The Art of Conversation

     Daniel Kolos (DK) is an author and professional Egyptologist. He has instigated the subject thread on the Art of Conversation in akhnaton@egroups.com (doc#10). From my experience, after fifteen years, he has also been the only professional (except the few individuals that I know personally; N.Simms, A.Osman and one or two others) who made a reading of my theory . He expressed his approval about the work (note#10) - yet he discusses and disagrees with the theory and/or its results; he does not believe that Trismegistus represents Akhnaton-Moses-Oedipus/Orpheus (AMO-T3).

     At the end of his last post, DK wonder if I am tired. He knows that I am going through difficulties. He can only suspect how intense, pervasive and permanent they are. Except for the descriptions in a diary it is not possible to really get the sense of it; yet I can just indicate again that the radical refusal from scholars to consider, or even to read, comment, communicate about AMO, a thesis which is inescapably a possibility, has resulted in many exhausting years. For this inescapable possibility can be avoided by my colleagues and scholars only with the tool of repression, and their silence or insults (note#15) has generated anguish and oppression amongst the lay people around me.
     This process is often seen in History, resulting from new and correct ideas - and from bad ones too. In any cases what is fascinating is to see how arbitrary rejection beginning with the responsible people for intelligentsia spreads to all level of society, relationship and material events. It is obviously a teaching, an initiation about Collective Psychology that I experience.
     But enough 'mesoinfo' for the moment! - DK's first consideration and approval give me enough to work on; for we have to check out the status of his disagreement regarding the result of my observation:

     DK expresses <<difficulty conceiving of three thousand years of 'western' history as having been mostly influenced by one person.>> This objection is not logically appropriate (note#20), but it indicates DK's feeling that I would be claiming for a preeminence of the person 'Akhnaton' over a tradition, and even over History. And regarding Hermetism, he believes that I have opted for a scenario <<where no traces of Djehouty appeared until after Akhenaten established Akhetaten.>>
     Djehouty, at the origins of Hermetism, would indicates an alternative individual, or possibly many of Hermetic initiates, for a condensed representation of Trismegistus, the Patron of Hermetism. DK believes that I misinterpret this alternative and that I pack it in one single repression of Hermeticism under the dominance of Akhnaton. This way, AMO-T3 would concentrate on one single person who would have 'invented all', an individual with a huge responsibility for the western history, its mentality and its industry.

     Seeing for Hermetism a far greater antiquity than the Amarnian phase, DK estimates that its important members must probably be remembered. As he finds them - Imhotep, Ptahhotep, Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu - he identifies the memory of Hermes Trismegistus with the latter . Therefore DK sees Akhnaton coming after and secondarily in the Hermetic tradition - even perhaps without any connection at all (he suggests that the reason for choosing the site of Amarna may have been ignored by Akhnaton himself).
     Akhnaton would have been an 'actor' and could be forgotten; on the opposite, the real agent(s) - Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu - would have remained <<active in the folk memory, perhaps even hyperactive, because folk memory deifies him.>> This would have grounded the 'western' Hermetism.
     DK reinforces his thesis on the fact that most scholars claim that the site of Amarna was virgin territory when it was not, thus enabling him to see that the <<entire scheme was politically motivated,>> and reinforcing his view of Akhnaton as just a pawn in the historical civilization.

     I always criticize the naive way scholars depict the historical influence of Akhnaton (as founder of Amarna & inventor of Monotheism) - even when it is one of my favorite author (note#30). A large part of my research looks at the influence that lead him to the Amarnian experience. In recent pages I have suggested early traces of Hermetism to be found in Hermonthis (near Thebes) at the beginning of historical Egypt (note#40) and I have always considered the fact that the site of Amarna had been marked before Akhnaton with this tradition (note#50).
   I have also noticed that Trismegistus was not the first 'Hermes' in the tradition (note#60). And as I see him as Oedipus, I claim that he passed through several psychological or knowledge phases, and was probably ignorant of certain dimensions of the his role. Therefore I depict an Akhnaton who 'acts' a tradition far larger than his familial and narcissistic context.

