Spirit and Society

(EXCERPT FROM SELF-MANIFESTATION)

1.

Action must move the luminous power from the being of the subject to its being with the things of the world; to the being that rushes before itself in order to realize the possibility of being this and that; and to the being that participates in the systemic practice. It is like attention. Attention connects consciousness with the representation by focusing on the self-manifestation of the object in order to unravel the secrets in the representation. Action connects the person to the way in which his being manifests itself by utilizing the three modes of practical and pragmatic subjective being in the world. But these are introductory ontological properties of attention and action. Now we will consider the remaining properties and compare them, in order to get an idea of ​​how significant action is as a luminous, material and aesthetic medium of perception.

If action is in everything or almost everything similar to attention, then this means that action is of equal interest to consciousness. Attention helps consciousness to transform the elusive immediacy of the representation into an absolute impression from which it will draw knowledge about it and its content. Attention supports and enables the drawing of impressions, meanings, knowledge and contexts at every moment of the conscious process. As Merleau-Ponty says, attention is “an attempt to form an object by ordering and grouping the vast content of the representation”¹. After this, can you imagine how privileged action is, since according to its structural features it enters a similar class with attention on which the essence of consciousness as such depends? It is clear in itself that action plays a huge existential-phenomenological role by letting through itself in a historical-temporal continuum the particular self-manifestations and systematic practice. Action is an extended arm of attention. Although, at first glance, action transforms being-in-the-world, and attention “serves” the tangible transformations. The action as representation swaps places with representation of the action. They are not the same. The first mode provides immanent insight into specific and average acting sometimes grounded in anticipating gesticulations, the second mode represents the concrete simulations of reaching a goal.

The subject always strives to find himself surrounded by real things that will enable him to achieve his goal. They are distributed at different distances. Therefore, his being-at must dynamize, self-distribute its presences in the environment of the necessary objects and organize the distances in accordance with the priority locations of the local goals. The necessary objects and the local goals must coincide exactly so that the being-at does not get lost in the labyrinth of desystematized procedures. The subject acts in such a way as to connect the distances while realizing the versatile criteria of the general goal. Being-at is a positional mode that the subject overcomes in order to derive the mode of universal goal-directed being in the world, that is, the being-that-runs-before-itself. But the subject temporarily overcomes being-at, because he must find himself at a certain distance in order to achieve the goal with the help of the necessary objects. He cannot achieve this unless he restores being-at and fulfills its functional role. Being-at is restored immediately after the subject has accomplished a phase of being-that-runs-before-itself. Thus, being-that-runs-before-itself and being-at are alternately supplemented, with a temporary and convenient abolition of essential functions. Seen from the outside, such obligations of the subject reflect his being-at in which he is fully and inextricably involved in systematic practice. The general goal is a synthetic moment that integrates the modes of subjective being-in into the logic of meaningful movement.

The subject who wants to act is fixed on the goal, no matter how great the obligation. When it comes to a goal, the logic of a meaningful movement is reduced to a single achievement: for example, to be famous, to collect money to buy something, etc. While reaching the goal, the subject achieves several complementary achievements that are incorporated into the being of the achieved goal. Furthermore, after the subject reaches the goal, it fits into an even larger vision that potentially and ideationally exceeds the expectations of the achieved goal. After that, the subject acts again in a new way, so that on the one hand it uses the ontological modes of being, and on the other hand it implements its internal characteristics. While achieving the goal, it is guided by the logic of a meaningful movement. This is the only universal way in which the subject exists-in as a being completely absorbed in the work. If the subject does not transform into a being-running-ahead-of-itself to achieve the goal and complete the complementary achievements, it will not be able to perform the practical-material actions grounded in the specified logic of a deliberate movement. The goal is a simple sign that helps the subject remember why he must perform the actions and complete the achievements. It is an obvious fact camouflaged in the pseudo-reminiscent representations that the subject creates for himself in order to have insight into the deliberate movement and its tasks. Pseudoreminiscent representations are full of responsibilities and necessary objects that determine the position of being-at in the system of action. The subject remembers the responsibilities as situations whose demands he has fulfilled even though he is still expected to truly fulfill them. The deliberate movement is necessary to remind the subject that these memories are false and that they represent the inevitable future.

