MSC Maximal Stress Cooperation: The Driving Force of Cultures

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Heiner Mühlmann MSC Maximal Stress Cooperation The Driving Force of Cultures

SpringerWienNewYork

Prof. Dr. Heiner Mühlmann

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Foreword

In 1996 my book ‘The Nature of Cultures’ appeared in Vienna and New York. It describes cultures as systems which are controlled by MSC and decorum. While MSC is a neologism meaning ‘maximal stress cooperation’ decorum is a very old term. It is as old as Western culture itself, and is furthermore, the translation of the even older Greek word ‘prepon’. Decorum and prepon mean ‘to be suitable, to be fitting’. It is all about the fitting of cultural medial contents to elementary cultural behavioural types and behavioural phases. These behavioural units are subject to a type of ranking system in which that which is essential is sorted from that which less essential. Decorum then means – the representations of the media must ‘fit’ the ranking of the cultural behaviour. It is MSC which assumes the top position in this ranking. In 1996 and the two previous years when I was working on my book ‘The Nature of Cultures’ less than 5 years had passed since the Iron Curtain had been lifted. Many believed at that time that with ending of the Cold War, which was more or less de facto peace anyway, that a new and better age of peace was dawning. At this time, I claimed with my book that all cultures without exception; the Graeco, the Roman, the Renaissance cultures of Europe and the USA as well as subcultures, hooligan cultures, cultures involving accomplices and mobbing cultures are all controlled by the MSC decorum principle where MSC stands for maximal stress, war and possibly collective death. I developed the MSC theory without paying too much attention to the political events surrounding me in the first half of the 90’s. 5

My most important fields of observation were the instructional texts on the rules governing Roman rhetoric, Italian humanism and the Italian Renaissance because I consider these epochs to be the key epochs of Western culture. Observations stemming from research in the fields of stress, artificial life and hooligan and marginal cultures were also of great assistance to me. Despite the fact, or perhaps for the very reason, that it was estranged from current events, the MSC decorum theory contained a formidable potential as far as prediction was concerned, because it maintained that all cultures are aggressive, and that one should distrust all cultures above all; one’s own. When one puts forward a theory based on observations of the last 2,500 years, and when the main claims of this theory are confirmed by subsequent events it is hardly surprising that one tends to assume – that is the way it always is! Cultures are controlled by MSC decorum. That is the way it always will be unless we manage to get to grips with the organisational core of MSC and decorum. The essay that my reader has before him is an update of ‘The Nature of Cultures’. Since 1996 the focus of my research has shifted to neurobiology concentrating on the connections between enculturation, memory and emotion. This is because MSC releases strong emotions, and it is emotions which favour the transgenerational memory. Culture is nothing more than the stability of the transgenerational memory

Essel, June 2004 6

MSC – Maximal Stress Cooperation

The terrorist attack of 11th September 2001 was an MSC-incident MSC is the abbreviation for “maximal stress cooperation”. On that day, everywhere in the world people watched the tops of the twin towers burning. They seemed strangely small since it was not possible to judge their actual size on the TV screen as there was nothing there which to compare them with. Only one thing was certain, and that was that there were a lot of people inside those towers. I followed the events on the one television in our house. It is located in a rather uncomfortable room on the first floor. My wife had called me. As I entered she made some comment to the effect that she didn’t really understand what she was seeing. We switched over to CNN at sometime. I couldn’t help thinking how the people above the smoking storeys might manage to reach the lower floors where they could be saved with all the other people. The CNN coverage alternated between New York and the attack on the Pentagon in Washington. As we were watching the pictures from Washington a voice in the studio announced that both towers had completely collapsed. This spoken announcement filled me with alarm. I saw in front of my inner eye a fleeting image of all the people in all the collapsing storeys. This event created a stressor for all those who saw it on television. Mankind had witnessed something for which it had no 7

name. Many people went to church. It took several weeks until their behaviour, so stunned as they were by the events, normalized again. Most people had no desire for entertainment or the like, and the television channels dropped all forms of entertainment in their programmes. After a few weeks, at least in Europe, everything was more or less back to normal. But not so in the USA. The larger part of the American people’s consciousness judged the events of 11th September not as a once-in-a-lifetime shock but rather as the triggering off of a permanent alteration of their own situation. For the Europeans on the other hand, everything seemed like a singular, nightmarish catastrophe. For the functioning of cultures however, one of the circumstances connected with the events of 11th September is of the greatest importance. Everybody can remember exactly where he or she was as they heard about the attack on the towers in New York. In my case it was while passing the door to our TVroom and hearing my wife’s shocked voice.

On the 11th of March 2004, a few days before the Spanish general election another attack took place, this time in Madrid. The course of events is well-known – several bombs were set off simultaneously in crowded local trains. Nearly 200 people were killed. The pro-American government probably realized immediately what the strategic objectives of the Islamic terrorists were, i.e. to influence the coming election in favour of opponents to the war in Iraq. The government attempted to blame the Basque separatist organization ETA for the attack. This would have benefited the government in power at that 8

time since it had made every effort to combat national terrorism and the electorate was fully aware of this. But the people saw through the attempted deception. The pacifist opposition won the election and the new President’s first act was to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. As a result of this the terrorists promised Spain an armistice. By announcing its withdrawal of troops, Spain promoted Kaida type terrorism to the ranks of a strategy. Whereas previous terrorist attacks had only had the effect of being big or very big disasters, the terrorist attack of the 11th March succeeded in implementing a premeditated political objective. And this was not the only thing which was achieved; the Kaida terrorist attacks start to form a coherent chain of events which seem to make sense. Because a purposeful causal relationship was produced by one incident of this chain, thus the whole chain gains sense and the sense of the sequence is henceforth transferred on to every single incident which would have otherwise been judged as a mere disturbance in a chain of disturbances. Both terrorist attacks of 11th September and 11th March are MSC events. They release maximal (M) stress (S) and cause strong phases of cooperation on numerous levels: the cooperation of the terrorists, cooperation of the rescuers, cooperation of the victims, their families and friends, the cooperation of the police and military units. Two results are however of special importance for the analysis of stress. The USA reacted to the stressor by attacking; Spain reacted by retreating.

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Stress physiology belongs to the organism’s cognitive systems and the cognitive result triggered off by the perception of a stressor is the binary reaction system ‘fight or flight’ – attack or retreat. But what is stress exactly and how does it work? How am I justified in claiming that stress is a cognitive process? As soon as the individual recognizes a stressor – a stressor is a threat, a danger or a physical act of aggression, regions of the brain i.e. the hypothalamus and the pituitary begin to release certain hormones and neurotransmitters. The pituitary forms the interface between the brain and the endocrine system for the brain is also a gland. The endocrine system is the bloodstream. It is used by the hormones as a transport channel to reach distant parts of the body where they trigger the release of further hormones. In the case of the stress reaction the hormones noradrenaline and adrenaline are produced. They belong to the family of catecholamines and cause acceleration of the cardiac frequency and increase in blood pressure. A further important stress hormone is cortisol which is produced in the adrenal gland and regulates such functions as the appetite and sleep. Under the influence of stress, noradrenaline, adrenaline and cortisol secretion is increased. This has the following effect; cardiac and circulatory functions are intensified, metabolism, immunity and sexual activity however are weakened. In this way all the organism’s energy reserves are channelled into the skeletal muscles in order optimise their motor abilities. They are used for fight or flight. In addition neural areas in charge of rapid perception and fast reaction are also strengthened. Stress physiology is thus a cognitive process by which a perception is transformed into a flow of energy. Of even greater importance than the stress itself is the happy ending of the stress phase. It is here, that a second aspect of 10

the cognitive character of stress manifests itself, and it is here, that the decision is made whether the whole process is healthy or morbid, since stress is normally associated with morbid behaviour. It is above all this pathological and therapeutic aspect which has led to stress physiology being so well researched. Morbid stress can lead to depression in humans for example. Stress research has made use of a wide range of evolutionary biological methods. In doing this, comparisons have been made between man and other species of animals thus reconstructing the point of branching out in the evolutionary tree of the genera and species. The other primates are especially suitable for these kinds of comparison as they take their place on the evolutionary ladder in the proximity of man. Stress research has been concerned a lot with monkeys and it is from a certain protoprimate the tupaia or treeshrew that we have learnt a lot about stress. When two tupaia males meet each other under certain conditions it soon comes to a fight the outcome of which is quickly decided. One male is the victor the other male the loser. The loser is normally not seriously injured. There are three possible results of the fight: dominance, subdominance and submission. The victor is ‘dominant’ his catecholamine and cortisol levels quickly reach their normal levels after stress action. Experiments have demonstrated that after repeated successful stress actions the base values of noradrenaline, adrenaline and cortisol are even lower than they were before the stress success series. This means that the animals have become healthier through the success series. The cardiac and circulatory complex is able to adapt as the low cortisol levels bring healthy sleep and increased immunity. Here we find a phenomenon which we can call the ‘samurai effect’. The 11

successful combatant finds ever increasing inner peace. His fighting abilities create something like an aura. This aura can be perceived by opponents and can result in duels being decided on the strength of this aura and the opponent signalling ‘I surrender’. The ‘subordinate’ male reacts to his defeat with increased watchfulness. His catcholamine and cortisol levels are always slightly higher. His cardiac frequency and blood pressure are also slightly higher whereas, his immune system is slightly weakened. If this condition is not altered by subsequent victory in a fight his life expectancy will be significantly shortened. This hormonal result resembles morbid stress so widely encountered in humans which consists of a constantly perceptible subjective strain. The ‘submissive’ tupaia male reacts to defeat with total apathy, his catecholamine and cortisol levels remain very high. He stops eating and sleeping and dies within two or three days. Death by stress however occurs only if the submissive male continues to see his conqueror. This is the case for example in a laboratory if his cage is opposite the victor’s. If however, and this is the really sensational discovery made by behaviourist D. von Holst and his team, the two cages are separated by a screen or curtain so that the submissive male doesn’t see his old rival any more, he recovers in a very short time. The catecholamine and cortisol levels fall to the base values again and the submissive male may well even attain a dominant rating in future fights. (v. Holst, 1972, 1974, 1977) As we see stress cognition consists of two phases. During the first phase recognition of a stressor is changed into an energy flow in which organic energy is transformed into fight or flight 12

activities. During the second phase stress activity is assessed. Only if the individual arrives at a non-negative assessment of the stress action does it then enter the poststressal relaxation phase. This is typified by rapidly sinking catcholamine and cortisol values and is associated with a slightly improved general state of health and increase in testosterone production. As testosterone is a sexual hormone the world looks a much nicer place in poststressal relaxation than it would have without the stress episode. Mars is the god of combat and victory and Venus the goddess of relaxation. Both, as we know, are well acquainted with each other. The sequence of the two phases stress and relaxation divides the world into two categories so to speak. The category ‘S’, successful stress, contains all skills, rules, implements and stories associated with such stress successes. It is of no consequence whatsoever, whether we are dealing with a physically measurable success or a subjectively perceived success. If for example the Germans really believed after their defeat in the First World War that they were ‘undefeated in the field’ and therefore the true victors they could find new energy to re-launch an attack. The category ‘R’, relaxation contains all the skills, rules, implements, requisites and stories that are involved in scenes of relaxation. As high stress actions have a greater influence on the balance of power and thus the fates of man and animals than low stress or stress free actions, the achievement and the assessment work of the relaxation phase are the decisive prerequisites for the creation of social systems of order. The systems of order which arise in this way are so important because they contain emotional order.

