STAF FORD BEER - The Cybernetic Brain - page 302

certain strands of New Age philosophy and practice, already mentioned in
chapter 5, as somehow running together science and spirituality, mind, body,
and spirit. 69
We should thus see Beer's cybernetic tantrism as an event within a broader
scientific-spiritual history, and I can close with two comments on this. First,
to place Beer in this lineage is not to efface his achievement. On the one
hand, Beer went much further than anyone else in tying cybernetics—our
topic—into the realm of the spirit. On the other hand, from the spiritual side,
Beer went much further than anyone else in developing the social aspects of
this nonmodern assemblage. Esoteric writings seldom go beyond the realm
of the individual, whereas the VSM and team syntegrity were directed at the
creation of new social structures and the rearrangement of existing ones in
line with cybernetic and, we can now add, tantric sensitivities. Second, plac-
ing Beer in relation to this lineage returns us to questions of institutionaliza-
tion and marginality. The entire lineage could be described as sociologically
occult—hidden and suspect. Even now, when New Age has become big busi-
ness, it remains walled off from established thought and practice. Despite—or,
perhaps better, because of—its elision of mind, body, and spirit distinctions,
New Age remains invisible in contemporary debates on the relation between
science and religion. Like Gysin's Dream Machines, New Age spirituality and
Beer's spirituality fail to find a place within modern schemata of classifica-
tion. And, to change direction again, perhaps we should regret this. The early
twenty-first century seems like a time when we should welcome a form of
life that fuses science and spirituality rather than setting them at each other's
throats. Again, this exploration of the history of cybernetics offers us a sketch
of another future, importantly different from the ones that are more readily
imagined.
Brian eno and new Music
[BEER'S WORK] SO FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED THE WAY THAT I THOUGHT ABOUT
MUSIC THAT IT'S vERY DIFFICULT TO TRANSLATE INTO INDIvIDUAL THINGS,
IT JUST CHANGED THE WHOLE WAY I WORK. . . . STAFFORD FOR ME WAS THE
DOORWAY INTO A WHOLE WAY OF THINKING.
BRIan enO, qUOTED IN DAvID WHITTAKER, stAFFOrD beer (2003, 57, 63)
We touched on relations between cybernetics and the arts in chapters 3 and
4 as well as briefly here in connection with biological computing, and I want