Author: Antoni Kepinski
Disclaimer: only certain fragments of the following text were translated by hand, the rest is a machine translation.
According to Pavlov, motor orientation in the external environment can be combined into two main vectors: “to” and “from” the source of the stimulus. In the first case, a stimulus acting on a living organism causes in it a reaction of approaching the source of the stimulus. It signals a positive reaction of the surrounding world, an opportunity to provide for its biological needs related to preservation of life and species. In the second case, the stimulus causes the opposite reaction – escape or fight, it is a signal of threat from the outside world. Motor behavior of this type, defined as propulsion and retropulsion, is observed from the lowest to the highest degrees of phylogenetic development. An amoeba responds to some stimuli by approaching and stretching out its pseudopods, and to others it reacts by running away; a child holds out its hands and smiles to some people, and hides and screams in front of others.
This basic motor orientation in the surrounding world, corresponding mainly to the Freudian Lust and Unlust Prinzip, indicates the close dependence of the living organism on the external environment. They cannot be considered separately. The exchange of signals with the external environment (informational metabolism), i.e., receiving stimuli from the external environment and responding to them, primarily by movement, which in turn transmits a signal to the environment, is a precursor to a more intimate contact with it. This intimate contact with the environment in living nature takes two forms: energy metabolism and sexual reproduction. Every living organism lives on the account of its environment. It draws from it the substances necessary for life and, decomposing them into simple elements, creates from them its own organism. The main biological law – preservation of own life – in physical terminology can be defined as the growth of negative entropy (a kind of order) of a living organism at the expense of negative entropy of the environment. This law with respect to animals and humans can be called cruel, because in order to live one must destroy other living organisms (plants, animals). The plant world is more “humane” because it gets its energy supplies primarily from the sun. Each living organism can easily become an environment for another living organism, from which it, in turn, will take energy reserves. In short, some are devoured by others. Thus, the first biological law can be considered the source of negative feelings – hatred, when one wants to destroy the environment, fear, when one turns to flee in order to hide in front of the destruction of the environment. These negative feelings are accompanied by a vector “from” the environment. Although aggression requires approaching the environment, it is approached only because one wants to destroy it. In a sense, the same goal is achieved by fleeing from danger. Perhaps this is also why aggression and fear go together.
The second basic biological law, the preservation of the life of the species, seems to underlie the positive feelings expressed by the motor vector “before” the environment. To fulfill it, one must connect with the environment in erotic or maternal love. Sexual reproduction ensures the emergence of new genetic plans and because of this the dominant position of individuality in living nature, in contrast to inorganic nature and technology, where seriality dominates. Individualization is characteristic of positive feelings – the object of love is always singular and unique.
Similarly to the first biological law (preservation of one’s own life) the second seeks to increase negative entropy. Only if in the first law the organism’s effort goes in the direction of increasing its own entropy (hence this law is somewhat egoistic), in the case of the other law it is not about its own negative entropy, but about a new one emerging from sexual intercourse (this law is more altruistic). Sometimes, especially among the higher forms of life, it can also happen that one’s own life is devoted to the protection of the new generation.
In humans we could find a third vector, the “over” vector.
It includes creative activity, when a man tries to introduce his own order into his environment (to reconstruct it according to his own plan). This is rather a purely human trait, but in its creative aspect it stems from the second biological law.
Ensuring both the first and the second biological laws requires orientation in the environment. Therefore, along with energy metabolism, even the simplest organisms develop information metabolism, i.e. an ability to accept signals from the environment and react to them (the organism’s reaction may be viewed as a signal sent to the environment).
As phylogenetic development progresses, information metabolism becomes richer, and in humans it exceeds energy metabolism.
The exchange with the surrounding world (energy and information metabolism) takes place in four-dimensional space. The direction of the exchange is determined by the past, both phylogenetic and ontogenetic experience of the organism (heredity and its own history of life), but at the same time this exchange looks into the future, aims at a certain goal, which in the most general term can be defined as an aspiration to oppose the second law of thermodynamics, by which matter tends to a disorderly motion of its particles. In this sense, life requires an enormous effort to hold this order against matter’s natural attraction to entropy.
