Alastair Smith on political tyranny

Alastair Smith is professor of politics at New York University. 

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The recipient of three grants from the National Science Foundation and author of three books, he was chosen as the 2005 Karl Deutsch Award winner, given biennially to the best international-relations scholar under the age of 40. 

He is co-author of “The Dictators Handbook: How Bad Behaviour is Almost Always Good Politics” (2011).

To whom do your guide lines apply?

Everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you are a dictator, a democratic leader, head of a charity or a sports organisation, the same things go on. 

Firstly, you don’t rule by yourself—you need supporters to keep you there, and what determines how you best survive is how many supporters you have and how big a pool you can draw these supporters from.

 
Do they actually have to support me, or can I just terrify them into supporting me by threatening them with death? 

No, they absolutely have to support you on some level. 

You can’t personally go around and terrorise everyone. 

Our poor old struggling Syrian president is not personally killing people on the streets. 

He needs the support of his family, senior generals who are willing to go out and kill people on his behalf.  

The common misconception is that you need support from the vast majority of the population, but that’s typically not true. 

There is all this protest on Wall Street, but CEOs are keeping the people they need to keep happy happy—the members of the board, senior management and a few key investors—because they are the people who can replace them. 

Protesters on Wall Street have no ability to remove the CEOs. 

So in a lot of countries the masses are terrified but the supporters are not.

 
What about Stalin? Even his inner circle was terrified.

Well, the brilliance of the Soviet regime was not just that you relied on few people, but that there were lots of replacements. 

In a tsarist system you have to rely only on aristocrats, but in a Soviet system everyone can be your supporter. 

This puts your core circle on notice that they are easily replaced. 

That, of course, made them horribly loyal. 

The Mob are very good at this.

 
This sounds typically mammalian to me—just groups of gorillas with a silverback?

It is virtually impossible to find any example where leaders are not acting in their own self interest. 

If you are a democrat you want to gerrymander districts and have an electoral college. 

This vastly reduces the number of votes a president needs to win an election.  

Then tax very highly. 

It’s much better to decide who gets to eat than to let the people feed themselves. 

If you lower taxes people will do more work, but then people will get rewards that aren’t coming through you. 

Everything good must come through you. 

Look at African farm subsidies. 

The government buys crops at below market price by force. 

This is a tax on farmers who then can’t make a profit. 

So, how do you reward people? 

The government subsidises fertilisers and hands it back that way. 

In Tanzania vouchers for fertilisers are handed out not to the most productive areas but to the party loyalist areas. 

This is always subject to the constraint that if you tax too highly people won’t work. 

This is the big debate in the US. 

The Republicans are saying that the Democrats have too many taxes and want to suppress workers. 

But when they were in power five years ago they had no problem with taxing and spending policies, but now it’s taxing their supporters to reward Democrats.

Okay. So, I have a small group of rewarded cronies and a highly taxed population. Now what?

Don’t pay your supporters too much! 

You don’t want them saving up and forming their own power base. 

Also, don’t be nice to the people at the expense of your coalition. 

A classic example is natural disasters. 

Than Shwe was the ruler of Burma when Cyclone Nargis hit in 2008, and he did nothing to help the people. 

The Generals didn’t warn anybody; though they knew it was coming, they provided virtually no emergency protection. 

He sent the army in to prevent the people from leaving the flooded Delta areas. 

He was the perfect example of a leader who never made the mistake of putting the people’s welfare above himself and his coalition.

 
But what if you really are trying to work for the common good? Is there no way of doing that? 

None. 

If you’re working for the common good you didn’t come to power in the first place. 

If you’re not willing to cheat, steal, murder and bribe then you don’t come to power. 

What if you’re Lech Walesa? 

I’m pretty certain he had his own political power base. 

He wanted to make society more inclusive. 

This is always the battle cry of revolutionary leaders. 

When they get into power they change their tune. 

The real question is what stops politicians from backsliding once they get in? 

Typically, it’s that the country is broke and the only way you can get people to work is by empowering them socially, but once you do that it becomes hard to take powers back from them. 

Broke countries are the ones that end up having the political reforms that make them nice places with good economic policy in the long run. 

Places where there is oil, like Libya, have a very low chance of having democracy. 