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The poststressal relaxation phase generates the phenomenon of emotional rule adjustment. Knowledge of nature’s cognitive systems has been gained with the help of four methods of observation. The first method is evolutionary biology which has already been mentioned. Different biological types are compared with each other to find differences and similarities. In this way our knowledge about human stress physiology has been gathered. It was easier to observe primates and protoprimates in extreme situations than humans and then by comparison, acquire general knowledge about stress behaviour in the higher mammals including man. The second method of observation in cognition research is the so-called developmental psychology. Researchers observe at which developmental phase in growing children which cognitive abilities are attained. The third method is neuropsychology. Here the brain is observed at work while subjects carry out definite, detailed cognitive exercises. The fourth means of access to knowledge about nature’s cognitive workings consists of experiments in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI)and artificial life (AL). In the case of artificial life experiments, computers are equipped with sets of rules attained by previous observations on regular behaviour of natural systems. Such computer programs are called ‘agents’. If these agents behave exactly as the previously observed natural systems one can assume that natural observations were correct. I will also make use of a fifth source for gaining knowledge about cognitive processes. However, it refers exclusively to cognitive behaviour which manifests itself within cultures. The 14

source consulted in this context consists of the numerous instructions in which the rules are represented which transmit cultural techniques. Among these practical instructions of culture are recipe books, instructions for the use of tools, books about military strategy, teaching books for rhetoric, textbooks on theatre, textbooks on poetry, textbooks on painting etc. It was above all the AL experiments which helped explore the phenomenon of rule adjustment. In these experiments artificial organisms were generated by artificial genetic systems. Or to put it more exactly the artificial organisms were rules generated by genetic algorithms which were rewarded when they were successful in simulated environmental problems. This led to the rules which were rewarded being strengthened. Reward in this case means they were provided with the ability to become active more often and faster. From this point on the less successful rules have to support the successful ones. Which looks something like this: Each rule has an ‘if’ side and a ‘then’ side. The more frequently successful rules provide the higher assessed offers as suggestions for solutions for an interaction problem with the environment,. Thus they occupy the pole positions in the case of these actions. Since, however, all rules can become active simultaneously the lower assessed rules take up the rear. This means they dock into the ‘if’ sides of the higher assessed rules with their ‘then’ sides. John v. Holland calls this rule adjustment or rule hierarchical phenomenon the ‘bucket brigade algorithm’ (1992). The main rule of an algorithm such as this is, ‘if there’s a fire then put it out!’ The first subrule is, ‘If you have grabbed a bucket full of water, then throw the contents on the fire!’

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This is followed by the next subrule. It applies to those people in the bucket brigade who are passing on the buckets to each other and finally to the one who is in the act of extinguishing the fire. The next subrule says ‘If the man behind you gives you a bucket then pass it onto the man in front of you!’ The experiments carried out by John v. Holland in the 90’s proved that rule adjustment systems of the ‘bucket brigade’ type can be generated by genetic algorithms, i.e. autonomous artificial agent systems and so can be the result of evolutionary processes and do not necessarily arise by means of rational behaviour. This natural system of rule adjustment offers a second means of access to understanding rule evaluative behaviour which manifests itself in the poststressal phase. It is important to remember that the relaxation itself, is only achieved by a nonnegative evaluation of the previous stress action. This is the way the formation of a spontaneous rule hierarchy comes into being. The rules which led to the presumed success in the stress situation must be promoted to the top positions on the rule scale by means of the indispensable evaluative work for the achievement of relaxation. The rules of relaxation activity operate on the subordinate dependent side. Apart from the poststressal assessment and the AL algorithm of the ‘bucket brigade’ type there is a third means of access to understanding the rule adjustment phenomenon. The assessment and reinforcement system applied in AL experiments corresponds exactly to genetic and nervous systems. Successful activities are carried out more often than unsuccessful ones. Human activity is always associated with the use of tools or implements and therefore with the application of rules. Furthermore, activity has always something to do with neuronal activity. Repeated actions generate growth of the neurons and 16

reinforcement of synapses involved, e.g. through increased production of the relevant neuro transmitters. These types of reinforcement are only possible within the bounds of genetic programs. Potential transformations of genetic programs depend on learning activity. If no learning activity takes place the genetic offers remain switched off and no genetic expression, as it is called, occurs. Genetic expression in the neuronal area is the development of the neuronal network which is dependent on activity. This neuronal reinforcement by means of the repetition of activities can also be described as ‘body memory’ or ‘procedural’ memory. The ‘body memory’ becomes active when all bodily movements are automatic, e.g. when driving a car we don’t think about which foot operates which pedal or when playing the piano one does not think about what one’s fingers are doing and when soldiers doing their drill at the barracks don’t have to think about how to handle their weapons.

The phenomenon of neuronal synapse reinforcement is important because it builds a bridge from the rule adjustment to the brain’s powers of memory. It can be assumed that a high ranking in the rule adjustment is synonymous with cultural ‘memoactivity’. ‘Memo-activity’ means ‘memory aptitude’. The successful application of rules leads to them being stored as input in the body memory of a large number of individuals in a cultural population. Thus cultures can be described with the aid of a quotient which expresses the percentage of individuals which is so strongly ‘enculturated’ that when the rule is applied all bodily movements are automatic. Enculturation means stor17

age of cultural traits in the biological memory. It is possible for example to speak of the enculturation quotient of a riding a bicycle, driving a car, playing the piano, having a barbeque, eating spaghetti, playing football, tightrope walking, firing a machine gun and programing a computer.

Neuropsychological research has found memory content is stored with especially lasting results when perception is associated with the release of emotions. It is then that the hippocampus (seahorse) and its neighbour the amygdala (almond) are activated simultaneously. The hippocampus and the amygdala belong to the limbic system. The neuropsychological process which the hippocampus triggers off is called ‘novelty detection’. It is indispensable for the storage of memory (Grunwald et al, 1999, 2000, 2002). Thomas Grunwald has raised the important scientific and philosophical question of whether it would not be more apt to describe the work of the hippocampus as ‘relevance detection’ rather than ‘novelty detection’. The amygdala is activated provided that an object perceived has been ranked as emotionally relevant. That is, for example, the case in stressors. The amygdala is connected to the hypothalamus and to the pituitary. It is there that the hormones are secreted which create the physical sensation by which humans and animals perceive that they are governed by an emotion. Neuropsychological experiments have demonstrated that simultaneous activation of the hippocampus and the amygdala leads to optimisation of successful memory storage.

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The triggering of an emotion during a learning or perceptual process stimulates the so-called ‘episodic memory’. The episodic memory means that the individual not only remembers the object noticed but also the entire scene in which the object was noticed. This brings us back to the events of 11th September. Everybody remembers what happened and where they were at the time it happened. In my case it was our rather uncomfortable TV room. It seems to me that events associated with stress generate strong emotions and are thus stored in many individuals’ memories. Also the reinforcing effects of the rule adjustment are reinforcements of memory storage of rules. That means that reinforcement effects of memory aptitude are not only involved in rule adjustment but also the poststressal assessment. The poststressal assessment and the rule adjustment associated with it are memoactive processes.

And now back to the abbreviation MSC! M means ‘maximal’ and refers to stress. Maximized stress signifies: mortal danger

and C stands for cooperation. In the case of MSC we are dealing with stress which is intensified into the realms of mortal danger and at the same time affects a large number of individuals in cooperating groups. 19

However, cooperation is always connected with conflict. Only where cooperation is practised can conflict and cheating exist and where there is conflict and cheating there must also be cooperation for without a preparedness to cooperate, fraud is impossible. Conflicts normally arise within cooperating groups. The example of the famous ‘prisoners’ dilemma’ illustrates the latent conflict potential contained in every form of cooperation very well. The paradigm ‘prisoners’ dilemma’ was developed in game theory. Merril Flood and Melvin Dresher of the RAND Corporation invented the game in its original form (Flood, 1952). In the following slightly adapted form it became world famous. Two prisoners, who have committed a crime together, are imprisoned in separate cells. It is made clear to them, individually, that if they give evidence against their partner the one who gave evidence will be acquitted, but the partner will be sentenced to five years, should he, the partner, not give evidence. However, both will be sentenced to three years if they give evidence against each other and that if neither of them betrays the other they will be sentenced to one year. The conflict is that betraying the accomplice could mean liberty whereas cooperation, where nobody betrays the other, will mean one year behind bars. Cooperation always assumes reciprocal altruism. One does something for the other expecting him to do the same and in this way the altruistic action, which at first signifies a fitness disadvantage for the individual, will be in the end compensated or even be advantageous. In this situation the individual can cheat at any time firstly by acting only in his interest and secondly by exploiting the altruistic behaviour of his partner. (Axelrod, 1985) 20

Since the prisoners’ dilemma is a game, the most important thing is just to win, i.e. to get as little points as possible in one round. If one ignores all ethical considerations whatsoever as far as cooperation and cheating are concerned, and only thinks about winning and uses cooperation and cheating as equally justified tactics, it soon becomes evident that cooperation and cheating in this kind of interaction are only variations of the same behaviour. This cooperative potential for conflict is directed outwards as soon as people function as a group, band, accomplices or community instead of as an individual. In this way complementary systems of intragroups cooperation and intergroups conflict can be the result. Cooperation and conflict create a bifurcation figure. The former is directed inwards the latter outwards. Conflict and cooperation become the two sides of the same coin or a head with two faces looking in opposite directions. The breakdown into intra-cooperation and inter-conflict inside the cultural population dynamics is supported by a phenomenon known as ‘folk sociology’ in cognitive module theory. In the case of a cognitive module it is assumed a form of genetically transferable cognitive reflex behaviour is involved (Sperber, Hirschfeld, 2004). An example of this is the inherent reflex-like recognition of snakes. The same applies to cognitive modules as was said about research methods in evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, neuropsychology and AL experiments. Cognitive modules, without exception, have been confirmed whenever any of these attempts have been made to observe them. In the case of the ‘folk sociology’ module we are dealing with the inherent ability to recognize individuals belonging to specific populations even if the external appearance of individuals is very variable. The most significant result arising from the ability to recognize 21

individuals belonging to specific populations is the formation of population boundaries.