While paying conscious attention to the representation, the subject actually considers its pure immediacy, its immediate vivid appearance. He walks from one manifested object to another and becomes aware of the power of connections. Powerful connections confront him with an event densely filled with semantic codes. Although the first thing the subject converts into an immediate impression and dissects it, separates it from the perceptible whole is the manifested object, he immediately redirects his attention to the interactive manifestation and its connections and relativizes the connections, interactions and manifestations in the event as such. So, the subject skips the individual impression although he first saw it in order to get to know the bigger picture of things – the event. When it comes to attention that has yet to find its goal, or is looking for a goal in order to conceive the action it has in mind, it does not focus on the meanings contained in the goal, but seeks the goal while considering the total representation. Hence, while the subject is paying attention to the individual thing, attention directs him to the general. While acting, the subject navigates in the general, taking into account the goal as a template and its normative elements. This is the first major difference between action and attention. If the subject acts or wants to act, he always imitates some goal and imagines the logic of a deliberate movement. But whenever he begins to pay attention to something, the subject disperses his consciousness, regardless of how attractive the object he observes is. In this way, the connection of object fixation with focus is initially established, which complicates and increases the potential interpretations related to the object’s being and beingness.

The subject sees the event and the representation as absolute impressions. The event is an absolute impression contained in the larger absolute impression left by the representation. But the connections of object manifestation enable the subject to see in the absolute impression something more independent of its size. These are the general dynamics of objects and their actions. The subject begins to notice the general dynamics first as perceptible, then as striking impressions. Whenever reflection successfully exploits the subject’s insight into the object of interest and incessantly delves into its appearance, the impression grows, and from perceptible it turns into striking. Such a segment should form the power-flow of light while helping the impression from a purely immediate thing to become a perceptible object. This means that the subject no longer perceives the representation as an elusive immediacy but as a set of events, or as an immediacy with basic dynamic characteristics. Now, the subject recognizes certain dynamic principles, states and events regardless of whether he sees the representation as an individual event or disfigures the event in the general representation. These dynamic entities deabsolutize the impression and turn it into a moving whole, into content where something is constantly happening.

The subject who pays attention to the manifestation suddenly refocuses on the event (on the happening or occasion) that includes the other manifestations and connects them in the network of relations inherent to it. If it remains at this, the event will turn into a dynamic and vivid segment of the representation that takes over its function: it becomes a complex phenomenon that shows itself as an immediate impression. The field in which the object manifests itself together with the changes of the object is a segment. A local event manifests itself from which relations with other objects are absent, although the object establishes connections with the environment in order to be able to act; to move meaningfully towards the goal. The representation is catchily immediate. As a moving general impression, it reflects an ill-defined state of affairs. The vivid content in it was not divided into dynamic moments. To be honest, the representation contains basic abstract moments with a dynamic form, even before the subject focuses on the event in it. Representation itself, without events as its segments, is at the same time doubly inert: it includes, represents, and displays objects that are potentially mobile and actions that reflect their intended movements. It is logical for objects to be potentially mobile just as it is logical for action to be concrete movement, movement in actio. Action compensates for the actual immobility of objects, just as objects are at rest to allow action to compensate for rest. There is nothing unusual in this picture of things, even though objects are unnaturally at rest and actions are unnaturally active. The potentials of objects and the activity of action are separated, although rational representation exists as a representation that synthesizes and harmonizes their states. When we are aware of what exactly is happening in the representation, we know why objects move and why they are at rest just as much as we know why action is active or why it has not been activated. On the contrary, if the representation is an immediate impression regardless of the clarity of the vivid contents, our insights into things are displaced, especially when it comes to the basic conditions that constitute every representation. Our experience of the representation that we know is twisted and distorted whenever we are confronted with things whose immediacy we have not deciphered, even though we know the genetic properties of representations in general. Such unusual, yet understandable impressions are incorporated into the immediately seen representation on a genetic level. If the representation reflects the genetic properties as impressions distorted in the manner described so far, the subject will not be able to break through to the other variants of the immediate impression.

