance and subtly (bid) and we experience only seemingly distinct categories.
Being divorced from the flow between categories is something we experience daily in the West. To illustrate, imagine our hunter and gatherer ancestry. The hunter and gatherer experience relied upon a close connection with the natural world. Close attention to the flow of weather determined food and shelter, the flow of animal behavior determined hunting. A hunter gatherer society needs to pay attention to the flow, as it provides cues about what has happened before the moment and what might happen beyond the moment. A hunter gatherer society is an integral part of nature.
By contrast, in our current society, we do not need to pay attention to the flow of the natural world or even the wider world. For example, food is available in stores and supermarkets. We walk into a supermarket, look for the category which we want, a carton of milk for example, and select the milk we prefer.
However, the connection between the wider world from which the milk came, and the carton we have selected from the supermarket is lost. Although there is an increasing interest in how food is produced and sourced, many of us do not have a phenomenological experience of this process. We do not know what the life of the cow who produced the milk was like, we do not know anything about the driver who drove it to the supermarket and the multitude of steps in between; we experience only it’s categorical outcome-the carton of milk. This is in start contrast to the connection hunter gatherers had to all aspects of their food and shelter.
The disconnection between the outcome and the flow, means that when the flow becomes disturbed, we experience shock. For example, we are shocked to find out the driver was working 19 hours a day to make ends meet. As our society has become more complex and specialized, we have outsourced increasing amounts of our lives. This has meant we are divorced from the flow which produces the things we use and eat. However, it has also meant that we have outsourced our experiences.
If products and produce is always at hand, we are not sensitive to the process which produced it. This means that we experience life as a series of objects for consumption, we are not aware of the context which brings them into being. When we are made aware of the context through some disturbance, we lack the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional experience to respond in a nuanced way; we can only experience it as a shock (McGilchrist, 2021). As a result, our relationship with risk becomes distorted. Disturbances in routine can bring people to a standstill since we have had no idea of the types of risks which are lives are exposed to, and perhaps worse, no idea how to recover.
Reading
Bergson, H. and Pogson, F.L., 2001. Time and free will: An essay on the immediate data of consciousness. Courier Corporation.
McGilchrist, I., 2021. The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. What Then is True?. Volume Two. Perspectiva Press.
