Addiction

Systems Analysis & Information Theory

“Their Despair is Inadequate”

Insane = “unsanitary.” Unclean! Unclean!

And so no wonder:
rites of cleanliness,
washing & washing
hands, blood of the
lamb rub-a-dub binging
of purging & purifying
& making clean against
the dirty untidy muddle.

To make “nice” = ne scire:
“not knowing.”

In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson...

[biologist, anthropologist, systems, information
& learning theorist; early cyberneticist (modeling
recursive circuitry in self-governing auto-poetic,
servo-mechanistic systems to generate smart bombs
and cruise control); student of schizophrenic &
dolphin communication & ultimately member of the
early Santa Cruz faculty prior to Paul Bartels &
Virginia McKinley & Katheyn Burleson; and his
father, William, a British biologist coining the term
“genetics,” which shares the same etymological root
as “generate,” “generalize,” and “gentle”:
gene—to give birth, beget:
“kin,”
“kind,”
“king,”
“genial,”
“germ,”
“germane,”
“progenitor,”
“gent”
(linguistically a patriarchal paradigm),
”naive,”
“native,”
“nature”
(not to be confused with “nurture”)
and “nativity”:
all in the family—
an origins notion. Genetics. Genius.]

…in a series of essays about anthropology &
relationship, biology & evolution, epistemology
& ecology & what he called a crisis in the ecology
of mind, knowingly demonstrates how

conscious knowing
ego-intentionality
purpose & aim
& objective

impedes: a stumbling block, scandal, handicap,
liability if its inadequacy & limit is not factored
into the fix-it-make-the-world-a-better-place
syllabus & agenda of the humanities service
projected.

Speaking from a whole systems standpoint
(pretending one could): the more one knows,
the clearer one’s focus & attention-efficiency:
the wider one’s circumference of ignorance.

This is not hard to consider from my armchair. I
imagine my self going into a closet with a flash light
to study darkness, riding a beam of illumination
thinking I’ve got it covered.

Conscious Knowing:
as “demonic” as it is “angelic,”
as luciferous as lucid, generating a
partial brilliance that occludes the whole
& holy & ignores the dark side of its equations.

Dirt.t.

Bateson & the Hamill Complex wouldn’t say IT
the way I’m saying it, but EngMajors could know
what I mean, middle-floor Jensen inhabitants used
to the old timey figures of speech & textual harass
mentalism no one takes serious: ways of talking that
justify the plays of God on myn. Don’t mess with
an EngMajor.

(Fine Artists
north of the gazebo
know exactly what I’m
saying I bet but we might
have to come to terms; or they’d
just show off—demonstrate: “Look,
see,” they’d say: “chiaroscuro!”)

Consciousness: double-edge sword.
Cuts both ways. I privilege one
& ignore the consequence.
Unclean.
Unclean.
Bi Polar, none the less
I’m addicted to Partiality
(you got a problem with that?)

Ad-diction: “to speak to”--literally manners
of speaking. Bateson demonstrates systemically
how knowing reasons why will not cure my
addiction. Knowing Reasons Why is what
makes me addict in the first place.

I’m addicted to Because & Affect.
You’d think explanations would help.
(I’ll fix THAT!)
You’d think knowing Reasons Why
would be a Good Thing.

Noooooo, says Gregory: not with addiction.
Your knowing got you into this pickle,
damnit: it won’t get you out! out!

A dirty business.