The event offers a different immediate image of the same dynamic manifestations in the representation. While the subject notices the event, he imagines the objects as elements that are constantly moving, and the actions as moments that freeze and reflect the most characteristic pose. This changed perspective of the immediate dynamics also changes the way we perceive the segment of the representation as an absolute impression. Moreover, the dynamic perspective offered by the event changes the way we see the entire representation and all the individual dynamics in it. What is so strange about the perspective of the dynamics offered by the event that has the power to help us better understand the performance? Objects cannot move infinitely and endlessly. In that case, the essence of the goal is relativized and the movement becomes meaningless. Action cannot reliably condense its naturally expanded and multiplied manifestations in frozen time, no matter how convincing the passive sublime moment is. Yes, the most characteristic pose is an individual expression that symbolizes the manifestations of a given action. But that is not enough to satisfy the subject’s interest in the meaning of the event and the logic of objective manifestation.

2.

The subject shows an increased interest in the dynamic perspectives and manifestations in the event. He strains his attention to get to know them closely. But attention knows nothing other than the approach of deduction. Accordingly, instead of helping consciousness to describe the dynamic features of manifested objects and their relations, it offers, crudely and at once, an abstract scheme of the dominant correlates that enable dynamics and dynamic relations per se. Such correlates are duration, movement and extension. The three correlates of the dynamic conditions in the representation introduce the subject into the existential logic of the event deeper than the objects, actions and their dynamic states.

The subject’s first attempt to penetrate the essence of the representation was when consciousness observed with the help of attention the manifestations of objects and their relations based on individual manifestations. Consciousness continued to conquer the representation by separating the events of the representation according to the principle of dynamic and inert manifestation of objects and actions. In this way, the subject transformed the elusive immediacy based on the pure vivid content into an immediacy whose content and meanings it gradually captures through consciousness and attention. The subject first observes the vivid content purely, as if it were “something in itself”. But attention crystallizes the view of consciousness. As a result, consciousness perceives that the first thing that attracts the subject to the vivid content is not the ideas symbolized in it, the motives and developments, but the universal abstract schemes of rapid manifestation. Duration, movement, and extension are functionals of dynamic patterns, abstract units that form the universal pattern. They exaggerate the spirit of the movements in the event, in order to force the consciousness to rise even higher on the scale of observation and to fully understand the essence of the representation. Once the subject recognizes the movements and their meaning, it will be easier for him to understand what the meaning of what is depicted in the representation consists of. For this purpose, we will now get to know them more closely.

In order to conclude that connections exist, the most important thing is to satisfy an appropriate condition. Objects must be present in space and somehow connected to each other. A connection is nothing more than a silent signal that shows how some objects are connected to other objects. That’s it. Nothing more than that. If the connected formations of objects manifest their interactive skills, the connection turns into a relationship. There is a possibility that we, as subjects, can use objects and their connections. In this way, we will connect with them in a solipsistic way. They will embody a certain structure of connections networked in time and space. We will exploit the structure of connections and show how a one-sided relationship affects connections that are not interested in it. This logic of unfolding and constituting events will help us understand how duration, extension, and movement cooperate on the level of abstraction that we proposed above. To show what exactly we mean, we will start with an archetypal representation that is based on this ratio of connections and relationships that we will extract from the film Labyrinth by Jim Henson. The archetypal representation also contains other moments that are crucial for understanding how attention works and why it underlies the functions of consciousness. Therefore, we will not narrow down. We will develop the magnificent limits of symbolic attachment that are “innate” to it.

