Editing Double bind (section)

== The double bind as a driver of evolution ==

After many years of research into schizophrenia, Bateson continued to explore problems of communication and learning, first with dolphins, and then with the more abstract processes of [[evolution]]. Bateson emphasized that any communicative system characterized by different logical levels might be subject to double bind problems. Especially including the communication of characteristics from one generation to another (genetics and evolution).

{{Blockquote
|text=Evolution always followed the pathways of viability. As Lewis Carroll has pointed out, the theory [of natural selection] explains quite satisfactorily why there are no bread-and-butter-flies today."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Bateson|first=Gregory|title=Cybernetic Explanation|journal=American Behavioral Scientist|date=April 1967|volume=10|issue=8|pages=29–32|doi=10.1177/0002764201000808 |s2cid=220678731}}</ref>
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Bateson used the fictional Bread and Butter Fly (from ''[[Through the Looking-Glass|Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There]]'') to illustrate the double bind in terms of natural selection. The gnat points out that the insect would be doomed if he found his food (which would dissolve his own head, since this insect's head is made of sugar, and his only food is tea), and starve if he did not. Alice suggests that this must happen quite often, to which the gnat replies: "It always happens."

The pressures that drive evolution therefore represent a genuine double bind. And there is truly no escape: "It always happens." No species can escape natural selection, including our own.

Bateson suggested that all evolution is driven by the double bind, whenever circumstances change: If any environment becomes toxic to any species, that species will die out unless it transforms into another species, in which case, the species becomes extinct anyway.

Most significant here is Bateson's exploration of what he later came to call "the pattern that connects"<ref>{{cite book|last=Bateson|first=Gregory|title=Mind and Nature|year=1979|isbn=978-1-57273-434-0}}</ref>&mdash;that problems of communication which span more than one level (e.g., the relationship between the individual and the family) should also be expected to be found spanning other pairs of levels in the hierarchy (e.g. the relationship between the genotype and the phenotype):

{{Blockquote
|text=We are very far … from being able to pose specific questions for the geneticist; but I believe that the wider implications of what I have been saying modify somewhat the philosophy of genetics. Our approach to the problems of schizophrenia by way of a theory of levels or logical types has disclosed first that the problems of adaptation and learning and their pathologies must be considered in terms of a hierarchic system in which stochastic change occurs at the boundary points between the segments of the hierarchy. We have considered three such regions of stochastic change&mdash;the level of genetic mutation, the level of learning, and the level of change in family organization. We have disclosed the possibility of a relationship of these levels which orthodox genetics would deny, and we have disclosed that at least in human societies the evolutionary system consists not merely in the selective survival of those persons who happen to select appropriate environments but also in the modification of family environment in a direction which might enhance the phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of the individual members.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Bateson|first=Gregory|journal=Archives of General Psychiatry|year=1960|volume=2|issue=5|pages=477–491|doi=10.1001/archpsyc.1960.03590110001001|title=Minimal Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia*|pmid=13797500}}</ref>
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=== Positive double binds ===

Bateson also described positive double binds, both in relation to [[Zen Buddhism]] with its path of spiritual growth, and the use of therapeutic double binds by psychiatrists to confront their patients with the contradictions in their life in such a way that would help them heal. One of Bateson's consultants, [[Milton H. Erickson]] (5 volumes, edited by Rossi) eloquently demonstrated the productive possibilities of double binds through his own life, showing the technique in a brighter light.{{Idetail}}