Outside of specialist/esoteric circles, consensus about the meaning of general and abstract language is hard to establish. When the objects of joint attention are invisible and intangible, and we need to believe that we have consensus, we are likely to confabulate in order to ‘keep the party going’ – just as a patient with severe memory loss or agnosia, unable to recall his history, will invent a story to cover up the deficit. Such patients have no idea that they are confabulating, and may refuse to admit that they are doing so even when the evidence is obvious to all.
On a purely perceptual level, the brain does the same thing when it ‘fills in’ the blind spot which is inherent to the structure of the retina. Just as there is no blank area in your visual field, even when you close one eye, no discontinuity in the consensual world appears to you: the sense you make of the world must on the whole appear seamless. To the non-participating observer, it is clear that the construction of consensus is hard work and the results dubious and impermanent. It is not surprising then that an established order tends to rely on unquestioned and unquestionable authority as a short cut through, or substitute for, the hard work of consensus-building. An authority figure offers an anchor, a point of stability, when the world of experience threatens to slide into chaos.
Human beings, fearing their own transience, have always associated value with permanence and preferred to put their trust in those who were ready to claim an unchanging truth.
— M.C. Bateson (2000, 135)
But the value attached to permanence is ever at odds with the value attached to life and consciousness, for these are dynamic and impermanent.