Sarah finds herself in front of a huge labyrinth in the shape of a brain. The labyrinth symbolizes the complex essence of the representation that we need to unravel in order to save ourselves from its dangerous spaces and multifaceted challenges. The labyrinth is surrounded by a huge wall, just as when first meeting the representation and its vivid content, they leave an absolute and impenetrable impression. At the entrance stands a dwarf-doorman whom Sarah asks where the door is to get inside. The dwarf-doorman replies that she asked the question incorrectly. Sarah tries once more. She reformulates the question, then asks how to get inside. Suddenly, a gate is created on one of the wall blocks, which opens automatically immediately after it is created. This introductory part of the archetypal representation does not confront the basic approach that we emphasized when we began to deal with this segment of the thematic horizon that is necessary for consciousness to begin to get to know the representation. The rule that constitutes the approach is: the manifestation of the object, and not the object itself, is the entrance card into the secrets of the representation. The manifestation is the first event localized in the relationship of the object with the environment. The manifestation contains two moments. The first moment is the establishment of a connection with the nearest object in the environment. The second moment is the way in which the object moves, exists, maintains itself, and operates based on the relationship it has established with the other object. In accordance with this, the gate at the entrance to the labyrinth is first created on the wall, that is, it establishes a relationship with the latter, and then it manifests itself in its own way. This individual manifestation within the object (the door) is part of its total manifestation in the given situation.

Sarah enters the maze and faces the first stage, that is, the first challenge. Here she recognizes other connections and other object constellations that are at rest. The only thing that characterizes their manifestation are the solid connections and the absence of other manifestations that would free the collective passive manifestation from its circulus vitiosus. We will visualize this abstract representation. Sarah faces a multifaceted path, with a crossroads in two directions. On Sarah’s side, the path follows and is enclosed by the outer wall of the maze. On the other, inner side of the maze, the paths are followed by an identical wall. Beyond it lie other challenges and other directions that from the outside resembled brain ridges and folds. Sarah also stands and rests. She is a self-integrated object thrown into the constellation of long-length objects embodied in the walls and the path. The position of being thrown inside is diluted, as Sarah almost melts into the expanse of “dead” objects. The objects are dead because they are immobile. Immobility symbolically deadens time because time is a universal presence and flows independently of its metric properties and historical contexts. This is an enforced temporary state of affairs. It is a collection of several indifferent moments that we slow down unnaturally and tendentiously in order to capture the essence of the relationship between extension, duration and movement from a miniature and macroscopic perspective.

The objects are present, rest and last. Their object duration is proof that there is time embedded in the perishability that manifests itself through duration. Object duration, or the duration of the object, contrasts the pure duration inherent in the atmosphere in space. It oscillates between the mask of rest that seeks to hide the fact that the object does not last and does not exist forever and the sarcasm of obsolescence that mocks the cheap trick of rest. The immobility of all objects at once prompts Sarah to look at the first arbitrary object in the environment. This situation inverts the previous relationship between the general and the particular, when the manifestation prompted the subject to devote himself to the event woven from many polyvalent manifestations². Immediately before looking at the object, Sarah moves her eyes and head. She uses these devices that allow her to move minimally in order to get to know the extension and its configurations and to see, examine and get to know the objects that are still and last. But these movements do not help her much because they are lost in the space of long-length connections. In fact, the dead atmosphere forces Sarah to be interested in the expanse of long-length objects that artfully extend into infinity. Since this procedure is useless, Sarah looks into an arbitrary object. She believes that if she begins to get to know her surroundings by examining them in this way, she is taking precautions by simply feeling the unknown circumstances. She must set limits for herself. There is no better limit than the homogeneous, polymorphic, monolithic and material wholeness of the object. The wholeness of the object will allow her to get to know the miniature relationship between duration, movement and extension.

