Disneyland

Berger:

“the biologically intrinsic world-openness of human existence is always, and indeed must be, transformed by social order into a relative world-closedness.”

Man in a state of nature does not abide by laws of “stability” or human conduct. However, as a state of nature cannot be “natural” for men, when man enters into the social world, this natural state of society is also characterized by an “openness”—or rather, a lack of linear order otherwise obtained by stable, directed human conduct. Berger asserts, in spite of this, empirically human existence takes place in a context of order, direction, and stability. Why? What provokes a social order of “world-closedness”? Why, when, how did we move from a natural openness—characterized by a lack of category, a lack of power constructions, one that is fluid and cyclical—to a world closedness characterized by symbols, category, constructed and reinforcing power structures, and an ultimate linear narrative of human behavior? Can we see this progression in a linear eye—a movement from point A to point B?

Berger acknowledges that “the inherent instability of the human organism makes it imperative that man himself provide a stable environment for his conduct.” We habitualize, or institutionalize directive symbols as a way of checking this natural instability. The habitualization of behavior that is dictated by constructed symbols yields institutions, which in turn, through the construction of history, normalizes these symbols. This reciprocal relationship, compounded by the non-transparent nature of institutions, creates a feedback loop which ultimately makes it impossible for one to decipher the actors from the action, the symbol from its habitualization.

The linear construction of time, safeguarded by Historicity, turns the “here we go again” into the “this is how things are done.” As time pushes generations further from the immaculate conception of a institution (the organization and reinforcement of symbols), the institutionalized world is experience more and more as objective reality. Historicity becomes a practice of objectivation.

What is the influence upon a society when its institution becomes objectified (objectivated?)? That institution is seen as natural—at once amoral, just, and inevitable. Social change is deeply entrenched in a web of simulacra and objectivation.

Vygotsky in contrast, maintained that massive, holistic, and stable social change would readily and categorically manifest in society. In line with Marx’s Historical Materialism, Vygotsky argues that human nature, which dictates the nature of social reality, changes when that social reality around him changes; the two—human consciousness and social reality exist in a reciprocal, input-output relationship here as well. Social change would be found in manipulating the conditions of the institution (or superstructure) in such a way as to provoke specific patters of human consciousness and behavior, which in turn would reaffirm those conditions. Marx believed that by designing society in such a way, that society could redesign the nature of man… as such, Communism would be the end of history.

The superstructure of society dictates the undertones of every single aspect of capitalist society, no matter how diverse those cells, or manifestations of that society might be. For Vygotsky, the human psyche has a superstructure as well, one that is cultivated by society, and effects every facet of the individual human mind.

“From external signs to the internalization of those signs to become inner functions, the recognition and institutionalization of sign’s meanings for one’s social existence…their transfer inward is linked with changes in the laws governing their activity; they are incorporated into a new system with its own laws.”

Vygotsky is a proponent psychological theory as an instrument of holistic social change. Change occurs linearly.

Pierce discusses, in a similar spirit with Baudrillard and Derrida, the process of semiosis, or the production and interpretation of signs. Like Derrida’s concept of simulacra, Pierce maintained that humans abstract symbols, which are inherently arbitrary, from our lived experiences (manipulated by how the institution animates such symbols), gleaning meaning for those symbols. This web of symbols and abstractions is unlimited and infinite in principle. As Vygotsky notes, it becomes impossible to decipher the symbol from its abstracted interpretation in a controlled society. The key to social change, or manifesting a change in one’s consciousness, lies in inspecting the signs which contextualizes all of our “self-knowledge,” in deconstructing all the symbols, through recognizing them, and attempting to separate one from the infinite feedback loop of symbols.

While reading, I was reminded of Baudrillard’s theory about Disneyland. Baudrillard writes, "Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real…” The effect of symbols is one of building identities by promoting illusions of contrast, of conceptualizing the Other, and grounding one’s own identity in the negative spaces outside the realm of that Other. We “discover” who we are and what is of value to us as “individuals” because specific symbols are disguised and institutionalized in our search for order. We seek the symbol, rather than the object that it symbolizes. For example, we drink Starbucks because we want to be identified as sophisticated, cultured, rather than seeking those qualities outside of their abstractions. Do they even exist in a pure form, outside of their symbols, apart from their abstracted forms? How do we begin to deconstruct this…to deconstruct something so embedded in the way we see the world?

Trinh May writes:

“Reality is delicate/My irreality and imagination are otherwise dull/The habit of imposing a meaning to every single sign/Watching her through the lens. I look at her becoming me becoming mine/Entering into the only reality of signs where I myself am a sign.”

“A shattered mirror still functions as mirror; it may destroy the dual relation of I to I but leaves the infiniteness of life’s reflections intact…The more ears I am able to hear with, the farther I see the plurality of meaning and the less I lend myself to the illusion of a single message” (23,30).

Breaking down, deconstructing.