deleuze and guattari develop the concept of the plateau as being a level that is consistent with itself. there are an infinite number of plateaus, just like there are an infinite number of logics, each different but with its own internal consistency. plateaus have at their core, an absolute logic that we can understand as being a “plane of immanence” — which is an even harder concept to define. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_of_immanence )
this plane of immanence is only immanent to itself — and this is what allows it to also be simultaneously transcendental but to other phenomenon outside the plane.
the easiest way to conceive of planes of immanence is to think of a specific consciousness — animal, human or alien. how sensory data enters the consciousness, or how that consciousness purposefully arranges phenomenon IS what makes that consciousness itself. this is the easiest way to understand immanence. but immanence is not limited to consciousness. it could be how a specific species of bug is, or how the building code is itself (regardless of what it specifically says), or how a system gravitation works. it could be a logical formulae and its extending existential statements. anything really. even a poem, potentially. anything with its own internal sense, or logic.
plateaus then, are planes of immanence but as they relate to other plateaus, and signs that float between them. if you take a line of flight, a thought as it escapes a plateau, it can then become another plateau. plateaus are the status quo of tight-knit groups of people. when a group of people that absolutely form a group (rather than a collective of individuals) navigate through a new space, they leave behind tracks unique to themselves. like survivors in a zombie apocalypse movie, they take certain choice items, leave others behind, and make muddy prints everywhere. forensic dramas like CIS, law & order, mentalist and bones, and whatever new tv shows exist now… they all hinge on the fact that people are planes of immanence. people can’t help it; they are immanent to themselves. their tracks are unique to them, and can be left by no one. each episode is the piecing together of a criminal profile like a new bear claw in the mud can tell the biologist the age, size, sex, diet and whatever about the bear so they can define it, contain it and capture it… normalizing the forest.
in case you aren’t impressed by the organizational power behind this post-structural philosophy: palmistry, astrology, alchemy… these are all planes of immanence on the scale of their immersion. if you grab any media, like anime or any movie or tv show — if this media is successful it will create a plane of immanence — a world uniquely itself so that we can insert any number of anything into this world and it will follow a logic. (one imagines aliens landing in the middle of an episode of SUITS and harvey spector defending earth by “out lawyering” a bunch of alien invaders)
so, if you think about planes of immanence and how they relate to things like real estate… or doing philosophical forensics — e.i. reading the signs people leave lying around and trying to reconstruct their psyche-footprint — no doubt planes of immanence is related to how we as human beings conceive and arrange things. that is, cultural knowledge can be arranged in a series of multiple planes of immanence. it follows too that biological, and physical phenomena can also be arranged this way, but only as it relates to how we define the study of that phenomenon — or more rightly speaking — how we define that phenomena. because when you take said knowledge and extend it beyond the academic field, we see (more and more so, through the internet’s ability to open us to other people’s thoughts and conversations) that nothing is by itself… changes even in one small area affect phenomena in conceptually remote places. for example, bees. pesticides. earthquakes in distant regions as they make our computer hardware more expensive. economic analysis often trace roots to surprising historical ontologies as they originate through natural or political disasters or technological disruption.
so i’m guessing that these plateaus are more a formulation of our mind than an actual out-in-the-world noumenon.
the question then becomes, for me, how is it that we choose one plateau over another? we (and i mean us 1st worlders who exist so much online) are so exposed to alternative medias, alternative media channels, lies, truths, advertisements that seek to blow our collective minds. yet we filter out some messages when other messages resonant so strongly with us. i understand that too much twisty logic is distasteful. such logic is rejected because it asks that we sacrifice too much of ourselves to follow it. but too little is boring, even cliche. so somewhere in the middle, is the pleasurable playfulness of being exposed to some kind of nonsense. it seems to me that philosophical economics is the proper field of study here.
economics is all about why we choose one thing over another. why we make decisions the way we do. granted, this isn’t psychology or sociology — economics today isn’t even about the maximization of utility. economics today is about the maximization of the objectively quantifiable utility (money and all the things that are money (commodities… stocks, real estate… branding… whatever…)). but the fact of the matter is, we make choices all the time about what we are willing to expose ourselves to, and why we chose to embrace one plateau (say, global warming) over another (say, scientology).
to me, this is MOST fascinating. it’s also not enough to say, okay, here’s a weird club, who goes with it, and can enjoy it… who wants to leave immediately? i want that experience to somehow say something about our psyche, how it reaches our core. i want to trace that line. so i suppose then, that i buy into the fantasy that so many forensic tv shows share: that everything is about us. that our choices matter, that they reveal to the world who we are despite ourselves. we cannot help but be who we are.
the root of this fantasy though, isn’t just that things touch us at our core, that everything reflects on us, because everything is psychologically revealing… it’s the fantasy that we even have a core in the first place.
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