There is an apocryphal tale told among Primatologists that, unfortunately, has some roots in actual research. As an experiment, five monkeys are put into a cage together. In the center of the cage is a staircase leading up to a set of hanging bananas. Seeing the bananas and being monkeys, the monkeys step onto the staircase. As soon as they did a hose, it turned on, shooting cold water at all the monkeys, leaving them shocked, wet, and unhappy whether they were on the stairs or not. After enough rounds of this to see a direct connection between the stairs and the water, the monkeys start patrolling each other. As soon as one goes near the stairs, the rest start beating the hell out of them to make them stop.
After the original group of monkeys has come to this new equilibrium of “got to the stairs, get beaten up,” the researchers take one of the monkeys out and introduce a new monkey. Having no idea what is happening, the new monkey heads to the stairs, but before they can get there, the long-term monkeys beat the hell out of him. Being monkeys, they cannot explain why, but they aren’t going to risk getting hit with the water again. Any time the new monkey goes down the stairs, they get beaten up and learn quickly not to go near the stairs.
Once this levels out, another of the original monkeys is removed, and a new one enters. The cycle repeats itself, with the previous new monkey helping to dish out the beatings. One thing level off again, another of the originals is cycled out. Eventually, you have all new monkeys not part of the original groups.
They get beaten up whenever one of the new monkeys goes near the stairs. It doesn’t matter that none of the monkeys giving out the beatings were there for the cold-water hose by the end of the experiment. Any monkey goes near the stairs, and they get beaten. It doesn’t matter that the hose was disconnected after the second monkey was replaced.
This apocryphal experiment demonstrates how behaviors are transmitted between individuals in groups. The reasons for the behavior, however rational originally, rarely filter down in the transmission. They do not matter. Only the stimulus and response matters in terms of the behavior. This Behavioral Dimension of Evolution is relatively common to warm-blooded animals. However, as cognitive capacity increases, this level’s variability also increases.
Interestingly, humans have this Behavioral Dimension of Evolution available to them and another dimension of adaptation termed Memetic. “Memetic” derives from Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene and represents the smallest unit of cultural transmission, a “meme.” Unlike nearly any other animal known, humans are capable of a kind of near-instant mimicking of activities from other humans or the environment. Like most instant replications, this happens with a fair amount of variations, which are then selected by environmental and internal factors. When this memetic dimension of Evolution came into being is uncertain. However, findings from Sonia Harmand suggest memetic transmission since at least 3.3. million years ago based on stone tool evidence.
The appearance of the Memetic Dimension of Evolution is significant as it correlates strongly with the brain expansion unique to the Hominin lineage of primates. Once things like stone tools enter the Hominin adaptive strategy, they alter the selection process in human evolution from being about genes to increasingly being about memes and, eventually, culture. This seems like an elusive thing to us, the result of this process, as we are nearly oblivious to the extent to which culture permeates the totality of our being. And like the poor monkeys in our Primatology Parable, much of what we have inherited culturally, however rational initially, has had its origins lost to us, and the context in which it was valuable no longer exists.
Anthropologists tend to wax poetic about culture and what defines it; however, one of the best descriptions for our purposes comes from business psychologist Edgar Schein. Schein defined culture as having three levels: artifacts and behaviors, espoused values, and shared tacit assumptions. It is the level of assumptions that is key at the moment. Schein described this level as “the basic tacit assumptions about how the world is and ought to be that a group of people share and that determines their perceptions, thoughts, feelings and overt behavior.” “Tacit” is the key term here, meaning “understood or implied without being stated.”
No one ever outright explains the assumptions of your culture. They are transmitted as an implication of the rest of culture and become so embedded in our development that short of something radical occurring, we never even realize it is there. For most of human history, this was a good thing, as people who thought about or, worse, questioned these tacit assumptions might risk their death or the death of their band. However, in our world of rapid change, especially for Initiates, such unexamined assumptions can be deadly.
The Temple of Set’s solution to the problem of shared tacit assumptions in culture comes in three ways. The first is through what Ipsissimus Don Webb calls “Satanic Anthropology.” Setians are encouraged to find cultures other than their own that resonate with them to interrupt their own culture’s hold over them. It is in the interference pattern between their original culture and this new culture that growth and Xeper can take place. This can begin as casual as getting into Vikings due to seeing a Kirk Douglas movie and develop to getting an advanced degree in Germanic Studies. What matters is learning how the tacit assumptions you inherited need not be the only way to see the world. Learning to see through a different set of assumptions and to use the experience to design your sense of the foundation of your values.
As an adjunct to this process Setians are encouraged, depending on their talents, to pursue languages other than their native tongue. Language, perhaps more than any other inherited cultural artifact, directly shapes consciousness by being the medium through which the mind expresses itself. By learning other languages, including programming languages, your ability to code thought begins to find new expressions and can open doors to learning to think in new ways.
Finally, and perhaps most notoriously, the Temple encourages the mindful inversion of tacit assumptions in the context of Ritual Behavior. This lies at the foundation of the behaviors that Ipsissimus Stephen Flowers identifies with “antinomianism” and returns to the root of that word as “against cultural assumptions.” For many people, the amount of emotional and limbic energy released through the inversion or desecration of symbols tied to the tacit assumptions they inherited, from High Black Masses to minor private blasphemies, can act as the necessary fuel to push them beyond their own habit gravity and into new realms of self-design and self-development.
Setemheb 