The only such object is the walls. But the walls cannot offer her the views she seeks. They are an original homogeneous whole, since they are composed of almost completely identical bricks. But the walls are broken and directly connected to the other walls that follow the path. If the walls do not break and do not connect to other walls, then the wall-as-object will give the impression of extending to infinity and will abolish the material whole, although it will retain its other properties – monolithicity and homogeneity. Some of them are so long in themselves that the visibility of the material whole is sacrificed to the length of the extension. Therefore, Sarah tries to find something that will help her get rid of the dead atmosphere of the surface of the wall in front of her. But the surface is composed of blocks of bricks harmoniously but irregularly arranged on top of each other. The space between the bricks is a network of regular shapes, but the network is so uniform that the assumed polymorphic texture turns into a monomorphic expression that establishes the uniform appearance of the object. The subject is also confronted with such obviousness whenever he perceives the representation or thing as immediate impressions full of content and events, with movements and actions that he cannot decipher or recognize as such³. As is right, Sarah tries to treat some of the bricks that form the network and their sequenced networks as an individual object. She alternately notices the bricks as objects next to each other, one above the other and one below the other, and the networks as a multifaceted and branched object that connects the bricks. She counts the bricks and moves along the trajectories of the network with hesitation because she does not know which direction to follow. In this procedure, her premonitions about what panicky uncertainties await her in the labyrinth are reflected in a miniature way. Sarah localizes the movement of her head and eyes, no longer allowing them to wander along the dead space of the walls and paths. She uses their movements, that is, she moves them, to capture the extension of the parts of the object, of the object-parts (the mesh and the bricks) in order to encompass and sketch the object. Sarah acts in this way, although she knows that what is encompassed is only a part of the object that has a limited content that extends infinitely. Her cognitive activity lasts as long as the object contains materials and spaces that help her to know it. If she lingers on certain parts for a longer time, this does not mean that the cognitive duration prevails over the duration of the fixed part of the object. Conversely, walking too long along the structure of the object does not mean that the object has captured the cognitive activity in its space and does not allow it to break free. Whatever duration seems to prevail, it always prevails because its correlate sees in it something more than exists in the given as such. Consciousness traces the structure because the object hides permanents that can only be discovered if sight and premonition are given time to find them. The part of the object is so attractive that consciousness miserably appropriates it because it vaguely imagines it as a significant auxiliary element. The dynamics of dominance can proceed differently. The part of the object captures consciousness, and the structure of the object is subordinated to consciousness. It all depends on how arbitrary and unhurried the need of the object for the subject is and how much the object limits and conditions his actions in a critical situation. But from the perspective of the structure, the objective segment is a uniform, monomorphic, monolithic and material whole that disappoints Sarah; it worsens her ability to find her way, because what extends over great and unfathomable distances throws her into spatial pandemonium and causes dimensional agony.

The two durations, cognitive and the one rooted in objects, are connected and form a segment just like immediacy and impression. In this segment, expression struggles with the clarity of the subject and the ability to determine meanings. This struggle is constantly being waged status quo. Sarah has full insight into the material expression of the object. The object turns into a detailed impression whose immediacy becomes the basis on which consciousness clearly draws the vivid pieces after it has looked at them and made an effort to recognize them as concrete impressions. Despite these technical advantages of looking at the object that she has come to know and recognize, Sarah is wasting time because she is gaining nothing. She chooses the right path and starts running in panic in the hope of finding an entrance to the other levels of the labyrinth. She moves along the path whose dimensions coincide with the walls on both sides of the path. Previously, she had spontaneously and with great attention measured the length of the wall while considering its appearance. Now Sarah runs, extremely dynamizing the extension, not measuring the structure of the object, but passing through it with its help. In both cases, the impression of extension is a technical moment that determines the consideration in a certain way. Now, the extension seems to stand out and become the prevailing value that the movement, its duration and the duration of the long-length objects emphasize. Sarah neglects the concrete structures of the path and the walls, because her previous experience with them was extremely unfavorable for her critical positions. She moves constantly, runs and radicalizes the movement, it turns from a relatively stressful curious observation into a panicked search for a way out. The longer the movement lasts and the more uncertain it is when she will see the edges of the long-length objects, the more the extension stands out. Here, two other formations of duration, duration of movement and duration of length, are connected. If the movement did not last within the length, Sarah would have been unaware of the length. Consequently, stretching is the duration of length that is revealed together with or without its metric properties.

How does our knowledge of the relationship between attention, consciousness, and representation benefit from the emergence of extension?

After Sarah has potentially examined the representation, she will become so familiar with its structure that she will transform each expression into an extremely impressive element. After that, Sarah will easily elevate each perceptible element to an extremely impressive phenomenon. But if Sarah wants to discover the deepest meanings hidden in the familiar impressions, she must rise above their structure, separate them without destroying their presumed unity, and place them in a new, transcendental relationship, which will rise above the familiar concrete structures. If the impressions become independent in this way, remaining in an extremely indefinite mutual relationship, they will begin to extend towards infinity. At some point and space of infinity, they will intersect possibilities, essences and meanings. Consciousness must conquer their far-reaching extension in order to catch the points of intersection that will modify the meaning of the representation that contains them. The idea is the potential of purposeful structuring that allows representations themselves to rise above their correlative structures. It allows them to stretch to infinity in order to unite purified meanings in its transcendental atmosphere.