The leaders don’t really need the people to pay the bills of their cronies, because they have oil.

Surely Google and Facebook aren’t run like this? 

Absolutely they are. 

All corporations are run like this. 

The bonuses are handed out to the people who determine the fate of the CEO. 

It’s a tiny number of people—ten to 20. 

There are very few shareholder revolts that work. 

Most leaders are deposed internally. 

This is why corporations pay huge bonuses.

 
Don’t I need a cult of personality for my dictatorship?
 

That’s window dressing. 

It’s useful in identifying whose side people are on. 

If you act crazy and the people tell you you’re crazy then they’re not as loyal as you might think. 

My co-author, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and I have a very cynical view, but we think cynicism doesn’t mean it’s not true. 

It’s not possible to reform a system by imploring people to do the right thing. 

You have to know how it works. 

Dictators already know how to be dictators—they are very good at it. 

We want to point out how they do it so that it’s possible to think about reforms that can actually have meaningful consequences.

Immigration whipping boy

There is no link between rising immigration and rising unemployment, independent economists have found.
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Contradicting persistent claims from anti-immigration activists and politicians that an influx of foreign nationals into the UK in recent years has led to more British-born workers on the dole.
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The respected National Institute of Economic and Social Research found that there was "no association" between higher immigration and joblessness.
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Even at times of recession or low growth of the sort that Britain is experiencing at the moment.
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In fact, the Institute's researchers suggested that the opposite might be the case and that immigration acts as an economic stimulus, pushing total employment levels higher and dole claimant numbers lower than they would otherwise have been.
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Perhaps surprisingly, the interaction between migrant inflows and GDP emerges as positive.
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Indicating that during periods of lower growth, migrant inflows are associated with ... slower [dole] claimant growth than would otherwise have occurred.
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The researchers did concede that the stimulating effects of migration on the overall labour market at a time of recession are likely to be small.
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The anti-immigration pressure group Migration Watch claimed yesterday that rising immigration from Eastern and Central Europe since European Union enlargement in 2004 had contributed to a surge in youth unemployment in Britain, which is now above 1 million. 
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Migration Watch released its own report, saying: Youth unemployment in the UK increased by almost 450,000 in the period from 2004 Q1 to 2011 Q3. 
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Over the same period, numbers of workers from the A8 countries grew by 600,000.

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Correlation is not, of course, proof of causation but, given the positive employability characteristics and relative youth of migrants from these countries, it is implausible and counter-intuitive to conclude ... that A8 migration has had virtually no impact on UK youth unemployment.
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However, critics of Migration Watch pointed out that youth unemployment started rising before 2004.
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The point when Polish and other former Soviet bloc nationals were freely permitted to enter the UK to work.
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And Jonathan Portes, the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and former chief economist at the Cabinet Office, also argues today that most of the rise in youth unemployment took place in 2008 and 2009, a period during which the number of Eastern European workers entering Britain to seek employment dipped. 
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Government ministers have implied a link between immigration and joblessness. Controlling immigration is critical or we will risk losing another generation to dependency and hopelessness, said Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in a speech last July.
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The Coalition has imposed a cap on immigration from outside the European Union and has pledged to reduce net migration to "the tens of thousands" a year by the end of this parliament in 2015.
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The Office for Budget Responsibility, however, has cast doubt on whether the Government will succeed in meeting this goal, with the Coalition's fiscal watchdog estimating that average annual migration until 2016 will be 140,000.
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Net migration hit a record high of 252,000 in 2010, although this was mainly due to a sharp fall in the number of Britons leaving the country rather than an increase in immigration.
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Yet another sorry little saga that runs and runs
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Depending on your media of choice you have either "they are ruining the country" or
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"They are making a beneficial contribution."
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Nothing but nothing escapes the doom merchants.
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Is it just a British exercise in self flagellation?
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Maybe not, rather it is a media cow to be milked whenever space is hard to fill.

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Time to move consciousness to a higher level.
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Treat people like morons and you get morons.
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Educate them and everybody wins.
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No, not true.
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Politicians certainly find it easier to deal with morons.
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Maybe that's why the education system is so bad!

