Maintenance of subjective reality

A reminder of a couple of definitions:

A quality appertaining to phenomena that we recognise as having a being independent of our own volition (we cannot “wish them away”).

The certainty that phenomena are real and that they possess specific characteristics.

Reality as apprehended in individual consciousness

Reality as institutionally defined.

Subjective reality is experienced by someone.

Objective reality is common goods and is only experienced as people take on roles.

Now the question of symmetry becomes relevant:

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY - 3.1.3 - MAINTENANCE AND TRANSFORMATION OF SUBJECTIVE REALITY

[…] every viable society must develop procedures of reality-maintenance to safeguard a measure of symmetry between objective and subjective reality.

Why? What is the conflict?

First and foremost, any reality that feels less like a necessity is in danger. B&L presents the taken-for-grantedness as key to the sense of reality.

The clearly understood reality can be in conflict with society’s surrounding realities. Or a suppressed reality - complete with a new kind of reality accent - such as one’s own shadow sides can compromise the strength of the existing one:

It is one thing for a well-behaved man to dream of unspeakable orgies in nocturnal solitude. It is quite another to see these dreams empirically enacted by a libertarian colony next door.

(This must primarily be a male concern?)

We can really see their entire model at work in this chapter.

A passage indicates how much this sense of reality matters. First, they relate shame of public nudity to primary socialisation and uneasiness with the wrong dress code at a restaurant to secondary. Both seem like natural ways of life, but not at the same level:

A relatively minor shift in the subjective definition of reality would suffice for an individual to take for granted that one may go to the office without a tie.

A much more drastic shift would be necessary to have him go, as a matter of course, without any clothes at all.

Just imagining sitting naked in the subway is enough to make us shudder. Notice the thick layer of human reactions that are package and parcel of primary socialisation. Habits from secondary socialisation cause much less consternation when bent.

We can and should understand the system as a psychology that is founded on Saussure’s sign system and the idea that emotions (or, as B&L says, the affective aspect) are hinged on knowledge. What IS interesting in that regard is that in many aspects, the language available to us is richer than that of psychology. The sociologist is handed over balloon strings with names used in the culture in question, and, while we do not develop a specifically psychological language with which we can name things, we instead can use the more precise nomenclature of the society in question.

Equipped with that, we can say that “through primary socialisation, the young working class man learns to deeply distrust the bourgeois industrial establishment that exists in the other end of town,” and we would know pretty much what feelings were involved (or could imagine them). Likewise, we can also say that “through secondary socialisation, the same young man figures out the rules to baseball,” and we can appreciate that the latter is far less an emotional thing than the former.

We can also analyse using those tools: The strong ties between affective and cognitive parts in his identity as a rough, fighting working class man would be much more sensitive to being countered by the experience of being forced to work with those he had distanced himself from. He would naturally fight against concluding that you must invest in your future with self-interest in mind, lest you should sink in self-deserved destitution, as that would go against his solidarity with other working class members. A full transformation into a yuppie would be almost devastating to the knowledge structures of his former allegiance.

But the yuppie in question would still be able to play baseball. After all, it’s just a game.

Everyday non-crisis maintenance

Other realities always tempt us. The deeper we are in the mud, the more they tempt. A violent reaction, a way out by seeing the world in a different light. How to exorcise those desires? Take the train…

[…] the shock of non-recognition of one’s own face in the bathroom mirror, the unspeakable suspicion a little later that one’s wife and children are mysterious strangers.

Most individuals susceptible to such metaphysical terrors manage to exorcize them to a degree in the course of their rigidly performed morning rituals, so that the reality of everyday life is at least gingerly established by the time they step out of their front door. But the reality begins to be fairly reliable only in the anonymous community of the commuter train. It attains massivity as the train pulls into Grand Central Station. Ergo sum, the individual can now murmur to himself, and proceed to the office wide-awake and self-assured.

One must remember the symmetry: If subjective reality is out of line with objective reality, or as we would say, if self-perception is out of line with “reality”, encounters can be gratifying or detrimental:

Even casual acquaintances may confirm his self-identification as a hopeless failure, but wife, children and secretary ratify this with undeniable finality […]

The process from objective reality-definition to subjective reality-maintenance is the same in both cases.

It matters that it was the significant others that held the greatest sway over his subjective reality. The process is one of straightening out the subjective reality (even if it may be a painful reminder).

What if your wife disagrees with the tenant at the first floor, with whom you rarely speak, about how wonderful a person you are? If your wife counts as a significant other and the distant neighbour does not…

It is, of course, quite possible that there is some disagreement between these people. The individual then faces a problem of consistency, which he can, typically, solve either by modifying his reality or his reality-maintaining relationships.

A simple way to alter our reality: Swap your friends or acquaintances with other people. That should ease the pain.