3.

We have considered two examples. One was the situation where Sarah was getting to know the uniform structure of an object independently of its extent. The second example was the situation where Sarah was passing through the structure of consistent objects without looking at them or their connections. In both cases, the three correlates of the conditions for dynamic manifestation complemented each other, with one or two correlates always prevailing, some illuminating the technical powers of the others. As Sarah got to know the structure of the object, movement and duration gained the upper hand. As she passed through the structure of objects, extension prevailed. In the first case, movement and duration were seemingly spontaneous and effortless, temporarily free from the stress of curiosity. Nevertheless, they suppressed extension, instrumentalized it, turned it into a map that would help Sarah more easily recognize structural specificities. Then, in the second case, they became extreme, extremely intensified. But this self-radicalization did not help them stay at the top. On the contrary, they crossed forces in the race, emphasizing the extension of objects at the expense of their individual structures.

One important point must not be overlooked. Sarah allows the objects to manifest themselves through her relationship to them. The awareness that she is trapped and cannot get out, the time that ticks away and every moment brings her to final ruin, the various self-manifestations that reflect changing internal states and the relationship to a certain configuration, location and atmosphere – all these acts of Sarah show that the objects are not as dead as they seem. They hide possibilities, block approaches, torment her with their harsh and unyielding muteness. Her relationship shows in fact how alive and full of morbid meaning their networked constellations are. The very connections and their imagined, silent and objective solidarity turn into a relationship to Sarah, which is revealed only by how she responds to the challenge that they themselves embody. Sarah manifests herself dynamically in different ways. The different degrees of power condition the ways of manifestation. The modes of manifestation must reach a certain level of power in order to create their being-in-the-world. Sarah stretches as a body and with her body as much as it can stretch. The same property is shared by the objects, the walls, and the paths. They, at least while Sarah is in their presence, last as long as she lasts. But the only thing that moves is Sarah. Movement is the key thing that helps Sarah to manifest herself. Stretching and duration belong to her too, but her self-expression does not depend so much on them as it does on the state of the objects and their structures. The constant extension and duration of the objects force Sarah to move. Through movement, she shows her relationship to them, she manifests herself while she moves. They respond to her, to her movements, by provoking her with their cold chronotopic and dimensional properties – duration and stretching. Sarah begins to manifest herself reactively, responding to the objects aggressively, as if their chronotopic-dimensional properties were abusive habits that the objects use to harm her. Their stillness is only a humiliating subtext that, like an evil spirit, overwhelms and elevates the provocation. Duration is the solid state of stillness, and extension increases its provocative capacities. It seems that stillness, together with the objects and its “elements,” enjoys watching Sarah writhe in helplessness.

However we consider this situation, we will recognize that the dynamics of mutual and interactive manifestations depend on the correlates that set the dynamic conditions on both correspondent sides. Extension, duration, and movement impose the conditions of dynamic manifestation on both parties involved. Moreover, it does not matter how symbolic or real their relations are. For example, the connections between objects are real, but they do not establish mutual relations. Their relations with Sarah are symbolic. Her responses reflect the symbolic potentials of the inherent properties of the objects and their structures. Chronotopic-dimensional properties take on symbolic characters depending on how Sarah understands and experiences the situation that they co-constitute with her.

The last thing to say about these dynamic conditions of manifestation is that they are at the same time a priori synthetic forms of attention, grounded in a priori synthetic forms of existence – time and space. The core of their being is volume. The seed of time and space – matter transforms volume into a generic technical moment of its manifestations. Volume shows how constituted the being of matter is and enables its elementary presence.

Having completed this phase, we will continue to symbolically interpret the narrative motifs in the film Labyrinth. The essential structure of attention on which action depends does not end here.

