Much to her own surprise, Nell was starting to like the book. She had some fierce battles with it initially, to be sure, as it presented her with a challenge towards her own ideas about human nature. Mostly the book provoked by simply ignoring the contents of most natural explanations and by having sociologists labelling them as just that: cultural ideas that held no claim to reality of their own. No reality an sich here.
Science was relegated to a position of purely social function. Maintenance of the tall tales about the supremacy of one’s own culture. Well, not exactly. In this business hyperbole served no good purpose.
There was something tempting about the whole approach to human culture, almost making the sociologist impervious to reality. The sordid little tactical acceptance manifested in sociologists saying they were also just part of the community as a kind of ultimate legitimisers, did little to offset the reality that you were re-educating people to a new perspective. Or tampering with their primary socialisation, if that suits you better.
Tempting to the point that she could easily see herself adopting the whole affair. When negotiations between warring parties ran ashore over trivial disputes inexplicably ending in bickering and sulking…? Bilateral maintenance of reality and the symbolic order!
The authors list the inventory of mechanisms at the disposal of the policymakers.
In her mind’s eye Nell made up a movie of a room of statesmen erupting in fury over an imaginary speech given by their enemy’s leader. “How dare he say we are the ones guilty of violation of terms! We have stood our ground firmly for months while they, with the blessing of their superpower patron, violated all terms and common sense.”
Protective manoeuvres? Of what then?
“2+2 is 5!” … “2+2 is 4, and I can prove it! (Quick, protect our reality – get a mathematician now!)”
The underlying hypothesis seemed to be that a priori knowledge was nothing but very deeply entrenched internalisations. They listed science as the highest level of legitimisation.
Traditionally, the whole point of objective scientific methods was to offset the human influence. Double-blinded trials are not performed to satisfy people’s need for stable reality. The fact that the very term “double-blinded” elicits massive cultural currents of trustworthiness and “objectivity” is undisputed (where it is understood that objectivity this time means “our modern enlightened culture is better than your mediaeval culture”, which was odd, as both the Enlightenment and mediaeval society were bygone stages of Western civilisation).
Early in the book, the authors admitted to not being philosophers. They were practising sociologists, and theories of knowledge were tools in their arsenal, and as such they were under no obligation to believe (what an odd choice of word) in anything science claimed had a priori truth.
God, she could see now how much furore Marxism had stirred throughout history. What an open assault on the ideologically entrenched ruling class! With the stroke of a pen, they witnessed their firmly held beliefs reduced to something hollow and meaningless.
And yet, what else was there to do?
The authors themselves really limit themselves to (phenomenological) experience. “Real”, they said, was defined as anything we could not “wish away”. It was irrelevant whether “we” have existence and what ontologically could be said about “real”. “We” hold something for “real” because we cannot ignore it, including both “I” and “reality”. And we act according to our perception of reality in this sense. The sentence “I am real, and so is the necessity to get a good education” makes us act in a certain way, and that is all the sociologist cares about.
Oh how the astronomer must have felt alone amongst men as he stared through the prisms and saw comets and galaxies unknown to human science. How alone have not the physicists felt amongst men as they witnessed the plans of men unravel in their quantum experiments.
Fine then. Apart from the chance astronomer and physicist whose attention was required beyond the circles of society, the rest of us acted according to our perception of reality, which was socially defined. Knowledge (the “certainty” that something was real) was taught in human schools. No way around it. That meant emotional situations and internalisation into subjective states. The stern teacher who forever imprinted in our young minds how German grammar required discipline and diligence.
Psychology had the same fundamental problem. Paranoia is only a pathology if there is nothing to be paranoid about.
What makes Berger and Luckmann’s book interesting is that, ironically, they offer a strong explanation for paranoia paralleling that of the psychological explanation: Loss of reality, which in this case is solidly explained in a framework of objectivations that have been internalised to the point that our emotional ocean has found attachment all over those structures.
The whole chapter on legitimation runs the same gamut as that of our paranoid friend: A plethora of evasive strategies applied in the interest of defending society’s institutions against devaluation.
If science threatens theology, theology evolves until it can respond in equally advanced terms.
And yet, this is the point where the book struck her as the most suspicious. Things just fitted a little too well. Because legitimisation is performed by a social layer of experts (e.g., scientists), they are not bound by subjective states in remotely the same way as during initial institutionalisation. Everyday tribal life engulfed the individual completely, quite opposite the professional clergy of the symbolic order.
Didn’t they know that they were defending meaningless theories?
And Patricia? Certainly knee-deep in a process of internalisation that was closer to primary than secondary. Finally, she was becoming someone, and behold, she didn’t have to thank anybody for that.
There was nothing she could do tonight but miss her best friend. She felt nauseous and went to bed again. The days were alarmingly short, and likely she was developing a depression. Rather, she would prefer depression to acceptance. Tonight a hurting heart was a sign of salvation.
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