Let us have a look at the individual parts of the MSC kit which have been introduced up to this point: The parts are called as follows: ‘non-negative stress evaluation and through this achieved relaxation as pre-/post-structure’, ‘stress-emotion’ = memoactivity’, ‘stress evaluation combined with rule adjustment’, ‘module: folk sociology’. If we assemble these components together we get a machine which represents a MSC hyper-organism. It is the actual cognition of stress which generates the two categories ‘S’ and ‘R’ which each contain all abilities, skills, implements, requisites and stories which refer to stress or relaxation. Abilities, skills, implements, requisites and stories can each be reduced to the rules which are necessary to produce and to apply implements, requisites and stories. The rule adjustment then generates a bipolar hierarchy in which ‘S’ is positioned at the top and ‘R’ at the bottom. Since the S area releases strong emotions, S events leave their mark more strongly on the memory than all other events. That is of the absolute importance for cultural structures and their transgenerational character. 22

The stress and cooperation unit results in populations reacting collectively to stressors, conflict cooperative units directing their conflict outwards and finally only cooperation being left within the conflict cooperative unit and the emotional harmony of relaxation spreading out within cooperating stress populations. The collective perceptual and reactive schema is reinforced by the cognitive module ‘folk sociology’ The most important characteristic of the MSC machine is the externalisation of the potential for conflict. It is important to consider that conflict and cooperation are always present at the same time in cultural organisations. Conflict and cooperation seem to be so mysteriously intertwined with one another that one can say that cooperation is synonymous with conflict. Or in other words, conflict will only be found where cooperation can be found. Lone wolves are only fooling themselves. If this merging of conflict and cooperation is so continued that it becomes impossible to distinguish one from the other, we are confronted with a phenomenon which strongly reminds us of the well-known linguistic paradigm “Gegensinn der Urworte” (Benveniste, 1956). Here are some examples – in Latin ‘altus’ means high and at the same time low. ‘Sacer’ means sacred and cursed. ‘Maiestas’ means sovereignty and treason. It has often been stressed that the paradoxical meanings of the Latin word ‘sacer’ are more a anthropological problem than a linguistic one (Milner, 2002). However, it is especially conspicuous that not only the terms ‘sacer’ and ‘maiestas’ but also the unit of cooperation and conflict concern the phenomenon of sovereignty and that MSC is nothing but the organisational centre of sovereignty.

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Sovereignty is the result of externalising conflict. This is the way communities arise which are internally free of conflict or at least low in conflict and emotionally harmonized. From the point of view of history the externalisation of conflict signifies nothing else but war, and sovereignty despite the United Nations’ charter still means the arrogated right to start a war at any time. And so I take up the MSC event ‘11th September’ again and the reaction it triggered off from the USA. – Attack. The most important functional characteristic of the MSC machine is that cooperation and conflict are divorced from one another and that this coincides with the creation of an emotional rule adjustment system. In turn, the rule adjustment system generates the two poles ‘S’ (everything involving cooperative stress action) and ‘R’ (everything involving relaxation and the welfare of the group). ‘S’ is directed outwardly. ‘R’ is directed inwardly. A remark on the five observation windows with which knowledge about MSC has been gained. The fifth means of access, as I see it, are cultural instructional texts. Consequently I have to ask the question at this stage whether instructions also supply explanations about ‘S’ and ‘R’ and about emotional rule adjustment. And the answer is: Yes they do! In fact they supply answers to this theme in great numbers. In instructions ‘S’ is called ‘sublime’ in English as it is in Italian. Spanish and Portuguese, in Greek ‘hypsos’ and in Latin ‘sublimis’. ‘R’ is called ‘low’ and in Latin ‘humilis’ etc…

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Rule adjustment is called ‘decorum’, ‘ornamentum’, ‘aptum’, and in Greek ‘prepon’, in French ‘bienséance’ and in German ‘das Angemessene’, i.e. ‘that which is appropriate’. And the number of books of instructions? A veritable cornucopia of them! Western culture is accompanied by instructions at every time and place. Here are a few examples: Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ and ‘Rhetoric’ by the same author. Pseudo-Longinus’s ‘On the Sublime’, Cicero’s and Quintilian’s various textbooks on rhetoric. The numerous treatises on architecture and painting through the epochs. The writings on courtly behaviour. The books about the art of strategy.

Institutionalised war is the most important cultural result of the MSC effect. It represents the cultural shaping of the separation of conflict and cooperation. The most radical manifestation of the externalisation of the conflict through internal population cooperation is the phenomenon of cultural preparedness to die. It is closely linked to the system of emotional rule adjustment since cultural preparedness to die is regulated by the principle of ‘honor’ and the principle of functioning of honour differs only slightly from that of decorum. Cultural preparedness to die means: the stress decision ‘fight or flight?’ is not made by the individual anymore but by the cultural population. There are two variations of this. The first makes use of the organisational form of rule adjustment called, as mentioned above, ‘honour’. In a certain situation the warrior must take up his weapons so as not to lose honour. He must give himself the command to attack. Should he fail in such a situation he is ruined. It becomes clear that the rule of honour 25

‘if situation X occurs you must attack’ occupies one of the highest rankings among all possible rules. The second variation of cultural preparedness to die is the military command. It is not the individual who decides for ‘fight or flight’ but rather the officer in command. Refusal to obey orders or deserting are war crimes and are punished. The command hierarchy of armies is the result of rule norming systems. While the rule adjustment functions by self-organisation, the creation and hierarchical structuring of rules through norms is the product of rational organisational systems. In this context it must be mentioned that the honour of a warrior firstly requires him to defend people placed under his protection and secondly to defend his own life. Suicide as a tactic of warfare has always been despised by western warriors. For the sake of completeness it should be added that honour in warfare in Europe of old was only attainable for the nobility, and not until the achievements of the French Revolution, was it possible for the simple soldier to win honour. It is at this developmental phase of military history that the honourable decision in respect to fight or flight was transferred in its entirety to the military command. In the modern army there are officers in command who give the decisive order while the aristocratic warrior gave himself these orders. Thus every individual aristocratic fighter was an integral unit of sovereignty. States and armed forces which were formed by aristocrats were additive clusters of local systems of sovereignty. In contrast the armies after the French Revolution and at the time of Napoleon I were the first global systems of sovereignty.

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The way MSC works directs our attention to the principle of inversion; and this is one of the most important characteristics of war Everyday truths and philosophy tend to assume that all disputes and disagreements which people get caught up in, are nothing more than a continuation of war. Hobbes’ argument often appears – man is the wolf of mankind. When children quarrel, when married couples spend all the time arguing, when one firm forces one of its competitors into bankruptcy one always hears remarks such as: ‘That is a continuation of the war’, or ‘That is war all against all’. When in church the words are heard ‘Pax domini sit semper vobiscum!’, the peace of God be with you forever more, the congregation shake hands to demonstrate their peaceful intentions. They believe by doing this to be laying the foundation stone for world peace. The principle of inversion points out that war has the diabolic characteristic, by means of the terror directed outwardly, to generate feelings of ease and comfort directed inwardly and that mankind’s good characteristics like peacefulness, altruism, consideration and sympathy find expression unhindered or even reinforced inside a terrible war raging outside.

MSC generates cultural founding events Founding events can take the form of murders on religious founders. Founding events can take the form of victorious battles and wars won, but above all battles lost which lead to cultures reorganizing, retaliating and triumphing.

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The Battle at Cannae was just such a disastrous defeat which sparked off something like this. On 2nd August 216 BC, Hannibal’s troops slaughtered 50,000 of Rome’s best-trained soldiers in a single afternoon. The scale of this military catastrophe was inconceivable. Two hundred men were either killed or injured per minute. The ground on which the battle had taken place remained contaminated for decades due to the enormous number of dead bodies. But in a period of time of less than a generation the Romans recruited new legions. They were under the command of Scipio, later known as ‘Africanus’, and soon set off on their famous African expedition. In the year 202 BC at Zama, Hannibal’s forces were annihilated by Scipio. In the year 146 BC the city of Carthage was razed to the ground. With this final victory in the Punic Wars the Roman Empire’s success story began. If an MSC event always separates cooperation from conflict and must trigger off strong stress emotions in order to, by means a positive assessment, create a phase of relaxation and furthermore, if this relaxation is inevitably the result of separating cooperation from conflict and therefore is infused with cooperative behaviour in its entirety, then this complete MSC complex of stress, emotion, relaxation and cooperation is to a large extent memoactive. That means it is excellently suited as a enculturating trait which can be transmitted over many generations in the future. Enculturating traits are units of transmission. They are so to say the atoms of cultures. Atomic theories always assume that the objects they describe consist of the smallest units which are all identical and possess no individuality. This applies to atoms as well as all particles in physics and likewise to quanta. It applies to the genes in biology and to the bits in information theory. Hydrogen atoms are all identical. Genes all consist of 28