Sarah continues to run. In fact, her incessant panic activity shows the necessity of action. Sarah has the general goal in mind, but does not know how to deal with its structural shortcomings. This sufficiently shows us how serious a human characteristic is action and how far removed it can be from the act, if by act we understand the undertaking to structure the set goal. Attention is the most necessary auxiliary tool in structuring the set goal. It helps the subject to organize the dense vivid content of the representation; to get to know it in the same way that we begin to clearly separate and recognize the words in the sentence of someone speaking in a language we hear for the first time. The more successfully we structure the set goal, the more the act is transformed into action. If we turn act into permanent action, we will discover a universal approach. With its help we will deal with the structure of the goal before we fully understand the essence of the goal as such⁴.

On the a priori structure of extension, duration and movement, the structure of the set goal is built. Moreover, there are still complexes that we can derive from the two models of attentional being within the framework of the “material geometric archetype”. These complexes are also immanent and a priori and predispose the subject to be able to consider the representation, to get to know it per se and to break through its “picturesque density”. In fact, as we will soon see, the new complexes are directly derived from the universal schemes of the three dynamic conditions. The derived complexes expand and build on the schemes from which they themselves arise. From the field of pure volumes embedded in material structures and the related structural formations of objects, they move to the field of material expressions.

Sarah tried to capture, get to know and perceive the internal structure of the object in order to understand whether she could use it as a means of assistance and overcome the first challenge. She began to open up to the symbolic world of the event represented in the self that is embedded in it, where she found herself thrown into the immovable solidarity of the dead states and caught in it. She opened up so much that she ended up running down the middle of the seemingly endless path. Without intending to, she shows us what the eerie and impenetrable dead-end looks like and what impressions it leaves. But as she examines the structure of the wall segment, she is confronted with two representations that appear alternately as a homogeneous whole as much as they appear as separate sub-objects. The network of grouted cracks and the bricks stacked next to and on top of each other are synthesized and totalized elements in the structure of the wall. They cannot be seen otherwise than in this ambivalent way. In other words, Sarah attends to them by having to use a purposeful structure of attention that has a centralized-divided dynamic form. We use this form in everyday life while thinking and communicating and in order to think and communicate. While we think of a sentence or utter it, we always add, more faintly and more vaguely, the thought that succeeds it to the complex of imagined ideas. Thus, we string thoughts together. The thoughts we say, we complement in ourselves with thoughts that we need to say next, even before we utter them. We create a coherent, directly spoken text by placing attention in the middle, which unevenly distributes potentially coherent thoughts. It helps thoughts to line up one after the other, while the following thought relatively and conveniently discriminates the thought being communicated. This cognitive mechanism is briefly described by Blessed Augustine as follows: “attention lasts; through it time moves towards the non-existent that is yet to begin to exist”⁵. He then continues: “the duration of this action in memory is separated into what I have already said and what I am about to say. My attention is present: what is future moves through it to become past”⁶.

Once Sarah opens herself up completely to the challenge and starts running across the endless and conditionally limited spaces of the first level of the maze, she is not only careful not to miss the exit if it appears in front of her, but also mechanically observes the space of uniform geometric orders. In this way, Sarah deepens the centralized-divided form of attention. She upgrades it so that she now uses another form that we will call synthetic-dispersive. The more Sarah dynamizes her behavior, the more she tries to encompass everything through movement in one direction. Embracing-everything-through-movement-in-one-direction says everything about the synthetic-dispersive form of attention. Movement-in-one-direction symbolizes the synthetic moment, and embracing-everything-in-the-view symbolizes the dispersive moment. However, no matter how attractive and unusual it is, something is not right in this attentional concept. Sarah grasps everything mechanically and moves too quickly to see exactly what advantages she has. The mechanical grasp does not allow her to recognize well the subtle details in the representation of the objective event, nor to conceive the pragmatic presence of the impressions discovered. When we talk about wild enthusiasm, we will see that the synthetic-dispersive approach based on this symbolic representation of attention is suitable for use whenever we are dealing with a vivid content that has its own arbitrary dynamics. In this case, the subject uses attention as the predominant element of surveillance to monitor the events in the vivid representation. The subject draws conclusions and systematizes them thanks to the attention that monitors in a synthetic-dispersive manner.

