the difference that makes a difference

When Bateson writes “the interaction between parts of mind is triggered by differences”, what are we to take this to mean? The first thing that would likely leap to you is the thought of an axon firing once it had acquired sufficient stimuli to cross its threshold. There is a line drawn such that passing it is considered a “difference”. It works in this on/off way, translating what is only a difference in degree into a difference in kind. The nervous system also codes differences in degree, but only after the signal has proved important enough to be coded in the first place. Variations in intensity are thereafter indicated by the frequency of firing. From Bateson’s point of view, it is that initial threshold that is crucial though, it discriminating the “difference that makes a difference”.

Bateson claims that that which occurs within the nervous system is but a minute fragment of what we should consider “mind” and that triggering by recognition of difference can occur at various points, not simply those within neurons. For example, a flock of animals may choose to migrate after the food supply has dipped below a threshold and any changes before that point are not deemed by them as relevant. In playing a musical instrument, the difference in the sound of the note just played leads one to play the next note.

Teaching may also be thought about as trying to create a “difference that makes a difference” -a pedagogical experience that becomes impactful enough to distinguish itself from the amorphous slurry of experiences that occur in every person’s life. As cultural workers, we also hope to make this difference when aspire to cross beyond a threshold, or a “tipping point” in our activism or advocacy. Our options and our strategies can be informed by the implications of this wider view of mind.

For instance, take the neuron firing as a negative example: all mental systems seem to have built-in mechanisms that prevent such differences from occurring as well. This is evident by the very fact that a threshold exists in the first place. If these mechanisms are gauging "relevance" too high, that part of the system becomes insensitive. Habit forming drugs, to which the body quickly acclimatize, require increasing doses to “make a difference” and thus desensitize the body to the substance. However, these mechanisms can operate as negative feedback as well as positive feedback. For example, humans within cultures become insensitive to experiences that question the cultural framework, and this insensitivity may itself be a part of the cultural framework itself. For these people, it may require a great deal of repeated stimuli to actually reach a threshold that is significant.

bateson's block

Gregory Bateson insisted that developing our aesthetic sense through the arts was necessary for us to get in touch with our more-than-rational selves. He pointed out that the workings of our “mind”, which he understood as the information circuits that pass through and beyond us into the ecosystems within which we are embedded, does not operate in a linearly causal manner. The conscious/rational mind is a rather recent invention in this system, and one that often disrupts the larger mind that our body and non-rational selves have evolved to gracefully inhabit. It does this by positing very short-term and local goals for itself, goals which appear linear, but only because the conscious mind is incapable of grasping all the implications and chains of pathways that come out of the action. When engaged in art, we allow ourselves to influence and be influenced by our artwork in a continuously recursive, albeit non-logical way. This provides a miniature feedback loop that compares with the larger one that we are also continuously engaged in. It also shows how a process of perpetual non-logical adjustment creates beauty, the same sort of beauty that has emerged in organisms and landscapes. However, it is clear to me that developing our aesthetic sense, on its own, is not sufficient to make our larger mental circuits sane. Many artists are known to be self-absorbed and hardly considered socially or environmentally sensitive in their actions. Bateson is therefore correct in attempting to teach the importance of his ecological perspective along with his claims that we develop our aesthetic senses, undoubtedly recognizing that either one, on its own, is likely to cause a great deal more damage than good. But here lies the paradox that so chilled him: this plan, is it not... planned? And if I deliberately don’t plan it, then isn’t that also, in an important sense, a ... ?

the ultimate pragmatist

Some indigenous explanations of worldly phenomena were accurate enough to not be abandoned over centuries of belief. These same explanations, through an important sort of self-validation, ended up maintaining the very truth of their claims: to the extent that humans living under their belief came to act in certain ways, the natural world expected it and indeed acted back in turn. It is in this way that Joe Sheridan says indigenous myths complete ecosystems. The level of accuracy demanded by modern science, which by its nature must perpetually revise itself and lead believers to successively new and unforeseen ways of living, is unlikely to be necessary for the existence of life on earth. In fact, one might say that there is an optimal level of accuracy that leads to a perfect combination of predictability, while simultaneously creating patterns of human behaviour that complete the ecosystem. Myths probably hovered about this level, as the stories changed themselves over generations of re-telling. Nature is the ultimate pragmatist here: the validity of a “truth”, to paraphrase Dewey, is judged by the consequences of the actions that lead from it –and an absolutely accurate prediction that causes the destruction of our life support system just can’t be considered “true”.