DNA and genes which transmit certain characteristics always contain the same DNA sequences although they are present in countless cell nuclei. Bits always consist of a 0/1 sequence. The distribution of enculturating traits in a culture population occurs in a similar way as the distribution of a gene in a population. Let us take for example the culture of Christians. The enculturating trait is the memory stored in the minds of individuals of the execution of the religion’s founder Jesus of Nazareth. This knowledge is also present in the minds of many people who are not Christians. Christians differ from nonChristians in that they participate in special liturgies. Simply remembering the fact of Christ’s crucifixion belongs to the socalled semantic memory. One knows something but one does not know in which situation it was learnt. If one could remember, apart from the memory content, also the scene in which one noticed this content then we would be dealing with the so-called episodic memory. The Gospels give an account of which persons were present at Christ’s crucifixion: Mary mother of Jesus, Maria Magdalene and the disciple John. For all of them the event was printed indelibly on their episodic memories. All of them considered Christ to be the Messiah. They knew that he had made his own violent death a metaphor of an animal sacrifice in advance. Animal sacrifices were familiar to all of them from their own Jewish religion. The sacrificial lamb functioned as ‘bouc emmissaire’- the scapegoat: A banished animal with the sins of mankind heaped upon it. (Girard, 2001) In addition it functioned as a sacrifice to God and sacrificial meal for the people. Jesus substituted the butchered animal with bread and wine as the sacrificial meal and made bread and wine a metaphor of his own flesh and his own blood and himself a metaphor of the sacrificial lamb. The people who were present at the crucifixion 29

knew all this. Furthermore, they witnessed the execution with their senses of sight, hearing and smell. They saw the blood flow and they smelt the blood. The sight and smell of blood belongs to the innate reflex-like perceptions which triggers off panic, impulses to flee, aggression or instincts of cooperation as in the case of accomplices. The great cultural success of animal sacrifices where there are spectators who see the animal being stabbed and bled to death may be attributed to the intensive stimulation of the episodic memory which always occurs at the sight and smell of flowing blood. To avoid any misunderstanding whatsoever it is important to realize that an animal sacrifice smells just the same as an abattoir. This sacrificial ritual forms the liturgical basis for the Roman as well as the Greek religion. Added to these are the numerous ancient mystery religions and in addition the Jewish religion. What is especially interesting in this context is the fact that Mohammed re-introduced animal sacrifices 600 years after the Christians had abolished them. Obviously he, as a founder of a religion, realized the importance of this ritual for his religion to succeed. This is because the success of a religion relies on memoactivity of its founding and enculturating events. The enculturating events are liturgical repetitions of founding events after a chain of generations of any length. There is firstly the MSC founding event ‘the crucifixion of Christ’. It is indelibly impressed onto the memories of all those witnesses present due to the importance of the event and because of the intensive stress and emotional stimuli emanating from it. The memories of those present are affected by acute stimuli. The event is subsequently related by the Gospels. Those who read the Gospels learn that the event took place. 30

But it never comes to an acute stimulation. The stimuli rooted in the events are merely latently present in the literary commentary. In this form they can be transmitted over hundreds of generations. Liturgies transform the latent stimuli back into acute stimuli. At Lent and especially on Good Friday the founding event is presented again with the aid of music, with the aid of theatrical performances and with the aid of meditative exercises so that the emotions are stimulated anew. Things have been carried so far in the liturgical exercises that the account in the Gospels of Jesus being whipped are re-created into intensive and acute stimuli by acts of self-flagellation. By observing liturgies the following has been learnt: cultural founding events must be MSC events because the stress portion of the MSC phenomenon releases strong emotions and because, among all potential memory contents, the one with greatest chance of making a lasting impression on the collective memory is the one which releases the strongest emotions. Whether one single event has the ability to become a founding event rests entirely on its ability to influence, and on a transgenerational scale, stronger than any other event. In this way it becomes clear that MSC also plays a decisive role in the case of vertical organisation of cultures. The term ‘vertical’ means – cultural traits are passed on to the next generation. By ‘horizontal’ is meant the passing on of traits from individual to individual belonging to the same generation. Cultures are vertical by definition, i.e. culture is only what its differential traits have passed on at least one time from one generation to the next. Verticality as a condition for functioning of cultures belongs to the anthropological constants. Mankind can only survive in 31

the form of cultural organisations. They are dependent on the previous generation’s knowledge of rules because it is simply not possible to learn all the techniques required for survival from scratch in one single generation. What is especially interesting about the enculturating technique of ‘liturgy’ by means of which founding events are transferred, is the verticalisation of stimuli emanating from MSC events. The stimulus is acute at the actual time of the event and subsequently is transformed by means of artificial storage systems into a latent stimulus such as scriptures and pictures. Existing in this form, it can be passed on to any number of generations. The latent stimulus is transformed back into an acute stimulus by means of liturgies. The vertical traditional of liturgical practice however, must not be allowed to be severed. As a culture and/or a religion is extinct, as soon as its content is to be found solely in books and pictures.

The module theory has already been mentioned in context with the cooperation effect. A cognitive module is a stand-by system genetically transferred by neuronal availability which is able to generate preferences for learning and in addition reflexlike processes of cognition. For example panic recognition of snakes and of course ‘folk sociology’. That is the recognition of a sense of belonging to a certain population and thus also the paranoid recognition of hostile populations. The genetic portion of the cognitive module reminds us of the epistemological initial attempt of so-called ‘Contructivism’ or of the ‘non-representative theory of cognition’. (Varela 1978). Its most important hypothesis is – the world does not exist sim32

ply objectively and is not merely reproduced or depicted by the neural system. It is much more the availability of the neural system which generates or ‘constructs’ the environment by means of successful actions. The environment is thus only a ‘model’ generated by the invariances of neural systems typical for a species. It follows therefore that the environments of each species are different. (Schmidt 1987) The module theory therefore takes care of the description of the genetic prerequisites for this neuronal constructional work. In the case of genetics we already find ourselves within the realm of verticality, i.e. we have realized that perpetual vertical generation of new nervous systems is the inevitable prerequisite for the coming into being of constructs. Such questions as to whether constructs are vertical phenomena or whether constructs are able to evolve vertically must be asked. And the answer is ‘Yes!’ for both cases or at least for the cultural constructs. It is here that the verticalisation of the stimuli which make an evolutionary theory out of constructivism. The verticalisation of the stimuli is achieved by the transformation of acute and horizontal stimuli into latent and vertical stimuli. It is therefore justifiable to associate MSC theory with constructivism and at the same time with the principles of verticality and evolution. This would more or less correspond to the theory put forward by Baltes and by the Max Planck Institute of ‘cultural-biological co-constructivism’. (Baltes, 2003)

Now that I have introduced the term ‘the MSC construct’, I find myself confronted with the question ‘What kind of thing is an MSC construct’?

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If the world is a construct created by the very nature of the nervous system then the construct’s essential characteristic is its neuronal perceptibility. That means that individuals are well provided for by the activity of the construct with perceptible objects – as far as aesthetic impressions are concerned nothing is missing. Constructivism now points out that the objects perceived are the result of non-representative cognition. Which signifies that there is no objective reality or world which can only just be reproduced as if by a camera. The nervous system’s constructivist activity can result in objects which exist physical space and are perceived by one animal’s nervous system not being perceived by the nervous system of another animal. Frogs, for example, perceive insects moving rapidly through their sphere of perception and snap at them. If insects managed to move extremely slowly then they would be able to tunnel through the frog’s world. The vertical MSC construct behaves in much the same way. It is not perceptible because it is a transgenerational phenomenon. Its evolutionary dynamics are so slow that they cannot be perceived in a generation’s time window, its stimuli only having an effect by means of its overlapping organisational structure for future generations. This organization of overlapping generations is the functional principle of cultures. However, it does not belong to the family of horizontal constructs which can be perceived. The vertical MSC construct is the invisible collective eye through which all individuals see a culture but which is not seen itself. We do not know that we are controlled by vertical coherence of MSC. When we are subjected to acute MSC influences we only see the horror and enjoy only the relaxation after the horror, should we have survived at all and should we succeed in finding a positive sense to it.

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The following is an example: apart from MSC events associated with founding of religions, ‘landmark battles’, as they called Victor Davis Hanson (2001), are the most important founding events for cultures. For the Americans the Civil War was a founding event and also an outstanding MSC achievement. One of the great heroes of the Civil War was General Sherman and it was he who contributed much to the success of the North. After the end of the war the relaxation phase set in under the auspices of the North. What followed was the obligatory evaluation with the rule adjustment caused by means of the MSC event. In this case the imposing of a rule norming system was also involved. This is because a democratic constitution against the legal system of a society tolerating slavery was imposed. The combination of MSC success, rule adjustment and the imposing of a constitution lent a certain sublime quality to the event complex. Everybody who had taken part in the war either as active soldiers or as relatives and friends of those injured or killed were affected by acute stimuli. The events of the war were described in the history books and thus passed on to subsequent generations. History writing and history lessons transferred latent stimuli. Liturgical events such as memorial parades and national holidays transformed latent stimuli into acute stimuli. However, stimuli were involved whose lower intensity did not match those stimuli of the original founding events. All the same, there are also latent stimuli transformed into acute stimuli which are of the same if not greater intensity than the founding event itself. Those are successive wars and it is here that the vertical MSC construct comes into play. It consists of the transgenerational linking of acute, latent new acute, latent and new acute stimuli etc. 35

As the Americans made the decision to intervene in the 2nd World War they probably were of the opinion that the rule systems which had resulted for them from the American Civil War were threatened by the potential expansion of Fascism. They suffered several defeats but also fought several successful battles but with heavy losses, e.g. the defeat at Pearl Harbour, the invasion of Normandy and the battle of Midway. They achieved their strategic objectives and succeeded in doing something which one believes they will not repeat in either Iraq or Afghanistan – namely ‘state building’. They created lasting, stabile, democratic states in Japan and Germany and later also in South Korea. This was only attained however because American troops remained in the countries concerned for two generations. During the second half of the last century the Germans were guided by ‘probation officers’ without noticing it, the Americans created the impression that they were in Germany because of some NATO strategies or the Cold War so as not to unnecessarily humiliate the vanquished opponent. That is as if a probation officer created the impression on his ward that he were not a probation officer at all but merely the employee of a security company. The end result was that the Germans stopped making any more strategic decisions and more or less failed to realize even that they had become incapable of deciding anything in this field. They became platonic geostrategic cave dwellers and as cave dwellers, came to believe that the issues of the Frankfurter Schule or those of the Documenta in Kassel were those of the actual world. Geostrategic issues are still not a matter of discussion in the Germany up to today. The American troops remained in Germany because Germany had committed genocide and so the primary political issue was to prevent renewed genocide. This question did not arise in po36

litical discussions in Germany in the second half of 20th century. German political consciousness was directed towards secondary political issues and transformed these secondary issues into primary ones. Among these pseudo-primary issues were the social market economy and the culture of Modernity which convinced Germans that they now had ethical powers which would protect them from relapsing into the Nazi system. These connections were absent from the Germans’ critical awareness in the second half of the 20th Century; with one exception. Only Bazon Brock with his formula ‘Der Verbotene Ernstfall’ (the forbidden worst case) correctly described the internal condition of German culture. (2002) The term ‘the forbidden worst case’ and similar terms derived from this are a recurrent theme in his numerous essays and lectures that he has been giving in public since the 60’s until today. Through the self-blocking mechanism of ‘the forbidden worst case’ Germany found itself cut off from the MSC experience in the second half of the 20th Century and thus incapable of realistically assessing itself.

