It would be hard not to be incredulous at the thought that most of the history of so-called progressive nations, the “civilized cultures,” has been mainly a story of preventing the expansion of whole human potential—beginning with physiology—rather than the expansion of it, which is how every academic discipline always tells their story [ending conveniently with each particular discipline being the only or best interpreter of all the others]. Bill Wurtz’s video History of the Entire World, I Guess has recently gone nearly viral and brought a lot of comments about how history should be taught the way he presents it: “Open your country. . .Stop having it be closed. Knock, knock, it’s the United States.” Bill Wurtz is not wrong. In fact, his history is exactly the treatment that demonstrates the domination of the Rationalism of history and the exercise of power over history, science, and the academics that keep them alive in their established forms. He just strips it to its utterly basic rationalizations, which is why it makes us laugh. The truth does out. And so will stress and its rationalizations.
I started reading Mind and Tissue around the same time that I started reading Blake’s A Father’s Memoirs of His Child. These got me thinking about the confusion that I have sometimes had while reading Ray Peat’s urgency to communicate the shift from one kind of metabolism to another, as well as the shift from Rationalism to rationality and the patterns and generality that arise from real empirical engagement. The former describes what the shift is like in the nerve physiology as perception flows into the body and the experiments done with this in mind, the latter demonstrates how a person unfolds in relation to himself in time and out of time under conditions of a whole embedded consciousness, “after” such a shift, though there is no discrete before or after.
What becomes crystal clear is that Rationalist deductive thinking is much easier in a physiologically energetic way, and easier to keep and pass on, than radical empiricism. The “radical” in radical empiricism is not just a description of the presentness of the effects of nervous flow on development, but also is a political disposition when society is destroyed enough that looking at its inadequacies against reality is painful to everyone. To see our broken down health and consciousness and call it out is painful. To call it health is a massive reversal. The most grounding realization is probably, “Oh, no wonder I feel like such a mess.” Eventually, the stress adaptations are more painful than the pain of not having recognized our alternatives earlier.
To be present continually to orienting and re-orienting, exerting and resting to prepare for the coming engagement and meaning, takes a terrific amount of energy. This is what the copious calories are for. I would think that becoming present from a depleted, stressed state, and to learn to do this for the first time is energetically very demanding. It would be easier for the younger organism to do this to the extent that stress adaptations had not come so early that the traumas to the curious, energetic state that come with becoming a responsible adult in a destroyed society had been thorough. It’s not necessarily harder for older people to change, especially if they have remained in some sense socially immature and spent a lot of time alone or even neurotically maladjusted in a way that isn’t too harmful.
To do science in a rational, but not Rationalistic, way one must be responsible to articulate what you find out from experience. This is not to agree, as in a somewhat democratic contract about what will be counted as scientifically true because it is politically efficacious, since this is just using arithmetic to justify ideological commitments by making them seem democratic. Two plus three equaling five can be true and also as exploitive as teaching children that “2 + 2 = 5.” [The Russians were the only ones who could make this little political test make sense when Iakov Guminer used it in a 1931 political poster in the context of a 5-year plan that was to finish ahead of schedule, in 4 years instead of 5.] Rousseau is the only political theorist who sought an alternative for democracy by majority rule. But no one takes his general will seriously because they don’t understand how to do it. It isn’t quick or efficient, especially because it is democratic, and it would need a lot of sustained energy. He’s also the only of the modern political theorists who showed us with specific examples how physical environment could be expected to effect politics. He said that mountain people would be more fertile and vigorous.
To be scientific in a rational way is to go out and see for yourself. But this “going out and seeing” is energetically rich and expensive. It’s not supported by the capitalist adoption of a completely socialized Hobbesian commitment to a human nature that is deeply competitive, struggling, ready for violence, overlaid on the cultural assumption of “civilization” where class replaces any pursuit of knowledge by empirical means, even if it is only about your own organism. The people who say class is imprinted on the body are right about that. Beginning to look at yourself in a light that promotes an immediate relationship to the environment—and to perceive this in one’s nerves [and to feed this]—is fundamentally subversive, which is probably why some peatarians become a little paranoid when they eat a lot of metabolism-nutritious, stress-protective calories and start to feel time slow and engagement with people and things dilate.
Using the faculty of reason and rationality isn’t difficult. The problem is that in a bureaucratized culture there is much less energetic harmful friction in appropriating those generalities, like “cancer is caused by gene mutations,” or, “depression is curable by raising serotonin.” Especially when they are taught to you by someone who should know. It takes much less energy to be considered smart on account of being a passive Rationalist than it is to be actively rational, beginning with real observations of the real details of the context of your own life. That’s a beginning.
Anyone who has read Ray Peat’s papers enough and tried to compensate for a longstanding stress metabolism has encountered the struggles with switching the energy distribution in such a way that they could shift their organism from a more passive state to a more active state. It’s good to have an idea of what one expects to see in the new state. Organisms at every field level are that intelligent that they seek better states even if they have little recent experience of it. The guidance is as good as someone telling you what to expect on your first psychedelic trip. They say the state of the mind changes but it is impossible to convey in a precise way. It must be experienced to be understood really. Everyone perks up at a dinner party when interesting people arrive. Everyone is relieved when Alcibiades gate crashes the Symposium because he's going to talk about what really happened with their teacher concerning sex instead of speaking a thesis under the influence about the god of love. Tediousness, the gatekeeper.
