On Percepticide & Perspecticide:

when we lose perception and perspective, what next?

On a recent writing retreat, the concept of “percepticide” was a central theme in teaching participants to be intentional about using our senses as we interact with the world around us.

This may seem like a simple exercise: “use your senses”.

But understanding the concept of percepticide helped me to understand what I find healing. Why it is so healing for me to walk quietly in a forest: hearing the bird song and the sound of trees breathing. Feeling my muscles work in multitudinous ways to negotiate interaction with Mother Earth. Why it is so healing for me to swim out into the Georgian Bay and simply be: vertically suspended in deep water with my whole body to my earlobes being touched and grounded in Mother Earth’s amniotic fluid.

When I came back from the retreat, I wanted to learn more about this concept. When I punched “percepticide” into google search, another term came up: “perspecticide”. Of course, down the delightful knowledge rabbit hole I slithered!

These two beautifully articulate words have given me handles for that which ail(s)(ed) me and that which (I think) ails the human soul in our modern world. So this little post will introduce these: percepticide and perspecticide. I don’t know where the writing will go - but that’s half the fun of bearing witness through the word.

PERCEPTICIDE:

Percepticide might be simply understood to be that which causes the death of (our desire for) perception. Sometimes, life gets too painful to keep on perceiving. It is, quite literally, easier to not feel, than to feel difficult things. Deadening our perceptions so that we do not feel is how I understand percepticide.

If our capacities for perception have been deadened, here are some of the useful readings I found on the concept of “percepticide” and how we might seek to recover the use of our perceptive capacities.

Along the lines of drawing away from the act of bearing witness:¹

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'Diana Taylor coins the term “percepticide” to explain the phenomenon of intentionally turning one’s gaze away from violence and consciously choosing to “un-see” or acknowledge it. In this way, percepticide is the polar opposite of bearing witness.  Bearing witness does not mean that you cannot at times, look away. It also does not mean that you must shoulder the entirety of the responsibility of listening and holding space. It does mean that we show up and acknowledge, allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable, and sometimes scared and uncomfortable.'

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I think I began engaging in percepticide quite actively in my late-20’s and certainly in my 30’s and 40’s, quite unwittingly, simply as a coping mechanism. During those decades, I encountered the most deeply painful experiences of death and loss (of relationships, hopes, expectations and some dreams).

I had (for me) the most challenging encounters of seeing what is happening in the world around me and simply wanted to not see such horrors (racism, sexism, environmental disaster, pandemic - take your pick! There are so many difficult things to choose from).

My tools of percepticide varied, but essentially could be summed up in workaholism, other addictive and mind-numbing behaviours (eg I’ve reached embarassingly high levels on a few games I play on my phone). In the end, using these percepticidal tools to cope with difficult sensory exposures resulted in a small-ification (reduction in size) of my capacity to truly experience joy and pleasure. Here, I mean real, deep, true joy and pleasure that satisfy:

• the senses (sight, touch, smell, taste, sound) and the body

• the soul,

• the desire for meaning and connection (and meaningful connection).

The process of percepticide in my own life was slow, typical of the frog in a cold pot of water slowly coming to a boil. The poor frog gets cooked so slowly, it doesn’t have the perceptive capacity to jump out before the boiling point is achieved!

In my life, I didn’t understand what was being lost, the process of percepticide happened so slowly. I sought to numb various hurts and pains with

a little numbing here,

and a little numbing there,

here a numb, there a numb,

everywhere a numb, numb …

until my world got so small that my hiding place from perception simply wasn’t big enough for ME anymore.

It became uncomfortable and even painful to try and exist in the small space which was left once my perceptive capacities were killed or denied. A major depressive, loss-of-meaning-and-purpose event was on the very near horizon when I paused to intentionally examine what was going on.

The pause was meaningful and helpful. From the pause, I began to slowly hear the voice of my own soul and the world around me again (Can you hear me now??). The writing retreat² was a key tool in recognizing what was afoot within me, and finding my way back out.

From the writing retreat notes:

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"Metis writer Warren Cariou's comments on percepticide: what was done to indigenous children in Canadian residential schools, cut off their sensory relationship to land, other creatures. [We] Need to acknowledge this sensory deprivation as a specific loss and specific crime.

In a very different way, we are undertaking percepticide culturally, socially, politically right now. [below was our listening exercise for the writing retreat]

Listening exercise: Go outside, walk around, breathe and listen. Come back inside and describe in writing what you hear. Be playful. You might want to attempt to spell out bird song or other sounds. How can you bring the auditory to the page."