Shared space

Standing at the junction of two of the busiest streets in central London – High Holborn and Shaftesbury Avenue. 
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In one direction is Centre Point and the start of Oxford Street; in another Leicester Square; to the south-east is Covent Garden; behind is Bloomsbury and the giant hulk of the British Museum. 
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It's quite a vista. 
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But this view only lasts for eight seconds before the little green man turns turns red and a herd of black cabs rev their engines.
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Pointing down the streets and cursing the crossing barriers that pen in tourists and office workers is Tim Stonor, managing director of Space Syntax, a UCL-affiliated consultancy whose job it is to understand how humans move within spaces like these. 
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Space Syntax's work has included analysing how people flow within the British Museum and helping Norman Foster to redesign Trafalgar Square.
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London is – when compared to car-heavy cities such as Los Angeles – quite easy to navigate on foot. 
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But all too often roads are designed for cars – pedestrians are plodding afterthoughts.
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Stonor's firm came to this spot when it was working on the Renzo Piano-designed Central St Giles complex next door. 
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It discovered that tourists heading from Covent Garden to the British Museum were so perplexed by the crossings that they ended up turning back and getting on the Tube.
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This wouldn't happen in a more "walkable" city. 
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Walkability is the measure of how easy and pleasant it is to get around a place on foot, whether that's quick road crossings; lots of routes; cut-throughs and meeting areas; housing in central areas and transport links. 
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If a city is walkable then more people will walk. 
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Simple. 
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And what does a walkable city get you? 
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Healthy citizens, clean air, economic vitality (having people walk past smaller shops instead of driving to out-of-town shopping centres), higher house prices and lower fuel costs.
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It's not just an important thing for Britain to consider. 
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If emerging cities in China and India develop in the same way they have in America, then their material and fuel use would be unsustainable. 
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Walkable cities may well be the only way for all of us to live in the future.
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Stonor's work on Central St Giles was to make sure it was walkable. 
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Rather than a block which pedestrians would have to traipse around, the new site features two public walkways that go straight through the middle of the complex. 
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This creates a large meeting point in the middle – perfect for lunching office workers and retail spaces – the spaces at floor level are occupied by restaurants including Jamie Oliver's new Union Jacks.
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Cities that grew organically tend to be walkable for the obvious reason that the main form of transport pre-car was by foot. 
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But towns and cities planned around the car are the antitheses of walkability. 
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These failures were due to well-intended but naive planning, Stonor tells me. 
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People saw garden cities as a wonderful alternative to urban congestion – and then we built them as New Towns: Bracknell, Skelmersdale.
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The problem with New Towns is that if cars become too costly, and local transport infrastructure isn't improved, then there'll be no easy way of getting around. 
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For instance, in the New Town where my in-laws live, Redditch in Worcestershire, the nearest shop is a 35-minute walk away. 
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You can't get a pint of milk without a car. 
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This creates other problems, Stonor explains. 
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The other method of urban planning in the 1960s was to separate the cars from the pedestrians to reduce road accidents. 
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If you combine the pedestrianisation of town centres with depopulation then come 7pm the place is dead. 
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The most important thing to do in this country to make towns safer, more economically vibrant and convivial – is to build more houses in the middle of towns.
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But how do you measure how walkable those towns are? 
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A number of people are beginning to try and quantify the walkability of an area. 
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The US website Walkscore rates areas on criteria including distances and transport links. 
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But this is different to walkability, which considers many other factors.
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In the UK, former sustainable transport consultant Adam Davies has created Walkonomics, a website that uses government data and crowdsourcing to measure how walkable a street is from crime rates to how hilly places are. 
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He's ranked more than 600,000 streets.
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Walkonomics gives local authorities and planners a visual assessment of the parts of their towns that need to be improved. 
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If they can do that and act upon it, then the overall benefits are good for everyone: 
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Research suggests that people who live in more walkable areas walk 30 minutes more a week than those who don't. 
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There's also a study which links how walkable a street is to house prices. 
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Walkability can add about £30k to the average house price.
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As with Stonor's High Holborn junction, it's the smaller elements of walkability which Davies thinks could dramatically improve things: 
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It's things like waiting to cross the road – there was a stat that said that 50 per cent of all time walking in London is spent waiting to cross the street. 
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You can get crossings with four different stages and you get herded across like cattle when you could get across in one stage if it was well designed.
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Concerns such as this are at the heart of the shared space movement. 
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Shared spaces are roads in which pedestrians, cyclists and cars are all on an even footing.
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They can be controversial – many don't have kerbs, which can disadvantage blind people – but done well they can drastically reshape what a city space can be. 
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They work by desegregating the space between cars and people – examples of the idea can be seen at New Road, Brighton and Seven Dials in Covent Garden.
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The most noticeable shared space project so far is the new Exhibition Road in west London – which runs from South Kensington station past the museums (Natural History, Science, V&A); Imperial College and up to the Royal Albert Hall and Hyde Park. 
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The idea is that as a driver you enter that space and you feel 'this is a space for people to walk within' so you slow down. 
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It's psychological traffic calming without the speed humps.
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Ben Hamilton-Baillie, one of the key proponents of shared spaces, played a role in the early stages of the scheme. 
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He says that shared spaces work because they reflect the way in which we actually walk. 
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Pedestrians are the world's greatest Pythagoreans, they always take the hypotenuse shortest route.
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Diagonal movement patterns are typical when you start to analyse what are called pedestrian desire lines.
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This is reflected in the new Exhibition Road, where diagonal paving tiles encourage pedestrians to drift between the institutions on the street. 
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This combines with signs telling drivers to give way to people; a lack of street markings; benches in the middle of the road and distinctive street lights. 
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These elements do two things – they make Exhibition Road a nice place to be and inform drivers that this is a public space and not just for them.
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It's about designing and building streets "along the grain of human behaviour", adds Hamilton-Baillie. 
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This means understanding the way humans interact and how we anticipate each others' movements – which a far more sophisticated language than conventional engineering assumes.
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The advantages are clear – studies show that urban traffic flows better at 20mph, while the museums are happy with the slowly passing crowds.
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Obviously shared spaces aren't the answer for all streets. 
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We still need highways linking places, but if the thinking behind them spreads then it should make our cities and towns pleasant places to walk. 
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And if that happens then everyone – apart from Jeremy Clarkson – stands to win.
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A smart route

