Virtual Grub Street: Shakespeare Authorship and the See-Behind Gene

A post has appeared in one of my Facebook groups purporting to have found a code within the signature of Edward de Vere. A commenter who traffics in codes and ciphers expanded the original post inserting codes associated with his own products. He ended with “I thought our moderator had banned this kind of conversation, no?”

I believe he was referring to a brief exchange we had when he applied to be a member of the group. I warned that he might feel offended should I choose to comment on his work in this… um… field. Any comments I might make were not likely to be positive regardless that they would be civil in accordance with group rules.

I could unfriend him if I wished, he replied.

I cannot help but notice how profoundly social media has affected our thought patterns. It is not at all difficult to see why. This was just one droplet in a tidal wave of stimuli that washes over us every waking hour.

The “unfriend” has become something of an obsession in our world. If I report to Facebook that a post contains a plan to nuke the U. S. Capitol building, the primary option I am provided is to “block” the person who has written the post. This, of course, is a kind of super-unfriending.

While I look on in despair at the button provided for the purpose, my “notifications” inform me that a friend that I may or may not have ever actually met, or even exchanged emoticons with, has posted that he or she will soon be unfriending the many people on their friend list that have failed to satisfy their expectations in some vague but somehow blatant way. Another boldly invites me to unfriend them if I don’t like their political beliefs. Go ahead. See if they care in the least. They dismiss with impunity the “sword of unfriending” poised over their heads.

By way of reply, the original poster announces “Good morning and I am sorry if I am violating rules,…” and proceeds boldly undaunted with a comment containing a virtual Niagara of ciphers direct and inferred. The kind of thing that would make a Rosicrucian (from which group, by the way, the methodology is originally adapted) blush. It is difficult to interpret this as anything but an assertion that he dismisses with impunity the “sword of removal” poised over his head.

Back when mankind was composed of hunter-gatherers, it was sometimes a matter of life and death to be able to detect predators hiding in thickets. Thus, those who were able to see hidden patterns behind things flourished for hundreds of thousands of years. Sometimes they were right and sometimes wrong. Those that were right often enough were naturally selected to pass their seeing-behind genes along. Those who couldn’t see the patterns, not so much.

Happily, we don’t live our lives in regular contact with predators any longer. This gratifying state, however, has only lasted for a millennium or so. Over that time the change was gradual. Things still hide behind bushes, in rapidly shrinking regions, terrified to think that they may begin to see humans on the other side.

Such a short period of time has barely changed the dominance of the seeing-behind gene-pool. For this reason, millions of hunter-gatherer brains are constantly detecting agency behind modern variations upon the thicket. It's just what they do. This fact has caused no end of problems greatly hobbling the advancement of civilization throughout its tenuous history. Many solutions have been tried, the historical choice falling to the creation of a vast system to train people not to constantly detect predators (or other agency) behind the tangled thickets printed on the pages of books. It is called the educational system.

Like so many primitive human traits, however, seeing hidden patterns behind texts has proven both a gift and a curse. As a gift, it is called “sub-text,” “implication,” “playing on words,” “satire,” “encryption” and other such things. It is not wise to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Our mental life would be stripped of its flexibility and much of its power. As a curse, of course, it has been assigned a psychological category. It is called “Apophenia”: a tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things.[1] The former requires extensive formal training. The latter none at all.

Unfortunately, there would seem to be no going back to an effective educational system. Our Smartphones depend upon us better using our time. The system has fallen victim to media that host advertisements in order to super-charge the economies they allow. Remnants remain, dedicated largely to remedial reading and Algebra 1. Course goals largely seek to make students able to do low- or medium-skilled labor and to respond to advertisements. Anything more would be positively counterproductive.

With careful, intensive training in rational thought those suffering from Apophenia can join the rest of us in the world of semi-conscious consumption of media — or, worse yet, the colorless boredom of the scholar hopelessly unable to see the predator for the thicket — and lead more or less normal lives. There is, however, no cure. Even eight-step programs can’t begin to touch it.

So then, the dominance of see-behind genes, barely dinged by natural selection, has burst it bonds. The new answer to their dominance has been to give them vast stretches of virtual space called “social media” were they can gloriously detect agency anywhere they wish and have absolutely zero effect on the real world except to hopelessly become entangled underfoot of the pathetic efforts of a moonbeam-mutated gene-pool of Poindexters who are always sticking their noses in where they don’t belong, trying to accomplish something without paying fees or buying paid advertising.[2] Two birds with one stone, as it were.

I am not proud of the fact that I do not choose to remove persons suffering from Apophenia or their posts. I know it’s like offering an alcoholic a gin-and-tonic and a last call Miss Bob’s Tavern contestant to go. No, I’m not proud of myself, but, perhaps, if the place looks receptive to all kinds, some pathetic recovering Apophenic will try a first tentative post about a documented fact. And however useless the effort will be as the daily tidal wave washes over us, sweeping all away, at least I won’t think that continuously fingering the unfriend button is a better use of my time.

[1] Visual-spatial manifestations such as the poster detected in Edward de Vere’s signature are called “Pareidolia “.

[2] We learn too sadly that some see-behind populations have proven capable of trashing the U. S. Capitol and leaving a corpse or six behind. I thank Shakespeare Authorship see-behind types more than they may know for being entirely incapable of effecting the real world.

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