Positive space is always abusive. PS is space where all the possibilities have been defined, where are all possible locations have been mapped out in advance and have been given values. It is just like a chequerboard where everything where all possibilities have been set out in unambiguous terms. ‘Positive space’ is where everything has been converted into the two-dimensional ‘Chequerboard of Logic’, therefore.

The CBOL is an abstract display of theoretical possibilities, it represents the total field of all possible events. It makes this field visible to us in the terms of a defined surface, but at the same time the CBOL doesn’t actually contain any real possibilities itself. Because it has been ‘laid out in black and white’, because everything has already been ‘nailed down right from the very beginning’, it only contains the one single possibility and – although we can’t see it – ‘the one single possibility’ equals no possibility. It’s a null domain.

When we make all possibilities into ‘just the one possibility’ then we run out of road entirely. We run out of road because there is no longer any possibility of change taking place (and in the real universe change is all there is). If a thing can’t change then it doesn’t exist. This is undeniably the case – how after all can there be any such thing as ‘change’ when there are no other possibilities (other than the one that has been given, the one that has already been defined for us)? There’s simply nowhere else to go…

It’s not merely that there’s ‘nowhere else to go’ – the fact that the chequerboard represents Everything, the fact that it is presented as the Universal Set, means that we’re ‘stuck in the box’, and this is a box that there is no thinking outside of. The box doesn’t permit that – there is no ‘outside’ to this particular box (at least as far as the box itself is concerned). According to the box, the box isn’t the box, and because we have (without realizing it) made it into an unquestionable authority, the possibility of thinking outside of it just isn’t open to us. Just as long as we are subservient to the All-Determining EA the box is the entire universe to us, it’s the Alpha and Omega of our (conditioned) existence, which always has to take place between limits that aren’t real.

Positive space put simply equals pressure. That’s all there is to it – pure pressure. Positive space is ‘all about pressure’ because it equals ‘how things should be’, ‘how things ought to be’. The whole of PS is essentially a non-negotiable template and so there was never any chance that it wouldn’t equal ‘pure pressure’. Templates are the very quintessence of pressure, we might say. The thing about this is that – within the terms of the system (which is the only thing that exists as far as it is concerned) – there is only one way to make the pressure stop, only one way to get relief from it, and this is of course by doing what the pressure wants us to do. It’s the System’s way or the highway. With regard to ‘the chequerboard of logic’, we could take the view that this set is indeed right, and so there is no harm in us acquiescing to it. Because the System is right adaptation to it is also right. This is the attitude we generally take to tyrants and tyrannies – it makes us feel better to believe that we ourselves want to do what the system wants us to do because that way there is no conflict of interests. Our autonomy is apparently intact. That’s our dodge, that’s how we make living under a tyranny bearable. It’s the only way we can make it bearable.

We might like to believe that the system is actually ‘right’, that it ‘resonates with our core values’ (or whatever else we might like to say), that it is a great thing because it’s such an infallible guide or guardian, but this simply isn’t true. The checkerboard of logic has no relation whatsoever with anything outside of it; it has 100% self-consistency (which is to say ‘It’s right according to itself’) but because it has no relationship to any wider reality that doesn’t mean a damn. It means nothing at all. It would only mean something if it were a proper and trustworthy representation (or guide) to a wider reality (to a broader state of affairs) and it isn’t. The arrangement of the CBOL is quite arbitrary, having no relationship to anything that is actually real. Its authority is a joke.

If the Tyrant had some kind of genuine mandate to do what he is doing – if it wasn’t all just completely arbitrary, completely ‘on a whim’ – then we wouldn’t refer to this agency as ‘a tyrant’. Instead, we would have to speak in terms of ‘a benign autocrat’ (which is how we tend to see God in the monotheistic religions) and that’s a different matter altogether. If this were the case then we couldn’t say that the autocrat’s relationship with those under his power, under his righteous jurisdiction, is an abusive one, an exploitative one. It’s ‘all for our own good’ – whether we can see it or not – and so everything is OK. Everything will turn out fine in the end and everyone will be happy. We’d all see the sense in it and as a result we’d praise the autocrat for being so great.

If there is no mandate however (or if the only mandate were the one that is assumed by the corrupt system itself) then what we’re talking about is a malign autocrat and not a benign one. If the Central Authority were acting entirely on a whim (as is always the case with tyrants, since whatever they say is automatically law) then what we’re looking at would be abuse pure and simple. There are no two ways about it! In truth, there is no such thing as ‘a benign autocratic ruler’ (or ‘a benevolent controller’) we might have that as an idea, as a theory, but it doesn’t actually exist in reality. It’s a self-serving story put about by the tyrant in order to justify his behaviour, in order to facilitate him in ‘getting away’ with his coercive control. The Malignant Ruler gets a foot in the door – so to speak – by telling us a big fat lie therefore – he anaesthetises us (just like a vampire bat does before snacking on our blood) by passing himself off as some kind of saviour, some kind of supreme beneficial force. In reality, this couldn’t be farther from the truth; in reality, what the system tells us is an inversion of the truth, a hideous corruption of the truth.

Positive space is pressure therefore, but it is more than just pressure; it is malignant in a very particular sense – we are being coerced to do something that absolutely can never be done. It’s a double bind, therefore. We have to act because not to do so is just not allowed, but when we do act (in the prescribed way, in the way that we’re told to) we discover that we’re making everything worse not better. We’re adding to our suffering – we’re ‘damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t’, as it is said. We hope that what we’re doing will improve things for us, but ultimately it never does. On the contrary, it always rebounds on us. When a double bind is seen for what it really is (when the inherent or systematic self-contradiction has been clearly seen) then all motivation to solve the problem (or achieve the glorious goal) completely departs from us. It flies out of the window in a flash and this is the liberating effect of ‘seeing the paradox for what it is’. There is no way to gain this insight and yet not give up on what we were pinning all our hopes on. We spontaneously let go of the illusion – no forcing or manoeuvring or cleverness of any kind is needed. It happens all by itself – liberation is always spontaneous.

The thing about this however is that we don’t want to gain this crucial insight, we don’t want to see through the illusion that the whole of our rational-purposeful existence is founded upon. To talk about ‘upsetting the apple cart’ is putting it mildly – we can’t help seeing a change of orientation as radical as this as being an inconceivable disaster, as being a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, and so we resist this happening to the very best of our ability. We simply aren’t going to go there. It’s not just that we don’t relish the thought of radical change, we fear it beyond anything else. What we’re up against here is the archetypal fear, which is the fear of personal extinction. Since the change that comes with insight into the double bind leaves nothing recognisable behind for us to relate to all of our ‘reference points’ are gone, and because we construct ourselves in relation to these reference points (which are thought’s reference points) this equals death, this equals ‘the end of everything we know’ (which is what we mean by ‘death’. There’s nothing to hold onto anymore, nothing solid that we can piggyback on, and that dependent sort of existence is the only type we know. For this reason, we prefer to ignore the abuse, we prefer to pretend that it isn’t happening. That’s the only way we can preserve the status quo, and ‘preserving the status quo’ is all we care about…







Image credit – nytimes.com