This 'walkable' space in London works because it connects a university, a Tube station, Hyde Park and museums. The large crowds help explain its purpose to drivers
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The paving
Different colours and patterns to regular streets make it clear to drivers that this isn't an ordinary road – the diagonal patterns reflect how people will cross the road
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Low/no curbs 
Rather than protect pedestrians from the traffic, curbs and some other safety measures are thought to encourage drivers to go faster as they feel distanced from people
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A 'shared space'
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This is one of the few street signs on the new Exhibition Road – cars are kept to low speeds by the surroundings and the free movement of pedestrians

Beyond morphogentic fields

Most biologists take it for granted that living organisms are nothing but complex machines, governed only by the known laws of physics and chemistry.

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I myself used to share this point of view.
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But over a period of several years I came to see that such an assumption is difficult to justify.
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For when so little is actually understood, there is an open possibility that at least some of the phenomena of life depend on laws or factors as yet unrecognized by the physical sciences. 

With these words biologist Rupert Sheldrake introduced his first book, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation, published in 1981. 
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It met with a mixed response: while welcomed as 'challenging and stimulating' by some, the journal Nature dismissed it as an 'infuriating tract . . . the best candidate for burning there has been for many years'. 
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Sheldrake developed his ideas further in The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature (1988) and The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God (1991).
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His basic argument is that natural systems, or morphic units, at all levels of complexity -- atoms, molecules, crystals, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, and societies of organisms -- are animated, organized, and coordinated by morphic fields, which contain an inherent memory. 
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Natural systems inherit this collective memory from all previous things of their kind by a process called morphic resonance, with the result that patterns of development and behavior become increasingly habitual through repetition. 
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Sheldrake suggests that there is a continuous spectrum of morphic fields, including morphogenetic fields, behavioral fields, mental fields, and social and cultural fields.
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Morphogenesis -- literally, the 'coming into being' (genesis) of 'form' (morphê) -- is something of a mystery. 
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How do complex living organisms arise from much simpler structures such as seeds or eggs?
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How does an acorn manage to grow into an oak tree, or a fertilized human egg into an adult human being? 
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A striking characteristic of living organisms is the capacity to regenerate, ranging from the healing of wounds to the replacement of lost limbs or tails. 
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Organisms are clearly more than just complex machines: no machine has ever been known to grow spontaneously from a machine egg or to regenerate after damage! 
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Unlike machines, organisms are more than the sum of their parts; there is something within them that is holistic and purposive, directing their development toward certain goals.
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Although modern mechanistic biology grew up in opposition to vitalism -- the doctrine that living organisms are organized by nonmaterial vital factors -- it has introduced purposive organizing principles of its own, in the form of genetic programs. 
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Genetic programs are sometimes likened to computer programs, but whereas computer programs are designed by intelligent beings, genetic programs are supposed to have been thrown together by chance! 
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In recent years a number of leading developmental biologists have suggested that the misleading concept of genetic programs be abandoned in favor of terms such as 'internal representation' or 'internal description'. 
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Exactly what these representations and descriptions are supposed to be has still to be explained.
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The role of genes is vastly overrated by mechanistic biologists. 