That which makes perceptible cannot be perceptible itself. The vertical MSC construct must itself be invisible in order to make other things visible. In the culture of Modernity the works of art of non-Fascist Modernity are made visible. They are supported by the State and held in awe by the German public like fetishes containing healing powers. While the individuals of a cultural population are being distracted by perceiving visible cultural objects it can come to the dissolution of vertical MSC constructs. This happens for 37

example if the vertical liturgical transmission is severed and only the medial artefacts which once referred to the past liturgy remain. The culture then transforms from a decorum aesthetic of emotional rule adjustment to an aesthetic of pure ‘conduite esthétique’. The ‘conduite esthétique’ is capable of inhibiting the formation of emotions and to observe objects so that the pleasant inner condition known as ‘Ästhetisches Wohlgefallen’ is attained. (Schaeffer, 2001) This inner condition is ‘autotélique’ i.e. its purpose lies within itself and it attempts to maintain itself as long as possible. According to the thesis put forward, a culture only exists as long as its vertical MSC constructs are passed on from generation to generation. And vertical MSC constructs evolve exclusively in the medium of maximized stress emotion. Mortal danger and the cultural preparedness to die have already been mentioned in this context. Brock’s formula of ‘the forbidden worst case’ can be relatively elegantly applied to MSC theory by asking the following questions: ‘Does a German culture of vertical MSC constructs exist?’ or alternatively ‘Do vertical MSC constructs exist in Germany?’ The first most likely answer is – Yes, vertical MSC constructs exist! If they do exist they must produce a coherent connection for a MSC founding event and MSC follow-up events. Furthermore, they must contain positive relaxation assessment for the chain of founding event and follow-up events. If that were the case then Germany would still be as dangerous as it was before. 38

The second possible answer is – they don’t exist anymore. They were destroyed because of the shame which Germany brought upon itself during the time of the Third Reich. That would mean that Germany is nothing but an aesthetic pseudoculture and not a national MSC culture like the USA, France and many other nations, In other words – German culture has become extinct. The third possible answer is that, there never was a MSC founding event with positive relaxation assessment in Germany and therefore no vertical MSC constructs either. I favour the third answer. Which allows me to interpret the aberrations of 20th century German politics as the desperate attempt to make up for the non-existent MSC founding event. The schematic application of the theory of the vertical MSC construct describes very realistically the characteristics of Germany’s efforts to make up for the MSC founding event. In the image arising in this way the fact fits for example that the unsuccessful founding events in the forms of the ‘1st World War’ and ‘2nd World War’ were induced by aesthetic culture. Even before the 1st World War, German writers and thinkers had done an excellent job as far as war mongering was concerned. This reversal of the order of events from ‘acute stimulus – latent stimulus – diminished acute liturgical stimulus’ to ‘first liturgised latent stimulus and then acute founding event’ has been described many times by Bazon Brock. One of his most important examples is the development of the romantic music culture which led to Richard Wagner’s liturgised music theatre by which Adolf Hitler was so significantly influenced culturally. In the case of Adolf Hitler the cultural preparedness to die became a death cult. The enculturation effect for this turning 39

point to becoming a religion of death finds its origins in the opera ‘Die Götterdämmerung’. This worship of death affected Hitler’s combination of culture and strategy which was, right from the start, organized in such a way as to signify degradation for Germany’s national heritage for ever, should it fail. Relaxation combined with a positive assessment of the MSC events of the 2nd World War were to be made impossible. And that is exactly what occurred. The disgrace of the genocide on the Jews rendered the formation of any vertical MSC constructs impossible. This reversal of events, in which the aesthetic visual objects of a culture release an MSC formative dynamic, throws a new light on the theory of the vertical construct. It makes the succession of events ‘founding event – liturgy’ reversible and transfers the unit of conflict and cooperation to fictive realms of the media. In other words MSC events can be immersions, which find their origins in the virtual worlds of the media e.g. the opera ‘Götterdämmerung’ and then enter the physical world e.g. in the form of the total annihilation of a people. A further consideration combines with the reversibility of founding event and liturgy – Germany would be the first culture which up to this point in time has not succeeded in creating an internationally recognized founding event which can be positively assessed. If in such a case stress pressure actually stems from aesthetic representations, then Germany is faced with an entirely new kind of cultural and political challenge. It must suffer its MSC culturelessness and should on no account make aesthetic culture a substitute for MSC culture by overestimating the former. Brock has warned of this danger and expanded the paradigm ‘forbidden worst case’ to include the arts.

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An epistemological comment: The theory of vertical MSC constructs would not be possible without neurological sciences. This is because it is only through neurological experiments that we know that memory storage involving simultaneous activation of the emotions achieves the most successful results and it is this way that vertical latent stimuli have a long term lasting effect. It is on them that the stability of cultures depends.

The USA’s intervention in the 2nd World War was for them a transformation of latent stimuli into intensive acute stimuli by means of a successive war. The assessment and relaxation which followed brought the USA a cultural coherence and a geostrategic control of the situation on a scale which had never existed before. A vertical MSC construct was charged with tremendous transgenerational amounts of energy here. Following the events of 11th September the military historian and classics scholar Victor Davis Hanson wrote a series of essays which initially appeared in various American magazines and were subsequently published in the anthology ‘An Autumn of War’(2002). These essays are reminiscent of the speeches, in which the great Demosthenes called upon the Greeks to declare war on the Macedonian king Phillip. Hanson calls the Americans to enter the fight against the USA’s enemies and makes use of the persuasive power of the vertical MSC construct. He represents the Americans as the legitimate successors of 2,500 years of Western culture and states that Western culture has always and quite justifiably been victorious over non-Western enemies in war and for this reason the Americans would also be successful in their fight against the terrorists and their organizations. 41

Hanson’s articles were written in the autumn of 2001 which explains the title ‘An Autumn of War’. Then the Americans did begin the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The chain of events is characterized by the logical consistency of the vertical MSC construct with its alternating stimulus sequences.

The vertical MSC has temporal and spatial structures. Its temporal structure consists of a combination of slow, transgenerational vertical event sequences and rapid intragenerational horizontal sequences. The vertical MSC construct is the enculturating unit which has to be stored in a representational number of a cultural population’s biological memories. It follows that the success of vertical MSC constructs is subject to the laws governing neuropsychological processes activated during storage of memories in the memory. The neuropsychological processes are released by stimuli affecting the sensory system. Stimuli which arouse emotions play an especially vital role in this case. The vertical chain of enculturation must never be allowed to be severed as this would lead to a culture’s extinction. This vertical chain contains an alternating temporal structure in which acute stimuli generate latent stimuli which in their turn generate acute stimuli which again generate latent stimuli ad infinitum. The vertical MSC construct’s time axis is thus formed by emotional time. The alternating figure ‘acutely emotional – latently emotional’ results in the forward passage of time assuming a nonlinear character. This non-linear passage of time moves in the media of the biological memory. This biological memory is directly subject to 42

the characteristics of its surrounding space. How is this meant to be understood?

Classical rhetoric included the subdiscipline ‘mnemotechnic’, it was here that students of rhetoric were instructed in the art of memory because the writing down and subsequent reading of speeches was frowned upon. This meant that every wouldbe speaker had to be taught to memorize the contents of his speech and then to recite them by heart; and so the techniques of artificial memory were taught. This is how it was done: Every rhetoric student had to design and adapt for his purposes an imaginary city with gates, streets, squares and buildings. This city had to be stored in his long term memory so that he was able to imagine it down to the last topographical detail at any time and so that he could make imaginary excursions in it. The city was said to remain at his disposal in the imagination for his entire life. A speech corresponded to a never-changing route through the city, through the streets, round corners and over boulevards and squares, through gates etc. The starting point of the imaginary route corresponded to the beginning of the speech the point of destination the speech’s conclusion. Every time a speech was to be given its content were transformed into images and displayed at a certain place in the city. Such a place in the imaginary memory was called ‘locus’ or in Greek ‘topos’ from which the words ‘topic’ and ‘commonplace’ stem. Mnemotechnic nearly always works with the help of architectural space. Which allows some conclusions to be made as to a connection between spatial memory and memory in general.

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In fact neuropsychology has found out that brains alone do not suffice to store everything which a human needs to remember in order to survive, and that brains have to rely much more on creating dependencies in the world outside which are capable of storing additional memory content. So a completely normal apartment is at the same time a memory storage site. This is particularly evident in the case of patients suffering from memory malfunction such as Alzheimer. Neural scientists owe their first insights to the wellknown medical cases where certain parts of patients’ brains had been destroyed cases and so it was possible to observe which areas of behaviour are altered and which parts of the brain non-functional. In diseases like Alzheimer it is generally the ‘working memory’ which is damaged. Patients are incapable of remembering the simplest duties of everyday life. They forget for example that they have to wash at certain times or they forget to finish washing when they have started. In such cases it has been possible to re-activate remembering by bringing patients back to their own homes. If they then went from the living room, along the hall and to what had been the bathroom they remembered that they had to wash and to finish washing once they had started. The transgenerational memory of cultures works with spatially external storage sites of the vertical MSC constructs. We can talk of a locating of the latent stimuli in this context. Western culture’s speakers communicated via the vertical lines which led from the founding events to their respective presents. In their minds and thus in their speeches they had a city which was structurally similar to the one which surrounded them. The imaginary city in the mind of the speaker is a memory tool. 44

The physical city surrounding the speaker is also a memory tool.

