Seeing with Self-Devouring Snake-Eyes: (En)Tangling with the Autoboros
[Toby Francis – z5342546]
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Picture the ouroboros, a representation of a snake eating its own tail present in many ancient and contemporary cultures (Bekhrad). As boros means ‘devouring’, by replacing the word ourá—meaning ‘tail’—with the prefix auto—meaning ‘self’—we may see ‘tail-devouring’ as a ‘self-devouring’ thereby pressuring the appetite of self-devouring humanity beyond the tail-tip of ecological existence so as to facilitate a taking in of the entire ecological-self.
The problem the autoboros seeks to reconcile is simple yet contradictory: humanity is, simultaneously, distinct and indistinct from the non-human/natural. Evidence for humanity’s difference to non-humanity may be found within the consequences of anthropogenic climate-change while evidence of humanity’s similarity/entanglement with non-humanity may be found, consequently, within impacts anthropogenic climate-change has upon humanity. The autoboros eco-concept posits that the difference/similarity problem emerges from humanity’s misunderstanding of human consciousness. Namely, the misunderstanding that consciousness separates humanity from the natural rather than evolved within the natural.
Human consciousness is popularly seen as responsible for human action however, neuroscientific experimentation has found that humans ‘decide’ actions before they realise a decision has been made (Libet et al.). Considering this, the autoboros eco-concept contends that consciousness evolved not to replace impulse in decision-making but to ensure impulse avoids suboptimal decisions. That a decision may be observed within the brain microseconds before a test-subject reports ‘deciding’ can be seen as evidence of impulse sending a decision via consciousness so that consciousness may act as a decision-making failsafe. That decision-making appears, to humanity, to came from consciousness is but a consequence of the speed at which impulse-originating decisions move through consciousness on their way to action. Consciousness is then, simply, a ‘check’ for the primordial and perpetual decider: impulse.
And so, we come to the autoboros, in which the ‘human-natural’ is a self-devouring snake. The tail of the snake represents all that is ‘not-alive’ (rocks etc.), while the head represents humanity with its consciousness-obsessed consciousness, and all in between stands for the ecological which (humans perceive) bridges the distance between ‘unalive’ and ‘human’. The head of the snake perceives the tail as distinct from the head due to obvious differences between them. The snake overlooks that head and tail are identical in their ‘snake-ness’, it does not see that 'difference' is different to 'detachment'. During self-consumption, the snake mistakes the ridge of its own nose for a seam separating ‘snake’ from ‘non-snake’, a seam called the auto-horizon (‘self-horizon’) which the snake may call a hetero-horizon (‘difference-horizon’).
The auto-horizon is an illusory delineation emergent from the act of self-consumption as the ‘seam’ between head and tail can only be seen during self-consumption. Thus, the auto-horizon is a self-created demarcation born from the very misunderstanding which first provoked self-consumption; specifically, when the snake-head mistook the snake-tail for a ‘non-snake’. Further, while the auto-horizon is what the snake takes as an obvious demarcation between ‘snake’ and ‘non-snake', the demarcation is not therefore responsible for the snake’s misunderstanding of the horizon. Rather, that the snake misunderstood the tail was an error made well before, and which provoked, the act of self-consumption which brought forth the auto-horizon. The snake's misunderstanding came, not from the experience which afforded the snake evidence of difference from itself, but from a belief already held within the head of the snake; the evidence the snake finds thus misidentified long before the snake even encountered said evidence.
As the ‘snake-self’ is contained across its entire length of the snake, so too is the ‘self’ of nature extant along all kinds of consciousness and unconsciousness. In this way, humanity’s mistaking of human-natural difference for human-natural separation is nature misunderstanding itself due to the fact that consciousness has been turned by a portion of it (humanity) so as to examine/understand consciousness. However, consciousness was never intended to ‘self-consume’, it did not evolve to wrangle with itself but, rather, to support decision-making impulse. Thus, that self-consuming consciousness may overlook how self-consumption furthers its own misunderstanding of the ecological-self may be due to the absence of an as-yet-unevolved failsafe for consciousness, akin to consciousness vis-à-vis impulse.
Perhaps there might one day emerge something beyond consciousness which may sail humanity’s gaze over the auto-horizon so as to curl along its own back that it may perceive the back of its own head. Within this new-gaze may difference and similarity be instinctively and simultaneously identified and reconciled; and may it evolve soon for, by all reasonable accounts, we may not have the deep-time to spare.
Works Cited
Bekhrad, Joobin. “The Ancient Symbol That Spanned Millennia.” BBC, 4 Dec. 2017, www.bbc.com/culture/article/20171204-the-ancient-symbol-that-spanned-millennia. Accessed 14 Nov. 2022.
Libet, Benjamin, et al. “Time of Conscious Intention to Act in Relation to Onset of Cerebral Activity (Readiness-Potential). The Unconscious Initiation of a Freely Voluntary Act.” Brain, vol. 106, no. 3, 1983, pp. 623–642, 10.1093/brain/106.3.623. Accessed 14 Nov. 2022.