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The Secret Art of Power - Part II

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 4/7/2006

Dear Roberto,

I enjoyed your letter greatly. You finally provided me with an insight as to why we feel so ambivalent about technology. But in this letter I would like to attempt a phenomenology of knowledge and the power it exercises or is associated with.

David Deutsch in his "Fabric of Reality" tried to fuse Dawkins' "Selfish Gene" theory with particle physics, Tippler and Barrow's "Anthropic Cosmological Principle", an expanded version of the Turing Principle, Quantum Computation, a primitive version of Evolution theory - you get the picture. The book is an unmitigated disaster, in my view. But it is laden with intellectual gems. You simply have to sift through a lot of mud to get through to the diamonds.

One of his interesting observations is that knowledge - as embodied in genes - replicates itself within niches to which it gets progressively better adjusted and that these niches are "virtual realities" produced by this knowledge. Our bodies, thus, are a virtual reality (generator) manufactured by our genes (=knowledge) to allow them to replicate. It is a hyper-rendition of Dawkins' idea of the Selfish Gene, cast in more universal terms.

Unfortunately, Deutsch stops there before formulating a general theory (or at least a phenomenology) of knowledge.

Knowledge appears in three forms:

It exists (knowledge per se) without "doing" anything (the sound of one clapping hand, so to speak). This category of "knowledge" is so broad that it includes the whole universe. Even a rock is a manifestation of this kind of knowledge.

Then there is the kind of knowledge that Deutsch deals with - the kind that manipulates the world (its environment) in order to replicate. Exactly as Deutsch suggests, this kind of knowledge creates a "virtual reality" in which it can not only survive but also self-replicate. Genes in biology are only one example of this type of "replicators". Dawkins identified another one: memes. Memes are self replicating ideas which make use of the virtual reality of human society to secure their own replication. In physics there are self-replicating crystals. In mathematics, certain classes of functions. And so on.

But there is a third type of knowledge. It replicates IN ORDER to manipulate the world (its environment). Compare it to Deutsch's kind which manipulates the world (its environment) IN ORDER to replicate. The polarity, the dichotomy, are clear. The Deutsch Knowledge (classic replicators) is an EFFECT of the manipulation of the world (and it tends to be physical, like genes). The Vaknin Knowledge (pardon the immodesty) is the CAUSE of the manipulation of the world (and it tends to be more abstract, like memes).

That Vaknin Knowledge is used to exert power upon an unsuspecting world is easy to demonstrate. If I know that you committed a crime I can blackmail you. If I know how to build a bridge I can make you use my services. If I sweet talk appropriately I can make girls make love to me. If I am a good therapist I can manipulate, even alter, the structure and activity of your brain through talk therapy. In short: knowledge exercises real influence on the physical world.

The Deutsch knowledge does so by being present in the right CONTEXT. We discussed this in another of our dialogues ("The Nature of Reality"). In the absence of context, Deutsch Knowledge is meaningless and, in the absence of meaning, it is dubious whether it remains knowledge at all, or, at least, whether it is a UNIVERSAL form of knowledge. DNA cannot manipulate an environment devoid of amino acids and, therefore, cannot build proteins there. It has no meaning without its context (its environment which it must manipulate). It has no meaning on the moon. In my view, it is not Knowledge at all or, at the least it is not a universal form of knowledge. The LOCUS of the ability to manipulate the world (to create proteins) is unknown. The locus of the POWER is unknown. DNA without amino acids is as helpless as amino acids without DNA. How can we assuredly determine who is manipulating who? Can we say with any certainty that amino acids are not using DNA to construct proteins?

The exercise of power demands ASYMMETRY. It demand a UNI-directional flow of influence. It demands clarity and unambiguity. If there is absolute, EQUAL, dependence between A and B - one would be hard pressed to say which is exercising power over which.

All types of knowledge do three things:

They replicate - genes create organisms, ideas are repeated by brains making use of communication organs, etc. If knowledge is not replicated - how could one obtain results? How can I blackmail you without providing you with a copy (=telling you) of what I know? If a therapist does not share his thoughts (=replicates them and gives the copies to the patient) - how can he hope to affect his patient's brain?

They decode - most knowledge comes encoded. We know the world through our sense organs and brains which contain intricate mathematical models of deciphering and representation. Genes use a genetic code which is "deciphered" (acquires meaning) by the combination, Lego-like, of amino acids. And the deconstructivists taught us everything we needed to know about encoding and decoding (deconstructing) memes.

They make their environment echo or resonate. The recipient of the decoded information must be able to respond. The physical-chemical environment of the DNA must be able to respond by assembling into proteins. People respond to memes by repeating them. Humans respond to emotions by echoing and internalizing them (a phenomenon known as "empathy"). Without such resonance, knowledge has no power. It is the REACTION of the world that is desired by knowledge and that substantiates the existence of a power exchanged between the knowledge and its substrate. The resonance is often decoded itself and constitutes a new piece of knowledge, either close to the original (=replication) or different but still resembling it.

I have gone into all this theorizing to demonstrate why the concept of "centre" is intuitive but like many intuitive things, never existed in reality. The exact same knowledge (DNA, memes and other types of knowledge) is replicated all the time EVERYWHERE. What is the center of our genetic system? We have identical DNA everywhere. Where is the centre of Einstein's thoughts? They are studied everywhere. It is only when context is absent (for instance, when it is difficult to reach everywhere, simultaneously due to technological or political constraints) that an asymmetry in the distribution of knowledge is created. This (temporary) asymmetrical distribution creates CLUSTERS which we tend to call "centres". What technology has done is to dismantle many of the past barriers, to allow (almost) simultaneity and, thus, to expose the fallacy of the centre.