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The genetic code in the DNA molecules determines the sequence of amino acids in proteins; it does not specify the way the proteins are arranged in cells, cells in tissues, tissues in organs, and organs in organisms. 
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As Sheldrake remarks:
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Given the right genes and hence the right proteins, and the right systems by which protein synthesis is controlled, the organism is somehow supposed to assemble itself automatically.
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This is rather like delivering the right materials to a building site at the right times and expecting a house to grow spontaneously. 

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The fact that all the cells of an organism have the same genetic code yet somehow behave differently and form tissues and organs of different structures clearly indicates that some formative influence other than DNA must be shaping the developing organs and limbs. 
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Developmental biologists acknowledge this, but their mechanistic explanations peter out into vague statements about 'complex spatio-temporal patterns of physico-chemical interaction not yet fully understood'.
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According to Sheldrake, the development and maintenance of the bodies of organisms are guided by morphogenetic fields. 
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The concept of morphogenetic fields has been widely adopted in developmental biology, but the nature of these fields has remained obscure, and they are often conceived of in conventional physical and chemical terms. 

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According to Sheldrake, they are a new kind of field so far unknown to physics. 
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They are localized within and around the systems they organize, and contain a kind of collective memory on which each member of the species draws and to which it in turn contributes. 
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The fields themselves therefore evolve.

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Each morphic unit has its own characteristic morphogenetic field, nested in that of a higher-level morphic unit which helps to coordinate the arrangement of its parts. 
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For example, the fields of cells contain those of molecules, which contain those of atoms, etc. 
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The inherent memory of these fields explains, for example, why newly synthesized chemical compounds crystallize more readily all over the world the more often they are made.

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Before considering other types of morphic fields, it is worth examining exactly what a morphic field is supposed to be. 
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Sheldrake describes them as 'fields of information', saying that they are neither a type of matter nor of energy and are detectable only by their effects on material systems. 
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However, if morphic fields were completely non material, that would imply that they were pure nothingness, and it is hard to see how fields of nothingness could possibly have any effect on the material world!* 
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In a discussion with David Bohm, Sheldrake does in fact concede that morphic fields may have a subtle energy, but not in any 'normal' (physical) sense of the term, since morphic fields can propagate across space and time and do not fade out noticeably over distance . 
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In this sense morphic fields would be a subtler form of energy-substance, too ethereal to be detectable by scientific instruments. 
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Sheldrake also suggests that morphic fields may be very closely connected with quantum matter fields . 
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According to science, the universal quantum field forms the substratum of the physical world and is pulsating with energy and vitality; it amounts to the resurrection of the concept of an ether, a medium of subtle matter pervading all of space.
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The reason Sheldrake uses the term 'formative causation' to refer to his hypothesis of the causation of form by morphic fields is precisely to distinguish it from 'energetic causation', the kind of causation brought about by known physical fields such as gravity and electromagnetism.

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Formative causation is said to impose a spatial order on changes brought about by energetic causation.
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The dualism Sheldrake introduces with his distinction between energetic and non-energetic causation is rather unsatisfactory.
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It is all the more remarkable given that Sheldrake criticizes other forms of dualism, such as the idea of a nonmaterial mind acting on a material body (Cartesian dualism), and the idea that the material world is governed by nonmaterial 'laws' of nature.