The western cities’ characteristic topographical structures resulted from the need to protect its people. That leads us back to the MSC principle. Cities were constructed as fortifications. Right up until the widespread use of artillery the city walls and city gates were an indispensable means of defence. As soon as the need for protection begins to predominate when settlements are being built ‘gate communities’ begin to arise. This applies to antiquity, the Middle Ages and earlier Modern times and today’s luxury ghettos in USA and Asia with all their security precautions. All these consist of a ring shaped enclosed area and gates are built through which one gains access to the inside. The gate in the surrounding wall creates the characteristic structure of this kind of settlement. It is the transversal. By means of the transversal curve the main boulevard always appears leading from the main gate to the central square. It forms a line which cuts the surrounding ring. Intersecting at right angles two straight lines is known as orthogonal in classical geometry. In topology one generally calls the orthogonal, transversal, because topology does not pay attention as to whether it is dealing with Euclidian straight lines or curves with all possible curvatures. In the city gate a sphere is intersected by a curve. The location of MSC has the topological form of the sphere. To express this more exactly we are dealing with the two dimensional sphere of the ground plan – this will be called S1. In the past, the main roads created by the sphere transversals had names such as ‘via regia’, ‘royal way’, ‘camino real’ 45

and ‘boulevard principal’. They were always important routes for the city’s traffic but in addition they always had a symbolic meaning because it was here that the parades took place; victory parades after successful wars, conquering armies parading, memorial parades on national holidays on which the founding events were again recalled and religious processions. These boulevards link gates to squares and the squares to other squares. It is in the squares that we find the monuments, in Latin ‘monumenta rerum dignarum’ i.e. monuments for dignified matters, and by dignified matters are meant the founding events and subsequent events. In these prominent roads and squares were to be found the most important public buildings, for example, temples, churches, law courts, government buildings, triumph arches and theatres. The facades of these buildings were decorated with monumental inscriptions, reliefs, statues and groups of statues. They represented unmistakably and conspicuously the references to the founding event. It becomes clear that not only are imaginary topographies spatial units for the memory but that physical urban topographies are likewise spatial units for the memory. The founding events with their strong emotional stimuli – if they didn’t contain strong emotional stimuli they wouldn’t be founding events and would have had no effect on the collective memory –are not only stored in the biological memory of successive generations but also stored in external memory sites in the form of urban i.e. topographic spatial units and take the form of physical places of memory. These real places are ‘topoi’ in physical space. They outlive the line of generations and new individuals of subsequent generations encounter them in the world that surrounds them as if they had been there for all time.

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The vertical MSC construct consists of alternating series of acute and latent stimuli. It stores its latent stimuli in public places and is capable of reactivating these latent stimuli by means of liturgies. Whereas the public spaces are locations of the vertical MSC construct, the liturgies function by using temporal structures such as calendar dates, times of the day and musical rhythms which help to synchronize body movements and coordinate entire populations. In this way the vertical MSC construct not only creates a locational but also a swarming effect and then combines them with each other. Examples are the military parades on national holidays. The parade on the 14th July on the Champs-Élysées in Paris takes place on a magnificent transversal. The troops’ steps are synchronized by means of march music. One of these marches, the Marseillaise, connects with its text to the founding event i.e. the French Revolution. The reader will realize that the transversal basic form of the city’s ground plan results from the ring-shaped fortification wall and that this ring-shaped fortification wall is the wall which separates conflict from cooperation. On the concave inner side there is cooperation and on the convex external side preparations are being made for conflict which could occur at any time. It should also become clear that external conflict will reinforce the willingness for cooperation inside.

The characteristics of urban space, the transversal structure and shifting of the memory as described up to this point can only be comprehended to the full extent by considering the temporal dimension as well. Then it becomes clear that vertical MSC con47

structs are spatiotemporal phenomena which are beyond aesthetic considerations as any objects of which one can say, ‘Regard this entity as both spatial and temporal!’. The MSC phenomenon does not appear in aesthetic cultural space and not in aesthetic cultural time because it is a cultural spatiotemporal entity. Not only does the vertical MSC construct contain the vertical temporal structure ‘latent stimulus – acute stimulus’ but also a horizontal structure. It is the t1 – t2 series of stress and relaxation. Every founding event driven by MSC must have generated a relaxation phase after it happened. Because the relaxation phase is the result of the positive assessment of the stress event and, without positive assessment no relaxation would have occurred or led to the high ranking assessment either, which converted an event to a founding event. The actual MSC event and the relaxation necessarily contain the temporal structure of a series from t1 to t2. This t1 – t2 series stores itself in the latent stimuli like a data packet. At the point of retransformation into an acute stimulus by means of liturgy the temporal structure t1 – t2 is updated. This is the case with liturgies as well as follow-up events. The founding event ‘the Crucifixion’ is thus transformed from latent stimuli to moderately acute stress stimuli every Good Friday. The Gospels also tell of a relaxation scene which took place at an inn in Emmaus. The latent stress stimuli from the gospels are transformed into acute stimuli by passion plays on Good Friday. Here we have to imagine a dramatization which more or less goes in the direction of Mel Gibson’s splatter movie ‘The Passion of Christ’. The empathy of the stimuli radiating from a passion play was reinforced by fasting which was expected of people throughout Lent and especially on Good Friday. On Easter Sunday the Easter plays were performed showing the discovery of the empty tomb. The scene in the inn at Em48

maus with the charismatic gesture of Jesus breaking bread and thus revealing himself to the disciples was especially popular in performances on the second day of Easter. Being in an inn the disciples had already imbibed somewhat and as sozzled clowns supplied some comic relief for the spectators. Suddenly the supposed unknown drinking mate reveals himself as Christ and the disciples sober up immediately but Christ disappears before their eyes. The liturgical series t1 – t2 of the theatrical presentation contains the reinforcing effects which make comic entertainment on stage so successful when it follows MSC theatre. The same liturgical law functioned in Greek theatrical practice where the comedies or satire were always performed after the tragedies. It is no different in the case of the liturgies associated with national memorial parades. In the morning the military parades take place and the commemorative speeches are given for 14th July and in the evening people dance in the streets and on the squares. If however, it comes to a real MSC follow-up event, i.e. a war, then the law of forced relaxation applies. Without positive assessment no relaxation, and without positive assessment plus relaxation no chance of survival for the vertical MSC construct. And without survival of the vertical MSC construct no chance of survival for the culture.

The characteristics of cultural space described as memory space and transversally structured physical space can only be understood if cultural space and cultural time are considered 49

simultaneously. This is because the vertical MSC construct is a culturally spatiotemporal structure. That sounds a bit like a metaphor of the general theory of relativity and I can’t help but feel nervous about the fact that metaphors may be used to illustrate theories more clearly but that the theories themselves may never be allowed to be metaphors of other theories. That means a cultural spatiotemporal theory in which space and time share the same characteristics exclusively, may only be considered on the condition it is not a metaphor of the general theory of relativity. The identity of conflict and cooperation is the non-perceivable characteristic of cultural space-time. This cultural space-time in which conflict and cooperation are one and the same, is divided into the separate zones of conflict and cooperation by the vertical MSC construct. It is only in this way, and then only singly, that events associated with conflict and events associated with cooperation can be perceived at all. The amount of stress of the MSC effect refers to the conflict, the amount of relaxation to the cooperation. Stress and relaxation are coupled onto each other as a temporal sequence. Stress and relaxation generate emotional rule adjustment. In the tradition of Western culture it bears the name decorum. Stress is known as ‘that which is sublime’ and relaxation as ‘that which is base’ in decorum. Stress/conflict and relaxation/cooperation are transferred by means of the spherical fortification in spatial form. Stress/conflict is the term for exterior/external and relaxation/cooperation is the term for inner/internal. Finally, as the last characteristic of cultural space-time, MSC construct’s vertical structure fits into the complete picture. The latent stimulus is transferred during the cooperative phase for 50

it is here in this phase that the didactic systems and the vertical enculturation systems work. The acute stimuli on the other hand produce stress phases either in the moderate form of the liturgy or in the intense form of an MSC follow-up event. The characteristic which only becomes evident when spacetime is observed as well and which does not appear in normal cultural aesthetics is the identity of conflict and cooperation. It is separated by the vertical MSC construct into the two cultural objects of perception – conflict as a temporal event in space and cooperation as a temporal event in space. The separation of cultural space-time into space and time corresponds to the separation of the unit conflict and cooperation into conflict and cooperation. This separation is achieved by the vertical MSC construct. It generates the cultural space and the cultural time and only separate conflict events and cooperation events in space at definite times are perceived. Accordingly techniques and rules are developed separately which are supposed to enable conflict events and cooperation events to be influenced favourably. The question therefore arises whether cultural techniques which regard conflict and cooperation as a functional unit could lead to greater successes.

I will summarize: MSC generates emotional rule adjustment. The emotional rule adjustment contains the temporal structure stress = t1, relaxation = t2. This temporal structure is to be called ‘emotional time’. The emotional rule adjustment generates transversal space with the separating partition stress/ conflict = external and relaxation/cooperation = internal. The 51

transversal space is to be called ‘emotional space’. t1/t2 and external/internal are an emotional time/space structure. This time/space structure contains a fast moving horizontal and a slow-moving vertical time scale. The slow moving time scale is formed from the transgenerational chain of stimuli acute-latent-acute-latent…. Every MSC event accelerates transgenerational time by shortening the generational cycles. These shortened generational cycles coincide with the reinforced acute phases in the chain of stimuli ‘acute/latent’. Acute means triggering of strong emotions and thus strong memories which at the same time creates a direct connection with emotional space-time ‘t1/t2 – external/internal’ and furthermore with transgenerational space-time with the transmission of cultural traits = vertical MSC constructs. The transgenerational space-time is called enculturational dynamics. This contains transgenerational physical topographies serving as depots for memories. By using the term ‘space-time’ we point out admonitorily that our intention is only to describe a partially conceivable object. This is because our perceptions only recognize an object in a space subject to the conditions of time. Furthermore, we, ourselves, are objects in a space subject to the conditions of time. The separation of space-time takes place within our own bodies and it might well be the case that the cognitive mysteries associated with space and time have a lot to do with the organization of stress and emotion. If I then refer the term ‘space-time’ to the vertical MSC construct I wish to express that this vertical MSC construct with its cooperation, which is conflict as well, is as inconceivable and yet as real as the space-time with its curvature which is gravitation as well. 52

What is inconceivable is that conflict and cooperation is a single spatiotemporal object (‘spatiotemporal object’: no metaphor) that is individually perceived at times t1 and t2 and in the transversal spaces internal/external when separated into conflict and cooperation.