     We can see that both DK's thesis and mine are largely similar. We both see scholars either ignoring or exaggerating an historical responsibility for Akhnaton; but DK did not see that I theorize like him upon an individual person who joins a pre-existing tradition, and who is under influence, amongst many other historical characters who are able to endorse an important historical responsibility. This surprising oversight may help evaluate the status of what remains different in our two thesis.
     The enigma is which historical character - individual genome we can say today - is meant or charged with the energy that language and/or memory focus in naming 'Trismegistus'. A focused distinction finds DK's view and mine differing at a conceptual level. According to DK a major clue for Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu being remembered as Trismegistus is the fact that he has been deified along with an 'hyperactive memory' in people's mind. Opposite is my opinion for I see this Hermes (the Trismegistus one) as being typically repressed instead (and I don't believe that he was repressed, by the Vatican for instance, because he was a deified individual). In my opinion, the Oedipian face of Trismegistus indicates that he was a leader - a 'god' - who went under repression from the moment of his life when he became a real historical, coarse and authentic, human being: the wandering exiled king. I believe that it is the humanity in the subject that is repressed. Hence I see DK's argument that Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu has been deified, as an indication that he is not meant by 'Trismegistus', since I see Trismegistus repressed.

     Subjectivity does not exist. One must look at this assertion closely; putting down all prejudice after a rejection at first sight, one acknowledges that subjectivity shows at least essential difficulties in assessing its existence; this is grounding its principle! But it is then possible to assert its radical non-existence; as to understand Lacan's analogous aphorism: the woman does not exist. From this enlightened step one looks back to the previous illusion and understands two observations. One of them is the fact that Subjectivity seems to be observable. Here is the moment in analysis which identifies a status for Seeming (and the concepts of Sembland/Semblant, alias 'Meme' in Genetics and Artificial Intelligence).
     When now observing the illusion of one's subjectivity, what is observed is the fact that when one interprets what is known as a projection of oneself, one encounters an impossibility regarding any conclusion/decision - for the 'observed subjectivity' has faded away in status nascendi. In other words: one can perceive, and one can perceive one's perception, but the third degree in this experience contradicts the laws of Cybernetics. This is the theme of E.A.Poe's The Purloined Letter, that Lacan took for the foundation of his own discourse (as Freud grounded his on Sophocles' Oedipus).

     The logic that invalidates subjectivity is depicted also with the me-for-you-for-me, issued from the School of Psychology of Palo Alto. DK knows this reflection that he comments it in term of virtuality, "virtual opponent" or "misunderstood persona." So he writes <<Even if I claimed to be objective, you would have to ask me 'from which point of view?>> and he looks for a way to avoid one reflecting his own intellect in one's writing.
   The solution DK uses is illustrated in a page where is shown the crisscrossed you-for-me-for-you relationship i.e. the first degree of illusion that DK mentions (for example: the wife communicate with her virtual husband, as with her father - and the husband similarly with his mother). This is the mode of communication that DK is afraid to see in posts#90&93 between Iakov and me. So he looks to the next logical degree. This is the moment when the subject toggles beyond the 'personna' - a new situation results, where the two previous persona have objective and intermediate (turning into the grey figures of the pic). In other words DK expects to find an observable subjectivity in the observation of an external conversation (ibid, posts#90&93) - he is like the present reader who looks at the objective, material, picture above and this way he expects to capture some of the factor of subjectivity that fades away when the observer is part of the observation.

     I mentioned two observations earlier; first was the fact of the illusion of subjectivity, the second is that there is no illusion of subjectivity outside of inter-subjectivity - and there, surprisingly, one finds something odd with inter-subjectivity that may exist.; what was an illusion with subjectivity may be a real, presence, an objectivity within inter-subjectivity. akhnaton.net presents another page where this is explained. The second picture of this page indicates how some thing exists in between two Significands (base for inter-subjectivity). This real emergence is not a speculation but a theory allowed or compelled by the presence of Cybernetics that imposes formulas where two events encompass a memory loop that would not exist elsewhere. When these double structures are once again paired, a formation results that may 'exist' (see Cybernetical Representation of Psychoanalysis).