Thanks to information metabolism a picture of the surrounding world is created. Each living organism sees the world differently because each has its own structure that is different from other organisms. A feature of the natural world is individuality, which is already expressed in energy metabolism (the individuality of the organism’s biochemical processes), but is more pronounced in information metabolism. Because of this, even though objectively the surrounding world is the same for everyone, each distinct living being sees it as their own, one and only world. Also individual is the organism’s dichotomy of the attractive and the repulsive, the “good” world and the “evil” world. This dichotomy is conditioned by the genetic structure in accordance with which information metabolism develops; the development itself is largely dependent on the objective living conditions of the surrounding world.
A feature of the processes of the natural world is the dialectic of variability and constancy – not a single atom of the organism remains the same, everything changes, yet the organism itself is always the same (the principle of identity). This paradox is especially pronounced in information metabolism.
As the organism receives more and more new signals, more and more new reactions develop. New signals are sent into the environment, and yet throughout the organism’s whole life it remains the same individual, and its world does not change despite the unending variability. Sometimes this world is sad and bitter, sometimes it is threatening and unpleasant, then pleasant, joyous, attractive and alluring again, but it is still the same world.
Emotional life, presented here as the subjective expression of a basic motor orientation in the environment, constitutes the first step toward an exchange of signals with the environment, toward a closer contact with it. This exchange becomes possible when the “before” position prevails over the “from” position. It is impossible to get close to the environment and get to know it if one wants to run away from it or destroy it.
The “from” position requires a greater mobilization of energy on the part of the body than the “before” position. Much more energy needs to be expended fighting the environment or turning to escape than calmly approaching it to provide the basic necessities of life. In energy metabolism, the “before” position connects with the prevalence of anabolic processes, and the “from” position connects with the prevalence of catabolic processes. In the first case, the organism’s own structure is built at the expense of the environment structure (negative entropy of the organism increases at the expense of negative entropy of the environment). In the other case the negative entropy of the organism decreases, due to which the energy needed to fight or escape increases.
Just as in energy metabolism, the processes of building and destruction, i.e. development and death, must go together, so in informational metabolism both opposite positions towards the surrounding world must be intertwined, which in the subjective aspect appears as a constant oscillation between positive and negative emotions towards the environment. The environment must be conquered in order to use it for one’s own purposes, to preserve one’s own life and that of the species, and with all this there is a need to fight or flee. There can be no “before” position without a “from” position, just as there can be no anabolic processes without catabolic ones.
The radius of emotion associated with both basic positions of orientation in humans is quite large. In every language there are many definitions for negative and positive emotions that reflect, at least in general terms, the quantitative and qualitative differences that occur between them. Language, as the highest form of movement, is addressed to the surrounding world, is formed in it, but still remains very poor in relation to the phenomena of its own world.
Fear, apprehension, anxiety, dread, tension, fright, etc. – are concepts that serve to define a variety of emotional states associated with the position of escapism. Each of them reflects a different emotional situation, difficult to define, but easily felt, especially when the term in question has been misused.
Disintegrative fear appears with every change in the structure of information metabolism. Constant variability is a feature of the exchange of signals with the environment. New stimuli constantly affect the organism, and under their influence new reactions constantly happen in the organism. These reactions become signals that are sent into the environment. However, this variability has a pronounced consistency: a specific structure of information metabolism, to an extent analogous to the structure of energy metabolism, appears.
Just as only certain forms of the environment’s energy can be used and transformed in an idiosyncratic way by a given organism, so too only certain signals from the environment are accentuated by the organism and stacked in a specific way created by this organism, leading to specific experiences and specific forms of reaction.
In such cases diversity is much greater than in energy metabolism, i.e. there are more differences between individual species and members of the species population. The structure is dynamic, i.e. it must be constantly destroyed and recreated. Repetitive external signals lead to exhaustion of organism reactions, they acquire a different qualitative character, and repeated signals of the organism (its motor, verbal reactions, etc.) after a certain time undergo automation, i.e. are produced with maximum economy of action of the system that controls information metabolism, which subjectively is expressed in their exclusion from conscious activity. The organism must be constantly provided with new signals from the external world, and it must constantly produce new forms of reactions. However, in this constant variability of information metabolism the organism cannot go beyond its specific structure. The received and sent signals must be new, but not completely new: they cannot transgress the specific structure of a given organism. Just as each organism builds its own specific protein, so too it builds its own specific forms out of incoming signals. In the external world these forms manifest as signals sent to the environment. Everything that does not fit the structure is not accepted at all and does not appear in the organism.
