Authenticity as "re-membering" the present moment

Evoking Authenticity: through polyhedral global configuration of local paradoxes (Part #9)

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A vital requirement to sustaining the embodiment of a way of knowing is through a mutually reinforcing pattern of mnemonic keys -- a memetic ecosystem of associations. At its simplest, and possibly richest, this may be a set of songs. Such patterns may be reinforced through any of the arts, in isolation or in combination. Aspects of such techniques are exploited in marketing campaigns, notably in political or religious propaganda. Much less known are the mnemonic techniques, notably associated with mnemonic architecture (as described elsewhere).

The concept of cocooning points to other lessons from its metaphorical roots -- the cocoons spun by silkworms, other insects and spiders. The features are juxtaposed to create a psychosocial cocoon, and the resultant web of mnemonic associations, recall the mnemo-technical role of structures such as "memory theatres" (see Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, 1966). Such devices compensate for attention-deficiency disorders, erosion of collective memory (Tensing Associative Networks to contain the Fragmentation and Erosion of Collective Memory. 1980), and the inability to comprehend the longer-term cycles fundamental to sustainability. The traditional mnemonic role of beaded circlets merit wider recognition with respect to the challenges of sustainability (Designing Cultural Rosaries and Meaning Malas to Sustain Associations within the Pattern that Connects, 2000).

In effect a way of knowing becomes all-encompassing when the pattern of associations is all-encompassing -- offering particular semantic pathways in every circumstance. Pejoratively, this may be labelled in anti-sect terminology as a dangerous degree of "programming" typical of "brainwashing" -- that urgently calls for remedial "de-programming". Curiously however professional training of any kind is offered through "programmes" -- perhaps implying that any professional qualification is the result of successful programming. Religious education -- to compensate for the errors propagated by sects -- is also offered through "programmes". There is already recognition that the simpler forms of propaganda are evolving through "psychological operations", to "information warfare" into "memetic warfare" -- to be understood as invasive exercises in programming and counter-programming.

The plethora of information and knowledge now available, especially via the web, is making evident the diminishing capacity of humans to "make sense" of it as a whole. The situation will be aggravated in the future when every person will probably have a website as a birthright -- to be cultivated during life, and cared for as an electronic tombstone after death, in a process reminiscent of the life-long preoccupations of the pharaohs. People are increasingly overwhelmed by significance -- with significance grasped in the moment rapidly fading and eroding with the passage of time (see Societal Learning and the Erosion of Collective Memory: a critique of the Club of Rome Report, 1980). This is a precursor of the Alzheimer condition which awaits many and may call for new mnemonic techniques for maintaining functionality and integrity with increasingly fewer links -- a new way of framing Gregory Bateson's challenge regarding sustaining quality by preserving the "pattern that connects".

Memory theatres and other contextual devices suggest the possibility of technologies through which the present moment may be "re-membered" as a focus for the authenticity projected into cultural artefacts and experiences.

As an example reviewed elsewhere (Renaissance Zones: experimenting with the intentional significance of the Damanhur community, 2003), the community of Damanhur has indulged riotously and joyfully in every possible art to carry and sustain a rich and evolving pattern of insights quite distant from the western mainstream. Its astounding temple decor, for those who can read the interwoven iconography and scripts, seems to offer a form of mnemonic or memetic encoding -- a carefully constructed circuitry for the mind and emotions through which knowledge is embedded in the body. This wraparound mnemonic circuitry is quite in contrast to the widely recognized challenge of responding to information overload. The techniques for doing so, from speed reading to the Total Information Awareness programmes, do not address the ultimate challenge of making sense in the moment from large quantities of information, however well-clustered. Clearly, however, the work on strategic "situation rooms", with their multiple displays, is moving towards the kind of "wraparound" presentation in continuing development at Damanhur. It is the improved elaboration of configurative encoding of significant content within physical volumes that remains the challenge -- again as in the time of memory theatres promoted by the hermetic tradition (cf Frances A. Yates. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 1991).

These issues were given a special focus by Marsilio Ficino -- named as instigator of the western Renaissance. His special skill might be described as a preoccupation with "composing the moment" through a configuration of aesthetic and cultural devices then described as "natural magic" (Composing the Present Moment: celebrating the insights of Marsilio Ficino, 2001). It is such configurations that sustain authenticity.

"Presenting" is therefore used here in a much stronger and more radical sense of "making present" rather than in the more common, weaker and more dissociated sense characteristic of "presentations" about the future.

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