A lot of things demonstrate this intelligent preparation for a much better but not completely known state, not only cell biology.
When Marx theorizes about communism he’s thinking about a new human nature. And since his critique of capitalism really comes down to a theory of calorie dissolution and energy redistribution, then a change of human nature would be a thing no one is very sure of. They just haven’t seen it before because they haven’t done it recently. Anarchists' views are like this, too, which is why they are often misunderstood. They are imagining human beings developing into whole, embedded, organisms living completely enriched lives. If society were constructed for this fundamental purpose, then our collective accomplishments might be so astonishing that we have no vocabulary now to accommodate this vision. I wonder if big, tall buildings wouldn’t even compare. I think I detect in Ray Peat’s papers the work to communicate this very possibility over and over again. Because that is the only reasonable thing to do once energy is abundant enough and the image of continually unfolding movement and what is wanted is discernible. The beginning of the shift is the most difficult part. It’s like springtime, welcome, but a little tricky to interpret where the most potential is at any moment. The uncertainty seems like a distraction that becomes a bonus.
Peat shows readers points in the history of physiological science at which Rationalism overtakes rational science and is supported by political power, titles, and funding. And then there are points at which a curiosity about what could be just glimmer through the historic haze of war, industry, and biotechnological empire.
Robert McNamara became the Secretary of Defense during 7 years of the Vietnam war. He is today characterized as the man who started to have a conscience about war. But when I see him in The Fog of War I see a man confused by a nagging intelligence that something is very wrong [“I was part of the mechanism that recommended it,” [the Harvard reports on the Abort Rates of bombing missions over Japan] even as he is instrumental in the statistical rationalization of the efficiency in firebombing civilians in WWII [“it”]]. This is what passes for ethical insight in a highly rationalized society. It’s poignant that one of his “rules of war” is that “rationality will not save us.” He would have been accurate if he had said, “Rationalism” but he was either confused about what he was feeling or hiding the truth, I suspect. Philip Glass wrote the soundtrack for Errol Morris’ film and it should get a lot of the credit for introducing the viewer’s organism to what Morris has given an opportunity to communicate itself. Incidentally, after his service as one of the “best and the brightest” [out of studying economic man theory, into government service] during Vietnam McNamara went on to become head of the World Bank, which seems only fitting.
In a highly rationalized society there are many people who look for relief from their anxieties, depression, and pain. If they don't have the resources to focus or do serious reading, then they do what they know. Why go to the trouble of hiding the best books and papers if you can instead turn a profit degrading the attention span and reading skills of the population?
This week the Attorney General of Ohio sued 5 pharmaceutical companies by name for their part in glutting the market with opioids that were marketed as “safer.” Mississippi has done the same and West Virginians are getting settlement payouts. It is reported that in Ohio more than 4200 people died from opioid overdoses in 2016. Policy experts say there should be more control of prescriptions and more rehab available for addicts. It seems to be only the street hustlers and the addicts themselves who understand the crisis of the actual physiological pain that the structure of society inflicts on exploited persons. But they still want to make a profit from it. If people who should know better really want to stop addiction, then an overhaul of society would be a thing to think about. The cost of doing that won’t be more than the waste of human potential by not doing anything effective. If you think in historical proportions, it’s been much cheaper for a long time.
People want to know how to feel less anxious and depressed, less fatigued and depleted, how to stop the stress, which happen to be of a fundamental and pervasive origin and maintenance. Compensating for stress is complicated because the whole organism must become energetically enriched beginning with nutrients, and it could take a lot of time and attention because the conditions of living in society today are so destructive from the womb to the grave. The preparation for an engaged life and demonstrating the difference between a Rationalistic and programmed existence and a lived life becomes a physiological imperative of a well-fed consciousness. That must be where the prolific nature comes from. You get to where you can’t not say something helpful, as long as it is helpful, given where the listener is. Ray Peat’s explanations aren’t that complex, but they take some energy and commitment to read and to begin to understand. These are the same faculties you would need in order to use the suggestions he puts freely in the papers in order to switch on the vision that he is having. He’s given a lot of examples.
There are two things I think it’s encouraging to think about in the afternoon when your energy is peaking: the cultural context in which Ray Peat is writing and thinking doesn’t have established words to describe what he is trying to get his readers to see; it hasn’t been invented yet. He doesn't slight the effort because of that, but works harder crafting with conventional terms to make it clear. And also, what are you “peating,” or, “you-ing” for? When we talk about the effects of taking aspirin or milk or sugar or salt, we usually leave the context at, “well everyone is different.” But that isn’t an end. That’s a beginning for your unique contribution to radically empirical observations. I had a teacher in graduate school whenever he was asked by a student, “What should I major in?” he’d give a gap-toothed grin, and raise one eyebrow in absolute seriousness: “Well, what was your mother like?”
If we want to revolutionize ourselves all you’d really need to get started is some drawing pencils and a pad. The most remarkable thing about this is that it would be so cheap to get these things, which is the most subversive prospect of all. This is one place to start. If you do it, go look at Leonardo’s Notebooks. They are online, or the book is not expensive. See how he goes into every detail of recording what he is seeing in everyday life. Interestingly, he begins with the effects of light and darkness on seeing.
©Celise Schneider 6/2017
Image: Gratisography