THE NATURE OF the special memory-surface can give rise to myths, that is, patterns which exist on the special memory-surface but not necessarily anywhere else. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage of the surface.
The limited attention span of the special memory-surface divides up pictures which are presented to the surface. The complete picture is broken down into separate attention areas. Through the effect of short-term memory, these separate areas are usually re-combined as a sequence on the memory-surface to give a coherent pattern again. Thus the fragmentation is no more than a step in transmitting the complete picture to the surface, a way of changing space into time and then back into space again.
The division of the environment into attention areas is arbitrary. Sometimes these divisions may be natural ones that are evident in the environment; more often they are created by the memory-surface. This hardly matters if the division is a temporary one for the convenience of the memory-surface.
Here is shown the d-line diagram of a complete picture which has been divided into four attention fragments. These are then reunited on the memory-surface and repeated emphasis establishes them as a coherent unit as shown. It may happen, however, that one of the created units, perhaps through connections with other things, becomes emphasized more than the other units. Through emphasis it becomes a separate entity on its own: it has become an arbitrary creation of the memory-surface. It would be quite easy to look at any object and divide it up into a top half and a bottom half. This would not matter if the two halves were reassembled as the complete pattern. It might even be a convenient method of description for objects such as dresses or football-league tables. But if the top half of everything was for some reason imbued with special significance ‘because it was the half nearer heaven’, while the bottom half was imbued with quite different qualities ‘because it was earthly and basal’, then instead of owing their allegiance to each other as parts of the same object the two halves would be pulled apart and would come to exist as separate entities.
This process is shown in d-line form here. The top diagram shows the two halves reunited as a whole unit. The bottom diagram shows the two halves being pulled apart to form separate units with some other d-line complexes. This is a true creative division, since it exists only on the special memory-surface and not in the objects encountered. If both halves were equally emphasized then they might still persist as a unit made up of two halves with very different properties. If, however, only one half was emphasized then this would tend to take off on its own as a separate unit.
Fig. 84
Descriptive labels become attached to the divisions created by the special memory-surface. It is rather difficult in visual terms to think of one side of the body as being a separate unit to the other side. But as soon as one attaches the labels ‘right’ and ‘left’ then these labels can separate in a way the physical body cannot. Each label can become the centre of a little complex of significance. Labels not only preserve the divisions of convenience made by the memory-surface but become little objects in their own right. This is why they are so very useful, for this results in a mobility which the original fragments could never have had. The words can be put together in groups or complexes that would have been most cumbersome without the use of words. And then the groups themselves get labels. By this time the actual objects which lay at the bottom of the hierarchy may be completely ignored.
The powerful combining property of short-term memory on the special memory-surface can combine fragments from quite separate objects to form a new object that only exists on the memory-surface: a centaur, a fairy or a fire-breathing dragon.
These creative and combining properties of the memory-surface result in an artificial world that is derived from the actual world but is not parallel to it. In this artificial world the information is organized with greater clarity and greater convenience. If no framework exists to do this, then one inevitably evolves. It may be necessary to create special systems of anthropomorphic gods to organize the information of the seasons, of the weather, of the behaviour of the crops. These organizing patterns which exist on the memory-surface are myths. Myths are more necessities than conveniences.
The myth arises as a way of connecting into a convenient coherent pattern the separate pieces of information that are derived from the environment. But once the myth is established it becomes a way of looking at the world. The world is seen through the myth and therefore tends to reinforce it. If you conceived the idea that mini-car drivers were dangerous and reckless then you would pay special attention to mini-car drivers and be quick to classify as dangerous any slight mistake in their driving. So the myth would be reinforced. From an information-processing point of view this system is very effective, because it magnifies slight differences and establishes firm patterns.
Myths tend to be self-perpetuating, since the accumulated information on the memory-surface provides the framework for processing incoming information. How then do myths change?
In the old style philosophical discussion the world was divided up into features, and then one played around with these features to see how they could be put together to make a sensible structure. Not surprisingly, one ended up with a structure which was implicit in the original choice of units of description. If you look at things through particular spectacles, then what you will see is not the thing itself, but the thing looked at through particular spectacles. If you look at the world through a transparent green sheet, then everything will appear green. No matter how hard you look at things through this sheet, that will only make them look greener. Nor is it any use looking at yourself to see if you are looking through a special coloured sheet. If you look at yourself in the mirror you would be completely unable to tell the colour of the sheet through which you were looking. The sheet would in fact appear greyish whether it was green or red or any other colour.
You would go through life looking through this green tinted sheet and believing that your view of the world was correct, even though other people told you that your view was in error. Then one day you would get into a car and drive off. At the first traffic lights you would be unable to see the red light through the green sheet and another car would smash into you. You would regret the accident and recover. Then it would happen again. At this point you might be ready to believe those who told you that your view of the world was mistaken and that you ought to get rid of the green sheet.
