The inability to move in the hierarchy doesn’t appear to be much of a problem, since there is no up or down – no basis for either aspirations or fear of lost status. In a two-dimensional world, there is only good/bad, weak/strong, and active/passive–the Semantic categories introduced many years ago by Charles Osgood (1957). We might find something of this static perspective operating in the two-dimension world of modern and even postmodern social systems. There is still the matter of differing social-economic levels, discrimination based on race, gender and many other factors. And we now have the hierarchy of technical knowledge, with the technocrats “lording” it over the techno-peasants (those with limited and recently acquired technical knowledge). Artificial Intelligence might soon intensify the magnitude and importance of this emerging technical class structure.
When reading Flatland, one gains a sense about the many sources of information that are to be found in the third dimension—including the very nature of a social structure. People are viewed from multiple perspectives, including competence and motivation. They are more than just physical appearance.
On the other hand, one discovers the benefits of two dimensions when a world of one dimension is introduced into Abbott’s satirical, yet insightful novel. It is to this one-dimensional life that I now turn.
And Then There Was One: Monadic Images
Within the realm of the Monad, everything radiates out from one specific focal point [Symptom Relief] or circulates back to some fundamental issue [Paradox]. We move from nothingness to one by concluding that there is one unifying entity or principle that draws everything together, produces meaning and “makes sense” in a world that often seems fragmented and meaningless. This unifying entity or principle provides the way forward and leads us to a point of perfection or at least a place of psychological maturation.
For some people, this one unifying entity is one’s own body. This perspective represents a bio-centric view of reality. There is only the body under this condition of Physicalism and Biological Realism,. There is no independent mind. There is only the intricate relationship between neurons and sectors of the brain. There is only one verifiable truth, which is that which one can see, hear, taste and measure. From the perspective of the behaviorist, one sees only the environment in which one behaves. Nurture rather than nature and genetics rule. Environmental determinism prevails. Personality and individual differences are only found in the Error Variance of studies done about the forces determining human behavior. The Monad is the invariant world in which we live and behavior.
A quite different perspective on the Monad is offered by those living in a humanistic camp that valued individual differences. The Monad exists within one’s unique core beliefs and experiences. For example, William James identifies the monad within the life of some people who are quite spiritual. For these people, religious and spiritual development came slowly and without major disruption. James describes these believers as Once Born. They were often born into the religion that they now profess or came to some acceptance of specific religious doctrine by studious investigation and slow, rational acceptance of specific doctrine and religious practices.