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Instinctive behavior, learning, and memory also defy explanation in mechanistic terms. 
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As Sheldrake remarks, 'An enormous gulf of ignorance lies between all these phenomena and the established facts of molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics and neurophysiology'. 
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How could purposive instinctive behavior such as the building of webs by spiders or the migrations of swallows ever be explained in terms of DNA and protein synthesis?

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According to Sheldrake, habitual and instinctive behavior is organized by behavioral fields, while mental activity, conscious and unconscious, takes place within and throughmental fields. 
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Instincts are the behavioral habits of the species and depend on the inheritance of behavioral fields, and with them a collective memory, from previous members of the species by morphic resonance. 
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The building up of an animal's own habits also depends on morphic resonance. 
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It is possible for habits acquired by some animals to facilitate the acquisition of the same habits by other similar animals, even in the absence of any known means of connection or communication. 
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This explains how after rats have learned a new trick in one place, other rats elsewhere seem to be able to learn it more easily.

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Memory poses a thorny problem for materialists. 
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Attempts to locate memory-traces within the brain have so far proved unsuccessful. 
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Experiments have shown that memory is both everywhere and nowhere in particular. 
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Sheldrake suggests that the reason for the recurrent failure to find memory-traces in brains is very simple: they do not exist there. 
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He goes on: 'A search inside your TV set for traces of the programs you watched last week would be doomed to failure for the same reason: 
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The set tunes in to TV transmissions but does not store them.' 
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It is true that damage to specific areas of the brain can impair memory in certain ways, but this does not prove that the relevant memories were stored in the damaged tissues. 
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Likewise, damage to parts of a TV circuitry can lead to loss or distortion of the picture but this does not prove that the pictures were stored inside the damaged components.

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Sheldrake suggests that memories are associated with morphic fields and that remembering depends on morphic resonance with these fields. 
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He says that individual memory is due to the fact that organisms resonate most strongly with their own past, but that organisms are also influenced by morphic resonance from others of their kind through a sort of pooled memory, similar to the concept of the collective unconscious put forward by Jung and other depth psychologists.

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According to Sheldrake, morphic resonance involves the transfer of information but not of energy. 
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But it is difficult to see how the one can take place without the other, though the type of energy involved may well be supraphysical. 
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In theosophical terms, the physical world is interpenetrated by a series of increasingly ethereal worlds or planes, composed of energy-substances beyond our range of perception, sometimes called the âkâsha. 
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Its lower levels are referred to as the astral light. 
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An impression of every thought, deed, and event is imprinted on the âkâsha, which therefore forms a sort of memory of nature. 
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Likewise, within and around the physical body there is a series of subtler 'bodies' composed of these more ethereal states of matter.

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Memories, then, are impressed on the etheric substance of supraphysical planes, and we gain access to these records by vibrational synchrony, these vibrations being transmitted through the astral light. 
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Sheldrake, however, rejects the idea of morphic resonance being transmitted through a 'morphogenetic aether', saying that 'a more satisfactory approach may be to think of the past as pressed up, as it were, against the present, and as potentially present everywhere' . 
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But it is hard to see why such a hazy notion is more satisfactory than that of nonphysical energies being transmitted through an etheric medium.

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Social organization is also impossible to understand in reductionist and mechanistic terms. 
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Societies of termites, ants, wasps, and bees can contain thousands or even millions of individual insects. 
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They can build large elaborate nests, exhibit a complex division of labor, and reproduce themselves. 
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Such societies have often been compared to organisms at a higher level of organization, or superorganisms. 
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Studies have shown that termites, for example, can speedily repair damage to their mounds, rebuilding tunnels and arches, working from both sides of the breach that has been made, and meeting up perfectly in the middle, even though the insects are blind.

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Sheldrake suggests that such colonies are organized by social fields, embracing all the individuals within them. 
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This would also help to explain the behavior of shoals of fish, flocks of birds, and herds or packs of animals, whose coordination has so far also defied explanation. 
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Social morphic fields can be thought of as coordinating all patterns of social behavior, including human societies. 
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This would throw light on such things as crowd behavior, panics, fashions, crazes, and cults. 
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Social fields are closely allied withcultural fields, which govern the inheritance and transmission of cultural traditions.

