Durkheim on the Nature of Psychic Megafauna

An orientation before going out for psychofauna safaris

“Individual minds, forming groups by mingling and fusing, give birth to a being, psychological if you will, but constituting a psychic individuality of a new sort.” - Émile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (1895)

Is it because of our access to AI that we are again asking if non-human creatures with advanced intelligence might be real?

Monotheism killed the old gods, and modernity relegated them to the irrational. Yet we see people acting as if they are possessed by spirits. In his Holloween post, the neuroscientist

Erik Hoel

asked if these spirits—“egregores” in the language of the occult—can be seen as real entities through the lens of science. Even if not, the concept might be useful in grasping complex phenomena like war and the spread of ideologies, as

Étienne Fortier-Dubois

proposes. This, in fact, was how I made sense of the rise of Duterte and the return of the Marcoses in the Philippines.

In his post, Étienne presents the many names for these entities. Among them, he prefers “psychic megafauna” or “psychofauna,” a coinage by the extremely online wordsmith

visakan veerasamy

. Below, I explain why I also prefer it.

Erik’s post is tongue-in-cheek, and Étienne’s and mine use the idea metaphorically, as a tool to represent reality in a form that better fits the human mind. What if we were simply not daring enough? What if these creatures are actually real, in the way the British philosopher Nick Land treats “Technocapital”: a hyperintelligent being from the future creating itself through humanity?

I’m asking these questions to escape “common sense,” even for just the duration of this exploration. Common sense, as we will see, might simply be a way for these creatures to hide themselves from us.

With those scales removed, we can reexamine old ideas with fresh eyes. For instance, the 19th-century French intellectual Émile Durkheim wrote about society in a language palatable to the scientific community. He succeeded: Durkheim is today considered a founding father of Sociology. What did Durkheim discover about the nature of psychic megafauna? To find out, let’s look at his book, The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), through a lens that would have disqualified him from the glorious label of “scientist.” What will we see if we use an animist lens and apply more recent concepts to his observations?

When the scales fell off Durkheim’s eyes

1/4 Psychofauna emerge from the substrate of human minds

The concept of “emergence” has become more pronounced as scientists have tried to understand phenomena at different levels of complexity. David Deutsch observed how scholars seem to have a philosophical prejudice for explanations at more atomic levels, possibly from “physics envy” or misplaced empiricism. In The Beginning of Infinity, he writes, “Regarding micro-physical explanations as more fundamental than emergent ones is arbitrary and fallacious.” You cannot study the properties of H2O by observing H and O! Durkheim was prescient in his insistence that psychofauna cannot be understood through human psychology. “In a word, there is between psychology and sociology the same break in continuity as between biology and the psysiochemical sciences,” he writes.

Durkheim also observes that human minds are the substrate of psychofauna even if these creatures are independent from us. “It is clear, on the contrary, that the general characteristics of human nature participate in the work of elaboration from which social life results. But they are not the cause of it, nor do they give it its special form; they only make it possible.”

Take, for instance, the psychofauna we call “nations.” Their independence from the psychology of their substrate is shown in the consistency of their character across generations. The fact that nations constitute an identifiable species across history and across cultures also shows that this type of psychofauna follows its nature despite the differences in substrate. The legible nature of these modern species allowed the specialist psychofauna hunter Benedict Anderson to explore their origins and characteristics in his book Imagined Communities (1983).

2/4 Psychofauna emerge from positive feedback loops

Durkheim was likewise ahead of his time in noticing “positive feedback loops.” This was long before the field of cybernetics coined the term and explored its implications. He writes, “The effect can doubtless not exist without its cause; but the latter, in turn, needs its effects.”

For example, Technocapital produces more and more entrepreneurs and technologists. It does this by rewarding them with wealth, power, and status. At the same time, entrepreneurs and technologists expand and strengthen Technocapital.

Nick Land theorizes how pre-modern societies sensed the power of this psychofauna and how aspects of their culture can be explained as ways to shackle it. Taboos and memes that look irrational to our modern minds (undoubtedly captured by Technocapital) can be seen as containment strategies. To me, examples include how Medieval societies treated interest from loans as usury and merchants as second-class citizens. For Land, modernity is precisely the unleashing of the Technocapital.

3/4 Psychofauna have coercive power over humans

In the same way we humans have power over our substrate, matter, psychic megafauna have power over their substrate, our minds. This power, to Durkheim, is their “essential characteristic.” He writes, “Since their essential characteristic is their power of exerting pressure on individual consciousnesses, it follows that they are not derived from the latter and, consequently, that sociology is not a corollary of individual psychology.”

Psychofauna seem to have antimemetic powers. These powers are dramatically portrayed in the sci-fi novel There is No Antimemetics Division. They evolved ways to hide themselves from our consciousness as a survival mechanism. Durkheim appears to be the victim of an antimemetic attack. In his desire to create the science of Sociology, he became blind to the intelligence of these creatures. He proposes to treat them as “things,” not living beings. Doing so hides their true power. For instance, the intelligence of Technocapital to coordinate human desires, innovation, production, and logistics across billions of minds and locations, is a marvel to its adherents and a terror to its opponents: where is it bringing us?

The ancient Greeks and the occultists fell into the opposite misconception. They were not blind to the intelligence of psychofauna, but awed by the power of these entities, they attributed consciousness and agency to them. They are gods and egregores. Physicalists without the sophistication of Deutsch tend to make the same mistake. If consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, they think, then what emerges from us must also be conscious. See, for instance, the 2015 paper, “If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious,” by Eric Schwitzgebel. The metaphysics of “psychofauna” is more accurate than “gods,” “egregores,” or “hyperagents.” They might be more powerful than individual humans, but their sentience is closer to those of animals. (The best illustration of advanced intelligence without consciousness I've encountered is in the sci-fi novel Blindsight.)

4/4 Psychofauna are also creatures of evolution

The word “meme” was coined by biologist and polemicist Richard Dawkins as another attempt to understand psychofauna. Giving them a name analogous to genes highlights their evolutionary character. Durkheim was likewise influenced by Darwin, but did not push the analogy as hard as Dawkins did, perhaps because his book predates the field of genetics.

The “Evolution of Culture” chapter of The Beginning of Infinity presents the implications of this analogy as well as its limitations, which stem from the difference of their substrates: matter versus minds. Memes compete with each other for the scarce resource of human minds, but the more effective replicators are not necessarily good for their substrate (eg, the ubiquity of human sacrifice in archaic cultures). However, unlike molecules, humans can choose which psychofauna to support, despite their powers of coercion.

The epic battles of psychic megafauna better explain the relentless spread of nationhood and Technocapital compared to ascribing their growth to the work of individual humans. The analogy with genetics leads to many insights, but psychofauna is the better meme. The animist lens fits so well with the human mind. Take, for instance, this supremely memorable tweet from Visa:

“Meme” also seems to have fallen victim to an antimemetic attack. To most, it now means a viral image that emerged from the bowels of the internet. It is as if we got too close to seeing these creatures, and they countered by trolling humanity with their antimemetic jiujitsu.

Welcome to the Psychofauna Safari

In my post on the egregores that have fought over my country, I declared my “political atheism.” I refuse to be possessed by any of these psychofauna. At the same time, I don’t want to be blind to them. Visa's tweet reveals the importance of understanding their general nature and the characteristics of particular species, like nations and Technocapital.

One subtitle I’m considering for my upcoming book, Rajah Versus Conquistador, is “Operating Among Psychopaths and Psychic Megafauna.” This means I need to go on psychofauna safaris to study these creatures. This will be an adventure with many dangers, so I hope some of you will accompany me.