One cannot see electromagnetic waves other than a narrow beam of light waves, one cannot detect by smell or taste chemical substances that do not irritate certain receptors, one cannot hear air vibrations if they are outside the boundaries of audible frequencies. Humans do not perceive polarized or ultraviolet light, which is perceived, however, by some insects. Only a small fraction of everything happening around penetrates into the organism, irritates its receptors, causing a nerve impulse (of course, in those organisms which disperse by receptor-nerve-effector apparatus, i.e. group of special cells receiving irritants – receptors, carrying and integrating – neurons and reacting by various forms of movements, which can be considered as signals sent from the organism – effectors). In organisms of lower stages of phylogenetic development a single cell can fulfill a role intended for a signaling system (i.e. receptor, effector and nerve cells).
In receptors, external signals are transformed into internal body signals – nerve impulses. The spatial and temporal placement of nerve impulses, i.e. their structure, informs about what happens in the external environment, and what is subjectively perceived as a picture of the surrounding world. Until now it is not known to what extent the perceived picture of the outside world corresponds to reality. The fact that the body’s action does not fall into a void, but into the actual world, and transforms it in a certain way, indicates the reality of the picture created.
A feature of signal metabolism is its structure, which is to an extent analogous to the structure of energy metabolism. From the structural nature of the exchange of signals with the environment follows the principle of probability: everything that fits into the structure of this exchange is probable, and everything that does not is improbable, unbelievable. […] It is probable that the sun will rise in the morning, and it is something we are used to since childhood; this structure has become fixed, and if it is violated (for example, during a solar eclipse), this violation causes fear. It is probable that when we walk, the ground beneath our feet is firm and unmoving. If it is not so (for example, when there is an earthquake, when we are in a swamp or on a ship deck during a storm, or when we lose balance), the violation of this fixed structure is accompanied by fear.
It is probable that the face of our conversation partner will not suddenly turn into a muzzle of a wolf. If it did happen, it would cause horror, and then laughter when we discovered that it was merely a masquerade mask. One way to obtain comic effect is to present an improbable structure that turns out to be safe and does not violate the fixed way of perceiving the world. What eventually wins out is that which is the most probable.
Humans cannot go beyond their own signaling structure, but the signaling system has the capacity for constant variability. Repetitive environmental signals stop triggering receptor reactions. The phenomenon of rapid adaptation appears in the exteroreceptors, i.e. receptors that receive stimuli from the surrounding world. Interoreceptors (receptors that receive signals from the internal cavities of the body) adapt much slower. Variability is necessary in relation to the environment, not the internal environment. Certain constants, such as body temperature, concentration of hydrogen ions (acidity of tissues and body fluids), potassium and sodium ions, sugar content, etc. must be preserved inside the body. If such constants are disturbed, the corresponding receptors must react for a certain time (i.e. produce nerve impulses) until the equilibrium is restored. Rapid adaptation to stimuli of the internal environment would end in a violation of the constants of the organism, which constitute a necessary condition for the life of the structure.
Internal signals of the organism must act for a certain period of time necessary to restore the disturbed equilibrium. The equilibrium returns through the action of visceral mechanisms, e.g. a drop in blood sugar levels excites the release of adrenaline and glucotropic hormones of the adrenal cortex, which in turn break down glycogen into glucose, or food extraction and its acceptance leads to normalization of blood sugar.
In this way we could say that in signal metabolism a general principle is binding: the world around us is changeable, and our own body is unchangeable. This applies not only to the receptors, but to all the links in the chain of signal metabolism. Like receptors, they stop responding to repetitive signals.
Signals received from and sent to the external environment, which are repeated monotonously, result in partial or complete cessation of signal exchange with the surrounding world. In such cases there appears dissipation of attention, i.e. weakening of information metabolism on a certain segment of contact with the environment, fatigue, sleepiness and, finally, sleep, which interrupts this information metabolism on the whole surface of contact with the external world.
