The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World[1]
We do not know how far the process of coming to consciousness can extend, or where it will lead. It is a new element in the story of creation, and there are no parallels we can look to. We therefore cannot know what potentialities are inherent in it. Neither can we know the prospects for the species Homo sapiens. Will it imitate the fate of other species, which once flourished on the earth and now are extinct? Biology can advance no reasons why this should not be so. (C. G. Jung)[2]
All my “reviews” may be best understood by the introduction to my blog, “Cultural Phenomena”, which I will repeat here:
This blog is devoted to modern cultural phenomena such as modern art, movies, books, plays, politics, news, social media, etc. My “reviews” are a little different from the ordinary style of most reviews. For me, cultural phenomena can open up to those “background” or psychic movements that are shaping all our cultural productions in the first place. These implicit movements are most often unknown to the artist who considers only his or her conscious intentions (exceptions include the kind of art that “allows” accidents). By reading a movie, art piece, book, or political event, as a text, we can get hints of the implicit background movements reflected in those texts, and thus give voice to them, or shape them, as a way of welcoming the unknown future.[3]
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I was initially attracted to Lewis’ book by a short description which describes it as an investigation into the biases of the mind when we try to make predictions under conditions of uncertainty—for example, trying to predict successful players for the NBA from the Draft selection process.[4] Something was stirring in my psyche in response to these words, like strands of a spider’s web drifting across my inner vision. As I began to read the first chapter, I suddenly “woke up” to a “bite”. Something was penetrating my consciousness deeply and I needed to pay attention to its “message”. This book, it turns out, is another example of a cultural art form becoming transparent to a movement in the psyche, one that constitutes a hint of the unknown future. This essay is my attempt to speak this hint, through the vocabulary and rhetoric of this book. So let’s now lead into it somewhat methodically.
Lewis’ book is a story of how:
Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred, systematically, when forced to make judgments in uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and … has also led to advances in medical diagnosis and patient behavior. It has affected eating habits, cellphone use by drivers, retirement savings, and many other areas.[5]
The book’s title reflects the effect of the research on our customary views of the human mind. It undoes our assumptions, for example, of the mind’s reliability when making decisions in uncertain or unpredictable circumstances. The science that grew in the 1960’s from the psychologists’ original research is called Behavioral Economics and new concepts quickly emerged to describe the errors we make in our judgments. Some of these concepts include: “the endowment effect” (overvaluing self-serving choices); “confirmation bias” (selecting new instances that strengthen an already established belief); “present bias” (the tendency, when making a decision, to undervalue the future in relation to the present); and “hindsight bias” (the tendency for people to look at some outcome and assume it was predictable all along.)
As with any science, the knowledge gained from its research methods was quickly appropriated to the rewarding task of making better predictions, and you may see from the above quote how quickly the method spread to other disciplines with encouraging success. In other words a new discovery about us, our minds, our consciousness, is quickly and very successfully employed to extend, yet again, the domain and reach of power and control over an increasingly uncertain future.
A deeper feeling grew as I read about this further development and extension of human will into the unknown and unknowable future, for the sake of controlling events. The feeling accompanied a dismal thought that something precious was emerging into our collective consciousness and it was in the process of getting perverted into yet another tool for the worst, even demonic now, urges of human beings—power and control.
This dark feeling sharpened into focus with another “bite”, as I read this passage from the book:
At the bottom of the transformation in decision making in professional sports—but not only in professional sports—were ideas about the human mind, and how it functioned when it faced uncertain situations. These ideas had taken some time to seep into the culture, but now they were in the air we breathed. There was a new awareness of the sorts of systematic errors people might make—and so entire markets might make—if their judgments were left unchecked. There were reasons basketball experts could not see that Jeremy Lin was an NBA player, or could be blinded to the value of Marc Gasol by a single photograph of him, or would never see the next Shaquille O’Neal if he happened to be an Indian. “It was like a fish not knowing he is breathing water unless someone points it out,” Morey said of people’s awareness of their own mental processes.
Two lines stood out, my breathing quickened, and my body heated up as I do when an unconscious content is pressing forward urgently. The lines are “ideas about the human mind, and how it functioned when it faced uncertain situations” and “ ‘It was like a fish not knowing he is breathing water unless someone points it out,’ ” Morey said of people’s awareness of their own mental processes.”
A dream-like response to these two sentences (now become soul phenomena) appeared before my inner eye. It was filled with authority. And then a dream memory appeared. The response “said”, “these radically uncertain times are forcing us into becoming conscious of a momentous transformation that has already taken place in the “psychic background” and its intent is being perverted by our privileging power and control. Something beautiful is about to be destroyed!” The dream memory that followed is the residue of a dream I had in 1993. It is in fact a picture of this precious something about to be destroyed:
I am lying on my back on the ground face up to the sky. I have a terminal illness. With help from others I have decided to end it by lethal injection. As the needle goes in to give me the dose, I stop it saying, “This is not right,” as I am not responding to the dose. Then I shout, “Look, look, look up! Don’t you see where we are?” What I thought was the sky is now shimmering a little. It is in fact the underside of a watery surface. It dawns on me that we are at the bottom of a pool, have been all along. I can now see some frogs above. We are all in water, have been all along and there is the surface! At that precise moment of dawning consciousness, a fish comes and threatens to swallow me up.
