metonymy4u

One problem western philosophy has with understanding behavior (human or otherwise) is that it has a cultural tendency to look for rules. (And see, I just reproduced that habit!). What I mean is that western models tend to view human behavior as rule governed when it is actually just rule described. And when it isn’t rule governed, it is seen as baser, more animalistic, more primitive, less valuable, less trustworthy and less virtuous (viz, the classical Greek distinction between techne and episteme). Actually, though, ever since Freud and Lacan we’ve even learned to see our most primitive instincts as rule governed. They’re just governed by rules that we don’t like and so we cover them up. But the rules are still there, waiting to be revealed by highly trained professionals (analysts). The issue I have with this approach is that I just don’t think it’s accurate. In fact, if humans were more rule governed and rule aware, I think we’d be living in a much saner world! Because then humans would have learned to follow Kant’s favorite rule (rendered here in more colorful form): “don’t fuck with someone if you don’t want to get fucked right back!” Pretty simple right? And yet it’s a principle that gets ignored millions of times every day and I suspect one of these days will be the spark that ignites our nuclear firestorm. The problem here is that what we call rule governed behavior is often merely rule described behavior, and people tend to conflate the two in an age old intellectual feint.

Most behaviors actually are fairly automatic, held in what modern psychologists call procedural memory. These are the memory circuits that allow you to drive to work each day while plotting the overthrow of your evil boss or fantasizing about your newest crush (or so I’ve heard…. 😉 ). The other type of memory, declarative memory, is the memory that actually allows you to follow a rule, explicitly. That’s the memory you used when you were 15 and first learning to drive. But by now the skills are automatic and you actually don’t follow any specific rule when you move your foot from the accelerator to the brake in response to one of those red polyhedron signs by the side of the road. The behavior is automatic, overlearned and no longer stored in the explicit rule following part of your brain. This is why depression and other mental illnesses are frequently so insidious and difficult to treat: they are in part learned behaviors that have been automatized by influences completely outside of our awareness.

Most therapists are all too familiar with this phenomenon as they frantically try to “teach” their clients to stop doing all kinds of self-destructive behaviors, and then in desperation move towards a theory of unconscious rule following to explain the failure of their inept therapeutic interventions. Theories of unconscious hostility and masochism abound the literature and professional conversations about client self-harming and therapy interfering behaviors. My issues with Freudianism aside, I do applaud analysts for their creativity in trying to find other ways to teach new behaviors, however I would like to dig even deeper into our western habit of “rule talk,” as I have recently thought of it. I do think we need to find ever more creative ways to change our own and other’s behaviors, but more because I think we tend to be creatures of blind, stupid habit, rather than creatures of any sort of obedience.