Sarah meets archetypal figures that symbolize the other side of synthetic-dispersive attention. They are the many-eyed lichens, the parodic arguses, here and there growing on the walls. The first thing Sarah should do is stop and get to know their symbolic structure. But she runs past them and is not interested in the useful secrets they can reveal to her. In fact, they reveal what attention that is not devoted to the environment, or that is devoted to it hastily, looks like. It is attention that sets aside a part of the tempting environment in order to get to know it. Or it turns the environment into a representation of the environment that it must necessarily imagine in order to correct some mistake from the recent past. Sarah does the opposite: she runs quickly and does not reflect on the individualities. Therefore, the film director keeps the frame exclusively on one sample of the singular parodic argus, a model for a all lichens with many eyes. He lets us know that we have to figure out for ourselves what the secret of this archetypal figure consists of, while Sarah vainly and frivolously searches for the way out. We will accept the challenge intended for the interested audience, and for that matter, we will figure out the secret hidden in the being of the mythological plant-creatures.

The parodic argus look with all his eyes in one direction, just as Sarah runs along the path. It do not move its eyes. Therefore, we will confidently elevate the assumptions that it completely renounce Sarah’s attentional approach to facts. The parodic argus looks in one direction and encompass with its gaze everything that enters its optical field. It do not divide its attention into rapid bodily movement and machinal consideration around. He calmly looks into the content whose scope he can grasp, illuminate and encompass with his sensory rays. Common to Sarah’s approach and his approach is the blunt focus in one direction. But for him, it is crucial to look in one direction with his eyes. He focuses fully on the thematic horizon in front of him and does not relativize it through body movements in space. He is fused with the structure of the wall and rooted in it. This means that he will only be able to recognize and get to know the essentials in the representation if he bases his interest on the immediate impression, which he will gradually deabsolutize with the help of attention and consciousness. Sarah runs and thinks that she is deabsolutizing the impressions that are constantly changing, while, in essence, she discovers the diversity⁷ of the immediate impression and strengthens its absolute nature by gliding her gaze mechanically along the concrete phenomena. Eventually, Sarah will get tired of running in the abyss of monotonous forms and will start paying more attention to what is around her. But this is the last stage of the description of the archetypal representation of attention that we have not yet reached.

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1. Мерло-Понти М., Феноменология восприятия, „Ювента“ „Наука“, Санкт-Петербург, 1999, с. 58. ↩︎
2. The concept of individual and general is relativized whenever multiple structures located in a common space manifest themselves independently of their connections and relations. If only the object manifests itself, it activates a part of its being, and the activity of the part takes place on the basis of, at the expense of, and in the circumstances of the parts of the object that are not engaged or are co-engaged in a secondary way. The object can complicate its manifestation. Then its being will in whole or in part form connections and enter into relations with other objects opposite it or in its surroundings. In that case, the object not only manifests itself invariantly on the basis of its individual structure, but in the process includes other structures that cooperate with it invariantly. The distinction between the general and the individual is lost as a consequence of the layered, extensive, combined, and ever-changing manifestation. ↩︎
3. We specify so many individual things not because we suffer from a mania for hunting for trifles, but because this is an important segment of the attempt to understand how consciousness manages to get to know each representation that is offered to it as a tempting absolute impression. These are basic mechanisms that help the subject to move meaningfully and to act if he has set a goal in the world of real representations. But he cannot set a goal for himself and consequently cannot act if he does not adopt the ways in which attention serves utilitarian meanings to consciousness. Consciousness hands over the meanings to the subject to process them. This basic mechanism of attention is the first step in the processing of any representation filled with meaning and goals. The sentence to which this footnote is attached is proof of this. ↩︎
4. In other words, we will become “experts” according to Dreyfus’s classification. Although we do not like this word because it is too technical, professional, and specialized, it can be used wherever we want to trivialize the deep essence of action without belittling its depth. ↩︎
5. Avgustin Sv., Ispovjesti, Vjesnik, Zagreb, 1973, s. 277. ↩︎
6. Ibid. ↩︎
7. At this level, there is not much diversity. It is composed of many different forms that extend throughout space and fill it with themselves. ↩︎