Resonance in the Cave
In the last Post, I discussed resonance and alienation as the two poles of our relationship to the world. I drew on the fascinating theory of the contemporary German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, and used the Seoul subway as a paradigm of modernity as alienation. In this Post I want to take the long view, and go back to the beginning: the Upper-Paleolithic cave-painting.
A negative hand-stencil on the wall in Grotte Chauvet, France, made about 30,000 years ago.
In the last Post, I discussed resonance and alienation as the two poles of our relationship to the world. I drew on the fascinating theory of the contemporary German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, and used the Seoul subway as a paradigm of modernity as alienation. In this Post I want to take the long view. I want too go back to the beginning: the Upper-Paleolithic cave-painting.
The capacity for having resonant and alienating relationships to the world was born with modern humanity, or what prehistorians (who take the long view) mean when they say ‘modern’: humans who are anatomically and cerebrally identical to us. One could say people living today are the descendants of the most resonance-oriented ‘modern’ humans. While Rosa stresses that modernity is characterized by a crisis of resonance, and an excessive levels of alienation, he also stresses that both resonance and alienation both have clear benefits in terms of the survival of our species. They are ways to adaptively transform the world. Both require a certain cognitive ability, one that we share with the Upper Palaeolithic cave-painters of 30,000 years ago, who like us, were humans with the capacity to feel resonantly attached to the world but also to feel alienated. For it would be naive and dangerously misleading to assume that these people - like hunter-gatherers of today - lived in a permanently resonant relationship to the world. This was and is impossible for any humans. As Rosa writes, resonance and alienation exist in dialectical relationship:
At the root of resonant experience lies the shout of the unreconciled and the pain of the alienated. At its centre is not the denial of repression of that which resists us, but the momentary, only vaguely perceptible certainty of a transcending ‘nevertheless.’ Alienation born of indifference and repulsion must first become palpable before resonant relationships to the world can be developed. Capacity for resonance and sensitivity to alienation thus mutually generate and reinforce each other, such that the depth of the indifference or repulsion one experiences seem also to define the potential depth of one’s resonant relationships. [emphasis in the orginal]
These two kinds of adaptive responses to the world could not have been made without a significant development in human evolution, an abrupt transition towards the recognizably ‘modern’ mentality, a cognitive ‘explosion’ that produced not only the cave-painters’ consciousness but also ours, and that made alienation and resonance intrinsic parts of the human story. How ‘explosive’ this transformation actually was is hotly debated, however, and new archaeological discoveries are continuously extending backwards in time the point of ‘ignition’ or attenuating it, so it looks less and less like an ‘explosion’ and more like an extended ‘blooming.’ For example, it was announced in early 2021 that the world’s currently oldest known painting - of a life-size wild pig - had been discovered in Indonesia and dated to 45,500 BP. This find is significant not only because it pushes the ‘beginning’ back yet again, but also because it is in Indonesia not Europe, suggesting also a far greater geographical distribution of early ‘modern’ humans with the inclination, for whatever reason, to paint caves. But the important point is that there was a major transformation in the human mind for some still, as yet, unknown reason – perhaps climatic, demographic, or, if we are to believe the more ‘far out’ theories, an alien visitation.
This amazing transformation in the structure of the human mind was vital for the emergence of the capacity for adaptive relationships to the world. In The Pre-History of the Mind (1996) the ancient historian Stephen Mithen argues that in the earlier stages of the evolution of the mind, which he dubs Phase 1, the mind was dominated by ‘general intelligence’, that is, by “a suite of general-purpose learning and decision-making rules.” In this primordial state we can hypothesize that neither hope nor despair troubled the human mind. In the next stage, Phase 2, the mind evolved so that general intelligence was supplemented by multiple specialized intelligences each devoted to a specific domain of behaviour, such as linguistic intelligence, social intelligence, technical intelligence, and natural history intelligence (knowing about the environment on which life depended), but they worked in isolation from each other. In Phase 2 hope and despair would also not have existed, at least not in any recognizable sense. Finally in Phase 3, the ‘modern’ mind evolves. Now, minds have multiple specialized intelligences that work together, and there is a flow of knowledge and ideas between various behavioural domains. This phase archaeologists date to the Aurignacian period (45-30,00 BP), the earliest phase of the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe, when the first figurative art appeared, including the first of the paintings in Chauvet Cave.