The moment of supreme danger! Jung brought our attention to the end of the Piscean Age and the dawn of the Aquarian Age—a transformation in (the background of) consciousness, which may be understood as a transformation in what fundamentally counts as knowledge.[6] The Piscean form of consciousness is concerned with what content it can draw up from the depths of the unconscious to study or assimilate (i.e., the archetypal image of the fisherman drawing up the fish from the depths).[7] Knowledge for Piscean consciousness comprises the contents of consciousness, to be then manipulated for human benefit. The Aquarian form of consciousness, on the other hand, is concerned with the medium from which all such contents are drawn, a totally different or transformed reality and epistemology that has yet to find its own language and way of being. My dream shows the critical point of transition from the consciousness of a “fish” which does not know anything about the medium in which it is immersed, to a form of consciousness we can call “Aquarian”—awareness of the medium that surrounds the “fish” at all times.[8]
Now perhaps we can appreciate with a fresh eye what Moray (the protagonist of Lewis’ book) may have spoken in jest or as a way to get his point across, using a convenient trope: “It was like a fish not knowing he is breathing water unless someone points it out.” Behavioral Economics, used for whatever human ends, is in fact rooted in a profound mystery that its proponents fail to understand, so focused are they on controlling the future. This is a mystery of transformation in which human beings are now being given the task of becoming conscious of the medium in which ALL knowledge (contents of consciousness) emerges or is drawn. The psychologists who founded Behavioral Economics are conceiving this urgent task only in terms of our conscious individual minds and their unconscious contents made conscious. As the quote says, “how the human mind functions in conditions of uncertainty.” This move towards power and control, conceiving the mind and its functions as yet another content of ordinary human consciousness is a regressive move that may be expected in the light of my dream: “at that precise moment of dawning consciousness, a fish comes and threatens to swallow me up.” This regressive move perverts the transformation that wants to take place at this time, this kairos, unless we can see it as a regressive move and turn our attention to the telos of the movement!
Moray offers us an unwitting hint when he says, once again, “It was like a fish not knowing he is breathing water unless someone points it out.” Again I felt a deep response to this statement. Yes, we need teachers to teach us about our emerging new status as human bearers of Aquarian consciousness—that form of consciousness that is aware of its own status as Consciousness, the medium in which we are all presently immersed as “knowers”, but emerging as bearers of a new way of “knowing”, i.e. as the medium from which, as I said, ALL knowledge is drawn. Aquarian teachings therefore cannot be in terms of any content or static knowledge.
We can turn to the symbol of Aquarius for hints. The Water Bearer is “outside” or “external” to the water (c/f the fish that is immersed unknowingly “in” it) yet “He” does not make the water into a content of his consciousness, thereby perverting the telos of the transformational process.[9] Instead, “He” pours the water out into a collective pool. Pouring the water, making it available to others—this image suggests a very different kind of knowledge altogether. In fact, “knowledge” is not the appropriate concept here for knowledge is as a fish drawn up from the depths. “Knowing”, before knowing becomes knowledge, is a more appropriate term.
What kind of experience could constitute knowing prior to its becoming knowledge? What happens when you are parched and then you drink a glass of water, prior to your conception of the experience as a cool drink (i.e. knowledge)? What happens when your soul is dry, in a wasteland and you read a poem that refreshes you, i.e. prior to your conceiving the experience as “reading a good poem”?
This giving of an direct experience of “water” prior to its becoming a “fish out of water” (content of consciousness) is the work of the Aquarian teacher.
Lewis’ book shows us how we humans can stumble onto a psychological truth (here the truth of a transformation in consciousness having taken place) with inadequate concepts with which to address that truth. A true transformation in the background of consciousness, namely the medium from which our human consciousness, along with its knowledge systems springs, has taken place. We mechanistically reduce and contract the reality of that medium to the (concept of our) small human mind and its vagaries when faced with an uncertain future and we study such vagaries as a content of knowledge from which we extend the range of power and control over the unknown future, or so we think. With this incorrigible practice something beautiful is on the verge of being lost.
Is it too late to turn to this mystery, with a welcoming and humble gesture, in order to become who we are meant to become—who in fact we now are?
ENDNOTES
[1] Michael Lewis (2016). The Undoing Project. Penguin.
[2] Jung, C. G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 408.
[3] http://www.johnwoodcock.com.au/blog
[4] For my “review” of Lewis’ book: The Big Short
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/books/review/michael-lewis-undoing-project.html? r=0
[6] This “background” has been called the unconscious but for reasons you will see I eschew such terminology, using for now, the word medium.
[7] See C. G. Jung, Aion, par 174 ff.
[8] A better formulation: Aquarian consciousness is the medium become self-consciousness as such.
[9] Concepts such as Objective Psyche, Self, The Opposites, the Unconscious, etc., from the Aquarian point of view, may now be seen as regressive moves, preventing an actual experience of the medium from which all such concepts are drawn.