Regarding secrets - they are often confused with codes. Codes were used to conceal secrets from prying sense organs - but this does not make secrets and codes identical. Secrecy is a concept closely associated with and derived from the false concept of centre. It is only when and where there is a centre (an asymmetry in the distribution of information) that secrecy (itself a purified form of knowledge asymmetry) prevails. With the dissipation of the centre (with the indispensable aid of technology) - secrecy will wane and disappear as well.

Which is absolutely not the case with codes. As I have said - coding and decoding are essential parts of the very process of knowledge formation, dissemination and prevalence. There is no such thing as a "secret code". Codes are open. It is the access to the KEY that is limited (by intelligence of the cerebral kind or by intelligence of the more sinister kind). Thus, Goethe's texts are no different to the Zimmerman telegram or the Enigma machine texts or DNA. In all four cases, the CODE is fully public - it is access to the key that is restricted.

Secrecy can be described thus: a pyramid of users interacting with an inverted pyramid (=pyramid standing on its head) of knowledge. The wide base of the users' straight pyramid interacts with the very narrow information provided by the tip of the inverse pyramid of knowledge. The tip of the pyramid of users (=a limited number of users) interacts with the biggest amount of information provided by the inverted pyramid of knowledge.

Codes are the exact opposite picture. It is an inverted pyramid of users interacting with a straight pyramid of knowledge. The wide base of the users' inverted pyramid interacts with the very narrow information provided by the tip of the straight pyramid of knowledge. The tip of the inverted pyramid of users interacts with the biggest amount of information provided by straight pyramid of knowledge.

Stay well,

Sam


Dear Sam,

Thanks for your exposition of the processes of encoding and replication. But, it raises some questions. For instance, to say, as you do, that the centre disappears has only meaning in some spaces, but what about politics: can you imagine a non-centered state? How can that be?

This, obviously, has to do with secrecy too, for the concepts of centre, hierarchy and secrecy are related. In this respect it doesn't matter what happens with secrecy, it does the same whether it is derogated or not because, as you well say, it is the key which matters. Secrets, no matter where and how they appear, are as old as life itself and will accompany it to the very end.

It is interesting to note that the Greeks used a negative word (aletheia) to mean "discovery". The act of knowledge was seen as an un-covering (decoding). We should make a distinction: the Greeks observe nature and we observe ourselves (we only decode one phantasm after the other). The Greeks had only religious restrictions (they were not allowed to talk about the visions of Eleusis). We, as "the will to power culture", had and will forever have secrets, for we understand knowledge only as a tool to be used (manipulation) to obtain power (as you have well described).

Another question is the communication of secrets. Thinkers of the Renaissance, Galileo for instance, used a curious method. He wrote some epigrams which contained (encoded) a reference to the new discovery. Then, after some time, Galileo offered an epigrammatic solution and exposed the new discovery. The moral of my time-tale is a kind of parody/homage to these methods. Nowadays, we use copyright which is one of the most interesting realms of speculative and philosophical thought - in fact secrecy, copyright and power will be the intellectual triad of the XXI century. The appearance of that C or R or TM could be compare with a virus spreading activity:-). Copyright is a curious thing. You, for instance, defend at the same time copyright and decentralization, but, how can that be? Does not the copyright concept imply precisely the existence of a Centre (the Patents Office of the Imperial Republic:-)?

E.A. Poe was one of the first (later emulated by others like A.C.Doyle) who solved the problem of a superior order. It is not by coincidence that Poe was interested in maths, hieroglyphics and conundrums - in the Gold Bug and others he exposes some decoding principles. How to encode (hide) a secret in a space? With masterly skill, Poe covers and uncovers the secret in his fascinating short story: The Purloined Letter, where he uses a beautiful and intelligent trick - and also its "counterpoint" in the (decoding) mental process of Dupin.

A more technical approach to this was made by McLuhan in the 70s. He used some Gestalt principles to explain the decoding process as a "sprouting" of figures from the background - an idea anticipated, curiously, by pre-Socratic philosophers (see Parmenides, Anaximander, Anaxagoras). We should point out that this is a mental/vision-related process. In music (mental/sound-related process), for instance, we have no limits (logoi) to the figures we can develop from the background. Music has its peculiar way of secrecy. To understand it we must note that secrecy, in most languages, has two primordial meanings:

Secret as in hidden (e.g., my secret home, etc.) and secret as dark, obscure, etc. By the way, the word "key" appears in my dictionary as the synonym of secret. That is to say, we can hide a secret, committing it to darkness (for instance, by putting it in a cave) but not necessarily so. We can place a secret, as Poe does, in plain view (so, then, the "darkness" is in the others' eye).

Music does the opposite. It sprouts, it comes from nothing, it appears, it touches but remains untouched. It's a total secret, dark and hidden in darkness.

This connection between secrecy and darkness is evident in power organizations (religious, scientific, monetary, military, etc.). It is an interesting adventure to explore these secret places (taboos) of the post-modern world: places like food-factories, currency fabrics, genetic experiments, military advances, forest exploitation and other places. All of them are almost in darkness - and this in a world which is constantly filmed. Food-factories, for instance, are a kind of medieval places, they exist but nobody has seen one:-)

Another example of an exposed secret is Goethe's Natural Theory, a small book which spent near two centuries in darkness. Then, it came to some scientific hands (Mitchell Feingenbaum and others) who made a new edition of the book, using it to explain new theories of chaos and complexity. How did it come to be? Was Goethe's book a kind of time-bomb? does it hide even more secrets?. was the secret in the book itself or in the eyes of the scientists?

roberto

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