Escape from the convenient myths organized by the memory-surface comes about when these myths conflict with actual experience. Science is a way of specially organizing experience so that it can conflict with and show up the myths. In the process, new myths will be generated. A myth or hypothesis nearly always outlasts its usefulness and holds back a better interpretation of the available information but this is a minor limitation, a small price one has to pay for the usefulness of the myth system.
But there are myths which cannot be disrupted by experience. This can come about either because the content of the myth is not checkable by common experience or because the myth is so constructed as to turn what should disrupt it into support.
A paranoid, harbouring the myth of persecution, will point out the evidence for persecution in the very events that are offered to convince him that there is no persecution. If a particular myth leads to misery rather than happiness then it would seem that the myth would become disrupted. But if the myth explains that misery is really the best form of happiness in terms of penance, expiation, or even the Eastern idea of release from self-interest, then the myth is protected. If the myth goes further, and regards misery as an investment in future happiness, then the myth becomes self-perpetuating under all circumstances.
If something seems to be true then people will accept it; if it seems to be untrue then people will reject it. But rejection and truth can be made into the same thing by saying that what is true will be uncomfortable and hence rejected. This makes any explanation invulnerable and the myth involved self-supporting. If the myth offers love as an explanation for some phenomenon but it turns out to be hate, this does not damage the myth which explains that love and hate are really the same thing anyway. These are the sort of arguments that people use against psychoanalysis.
Extrasensory perception has proved a difficult subject to investigate. Experimenters are always offering up evidence of this phenomenon, but suspicious people who set out to check the results never seem to be able to reproduce the results of those who are in favour of the idea. The explanation suggested is that suspicious people are not in the right frame of mind to get results, that one must be confident and relaxed for extrasensory perception to get through. This makes the phenomenon insusceptible of critical investigation. It is rather like seeing ghosts. Only the sensitive people see ghosts, so you cannot prove that ghosts do not exist but only that you are not sensitive enough to see them.
It is quite easy to find self-protective situations. In my book, The Use of Lateral Thinking, I pointed out the rigidity of vertical thinking and the need for the flexibility of lateral thinking. But some vertical thinkers were so rigid that they could not even appreciate the need to be less rigid. In the present book many of the points are made in an easy manner and the intention is to stimulate the reader into realizing the full implications for himself. The danger is that a superficial reader who is unable to work out anything for himself might feel that things have been put down too simply. Because some myths are protected against destruction in the manner indicated above, it does not mean that they are false. If a man is shouting at you in a strange language that you do not understand, that does not mean that he must be talking nonsense. A myth can be like a self-consistent language. Once one accepts and understands the language, it makes sense. From outside it may not. The real point, however, is not whether the language is consistent but whether it is useful.
Since myths are by nature uncheckable, usefulness is a better criterion to apply to them than truth. The usefulness of a myth arises from its function as an organizing system for holding information together to provide a framework for easier acceptance of further information. The danger of a myth is its ability to exclude further information or better arrangement of information already available.
A woman went to a psychoanalyst who at one point asked her if as a child she had ever been afraid that she might be sucked down the plug-hole with the bathwater. She thought a while and then admitted that she had had such fears. It was explained to her that her basic trouble was insecurity and a fear of impending doom. For some weeks the woman felt much better. Then one day she met her mother and told her what had happened. Her mother roared with laughter and pointed out that there had been no plug-holes as they had only been able to afford tin baths. At once this destroyed the story and the useful effect it had had on the woman. The validity of the story as an organizing structure had been quite independent of its truth. It might also be said that a woman who believed she had had such fears would have been quite capable of having them, and hence the diagnosis was still valid.
Myths cannot be destroyed by direct attention since they are the organizing pattern on the memory-surface, and any attention to a pattern can only reinforce it. A myth can only be destroyed through inattention, which lets it atrophy so that a new organizing pattern can arise. Inattention or neglect usually follow when a myth has outlived its usefulness.
A dangerous myth may survive because it expressly forbids the circumstances which might contradict it. In Vietnam there is a myth that when children are ill they should not be given milk to drink as it causes diarrhoea. So the children are given only rice-water, which has no vitamins, and as a result they suffer severe vitamin deficiencies leading to blindness and even death. The myth is a self-perpetuating one since if children who have been kept off milk for some time are given milk they do get a temporary diarrhoea. This diarrhoea would pass off after a few days, but it is enough to reinforce this myth. This type of myth also indicates how impossible it is to suppose that natural phenomena will organize themselves into useful myths, and that useless myths will die out.
Myths are internal organizing frameworks for information. Such frameworks may increase the usefulness of available information by putting it together into a coherent structure that it would not otherwise have. But the arrangement of information contained in a myth may also be considerably worse than the best arrangement of available information.