The structure of informational metabolism must have a certain constant gradient; the smallest at the border with the external environment, and the largest with the internal environment. The variability of the former is tolerated without complications, and the latter with great difficulty.
Each external signal passing through the receptor surface changes the structure of the signaling metabolism to some extent and enriches it at the same time; external signals are to the information metabolism what food is to the energy metabolism. On the other hand, they must fit this structure to some extent, they cannot be completely new; their traits are marked from the very beginning of their action. In this sense, the organism anticipates everything it might encounter in the external environment.
A disturbance of the structure of both energy and information metabolism always threatens the organism, because it is not known how this disturbance will end. The subjective signal of threat is the feeling of fear. If the energy structure with the environment is disturbed, we can talk about biological fear, and if the information structure is disturbed, we can talk about fear of disintegration.
The strength of the fear reaction is proportional to the degree of disruption of the structure. In the case of energy metabolism, it will be greater, for example, in the absence of oxygen than in the absence of food; in sudden hormonal dysfunction than in its gradual appearance.
In the case of informational metabolism, the strength of the fear reaction is the stronger the less known the incoming signal, and therefore the poorer it fits into the existing structure of interaction with the environment. The firing of a revolver produces a stronger orienting reaction than the noise of an engine; during war, when the explosions of bombs and shells become habitual, the sudden silence that comes suddenly becomes, so strong a signal that it can awaken more than one sleeper. The darkness caused by an eclipse of the sun gives a stronger fear reaction than the darkness caused by the absence of electric current. A change in the perception of one’s surroundings under the influence of LSD or another hallucinogen, taken consciously, produces a weak reaction compared to a similar situation occurring with mental illness or accidental poisoning with a hallucinogenic chemical substance.
Anticipation does not only fit into conscious activity. If a person stumbles unexpectedly on the sidewalk, there is a fear reaction associated with the disruption of the structure of a certain segment of interaction with the external environment – the function of walking, which relies on the probabilities of a level road. Thanks to this assumption, walking is automatic, which has no place in the narrow paths over the abyss, when each step becomes a conscious act.
Usually a small feature, a single feature, is enough to identify a known object, and in case of an error there is a reaction of surprise, for example, when a seemingly familiar person turns out to be unknown to us. The complex chain of functions associated with perceptual analysis, consisting apparently in the ordering of incoming memory-record signals, is played out outside the realm of consciousness. Consciousness becomes the last conclusion that the observed object can be attributed to a certain category of memory records.
The reaction of surprise, which can be seen as a kind of fear reaction peculiar to the orienting reflex, is proportional to the disproportion between the foreseeable and the actual forms of disruption of the information metabolism.
Projection into the future, which at the level of consciousness is perceived as the ability to anticipate, constitutes an essential feature of information metabolism and metabolism in general, together with energy metabolism. This projection can be considered a basic feature of living nature. Every living being from the simplest unicellular organism to the most developed forms of multicellular organisms, including humans, realizes its genetic plan by exchanging energy and information with its environment. Depending on social conditions the possibility to realize the genetic plan narrows or expands. The plan itself can be modified under the influence of external environment. To what extent such modification is possible has not yet been precisely established. The notion of a plan encompasses a glimpse into the future, a foresight.
The realism of nature consists in the overall consistency of the plan with the possibilities of the environment. “Anticipating” further stages of its development, which can be realized only in a constant exchange with the environment, the organism, at least to some extent, must “foresee” the attitude of the environment to it. In human consciousness there is a sharp distinction between the past, or what has already been accomplished, and what is to come and what still needs to be done, and the future. Perhaps this boundary is not so sharp in the animal world.
The time coordinate, along with spatial coordinates, constitute the most significant element of the structure of informational metabolism, because the nerve signal is qualitatively independent from the type of external stimuli, and the picture of the environment is created on the basis of heterogeneous localization of nerve signals on the temporal-spatial canvas. This arrangement of signals constitutes the actual functional structure of signal metabolism; the previous structure must be destroyed and a new one built in its place. This constant destruction and construction is the most characteristic feature of the signaling system operation.
Classic Socionics 