The need for protection generates the transversal space under the functional condition of historical and contemporary gated communities. Our modern cities, however, are open and are to stay open. This was not a problem as long as the inhabitants of and visitors to these cities claimed no need for protection. But everything has fundamentally changed since the growing threat of terrorist attacks. How can we keep the cities open and still guarantee safety? For the last 10 years security systems have been developing a new spatial structure. Its most important trait is pervasiveness. It does not cut space transversally but suffuses it. It suffuses space with the aid of ubiquitous relay stations which are all connected together by transmitters and receivers and is aptly termed ‘Ubicomp’ or ‘ubiquitous computing’. Computers everywhere are spanning physical space with a secondary space called the ‘cybersphere’. Immersions is the name given to passages leading from one space to the other. The way pervasiveness functions has already become clear if we consider SMS culture at the beginning of the 21st Century. Let us imagine the following scene – people are leaving a cinema or a theatre. They leave in groups chatting to each other but then many break off the communicative contact to the members of their group in physical space and get out their mobile phones, 53

start pressing buttons, looking at displays, again more buttons and so on. Their facial expressions change and it is clear that the changes in body language and facial expression are not influenced by those who are visible accompanying them in physical space. They are reading messages originating from people who are quite possibly far away and they answer these messages without further delay. This form of communicational behaviour is called ‘texting’ and is resulting in the continual increase in size of the group with which an individual is able to be in contact at any one time. Individuals no longer live in the communities which come together in physical space. They are physically present but are in a second space all the time in which they communicate in real time or almost real time with people who are not present. The text messages contain empathetic and allelopathic elements and remind us of certain forms of poetry. A non-stop stream of communicative acts consisting of affective links is the result. The person on the other end is informed where the caller is, how the caller feels and what effects the caller’s immediate surroundings are having on him or her and at the same the caller enquires about the situation at the other end of the line. This seems to be very similar to the uninterrupted flow of communication among herd animals e.g. monkeys or wolves. They too are continually checking on the emotional inner condition of other group members by bodily movements demanding approval, interpreting facial expressions such as the eyes, the attitude of the ears and the position of the lips. They watch each other all the time and for the purposes of control provoke short-lived but affective reactions from the other group members for example by licking the lips of other members of the pack. It is unbearable for them to be in the dark about the affective inner condition of a neighbour.

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SMS texting people live in a tribal culture made possible by the mobility of computers and telephones. Here we are dealing with a type of tribalism which cannot occur in the form of real encounters in physical space any more because settlements which gather extended families and clans at meeting places no longer exist. Today, in physical space, people are forced to live with other people with whom they have no emotional contact and are not of their choosing. This is different in the case of SMS partners. They are always available and were personally chosen. They are so numerous that real group feeling arises and it is only thanks to the ubiquitous communications technology that critical group numbers are reached which are capable of generating a tribalism effect. One need not be surprised to find this phenomenon dubbed ‘e-tribalism’(Rheingold, 2003). Tribalism differs from the social organisational forms in which people of the modern Western cultures live together in the fact that the boundaries of social organization coincide with the boundaries of cultural organization and in that this also coincides with a network whose connections are all personal. These consist of sensorial, visual, audio and haptic contacts in physical space and continuously trigger off emotional responses. Tribally organized groups represent a form of population in which the aesthetic perception of the group (everybody knows everyone) and the separation of conflict and cooperation coincide. This applies to tribalism as a cultural anthropological phenomenon. The term ‘e-tribalism’ as a name for the texting culture is as yet a metaphor because the formation of more or less sovereign outer boundaries as partitions for conflict and cooperation have not been observed in any known SMS populations up to now. Tribal cohesion is a classical example of successful separation of conflict and cooperation. The high levels of sensorial nature 55

in internal relationships in a tribal culture and watchfulness in respect to potential external conflicts creates an especially harmonious form of cooperation. The pervasive protective space i.e. the replacement of the transversal protective space is then achieved when ‘e-tribalism’ has adopted all the characteristics of real tribalism. The most important tribal characteristic is sovereignty in one form or another, i.e. potential to decide on MSC conflicts at the external boundaries of the tribal culture.

A development which leads to this final condition is now already obvious. It consists of the double function of the cybersphere as a game space and as a strategic space. The Swedish game producer ‘It’s Alive’ titles its internet side ‘Pervasive Games’. Pervasive computing really means that very small computers suffuse their environment. They are to be found in the outer and inner walls of buildings, in furnishings and in automobiles. They are equipped with radio transmitters and radio receivers and thus can be linked to mobile computers worn by people on their persons. In this way mobile and pervasive units generate local intranet systems. Visitors to particular parts of a town, squares, streets and buildings are equipped with ‘location awareness’ by the network consisting of stationary pervasive computers and mobile computers worn by all individuals. This means they are supplied with all the information about the place where they are. This phenomenon is known as ‘World Board’. The computer is directed to a definite position in space and the display supplies all available information whether it be historical, economic, technical and 56

art-historical referring to this particular place. This knowledge can be conveyed in the form of visualizations such as pictures, diagrams or animations. Apart from locating knowledge, pervasiveness, mobility and ubicomp are responsible for a further achievement which will have more far-reaching consequences in the future. Location awareness also signifies ‘swarm awareness’. The individual obtains precise information about the composition of the population which he or she encounters on entering a zone. ‘Lovegety’, for example, is a service already on offer from 2000 to 2003. With the aid of a Bluetooth transmission and receiver system the user can find out whether there are any persons within a range of x meters who might correspond to his or her idea of the perfect partner. The ‘Many-to-many-monitoring’ is geared to the need for protection. Here we are approaching one step nearer to the realization of genuine cybersphere tribalism. ‘Many-to-manymonitoring’ means everybody is monitoring each other and ascertains whether individuals are present in a particular spatial zone who do not belong to cybersphere tribal culture. Computers which are integrated into clothing are called ‘wearable’. We start imagining every individual wearing a device on his body functioning as a computer, telephone, internet access, credit card, identification card, cordless connector technology, location and navigation device, medical recorder and games console. Then it goes without saying that in this ‘wearable unit’ information will be stored as to payment behaviour, travel, misplacements, daily schedules, preferences, reading habits, quirks, upstandingness, prior convictions and even state of health. In a culture which defends the values of data protection and privacy, this information must not be allowed to be passed on either to other curious individuals or to sup57

pliers of services or consumer goods or to employers or the state. Radical ‘many-to-many-monitoring’ would mean that this, very up till now private and protected information, would be revealed voluntarily not to everyone but rather to individuals belonging to a previously defined cultural population. By defining this population the critical point of divergence of cooperation and conflict is created yet again. Passing on of intimate information is in this case, the basis of the cooperation which is to direct the conflict outwards. The individual only gives his personal data to a population which consists of similar data as to their personalities, as the individual feels secure within a reputable group and the individual feels comfortable in groups of individuals with similar cultural practices. Last but not least, individuals can earn the respect of other members by achievements in games. Winning respect is an important cultural function and all kinds of competitions play an essential role. Many-to-many-monitoring and location awareness are both characteristic of pervasive computing and generate structures for locating and swarming. The individuals recognize the swarms which are located at particular places in advance, and can decide whether they belong to the local swarm and thus be safe or, whether there are individuals whose membership to a known swarm cannot be identified in a place where physical contact is possible It can be predicted that the readiness to reveal personal data to such an extent in order to generate protection and security requires absolute trust in the other members. In other words such radical surrender of privacy and discretion is only imaginable when there are equally pervasive dangers or threats. Only under the influence of pervasive stressors do pervasive protective spaces arise. Examples of pervasive stressors are 58

terrorist organizations. Terrorists generate the pervasive MSC, the pervasive maximal stress cooperation.

The key word ‘swarm’ has already been used. The swarming phenomenon plays an especially important role in connection with mobile and pervasive computers. The term swarm has also arrived in the language of military doctrines. Terrorists use for example swarming tactics. The swarming phenomenon was firstly studied in the field of socio-biology. The social structures of insects, birds, fishes and mammals have been understandably the subject of socio-biological studies. One of the main questions which has arisen is whether social forms of behaviour are inherent, i.e. passed on phylogenetically, or acquired and thus the result of ontogenetic learning. There are many words to describe the structure of animal groups and the variety of the words points to very different organizational structures in the various species. Flying insects are in swarms, birds in flocks, bee colonies, packs of dogs or wolves, shoals of fish and schools of whales. A group of partridges is called a covey and a group of songbirds screeching and fluttering in an attempt to scare away a bird of prey is called mobbing. There have been many successful studies on the systems of rules which describe the coordinated movements of animal populations. Much investigation has been made into the coordination and manoeuvrability of flocks of birds. Flocks’ ability to manoeuvre obstacles as one, without losing their orientation, despite there not being any command hierarchy has always fascinated researchers. 59

Since spring of 2003 a new form of group organization has been observed in humans. It is called a ‘flash mob’ and is the most short-lived form of human culture known at present. Here is an example of how a flash mob is organized. You read on the internet the message – ‘On 7th May 2004 at 4:43pm, Zurich, Paradeplatz, glove on right hand, point with right index finger at the sky. Ten minutes or less.’ Then people, who have never seen each other before in their entire lives, go at the appointed time to the appointed place and do what they have read on the internet and then disappear from whence they came. And that is the most important thing – they just disappear, they don’t meet up after the event. I read somewhere the poetic sentence, ‘the best thing about a flash mob is the abruptness of its dispersal.’ For nine whole minutes the culture with the distinguishing trait ‘All those on 7.05.04 at 4:43 on Paradeplatz pointing at the sky with a gloved right hand’ existed. The flash-mob’s most important structural trait is the phenomenon of immersion and this phenomenon of immersion is also the organizational principle of not only terrorist but also military swarming tactics. By immersion is meant immersion in an other space. Flashmobs and military swarm formations first assemble in the cybersphere and don’t appear in physical space until the moment of the action. Immersion is at the same time the swarm’s materialization. The cybersphere is a space pervasively covering physical space. Stressors and protective tribalism organize in the cybersphere. Attacks and defence don’t occur until the moment of immersion.

