Totem Animal: Octopus

I believe that the totemic image for the future is the octopus. This is because the cephalopods, the squids and octopi, have perfected a form of communication that is both psychedelic and telepathic; a model for the human communications of the future. In the not-too-dstant future men and women may shed the monkey body to become virtual octopi swimming in a silicon sea. // Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival

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What is not well known is the communication model that is happening in the octopus. Octopi change their color not for camouflage purposes, as might be supposed, but as a mode of communication. The blushes, spots, and traveling bands of color that an ordinary octopus can manifest are reflective of its linguistic intent. Its language appears on the surface of its skin.

Ordinarily, telepathy is imagined to be you hearing me think, then me hearing you think. But a richer notion of telepathy would be if you could see my words, rather than hear them—if they were actually sculptural objects where I would make an utterance, then you and I would stand and regard this utterance from all angles. There would be no ambiguity. And this is exactly what is going on with the octopi. Shamans do the same thing. These shamanist songs that are sung are not intended to be heard, they are intended to be seen by other people who are intoxicated. This crossing from the heard to the seen is a very important part of the revelation of the transcendental object.

Philo Judeus, the second-century Alexandrian Jew and polymath (a person knowledgeable in many fields) who wrote encyclopedic tomes on the religions of his day, talks about what he calls a more perfect Logos. And he asks, what would be a more perfect Logos? And he answers his own question by saying, “The more perfect Logos is a Logos that goes from being heard to being beheld without ever crossing over a quantifiable moment of transition.” And I think this is a perfect example of the kind of historical development that I am trying to indicate by talking about the transcendental object. That we are going to go from a linguistic mode that is heard to a linguistic mode that is beheld, and when this transition is complete, the ambiguity, the uncertainty and the subterfuge that haunts our efforts at communication will become impossible and obsolete. And it will be in this environment of beheld communication that the new world of the Logos will be realized.

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Consider: Nature offers the example of the octopus, a creature in which well-developed eyes and an ability to change the color, banding, and general appearance of the skin surface have favored a visual, and hence telepathic, form of communication. An octopus does not communicate with spoken words as we do, even though water is a good medium for acoustical signaling; rather, the octopus becomes its own linguistic intent. The octopus is like a naked nervous system, say rather a naked mind: the inner states, the thoughts, if you will, of the octopus are directly reflected in its outward appearance. It is as though the octopus were wearing its mind on its exterior. This is in fact the case. The octopus literally dances its thoughts through expression of a series of color changes and position changes that require no loca linguistic conventions for understanding as do our words and sentences. In the world of the octopus to behold is to understand. Octopi have a large repertoire of color changes, dots, blushes, and traveling bars that move across their surfaces; this ability in combination with the soft-bodied physique of the creature allows it to obscure and reveal its linguistic intent simply by rapidly folding and unfolding different parts of its body. The octopus does not transmit its linguistic intent, it becomes its linguistic intent. The mind and the body of the octopus are the same and are equally visible. This means that the octopus wears its language like a kind of second skin; it appears to be and becomes what it seeks to mean. There is very little loss of definition or signal strength among communicating octopi. Indeed, their well-known use of “ink” clouds to conceal themselves may indicate that this is the only way that they can have anything like a private thought. The ink cloud may be ad of correction fluid for voluble octopi who have misspoken themselves. Like the octopus, our destiny is to become what we think, to have our thoughts become our bodies and our bodies become our thoughts. This is the essence of a more perfect Logos, a Logos not heard but beheld. VR can help here, for electronics can change vocal utterance into visually beheld colored output in the virtual reality.

This output can then be manipulated, by tools still uncreated, tools to be found in the kit of the VR hacker/mechanic soon to be. This means that a three-dimensional syntax, one that is seen, not heard, becomes possible as an experience in VR. You may ask, What is the point of being able to see one’s voice, even in virtual reality? The point is that others will be able to see it as well, that the ambiguity of invisible meanings that attends audio speech is replaced by the unambiguous topology of meanings beheld. At last we will truly see what we mean. And we will see what others mean too, for cyberspace will be a dimension where anything that can be imagined can be made to seem real.

When we are in the act of seeing what is meant, the communicator and the one cmmunicated with become as one. In other words, the visible languages possible in VR will overcome the subject/object dualism as well as the Self/Other dualism.