For the animal, the ‘ascent’ to representational capacity is the establishment of a technology which is expressed as dream-universe, the character of which is a projection of the relational qualities of memory, denotation, fantasy, imagination and social scripting. This is first established as a possible extension of self. Eventually, this projection will vie for domain dominance and, to a large or even overwhelming degree, become the de-facto ‘self’.
The establishment of this projection could be analogized as a ‘space-station’, in that it comprises a seemingly durable bubble which is surrounded by an uninhabitable and to some degree openly hostile environment; abstraction. To the self, abstraction is equivalent to ‘space’ (void, uninhabitable, radioactive, &c.) and the representational game we enter upon awakening is the re-establishment of the ‘space-station’.
It is a kind of evolutionary experiment which, under certain conditions may go horribly awry. When (in our analogy) the space-station dominates the living planet, this is like a shadow casting a person. It is as if Hal (a computer intelligence from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey), gained control not only of Earth, but of what people thought Earth (and people, and everything else) were…