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The cybersphere is both a games arena and strategic space. The term ‘strategic space’ refers to areas of space in which win or loss of terrain can have a decisive influence on the outcome of a war. Before the existence of the cybersphere there were four strategic spaces. There was firstly the land where infantry battles were fought and the surface of the sea for manoeuvring warring fleets. In the 20th century to these were added the air and under the sea through the invention of the aeroplane and the submarine respectively. In the 21st century the cybersphere will become the most decisive strategic space of all. This is because the cybersphere contains the control of military intelligence and in the age of intelligent GPS weapons clarification as to ‘friend or foe’ is synonymous with ‘contact with the enemy’. And ‘contact with the enemy’ means ‘ elimination of the enemy’. The cybersphere’s most important structural trait is the phenomenon of immersion because immersive is contact with an intelligent weapon using auto-pilot. It materializes out of the cybersphere exactly like a flash-mob materializes out of the internet. Please note though that the individual exists before and after in the case of the flash-mob. But a certain flash-mob’s culture only exists for the well-known ‘ten minutes or less’. Mobile computers combined with cordless transmitter and receiver units will be the game consoles of the future. ‘Pervasive Games’ is the title emblazoned resplendently on the website of the game producer ‘It’s alive’. The first successful pervasive game is called ‘Botfight’. Here again immersion phases assume the most important game functions. People who move like you and me in physical space are understood in the cybersphere as ‘friend or foe’. All one has to do, is to spy them out on the cybersphere via GPS and then an immersion step takes place 61

in physical space, because it is here that one must approach the physical embodiments of the cybercharacters, and not until one is within shooting range to the physical bearer of the cybercharacter ‘foe’ does the re-immersion into the cybersphere occur, because it is then that ‘contact’ can be made with the cyberfoe using a cyberweapon. Online computer games of the type ‘Counterstrike’ have produced the immersive MSC. This functions in the following way – gamers sit at their computer displays and fight battles at locations in virtual reality against other online players who they don’t know. In the cybersphere’s virtual reality they and their enemies appear as animated characters often called avatars. While the gamers at home may well be physical weaklings the avatars always appear as formidable, broad-shouldered frightening warriors who are armed to the teeth. During these avatar battles alliances are formed. Players, alias avatars, encounter other players in the form of avatars in the cybersphere. One saves the other’s ‘life’, they become comrades in arms and decide to fight together against a common foe as of this time. They develop tactics and formations which may well include swarming. They meet for online combat training sessions, coach each other but always of course in the form of avatars. They remind each other to be punctual for the training sessions arranged and finally they fight against enemy formations and either win or lose thus going through all MSC experiences in a slightly diluted intensity. This is often followed by an immersion phase by surfacing as groups in physical space to celebrate their relaxation parties. This immersive MSC too, separates conflict from cooperation. In the case of immersive cultures of this type a phenomenon is involved which has existed for several years. 62

Counterstrike is a so-called ‘ego-shooter game’. The scene of the action is up to this date the virtual reality behind the glass of the monitor screen. Players make contact with each other via the internet. ‘Ego-shooter’ means the weapons are displayed in the foreground of the display and the player looks through the weapon’s sights and shoots using a mouse click. In the meantime an Australian firm has developed egoshooter systems which are pervasive and can be played using augmented reality. It is therefore only a matter of time before games like Counterstrike will appear on the market in pervasive form.

While analysing pervasive structure we have found that the arena and the strategic space coincide, and the question arises whether a topological connection between arena and strategic space existed at the time of the transversal spaces; and if so, what did it look like? The creation of the transversal curve is a cybernetic necessity which results in the case of all living systems. This is because the functioning of a living system is subject to the spatial organizational form of compartmentation (Eigen, 1971). Living systems are subject to a compartmental differentiation between internal and external created by the cell membrane and/or the ectoderm. That is very reminiscent of spatial separation of cooperation and conflict. The compartment always has the topological form of the sphere and this sphere must always be furnished with inlet and outlet openings. This means inevitably that a transversal path must produce a connection between the outside and the inside.

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The sphere of the old protective walls of the city created the separation of conflict from cooperation. The conflict was expelled to the outside and a place of conflict arose on the convex outer side in the form of strategic space. Peter Sloterdijk has analysed the sphere as a cybernetic organization, as an artefact, as an idea, as a mathematical symbol, as a morphogenetic principle and as a natural object. The result was a three-volume phenomenology on the sphere containing an entirely new philosophical system: spherology. This system demonstrates its descriptive competence in many ways, among others by showing the arena’s dependence on spherical strategic space. In the volume ‘Sphären II, Globen’ Sloterdijk describes interlocking complexes involving Roman city walls and gladiatorial arenas (1999). When thinking of arena one should imagine buildings like the Colosseum. A second sphere is situated within the inner space of the spherical city. It is the games arena. The observers’ gaze at the city’s spherical outer limits is directed in a convex direction to the strategic events occurring in the entire open space outside the city walls. The observers’ gaze in the arena is directed in a concave direction to the enclosed space of the disc-shaped arena itself by the spherical outer walls of the Colosseum. It is here that the ‘players’ imprisoned in the arena, do combat forced under oath to fight to the death. The audience experiences the authentic death of the loser. Gladiatorial combat is the presentation of a variation on cultural preparedness to die. Sloterdijk points out that in this kind of spectacle, the forces of selection immediately become evident to the masses. They become visible by accelerating the succession of intervals lying between survival and death. This is because this rhythm is 64

neither predetermined by the relative slowness of normal dying nor accelerated by dying in wars. It is much more determined by the much faster chain of events of the calendar for spectacles and the city’s inhabitants’ demand for entertainment. The spectators, according to Sloterdijk, experience as if in timelapse the mercilessness of selection in which, in each brief succession of events, one combatant survives and one combatant is killed. Furthermore they see that it is always the better one who survives. That is the brutal message of selection. At the same time it is the message of the dramatics of the Roman games. It is the Emperor or his governor who decides whether a defeated but, as yet not slain combatant has fought in the spirit of Roman virtues and thus deserves ‘clementia’ or, whether he deserves death. The difference between life and death is delineated as a temporal structure by accelerating the periods of time between the fights with fatal end. According to Sloterdijk the difference between life and death appears merely as a respite. The Derridaic ‘differance’ is presented in a philosophy seminar for the masses. Between life and death is but a short respite. That is selection and at the same time time-honoured Roman virtues, i.e. prisca virtus romana. A visit to the games with the fatal results was largely responsible for the enculturation of Roman citizens. Sloterdijk suspects that this cultural trait, successfully transferred until the 5th century, contributed greatly to the stability of Roman culture. In this context he also speaks of an inevitable self-intoxication which a culture accepts in the interests of its own inner balance. It cannot be denied that the phase in which Western culture achieved its geographical dimensions for the first time was impregnated with a brutal form of the games which was never 65

repeated to this radical extent during later developments. For this reason gladiatorial combat can be considered as the first catalyst for all subsequent developments involving the relationship between games and culture. Is the gladiatorial game a vertical MSC construct with its transgenerational dynamics of latent and acute stimuli? No! Because gladiatorial combat generates with every new spectacle new acute stimuli of the highest intensity without having to rely on the transformation of latent stimuli into acute stimuli again. Gladiatorial games form a liturgical chain of iteration of real MSC events. Culture is repeatedly founded iteratively. The events contain a dramaturgic message – transfer of Roman virtues. Furthermore, they contain stress in the form of fatal consequences and thus fulfil the condition ‘M’. They also contain many forms of cooperation such as arrangements made by the organizers and the revoking of the individual freedom to decide on fight or flight. In war the officer in command decides on fight or flight. In gladiatorial combat it is the slave keepers and the Emperor and his thumb, whether it be raised or lowered, who decide. It is a fact that the gain in vertical stability and the cultural success resulting from this form of enculturation can only have obtained their power from the brutal confrontation with the reality of selection being lumped together with official doctrines of virtue. It is the hardcore spectacle of selection which has clearly influenced cultural evolution favourably here. We can only but assume, that this was a favourable influence, since the success of the games with the masses and their vertical success over many generations coincided with the geostrategic success of Roman culture. In gladiatorial games verticality itself is represented as every death is a vertical event. This authentic verticality is made vis66

ible in the arena and is perceived directly. Here we are not dealing with the concealed verticality of the MSC construct whose lack in vividness I have compared to the difficulties of imagining the bending of space time. The gladiatorial games represent the first crisis in the development of war and entertainment in Western culture. This crisis quite clearly had a decisive influence on the stability and extent of expansion of empire-like cultures. Ludic culture’s first consolidating phase is described succinctly using a spherological approach. The strategic space is situated on the outside of a large sphere. This space is conflict space. The large sphere’s inner space is the non-strategic space of cooperation. Within this space of cooperation inside the large sphere is a smaller sphere, and inside this smaller sphere is the conflict space from outside, as an exception of the space of cooperation. Gladiatorial combat is a state of emergency presented as the normal state of affairs of entertainment. Like Badiou we can apply the ideas of set theory to the smaller inner sphere by saying it is ‘contained in’ the larger sphere and yet is not an ‘element thereof’. (Badiou, 1988). This is because the elements of the inner space of a city cooperate but what is happening within the sphere of the Colosseum, is conflict. The relationship games arena – strategic space, during the glorious epoch of the transversal triumph processions and triumph arches, which is at the same time the epoch of the first consolidation of Western culture as a culture of expansion – this spatial relationship of games and strategy can be described with the help of the transversal curve which connects the outer gate of the city walls with the gate of entry to the inner arena. An orbit can be discerned, which connects the conflict from outside with the normalized exceptional conflict inside, and 67

by doing this, crosses the zone of cooperation. The outer wall of Colosseum is the redoubling of the partition wall of conflict and cooperation. It presents the representation of the separation of conflict and cooperation for the masses. This two-sphere complex has the form of a theatre of exception.

I return to the 21st century. In the case of the Romans games, space and strategic space were transversally interlocked. In the 21st century, games space and strategic space are pervasively permeated. The individual phenomena such as pervasive game, many to many monitoring, tactical swarming, pervasive stressor, immersive culture, immersive MSC und strategical cyberspshere can be assembled into a single scenario. The result is the vision of pervasive war and the pervasive MSC experience. It is likely that under the influence of pervasive MSC, e-tribal cultures form which will have many characteristics in common with elementary sociobiological swarm organizations. The cybersphere’s doming over of physical space will then function in a similar way as the doming over of animals’ physical bodies by olfactory and pheromonal gaseous spaces.

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