When either the surroundings manage to convince the husband that his wife is lazy and no-good, or the other way around, the husband is a staunch defender, then we observe the mutual influence at work. Reality can shift, and reputation matters.

All voices carry some weight, though. Can ten acquaintances outweigh your wife?

Conversation & consensus

Nevertheless speech retains a privileged position in the total conversational apparatus. It is important to stress, however, that the greater part of reality-maintenance in conversation is implicit, not explicit.

B&L spends considerable energy on the main role of conversation as a way to maintain the reality in check:

If this is understood, one will readily see that the great part, if not all, of everyday conversation maintains subjective reality. Indeed, its massivity is achieved by the accumulation and consistency of casual conversation — conversation that can afford to be casual precisely because it refers to the routines of a taken-for-granted world.

(Perhaps a bit contrived, or most people aren’t really discussing anything of value.)

Repetition begets a feeling of being at ease with something. Daily talking about even embarrassing things makes us less insecure once we get to them.

Conversation has that powerful effect by virtue of being a combination of exchange of knowledge and our speaking partner’s benevolence towards us.

The price to pay is, of course, that we are dialectically herding each other along a course that we all help change.

Returning to the philosophical aspect:

In the establishment of this order language realizes a world, in the double sense of apprehending and producing it. Conversation is the actualizing of this realizing efficacy of language in the face-to-face situations of individual existence. In conversation the objectifications of language become objects of individual consciousness.

[…] all who employ this same language are reality-maintaining others.

B&L further notes that frequency and depth matter as multipliers of the effect.

Crisis maintenance

A crisis develops if something unravels the obviousness of a reality. Remember, a reality is really just a conjunction of emotional states and non-conflicting knowledge. The very fact that our reality can be contradicted is enough to constitute the beginnings of a crisis. The mere doubt that there can be only one reality dilutes the massivity of the daily reality.

A full-blown crisis means the individual must undergo a transition to a new reality, preferably without “losing his religion” for too long, there, in the corner.

On an objective scale, this is handled by legitimation and symbolic orders that swallow critique into a higher frame.

On a subjective scale, we need something to lean back on that amplifies the sense that this reality is the natural order. We need the plausibility (social) structure: A social background that confirms reality and preferably also annihilates contradictions.

As long as he remains within the plausibility structure, the individual feels himself to be ridiculous whenever doubts about the reality concerned arise subjectively. He knows that others would smile at him if he voiced them. He can silently smile at himself, mentally shrug his shoulders — and continue to exist within the world thus sanctioned.

A hostile takeover of a factory can constitute a crisis situation for those involved, as they face an uncertain future. Another example would be the breakdown of an ideology that has fought for its life for years only to be abandoned by its most staunch ideologists. There is nobody to go to for assurance. This is a loss of plausibility structure for most individuals.

In crisis situations the procedures are essentially the same as in routine maintenance, except that the reality-confirmations have to be explicit and intensive.

You can seek new allies, if possible.

Alternation

There are situations where the individual ends up transitioning to another reality altogether. This is called alternation.

Alternation requires processes of re-socialization. […] they are different from primary socialization because they do not start ex nihilo, and as a result must cope with a problem of dismantling, disintegrating the preceding nomic structure of subjective reality.

This is clearly powerful stuff. Here we can really see the difference between knowledge and the “psychological” affective layer. We can change course, sure. That is an intellectual challenge. But the meat of the conversion is not to think in a new way but to muster momentum, to reorganise the sails and catch new affective winds.

To have a conversion experience is nothing much. The real thing is to be able to keep on taking it seriously; to retain a sense of its plausibility. This is where the religious community comes in.

You need help with your new reality, you need - not receiving arms, but - reality confirming voices (which is certainly not the same as confirmation).

The alternating individual disaffiliates himself from his previous world and the plausibility structure that sustained it, bodily if possible, mentally if not.

In some cases, staying in the old environment with a new belief means you are now associated with a threat to their reality, and they must solve the threat through annihilation. Physically if need be. Defecting gang members rarely hang out with their old buddies.

When it comes to legitimisation, as long as the two realities are not being squeezed into one simultaneity, you can get away with murder.

You can’t really forget that you were convinced that Jesus was commanding heaven’s armies every day. Now you must rationalise it in the least painful way: “We all have a deep psychological need for meaning. I projected my needs into this mythological Saviour, which incorporated my own needs. Now I can handle my need for meaning on a rational basis through providing for my family and my community. I can face life now.”

This involves a reinterpretation of past biography im toto, following the formula, ‘Then I thought ... now I know’. Frequently this includes the retrojection into the past of present interpretative schemas

B&L provides more examples of how to apply the methodology on situations falling between full-blown alternating and secondary socialisation plus further corner cases.