Okay, so we are talking about the things we figured out about emergent language and emoticons, yesterday. Let’s use the genogram again because what we are tracking is how language and feeling states might have devolved into something as primitive as the emoticons we saw in the little video yesterday.
So we had looked at the emoticon for this: >-@88888888oooooo)))
What that meant was “rattlesnake.”
It’s almost functioning like a hieroglyph that the Egyptians made. These are also called pictographs.
A pictograph is a way that a “writer” left a message for others. Pictographs are also some of the earliest languages as they were written down, as well. Here is cuneiform writing — how that looks.
We talked about something called LOGOS, yesterday as well.
Etymology and linguistic issues
In ordinary, non-technical Greek, logos had a semantic field extending beyond “word” to notions such as, on the one hand, language, talk, statement, speech, conversation, tale, story, prose, proposition, and principle; and on the other hand, thought, reason, account, consideration, esteem, due relation, proportion, and analogy.[1]
Despite the conventional translation as “word”, it is not used for a word in the grammatical sense; instead, the term lexis (λέξις) was used.[7] However, both logos and lexis derive from the same verb legō (λέγω), meaning “to count, tell, say, speak”.[1][7]
The Greeks distinguished between logos prophorikos (the uttered word) and the logos endiathetos (the word remaining within).[8] The Stoics also spoke of the logos spermatikos (the generative principle of the Universe), which is not important in the Biblical tradition, but is relevant in Neoplatonism.[9] Early translators from Greek, like Jerome in the 4th century, were frustrated by the inadequacy of any single Latin word to convey the Logos expressed in the Gospel of John. The Vulgate Bible usage of in principium erat verbum was thus constrained to use the perhaps inadequate noun verbum for word, but later romance language translations had the advantage of nouns such as le mot in French. Reformation translators took another approach. Martin Luther rejected Zeitword (verb) in favor of Wort (word), for instance, although later commentators repeatedly turned to a more dynamic use involving the living word as felt by Jerome and Augustine.[10]
In English, logos is the root of “logic,” and of the “-logy” suffix (e.g., geology).[11]
So, what we are concerned with is this concept of “logos” in terms of reasoning — and logic. This reasoning and logic are part of what I described in Piaget’s child development from age of birth to age 9. Pre-1970 we did not have “pre-scripted” computer programmed learning. Because we did not have them! Okay? Post 1970 we did. So we can refine the genogram further now, by assuming that the year 1984 is a year that most people began to have an exposure to the computer in some form. Here is a web page that shows the history in the years 1980 – 1990. It’s interesting to take a quick scan down the list — and you can see that by 1988 45 million PC’s are in use in the US according to the above. How many were in use across the world as well at that time? I’m going to assume that kids were already playing the pre-scripted games in high school in those years? Here is a timeline of them at this link.
I recall them at work in the graphic design industry in that era. Hellish trying to adapt to a “systems department” in terms of graphic design — but at home these were probably seen as a toy?
Let’s narrow that genogram further:
1988—————————————————————————-2011
Let’s assume that by 1988 — here are some articles on that — that this is being used for education in the schools.
An interesting article is here…
A New Age in Education
Until recent times, culture and values were passed down from generation to generation by three institutions–family, church and school. Today, by the time our children reach school age, they are predisposed to learning from an additional source: technology.
A new generation of yound people in growing up in an electronically configured world, a world where communication devices convey information and culture in ways that are fundamentally different from only a few years ago. From an early age, children are now exposed to highly sophisticated, immensely powerful audio and video technologies.
So, let’s narrow that genogram further now. Let’s assume a birthdate of 1988.
Questions would be to assess whether this generation onwards played pre-scripted games in countries where this was the standard method of learning?
1988——————————————————————————–2011
That period is exactly 23 years. Let’s assume that this generation did play the pre-scripted games.
Let’s also take into account “homeschooling” in this era.
The first thing that struck me was the attempt at design of a pictograph or symbol system and also the attempt at “logos,” in the video above.
What Sardello had discussed in terms of pre-scripted games in the article from 1984 was that this type of pre-scripted learning would not allow Piaget’s imaginal stage that we discussed yesterday. That is because a game is linear only. In other words there is only one outcome? That someone has already scripted. Sardello’s thesis was that this could lead to sociopathy.
What gave me the initial idea for the paper I had written for child development at Pacifica was seeing the violent games while I was purchasing my own first home computer in 1995.
Here I am positing a second theory. Suppose that for the generation who grew up with only pre-scripted games — to learn from — having missed Piaget’s birth to age 9 “magical thinking” period of development — and non-attainment of the Depressive position? Suppose that the world is ordered by a series of pictographs in some people — but without “logos” or inter-relationship between objects? Without the Depressive position there cannot be “Empathy.”
Notes on what the Depressive Position is for non-therapists — from the wikipedia:
The anxieties characteristic of the depressive position shift from a fear of being destroyed to a fear of destroying others. In fact or phantasy, one now realizes the capacity to harm or drive away a person who one ambivalently loves. The defenses characteristic of the depressive position include the manic defenses, repression and reparation. The manic defenses are the same defenses evidenced in the paranoid-schizoid position, but now mobilized to protect the mind from depressive anxiety. As the depressive position brings about an increasing integration in the ego, earlier defenses change in character, becoming less intense and allow increasing awareness of psychic reality.[15]:73
In working through depressive anxiety, projections are withdrawn, allowing the other more autonomy, reality, and a separate existence.[5]:16 The infant, whose destructive phantasies were directed towards the bad mother who frustrated, now begins to realize that bad and good, frustrating and satiating, it is always the same mother. Unconscious guilt for destructive phantasies arises in response to the continuing love and attention provided by caretakers.
[As] fears of losing the loved one become active, a very important step is made in the development. These feelings of guilt and distress now enter as a new element into the emotion of love. They become an inherent part of love, and influence it profoundly both in quality and quantity.[16]:65
From this developmental milestone come a capacity for sympathy, responsibility to and concern for others, and an ability to identify with the subjective experience of people one cares about.[16]:65-66 With the withdrawal of the destructive projections, repression of the aggressive impulses takes place.[15]:72-73. The child allows caretakers a more separate existence, which facilitates increasing differentiation of inner and outer reality. Omnipotence is lessened, which corresponds to a decrease in guilt and the fear of loss.[5]:16
When all goes well, the developing child is able to comprehend that external others are autonomous people with their own needs and subjectivity.
If there were not “connections” between all the things we described yesterday like the FISH in the aquarium?
Then, it would look something like this in the inner world?
Look at the brain image at the top of this article, and imagine that inside of it?
Are a bunch of free-floating “objects” such as this. Imagine the brain like a giant aquarium!
The objects can be named? Like this:
>-@88888888oooooo)))
(for rattlesnake) — but it is simply a pictograph.
A question would then arise about “cognition” and the object?
We all saw how fast this logo moved through the collective conscience, during the last election. But what is really interesting from a Depth Psychology perspective is what happened to it. It was used as what we call a part-object? By so many.
Let’s think about that.
It was a symbol that people felt they could attach to themselves? In a world where “logos” is non-linear? Where there are only free-floating “objects” in the cognitive field? It makes a lot of sense.
Here is an image of what that looked like:
I’m seeing this as a beginning point for an intervention in terms of creating a self-narrative for a generation post 1988 who may not have that because of the pre-scripted learning modality? Here is what sociopathy looks like in this generation of non-logos?
Still working out interventions for the tx planner.
Here is a link to Piaget — how interesting on the side bar — From Embryo to Ethics.
VALENTINE BONNAIRE - WRITER 