In Phase 3 the capacity of our ancestors to adaptively respond to the world, was greatly enhanced, because the mind was now characterized by ‘cognitive fluidity’. As Mithen writes, this meant that “[e]xperience gained in one behavioural domain can now influence that in another. Indeed, distinct behavioural domains no longer exist. And brand-new ways of thinking, subjects to think about and ways to behave arise. The mind acquires not only the ability but a positive passion for metaphor and analogy.” Humans acquired the capacity for complex social performance and ritual, for vicarious and imaginal experiences, for verbal, visual, and gestural persuasion, and distinct physiological and emotional states. It is Phase 3 that provided humans with the resources for resonance, but also, of course, for alienation. We became truly human once we could reflect on our earthly existence and see the pervasiveness of suffering and hardship, the sheer capriciousness of fate. As soon as we were able to remember good and bad experiences, and to imagine them happening again, we were made aware of uncertainty, and it is in this sense that resonance and alienation and not polarities, but rather interdependent parts of the complex whole of human consciousness.
People of the present share with their cave-painting ancestors of 30,000 years ago the same core emotions of desire, fear, happiness, and sadness. We still live our lives very like them, by shunting erratically between positive and negative states of mind. Psychologists have pinpoint five bundles of personality traits which all humans universally possess in differing degrees, and despite the obvious differences between the lives of Upper Palaeolithic cave-painters and us, we nevertheless share these same basic traits, which predispose us to approach the world in recognizably similar but also the inevitably divergent ways determined by culture.
First, there is our degree of extroversion. This refers to how stimulating or straining we find interactions, and so will have a fundamental influence on how we relate to both the human and non-human world. Second is neuroticism, or the tendency to get nervous, anxious, worried, and unstable in relation to the world. This trait influences how rational choices are made, and inclines us towards excessively idealized or irrational thoughts and actions, which we erroneously believe can reduce feelings of insecurity. Neuroticism is a key driver of alienation. Third is agreeableness, or how helpful, optimistic, kind, and empathetic we are. Agreeableness greatly affects what and how we engage with the world in both positive and negative ways - positively, by making us incline to align personal interests with those of others, and negatively, by making us conformist and too eager to align our own beliefs and goals with those of a peer group or leader.. The agreeableness trait can lead us in both directions - to more resonance and more alienation. Fourth, is conscientiousness. This refers to how self-disciplined and prepared we are, and will determine how resolute we are in pursuing goals in spite of perceived obstacles. Because of this, conscientiousness is a vital prerequisite for experiencing resonance, as it is inevitably experienced within uncontrollable and often difficult and threatening circumstances. Then again, too much conscientiousness can shut down resonant relations through enforcing too much control. Finally, there is openness, or the extent to which we are curious, inquisitive, take risks, and are creative. Where the capacity for resonance is concerned, this psychological trait is probably the most important of all, because it has a major impact on how controlling or uncontrolling we are in relation to experience, making us more or less inclined to conform and willing to accept novelty and uncertainty.
All these aspects of the spectrum of human personality would have impacted on Upper Paleolithic humans’ capacity to experience resonance and alientation, determining what kind of goals they set themselves, and how successful they were at achieving them. But just like for us, conscientiousness and openness would have been the most salient. Which means we are the descendants of the more conscientious and open human beings.
But psychologists have also shown that we are hardwired with a ‘negativity bias’. Instinctively, we are more pessimistic than optimistic, and pay much more attention to prophets of doom and gloom than prophets of liberation and light - as world religions and modern news coverage demonstrate. However, this makes very good sense in terms of optimizing chances of survival. One can say we are also the ancestors of those humans who thought a cave up ahead concealed a dangerous predator, not of those who assumed it was a safe and comfortable place to spend the night. For our ‘negativity bias’ has been honed over tens of thousands of years to make us better at confronting the volatility, capriciousness, and inconstancy of situations. A feedback loop makes this tendency a self-fulfilling prophecy: because most of our attention is directed at information that brings confirmation of our prior predisposition to be pessimistic, so we assume we have a reasonable attitude. That we prefer our current affairs media to traffic in overwhelmingly bad news, which we also believe is the actual and important news, is symptomatic of this bias running rampant in modern times. Inevitably, this ‘negativity bias’ inclines us toward an alienating relationship to the world. But we obviously also share with the cave-painters the capacity to override our ‘negative bias’ - otherwise resonance would be impossible. Psychologists call this mental trick the ‘Pollyanna Principle’ (named after the cheerful and optimistic girl of the children’s book). In some circumstances humans have an in-built tendency to selectively favour the positive, to look on the bright side, to recall more positive memories than negative ones. People who supplement their ‘negativity bias’ in this way tend to experience more vivid and positive future-oriented thoughts. Those who don’t, can become depressed or suffer from chronic low moods. This ability to imagine positive mental imagery in relation to future events or situations also serves an important evolutionary function: it allowed humans to plan and make decisions that are more goal-directed, and thereby to overcome obstacles that may otherwise have led to crippling doubt and alienation, leading to endless delays in decision making or outright retreat.