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The writing notes speak to acknowledging sensory deprivation as a specific loss and crime. It is one thing to acknowledge and address a crime done against us. Another thing entirely to acknowledge and address a crime we have allowed ourselves to engage in, that has harmed us. Finding the way back can be hard. Self-forgiveness is required. So too is activation, or an intentional movement towards activities which help us to re-engage the sensate life.

The concepts and exercises offered by the writing retreat were most helpful in allowing me to understand how and where my perceptions had deadened, and providing some practical tools for re-engaging with perception. By doing this work, my world is slowly becoming bigger again. One of the simplest practices that is helping is walking, quietly in nature, and paying attention to the experiences of my senses.³

Doing what Warren Cariou says in his book, “Land/Relations”:

“a walk on the land—a walk with eyes and ears open, with our skin and our nostrils and even our taste buds attuned to where we are.”

As Anthony DeMello puts it “paying attention.”

PERSPECTICIDE:

In Psychology Today⁴, perspecticide is identified as the abuse-related incapacity to know what you know, often used as part of a strategy of coercive control that may include manipulation, stalking, and physical abuse. This description applies in relationships contexts, specifically in abusive relationships.

However, there is a growing body of research and writing that identifies perspecticide in a broader way. Perspecticide is identified in relation to how the perspectives of collective humanity are impacted by media and technology environments which, perhaps in much more subtle ways, seek to control how we think or the perspectives we take.

This is a very deep rabbit hole, I warn you!

But it is one I have been aware of for a very long time. I just didn’t have this particular word to describe the influence of media on my capacity to think and establish my own (informed) perspective on things. I had no word to describe what happens to my perspectives when they are unduly influenced by those who profit from directing my perspectives in particular ways.

Not owning a TV has been an intentional intervention throughout my adult life: a means of protecting my capacity to form and inform my own perspectives with influences I trust. I recognized very early that, for example, TV advertising has a very strong influence on what I might begin to identify as “wants” and “needs". Much of this influencing of perspectives is fear-based: fear of not being good / popular / attractive or safe enough - as some examples.

As technology, AI, personal data mining and the ubiquitous presence of “smart devices” prevail in our lives, our perspectives become more informed by forces we may not even notice. These two simple quotes struck me in particular, from a much more complex article on perspecticide written by L. Poenaru⁵

"For the first time in the history of humanity, we are going to immerse ourselves in spaces motivated and influenced by these silicon spirits that we have created ourselves. Our environment will no longer be passive or harmless; it will have intentions, opinions, and agendas." (Wylie, 2019, p. 233).​

"Attacking the most important center of gravity of an adversary – the mind of its people – no longer requires massive bombings or bursts of propaganda. All it takes is a smartphone and a few seconds of inactivity. And anyone can do it." (Singer, Brooking, 2018, p. 18).

My understanding of perspecticide from this article is: we need an awareness of our capacity to form and inform our perspectives by means we choose. Just as we might choose a lower cholesterol, high fibre diet to manage our physical health, we need to be aware of what we are ingesting that forms and informs our perspectives on life. We need to be making informed choices about our perspective-formation.

And, if our perceptions are dulled (or dead, i.e. if percepticide has occurred) then our ability to be wise and selective in what informs our perspectives on life is also vulnerable: all kinds of perspective junk food are free to enter and influence us. Before you know it, we will be buying into tin foil hat ideas, imagining dangers that do not exist, and backing ourselves into smaller and smaller soul spaces.

I don’t want that for my life.

There is a lot of difficult stuff in life. But I want to have an awake, aware encounter with these things. Not one that peers through lenses someone else has crafted for their profit, or to support agendas, ethics or values that are contrary to my own. I want to understand other perspectives, and choose them as a matter of my own intention, not as a matter of coercive or manipulative influence.

And, I want to be able to witness and bear witness from a place of being awake and aware.

That’s all she wrote tonight :)

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1. https://imaginenj.org/help/when-you-cannot-bear-to-be-a-witness/ This article draws on the concept of percepticide to recognize our tendencies to turn away when we cannot bear to be a witness to difficult things.

2. https://ignatiusguelph.ca/events/category/retreats/ the writing retreat I attended was called “writing the outside in” or it may have been “writing the inside out”- but I highly recommend this retreat centre - even to simply practice recovering from Percepticide and Perspecticide - the care and the environment invites us into media detoxification and sensory (re)awakening.

3. image credit: Photo by Kiwihug on Unsplash

4. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/invisible-chains/201602/is-what-controlling-relationship-is-really - this link describes perspecticide in the context of a relationship.

5. https://www.liviupoenaru.com/science-of-perspecticide The article here is titled “Science
of Perspecticide and Psychoanalysis: The Epistemic Void” - have a cup of coffee with you to read it!