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Sheldrake's hypothesis of morphic fields and morphic resonance is of course anathema to mechanistic biologists. 
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It also goes further than many forms of systems theory, whose advocates recognize the holistic properties of living organisms and the need for some sort of organizing principles, but generally avoid proposing that there are new kinds of causal entities in nature, such as fields unknown to physics. 
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Instead they use vague terms such as complex self-organizing systems, self-regulatory properties, emergent organizing principles, and self-organizing patterns of information -- expressions which are descriptive but have little explanatory power.

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According to Sheldrake, then, human beings consist of a physical body, whose shape and structure are organized by a hierarchy of morphogenetic fields, one for every atom, molecule, cell, and organ up to the body as a whole. 
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Our habitual activities are organized by behavioral fields, one for each pattern of behavior, and our mental activity by mental fields, one for each thought or idea. 
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Sheldrake also suggests that our conscious self may be regarded either as the subjective aspect of the morphic fields that organize the brain, or as a higher level of our being which interacts with the lower fields and serves as the creative ground through which new fields arise.

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This is reminiscent of the theosophical idea that humans are composed of several interpenetrating and interacting bodies, souls, or vehicles of consciousness, which consist of energies and substances of different grades, and live and function on the inner planes. 
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The lowest body, and the only one normally visible to us, is the physical body. 
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It is built up around an astral model body. 
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Every living entity has a model body, which is relatively permanent and therefore explains how physical shapes preserve their identities and characteristic forms despite the constant turnover of their physical constituents.

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Working through the human physical and model bodies are two closely related vehicles of consciousness composed of still finer substances, which may be called the animal soul and the lower human soul. 
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These four lower bodies are associated with the human personality -- with the desires, emotions, thoughts, and habits of the lower mind. 
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After death they disintegrate into their constituent physical or astral atoms at different rates on their different planes. 
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There are also three higher souls, composed of more refined âkâshic substances: the higher human soul or reincarnating ego, the spiritual soul, and the divine soul. 
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These higher vehicles are the source of our nobler feelings, aspirations, and intuitions, and endure for a time period immeasurably longer than do the lower vehicles.

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As we move up the ladder of life from the mineral kingdom through the plant and animal kingdoms to the human kingdom, the degree of individualization increases, as the higher vehicles become more able to express themselves through the more sophisticated physical forms. 
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In the human kingdom a selfconscious mind develops, bringing with it free will and moral responsibility.

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After death, the reincarnating ego is said to enter a dreamlike state of rest until the time comes for it to return to earth. 
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As it reawakens and redescends towards the material realms, it draws back to itself many of the same life-atoms which had formerly composed its lower vehicles and which therefore bear the karmic impress of previous lives. 
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Life after life we therefore build habits of thought, feeling, and behavior into the different levels of our constitution. 
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The formation of habits can be understood in terms of nature's fundamental tendency to follow the line of least resistance and to repeat itself. 
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The vital and electric impulses and energies moving within and between the different levels of our constitution are more likely to repeat past pathways and vibrational forms, associated with particular patterns of thought and behavior, than they are to follow or assume new ones -- unless forced to do so by our will.

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According to Sheldrake we are also influenced by social and cultural fields contained within the overall field of the earth. 
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In theosophy we are said to contribute thoughts and ideas to the pooled memory of the astral light and attract from it those ideas and thoughts with which we resonate most strongly. 
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The astral light may be considered to be the astral body of the earth, and plays a role similar to what Sheldrake calls the morphic field of Gaia.

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Sheldrake admits that his terminology of morphic fields could be replaced by occult terms such as âkâsha and subtle bodies. 
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However, occult philosophy goes much further than anything Sheldrake would care to admit to, especially as regards such teachings as reembodiment. 
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Instead of a physical world organized by a nebulous nonmaterial realm of 'fields', theosophy proposes the existence of bodies within bodies and worlds within worlds, comprising a whole spectrum of energy-substances, the higher helping to animate and coordinate the lower. 
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These ideas account for the regularity and harmony of nature, the powers of mind and consciousness, and paranormal phenomena.

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Whatever the limitations of his ideas, however, Sheldrake has dealt a significant blow to materialistic science with his forceful arguments exposing the inadequacy of physical factors alone to account for the phenomena of life, mind, and evolution, and in support of the idea that memory is innate in nature.
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David Pratt