Recent research also shows that in the genetic lottery some humans are born with a natural predisposition to see the ‘cup’ as always half full, while the less fortunate tend to see it as habitually half empty. Life experiences, within normal limits, will do little to change this inherent proclivity. People also tend to look for confirmation of their innate predisposition by embracing ideas or intellectual tendencies that mirror them. But evidence of genetic predisposition also means we should acknowledge that the ‘losers’ in the gene lottery will inevitably also be biased, and may fail to make a fully reasoned assessment of a present situation and the outlook for the future. Consequently, they will be unable to be open to the possibility of resonance when it is feasible to be so. But does that mean those who win in the gene lottery and are inherently Pollyanna-optimists will also be more truly resonance experiencing? Hardly. Optimism is a strategy for protecting ourselves from the reality of negative outcome, not coming to terms with the uncertainties of life - its inevitable obstacles and failures. To experience resonance we must be able to trust that nature is somehow on our side, despite all the evidence to the contrary. If our goals are chosen intelligently, and the interest of the community and nature are borne in mind, hopefulness will allow us to find meaning individually and collectively in the present moment, no matter how troubled that moment may be. The cave-painters would also have been hapless victims of the gene lottery. Perhaps the person who made the hand-stencil in Grotte Chauvet thought their metaphorical cup was always half empty, and he or she painted it to cheer themselves up.
Because they were human, Upper-Paleolithic humans also thought in terms of pathways. Even new-born humans are pathway-thinkers immediately after birth, and during childhood early lessons are refined. At approximately 1 year old a baby already realizes it is separate from other entities and can cause chains of events to happen. Children quickly understand the process of causation, that events are not unrelated in time and that one event elicits another event through cause and effect. So, by this early stage all healthy humans have a sense of personal agency. With awareness of causation and agency come awareness of pathways and goals, and the acquisition of goal-directed hopeful thoughts. These are crucial for a child’s survival and thriving, which are greatly improved by the routine anticipation of future well-being. It is obvious why positive expectations - pathways and goals – would have benefited the survival of the cave-painters: people with higher levels of resonance have higher levels of psychological health than those who experience greater levels fo alienation. Being resonant would have yielded higher confidence and protected them against future sources of fear and anxiety, and obstacles to personal and group flourishing. A resonance experiencing cave-painter would therefore be better at adapting to the unforeseen and coping with it than an alientated one. Those ancestors with high levels of collective confidence in the possibility of resonance would have been able to think more effectively about the future, while those with lower levels would have catastrophized about the future. Upper-Paleolithic humans with faith in and experience of resonance would also have been more likely to actively engage the others in their group, when compared to those shadowed by alienation. They would have more consistently felt a strong sense of mutuality with others in their group, on whom they knew they could call for support. For we humans are ‘ultrasocial’, that is, have adapted to be superbly cooperative. The cave-painters would have known how to profit from kin altruism, a deep social bond based on close familial connections. But this bond would also have extended to wider forms of altruism that involved non-kin reciprocity, for example, during seasonal hunts, and, probably, while painting caves. The capacity for positive, hopeful, motivational - resonant - states functioned as a highly efficient method of muffling or cloaking volatility and uncertainty under the safe canopy of a higher, positive, purpose. Resonance-filled conviction established the grounds upon which sacrifice and suffering in the present were recognized as necessary preliminary stages on the way towards beneficial, pleasurable, or happy results in the future. Being resonant therefore has its roots in an age-old survival strategy honed by humanity over millennia, one with which the cave-painters were already intimately familiar.