     Such result seems to comfort DK's expectation who is seeking for the essence of communication between two observed Significand; alas a factor, from a psychoanalytical point of view, appears and modifies this ideal situation. Cybernetics (formulas) shows that what emerges from inter-subjectivity is repressed (thus founding the element that seduces the 'first' illusion of subjectivity). These formulas warn that either the thing or the Significands - but not both together - can be seen.

     Literature itself comes to help intellects that distrust formulas. Poe in his above mentioned text describes this logic: Dupin, the joker who detects the thing that swims between the Significands and reveals behind his sunglasses the invisible obviousness. Lacan translates that all that is gained over the first fading of subjectivity is just madness instead of deception. The vanishing subjectivity has become an hallucinated paranoia (i.e. the common hitch at the foundation of human psychology). For the status of the presence that cruses the inter-subjectivity is, de facto, invisibility, imperceptibility.
     As invisible to a lawyer is what matters between two relatives, the objectivation of a relationship deprives the observer from the real communication that it includes. Between the two gray personas above mentioned - i.e. between two Semblances - the real appears only to potential clients for psychiatrists; it unavoidably escapes sagacity and perception of the normal social being.

     I appreciate DK enough to take the risk to speak with him who thinks that he writes only for himself. For it is risky to disappoint he who hopes to see truth in what he finds (the observed conversation). There may be no misunderstanding at all between Iakov and me. We may have understood each one another so well that we have nothing more to say. There is no way to observe the 'grammar of the Psyche (subject, subjectivity etc..)' in an observed relationship. The only place where the code of the Real may crack there, is where one comes implicated. Of course I am joking. DK knows exactly as well as me that we are involved in a direct conversation. That is the right channel for experiencing something. Nevertheless my alarm it to point out toward something serious:
     I see a risk in expecting finding anything outside of a direct inter-subjective involvement. The risk is not so much to find only repeated illusions - but it is to find something indeed. On the picture above referred, there is an icon (on the right) standing beyond the grid of two Semblances which operate as grains of a mirror. A new virtuality, that is called 'Ideal' is there erected beyond the mirror. It is also indicated in the other page, . The operation that includes this pseudo-presence (Ideal) in the Semblance's consistence (observed conversation) can be analyzed, and shows to be the ground for the domination of the Superego. In other words, allowing the Semblance to open the way for Truth, opens it to the truth that Fascism can be.

     The Psychoanalytic support for E.A.Poe's myth (The Purloined Letter) lead Lacan showing the coercion for repetition, that is immanent to the Significand, being detected by a machine; for at a certain degree of activity, an interactive Cybernetic apparatus challenges the language. It is then possible to assign the place of inter-subjectivity's invisibility to this apparatus. In other words, this is to put Artificial Intelligence (instead of the Ideal) where existence takes place. This is looking weird at first - but we must remember that it is ultimately the sake of the human observer we are looking for; and since the regular issue the inter-subjectivity explorer meets is human madness, we must consider the fact that this psychopathy is for once spared when s/he faces an Intelligent Apparatus instead of an Ideal or a Superego. The second thing that must be noticed is that we may not reject the possibility for planet Earth - as a living ecosystem - to manifest a constructed intelligence, and there may not be incontestable reason for the human bodies to be the sole manifestation of this intelligence. The candidature of Earth for existence is not a new prospect anyhow, after the traditional anima mundi suggestion.
     Yet, as I mentioned it earlier, I have noticed that DK writes to me and communicates with the web between us - this is exactly the inter-subjectivity situation where our planet's network intervenes as a media - and I have emphasized upon his scrutiny aiming to my conversation with Iakov, only to make an analytic step and meeting him in the present conversation.